Burma’s military rulers have called the US and EU’s approach to Burma “dogmatic” said a column in the state-run press on Monday.
(more…)

July 12: Yangon: Myanmar’s military government on Sunday welcomed a research institute report urging international aid for the country’s impoverished border areas.
(more…)

July 12: Dhaka: About 70 Burmese prisoners in the Bandaban District jail, a border town near Kyauk Taw Township in Western Burma, have been on a hunger
strike since September 4, as they do not want to return to Burma under aBangladeshi repatriation program.
(more…)

Kuala Lumpur: Are some foreign employees turning into dadah traffickers? The police raid on Friday where five Myanmar nationals were arrested in an apartment block off Jalan Tun Razak, seems to suggest this.
(more…)

Yangon: A soon-to-be released survey reveals military-ruled Myanmar has dramatically slashed illegal opium production, the Myanmar Times said.
(more…)

Singapore: Singapore’s prime minister highlighted U.S. and European concerns over military-ruled Myanmar’s human rights record on Monday at a meeting that also signalled Southeast Asia’s growing ties with the junta.
(more…)

Brussels: The European Union threatened Myanmar’s military leaders on Monday with new sanctions unless they free opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest by the time an EU-Asia summit opens on Oct. 8.
(more…)

September 11: First Person

I’ve been a proud Karen soldier since 1938, and I can probably count the years of peace on one hand. First we fought the Japanese and then their creation, the Burma Independence Army. We are still fighting that army today. Boys have become great-grandfathers in this war. I’m not optimistic that I will see it end. Burma is run for the benefit of a very small group of people and they play the ethnic card very hard. The Burmese are taught all their lives that the Karen are one of the dangerous, inferior minorities.

As a kid in Moulmein I didn’t mix with Burmese boys. Passing selection for the British Burma Army after high school at 17 was the triumph of my youth – 16 rupees a month and life was very good. I didn’t think much about the future. I thought the British would remain forever.

Then in December 1941 the Japanese bombed Rangoon. The 2nd Burma Rifles were hopelessly exposed – strung out along the country’s southern panhandle. My personal priority was to find out if I was a coward or not. I was greatly relieved when my unit repulsed the Japanese. We soon
withdrew on Royal Navy boats, but by then I knew I could fight.

The Japanese were brutal but their Burmese allies, the nationalists who followed at their heels, really made me fear for the Karen. Their leaders incited them to wipe out the Karen “filth”. Every rascal in the country joined in.

Instead of retreating with the British into India, I disguised myself as a student and made my way to the Karen Hills. The Japanese caught me but they thought the fight had been knocked out of me and released me on a promise to persuade others to surrender.

In the hills I was privileged to meet the English soldier Major H.P. Seagrim, who had stayed to organise the Karen resistance. He was the best type of Englishman: soft-spoken and very religious. He carried a Bible everywhere. By then, my blood was boiling – during my intelligence gathering I had heard how the Burmese were slaughtering our elders, women
and children. I saw like a bad dream empty Karen houses and fallen chairs. Even the Japanese warned them it was too much. Seagrim, who was known among us as Grandfather Longlegs, advised us not to be reckless.

A few enlightened Burmese, such as General Aung San (the independence leader and father of present-day opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi), tried to stop the killing. But I already felt the bitterness in the land. Japanese reprisals against Karen villages became so frequent after our guerrilla attacks that Major Seagrim gave himself up in 1944 to try to
stop the killing. My heart ached when I heard that he had been beheaded. I hope he is remembered in England.

The war’s end brought nothing for me to celebrate. I was convinced the Karen needed their own homeland to protect themselves, and the British left quicker than I could ever have imagined. General Aung San just might have been able to hold the country together by force of character if a rival had not murdered him. It was a mess.

Guerrilla fighting is not Hollywood. I seem to have walked forever through hard, hard jungle, eating bad food, wondering if a friend will die of a minor wound. I endure because the alternative means to surrender everything.

My sorrow today is that the generals in Rangoon still show no enthusiasm for tackling the same big issues that confronted us around independence. The only offer on the table is a military state in which I’d be a second-class Burman.

Aung San Suu Kyi has won our respect because she could have chosen an easier life and no one would have blamed her. My feeling is that she understands more clearly than a decade ago how crucial it is to give the minorities a fair deal.

In 1996, when I visited the capital for the first time in 45 years on a peace mission, it was a strange feeling. The Burmese officers are saying “Look how modern it is”, but mostly I saw the same Victorian city that the British built. Older and frayed, like me.

I’m 83 years and six months old. Sometimes I wonder how much I’ve missed by living inside a war. I would like to experience a little peace again, but abject surrender is out of the question.

General Tamlabaw, commander of the Karen National Liberation Army, has been fighting the Burmese Army since 1949. The Karen, the biggest ethnic minority in Burma, are trying to negotiate a ceasefire with the military regime. Tamlabaw spoke to the FT near the Thai/Burma border town of Mae Sot.

As told to William Barnes

July 12: There is no simple way to reconcile the expanding human appetite for energy consumption with environmental conservation. Whenever a choice has to be made, economic development always seems to trump Mother Nature. Thailand has expressed its interest in sharing in the development of hydro power facilities along the Salween in neighbouring Burma to accommodate its ambitions as a magnet for foreign investment.
(more…)