Ethnics’ representatives including Rohingya meet British Prime Minister, David Cameron

Ethnics’ representatives - Chin, Kachin, Shan, Karen and Rohingya – met British Prime Minister, David Cameron, at the residence of the British ambassador in Rangoon on April 13 at 7pm- 8 pm, according to a source from Rangoon and BBC Burmese.

Rohingya representative - Mr.Abu Taher- highlighting the situation of Rohingya  in northern Arakan

In the meeting, the Rohingya representative - Mr.Abu Taher- Central Executive member, Head of Political Bureau and Research and development of National Democratic Party for Development (NDPD), highlighted recent Rohingya facing – social, economic and political – problems in northern Arakan.

He highlighted the identification of Rohingya ethnicity and the root cause of Rohingya ethnic, where he mentioned that from Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) time to till today, the regime excluded from the list of ethnic –the 135 races- under the 1982 Myanmar Citizenship Law and that citizenship law is contradicting with 2008 Constitution.

The 1982 Myanmar Citizenship Law was designed specially in order to make deliberately Rohingyas from bona-fide citizen to non-bona-fide citizen. The law was done as a racist attitude. The regime has no legality or authority to exclude Rohingya from the list of ethnic, said the Rohingya representative in the meeting.

“The authority has to restore Rohingya ethnic rights and citizenship rights, before going durable solution, national reconciliation and durable peace process in Burma.”

Ethnics’ representatives meeting with British Prime Minister, David Cameron at the residence of the British ambassador in Rangoon

The representative also highlighted on going Human rights violations in Burma and especially in the area – northern Arakan - where Rohingya community reside.

He also submitted to Prime Minister an official letter on behalf of NDPD. After the meeting they were served by dinner at British Ambassador residence.

The Rohingya representative, Abu Taher, won from People’s Parliament, Buthidaung Township in 2010 election. But, Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) forcedly denounced his victor, according to NDPD press released and case file against Shwe Maung of USDP.

NDPD complained to Township Election Commission, the votes were recounted by the Commission where Abu Taher (NDPD) got 56,882 votes and Shwe Maung (USDP) got 53,702 votes, according to election watch in Buthidaung report.

“Obviously she [Suu Kyi] is ignoring the Rohingya problem, a key human rights issue in Burma. However, still the Rohingya have high expectations of her. Rather than avoiding the Rohingya people and their problem,... Aung San Suu Kyi should take all measures to formally accommodate Rohingya into the family of the Union of Burma, with full ethnic and citizenship rights, as one of the many ethnic nationalities of the country,” Nurul Islam, President, Arakan Rohingya National Organization ( ARNO) told IRIN News agency

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British Prime Minister, David Cameron talking with ethnics' representatives

“There is no change of attitude of the new civilian government of… Thein Sein towards Rohingya people; there is no sign of change in the human rights situation of Rohingya people. Persecution against them is actually greater than before.”

Similarly, "The government is trying to show the West that they are dealing with the Karen [another aggrieved ethnic group] and other groups by giving rights and making a truce. But they are showing the carrot in one hand and the stick for us [the Rohingya] in the other. It's a distraction and a diversionary tactic," Dr. Wakar Uddin, chairman of the Burmese Rohingya Association of North America said to www. ibtimes.com.

"If somehow the Burmese government [manages] to get sanctions lifted and the Rohingya issue is not resolved, we are finished," Uddin told the BBC.

"There is no hope because they will not revisit this. Whatever needs to be done about the Rohingya, it has to be done before the sanctions are lifted."

According to the United Nations, the Rohingya who live in Burma are forbidden from owning property, marrying or even traveling without state permission. Many are subject to forced slave labor and extortion by authorities.

Many Rohingya have also moved to neighboring Bangladesh, where they are also unwanted.

