LATEST NEWS FROM MYANMAR (OCT 05)

China to block UN as junta offer spurned
Aung Hla Tun in Rangoon-October 6, 2007
THE party of Burma's detained opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has dismissed a junta offer of talks as unreal, while China's United Nations representative said the ruthless suppression of pro-democracy protests did not require international action.
The leader of the junta, Senior General Than Shwe, set out his conditions for direct talks at a meeting with special UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari on Tuesday, Burmese state-run television said.
But a spokesman for the opposition said General Than Shwe, who outraged the world by sending in soldiers to crush peaceful monk-led demonstrations, was asking Ms Suu Kyi to abandon the campaign for democracy which has kept her in detention for 12 of the past 18 years.
"They are asking her to confess to offences that she has not committed," said Nyan Win, spokesman for the Nobel peace laureate's National League for Democracy (NLD).
The general said Ms Suu Kyi must abandon her "confrontation" with the Government, give up "obstructive measures" and backing for sanctions as well support of "utter devastation", a phrase he did not explain.
Mr Nyan Win demanded Ms Suu Kyi be allowed to respond in public. That is unlikely. The only time she has been seen in public since she was last detained in May 2003 was during one of the monk-led demonstrations when protesters were inexplicably allowed through the barricades sealing off her street.
The US called on the junta to talk to Ms Suu Kyi without conditions and said US charge d'affaires Shari Villarosa would visit the capital, Naypyidaw, to urge them to begin a "meaningful dialogue" with opposition groups. A diplomatic source said Ms Villarosa was to see Deputy Foreign Minister, Maung Myint, who is not a policymaker.
The UN Security Council dispatched Dr Gambari to Burma, where he had to wait two days to see General Than Shwe, in hopes of ending the crackdown.
Dr Gambari was due to present his report to the council yesterday but veto-wielding China said it opposed international action.
"There are problems there in Myanmar [Burma], but these problems still, we believe, are basically internal," said China's UN ambassador, Wang Guangya. "No international-imposed solution can help the situation."
With China, the junta's closest ally blocking action at the UN, and the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) - one of the few international groupings of which Burma is a member - unwilling to change its policy, experts say little is likely to happen.
Activists hoped to crank up the pressure on governments today with a Global Day of Action involving marches and rallies in 41 cities across Asia, Europe and North America.
Burma's state television admitted this week that about 1400 people were still being held after the release of 692 of the 2093 people arrested since the crackdown began.
One of those released on Thursday was a UN employee based in Burma, Myint Ngwe Mon, who was taken from her home with her husband and two other people the day before. Her release was confirmed by Charles Petrie, the UN's resident co-ordinator in Burma.
And police in Tokyo yesterday announced the result of the autopsy on a Japanese journalist shot dead during one of the demonstrations.
"An autopsy performed Thursday on Kenji Nagai confirmed that the direct cause of the death was massive blood loss after a bullet penetrated through his liver," a police spokesman said.

