------------------------ BurmaNet ------------------------ "Appropriate Information Technologies, Practical Strategies" ---------------------------------------------------------- The BurmaNet News: February xx, 1996 Issue #353 HEADLINES: ========== THE NATION: BURMA HOLDS THEFT SUSPECTS THE NATION: ACTIVISTS BLAST E.ASIAN NATIONS FOR STAND ON HUMAN RIGHTS BKK POST: KNU RAID KILLS AT LEAST 35 BURMESE BKK POST: PROMISING GAS FIND IN GULF OF MARTABAN ------------------------------------------------------------ -- THE NATION: BURMA HOLDS THEFT SUSPECTS FEBRUARY, 29 1996 BURMESE authorities have refused to hand over to Thai police on a highway on Sunday night, border officials said yesterday. The official said the Burmese authorities arrested six Shan men believed to have crossed the border and robbed Thai police. They also seized valuables and cash. They said two of the suspects reported escaped custody. The officials also said the robbery suspects were no longer members of drug warlord Khun Sa’s troops after the warlord surrender to the Burmese authorities. Meanwhile, police at Pang Ma Pha sub-district said that a Shan man who was arrested here after the road robbery was apparently not involved. The man was charged with possessing war weapons, they said. (TN) ************** THE NATION: ACTIVISTS BLAST E.ASIAN NATIONS FOR STAND ON HUMAN RIGHTS Yindee Lertcharoenchok KEY political activists on Burma, East Timor and Northern Ireland yesterday verbally lambasted leaders of rapidly- growing East Asian economics which have rejected the university of human rights with counter-argument based on Asian values. In Rangoon Aunt San Suu Kyi, leader of Burma’s democracy movement, has accused Asian leaders of abandoning the values that carried their countries to independence in favour narrow commercial gain. The activists, attending a three-day Asian-Europe NGO Conference ahead of the upcoming Asian-Europe Meeting, expressed strong opposition to the Asian definition, particularly on the promotion of communal rights at the expense of the rights of the individual. “The definition of collective rights ought not to take place in the context where their are violations of individual rights within the community. You cannot justify those rights being violated just because the community’s identity has to be respected,” said Simtu Kothari, a human rights activist from the New Delhi-based Lokayan Dialogue for the people. He said both the universality and the specificity have to be respected,” but the important point is that there is no case to justify leaders of (Asian) regime suppressing the human rights of their people in the name of specific identity and context.” Kothari said activists were protesting against leaders of regime in Asian who are allowing gross violations of basic human rights to take place and protecting themselves under this umbrella of the Asian identity. Along with Kothari, Maung Maung, a representative of the opposition Burmese government in exile, Catrina Rauane from the Centre of Research and Documentation in Ireland, and Carmel Budiardjo, who is a British activist on East Timor, have urged the 25 leaders from Asian and European Union to discuss human rights during the Asem. Addressing the same press conference, Rauane said most of the countries that have promoted Asian values are “often the governments with the worst human rights record”. She said Burma, the Slorc has denied the rights of the majority of its population. More than 80 per cent voted in the 1990 general elections for the NLD of the Suu Kyi. “The community right is what the people of Burma voted for in 1990. The problem is that the military regime said that there are different standards of this right. The majority of Burma voted for this (NLD) political party, so what are the reason behind denying them their rights?” He said. Maung Maung said he did not see any difference between being born in Asian or the West as we are all human beings and, therefore, are entitled to the same basic human rights. In an interview with AP Television to be broadcast, Suu Kyi urged leaders at the Asian-Europe summit to help, not hinder, Burma’s struggle for democracy. “We are going to achieve democracy in Burma and it would be much to their credit if they could say later that they help us in that achievement. “At the time of independence, all the Asian leaders insisted that should have the same rights as Europeans and that they should have the rights that colonial governments had...” “But of course with time views do change, and on the road to economic development some people now think issues of human rights and democracy are not important,” Suu Kyi said. Despite the strong popular support enjoys, Suu Kyi refuses to threaten the army with any sort of uprising. She said she believed the military’s handing of the economy will prove so ruinous that even those investors who care little for human rights will start to worry. “The majority of the people are getting poorer while a very, very rich. Such a difference between haves and have-nots will surely make for a lot of social unrest,” she said. (TN) ***************** BKK POST: KNU RAID KILLS AT LEAST 35 BURMESE February 29 ,1996 Mae Sot, Tak AT least 35 soldiers were killed in heavy fighting between the Karen National Union and Rangoon-backed Democratic Karen Buddhist Army troops early Tuesday in an area opposite Mae Sot, a rebel source said. The source said 300 KNU soldiers of the 24th Battalion, 7th Division, led by Col Kyaw Nee pounded a DKBA position at Tichara Botae with motars and recoilless guns. The attack on the position, about 10km west of the border opposite Ban Wang Kaew began at 3 a.m. The DKBA were reinforced by 400 Burmese government troops and both sides engaged in heavy fighting. The din of machine-gun fire was heard clearly in Mae Sot town. The KNU withdrew at about 8 a.m, said the source, confirming that a least 30 government and DKBA troops were killed while the KNU sustained five killed and seven wounded. A Thai military source said the attack was in retaliation for the DKBA raid on Mae La refugee camp in Tak’s Tha Song Yang District early last month which killed senior KNU officer Hta Lu, 71. The two sides have frequently clashed for control of logging areas near the border with Thailand. (BP) ****************** BKK POST: PROMISING GAS FIND IN GULF OF MARTABAN February 29, 1996 by Boonsong Kositchotethana A CONSORTIUM that includes Thailand’s PTT Exploration & Production PLC (PTTEP) has discovered what appears to be another promising gas structure in Burma’s Gulf of Martaban. Total, the French oil firm that leads the group, reports success from the exploratory well M5 A1, lying about 10 kilometres south of Yadana, Burma’s largest known gas field. The discovery well, to be called Sein, flowed natural gas at a combined rate per day (MMcfd) during tests that were completed recently. Sein - diamond in Burmese - was drilled to a total depth of about 2,000 metres with two gas productive zones, according to executives of PTTEP, an exploration affiliate of the Petroleum Authority of Thailand. The well is the first of a series of six exploratory wells the consortium plans to drill this year in its licensed blocks M5 and M^, where at least some six gas productive deposits are believed to be lying. The exploration programme, estimated to cost as much as US$25 million, forms part of the group’s effort to establish additional gas reserves from the blocks, on top of Yadana whose recoverable gas reserves stand at a world-scale 5.7 trillion cubic feet. Yadana is being developed by the group, mainly for exporting to Thailand. Under a 1995 agreement, the group to PTT in mid-1998 at a rate of 130 MMcfd, before increasing the rate to 525 MMcfd 15 months thereafter. The $1 billion Yadana development, some 320 kilometres south of Rangoon in the Gulf of Mataban, has drawn fire from activists who accuse Thailand and the Total group of supporting the Burmese military junta. Additional gas reserves from the Burmese blocks would support PTT’s announced plan to raise its purchases of natural gas from Yadana by 200-300 MMcfd over the contractual levels. PTT Governor Pala Sookawesh has discussed this possibility, since the Yadana developers expect more gas from the field, and additional gas demand spurred by private power plant operators under Thailand’s independent power producer programmes. According to PTTEP, the consortium is moving the semi- submersible drilling platform from Sein to a new location called Badamya. 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