UK PM Cameron in Historic Burma Visit

UK Prime Minister David Cameron touches down in Burma on Friday.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron has joined calls for an easing of punitive economic sanctions against Burma as he prepares to touch down for an historic visit to the military-dominated nation.
Cameron’s visit on Friday will be the first by a major Western leader to long-isolated Burma for 50 years, and comes in the wake of tentative democratic reforms by the Naypyidaw administration.
The Conservative politician has been visiting Asia as part of a trade tour to drum up business for British firms, and he has already signed significant deals in Japan and Indonesia.
The 45-year-old decided to pay a visit to the former British colony after the widely praised April 1 by-elections secured 43 seats for pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi’s main opposition National League for Democracy party.
The move has seen a litany of Western powers announce an easing of crippling international trade restrictions on Burma, but until now the UK premier has refused to make any such concessions.
“If Burma moves towards democracy then we should respond in kind, and we should not be slow in doing that,” Cameron told BBC Radio Five Live during an interview on Thursday. “But first I want to go and see for myself how things are going.”
And Cameron was quick to lavish praise on those who had pushed for reform in Burma during a speech to students in the Indonesian capital Jakarta.
“So let us pay tribute to those who for decades at huge personal cost to themselves have fought for that freedom and fought for that reform, not least, of course, the inspirational Aung San Suu Kyi,” he said.
“Let us also pay tribute to the leadership of President Thein Sein and his government, which has been prepared to release political prisoners, to hold by-elections and to legalise political parties that had previously been outlawed.
“And let us show that when they have the courage to reform, we have the courage to respond.”
Burma, also known as Myanmar, is slowly emerging from the international wilderness after years of Western sanctions due to human rights abuses perpetrated during more than half-a-century of military rule.
Former junta generals ceded power to a nominally civilian administration a year ago, but concerns remain regarding the widely condemned 2008 Constitution which guarantees 25 percent of parliamentary seats for the military.
There are also reservations about the residual power of the commander-and-chief of armed forces to cease control in times of “national emergency.”
However, in recent weeks both large and small multinational firms have set up shop in the former capital Rangoon in eager anticipation of the end of sanctions and the huge investment opportunities on offer.
Burma has a population of 64 million people and huge natural resources of lumber, gemstones and fossil fuels, as well as being strategically placed between the booming markets of India, China and Southeast Asia.
The US announced an easing of economic sanctions on April 4 with the subject up for review by the European Union on April 23, and it appears that the UK is now determined not to be left behind.
“In a world where there are many dark chapters, there is one potential chapter of light in Burma where there does seems to be a prospect of the flowering of more democratisation and freedom. We should be sceptical. We should be questioning it and not naïve,” Cameron told a press conference in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday.
“But its not just the Indonesian President who thinks [Burmese President Thein Sein] is sincere, its not just the Malaysian Prime Minister who takes that view. Aung San Suu Kyi herself who spent so many years in such a lonely, but powerful resistence believes [Thein Sein] is acting in good faith.
“Just as Britain played a leading role in the EU on imposing sanctions, we should not be backwards in our response.”

Thein Sein Ripe for Japanese Reward: New Loans to Burma

Japan's Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Edano shakes hands with Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi at her home in Rangoon on Jan. 12, 2012

