brad brace contemporary culture scrapbook

June 5, 2008

Human trafficking list

Fiji and Papua New Guinea have been added to a United States blacklist of countries trafficking in people.

The Tier Three blacklist is contained in the US State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons report.

The report analyses efforts in 170 countries to combat trafficking for forced labour, prostitution, military service and other purposes.

Pacific correspondent, Campbell Cooney, says the report claims Fiji is a source country for children trafficked for sexual exploitation, and a destination for women from China and India for forced labour and exploitation.

It also claims Papua New Guinea is the destination for women and children from Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and China for sexual exploitation in cities, towns and isolated logging and mining camps.

Remaining on the Tier Three list are Sudan, Syria, Algeria, Iran, Burma and Cuba, while Malaysia and Bahrain have been removed.

In introducing the report, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said human trafficking deprives people of their human rights and dignity, and “bankrolls the growth of organised crime”.

“The petty tyrants who exploit their labourers rarely receive serious punishment,” she said.

“We and our allies must remember that a robust law enforcement response is essential.”

Meanwhile, the Netherlands has allocated $US2.5 million for the elimination of child labour in Papua New Guinea.

The National newspaper reports the funding is part of a 36-month program that also covers Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

PNG acting deputy secretary for Labour and Industrial Relations, Martin Kase, says the program will help determine the extent of child labour in the country.

He says current data is inadequate.

May 16, 2008

Artist tragically denied support and pay for 35 years!

Filed under: art,burma,china,corporate-greed,General,government,human rights — admin @ 6:34 am

Regime-Quakes in Burma and China

When news arrived of the catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan, my mind
turned to Zheng Sun Man, an up-and-coming security executive I met on
a recent trip to China. Zheng heads Aebell Electrical Technology, a
Guangzhou-based company that makes surveillance cameras and public
address systems and sells them to the government.

Zheng, a 28-year-old MBA with a text-messaging addiction, was
determined to persuade me that his cameras and speakers are not being
used against pro-democracy activists or factory organizers. They are
for managing natural disasters, Zheng explained, pointing to the
freak snowstorms before Lunar New Year. During the crisis, the
government was able use the feed from the railway cameras to
communicate how to deal with the situation and organize an
evacuation. We saw how the central government can command from the
north emergencies in the south.

Of course, surveillance cameras have other uses too like helping to
make Most Wanted posters of Tibetan activists. But Zheng did have a
point: nothing terrifies a repressive regime quite like a natural
disaster. Authoritarian states rule by fear and by projecting an aura
of total control. When they suddenly seem short-staffed, absent or
disorganized, their subjects can become dangerously emboldened. Its
something to keep in mind as two of the most repressive regimes on
the planetChina and Burmastruggle to respond to devastating
disasters: the Sichuan earthquake and Cyclone Nargis. In both cases,
the disasters have exposed grave political weaknesses within the
regimesand both crises have the potential to ignite levels of public
rage that would be difficult to control.

When China is busily building itself up, creating jobs and new
wealth, residents tend to stay quiet about what they all know:
developers regularly cut corners and flout safety codes, while local
officials are bribed not to notice. But when China comes tumbling
downincluding at least eight schools in the earthquake zone the
truth has a way of escaping from the rubble. Look at all the
buildings around. They were the same height but why did the school
fall down? a distraught relative in Juyuan demanded of a foreign
reporter. Its because the contractors want to make a profit from
our children. A mother in Dujiangyan told The Guardian, Chinese
officials are too corrupt and bad%.They have money for prostitutes
and second wives but they dont have money for our children.

That the Olympic stadiums were built to withstand powerful quakes is
suddenly of little comfort. When I was in China, it was hard to find
anyone willing to criticize the Olympic spending spree. Now posts on
mainstream web portals are calling the torch relay wasteful and its
continuation in the midst of so much suffering inhuman.

