The European Commission raises eyebrows by commissioning two Burma experts, known for their military regime sympathy, to write a report for a Brussels meeting.
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A US Campaign for Burma statement released today urged people in Burma to boycott the products of the Hong Pang Group, who are allegedly involved in drug trafficking. The director of the pro-democracy activist group, Aung Din, said “It’s a dirty and corrupt company operated by druglords who support Than Shwe [the ruling junta's top leader].”
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Curb the anti-India militants, Rangoon is told
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Beijing: Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said here Friday that China is ready to step up efforts to promote bilateral ties with Myanmar.
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Burmese teenager says she was left with fractured skull, broken back

A Burmese teenager working as a maid at an apartment in Huai Khwang district has filed a complaint with police, accusing her Thai employer of giving her such a severe beating that she suffered a fractured skull, a broken back and shattered ribs.
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Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on Friday defended the blocking of a parliamentary motion seeking to deny Myanmar the ASEAN chairmanship next year unless it implements democratic reforms.
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April 28: Talks between Thailand and Burma have found they both have complaints against the other, and both see the other’s complaints as unfair:
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The UN High Commissioner for Refugees urged Thai authorities to grant more freedom to Myanmar (Burmese) exiles and to improve their living conditions in border refugee camps, The Nation reports.
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As the recent arrest of key Shan figures casts a cloud over the National Convention’s attempts at national integration, ethnic minority in-fighting continues to play into Rangoon’s hands.
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Burma’s wealthy tycoon and arms broker Te Za has expanded his involvement in the telecommunications sector by taking over a profitable GSM mobile phone contract reached between the Rangoon regime and China’s ZTE company, according to business and diplomatic sources in Rangoon.

Te Za is very close to the family of the military government’s top leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe.

The GSM phone contract between the government’s Myanmar Post and Telecommunications and China?s ZTE, the country’s leading telecommunications manufacturer, was signed during a visit to China last July by former prime minister Gen Khin Nyunt. The contract provided for the sale of 100,000 mobile phones in Rangoon and Mandalay.

The official price of a GSM phone is 1 million kyat (about US $1,100), but on the black market it fetches more than $2,000.

One businessman in Rangoon suggested that Te Za had been awarded the mobile phone contract in return for his involvement in building the controversial Nanmyint Tower at the Pagan World Heritage Site. It is believed that the recently-inaugurated tower was Than Shwe’s idea.

As President and Managing Director of the Htoo Trading Company, Te Za is a major player in Burma’s tourism, logging, real estate, and hotel and housing development sectors.

Since the early 1990s, he has also been involved in arms trading. He is the junta’s sole representative of Russia’s Export Military Industrial Group and the Russian helicopter company Rostvertol. In this capacity, he helped the military buy MiG-29 fighter jets and helicopters from Russia.

One western diplomat in Rangoon disclosed that Te Za was now selling arms not only to the military government but also to the United Wa State Army, the Wa group associated with the drugs trade. The UWSA is the biggest ceasefire group, with a 16,000-strong army, which recently launched serial attacks on a Shan rebel group in Shan State. Is there no stopping him (Te
Za) the diplomat asked.

Observers feel it will indeed be difficult to stop the forward progress of Te Za, as he is favored by the junta’s No. 1 leader Than Shwe. In recent years, when Than Shwe and his family holidayed at Ngwe Saung beach, Irrawaddy Division, they stayed at the Myanmar Treasure Beach Resort owned by Te Za, the Rangoon businessman said.

In Ngwe Saung alone, the businessman added, Te Za owns at least three big hotels and has been building an airport there. He is becoming the owner of the country, he commented wryly.

April 28: The Vigorous Burmese Students Warriors (VBSW), a secretive underground Burmese group said it was not responsible for recent bomb blast at Mandalay Zegyo Market and denounced the action.
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April 28: Former Burmese student leaders and political activists, U Tin Aung and Ko Tin Aye were released from Rangoon Insein Jail on 28 April after spending more than a decade and a half in prison. The followings are comments of fellow ex-political prisoners who were released recently:
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