I've been asked about the significance of the release from house arrest of Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi today.
The short answer is: that the term of her detention expired and the Junta had not chosen to extend it again, so when the time came, they just picked up the barbed wire barricades and left.
Of course, there is more: that the Myanmar Junta has already dismantled the political party behind Aung San Suu Kyi and just held an exercise in manipulated voting that they called an 'election', resulting in a massive win for the Junta-backed candidates. They didn't extend her detention because... for whatever reasons in their minds, they don't see her as a threat any more. To explain why the Junta thinks that, and maybe why they are wrong, would take a lot more time than I have right now. But I think a close look at the media reports will point you in that same line of understanding. Look for reports on the 'election', on the reformation of 'political parties' under the new rules, and on recent military activities by the Myanmar Junta against ethnic rivals in the countryside. The Junta is more confident domestically than ever, these days.
But like I said above, they might be wrong.
Showing posts with label Myanmar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Myanmar. Show all posts
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
China, Burma, and on
While hunting up a reference to the potential resolution of the Bangladesh - Myanmar (Burma) sea border dispute originally mentioned here at CompHyp back in Nov. 2008, I came across a very fine work-up by Ben Blanchard for Reuters on the current state of relations between the P.R. Chinese and the Myanmar junta, which really is a marriage of convenience at best.
You can read the entire story at AlertNet. Good job, Reuters.
You can read the entire story at AlertNet. Good job, Reuters.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Webb visits Myanmar (Burma)
Either *this* is one heck of a case of harebrained Parliamentary Diplomacy... that's when elected representatives take it upon themselves to go play Ambassador... or (far more likely) a massive shift in American policy toward Myanmar (Burma), which could not possibly come at a less appropriate time.
The Than Shwe Junta has just taken the opportunity to further repress the party of Ang San Suu Kyi and extend her house arrest further for a matter she had no responsibity in...
The latest round of North Korean gamesmanship was focused on further arms exports to the Junta...
The Myanmar Army has been on the offensive against the Karen ethnic group, driving more of those people over into refuge in Thailand...
...and this is a good time to send over a sitting U.S. Senator to have a chat with Than Shwe?
Then again, we are talking of the current American administration; Between creative interpretations of other democratic countries' Constitutions and banishing the Secretary of State on repeated journeys to outlying corners of the world, this might well be right along the course of action one should expect from the Obama regime.
***
Open invitation: anyone who sees a plausible explanation for all this, please do feel free to inform me... but do keep it to the foreign affairs part of the issue, thanks. There's a reason why this weblog is not a American domestic political 'blog.
The Than Shwe Junta has just taken the opportunity to further repress the party of Ang San Suu Kyi and extend her house arrest further for a matter she had no responsibity in...
The latest round of North Korean gamesmanship was focused on further arms exports to the Junta...
The Myanmar Army has been on the offensive against the Karen ethnic group, driving more of those people over into refuge in Thailand...
...and this is a good time to send over a sitting U.S. Senator to have a chat with Than Shwe?
Then again, we are talking of the current American administration; Between creative interpretations of other democratic countries' Constitutions and banishing the Secretary of State on repeated journeys to outlying corners of the world, this might well be right along the course of action one should expect from the Obama regime.
***
Open invitation: anyone who sees a plausible explanation for all this, please do feel free to inform me... but do keep it to the foreign affairs part of the issue, thanks. There's a reason why this weblog is not a American domestic political 'blog.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Treasury lists another North Korean banking front
The U.S. Department of the Treasury acted on August 11th to list Korea Kwangson Banking Corp. (KKBC) under Executive Order 13382.
KKBC is another of the tangled mass of financial routes used to bring hard currency payments for weapons back to North Korea. A clear case of this was the movement of funds from Myanmar (Burma) to the People's Republic of China earlier this year, evading sanctions on both North Korea and Myanmar.
E.O. 13382 freezes the assets of proliferators of WMD and their supporters and prohibits U.S. persons from engaging in transactions with them, thereby isolating them from the U.S. financial and commercial systems.The listing was also pursuant to UNSC Resolution 1718, sanctioning North Korean activities related to proliferation.
"North Korea's use of a little-known bank, KKBC, to mask the international financial business of sanctioned proliferators demonstrates the lengths to which the regime will go to continue its proliferation activities and the high risk that any business with North Korea may well be illicit," said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey.
KKBC is another of the tangled mass of financial routes used to bring hard currency payments for weapons back to North Korea. A clear case of this was the movement of funds from Myanmar (Burma) to the People's Republic of China earlier this year, evading sanctions on both North Korea and Myanmar.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Malaysian Bank I.D.'ed as North Korea's Banker
They won't publish the name of the bank, but Yonhap News is running with a report that
Heh.
