Please stand with those opposed to BURMA'S Military regime

Thailand is going to be seriously effected by the political situation in Burma,

Refugees are flooding over the border.
Thai investments in Burma especially in the tourist business will suffer badly.
Will Burmese be able to afford to buy Thai goods as poverty increases.
No country likes a regime unstable neighbour.

Thais are appalled at the vicious beatings and killings of people and monks in particular. A Thai guy told me years ago that to kill a monk is the worst thing that you can do other than kill the King.

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Violence in Burma to affect Thai business, Bangkok Post says it better than I can.

Violence in Burma caused by the military government's crackdown on mass street protests by monks and the people, if persistent, will have an impact on businesses owned by many groups of Thai investors in the country, according to the Kasikorn Research Centre.

The leading think tank reported should the unrest drag on, and escalate, it would affect Thai businesses investing in tourism in Burma since foreign tourists would reduce their travel into the country. At the same time, Thai businesses investing in production for export in Burma might be affected by additional international sanctions.

At present, Thai businesspersons have invested in various areas including production, hotels and tourism, fishery, mining, transportation, oil and natural gas drilling, construction, property, and agriculture. The KRC forecast indicated that should the violence persist, Burma would face more economic sanctions from the international community, particularly the United States, the European Union and Japan.

It said investment made by Thai investors in hotel and tourism businesses in Burma totaled US$228.6 million. Investment projects Thai businesspersons made in the production industry in Burma are worth $614.6 million, the fisheries industry $171 million and agriculture the smallest at $2.7 million. Power generating projects invested by Thailand in Burma worth $6.03 billion baht involve construction of hydro-power dams along the Salween River, which is expected to take six years to complete. The project value, combined with that of other investment projects, brought up the total investment value Thailand has in Burma to $7.38 billion.

It resulted in Thailand becoming the biggest investor in Myanmar with Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia coming second, third and fourth respectively.

Regarding the border trade with Burma, KRC believed trade activities along the border of the two countries would be sluggish only in the short run unless the violence escalated to such an extent that the border is closed.

Bangkok Post 4th October 2007

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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v27/wowpow/watermark.jpg

Body of dead monk dumped in river near Rangoon published by Democratic Voice of Burma http://english.dvb.no/letstalk.php?id=4

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epsy posted on Gay ting tong:

A sign can help, please help too. More then 500.000 peoples in the world have sign, help to get 1.000.000 peoples!

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burm ... _tf_sign=1 (http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burma/tf.php?cl_tf_sign=1)

Look what they do with the people:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NmL9tDmEhM

What happen in the last 48 hours in Burma:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 32,00.html (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,509232,00.html)

I'm not sure why you're posting such a request in the Thailand Forum, wowpow. It's well-documented that The King is a resolute supporter of the Burmese military junta (you want to lay yourself open to a lese majeste conviction?) and, let's face it, neither the military rulers of Thailand nor the Chinese government (remember Tienanmen Square?) are going to admit that calls for democracy are worth supporting

I rarely agree with homintern, but he hit the nail on the head. Thailand is a huge supporter of the evil military in Burma.

[TrongpaiExpat]

It's well-documented that The King is a resolute supporter of the Burmese military junta

I don't doubt that but what's the "documentation"? I don't see one reference to the King's position on Myanmar in the index of 'The King Never Smiles'. There are many references to the Royal position on democracy and from that you could make some assumptions but where's the proof?

Several pictures inclusive ...

have a look by yourself

http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/BurmaWatch

Dozens arrested as Myanmar junta tightens grip

Security forces combed through Yangon rounding up activists as Myanmar's regime tightened its grip on power Thursday and a UN envoy prepared a key report on last week's bloody crackdown on protesters.

Residents said dozens of people were arrested during the night as security forces raided homes in Yangon neighbourhoods near Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar's holiest Buddhist shrine and a key rallying point for the mass protests.

They patrolled the streets during an overnight curfew and swept into homes to make targeted arrests from a blacklist of campaigners following the largest anti-regime demonstrations in almost 20 years, residents said.

"Many people were arrested during the night, but it is really hard to say exactly how many people were arrested. But none of the usual vendors around Shwedagon Pagoda can be found," one resident told AFP.

Authorities have released some of the people arrested last week, including journalist Min Zaw of the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper who was detained as 100,000 people led by Buddhist monks took to the streets on successive days.

But the empty streets, where thousands of Buddhist monks are normally seen walking in the early hours collecting alms of food and coins, bear witness to the scale of the crackdown.

