------------------------ BurmaNet ------------------------ "Appropriate Information Technologies, Practical Strategies" ---------------------------------------------------------- The BurmaNet News: February 14, 1996 Issue #343 HEADLINES: ========== NATION: SUU KYI MAKES NEW APPEAL FOR INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE ABSDF-MTZ: STATEMENT ON THE 49TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE UNION DAY BKK POST: 2,000 KARENS TO CROSS THAI-BURMESE BORDER NATION: BURMA BORDER TENSIONS RISE AS ARMY BEEFS UP TROOPS WIRED MAGAZINE: THE RESISTANCE NETWORK BKK POST: LETTERS - IN BURMA WATCH WHERE YOU WALK BKK POST: LETTERS - SLORC MUST FIRST LEARN CIVILITY NATION: SUCHART OFFERS MA KHINE STORY FOR BT 5 MILLION NATION: US DISMAYED KHUN SA WON'T BE EXTRADITED ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NATION: SUU KYI MAKES NEW APPEAL FOR INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE Agence France - Presse February 12, 1996 RANGOON - Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's leading pro-democracy activist, has again appealed for the moral and practical support of the international community to help Burma attain democracy. Directing her appeal to the sprinkling of foreigners present outside her house as she addressed the regular weekend crowd of supporters, she asked for a "firm commitment" to the United Nations resolution on Burma which has called for an early restoration of democracy to Burma. "All those who are present here will certainly realize that the people of Burma do desire democracy," she said. Aung San Suu Kyi said those who came to her weekly public meetings, which she has begun to call "forums for democracy", had the full knowledge that they ran the risk of "bringing down upon them the disfavour of the authorities". "But still they come because they believe democracy is something for which they should sacrifice their security," she aid. "So seeing how the people of Burma are committed to democracy, we would like the international community to help in every way possible to bring about an early implementation of the terms of the [UN] General Assembly resolution," she said. The pro-democracy activist said that although she depended mainly on the "strength of our own people to achieve our aims", she was well aware of the contribution the international community could make in this respect. "We are not unaware of the fact that today the world is getting smaller and smaller and that we are all linked to each other by bonds of humanity," she said. "We will always continue to be grateful for anything that you can do to support us in our struggle for democracy and human rights. I hope you will continue to support us morally as well as through practical means," she said. Today, the National League for Democracy (NLD), the political party she leads, plans to hold a commemorative ceremony on the occasion of the 49th anniversary of Burma's Union Day. Hundreds of supporters are expected to attend the unofficial ceremony to be held inside the compound of Aung San Suu Kyi's private residence risking official displeasure, observers said. ***************************************************** ABSDF-MTZ: STATEMENT ON THE 49TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE UNION DAY February 12, 1996 Statement on the 49th Anniversary of the Pang Long Agreement(Union Day) Date: February 12, 1996 February 12, 1996 is a special day in Burma as it is the 49th anniversary of the signing of the Pang Long Agreement (Union Day), symbol of solidarity of all ethnic groups in Burma, which led to independence from British colonial rule. General Aung San, independence hero of Burma, and almost all ethnic groups signed the treaty, agreeing to a future Federal Union based on equality and mutual understanding. The signing took place at Pang Long Township in Shan State on February 12, 1947. One year later Burma gained independence from the British. Since the 1962 coup led by Gen. Ne Win, ethnic people have lost their rights to address outstanding problems by political means. SLORC, the current ruling junta, has continued to deal with ethnic problems by means of intimidation and repression through its sham National convention and temporary ceasefire agreement. The ABSDF believes that National solidarity and long lasting union can never be constructed on the base of a constitution produced by means of repression and intimidation. Only a constitution founded on equality, mutual understanding and mutual respect can bring peace and lasting union of all the people of Burma. SLORC is still continuing its puppet show National Convention in order to guarantee the military a leading role in the future politics of Burma, very much against the wishes of the Burmese people. All this is to be achieved with no guarantee for the rights of ethnic minorities. The ABSDF demands the Slorc to: -Abolish the sham National Convention, -Begin dialogue with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and ethnic leaders in order to bring national reconciliation, democracy and lasting peace to Burma, -Unconditionally release prominent student leader Min Ko Naing and all political prisoners, -Cancel all unjust laws. We call on all ethnic people of Burma unite and continue their struggle with the