Daily News- October 30- 2002- Wednesday

  • Shan groups say Myanmar junta concedes rape claims in talks with UN envoy
  • Myanmar says major drugs haul burned
  • Indian Novelist, Burmese Memoirist Win Kiriyama Prize
  • INTERVIEW-U.N. envoy urges more aid for Burma
  • U.N. envoy: Burma junta's efforts to probe rape allegations insufficient

    • Shan groups say Myanmar junta concedes rape claims in talks with UN envoy

    CHIANG MAI, Thailand, Oct 29 (AFP) - The authors of a report which claimed the Myanmar junta used rape as a weapon of war against ethnic Shan women said Tuesday that visiting UN envoy Paulo Sergio Pinheiro told them the regime admitted the attacks may have occurred.

    Pinheiro, fresh from an 11-day visit to Myanmar where he met with top members of the regime, travelled to this northern Thai city to investigate allegations of the systematic rape of hundreds of Shan women and girls by Myanmar soldiers.

    "Pinheiro told us that during talks with the Myanmar authorities, they replied that it may have occured, but they rejected that the rapes had been systematic," Hseng Naung, spokeswoman for the Shan Women's Action Network (SWAN), told AFP.

    The report released in May by Thailand-based SWAN and the Shan Human Rights Foundation (SHRF), which documented 625 sex attacks, drew international outrage and has been repeatedly rejected by the military government in Yangon.The junta invited Pinheiro to travel to Shan state to investigate the claims but the envoy turned down the offer, saying he would not have had sufficient time to carry out a comprehensive inquiry.

    Pinheiro, who is due to hold a press conference in Bangkok Wednesday, also met Tuesday with other ethnic minority groups in order to assess their human rights situation, Hseng Naung said."We had a chance to tell him what he wanted to know. It was a positive meeting," she said.

    Hseng Naung added that members of Pinheiro's UN team were scheduled to go to the Thai provinces of Tak and Kanchanaburi which border Myanamr on Wednesday to investigate human rights issues there.It was not clear if they would attempt to interview any rape victims, many of whom have slipped across the Myanmar border into Thailand.

    Myanmar's junta had been hoping that Pinheiro's visit could help clear the air after a series of damning reports, including the rape allegations, which portrayed the regime as a gross human rights abuser.

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    Myanmar says major drugs haul burned

    WASHINGTON, Oct 29 (AFP) - The Myanmar government said Tuesday it had destroyed opium poppy seeds and chemicals that would have produced heroin worth more than one billion dollars on the streets.

    A statement released by a lobbying firm in Washington, said junta leader General Khin Nyunt had taken part in the third drug burning ceremony staged this year in Myanmar.

    It said hundreds of kilogrammes of narcotics and chemicals that go into heroin production and enough opium poppy seeds to cultivate 100,000 acres (40, 000 hectares) of land had been burned last Friday in Lashio, Shan state.

    The government statement estimated that the opium seeds handed over by farmers could have produced 43 tonnes of heroin which could be sold for more than one billion dollars at New York street prices.

    Government spokesman Hla Min said the action showed the Myanmar government's determination to end the huge drug trade."It will take time to achieve our goals but we are determined to make significant progress, year to year." He added that studies by the United Nations and the United States, the main target market for the narcotics, showed that Myanmar was "moving in the right direction".

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    Indian Novelist, Burmese Memoirist Win Kiriyama Prize

    Hartford Courant, CT
    October 30(AP) - Novelist Rohinton Mistry and memoir writer Pascal Khoo Thwe are the winners of the seventh annual Kiriyama Prize, given for books "that promote greater understanding of and among the nations of the Pacific Rim ... and of the South Asian subcontinent."

    Mistry, a native of India now living in Canada, was cited Tuesday for "Family Matters," a novel set in Bombay and featuring an ailing patriarch whose children debate over how to care for him. "Family Matters," Mistry's fourth book, was a finalist for the Booker Prize.

    Paschal Khoo Thwe won in the nonfiction category for "From the Land of Green Ghosts," the story of his childhood in rural Burma, his years as a guerrilla fighter in the jungle and his eventual journey to England. "From the Land of Green Ghosts" is his first book.The winners share $30,000, given out by Pacific Rim Voices.

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    INTERVIEW-U.N. envoy urges more aid for Burma

    BANGKOK, Oct 30 (Reuters) -- A U.N. envoy to Burma urged the international community on Wednesday to put money into the military-ruled country despite allegations of rights abuses, including the forced conscription of child soldiers and rape by troops.

    United Nations human rights rapporteur Paulo Sergio Pinheiro said the international community should encourage political change in Burma by giving humanitarian aid and engaging the ruling junta more.