None of this compares with the rage boiling over in Burma, where
cyclone survivors have badly beaten at least one local official,
furious at his failure to distribute aid. Simon Billenness, co-chair
of the board of directors of U.S. Campaign for Burma, told me, This
is Katrina times a thousand. I dont see how it couldnt lead to
political unrest.

The unrest of greatest concern to the regime is not coming from
regular civilians but from inside the military a fact that explains
some of the juntas more erratic behavior. For instance, we know that
the Burmese junta has been taking credit for supplies sent by foreign
countries. Now it turns out that it have been taking more than
creditin some cases it has been taking the aid. According to a
report in Asia Times, the regime has been hijacking food shipments
and distributing them among its 400,000 soldiers. The reason speaks
to the deep threat the disaster poses. The generals, it seems, are
haunted by an almost pathological fear of a split inside their own
ranks%if soldiers are not given priority in aid distribution and are
unable to feed themselves, the possibility of mutiny rises. Mark
Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, confirms that before the
cyclone, the military was already coping with a wave of desertions.

This relatively small-scale theft of food is fortifying the junta for
its much larger heistthe one taking place via the constitutional
referendum the generals have insisted on holding, come hell and high
water. Enticed by high commodity prices, Burmas generals have been
gorging off the countrys natural abundance, stripping it of gems,
timber, rice and oil. As profitable as this arrangement is, junta
leader Gen. Than Shwe knows he cannot resist the calls for democracy
indefinitely.

Taking a page out of the playbook of Chilean dictator Augusto
Pinochet, the generals have drafted a Constitution that allows for
future elections but attempts to guarantee that no government will
ever have the power to prosecute them for their crimes or take back
their ill-gotten wealth. As Farmaner puts it, after elections the
junta leaders are going to be wearing suits instead of boots. Much
of the voting has already taken place but in cyclone ravaged
districts, the referendum has been delayed until May 24. Aung Din,
executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Burma, told me that the
military has stooped to using aid to extort votes. Rainy season is
coming, he told me, and people need to repair their roofs. When
they go to purchase the materials, which are very limited, they are
told they can only have them if they agree to vote for the
constitution in an advance ballot.

The cyclone, meanwhile, has presented the junta with one last, vast
business opportunity: by blocking aid from reaching the highly
fertile Irrawaddy delta, hundreds of thousands of mostly ethnic Karen
rice farmers are being sentenced to death. According to Farmaner,
that land can be handed over to the generals business cronies
(shades of the beachfront land grabs in Sri Lanka and Thailand after
the Asian tsunami). This isnt incompetence, or even madness, as many
have claimed. Its laissez-faire ethnic cleansing.

If the Burmese junta avoids mutiny and achieves these goals, it will
be thanks largely to China, which has vigorously blocked all attempts
at the United Nations for humanitarian intervention in Burma. Inside
China, where the central government is going to great lengths to show
itself as compassionate, news of this complicity could prove
explosive.

Will Chinas citizens receive this news? They just might. Beijing
has, up to now, displayed an awesome determination to censor and
monitor all forms of communication. But in the wake of the quake, the
notorious Great Firewall censoring the Internet is failing badly.
Blogs are going wild, and even state reporters are insisting on
reporting the news.

This may be the greatest threat that natural disasters pose to
contemporary repressive regimes. For Chinas rulers, nothing has been
more crucial to maintaining power than the ability to control what
people see and hear. If they lose that, neither surveillance cameras
nor loudspeakers will be able to help them.

May 6, 2008

Nargis cyclone claims 15,000… 100,000

Filed under: burma,General,global islands,government,military,weather — admin @ 6:32 am

Burma’s government said today that at least 15,000 people are dead and 30,000 missing after Tropical Cyclone Nargis hit the country on Saturday. The storm, which struck the capital Yangon and the rice-growing Irrawaddy delta, triggered a tidal wave killing thousands and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. The country’s isolated military junta have allowed in aid agencies to help distribute vital supplies. The UN is discussing how to supply more aid…

Myanmar Holds Election Amid Stench of Death
Ruling Junta Keeps Political Process Going Despite Scores of Dead and Dying

In Myanmar’s Irrawaddy delta, old men lie under crushed tin roofs, flies covering their faces. Nobody has come to help them exactly one week after Cyclone Nagris arrived. Dead bodies litter the sides of rivers, bloated from neglect. The stench of death overwhelms towns.