spirit of Pang Long in their hearts until the restoration of ethnic rights and democratic rights has been achieved. Central Leading Committee ABSDF Camp 88 E-mail: ABSDF-MTZ ***************************************************************** BKK POST: 2,000 KARENS TO CROSS THAI-BURMESE BORDER February 11, 1996 About 2,000 Karen civilians are poised to cross the Thai- Burmese border to escape a drive against Karen rebels by Burmese troops, it emerged yesterday. Informed Thai police sources said the civilians had evacuated Democracy, Ayettaya and Tung Kha camps in Tenasserim village and were gathering close to the border, waiting to flee into Huay Pak Kok in Tambon Huay Khayeng in Thong Pha Phum District. The latest clashes between the 30-strong Karen force and Government soldiers took place this week at Kamaw Twe village, about 20 km away from Thailand. Three Karen soldiers were reportedly injured. No casualties have been reported on the government side. Thai border patrol police have been put on the alert to prevent the fighting from spilling over into Thailand. (BP) ******************************************** NATION: BURMA BORDER TENSIONS RISE AS ARMY BEEFS UP TROOPS February 12, 1996 KAWMOORA, Burma -Tension is high on the Thai-Burmese border as Thai Army reinforcements move up to the frontier and the two uneasy neighbours accuse each other of supporting rival Burmese rebel factions. Thai troops are moving into the area after a series of violent cross-border raids and their commanders are vowing immediate retaliation for any further intrusions. Thai forces will stage live-fire military exercises near the porous border later this week, one officer said yesterday. The ethnic Karen gunmen in Burma held responsible for the attacks admitted crossing into Thailand to kill their rivals and appeared determined to continue their fight. Army officers said last week a Karen rebel splinter faction, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), had made 15 raids into Thailand since October including a Jan 30 attack on a village in which a policeman and two civilians were killed. For the first time, senior Army officers directly accused Burma of complicity in the raids, saying the DKBA was being supplied and directed by Burmese government forces. A senior DKBA officer denied that his men were responsible for raids on Thai villages but admitted they did cross into Thailand to kill members of the Karen National Union (KNU) guerrilla group living in Thai refugee camps. "We've never attacked Thai villages but sometimes we go over and kill KNU members," Capt Kyaw Thay told a small group of reporters at his camp on the Burmese bank of a border river. "There are lots of KNU members on the Thai side of the border," he said. There would only be peace when KNU leaders negotiated a settlement with the DKBA's spiritual leader, Buddhist monk U Thuzana, he said. However, the Thai military said attacks have been made against both Thai villages and refugee camps. Villages and camps are sometimes, but not always, located near each other. The DKBA was formed in December 1994 by former KNU fighters who mutinied against their mostly Christian leaders claiming religious discrimination, and joined forces with the Burmese government army. Soon after it was formed DKBA gunmen began raids into Thailand, attacking and burning camps housing some 70,000 Karen people who have fled the decades of fighting between the KNU and the Burmese army. The DKBA say they want all Karen civilians in the Thai camps, many of them KNU supporters, to return to areas of Burma under DKBA control. The gunmen have also attacked Thai villages, police posts and border roads, creating a climate of fear in the region which until very recently was a trouble-free frontier. Burma denies responsibility for the actions of its DKBA allies and has in turn accused Thailand of supporting the KNU which has been fighting Rangoon for autonomy since 1949. Thailand denies supporting the KNU but says it allows disarmed guerrillas fleeing fighting to enter its territory on humanitarian grounds. DKBA officer Kyaw Thay, speaking at a former KNU stronghold captured by Burmese troops a year ago, said the Burmese army only supplied the DKBA with rice. Their arms and ammunition were captured in fighting with their former KNU comrades, he said. Near where he spoke a mortar tube with several bombs at the ready was pointing across the Moei river into Thailand. On the Thai side of the border Karen refugees an Thai civilians are living in fear of more DKBA attacks. "Most people here are Buddhist but they're still afraid," said Karen refugee Ne Minn, a 30-year-old medic at Shoklo refugee camp. "When the DKBA come they don't care who is Buddhist and who is Christian. They rob and kill anyone. " ********************************************************** WIRED MAGAZINE: THE RESISTANCE NETWORK January, 1996 (abridged) By A. Lin Neumann [This article appeared in the January issue of Wired magazine and was forwarded for distribution on BurmaNet by Burma Center, Netherlands] Too many people believe if it isn't on CNN, it isn't important. "Countrynets" expose dictatorships, unite activists, and give hope to the oppressed around the world. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For the most part, people outside don't understand and don't care," says the slight young American man who calls himself Strider. "Burma is just too far away and too hard to understand." As a result, he says, a brutal dictatorship has existed there for years with scant outside attention paid to its excesses and abuses. The cure for the problem, as far as Strider is concerned, is partly to be found on the Internet and in a new kind of communications resource: BurmaNet, an information-heavy mailing list that targets activists, journalists, exiles, and academics intent on tracking Burma (renamed Myanmar in 1989) with detail unavailable through traditional media. While commercial online companies sell the _ash and dash of the World Wide Web and US Congressional antiporn tub-thumpers seek to impose their parochial will on the global networking phenomenon, Strider and hundreds of other modem-driven activists are using the Internet to quietly transform the work of monitoring human rights violations and pressuring governments. They may exist outside most of the recent public Net scrutiny, but dozens of mailing lists, webpages, Usenet groups, and other tools are springing up to track events and affect political decisions in under-reported countries, many of them hindered by closed political systems. These "countrynets" unite activists separated by tens of thousands of miles and allow instant access to a common pool of narrowcast news and information on nations and issues that are largely ignored by the mass media. "For Americans, if it doesn't happen on CNN, it doesn't happen. We're trying to change that, at least for those who are interested," explains BurmaNet's Strider, 29, who says he began working on the project because he was frustrated by the lack of information available in the West about the deplorable human rights conditions in Burma. "Without the Net, there wouldn't be any information available," says Strider, who doesn't use his real name for security reasons. Funded by the Open Society Institute of international financier and philanthropist George Soros, BurmaNet is one of the most effective of the new countrynet services that have emerged in recent years. More than information, however, these nets and a growing number of webpages are helping knit together diverse communities united around a given issue - be it human rights in Burma, the liberation of East Timor, or the release of political prisoners in Kenya. As BurmaNet's Bangkok-based moderator, Strider has gradually built one of the world's best sources of information on events in Burma. A network of volunteers in Thailand and Burma reprint human rights reports and articles from wire services and the local press by rekeying them into their computers for posting on the Net. Occasionally, Strider and others do original reporting from inside Burma, and they have even distributed modems and laptops to a small network of correspondents working among refugees and relief workers on the Burmese border with Thailand. BurmaNet has opened the list to wide-ranging debates by its 500-plus subscribers and thousands of netizens who access portions of BurmaNet through Usenet and other services. "What goes out over the Internet is largely aimed at a specialist community," Strider says, noting that the amount of material and the detail involved requires a serious commitment on the part of a reader. For casual observers and others, however, Strider believes the Web may be a better resource; there are now several different Burma pages. "This is the information backbone of a larger movement that aims to mobilize public opinion against the military leaders of Burma," Strider says. It was the Net, he explains, that helped mobilize activists on college campuses and elsewhere in their opposition to investment in Burma by Eddie Bauer. (The clothing outfit pulled out of the country earlier this year.) And it was the Net that stimulated bipartisan sentiment in Congress to impose sanctions on the regime. "There are few Burmese in the States," he says, "and relatively few people who even know where Burma is. But those who care are organized and effective, and it's because of the Internet." Not all of the countrynets are the same, of course, and not all of the information available is anti-government. Some carry a modest subscription fee: Kenya-net, for example, charts everything from news and gossip to stock-market quotations and political debate in the East African nation. Others like the East Timor Action Network - devoted to the plight of the tiny former Portuguese colony that has been occupied by Indonesia for the last 20 years - are basically electronic extensions of networks that have functioned through other means for years. In the case of East Timor, activists in Australia and elsewhere use the Net to instantly disseminate information and calls for action, something that once took weeks of snail-mail and expensive telephone calls to arrange. The same can be said of services that track events in Israel and the West Bank, as well as in China, Vietnam, Mexico, Guatemala, and the former Yugoslavia (see "Balkans Online," Wired 3.11, page 159), employing everything from relatively old listserve technology to the Web. PeaceNet, a project of the Institute for Global Communications, provides space on its