Burmese Dissident Meets With Party

By MARK McDONALD

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HONG KONG — The military junta in Myanmar allowed the opposition leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, to meet with senior members of her party on Wednesday, the latest in a recent series of signals that suggest the junta might be responding to diplomatic overtures from the West.

A Western diplomat in the main city of Yangon, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi was permitted to leave her home under military guard to meet with three elderly leaders of her National League for Democracy. She has been under house arrest for 14 of the past 20 years.

The meeting took place at a state guesthouse in Yangon, formerly Rangoon. She had not been permitted to confer with her party colleagues in nearly a year.

Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, had requested the meeting in a letter to the leader of the junta, Senior Gen. Than Shwe. She also requested a meeting with the general himself.

Despite her continuing detention, Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi has been able to meet in recent months with a number of visiting diplomats, including a high-level delegation from the United States led by Kurt M. Campbell, an assistant secretary of state, and his deputy, Scot Marciel.

Earlier this year, the Obama administration undertook a review of American policy toward Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, and decided to seek a new approach, including direct talks with the junta.

“A policy of pragmatic engagement with the Burmese authorities holds the best hope for advancing our goals,” Mr. Campbell said in testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in October. “A central element of this approach is a direct, senior-level dialogue with representatives of the Burmese leadership.”

But Mr. Campbell said a wide array of sanctions against Myanmar would not be immediately relaxed, and improved bilateral relations depended on the government’s making “real progress on democracy and human rights,” a demand reiterated by President Obama at a regional summit meeting last month in Singapore.

While in Singapore, Mr. Obama sat in a meeting near the prime minister of Myanmar, Gen. Thein Sein — the first time an American president had met with a member of the military junta.

Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi met for 45 minutes on Wednesday with the National League for Democracy chairman, Aung Shwe, 92; the party secretary, U Lwin, 87; and another senior official, Lun Tin. The elderly leaders of the party are known collectively in diplomatic circles in Yangon as “the uncles.”

Their meeting, which U Lwin discussed with reporters afterward, took place less than a week before the highest court in Myanmar was scheduled to begin considering an appeal of the 18-month extension of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s longstanding house arrest. That extension, which was handed down in August, came after an American man swam to her lakeside home in May, evaded military guards and briefly stayed at the house — a breach of the terms of her detention.

One of her lawyers, Kyi Win, said this month that the hearing would most likely be a procedural affair. But a successful appeal and a lifting of her detention could allow Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi to play a role in national elections that the junta has vowed to hold next year.

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Analysts and diplomats say the country’s new Constitution virtually ensures the continuing dominance of the military in the political life of the country, despite the election. Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi would likely be barred from running for office because her husband, who died in 1999, was a foreigner.

Her party won a landslide victory in national elections in 1990, and she was elected prime minister. The election results were annulled by the junta, which has continued to govern ever since.

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Elder of Burmese Opposition Grapples With Election Dissonance - NYTimes.com

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By THE NEW YORK TIMES

YANGON, Myanmar — U Win Tin, Myanmar’s longest-serving political prisoner, was tormented, tortured and beaten by his captors in the notorious Insein Prison for nearly two decades. Now, at 80, he faces a new kind of torment: watching colleagues from his political party decide whether to play by the rules of the junta that put him behind bars.

Released in September 2008 after more than 19 years in prison, Mr. Win Tin remains remarkably spry, upbeat, and politically engaged. A co-founder of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, he is a vocal opponent of taking part in national elections set for next year. The vote, along with the implementation of a new constitution, would introduce a shared civilian and military government after four and a half decades of military rule.

But while the constitution, passed in a disputed referendum held amid the widespread devastation of Cyclone Nargis in 2008, allows elected representation, it accords special powers to the military in what the junta calls “disciplined democracy.” Many critics call it a sham.

“The election can mean nothing as long as it activates the 2008 constitution, which is very undemocratic,” Mr. Win Tin said in a recent interview.

However, his party is split over whether to boycott the election. Some members say participating would mean losing moral claim to the party’s landslide victory in the 1990 general election, which was ignored by the junta. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent much of the period since under house arrest and was sentenced to a new term of 18 months in May, has not made her views on the issue public.

Still, the constitution offers some protections. In August, the International Crisis Group, the Brussels-based nongovernmental organization that seeks to prevent and resolve deadly conflicts, issued a report recommending that opposition groups participate in the election. It said that, although the new constitution “entrenches military power,” the changes at least establish “shared political spaces — the legislatures and perhaps the cabinet — where co-operation could be fostered.”

