Myanma's Democratic Hope

[postlink] https://burmacampaignjapanteam.blogspot.com/2012/04/myanma-democratic-hope.html [/postlink] 01/04 10:39 CET

At 66, human rights and democracy defender Aung San Suu Kyi leads the National League for Democracy (or NLD) campaign in Myanmar’s elections. She considers the poll, with all its problems, vital. The opposition candidate has travelled thousands of kilometres in her country, to speak before hundreds of thousands of compatriots.

She has spent 15 years of the past two decades either in prison or under house arrest. Recently released, she considers Myanmar is at a turning point, after many years of dictatorship under a military junta. It may finally be moving towards more representative civilian governance.

Suu Kyi’s father, a general, was also the father of then Burma’s independence from British rule in 1947, after which he was assassinated. She was only two at the time. At 19, she left to earn a degree in philosophy, politics and economics in Britain. In 1972, she married scholar Michael Aris. Although two sons would be born of the marriage, work and then politics meant they lived together very little. Suu Kyi went back to Myanmar 1988. Her mother was ill.

When massive demonstrations for democratic government were violently put down and the army took power, she founded the NLD. She chose house arrest over freedom in exile. Her party won elections in 1990 but amid an international outcry the military refused to hand over power. For her perseverance, she won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Afraid if she left to see her now-ailing husband abroad she would not be allowed home, she did not see him – or her sons. They were refused entry to Myanmar.

In 1999, Michael died of cancer. While she was imprisoned in her house, Suu Kyi was cut off from supporters, international visitors and the media. Only occasional diplomatic and medical visits were allowed.

Briefly released, then rearrested in 2000, and let go again in 2002, the following year a convoy she was in was attacked by a group of paramilitaries in the sway of the junta. She escaped but was then locked away for the next seven years, in spite of international pressure on the regime.

Her non-violent struggle to bring about democracy and the respect of human rights in Myanmar has won her global renown and many awards, as well as reference in popular media. The Nobel committee called Suu Kyi “one of the most extraordinary examples of civil courage in Asia”.

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Australia to lift some Myanmar sanctions

[postlink] https://burmacampaignjapanteam.blogspot.com/2012/04/australia-to-lift-some-myanmar-sanctions.html [/postlink] By Martin Parry | AFP – 13 hours ago

Australia said on Monday it will lift sanctions against Myanmar's president and more than 200 others who are currently under travel and financial bans, after a series of reforms in the past year.

However, some 130 names will remain on the restricted list, including senior members of the military and others suspected of human rights abuses, Foreign Minister Bob Carr told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
The decision comes just days after British Prime Minister David Cameron and Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi issued a joint call for the suspension of sanctions against the former pariah state after landmark talks.
EU foreign ministers are expected to act on the issue later this month.
"We're easing sanctions after talking to Aung San Suu Kyi and others in the opposition, after talking to the government itself, (and) after talking to other nations," Carr said.
Speaking from London where he was to meet British Foreign Secretary William Hague, he said it meant the number of people in the Myanmar government subject to restrictions would be reduced from 392 to about 130.
"That removes many of the civilians from the list, and that includes President Thein Sein and government ministers," he said.
"But senior serving military officers and people of human rights interest will stay subject to those Australian sanctions."
Australia also has a longstanding ban on defence exports, which remains in place. Canberra does not impose general trade sanctions, although two-way trade is low and focuses mostly on wheat and other foodstuffs.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, has surprised observers with a series of reforms following the end of nearly half a century of military rule, and historic by-elections this month have been widely praised.
The elections gave democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi her first seat in parliament after spending 15 of the past 22 years locked up by the junta.
Canberra sent a team of five observers to track the polls but Carr warned that if progress was not continued, his sanctions decision could be reversed.
"I think the president is sincere, I think he deserves these rewards but of course it's always possible to resume these sanctions," he said.
Thein Sein took office last year and has proven to be a reformist, accepting Suu Kyi and her party back into the mainstream and freeing hundreds of political prisoners.
But Western sanctions have largely remained as the international community balanced fears over the sustainability of the changes and a desire to bolster regime reformers who may face pressure from those wary of the initiatives.
However, that position could soon change after Cameron's visit last week, as the first Western leader in decades to travel to Myanmar.
While in the country, he announced a dramatic shift in stance, calling for all European Union sanctions, except an arms embargo, to be suspended -- although not scrapped completely.
Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate whose support is seen as crucial for any easing of sanctions, for the first time also called for a suspension of measures against her country.
The 27-nation European Union lifted a travel ban on 87 Myanmar officials, including Thein Sein, in February but kept an assets freeze against them.
EU foreign ministers are expected this month to also revoke an assets freeze on nearly 500 people and 900 entities, experts say.
Washington announced early this month it would ease restrictions on investment to Myanmar and appoint an ambassador, but said measures would remain against those opposed to reform.