Most of the city's monasteries seem empty, leaving neighbours to wonder if the monks have been injured or worse, arrested, or simply ordered to return to their villages.

"We have to hide. We joined the protests very peacefully to pray for the people. Now I don't know what has happened, but we have to hide. I hope things will be back to normal soon," one monk told AFP.

During daylight hours, soldiers and police stay largely out of sight after storming through the city last week, killing at least 13 people and arresting more than 1,000 to break up the mass rallies.

"Visually, Yangon is returning to normalcy, but I think the underlying tensions and fear are still there," said Charles Petrie, the top UN official in Myanmar.

"What I do know is that there are a number of people who we are trying to trace and who have not been released," he told AFP.

He said it was difficult to estimate the overall number of people detained, but arrests have continued, including of a local UN worker and three of her family members.

Diplomats say thousands may have been arrested, while the death toll could be far higher than the 13 confirmed so far.

Activists who had harnessed technology to send photographs and video of the protests around the world now find those weapons turned against them.

Security forces also recorded the protests, and have apparently used those images to compile lists of activists whom they are now hunting down, residents say.

Soldiers maintain the sense of fear by driving through at night, shouting via loudspeaker that they have photographs of the people they are seeking and "We will arrest them."

The arrests came as the international community turned up the pressure on the military, which has ruled the country formerly known as Burma with an iron fist for 45 years.

UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari was to brief Secretary General Ban Ki-moon later Thursday about his four-day mission here, during which he held talks with the ruling generals and detained opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

"Mr. Gambari has delivered a strong message from me personally," Ban told reporters in New York. "The concerns of the international community have been clearly and loudly conveyed to the Myanmar authorities."

While the United Nations awaits Gambari's report, the European Union agreed in principle to toughen sanctions against the regime in Myanmar.

The bloc already has broad sanctions against its leadership, but has since been preparing new measures while stressing the importance of neighbours such as China and India also exerting pressure.

Japan said it was also considering cutting aid after the shooting death of video journalist Kenji Nagai, whose body was repatriated Thursday.
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Source: AFP, Oct 04, 2007

Where are Myanmar's monks?

Thousands of Buddhists have been arrested and scores killed, observers say, but no one can find them

After paying a heavy price for their uprising, Myanmar's monks are nursing their wounds and hoping for international action against the military junta that crushed their peaceful protests with bullets and tear gas.

A new estimate by a well-connected dissident group has concluded that 138 people were killed and about 6,000 detained, including about 2,400 Buddhist monks, when the regime smashed the anti-government protests last week.

Those numbers were issued by the Democratic Voice of Burma, a dissident news group based in Norway with close ties to pro-democracy activists.

Another report said many of the arrested monks are being held at a former race course, where they were forced to give up their robes and change into civilian clothes.

Several monasteries, brutally raided by police and soldiers last week, are nearly empty now.

Shari Villarosa, the top U.S. diplomat in Myanmar, told the Associated Press yesterday, "We do believe the death toll is higher than acknowledged by the government. We are doing our best to get more precise, more detailed information, not only in terms of deaths but also arrests."

Ms. Villarosa said her staff had visited up to 15 monasteries around Rangoon and every single one was empty.

She put the number of arrested demonstrators, monks and civilians in the thousands.

"I know the monks are not in their monasteries," she said. "Where are they? How many are dead? How many are arrested?"

She said the true death toll may never be known in a Buddhist country where bodies are cremated. "We're not going to find graves like they did in Yugoslavia. ... We have seen few dead bodies. The bodies are removed promptly. We don't know where they are being taken."

The BBC reported yesterday that thousands of monks detained in Rangoon will be sent to prisons in the far north of the country. There are also reports that the monks are refusing to take food from the soldiers guarding them.

"We're hearing stories every night of raids, but by the morning it's hard to confirm," a Western envoy told Agence France-Presse. "There are fewer and fewer monks to speak to. What have they done to so rapidly silence the monks? That's the big question that needs to be answered."

Monks fleeing Burma for Thailand were interviewed yesterday by the BBC. "I was not involved, but they are arresting hundreds of monks," one said. "They are indiscriminate arrests. I had to flee."

Monks in northern Burma who spoke to the Associated Press confirmed that many of their colleagues were killed or beaten and taken away by the military. But they predicted the monks would not give up.

"I want our demands to be fulfilled. I want peace," said one. "The best thing is to have balance and equality and peace."