    But in return, Burma must allow an investigation into allegations of human rights violations and be prepared to work with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi on humanitarian issues, he said.

    "For this cooperation...the (government) needs to have a professional, independent and credible investigation of human rights violations in border areas where you have conflict," Pinheiro told Reuters in an interview after an 11-day mission to Burma.

    "An important thing I did was to encourage the government to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to be present in the hot areas where you have armed conflict."

    But Pinheiro said he turned down a government invitation to visit Shan state in eastern Burma, citing a lack of time for a proper investigation into allegations by human rights groups that the army is using systematic rape and child soldiers in a war against ethnic minority separatist groups.

    Pinheiro said he planned to go to Shan State during future visits to Burma, the next being in February.

    Many Western countries, including the United States and the European Union, impose political and economic sanctions on Burma, a country diplomats say has been impoverished by decades of economic mismanagement.

    JUNTA NOT READY FOR TALKS

    But Pinheiro suggested isolating Burma was wrong.

    "It's important that the international community does not wait for the end of political transition before engaging," Pinheiro told a news conference. "Every political transition in the world is a process. Don't expect instant regime change in Myanmar."

    The military has raised hopes for political change in the last two years by releasing around 400 political prisoners and freeing Suu Kyi from 19 months of house arrest in May.

    Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won national elections in 1990, but has never been allowed to rule by the military, which has held power for the last four decades.

    Pinheiro, who met Suu Kyi and powerful military intelligence chief Khin Nyunt during his visit, said the junta and the NLD were in regular contact but substantive talks on political change had not begun.

    He said the military appeared reluctant to work with Suu Kyi, even on humanitarian aid. Diplomats say NLD cooperation with the junta could persuade donors to open their wallets.

    "The NLD is ready to participate in monitoring and assessment of humanitarian aid," Pinheiro said. "But it seems to me the government is not yet prepared to have this engagement." Pinheiro called for the immediate, unconditional release of all political prisoners, who he thought numbered between 1,200 and 1,300, as the next step towards political change.

    He said treatment of the prisoners had improved since the Red Cross began prison visits nearly three years ago. But political repression, including sporadic arrests of pro-democracy activists, continued, he said.

    "There is no torture, no misconduct by agents in prison facilities," Pinheiro told Reuters.

    "But the basic political freedoms for political parties are limited. They don't have the right for instance to print materials, which will be very necessary in political dialogue."

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    U.N. envoy: Burma junta's efforts to probe rape allegations insufficient

    BANGKOK, Thailand (AP)- - A United Nations human rights envoy on Wednesday criticized Burma's junta for not making sufficient efforts to verify allegations that its soldiers used rape as a weapon of war against ethnic Shan women.

    Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, who ended a 12-day mission to Burma on Oct. 28, told reporters in Bangkok that he has urged the country's military government to allow independent investigations into the alleged abuses.

    He said he told authorities that their efforts so far are "not sufficient, that allegations are not to be denied, allegations are to be investigated and prosecuted."

    "I expressed to the government that an assessment of these violations or any other kind of violation in the areas of military conflict needs to have independent evidence," he said.

    The Shan are an ethnic minority living in Burma's northeast, and are fighting for autonomy. Earlier this year, two Shan human rights groups accused Myanmar soldiers of raping its women.

    The government denied the allegations and invited Pinheiro to investigate independently. However, Pinheiro refused to travel to Shan State, saying the little time he had would not allow a thorough investigation. But he held other intensive meetings with judicial and security officials and political prisoners among others.

    Pinheiro said his team was unable "to perform a credible assessment" of the alleged sexual abuses of the Shan.

    He repeated earlier calls for the Red Cross to be allowed to have a permanent role in Burma's conflict zones, where the military is battling ethnic insurgents and reports of alleged abuses have repeatedly surfaced.

    He said he was pleased that pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been allowed to travel freely around the country since her release in May after 19 months under house arrest.

    Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel peace laureate, has held reconciliation talks with the junta since October, 2000 but little progress has been reported. The government refuses to hand over power to Suu Kyi's party, although it won the 1990 general elections.

    Since the start of the reconciliation process, a few hundred dissidents have been released.

    The number of political prisoners is now believed to be "between 1,200 and 1,300," Pinheiro said, noting that he had requested official figures and would elaborate further during his address to the U.N. General Assembly on Nov. 6.

    "Let's be objective about the numbers. There are many other countries that have hundreds of thousands of prisoners," Pinheiro said.

    Still, he said he called for the unconditional release of political prisoners as a prelude to political transition, adding that the regime acknowledged "without denial" that scores of dissidents languished in its prisons.

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