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Insight: Myanmar's power struggle endangers economic boom

[postlink] https://burmacampaignjapanteam.blogspot.com/2012/04/insight-myanmar-power-struggle.html [/postlink]

By a Reuters staff reporter

KYA-OH, Myanmar | Sun Apr 15, 2012 4:05pm EDT

(Reuters) - The banging of Win Maung's hammer echoes across the farming village of Kya-oh in parched central Myanmar, as twilight descends upon its thatched-roof homes.

His arms and legs streaked in oil, the 48-year-old is struggling to repair a 22-horsepower diesel engine in a wheezing generator, the only power source for about 200 villagers whose homes will soon be enveloped by darkness. It is a familiar scene in rural Myanmar.
"I'm not sure it can be fixed quickly. I'm not sure what the problem is," he says.
Kya-oh lies in Myanmar's oil-rich heartlands but is not connected to the nation's power grid, a problem shared by hundreds of poor villages where electricity is elusive, and homes are sometimes powered by car batteries or lit up at night by the glow of campfires.
A year of dramatic political changes after half a century of isolating military rule has convinced the West to start lifting sanctions imposed years ago in response to human rights abuses, encouraged by this month's historic by-elections that saw Nobel Peace Prize-winning dissident Aung San Suu Kyi win a seat in parliament.
But the lack of a cheap and reliable energy supply could slow an expected economic boom, forcing consumers and businesses to rely on costly private generators and imported fuel.
For the multinational companies descending on one of Asia's last frontier markets, the shortages are both a curse and a blessing: some say the erratic power could lead them to delay investments. Others see opportunity in expanding power supplies.
In Kya-oh, Win Maung charges each household 3,000 kyat ($3.65) a month for 2 1/2 hours of electricity a night, and an extra 1,500 kyat if they own a television. That translates into nearly a week's wage for some villagers, who, like a third of the country's 60 million people, live on less than a dollar a day.
"We do not believe the government will give us power, so we have to do it ourselves," said Win Maung, shirtless and sweating as he hovers over his broken engine. "We can only hope foreign companies will come in and help us."
The unprecedented reforms over the past year have raised expectations of a wave of foreign investment that could help improve power supplies if the government gives priority to fixing the sector.
But even if reform and capacity building progress quickly, gains will take time. Western energy firms say that once sanctions are lifted it will take at least two years to significantly boost Myanmar's power capacity due to decades of neglect and mismanagement.
"The power infrastructure is extremely important. That is one of the main questions you hear from people looking to set up manufacturing," said Jeremy Kloiser-Jones, chief executive of Bagan Capital, a new private equity firm dedicated to investing in Myanmar. Billions of dollars of investment in the power sector would be needed, he said.
The government announced nationwide rolling blackouts on April 2, the day after the historic landslide victory for pro-democracy leader Suu Kyi and her other party members in by-elections.
"Things are not going to change overnight. We have plans on paper but implementing them in a country where we haven't operated will obviously take some time," said a senior official with a major Western company, who asked not to be identified because sanctions are still in place.
Concern over power supply and future investment have been exacerbated by the scrapping of two major electricity projects, the China-led Myitsone dam and Thailand's Dawei coal-fired power plant, by Myanmar's government, in an apparent response to public concern over damage to the environment.
LEFT IN THE DARK
Power consumption in Myanmar, where only 25 percent of the population has access to the national grid, is one of the lowest in the world, averaging 104 kilowatts an hour per person, near the same level as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nepal, according to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.
Government officials believe demand would be at least double if supply was available.
Neighboring Thailand, with a similar population of about 65 million, consumes 20 times more electricity per capita with access available to more than 99 percent of its population, thanks in part to natural gas imported from Myanmar.
"Needless to say, for a developing country, energy demand is always a problem. We are always facing the big challenges with demand and supply," Htin Aung, director general of the Ministry of Energy's planning department, told an oil conference in Yangon on March 28.
For those lucky enough to have access to the national grid, the price of electricity varies sharply from one region to another. In the commercial capital of Yangon, electricity costs 35 kyat per kilowatt hour but surges more than 12 times that amount in the western city of Sittwe.
The government has embraced hydropower as the main source of electricity for the immediate future, allowing the country to continue exporting most of its natural gas output to Thailand, rather than burn it. Myanmar will also pipe gas to China from next year.
Hydroelectricity represents nearly 70 percent of Myanmar's power generation, while natural gas fuels more than 20 percent and coal 9 percent, according to the state-run Central Statistical Organisation.
Installed power capacity for fiscal 2011-12 was estimated at 2,544 megawatts, up from 1,717 four years ago.
"The policy for the electric power sector is to employ gas turbine power generation only for the short term and rely on hydroelectric power as the vital source of energy sufficiency," Kyaw Sar Soe Naing, executive engineer for the Ministry of Electric Power, told the same oil conference.
Relying on limited water resources for power, however, has forced Myanmar to ration its electricity supplies, especially during the dry season, which can last for half the year.
To keep the power on, businesses use their own generators that run on diesel. The oil is purchased at fuel stations that typically smuggle in supplies from Thailand and China due to Myanmar's limited refining capacity.
At the Myanmar Treasure Resort in Bagan, for instance, the 94-room hotel spends the equivalent of about $100 an hour to run both of its generators during a blackout, a heavy financial burden in the dry season, said its deputy manager Myo Myo Latt.
Myanmar diesel imports are on the rise since the government reformed the sector to facilitate imports by private companies, surging to $1.39 billion in fiscal 2010-11 from $673 million the year before.
FOREIGN HELP
Myanmar's government is optimistic that it will be able to meet domestic power demand within a few years with help from foreign investors.
A senior official with a Western energy firm said his company could increase Myanmar's power capacity by more than 15 percent, or an additional 400 megawatts, within a 26-month period by simply upgrading the current infrastructure.
Much more could also be done with billions of dollars of credit support and loans from multinational organizations such as the Asian Development Bank, industry officials said.
"If the world is now going to be serious about welcoming Myanmar into the fold, then multinational institutions are going to have to open up funding opportunities," said Bagan Capital's Kloiser-Jones.
POWER AND CHINA
The country - the biggest in mainland Southeast Asia - has more than 48 planned power projects, 45 of which are for hydropower stations, that would boost installed capacity more than 14 times to 36,635 megawatts, the ministry said.
But many of those projects have come under question following September's unexpected scrapping of the Chinese-led $3.6 billion Myitsone dam, Myanmar's largest hydropower project. Myanmar said it canceled the project because of environmental worries, but the decision was also seen as an attempt by its government to distance itself from Beijing.
China's ties with Myanmar have since been strained, raising concern over future investment from its second biggest trade partner. Chinese firms, including state-owned China Power Investment Corp and China Datang Corp, were due to build at least 33 of the 45 planned hydropower stations, the ministry said.
Myanmar could also help increase its power capacity by tapping more into its natural gas reserves, estimated at between 11 trillion and 23 trillion cubic feet. An energy official said a gas-fired power plant would likely be built at the multibillion-dollar Dawei Special Industrial Zone after the government halted construction of a 4,000 megawatt coal plant in January due to environmental worries.
Myanmar's energy minister in January promised to keep gas from new projects beyond 2013 for the country's fast-growing energy needs, but would not use natural gas to power Dawei.
The country produces about 1.47 billion cubic feet of gas per day (cfd), but exports 1.2 billion cfd to Thailand. The 270 million cfd kept at home met only 48 percent of domestic demand, according to Zaw Aung, director of planning for the state-run Myanma Oil & Gas Enterprise.
"We are now very much deficient in natural gas for our domestic utilization," said the Ministry of Energy's Htin Aung. "Natural gas to the private sector is negligible with just 1 percent of our supply. In the future, we plan to give the private sector more gas."
Back in Kya-oh, promises and plans mean little for Kyaw Soe Khaing, who faces a night without light if his friend, Win Maung, doesn't fix the village engine before sunset.
"Electricity for us is a luxury," the snack seller said with a smile. "We can manage without it, we have to make do with what we have."
(Additional reporting by Aung Hla Tun in Yangon; Editing by Jason Szep and Robert Birsel)