The monks' strategy seems to be based on a faith that the world will take action against the regime that showed its brutality in the crackdown last week. But early signs suggest that the junta will escape any serious consequences from key neighbouring states.

Myanmar's top generals appear confident that they can dodge the international pressure. Yesterday they snubbed a United Nations envoy, forcing him to cool his heels for a third consecutive day as he waited for a meeting with regime leader Senior General Than Shwe.

The envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, arrived in Myanmar on Saturday to express the UN's outrage at the violent military crackdown that killed at least 10 people and perhaps many more. Yesterday he made his second trip to the country's remote new capital, Naypyidaw, in a failed effort to obtain a meeting with Gen. Shwe. The government, bizarrely, took the envoy instead to another remote town to attend a workshop on relations between Asia and the European Union.

The envoy was finally promised a meeting today with the junta leader. But the delays suggest that the regime is quite willing to defy the international community.

At the United Nations in New York, Myanmar's Foreign Minister accused "political opportunists" yesterday of trying to create a showdown in his country with foreign help so that they could exploit the ensuing chaos.

In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, U Nyan Win urged the international community to refrain from measures he said would add fuel to the fire.

The regime's survival has depended largely on support from neighbouring countries such as Thailand, China and India. While these states have expressed concern about the bloodshed last week, none has taken any substantial steps to put pressure on the junta.

India's new army chief, General Deepak Kapoor, said yesterday the crackdown in Myanmar was an "internal matter." He said India has a "good relationship" with the military junta. "I am sure that we will try to maintain that," he told reporters in New Delhi.

Amnesty International said yesterday China and India are the main suppliers of weapons to the Myanmar regime. Russia, Serbia, Ukraine and a number of Southeast Asian nations are also providing arms to Myanmar, the group said.

The monks, meanwhile, have abandoned their attempts at confronting the soldiers directly, at least for now.

"The situation is very bleak," said Aung Zaw, an exile from Myanmar who is editor of Irrawaddy, a Thailand-based magazine on Myanmar issues.

"The protests can't be sustained because of the violent crackdown. The people have told us that they are completely under military control. They're just trying to survive now. They can't even move around the city to take photos. It's a total blackout."

In the months to come, the military will maintain a nightly curfew and will patrol the streets to break up even the smallest gatherings of protesters, he predicted.

"There could be small pockets of resistance, hit-and-run groups, shouting slogans and disappearing."

The monks are hoping their defiance of the military regime will spark a broader international movement to topple the junta, he said. "They've unmasked the true colours of the junta and shown its bad side, and now it's up to the international community to do something."

But with the protesters gone from the streets yesterday, the soldiers showed their confidence by reopening the major Buddhist shrines and removing the barbed-wire barricades that had prevented the monks from reaching the shrines, the rallying points for the protests last week in Rangoon, the biggest city in the country.

Thousands of soldiers were still deployed in the streets of Rangoon yesterday, preventing any hint of protest. They were stopping cars to search for cameras and video equipment, seeking to prevent any further documentation of the crackdown.
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Source: globeandmail, Oct. 02, 2007

I don't see one reference to the King's position on Myanmar in the index of 'The King Never Smiles'.I suggest you read the book itself rather than relying on the index. There's an episode where the King grants an audience to Nobel Peace Laureates and complains about Aung San Suu Kyi merely being a nuisance and other comments

[Marsilius]

From "The King Never Smiles", pp. 361-2...

"While Thailand was struggling with democratic processes and ambitious generals, neighboring Burma suffered the misrule of a paranoid and brutal military junta, known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council, or Slorc. They had crushed a popular revolt in 1988 and jailed members of the political opposition, including their leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Still under house arrest, in October 1991 Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of their struggle.

"In February 1993 eight previous Nobel Peace laureates visited Thailand, as Burma's closest neighbor, to demonstrate their solidarity. Oscar Arias, the former president of Costa Rica, South Africa's Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama of Tibet, and five others were invited by Thai social activists, to the great consternation of the Thai military. After visiting the desitute Burmese refugee camps on the northern Thai border, the group was received by King Bhumibol. They were astounded to hear him lecture them on how Aung San Suu Kyi should give up her fight and return to England to raise her children, and let Slorc run the country. Military governments were good for developing countries, the king insisted, and there was no need to support the Burmese opposition. Suu Kyi was only a troublemaker.

"It wasn't the only time the king said such things. He lobbied American diplomats and foreign academics to accept Slorc as bringing stability to Burma. Like the Slorc generals, he argued from his palace chambers that because Suu Kyi was married to a foreigner and had been educated abroad, she didn't represent traditional Burmese values, so she ought to return to England and her family there..."