UN Security Council Must Act Now on Burma

[Editorial]By The Irrawaddy October 5, 2007
On Thursday evening, Burma's state-run media announced that junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe was prepared to meet with detained democratic opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. State television and radio also said the junta leader had sent this message during his meeting this week with UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari.
It’s no surprise that the announcement came as the UN Security Council prepared to discuss what to do about human rights abuses in Burma, calling the situation there an issue of international concern.
The entire world is now aware of the massive abuses committed by the regime in its crackdown on recent peaceful demonstrations and its incarceration of so many devotees of democracy and human rights, including Suu Kyi, the world’s only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
The mass protests were preceded by equally peaceful demonstrations calling for an improvement of the people’s living standards and relief from their everyday suffering, for the release of political prisoners and the start of a process of national reconciliation.
The military government chose to meet this challenge not at the negotiating table but with gunfire. Monks and nuns have been viciously beaten and arrested by regime authorities and hired thugs. Students and journalists were shot in the streets. Burma is now under a military reign of terror.
As events took their bloody course, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's envoy on Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, flew to Burma and met separately with the junta’s top generals in the remote capital of Naypyidaw, and twice with Suu Kyi in Rangoon.
Gambari urged the junta's leaders to stop repressing peaceful protesters, release detainees, move towards real democratic reform, respect human rights and reconcile with their political opponents, according to a UN spokesman.
On Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters that Gambari had delivered "the strongest possible message" to Burma's military leaders, but the UN chief admitted that the trip had not been successful.
This means that the conditions set by Than Shwe for a meeting with Suu Kyi—including giving up her calls for confronting the military government and for imposing sanctions against it—are not acceptable as a starting point for compromise or negotiations between the junta and her opposition National League for Democracy.
"They are asking her to confess to offences that she has not committed," said NLD spokesman Nyan Win, whose party’s landslide election victory in 1990 was ignored by the generals.
If Snr-Gen Than Shwe has a will to consider compromise, the political preconditions must be created by allowing the public to peacefully participate in the process, by lifting the curfew, withdrawing troops from the cities and releasing all political prisoners, including Suu Kyi. Such steps would definitely help build trust between the junta and the NLD. Compromise with the generals should not be a monologue with the senior generals doing all the talking.
Despite disagreements among Security Council members on how to handle the Burmese regime, all have agreed that Burma needs to move towards a political reconciliation process.
Far from making such a move, the regime has oppressed its own people and locked opposition groups out of the political process for decades. The situation for ethnic minorities in the country is even worse. About 3,000 villages have been burned down or otherwise destroyed in eastern Burma alone, some repeatedly, to force ethnic minorities to move to military-controlled areas.
The hope for freedom and justice for Burmese citizens is still strong, although the Burmese generals show no evidence of democratic feeling, while trying to hijack the country's fate.
The UN Security Council must not let the Burmese people down this time. They have endured brutal repression over the past 19 years and have shown their resolve and demonstrated—in 1988, 1990 and now again— that they want to see a chance for political, economic and social change.
Members of the Security Council should step forward and publicly lead the pressure on Burma to start democratic reforms as soon as possible. If they refuse to act, many more people will die again in reaching out to achieve their hopes.

Myanmar Hunts for 4 Monk Protest Leaders
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar said Friday it had detained hundreds of Buddhist monks during last week's bloody crackdown of pro-democracy protests, and that security forces were searching for four of the monks who led the demonstrations.
Of more than 500 monks who were detained, 109 are still being questioned, the government said on state-run television.
The junta on Sept. 26-27 crushed the demonstrations that began in mid-August, inspired largely by thousands of monks, who are revered in Myanmar, marching in the streets. The government says 10 people were killed in the crackdown but dissident groups put the death toll at more than 200.
A government official met senior monks in Yangon on Friday and asked them to "expose four monks who are at large, who took the leading role in the protest," the announcement said. The names of the four were given to senior clergy, it added.
The announcement, which emphasized the official's visit to senior monks, was apparently meant to show that the ruling generals still have high regard for the Buddhist clergy despite the crackdown that targeted the monks.
In a rare meeting, acting U.S. Ambassador Shari Villarosa, a vocal critic of the crackdown, told Deputy Foreign Minister Maung Myint that Myanmar must end its violent suppression of peaceful demonstrators.
"It was not a terribly edifying meeting," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington. "What she heard in private was not very different than what we hear from the government in public."
Also Friday, a U.N. envoy who met with Myanmar's military ruler earlier this week said he was "cautiously encouraged" that Senior Gen. Than Shwe is prepared to hold talks with detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi under certain conditions.
State media said the government official told the senior monks that many junior monks and civilians took part in the protests at the instigation of "a political party, members of the 88 Generation Students and dissidents."
It did not name the political party, but it referred to Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. The 88 Generation Students is a dissident group, which takes its name from the last pro-democracy movement in 1988 that was crushed by the ruling generals. At least 3,000 people are believed to have been killed in that crackdown.
The junta statement said security forces "systematically controlled" the latest protests, and searched 18 monasteries.
Authorities initially detained 513 monks, one novice, 167 men and 30 women lay disciples, but most were released, state media said. It said "109 monks and nine men are still being questioned."
On Thursday, state media has said nearly 2,100 people were detained in the crackdown, with almost 700 released. Dissident groups say about 6,000 people were detained, including thousands of monks.
The official also told the monks that nonreligious material was seized from the monastery, including pornographic videos, literature belonging to Suu Kyi's party, headbands printed with a Nazi swastika or a U.S. flag.
The official denied foreign media reports that monks were killed and injured in the crackdown, the statement said.
It said the body found floating in Pazundaung Creek in eastern Yangon last week was not that of a monk, as reported by a dissident group, but of a man "with a piece of saffron robe tied round the neck."
It blamed "internal and external destructive elements of inciting the monks who could tarnish the honor of the religion."
State media reported that Than Shwe was willing to talk with Suu Kyi if she stops calling for international sanctions. He also insisted that Suu Kyi stop urging her countrymen to confront the military regime.
Suu Kyi "does not have confrontational attitude, nor does she encourage sanctions," said Thein Lwin, a spokesman for her National League for Democracy party. Suu Kyi, however, has in various statements to the media supported economic sanctions, saying they are effective politically.
Addressing the U.N. Security Council on his four-day trip to Myanmar following the crackdown, U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari said Than Shwe's meeting with the Nobel laureate should occur as soon as possible. "This is an hour of historic opportunity for Myanmar," he said.
"This is a potentially welcome development which calls for maximum flexibility on all sides," Gambari said in New York.
Myanmar has been ruled by the military since 1962. The current junta came to power after routing the 1988 pro-democracy uprising. Suu Kyi's party won elections in 1990 but the junta refused to accept the results.
Suu Kyi has spent nearly 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest and was awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her democracy campaign.
The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a Thailand-based dissident group, said more than 250 protests have been taken place in Myanmar since Aug. 19.
The diplomatic moves by the military leaders appeared aimed at staving off economic sanctions while also pleasing giant neighbor China, which worries the unrest could cause problems for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Many governments have urged stern U.N. Security Council action against Myanmar, but China and Russia have ruled out any council action, saying the crisis does not threaten international peace and security.
"No international imposed solution can help the situation," China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Gunagya said Thursday.
Life in Yangon was slowly returning to normal but security remained tight in downtown areas where protests were crushed last week. A half-dozen military trucks were stationed near the Sule Pagoda, a flash point of the unrest.
The typically busy area around the city's famed Shwedagon Pagoda was eerily quiet, with residents avoiding the area outside the temple where monks were beaten by troops.

