Burma's Suu Kyi begins house arrest amid outrage

Source: AP via USA Today

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Burma's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi awoke at her lakeside home Wednesday to begin serving her latest house arrest, following her globally condemned conviction that lawyers said they would promptly appeal.

The 64-year-old Nobel laureate was convicted Tuesday by a Burma court of violating her previous house arrest by allowing an uninvited American who swam to her home to stay for two days. She has already spent 14 of the past 20 years under house arrest — but Tuesday marked her first conviction.

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-08-12-burma_N.htm

There never seems to be much one can do, but people may wish to sign the petition at www.avaaz.org. There is also a lot about it on the Amnesty International site.

She lived in the US and the UK most of her life until she returned to Burma to enter politics in 1988.

The generals would just as soon she left, and offered to have her leave the country when her husband in the UK was dying.

Educate yourself.

She is probably an asset of UK and/or US intelligence.

The US generally doesn't have a problem with military dictatorships. We've been quite cozy with many of them.

The US and UK seem to have two problems with the current Burmese regime:

1. They are nationalist and not letting the US and UK oil companies, who had their properties nationalized in 1973, back into the country. Recall that Burmah Oil is one of the earliest UK oil companies, started in 1896 to exploit oil resources in British India. It was a major shareholder in British Petroleum, but later was acquired by BP. Burmese fields were also exploited by the Standard Oil Trust, starting in 1901.

2. They changed the British-inspired constitution to eliminate the relative autonomy of ethnic regions along the border with China and Thailand. They also brought these areas under government control and pretty much eliminated the heroin trade in the Golden Triangle. This no doubt also reduced the income of US and UK organizations until the supply was replaced by Afghanistan.

Their treatment at the hand of the Chinese is inexcusable, and your tacit defense of them indicates you do not belong on a progressive website like this one.

Not hostile to your point of view, just want something to better to go on than a post on a message board.

Burmah Oil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmah_Oil for history of oil production in Burma. It was actually nationalized in 1963, by Ne Win.


CNPC to start Sino-Burma pipeline construction in Sep
http://news.alibaba.com/article/detail/business-in-china/100119601-1-cnpc-start-sino-burma-pipeline-construction.html

Jun. 17, 2009 (China Knowledge) - China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), the country's largest integrated oil and gas enterprise, plans to start construction on the US$2-billion Sino-Burma oil and gas pipeline project in September and to complete the project in 2012, said an official of CNPC in Kunming, Yunnan Province on Jun. 12 sources reported.

On Mar. 26, China and Burma signed an agreement to build a pipeline linking Burma's west coastline to Nanning City, Guangxi Province, China.

The 2,806-kilometer pipeline will transport 12 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 20 million tons of crude oil per year.
<snip>
At present, Burma's proven natural gas reserves amount to 2.54 trillion cubic meters, while proven crude oil reserves stand at 3.2 billion barrels.

For an analysis of the situation in 2004 see Myanmar's Wa: Likely losers in the opium war http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/FA24Ae06.html

Note that the main growers of opium are not the Burmans, but the Wa and Shan. The Burmans are the main ethnic group, but there are several others. The main opposition has been the Karens, who were Christianized and favored by the British admistrators. Myanmar is basically another post WW II British colonial disaster. Another multi-ethnic mosaic like Iraq or Afghanistan that was cobbled together in London.

From "Opium production surges in Myanmar, UN says"
http://news.oneindia.in/2007/10/10/opium-production-surges-in-myanmar-un-says-1192037575.html

The ''Golden Triangle'', a notoriously lawless region spanning parts of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, has ceased to be a big supplier of opium, from which heroin is made, thanks to a concerted campaign over the past decades. ''The significant downward trend in Southeast Asia risks being undercut by an alarming upsurge in opium cultivation in Myanmar,'' said the office. Laos has cut output by 94 per cent in a decade, Thailand has had no significant production for almost 20 years, and Myanmar's share of the world market shrivelled from 63 per cent to 6 per cent between 1998 and 2006, the UNODC study said. But opium cultivation in Myanmar, formerly Burma, increased by 29 per cent to 27,700 hectares (66,480 acres) in 2007, while output rose by 46 per cent due to improved yields, it added.

But note that despite the headline, the Myanmar production was still down a lot and a lot less than Afghanistan's.


UN reports more opium coming from Myanmar
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/world/asia/02iht-drug.1.19860783.html

This ia a more recent article that again notes a small increase in Myanmar, but the body of the article indicates that both the Chinese and the Burmese governments are working to control opium production in the ethnic rebel areas in the hill country.


As for western involvement -- Multiple realities at the Golden Triangle
https://www.uni-hohenheim.de/entwicklungs-soz/publications/SOAS%20Opium.pdf

This discusses the role of opium among Tai and Tibeto-Burmans in the highlands of Southeast Asia.

One excerpt is -

In the context of the cold war, opium was a crucial link between the CIA and the 8th army of the Kuomintang. The 8th army was active in southern China and could not move to Taiwan. They escaped to Burma to continue their fight against the Peoples Republic from there and found a ready ally in the CIA. Opium was the main source of revenue for the army, and the CIA contemplated to use the army for the roll back in China. Later, besides the Kuomintang, opium linked the CIA to Hmong groups in the Plain de Jarre in Laos to fight against the Northern Vietnamese and the communist Pathet Lao. While the Kuomintang established themselves as dominant power within eastern Burma and northern Thailand, the Hmong soldiers in eastern Laos never were able to gain an upper hand, and were resettled in Montana, southern France and Thailand at the end of the “Vietnam war” in the mid seventies.(McCoy 1997)

More paragraphs follow. And you can google up plenty of references to the relationship between Golden Triangle opium and Cold War actors.

:hi: