April 7: Maha Ja claimed years ago that he had turned his back on the illicit drug trade and was working to make his home a legitimate centre of commerce.
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For over a decade, debate has raged over the appropriate path for Burma to take in its journey to democracy.
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Tokyo: A Myanmar man who served as an aide to pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi filed a damages suit against the Japanese government on Friday for detaining him for about 14 months after his request for asylum in Japan was rejected and he was ordered to be deported to Myanmar.
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Phnom Penh: Myanmar’s Prime Minister Lieutenant General Soe Win jetted into the Cambodian capital Friday as part of a swing through Southeast Asia that comes amid debate over Yangon’s role in ASEAN.
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Mactan, Philippines: The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is looking to the European Union and the United Nations as possible models for a planned charter aimed at giving the regional group a “legal personality”, officials said Friday.
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Manila: The Philippines senate is to pass a resolution calling for Myanmar to be stripped of its upcoming ASEAN chairmanship unless it releases a timetable towards democracy and improves human rights, its president said Friday.
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New York/Bangkok: ChevronTexaco Corp. (CVX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) will likely sell a natural gas pipeline and field in army-ruled Myanmar rather than face protests from activists opposed to the holdings of its takeover target Unocal Corp. (UCL.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , analysts say.
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Ceasefire sources have confirmed the surrender of one of their brigade commanders to the Burma Army yesterday.
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Yangon: Every year, Myanmar’s ruling generals throw a grand party in verdant People’s Park, marching their troops around in celebration of what they claim are their many achievements. But it’s an in-house affair.

The general public isn’t invited to the Armed Forces Day event, and is kept well away by tight security.

To many, it’s a symbol of the gulf between people and rulers in Asia’s last military dictatorship, and underlines the grip of a regime which internal dissent and international pressure seem powerless to loosen.

Rarely in the 17 years since the present junta seized power has the mood in the capital of the impoverished country seemed bleaker.

In fact, the generals are looking more secure than ever. They have continental Asia’s two biggest powers, India and China, on their side, and unless foreign objections prevail, Myanmar will next year assume the prestigious rotating chairmanship of ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The junta is widely hated, says one knowledgeable Yangon man, but adds that short of a U.S. invasion, no one can see a way of dislodging it. “People know they would get gunned down if they protested in the streets,” he said, requesting anonymity for fear of official retaliation.

Thus dissent is merely expressed in sarcastic jokes rather than anti-regime plotting when the disaffected of Yangon meet in the teashops that officials regard as hotbeds of opposition.

A new U.S. State Department report says: “Prospects for meaningful political change and reform continued to decline over the past six months.”

Headed by hard-liner Gen. Than Shwe, who consolidated his power with the ousting of a powerful rival last year, the junta shows no signs of releasing Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who symbolizes Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement. Approaching her 60th birthday, she has been under house arrest for a year and barred from contact with independent observers.

Except in Yangon, the offices of her National League for Democracy across the country remain padlocked. Some of its members are among Myanmar’s estimated 1,300 political prisoners. The few remaining opposition leaders are in their 80s while the movement’s rank-and-file is considered to be infiltrated by government agents.

“It’s a terrible situation. When I talk to the opposition people they want me to give them some hope, but I can’t,” says David Steinberg, a Georgetown University professor who has contacts among both regime and opposition figures.

The junta insists it’s following a seven-point road map to democracy and a constitution has been in the works for 12 years. But critics are unimpressed.

“This road map and this constitution have been charades from the very beginning,” says Asda Jayanama, Thailand’s former ambassador to the United Nations.

Asda, who has had extensive dealings with the Myanmar government, says the military has already signaled that 25 percent of legislative seats will go to its members and the head of state is to be someone of military background. The generals, he says, will simply switch from uniforms to civilian clothes.

External pressure has recently intensified over the ASEAN chairmanship.

Some within the 10-nation bloc say the regime must first take steps toward democracy, and the United States, which imposed economic sanctions in 2003, has indicated it would boycott any ASEAN meetings chaired by Myanmar. Recent United Nations statements have abandoned diplomatic language to flatly lambaste the country’s human rights record.

But ASEAN rarely interferes in the domestic affairs of its members, and Myanmar, under the military’s control since 1962, has a record of retreating into a shell rather than give in to outside pressure.

“It’s dicey. Than Shwe could easily say, ‘I don’t give a damn about foreigners. We’ll go back to our isolation,”‘ Steinberg says.

Not total isolation, though. China provides Myanmar’s more than 400,000-strong armed forces with arms, and last month an Indian foreign minister visited for the first time in 18 years. India, initially hostile to the junta when it seized power in 1988, apparently wants to offset China’s influence here, and says it now considers Myanmar a “valuable neighbor and strategic partner.”

“Real change can only come from within, people staging a coup d’etat or whatever,” says Asda. Steinberg says a new order could only emerge if a serious rift split the military or a popular uprising broke out.

People did rise up in 1988, and thousands died. The military’s brutal response still haunts the nation.

Yangon: Secret courts inside Myanmar’s notorious Insein prison have begun handing down stiff sentences in trials for some 300 people linked to the disbanded military intelligence services, legal sources said Friday.
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