But 70 miles to the north, in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, two young women smile and dance on state television, a glitzy promotional campaign for a referendum that proceeded today despite the 1.5 million to 2 million Burmese who have no water, food or shelter.

“Let’s go vote … with sincere thoughts for happy days,” the dancers sing, neglecting to mention the fact that for more than 12 million Burmese conditions are so bad the vote could not proceed where they live.

Myanmar’s ruling generals today appeared more interested in promoting the vote that will entrench their rule than they were in the hundreds of thousands of their people who are drinking coconut milk because they have no clean water, who are sleeping under the stars because they have no homes, who haven’t had electricity since the storm hit.

The United Nations today increased its estimates of the number of dead and the number of people who urgently need aid, saying that anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 people have died from the storm. “And that’s not counting any future casualties,” Richard Horsey, the spokesman for the UN’s humanitarian affairs office in Bangkok, said.

“It’s a major disaster, and relief is not getting there fast enough,” Horsey said. Fewer than 500,000 people have received aid, less than a third of the number who need it, he said.

“It’s a race against time,” Horsey said. “There is a huge risk that diarrheal disease, cholera and so on could start to spread, because there is a lack of clean drinking water, a lack of sanitation facilities. This could be a huge problem and it could lead to a second phase which could be as deadly as the cyclone.”

And yet the generals who run Myanmar spent the day posing for cameras, handing out boxes of aid stamped with their names on it and promoting a “yes” vote in the referendum.

Burmese citizens live in fear of a police state, and most of those brave enough to speak to reporters said they had voted yes, meaning they had voted to allot one out of every four parliamentary seats to the military, allow the president to hand over all power to the military in a state of emergency and ban Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who leads the country’s pro-democracy movement, from public office.

“I voted yes. It was what I was asked to do,” 57-year-old U Kyaing said in Hlegu, 30 miles from Yangon.

Aye Aye Mar, a 36-year-old homemaker, was asked by a reporter if she thought anyone would vote no. Her eyes darted around to see if anyone was watching, and then she whispered, “One vote of ‘No’ will not make a difference.”

Then she raised her voice: “I’m saying ‘Yes’ to the constitution.”

There are some signs that aid into the country is slowly increasing.

The United Nations launched its first emergency appeal for the cyclone’s survivors, asking for $187 million.

The International Committee of the Red Cross sent its first shipment into Myanmar, an aid flight with 31 tons of pumps, generators, water tanks and medicine.

And today, the U.N.’s refugee agency delivered its first supplies into the country, via a border crossing in Mae Sot, Thailand. Two trucks full of mostly tents and some relief supplies will take almost a week to get to Rangon, the U.N. said today.

But there are still thousands of aid workers who have not been given visas to enter the country. The Myanmar government has suggested international organizations deliver aid without accompanying workers. But aid groups point out that the devastation is too vast for a government to handle.

TV images taken at the Yangon airport show workers hand-carrying relief supplies off of the few planes that have been allowed to land, a process far too slow for the Burmese in desperate need.

“The country, the areas which were struck by the cyclone, should get the foreign aid,” one villager said in English, his voice rising in anger.

“The aid workers in the country are saying this is just overwhelming,” Horsey said. “The scale of this in comparison to what people are able to do is just overwhelming.”

It is overwhelming local aid workers in towns such as Myaung Mya, where 10,000 survivors have arrived since the storm hit. They sleep next to each other on bare floors, no fires to keep the mosquitoes away.

“How many more days are we going to be able to feed them? People here can barely afford to feed themselves,” one local businessman said.

Shopkeepers are closing before dusk, fearing looters.

“These people have nothing left to lose,” the businessman said. “Maybe they will just go for it.”