North Korea sought payment through a bank in Malaysia for its suspected shipment of weapons to Myanmar that is being carried on a freighter tracked by the U.S. Navy, a source said Saturday.The bulk of the funds transfer is supposedly held up now. Sanctions officials are on the way to Malaysia for meetings.
Heh.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Karen refugees flee to Thailand
Lieutenant General Thanongsak Aphirakyothin, a Royal Thai Army commander on the western frontier, has reported that at least 1,700 ethnic Karen refugees have flooded across the border from Myanmar (Burma) following a Myanmar Army offensive against the Karen National Union (KNU) on June 3 and fighting continued on Monday according to KNU sources. Karen exile groups put the number of refugees much higher... they cite a figure in excess of 3,200. Again, citing Lt. Gen. Thanongsak:
Background on this issue was discussed *here* at CompHyp back in February.
"They fled because of danger and fear of capture and forced labour by the Myanmar army," Thanongsak told reporters. "Most of the refugees are women and children."
Background on this issue was discussed *here* at CompHyp back in February.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
U.N. calls on Myanmar Junta to release detainees
Sadly however the day after Tomas Ojea Quintana, United Nations human rights investigator, published his report and called for the release of the ~2,100 political prisoners held in Myanmar (Burma)...
The Junta responded by arresting five more people linked to the democracy movement and then issued this statement:
That could have gone better.
Might help to have something more than moral authority on the side of right in this case.
The Junta responded by arresting five more people linked to the democracy movement and then issued this statement:
Responding to the report, Myanmar's Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva said his country holds no political prisoners. "In fact, these are only individuals who are serving prison terms for breaking the existing laws of Myanmar," said Wunna Maung Lwin.Oh.
That could have gone better.
Might help to have something more than moral authority on the side of right in this case.
Monday, February 9, 2009
The Weekly N&C for February 9th, 2009
Allow me to direct your attention to…
…the extraordinarily competent reporting and analysis on the current situation for refugees from Myanmar (Burma) by Jeff Kingston of Temple University Japan.
His recent work has received a wide spread in the most recent Sunday edition of The Japan Times. If one can imagine a major metropolitan newspaper in North America or Europe using almost two full pages of layout space to speak of a matter little known and even less understood, one likely has a sense of how large a commitment to getting the story out was made by The Japan Times editorial staff.
Here’s a bit of background on the situation before you follow the linkage to Professor Kingston’s work:
Burma (so-called as the Union of Myanmar by the current military junta) is one of the last territorial relics of British imperialism in Southeast Asia. Once acquired by conquest spanning the years 1824~1886, the territories were placed under attachment to British India. Come the process of the “beginning of the end” in India during the 1930’s, the British held a referendum in these territories as to whether they should remain under the came colonial government as India or be separated into a stand-alone colony to be called “Burma”. On April 1st, 1937, Burma became a separately administered territory, composed of a wide diversity of cultural groups and tribes, and in addition heavily colonized by colonial subjects who were of Indian and Chinese origin.
Come World War II in the Pacific, what little cohesion was present in colonial Burma was shattered by the successful Imperial Japanese conquest of most of the territory in the drive to invade India and knock the British out of the war. The problem was, they never got all of it, nor lost all of it until the end of the war. The front line of the war moved back and forth across the territories first one way and then the next, repeatedly. Various tribes and factions within Burma sided openly with the Imperial Japanese, others simply claimed to do so, and many more never abandoned support for the British or the Americans when they came into the theater of operations.
Come the last year of the war, the nationalist Burma Independence Army that had fought beside the Imperial Japanese turned against them. It may well have been opportunism, or just the realization that Japan was going to lose, but General Aung San had enough command influence to order a full-force turning-of-the-coat and the Allied armies had a new member… One that was counting on American anti-imperialism to do what supporting the Japanese had not; run the British out of Burma.
Aung San would not live to see it (assassinated by rivals in 1947), but come January 4th, 1948, the Union of Burma became an independent republic. They were *so* independent-minded that they did not even accept the offer of Commonwealth membership. This placed the territories previously classified as “Lower Burma”, “Upper Burma” and “Frontier Territories” under a single Nation. There are one hundred and thirty five distinct ethnic groups; four major linguistic families including more than a dozen major languages. The largest fraction is estimated to be the Myanmar (Bamar) ethnicity, at roughly 2/3 of the total population. About the only unifying things in the nation were the Buddhist traditions (over 80% of the population today follows those) and the desire for independence from the British Empire… or any foreign Empire…
What was overlooked was the possibility of a self-generated overlordship.
The republic stood for a scant 14 years.