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Myanmar to be set free from EU sanctions: analysts

[postlink] https://burmacampaignjapanteam.blogspot.com/2012/04/myanmar-to-be-set-free-from-eu.html [/postlink] 15 April 2012, 19:19 CET

(BANGKOK) - Myanmar is likely to shake off tough EU sanctions this month, analysts said, after a dramatic change of policy from Britain and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in the wake of sweeping reforms.
Western nations eager to reward changes that culminated in Suu Kyi's election to parliament in April 1 by-elections, have made some reciprocal gestures to encourage Myanmar's government.
But the call from British Prime Minister David Cameron for all European Union measures to be suspended is the strongest signal yet that sanctions may be halted -- although not scrapped completely as the international community looks to maintain leverage in the still army-dominated country.
Experts said the suspension is likely to be enacted by EU foreign ministers on April 23, potentially opening up what many investors see as the next big frontier market to European firms.
"Given this pre-emptive move by one of Europe's most hardline countries, the foreign ministers' decision looks like a fait accompli," said Jim Della-Giacoma of the International Crisis Group, describing the proposal as "a de facto dropping of sanctions".
Myanmar President Thein Sein has surprised observers with a series of reforms since taking office last year, including accepting Suu Kyi and her party back into the mainstream and freeing hundreds of political prisoners.
But Western sanctions have largely been left intact as the international community balanced fears over the sustainability of the changes and a desire to bolster regime reformers who may face pressure from those wary of change.
Suu Kyi's endorsement of the suspension -- which does not include an arms embargo -- is also crucial, said Gareth Price, senior research fellow in the Asia Programme at Chatham House. "That has always been a big determinant of the UK and pretty much the wider EU position."
He said the proposal was a "sensible middle path" between countries wanting a wholesale removal of sanctions and those striking a more cautious note.
"Everyone wants the reform process to continue and the question is how best to do that," he explained.
The 27-nation European Union has already lifted a travel ban on 87 Myanmar officials, including Thein Sein, in February but kept an assets freeze against them.
Its decision later this month is likely to encompass other EU sanctions, including a ban on gems and an assets freeze on nearly 500 people and 900 entities.
But it is still unclear how far it would be echoed in Washington, which said it would ease restrictions on investment to Myanmar and appoint an ambassador this month as a reward for reforms.
The US has indicated further loosening would be tied to the release of remaining political prisoners and a solution to long-running conflicts with ethnic rebel groups.
ICG's Della-Giacoma said while the EU and Australian sanctions could be easily lifted, those in the US were "embedded in law" and would be difficult to shift with the tight schedule and political demands of an election year.
"We should expect more incremental moves from the US with further reforms in Myanmar being matched, but not anything too dramatic," he said.
Adding momentum to the political decisions is surging investor interest in Myanmar, with its abundant natural resources, strategic position in Asia and soaring tourism sector.
The Asian Development Bank described it as a "goldmine," predicting accelerating growth, despite an array of challenges.
Myanmar is actively wooing foreign business, with new measures including a managed flotation of its currency, tax holidays for investors and plans to open its first official stock exchange in 2015.
"The Myanmar economy has tremendous opportunities in many sectors," said Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at IHS Global Insight, pointing to oil and gas, tourism and the underdeveloped financial system.
He said the EU and US were likely to increase their economic engagement with Myanmar through providing new development assistance, meaning the country "could become the next gold rush opportunity" for firms providing everything from construction to healthcare.
But Western firms are likely to remain cautious about the country as it grapples to resuscitate its moribund economy, crippled by mismanagement and corruption during nearly half a century of military dictatorship.
"It's a country without a functioning rule of law. The idea that all these Western companies are going to pour in billions strikes me as unlikely, until there are some sort of changes in legal protections," Price told AFP.

Text and Picture Copyright 2012 AFP. All other Copyright 2012 EUbusiness Ltd. All rights reserved. This material is intended solely for personal use. Any other reproduction, publication or redistribution of this material without the written agreement of the copyright owner is strictly forbidden and any breach of copyright will be considered actionable.

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BCJP Television latest recorded news

[postlink] https://burmacampaignjapanteam.blogspot.com/2011/07/bcjp-television-latest-recorded-news.html [/postlink]

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On this web site you'll get step-by step descriptions of the basic functions, you need to be able to enjoy your computer.

[postlink] https://burmacampaignjapanteam.blogspot.com/2011/07/on-this-web-site-you-get-step-by-step.html [/postlink]

You just got your first computer, or you are just now starting to find out the basics of how you can turn your computer into a real everyday tool, but...

• You need a little Computer help, so you can start enjoying all the great possibilities your computer can provide?
• You want to know about virus, spyware and adware and how you protect yourself from them?
• You want to know some of the most commonly used computer terms?
• You want to be able to actually use the programs it came withBecause:
• You want to keep up with your children and understand what they are saying
• You want to take advantage of all the Information on the net
• You want to be able to use e-mail so you can keep in contact with distant family and friends
• Maybe you just want to be able to download music or get newsletters and e-books about your favorite subjects
• You bought a digital camera and want to store and organize your photos
• Or maybe you just like to write down all the great recipes, you have collected over the years
• http://www.basic-computerskills.com/index.html

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Snake strangulation an accident

[postlink] https://burmacampaignjapanteam.blogspot.com/2011/07/snake-strangulation-accident.html [/postlink]

Lawyer: Snake strangulation an accident

Wed, Jul 13, 2011 - WFTS-Tampa 1:23 | 17 views

Testimony is under way in the trial of a Sumter County couple whose Burmese python attacked and killed a 2-year-old girl.

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