April 10, 2008

Thai police find 54 dead Burmese workers in lorry

Filed under: burma,global islands,government,human rights,thailand — admin @ 6:51 am

Fifty-four illegal Burmese migrants who were being smuggled by traffickers in southern Thailand suffocated in the sweltering confines of a tiny seafood container lorry today after the air-conditioning system failed.

Some of the 67 survivors told how they were just 30 minutes into their journey to the resort island of Phuket, where they hoped to find work, when conditions became unbearably stifling.

But the driver warned those trying to alert him by banging on the container’s walls and calling him on his mobile phone to be quiet for fear of tipping off the police as they passed through check-points along the route.

He turned on the air-conditioning, but it failed and went off after a few minutes. When the driver finally stopped on a quiet road running along the Andaman Sea 90 minutes later, many of the migrants, mostly women, had already collapsed. After discovering the horrific scene, he ran away.

“I thought everyone was going to die,” said survivor, Saw Win, 30. “I thought I was going to die. If the truck had driven for 30 minutes more, I would have died for sure.”

It underscored the plight of Burmese migrants fleeing conflict and economic collapse in their homeland who flood into Thailand across the porous border desperately seeking work.

As many as 150,000 languish in refugee camps along the border. But another 1.5 million live and work in Thailand, often in the seafood processing, fishing and construction industries that Thais shun.

Just 482,925 have managed to secure work permits leaving at least a million working illegally, vulnerable to abuse from corrupt officials and exploited by unscrupulous employers. They are forced to work for as little as £1.15 a day, half what a Thai worker could expect.

The 121 migrants who found themselves crammed in the seafood container left Song Island in Burma last night for the short sea crossing by fishing boat, landing near Ranong.

They paid the traffickers £82 each to transport them to Phuket to work as day labourers, but were so tightly packed into the truck there was standing-room only in the air-tight container measuring just six metres long and 2.2 metres wide.

“It was hot when the truck started moving,” one 40-year-old survivor explained from his bed in Ranong hospital, where another 20 were treated. “We asked the driver to turn the air-conditioner on. The heat made me pass out and the next thing I knew I was in hospital.”

Police Colonel Kraithong Chanthongbai said: “The people said they tried to bang on the walls of the container to tell the driver they were dying, but he told them to shut up as police would hear them when they crossed through check-points inside Thailand.”

When police reached the scene in the early hours of this morning, tipped off by local villagers, they found 54 of the migrants already dead. Officers were seen lifting the bodies of the 37 women and 17 men, dressed in little more than T-shirts and shorts, from the truck’s rear where only rags of discarded clothing remained.

The bodies were taken to a shed where they were laid out in rows on plastic sheets. Police said they would be buried in temporary graves so that relatives could reclaim them in the future.

Tonight just two survivors remained in hospital while the other 65 were being detained by police who said they were likely to be deported as illegal immigrants.

Police were searching for the driver. The owner of the truck, part of the Rung Thip company’s fleet, was detained for questioning despite claiming to have no knowledge of the human cargo.

“We believe this must be part of a smuggling racket which has to be tracked down,” said Col Kraithong. “The large number of illegals represents a very brazen act.”

November 27, 2007

Search for 50 passengers called off after people-smuggling boat sinks off Bangladesh

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh: Bangladesh authorities called of searches at sea Monday for about 50 passengers missing from a people-smuggling boat that sank off the southern coast near Myanmar waters, killing at least five people, police said.

The wooden fishing boat went down Sunday near Saint Martin’s island, about 120 kilometers south of the coastal resort town of Cox’s Bazar, said local police officer Mohammad Jasimuddin, who had been coordinating the rescue effort.

Survivors said the boat was carrying more than 100 people, Jasimuddin said. Five bodies have been recovered so far, Jasimuddin said.

He said about 50 people were still unaccounted for, and that about 50 others swam ashore or were rescued by fishing boats.

One survivor, Hashem Mollah, told police that he and his cousin had each paid 20,000 takas (US$298) to a trafficking syndicate to carry them to Thailand, from where they had planned to travel to Malaysia for better jobs, Jasimuddin said.

The Bangladeshi villager said he swam for nearly three hours to shore after the overcrowded boat sank in deep seas. Many others did not make it, he said.

Jasimuddin said police were trying to find the traffickers, based on information from survivors.

Searches for the missing by police and coast guard speed boats were called off late Monday, he said. However, he said rescuers were still looking out for any more bodies or survivors along the shoreline.

Jasimuddin said the passengers were poor Bangladeshi villagers, and Myanmar refugees from camps at Cox’s Bazar, 300 kilometers south of the national capital, Dhaka.

Several thousand Myanmar refugees, mostly Muslims known as Rohingyas, have fled to Bangladesh over the years, claiming persecution by Myanmar’s military junta and economic hardships.

In the last three months, police and the coast guard have arrested about 500 people – Bangladeshis and Myanmar refugees – in the same waters, mainly on human trafficking or illegal entry charges.

Boat and ship accidents are common in Bangladesh, a delta nation with about 250 rivers. They are often blamed on poor navigation, unfit vessels and lax enforcement of safety regulations.

October 20, 2007

Women Send Panties to Myanmar in Protest

Filed under: burma,General,government,media,thailand — admin @ 5:37 am

BANGKOK, Thailand — Women in several countries have begun sending their panties to Myanmar embassies in a culturally insulting gesture of protest against the recent brutal crackdown there, a campaign supporter said Friday.

“It’s an extremely strong message in Burmese and in all Southeast Asian culture,” said Liz Hilton, who supports an activist group that launched the “Panties for Peace” drive earlier this week.

The group, Lanna Action for Burma, says the country’s superstitious generals, especially junta leader Gen. Than Shwe, also believe that contact with women’s underwear saps them of power.

To widespread international condemnation, the military in Myanmar, also known as Burma, crushed mass anti-regime demonstrations recently and continues to hunt down and imprison those who took part.

Hilton said women in Thailand, Australia, Singapore, England and other European countries have started sending or delivering their underwear to Myanmar missions following informal coordination among activist organizations and individuals.

“You can post, deliver or fling your panties at the closest Burmese Embassy any day from today. Send early, send often!” the Lanna Action for Burma Web site urges.

“So far we have had no response from Burmese officials,” Hilton said.
On the Net:

* http://lannaactionforumburma.blogspot.com

October 8, 2007

Myanmar’s rubies; bloody colour, bloody business

BANGKOK – The gem merchants of Bangkok display their glistening wares proudly; diamonds from Africa, sapphires from Sri Lanka and rubies, of course, from Myanmar.

The red stones from the country formerly known as Burma are prized for their purity and hue. But they have a sinister flaw.

The country’s military rulers rely on sales of precious stones such as sapphires, pearls and jade to fund their regime. Rubies are probably the biggest earner; more than 90 percent of the world’s rubies come from Myanmar.

International outrage over the generals’ brutal crackdown on pro-democracy rallies encouraged the European Union this week to consider a trade ban on Myanmar’s gemstones, a leading export earner in the impoverished country.

There is also pressure in Washington to close a loophole on existing U.S. sanctions which allows in most of its precious stones.

But in neighbouring Thailand, where the majority of Myanmar’s gems are bought and sold, the stone merchants have yet to be put off business with the junta.

“People are unhappy about what’s going on but they are not angry enough to stop buying rubies,” said Pornchai Chuenchomlada, president of the Thai Gem and Jewellery Traders Association.

“If they killed a lot of people like they did in 1988 we might consider banning their products,” said Pornchai, adding that he personally bought little from Myanmar on moral grounds.

Official media say 10 people were killed when soldiers fired on protesters, including Buddhist monks, in downtown Yangon last week, but the real toll is thought to be much higher.

The junta killed an estimated 3,000 people during the last major uprising in 1988.

VALLEY OF RUBIES

Myanmar’s generals are estimated to have earned around $750 million since they began holding official gem and jade sales in 1964. A far bigger number of precious stones are smuggled over the border into Thailand and China.