servers to BurmaNet along with hundreds of global mininets. BurmaNet, as with many others, acts as a PeaceNet "conference" and also e-mails its list free of charge to interested parties. PeaceNet also offers its users access to China News Digest, perhaps the largest countrynet project in existence. Staffed by more than 50 volunteers worldwide, China News Digest was set up in early 1989, shortly before the Tiananmen Square democracy movement was crushed in June. The digest now goes to some 35,200 e-mail addresses in 43 countries and contains a summary of wire-service reports, news, and commentary from dissident sources inside China. "The Net has been so intrinsic to organizing in the US and internationally for the last few years that whatever successes East Timor's solidarity movement has had cannot be considered otherwise," says Charles Scheiner, the moderator of reg.easttimor, a PeaceNet conference mirrored on the East Timor Action Network mailing list. "Consider last month, when five young East Timorese activists sought political asylum in the British embassy in Jakarta. Within hours, their statement and biographies were e-mailed all over the world, and people began calling the British embassies in their own countries, as well as Indonesian government officials. Within a day, the Portuguese, British, and Indonesian representatives met and discussed what to do; within two days, they had agreed that the young men would be allowed to leave Indonesia for Portugal. Within a week they had left." The problem of e-mail clutter can also be a major difficulty if you start tracking countrynet activity through mailing lists. In the course of researching this article, I subscribed to BurmaNet, Kenya-net, East Timor Action Network, and a mailing list on Chinese human rights managed from Silicon Valley. On any given day, I received 75 or more lengthy messages. Keeping up with several of these lists at a time is a full-time job. But to someone who once clipped newspaper articles and coordinated phone trees on human rights issues, it is clear that the Internet is offering activists and others with a burning need to stay informed a wealth of information that was previously hard to come by. As a foreign correspondent, I covered the popular uprising in Burma that was brutally crushed by the military in 1988. But in recent years, I had grown unfamiliar with events there. That problem has been cured. Earlier this year, when Burmese government troops overran rebel strongholds near the country's border with Thailand, BurmaNet carried often gripping updates from the border - on an almost hourly basis - during a time when most American newspapers and broadcast outlets ignored the clashes. In recent months, BurmaNet easily has been the best source of continuing information on events related to the release in July of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Prize-winning opposition leader who had been kept under house arrest by the regime for six years. "For the first time, people all over the world who are interested in this issue are seeing essentially the same information at about the same time. That is really our main contribution," says Strider. "It is difficult to track the effect. You can't say this or that happened just because of the Net, but the information is what is allowing things to happen. There simply wouldn't be an activist movement for Burma in the United States without BurmaNet. None at all." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- California-based freelance writer A. Lin Neumann (74507.134@compuserve.com) was a foreign correspondent in Southeast Asia for seven years. ******************************************************** BKK POST: LETTERS - IN BURMA WATCH WHERE YOU WALK February 11, 1996 SIR. I would like people who are thinking of visiting Burma to know of a harrowing experience I had on a holiday there in January. I had just returned to Rangoon on an overnight bus from Mandalay and was walking to my guest house when my arm was grabbed roughly by a person in a white uniform, who I later found out was a traffic policeman. After haranguing me in Burmese, he proceeded to haul me down the street. I had no idea what was happening, and naturally I was quite intimidated. I tried to stop and ask the policeman what was happening, but he did not even acknowledge that I was speaking to him, and he would not relax his tight grip on my arm. I was dragged through crowds of people in this humiliating way for several hundred metres to a military truck parked in a side-street. There were l already about 30 Burmese people in I the truck, all clearly scared, and it appeared that I was going to join them. By this time I was extremely distressed, but no one had yet said anything to me. Luckily, however, I was spotted by a local tourist guide, who I had earlier hired to take me around Rangoon. He explained to the police and army personnel at the truck that he was waiting to take me to a pagoda (a lie on his part) and translated as police told him I had crossed the road in the wrong place and would have to be taken to police headquarters where I would be charged with My friend suggested that I don't say anything which might upset them, and after he had talked to them for about 10 minutes, and paid a small amount