BANGKOK — Following the political reforms he has unleashed, Burmese President Thein Sein is on the cusp of reaping a financial harvest from Japan—new loans for development assistance.
A likely setting for the deal to be unveiled is an upcoming Japan-Mekong summit on April 21, when Thein Sein visits Tokyo to join government leaders from the four other Southeast Asian countries that share the Mekong River.
But a US $5 billion hurdle needs to be surmounted before Tokyo ends its decades-long suspension of loans to Burma: a decision on what to do about the amount the Burmese government owes Japan in unpaid debts from loans spanning from the late 1960s to the late 1980s.
Officials from Japan’s Finance Ministry and Foreign Ministry have been exploring a range of options to deal with the over $5 billion in unpaid debt that has to be paid back before a new tranche of loans from Japan can flow to Burma. The amount Burma owes Japan is the largest slice of its $11 billion in unpaid debt to foreign governments and international institutions. The amount it owes the World Bank, which has also suspended development loans for nearly two decades, is $789.2 million.
According to sources following the policy options being tabled, one school of thought favors Japan resuming loans to Burma by canceling the total or part of the debt. They are turning to a debt cancellation mechanism that was established by the trade and development board of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD- TDB) resolution in 1978 as a blueprint.
This view is up against another school of thought among government policy makers who are pushing for a “bridge loan” to help Burma repay its debt and qualify for new loans. This would rope in Japanese private banks, which would lend Burma the amount it needs to pay off its unpaid debts to Japan in order to break the ban on new loans until old debts have been cleared. It is also a debt-relief mechanism with precedents: six Japanese private banks loaned Vietnam $182.5 million in the early 1990s to help Hanoi pay Tokyo the debt it owed in order to qualify for new loans.
“Since public loans cannot be provided because of the overdue debt, there are no other options than mobilizing private money,” said Saturo Matsumoto, an expert on Japan-Burma ODA policies at Hosei University in Japan. “Some officials in the Finance Ministry seem to prefer the bridge loan because they feel ‘full cancellation’ could lead to moral hazard.”
And if a compromise is reached—opting for both debt relief mechanisms—one of the glaring stories of oppression during the years of Burma’s former junta leader, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, will cast a shadow: the attack by pro-junta goons on opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi’s motorcade in Depayin on May 30, 2003, which killed close to 50 people.
“The Japanese government had pledged to cancel the debt that had matured in January 2003 based on the UNCTAD-TDB resolution. But the May 2003 violent attack against Aung San Suu Kyi’s motorcade stopped Japan from providing further debt relief,” Matsumoto said in an interview. “The issue is how much had matured in January 2003 and how much is overdue.”
“According to my sources, the [amount matured] is about $2 billion, while the [amount overdue] is $3 billion,” he revealed. “The bridge loan will be approximately $3 billion.”
Japanese activists, however, prefer the “bridge loan” option, since it gives them more leverage to monitor the conditions under which such a debt-relief package is given.
“My understanding is that Japan would like to see Burma undertake further serious political and economic reforms,” said Yuki Akimoto, co-director of the Burma Information Network—Japan, a Tokyo-based monitor of financial flows to Burma. “I would hope that the Japanese government, with support from Japanese civil society, would use such leverage to help ensure that reforms are made.”
Such a window to monitor the loan conditions would also give a pivotal role to Burmese activists in Rangoon and elsewhere in the country, Akimoto said in an interview. “By working with Japanese civil society, members of Burma’s civil society can help inform the Japanese government how the new loan is being used and whether political and economic reforms are in fact taking place.”
Talks between Tokyo and Naypyidaw to explore debt relief began in early December, following the visit to Burma that month by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Her visit to engage with the reformist administration of Thein Sein lifted the pressure Washington had placed on Tokyo for decades to toe the tough, pro-Western line on Burma—including denying the country loans.
During the talks that involved officials from Japan’s Foreign Ministry, Burmese officials from the Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development were given a reminder of Japan’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) Charter, a 1992 document that compels Tokyo to take note of the loan recipient’s records on military spending and its commitments to advancing democracy, protecting human rights and promoting a market economy.
This charter marked a turning point from the loans-without-conditions of Japanese ODA that shaped Tokyo’s assistance to developing countries in the previous decades. Burma under Gen Ne Win’s dictatorship was a major beneficiary, since Japan gave its first loan in 1968. Between 1978 and 1988, Japanese loans to Burma reached an estimated $3.7 billion, accounting for nearly 70 percent of the country’s foreign development assistance.
But Burma’s crumbling economy through the 1980s, its inability to repay its loans and the brutal crackdown on the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, in which an estimated 3,000 people died, ended the strong ties that Burma and Japan had developed since the end of the Second World War. “The default on the loans came first. The defaults could have been renegotiated afterward, but the country’s politics made this impossible,” notes Sean Turnell, an associate professor in economics at Australia’s Macquarie University.
“The World Bank loans were mostly taken on in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, and the Japanese and the Asian Development Bank ones across a similar period,” he explained. “Much was built out of it—much of it wasteful, much no longer functioning—but it was mostly used.”