In 1962, a military junta assumed complete control of the nation, led by General Ne Win. They have never let go, although since 1974 they have ruled through a mechanism then-called the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP). Opposition to military rule flared from the start, and never was completely suppressed, but in late 1988 after massive demonstrations against the BSPP government were brutally put down with the death of “thousands” (the exact number is not known), a coup within the coup turned over the regime to State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), run by General Saw Maung. One of their first actions (besides shooting people) was to change the official name of the nation to the Union of Myanmar, but the junta also offered the first democratic elections (for a People’s Assembly) in May of 1990.
The SLORC was astounded when their slate of picked candidates lost.
They lost badly, too. The National League for Democracy (NLD) took 392 of the 489 seats contested. It seems that the daughter of the revered Aung San had come to lead the NLD. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, a veteran of the days of republican Burma and former United Nations Secretary General U Thant, proved to be a unifying force throughout the country, beyond all expectations.
Never ones to let a little thing like losing an election slow them down, the SLORC refused to accept the results, dropped Aung San Suu Kyi into detention, and went on ruling by fiat.
Under new management by General Than Shwe since 1992, the now-renamed SLORC State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) has reissued a national constitution (1993) that brushes the whole democracy idea under the rug and puts Than Shwe in undisputed control.
In control, that is, of a nation in utter ruins.
If not by the hands of the Generals of the junta, if not by the climate of thuggery that puts 800,000 people into forced labor camps, if not by the absolute madness of relocating the entire capital from Yangon (Rangoon) to a new site inland “to prevent foreign invasion from seizing the government”…
…then by the biggest cyclone to hit the eastern Indian Ocean area in decades. Cyclone Nargis came ashore on the Irrawaddy coast in May of 2008, leaving over a hundred thousand people dead or missing, and devastating the coastal growing region.
The SPDC refused available foreign aid.
This is the Burma people are trying to run away from: an unforgiving ethnically-charged dictatorship so paranoid that it compares closely to North Korea in leadership-by-psychotics. It is a regime that is actively trying to kill its citizens… and any foreign reporters who get in the way, too.
That is why the issue of Burmese refugees is so important.
That is why Japan needs to allow recognition and refuge to *more* than the 30 people *each year* promised in the most recent government allowance.
We can do better than that; other countries can do better than that; and we should do better than that.
Now one is ready to read Professor Kingston’s work.
Main article on Japan’s refugee policy and Burma
Related article on the SPDC role in causing the crisis
Related article on one Burmese refugee seeking legal status in Japan
***
End Notes:
Just in case one thinks the accusations of atrocities by the SPDC are unfounded, here is a 2005 Asia Times article on the International Labor Organization effort to justify placing sanctions on the SPDC regime for its Forced Labor policy and here is the CIA Factbook entry on Burma; scroll down to the section on Transnational Issues to get to the matters of Human Trafficking, Narcotics Sourcing and Trafficking, and the Displacement of Persons by Conflict.
The following Wiki-p links are for convenience and general reference only.
General Information on Myanmar (Burma); Map references included there.
The SPDC; the junta
Personal Profile: General Than Shwe
The National League for Democracy
Personal Profile: Aung San Suu Kyi
Historical Information: Cyclone Nargis
…the extraordinarily competent reporting and analysis on the current situation for refugees from Myanmar (Burma) by Jeff Kingston of Temple University Japan.
His recent work has received a wide spread in the most recent Sunday edition of The Japan Times. If one can imagine a major metropolitan newspaper in North America or Europe using almost two full pages of layout space to speak of a matter little known and even less understood, one likely has a sense of how large a commitment to getting the story out was made by The Japan Times editorial staff.
Here’s a bit of background on the situation before you follow the linkage to Professor Kingston’s work:
Burma (so-called as the Union of Myanmar by the current military junta) is one of the last territorial relics of British imperialism in Southeast Asia. Once acquired by conquest spanning the years 1824~1886, the territories were placed under attachment to British India. Come the process of the “beginning of the end” in India during the 1930’s, the British held a referendum in these territories as to whether they should remain under the came colonial government as India or be separated into a stand-alone colony to be called “Burma”. On April 1st, 1937, Burma became a separately administered territory, composed of a wide diversity of cultural groups and tribes, and in addition heavily colonized by colonial subjects who were of Indian and Chinese origin.
Come World War II in the Pacific, what little cohesion was present in colonial Burma was shattered by the successful Imperial Japanese conquest of most of the territory in the drive to invade India and knock the British out of the war. The problem was, they never got all of it, nor lost all of it until the end of the war. The front line of the war moved back and forth across the territories first one way and then the next, repeatedly. Various tribes and factions within Burma sided openly with the Imperial Japanese, others simply claimed to do so, and many more never abandoned support for the British or the Americans when they came into the theater of operations.
Come the last year of the war, the nationalist Burma Independence Army that had fought beside the Imperial Japanese turned against them. It may well have been opportunism, or just the realization that Japan was going to lose, but General Aung San had enough command influence to order a full-force turning-of-the-coat and the Allied armies had a new member… One that was counting on American anti-imperialism to do what supporting the Japanese had not; run the British out of Burma.