of money, the policeman finally let go of my arm and allowed me to leave. As you can imagine I was both angered and humiliated by this incident. The guide explained that, in Rangoon, everyone must cross the road between yellow lines painted on the road. These are the equivalent of the "zebra crossings" which are found in most countries. As a tourist who had only been in the country for a few days, I had no idea of this law. There were no signs anywhere in English that I could see, and there was no information in the tourist literature I had been given. I had no time to complain to anyone as my flight was leaving that afternoon, and the guide was too scared to accompany me anywhere to make a complaint. If this is the way tourists are treated during "Visit Burma Year 1996" it can only be a resounding failure. I would suggest that anyone thinking of visiting Burma thinks again. I have heard of the way the Burmese government treats its own people, but I did not think they would be stupid enough to treat foreign tourists in the same way. Richard Samuels Melbourne, Australia ********************************** BKK POST: LETTERS - SLORC MUST FIRST LEARN CIVILITY February 11, 1996 SIR: The nightmare recent tourists experienced in Burma as reported in the piece by L. Huron should indeed deter would-be tourists from parting with their dollars in Burma. In attempting to emulate Thailand's success with international tourism Burma's ruling Junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (Slorc) would like to make a fast buck without genuinely welcoming them. To be sure the generals and their minions are reaping abundant economic benefits from tourism, but they must first learn how to be civilised. Until such time as repression ceases and Burma's populace begin to enjoy a measure of freedom tourists should boycott Burma. U Kyaw Win Laguna Hills, California ************************************************** NATION: SUCHART OFFERS MA KHINE STORY FOR BT 5 MILLION February 10, 1996 (abridged) Deputy Interior Minister Suchart Thancharoen offered a special scoop about the "mysterious" Burmese businesswoman, Ma Khine Zaw, to any newspaper in exchange for Bt 5 million. "Any newspaper wanting to meet Ma Khine should give me money and I'll take them," Suchart said. "I won't charge much. Give me only Bt 5 million." Varin Poonsiriwong, chairman of the paper (Naew Na) claimed he had been harassed by the government because of the Ma Khine story and other stories critical of the administration. ************************************************** NATION: US DISMAYED KHUN SA WON'T BE EXTRADITED February 11, 1996 Reuter (abridged) WASHINGTON - The US has voiced disappointment over Burma's refusal to extradite repute Khun Sa and renewed its appeal to the Slorc to hand him over. State Department spokemans Glyn Davies decribed as a "negative development" a statement by Burmese Foreign Minister Ohn Gyaw that "there is no questions of extradition with any country." Khun Sa, once described by former US Attorney-General Richard Thornburgh as the "prince of death" is wanted in the US on heroin trafficking charges. ****************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------- BURMANET SUBJECT-MATTER RESOURCE LIST BurmaNet regularly receives enquiries on a number of different topics related to Burma. If you have questions on any of the following subjects, please direct email to the following volunteer 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 Campus activism: zni@students.wisc.edu Boycott campaigns: [Pepsi] wcsbeau@superior.ccs.carleton.ca Buddhism: Buddhist Relief Mission: brelief@gol.com Chin history/culture: plilian@asc.corp.mot.com Fonts: tom@cs.colgate.edu History of Burma: zni@students.wisc.edu Kachin history/culture: 74750.1267@compuserve.com Karen history/culture: Karen Historical Society: 102113.2571@Compuserve.com Mon history/culture: [volunteer needed] Naga history/culture: Wungram Shishak: z954001@oats.farm.niu.edu Burma-India border [volunteer needed] Pali literature: "Palmleaf": c/o burmanet@igc.apc.org Shan history/culture: [volunteer needed] Shareholder activism: simon_billenness@mail.cybercom.net Total/Pipeline Dawn Star: cd@utopia.EUnet.fr Tourism campaigns: bagp@gn.apc.org "Attn. S.Sutcliffe" World Wide Web: FreeBurma@POBox.com Volunteering: christin@ksc.net.th [Feel free to suggest more areas of coverage] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The BurmaNet News is an electronic newspaper covering Burma. Articles from newspapers, magazines, newsletters, the wire services and the Internet as well as original material are published. It is produced with the support of the Burma Information Group (B.I.G) and the Research Department of the ABSDF {MTZ} The BurmaNet News is e-mailed directly to subscribers and is also distributed via the soc.culture.burma and seasia-l mailing lists. For a free subscription to the BurmaNet News, send an e-mail message to: majordomo@igc.apc.org For the BurmaNet News only: in the body of the message, type "subscribe burmanews-l" (without quotation marks). For the BurmaNet News and 4-5 other messages a day posted on Burma issues, type "subscribe burmanet-l" Letters to the editor, comments or contributions of articles should be sent to the editor at: strider@igc.apc.org