And internationally, some policies toward Myanmar are shifting.

Last week, the Obama administration announced that it would engage the junta directly, while keeping sanctions in place. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called for the unconditional release of political prisoners, including Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, and “credible, democratic reform.”

“If the direct engagement of the U.S. will result in the release of all political prisoners and in a revision of the 2008 Constitution, then dialogue could begin between us and the junta, and we would consider running in the election,” Mr. Win Tin said.

Mr. Win Tin — warm, razor-sharp and clearly determined — said the junta might have released him, shortly before his jail sentence was complete, in order to split the party. He admitted that “we are having some arguments about whether we are going to participate in the elections or not,” but insisted that there was “no conflict within the party now.”

Before being jailed for three years in 1989 after he became secretary of the then newly formed National League for Democracy, Mr. Win Tin had worked as a journalist. In 1991, he was given 10 more years for his involvement in popular uprisings in 1988 that were crushed by the military. In 1996, he was given seven more years for sending the United Nations a petition about abuses in Myanmar prisons. Much of the time, he was in solitary confinement.

“I could not bow down to them,” he said. “No, I could not do it. I wrote poems to keep myself from going crazy. I did mathematics with chalk on the floor.”

He added: “From time to time, they ask you to sign a statement that you are not going to do politics and that you will abide by the law and so on and so forth. I refused.”

When all his upper teeth were bashed out, he was 61. The guards refused to let him get dentures for eight years, leaving him to gum his food.

Early this month, Mr. Win Tin was briefly detained after he wrote an op-ed that appeared in The Washington Post, criticizing the ruling military junta and its plans for the election next year.

“I think they are trying to intimidate me, to stop me from appearing in the foreign media,” he said.

During the interview, on his cousin’s leafy porch in suburban Yangon, government spies openly watched and took photographs from outside the gate.

Never married, Mr. Win Tin talks fondly of his adopted daughter, who lives in Sydney, Australia, after gaining political asylum 15 years ago. He has not seen her since.

Accustomed to a spare prison diet, he has one meal early in the day and a bit of fruit in the evening.

“I don’t want to be a burden on anyone,” he said.

Since his release, Mr. Win Tin has tried to reinvigorate the leadership of the National League for Democracy by stepping up the frequency of meetings and lobbying overseas governments. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi remains popular, despite the long years of detention, but the party has been crippled by the arrests of hundreds of the younger members, Mr. Win Tin said.

“We have some young men, but they are followed and sent to jail all the time,” he said. “Sometimes, they go to the pagoda just for praying. They are followed and charged with something and sentenced.” Many, he said, are tortured.

In one kind of torture, called “riding the motorcycle,” the subject is made to bend the knees, stand on tiptoe with sharp nails under the heels, and make the sound of a revving engine. When the subject can no longer maintain the tiptoe, the nails penetrate the foot.

All but one of Mr. Win Tin’s eight colleagues on the party’s central executive committee are older than him. The committee president and chairman, U Aung Shwe, is 92, and so infirm that he has not visited party headquarters for months. The party secretary, U Lwin, 87, is bedridden and paralyzed. The youngster in the group, is U Khin Maung Swe, 64.

Despite the challenges his party faces, Mr. Win Tin remains upbeat.

“We expect democracy can happen anytime,” he said, recalling the country’s postcolonial democracy period between 1948 and 1962. “But sometimes, you have to sacrifice everything for a long, long time. It might extend for more than your life span.”

Beijing Limits Information on Burmese Refugees Remaining in China - NYTimes.com

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By MICHAEL WINES

BEIJING — Chinese officials imposed an information blackout on Tuesday on the situation along its border with Myanmar and began taking down tents that had sheltered an estimated 30,000 refugees who fled into China to escape recent fighting between Myanmar’s military and ethnic rebels.

But news reports stated that many thousands of refugees remained in China, unwilling or unable to return to Myanmar, formerly called Burma, and it was not clear how the Chinese government intended to address their plight.

The Chinese authorities withheld comment on the border situation on Tuesday, aside from saying, in a Foreign Ministry briefing, that “necessary humanitarian assistance” was being provided. And they began ordering foreign journalists to leave the area around Nansan and Genma, Chinese towns on the mountainous border where the refugees have been housed in seven separate camps.

While about 4,000 refugees had returned to Myanmar on Monday, the day after the fighting ended, the pace has since slowed significantly. Only about 30 people crossed the border into Myanmar in a half-hour period on Tuesday morning, The Associated Press reported.

“It seems to be slowing down,” one foreigner near Nansan said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “There’s still a large number of refugees in and around Nansan, both in the camps and hanging around.” The foreigner, who asked not to be identified, said Chinese Army troops had stepped up patrols in the area.

An unknown number of those who fled to China during the fighting are Chinese citizens who have been conducting business in Myanmar, where China is building dams and other projects and has extensive mining ventures. They are unlikely to return soon.

China has insisted that the northern Myanmar region of Kokang is safe and stable after the fighting last week, in which hundreds of government troops overwhelmed an armed ethnic group, breaking a cease-fire that had prevailed for two decades. Human rights groups and others have warned that the junta’s actions could ignite a wider conflict in the area, where other, better armed, ethnic groups also are resisting government control.

Thai newspapers and The Irrawaddy, an independent magazine that focuses on Myanmar, have reported that the government is sending fresh troops into the northern state of Shan in an attempt to consolidate its control there. The army wants the rebels to disarm and join a government border patrol force, as required under a new Constitution. Most of the rebels have resisted the order, which would effectively place them under government control.

Myanmar’s military junta apparently seeks to take control of the region before elections, the first in almost 20 years, that are scheduled for next year. Outside monitors accuse the military junta of brutal human rights violations as part of its effort to stay in power. The Myanmar government has said that 26 of its soldiers and at least 8 rebels died in three days of battles.

The Myanmar conflict has thrust the Chinese government, one of Myanmar’s only staunch backers, into an awkward situation. China has provided diplomatic support to the junta in exchange for access to its considerable mineral wealth and cooperation in efforts to suppress a growing cross-border trade in heroin and other illicit drugs. The flood of refugees prompted the Chinese to issue muted criticism of the junta, on Friday calling for it to secure Myanmar’s borders.

Myanmar activist says China ignores junta's graft - AP

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MANILA, Philippines — China and other governments with lucrative business deals in Myanmar are ignoring massive corruption by its ruling military junta, a pro-democracy activist said Thursday.

Ka Hsaw Wa said corruption has become the second worst problem in Myanmar after widespread human rights violations and afflicts all levels of its government.

He spoke to The Associated Press in Manila, where he was named one of six recipients of the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay award, considered Asia's version of the Nobel Prize, for documenting human rights and environmental abuses in his country.

Corruption in Myanmar should be dealt with urgently, since most people struggle to afford three meals a day, Ka Hsaw Wa said. But obtaining evidence is almost impossible, he said.

"It's simply economic plunder," Ka Hsaw Wa said, adding that "99.9 percent of the ruling junta, from a normal soldier to the top generals, are completely corrupt."

He said corruption within the military should be apparent to friendly foreign governments like China, but they look the other way.

"We won't turn a blind eye to that (corruption), of course," said Ethan Sun, a spokesman at the Chinese Embassy in Manila. He added, however, that trade and economic cooperation "benefit the peoples of both countries."

China has often supported the junta against international pressure in the past.

Most generals live in sprawling, heavily guarded compounds which are off-limits to the public, he said. When a secret video of the lavish 2006 wedding of senior Gen. Than Shwe's daughter surfaced on YouTube, it caused outrage in his country.

International watchdogs have consistently ranked Myanmar, also known as Burma, among the world's most corrupt nations. Transparency International's 2008 list put it next to last, ahead of only Somalia.

The junta does not publicly respond to accusations of corruption, but it has launched anti-corruption drives mostly targeting low-level offenses. A call to the embassy in Manila was not answered Thursday.

"A lot of countries want to swallow Burma alive, it's so rich in natural resources," Ka Hsaw Wa said. "But they try not to see (corruption) in a way that they can do business there."

While the Myanmar government officially restricts logging, middle-level military officers have cut down huge swaths of rain forests for personal profit, he said.

Ka Hsaw Wa, a member of Myanmar's ethnic Karen minority, was a 17-year-old student activist when the government violently suppressed 1988 pro-democracy demonstrations. After his arrest, he fled to the jungle where he witnessed atrocities committed against villagers, the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation said.

EarthRights, the nonprofit group he co-founded, filed a case in the United States in 1996 against the U.S.-based oil company Unocal for alleged complicity in human rights and environmental abuses committed by Myanmar's military in the building of the Yadana gas pipeline. After 10 years of litigation, Unocal agreed to compensate the 11 petitioners.

EarthRights also runs a school in Thailand that trains young people from Myanmar and other countries in nonviolent social change.