[TrongpaiExpat]

I suggest you read the book itself rather than relying on the index

I am but only up to page 257, the coup of Oct. 1976. Every chapter has something shocking like what Marsilius quoted. Thanks Marsilius.

For those who want to stay in a perpetual state of denial about Thailand, please do not read the book.

[krobbie]

For those who want to stay in a perpetual state of denial about Thailand, please do not read the book.

I'm all for that. To much inquiry leads to disappointment.

I lub my King.

[Marsilius]

Surely, Krobbie, if your location is New Zealand, you have a Queen (Elizabeth II) to "lub" - not a King?

Surely, Krobbie, if your location is New Zealand, you have a Queen (Elizabeth II) to "lub" - not a King?

The "King never smiles" is worse than a Wikipedia entry, only credit worthy if you live in Ga ga land.

[Lunchtime O'Booze]

It is an appalling situation in Burma-and I now read the Aussie police have been training Burmese police. Charming.

You mention Tianeman Square Homitern : I listened to a fascinating interview with the former head of Reuters in China for 20 years.

He mentioned how the Chinese government called in representatives of the so-called "elites" in China after the Tianamen Square events had been published worldwide ( I don't think anyone knows that most of the footage that beamed worldwide such as the sole man facing a tank etc-was filmed by a gay reporter from his hotel balcony while soldiers took potshots at him. Because he was in such danger he was allowed to go back to Canada and his Chinese boyfriend was given instant Canadian citizenship).

but I digress-the Chinese govt told artists, the middle class, doctors and so on that from now on they could embrace capitalism-speculate-buy and sell properly, take drugs, have sex...do absolutely anything they wanted including writing nasty letters to the government telling them how bad they are-but under no circumstances could they organize politically against the Communist Govt-that would mean instant jail.

Hence we have the miracle of China today !

The "King never smiles" is worse than a Wikipedia entry, only credit worthy if you live in Ga ga land.Ah yes, Cedric, the man who reads a single review by someone bearing a grudge and decides on that basis alone that something isn't worthwhile. Is your family name "Bayes", Cedric - he also was found of sample sizes of one? Besides, the book is merely quoting, for that incident, other published material

[krobbie]

[quote=Marsilius]Surely, Krobbie, if your location is New Zealand, you have a Queen (Elizabeth II) to "lub" - not a King?

The last line is a direct quote from bf. as his yellow wrist band will also atest.

[Marsilius]

Quote from Homintern, above: "Besides, the book is merely quoting, for that incident, other published material."

That is incorrect. In the lengthy passage I have quoted from pages 361-362, there is a single footnote (chapter 18, footnote 25) giving attribution to a source. It is certainly not to "other published material", for it reads (page 471) that knowledge of that incident came solely "From several confidential interviews."

[TrongpaiExpat]

Still, the book with some 25 pages of footnote references is written in a balanced manner with much of the speculation explored with several alternative views. For those who want to be enlighten reed the book and then you might have a sense why you can't talk about it with a Thai.

I ordered my copy by Amazon.com but mailed to a U.S. address. Then during a visit brought it back in my luggage. I wonder if your living in Thailand would it make it through the mail direct from Amazon? Anyone try this?

Getting back to Myanmar, I have yet to hear one Thai I know say anything about what is going on there.

Still, the book with some 25 pages of footnote references is written in a balanced manner with much of the speculation explored with several alternative views. For those who want to be enlighten reed the book and then you might have a sense why you can't talk about it with a Thai.

I ordered my copy by Amazon.com but mailed to a U.S. address. Then during a visit brought it back in my luggage. I wonder if your living in Thailand would it make it through the mail direct from Amazon? Anyone try this?

Getting back to Myanmar, I have yet to hear one Thai I know say anything about what is going on there.

Hi,

My last visit was on a cruise ship, even the Bus driver [ we were informed] was secret police and his sole intention was to prevent us from talking or mixing with locals or straying from the marked tourist itinerary.

Even the fabulous female tour guide was afraid to take a tip in Dollars until he was,the Policeman come bus driver, distracted by other events.

A very sad state of affairs for a beautiful, [yet forgotten by the outside world] race of people.

Can I just tell you this, a friend of mine was over to visit us two weeks ago from Laos, his opinion was Laos has no crime rate, unlike Thailand, quote " It must be a lot better, we never see anything bad on the news!"

I left the point, as there was no point, if you get my meaning!