Burma’s information minister on Monday confirmed that the country’s ministries were in the process of relocating from Rangoon to a new administrative center nearly 400 km north of the capital in Pyinmana, central Burma.

Speaking at a press conference in Rangoon today, Brig-Gen Kyaw Hsan said that the transfer had started on Sunday and explained that the move is being made so that government operations will run more “smoothly.”

Kyaw Hsan dismissed earlier reports of travel difficulties for civil servants, many of whom were only informed of the move last Friday, saying the government had made necessary arrangements for transportation and housing.

Pyinmana served as the military headquarters of Burma’s resistance movement, led by independence hero Gen Aung San, during the country’s Japanese occupation in World War II. The area is strategically located within easy range of ethnic frontiers and sources say the generals have already constructed anti-aircraft missiles and underground tunnels. Outside the country the move has been widely viewed as the paranoid action of a regime fearful of foreign invasion. The present capital, Rangoon, is considered vulnerable to a seaborne attack.

The relocation to Pyinmana had originally been considered in 2001, when The Irrawaddy reported on plans for the state-run television company MRTV and a 1000-bed hospital to join ministry and military facilities in making the move.

“We are very surprised by this sudden development. It is very puzzling,” Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Monday. The statement said that the clarification will be sought from the Rangoon’s ambassador in Singapore.

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November 7, Agence France Presse
Myanmar presses on with move to half-finished government compound

Myanmar government workers were working frantically Monday to comply with the reclusive military junta’s sudden order to relocate ministries to a secret compound in a mountainous region north of Yangon.

Much of the compound 200 miles (320 kilometers) north of the capital remains incomplete, without even housing for the staffers of the commerce, foreign, home affairs and post and telecommunication ministries which began moving Sunday to Pyinmana.

Analysts have said the move, which has been under preparation for several months, was prompted by fears of an invasion by the United States, one of the junta’s staunchest critics.

They said the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq apparently reinforced the fears.

There was no official announcement of the move but a written order has said that “the relocation must be completed before April 2006,” accoridng to government workers who had seen the document.

Only a handful of people in the first group who arrived late Sunday in a military convoy have managed to telephone back to Yangon, mainly to ask relatives to send them food.

One of them told AFP they were forced to spend the night on the floor of an assembly hall, and that they had been informed they would only receive meals for two days and then have to fend for themselves.

“We have all been put into one big hall where we have spent the night. We don’t know what to do so we are just waiting for orders,” one worker said.

The first group of workers in the foreign ministry was given only one day to prepare for the relocation, staffers in the ministry said.

None of the workers would speak on the record, fearing retribution from the notoriously secretive junta.

The secret complex lies in a valley, some 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the nearest town, they said.

An engineer involved in the construction told AFP that even housing for some 40 deputy ministrers remains incomplete.

“The buildings for the deputy ministers are still far from finished, with not even an access road to some of them,” he said.

One analyst in Yangon told AFP the move was also part of the military’s broader plan to change the system of government after it completes drafting a new constitution at a national convention due to resume on December 5.

“Obviously the whole idea is motivated by security and strategic concerns,” he said.

The new compound is part of the military’s plan to maintain its control of the state, even after it hands power to a government that could eventually be elected under the constitution it has been drafting for years, the analyst said.

“They take the guardianship of the nation very seriously and have been painstakingly preparing for” the transfer, he said.

Myanmar has been ruled by the military since 1962.

The US and European Union have imposed sanctions for its suppression of the pro-democracy movement, including the detention of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the world’s only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient.

The junta says the next session of constitutional talks on its self-declared “road map” to democracy will resume on December 5. Critics describe the talks as a sham since they have been boycotted by the opposition Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy.

The NLD won a landslide election victory in 1990 but was never allowed to take power.