Meanwhile in Burma.... junta still terrified of the Lady

Friday’s Guardian reported, unsurprisingly, sadly, that Aung San Suu Kyi (The Lady) failed in her latest bid to end more than a decade of house arrest today after the country's highest court threw out an appeal against her sentence.

The supreme court's decision was widely expected but her lawyer said he would launch a final special appeal to the supreme court after establishing the reasons why the latest attempt had been rejected. "The court order did not mention any reasons," he said.

The Lady had been sentenced to three years in prison with hard labour following the incursion on to her land of an utter fuckwit called John Yettaw (thereby gifting the scum who run Burma with a pretext for continuing to hold the Lady in detention). The sentence was immediately commuted to 18 months of house arrest by junta chief Senior General Than Shwe.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been detained for 14 years. Her National League for Democracy won elections in 1990 by a landslide, but the military, which has ruled Burma since 1962, refused to cede power. The junta has announced it would hold elections some time this year under a constitution that would allow the military to maintain substantial power. Aung San Suu Kyi's party has not announced whether it will contest the elections.

Than Shwe and his rabble are a pathetic bunch of inadequate. How else can one describe the bunch of vicious and murderous .... Damn it has anyone got some good expressions for these sub humans? I don’t want to use too many expletives....
It remains clear that they are shit scared of one brave and resolute lady.

I still don’t understand Yettaw’s motives. At best he was a bloody idiot, at worst..... Let me just be charitable and call him a fuckwit one more time

Total and Burmese Junta rake in the cash

According to the Independent the Burmese junta has earned almost $5bn from a controversial gas pipeline operated by the French oil giant Total. Unsurprisingly the junta has not chosen to invest this money in the nation’s infrastructure, instead depositing almost all the money in bank accounts in Singapore.

A report published today by Earth Rights International (ERI) say that Total says that the windfall from the Yadana pipeline, operated by Total and two other partners, has been so huge that it has done much to insulate the country's military rulers from the impact of international sanctions imposed over its human rights abuses. While their people suffer some of the worst standards of living in Asia, with miserable state investment in health, education, infrastructure and everything else that affects the lives of ordinary people, the self-perpetuating military elite has grown obscenely wealthy.

The pipeline in eastern Burma, which carries gas from rich fields in the Andaman Sea through Burma and into Thailand, has long been controversial. Campaigners have regularly claimed that the authorities have used forced labour in the project, security for which is provided by the Burmese armed forces. Last month, Total rejected claims that forced labour was still being used.

In the report, Total Impact, which has taken two years to research, ERI says the junta, headed by General Than Shwe, manages to avoid including almost all its dollar gas revenues in the national budget by using an artificially low exchange rate. This way it calculates its revenue as just 6 kyat to the dollar when the real rate is closer to 1,000. According to a confidential IMF report obtained by ERI, the natural gas revenue "contributed less than 1 per cent of total budget revenue in 2007/08, but would have contributed about 57 per cent if valued at the market exchange rate". The report says that at these rates, the regime has listed just $29m of its earnings while around $4.8bn is unaccounted for.

"The military elite are hiding billions of dollars of the people's revenue in Singapore while the country needlessly suffers under the lowest social spending in Asia," said ERI's Matthew Smith, the report's main author. "The revenue from this pipeline is the regime's lifeline and a critical leverage point that the international community could use to support the people of Burma."
The apparent disregard for its people is a charge that has long been levelled at the Burmese junta, which calls itself the State Peace and Development Council. The group Burma Campaign UK has estimated the regime's spending on health services is the lowest in the world – just 50 pence per person a year – while it spends up to half its budget on the military.

The Burmese Embassy in London has failed to respond to questions about the report's allegations. A spokeswoman for Total said it was unable to respond comprehensively to the claims made by ERI as it had not seen the document. Asked about its earning in Burma, the spokeswoman said: "We do not usually comment on our earnings per country. Nevertheless our amount in Myanmar represents 0.7 per cent of the group's results." In 2008, the group's income was €13.9bn (around $20bn), suggesting Total annually earns $140m from Burma and its controversial pipeline.