Rights Groups call for action in Burma

By Violet Cho October 5, 2007
International rights groups and Burma campaigners have called for a global day of action to protest against the military clampdown on peaceful demonstrations in Burma.
The UK-based Trade Union Congress, Amnesty International, and the Burma Campaign UK issued a joint release earlier this week calling on communities around the globe to take action on Saturday to condemn the Burmese junta’s massive crackdown, in which at least 130 Burmese monks and members of the public were killed and more than 3,000 were arrested.
Myo Thein of the Burma Campaign UK, which is organizing the protest in London, said that, “The events in London are designed to show the people of Burma that we stand with them and [to show] the generals that we are watching their every move.”
The Burma Campaign UK also hopes the protests will force the UK Government to do more to demand an end to the military crackdown and get the UN Security Council to act.
Protests are expected across the world at noon local time. They have already been scheduled in key locations, including cities in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, India, Ireland, France, New Zealand, South Korea, Thailand, the UK and the US. In the UK, the protest is being organized by 25 organizations, including Burma Campaign UK, Amnesty International and the TUC.
According to the release, campaigners will wear red headbands in solidarity with the monks under arrest and tie these onto government buildings, religious shrines or key landmarks to signify the thousands of lives currently hanging in the balance.
“An event will take place on a global scale in support of Burma in their drive for democracy, freedom and justice,” said Alex Bookbinder, a 19-year-old student from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
Demonstrations in support of the peaceful protests in Burma will be held in ten cities across Canada on Saturday, including Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and the capital, Ottawa, according to Canadian Friends of Burma, which will be coordinating its efforts with the Burma Campaign UK and the US Campaign for Burma.
“This day of action is to show that this crisis has not gone away,” said Ko Aung, a Burmese refugee in the UK. “Our friends, families and spiritual leaders are in jail cells today at risk of torture. The UN Security Council must act now to end the crackdown and must keep focused on this crisis until we know the people of Burma are safe. The international community must not desert them now.”
The Burmese military regime has shown no signs of relenting in its efforts to keep a lid on protests, warning of more arrests after last week's crackdown, even as the European Union has agreed in principle to punish the junta with sanctions.