Aung San would not live to see it (assassinated by rivals in 1947), but come January 4th, 1948, the Union of Burma became an independent republic. They were *so* independent-minded that they did not even accept the offer of Commonwealth membership. This placed the territories previously classified as “Lower Burma”, “Upper Burma” and “Frontier Territories” under a single Nation. There are one hundred and thirty five distinct ethnic groups; four major linguistic families including more than a dozen major languages. The largest fraction is estimated to be the Myanmar (Bamar) ethnicity, at roughly 2/3 of the total population. About the only unifying things in the nation were the Buddhist traditions (over 80% of the population today follows those) and the desire for independence from the British Empire… or any foreign Empire…
What was overlooked was the possibility of a self-generated overlordship.
The republic stood for a scant 14 years.
In 1962, a military junta assumed complete control of the nation, led by General Ne Win. They have never let go, although since 1974 they have ruled through a mechanism then-called the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP). Opposition to military rule flared from the start, and never was completely suppressed, but in late 1988 after massive demonstrations against the BSPP government were brutally put down with the death of “thousands” (the exact number is not known), a coup within the coup turned over the regime to State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), run by General Saw Maung. One of their first actions (besides shooting people) was to change the official name of the nation to the Union of Myanmar, but the junta also offered the first democratic elections (for a People’s Assembly) in May of 1990.
The SLORC was astounded when their slate of picked candidates lost.
They lost badly, too. The National League for Democracy (NLD) took 392 of the 489 seats contested. It seems that the daughter of the revered Aung San had come to lead the NLD. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, a veteran of the days of republican Burma and former United Nations Secretary General U Thant, proved to be a unifying force throughout the country, beyond all expectations.
Never ones to let a little thing like losing an election slow them down, the SLORC refused to accept the results, dropped Aung San Suu Kyi into detention, and went on ruling by fiat.
Under new management by General Than Shwe since 1992, the now-renamed SLORC State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) has reissued a national constitution (1993) that brushes the whole democracy idea under the rug and puts Than Shwe in undisputed control.
In control, that is, of a nation in utter ruins.
If not by the hands of the Generals of the junta, if not by the climate of thuggery that puts 800,000 people into forced labor camps, if not by the absolute madness of relocating the entire capital from Yangon (Rangoon) to a new site inland “to prevent foreign invasion from seizing the government”…
…then by the biggest cyclone to hit the eastern Indian Ocean area in decades. Cyclone Nargis came ashore on the Irrawaddy coast in May of 2008, leaving over a hundred thousand people dead or missing, and devastating the coastal growing region.
The SPDC refused available foreign aid.
This is the Burma people are trying to run away from: an unforgiving ethnically-charged dictatorship so paranoid that it compares closely to North Korea in leadership-by-psychotics. It is a regime that is actively trying to kill its citizens… and any foreign reporters who get in the way, too.
That is why the issue of Burmese refugees is so important.
That is why Japan needs to allow recognition and refuge to *more* than the 30 people *each year* promised in the most recent government allowance.
We can do better than that; other countries can do better than that; and we should do better than that.
Now one is ready to read Professor Kingston’s work.
Main article on Japan’s refugee policy and Burma
Related article on the SPDC role in causing the crisis
Related article on one Burmese refugee seeking legal status in Japan
***
End Notes:
Just in case one thinks the accusations of atrocities by the SPDC are unfounded, here is a 2005 Asia Times article on the International Labor Organization effort to justify placing sanctions on the SPDC regime for its Forced Labor policy and here is the CIA Factbook entry on Burma; scroll down to the section on Transnational Issues to get to the matters of Human Trafficking, Narcotics Sourcing and Trafficking, and the Displacement of Persons by Conflict.
The following Wiki-p links are for convenience and general reference only.
General Information on Myanmar (Burma); Map references included there.
The SPDC; the junta
Personal Profile: General Than Shwe
The National League for Democracy
Personal Profile: Aung San Suu Kyi
Historical Information: Cyclone Nargis
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Bangladesh-Myanmar Sea Border Crisis
A territorial crisis has been developing in the Bay of Bengal over the last few days as naval forces and survey vessels of Myanmar (Burma) have intruded and remained in Bangladeshi waters. The region is considered a valuable resource location for undersea natural gas fields. Bangladesh has responded to the incursion by dispatching their own naval vessel(s) and involving Chinese diplomats in an attempt to find a resolution other than force.
Good luck with that.
For those wishing more details and a naval warfare perspective on this crisis, I recommend the superb Information Dissemination site's article.
Good luck with that.
For those wishing more details and a naval warfare perspective on this crisis, I recommend the superb Information Dissemination site's article.
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