Sadly not a word of this item surprises me in the very least. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t anger me though. But then what would you expect when a brutal regime and amoral capitalists get into bed. It’s always “Fuck the people, let’s make profit” Perhaps the not-wife is right and the asteroid that wipes out humanity can’t come fast enough.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s 5,000th Days of Detention

Today marks the 5,000th day of incarceration for Nobel Peace Prize Winner (and who should have been the real leader of the Burmese state in 1990) Aung San Suu Kyi, The brutal scum that make up the Burmese junta must have thought that by putting her out of circulation she would have been forgotten by the world. How wrong they were! That said the response of the world could and should have been far more robust than it has been.

We are reminded by Andrew Buncombe in today’s Independent on Sunday that Aung San Suu Kyi will spend the day in detention accompanied by two women. At present she is being held in a "guesthouse" in the grounds of Rangoon's Insein jail. For the six previous years she in a lakeside house with no television, radio or phone.

As is (or should be) well known she has been charged with violating the terms of her house arrest after an American swam to her home and spent the night there. As Andrew Buncombe reminds us her real “crime” was to win an election nearly two decades ago. Moreover, she strikes fear in the heart of the vermin Than Shwe and his junta because even now she can do something they never could for all their brutal force – and that is to unite the Burmese people.
Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, The National League for Democracy (NLD), won a landslide election victory in 1990. But this election was simply ignored by the junta. It was at that time that the opposition leader was first imprisoned, for a period of three years.

She has spent almost 14 of the past 19 years under house arrest. On occasion, the junta has made clear it would release her if she agreed to leave Burma but she has always chosen to remain a part of her country's struggle. In 1999, while temporarily free, she faced the agonising choice of visiting her dying husband, the British academic Michael Aris, who had been refused a visa to enter Burma. Fearful that if she left she would never be allowed to return, she stayed in Burma without seeing her husband again.

Mark Farmaner, of the Burma Campaign UK, said the reason for her continued detention was very simple. In a country that has been brutalised by violence and the fear of violence, ordinary people will still, in private, whisper about the "the lady" and how she could help fix their broken land. "It might be one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world but they are terrified of this one woman," he added. "They hoped by keeping her detained the world would forget about Burma, but the opposite has happened. The fact that she has now spent 5,000 days in detention should shame world leaders who have tolerated this situation."

Ms Suu Kyi is just the best known of an estimated 2,000 or more political prisoners being held by the regime. I hope that the day comes and comes soon that the Junta will be swept away into the sewers of history, stopping first to receive a very long dose of what they have inflicted on these people.

UN General Secretary delivers a speech for deaf ears

The Sydney Morning Herald published an extract of a public speech by UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon (above) that outlines his vision for a democratic Burma.

Ban told an audience of diplomats, UN agencies and non-governmental organisations at the Drug Elimination Museum in Rangoon that the military regime must free the Aung San Suu Kyi and introduce other reforms for the good of the country's people.

"I am here today to say: Myanmar, you are not alone. We want to work with you for a united, peaceful, prosperous, democratic and modern Myanmar. We want to help you rise from poverty ... work with you so that your country can take its place as a respected and responsible member of the international community, but let me emphasise: neither peace nor development can thrive without democracy and respect for human rights. Myanmar is no exception."

Than Shwe, brutal thug

Junta chief Than Shwe (above) earlier Saturday refused to let Ban visit Aung San Suu Kyi, who is in prison facing trial over an incident in which an American man swam uninvited to her lakeside house in May. Ban Than Shwe's snub as "deeply disappointing" and said in his speech that all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, "should be released without delay".

Ban also urged the junta to ensure that elections promised in 2010 should be free and fair. Critics say they will be a sham that will allow the ruling generals to entrench their power."The upcoming election, the first in 20 years, must be inclusive, participatory and transparent if it is to be credible,"

I agree whole heartedly with the words and the sentiments of the General Secretary. Sadly I cannot imagine them cutting any ice with the brutal thugs that run Burma. A case of fine words falling on deaf ears, sadly. There’s a fat chance of the junta giving up the levers of control... Prising the levers out of their cold, dead hands is a thought though