The official expositions, held twice a year in the tropical heat of Yangon, are increasingly popular. More Chinese bidders are attending, attracted by slabs of jade.

The state holds a majority stake in all mining operations in Myanmar, including the “Valley of Rubies”, the mountainous Mogok area, 200 km north of Mandalay, famed for its rare pigeon’s blood rubies and blue sapphires worth tens of thousands of dollars apiece.

Conditions in the mines, off-limits to outsiders, are reported to be horrendous.

Debbie Stothard of the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma said her organisation had reports of mining operators hooking employees on drugs to improve productivity. Needles are shared, raising the risk of HIV infection, she said.

“Heroin is given to people at the end of the working day as a reward,” said Stothard. “Young people go off to the mines with big hopes and dreams and they come back to die.”

“These rubies are red with the blood of young people.”

REVULSION

Couples buying engagement rings often now ask where the diamonds come from since last year’s Hollywood film “Blood Diamond” raised awareness about gems which finance conflicts.

But even during the late 1990s, when war was still raging in Sierra Leone, where the film was based, only between 4 percent and 15 percent of the world’s diamonds were estimated to have come from conflict zones.

Brian Leber, a third generation jeweller from the U.S. state of Illinois, decided years ago to stop buying Myanmar gems.

“I think it’s more important to sleep at night,” said the 41-year-old who founded The Jewellers’ Burma Relief Project, an organisation that supports humanitarian projects in the country.

Although the United States imposed a ban on imports of Myanmar gems in 2003, a customs loophole allows in stones cut or polished elsewhere. As Myanmar exports virtually all its gems uncut, this interpretation rendered the ban useless.

Leber is hopeful last week’s brutal crackdown will convince U.S. lawmakers to close this loophole. He would like to see consumers shun all gems from Myanmar, whatever their cachet, until the generals are gone.

“For the time being, Burmese gems should not be something to be proud of. They should be an object of revulsion.”

In Bangkok, some dealers have stopped handling stones from Myanmar and they are angry that colleagues haven’t followed suit.

“This is a Buddhist country. I was expecting the price of rubies to drop dramatically after they shot at the monks, but I’m beginning to think these people are hypocrites,” said one Bangkok-based jeweller, who declined to be named.

“It’s the only country where you can get really top quality rubies, but I stopped dealing in them. I don’t want to be part of a nation’s misery.”

“If someone asks for a ruby now I show them a nice pink sapphire.”

October 1, 2007

Myanmar: Internet link remains shut

Filed under: burma,General,global islands,media,military — admin @ 5:27 am

Yangon – Myanmar’s main Internet link remained shut for a third straight day on Sunday, as the ruling regime tried to curb the flow of information on a bloody crackdown against protesters.

“I tried on Sunday morning again but it’s failed again. I haven’t been able to check my email since Friday,” said one Yangon resident.

Internet cafes in Yangon also remained closed. Over the past week, tech-savvy citizens used the cybercafes to transmit pictures and video clips of the regime’s clampdown taken on mobile phones and digital cameras.

“People inside Myanmar can’t send emails or news to outside organisations,” said Kho Win Aung from activist group Shwe Gas Movement.

“So they are losing their chance to express what’s happening in Myanmar,” the Thailand-based activist told reporters in Bangkok.

The government cracked down on protesters last week, killing at least 13 people and injuring hundreds more, in a campaign that has also intensified pressure on media operating in the country.

In the main city of Yangon, soldiers shot dead a Japanese video-journalist Thursday and beat people found with cell phones or cameras, witnesses said.

Myanmar’s military rulers always keep a tight grip on information, heavily censoring newspapers, blocking much of the Internet and rarely allowing foreign journalists into the country.

Paris-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders said that by cutting Internet access, the regime was trying to operate “behind closed doors”.

It has condemned Myanmar as a “paradise for censors” and listed the country as one of the world’s most restrictive for press freedoms.

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