US to ease sactions against Burma

US to ease sanctions against Burma

The United States has announced it will further ease sanctions against Burma. (BBC News)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said some travel and financial restrictions would be relaxed, with Burmese leaders allowed to visit the US.
European Union leaders had said earlier on Wednesday that they would consider taking similar steps.
The news follows by-elections in Burma on Sunday in which pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party secured a landslide win.
The National League for Democracy (NLD) took 43 out of 45 seats up for grabs in the polls, which were generally deemed to be free and fair.
Mrs Clinton, who paid a visit to Burma last year, praised President Thein Sein's "leadership and courage".
"We fully recognise and embrace the progress that has taken place and we will continue our policy of engagement," she said.
Under the moves, the US will name an ambassador to Burma and establish an office for its Agency for International Development in the country.
The US would also begin "targeted easing" of the ban on US financial services and investment in Burma, she said without giving further details.

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Administration officials said agriculture, tourism, telecommunications and banking would be among the economic sectors to be considered for the relaxation of sanctions.

Mrs Clinton said that sanctions would remain in place "on individuals and institutions that remain on the wrong side of these historic reform efforts".
The US eased some sanctions on Burma in February.

The recent by-elections are being hailed as an important step in Burma's transition from decades of authoritarian military rule towards a more open, democratic and representative system. But it is a transition fraught with difficulties.
Aung San Suu Kyi will feel that the risk she took in deciding to participate in the elections has been vindicated by the scale of her party's success.
But the real test will be to see how effective she is able to be as an agent for change within parliament.

Rachel Harvey BBC South East Asia Correspondent

Kachin Refugee along the China-Burma Border Worsens

The video about Kachin refugees can be seen here:

http://youtu.be/uD3vHpHyokc

The latest report from China is here:

http://www.chinaaid.org/2012/02/refugee-crisis-along-china-burma-border.html?spref=fb

Refugee Crisis along the China-Burma Border Worsens 
(Dehong, Yunnan―Feb. 17, 2012) In recent days, as the news of the Burmese refugee crisis has spread rapidly over the Internet, people are once again paying attention to the half-year conflict between Burmese government troops and Kachin rebel forces. The government troops’ current moves to wipe out ethnic Kachin rebels in the border regions have caused tens of thousands of refugees to swarm into China fleeing the fighting.

Attempts to negotiate a ceasefire between the Burmese government and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in the Kachin minority areas in the border region with China have time and again been interrupted by the outbreak of fighting. Since June 2011, the two sides have been trading fire without pause and the small skirmishes have escalated, resulting in the displacement of what the United Nations estimates to be some 60,000 refugees who have been forced to leave their homes and head north. Already, more than 25,000 of them have poured into China’s Dehong prefecture in the province of Yunnan.

According to aid workers from the local churches, the intensity of the armed clashes appears to have eased for now, but all the refugee camps lack drinking water and some refugees have come down with diarrhea, malaria and upper respiratory tract infection. The Chinese government not only is refusing to provide humanitarian aid, but is also trying to prevent refugees from crossing the border into China.
 

An Ethnic War Is Rekindled in Myanmar

In Myanmar, at least 10,000 displaced people live in camps in areas controlled by the government that often lack adequate food, health care and education facilities.

By EDWARD WONG

Published: January 19, 2012 

MAIJA YANG, Myanmar — Even as the Burmese government initiates political reforms in much of the country, it has intensified an ethnic civil war here in the resource-rich hills of northern Myanmar, a conflict that at once threatens its warming trend with the United States and could alienate Chinese officials concerned about stability on the border.
This month hundreds of mortar rounds fired by the Burmese military landed within miles of this town near the mountainous Chinese border. International human rights groups and soldiers and officials of the Kachin ethnic group say that Burmese soldiers have burned and looted homes, planted mines, forcibly recruited villagers as porters and guides, and raped, tortured and executed civilians. Several thousand villagers have fled to China. Tens of thousands more who have been displaced could follow if the Burmese Army continues its offensive, local relief workers say.
Lazum Bulu will not be going farther. Exhausted by the flight from her village, she died on Jan. 10 in a bare concrete room in a camp here for the displaced. People said she was 107. Her body lay on blankets on the floor. “I regret that my mother can’t be buried with my father,” said her daughter, Hkang Je Mayun. “The Burmese Army was coming, and we didn’t want to live in the village anymore. We were afraid they would kill all the Kachin people.”
The fighting has raised questions about the limits of the reform agenda pushed by President Thein Sein, Myanmar’s first civilian president in nearly 50 years, who has led the opening to the West. Some analysts in Myanmar say Mr. Thein Sein has been unable or unwilling to control the generals pressing the war.
Myanmar, formerly Burma, is riddled with ethnic civil conflicts, but this is the largest, with the greatest at stake. Right on the Chinese border, Kachin State is rich in jade, gold and timber, and has rivers that are being exploited by Chinese hydropower projects. Part of the state has long been controlled by the Kachin Independence Army and its political wing, which levies taxes on all commerce. The army allowed a reporter and a photographer recently to visit an area rarely seen by Western reporters for one week.
Both the United States and China would like to see the war resolved: the Chinese to ensure stability on the border and access to resources and important power projects; the United States to forestall the kinds of abuses by the Burmese military that present one of the biggest obstacles as President Obama considers lifting economic sanctions. At the same time, some Chinese officials and executives might welcome Burmese military control of the resource-rich areas, preferring to cut deals with the Burmese rather than the Kachin, foreign analysts say.
Some Kachin commanders say one factor that rekindled the war last June after a 17-year cease-fire may have been a desire by the Burmese military to widen its control of the areas with Chinese energy projects.
Such projects are a source of tension. After protests last year by Kachin civilians, Mr. Thein Sein suspended the planned Myitsone Dam, which was being built by a Chinese company in a part of the state controlled by the Burmese. That angered Chinese officials and executives, some of whom suspect Mr. Thein Sein of trying to wean Myanmar off its overreliance on China and to encourage investment from the West.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/world/asia/ethnic-war-with-kachin-intensifies-in-myanmar-jeopardizing-united-states-ties.html

U.S. to restore full diplomatic ties with Burma

(AP)  WASHINGTON - The United States is restoring full diplomatic relations with Burma, a landmark in the Obama administration's drive to reward democratic reforms by a government the U.S. previously treated as a pariah.
The decision announced Friday to exchange ambassadors with Burma for the first time in two decades followed the release of hundreds of political prisoners, but Washington probably will be looking for fair conduct in coming elections and an end to ethnic violence before it lifts sanctions.
The U.S. also wants Burma to open up to U.N. nuclear inspectors and sever illicit military ties with North Korea because of concerns that Pyongyang has sold Burma defense hardware, including missiles, in defiance of international sanctions.
Burma President Thein Sein pardoned 651 detainees on Friday, among them leaders of brutally repressed democratic uprisings, heads of ethnic minority groups, journalists and even a former prime minister who had been blamed himself for incarcerating activists.
President Barack Obama, in a statement, described the pardons as "a substantial step forward for democratic reform."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57359121/u.s-to-restore-full-diplomatic-ties-with-burma/

Hillary Clinton meets Suu Kyi in Myanmar

Hillary Clinton to visit Burma

Hillary Clinton to visit Burma to check on 'flickers of progress'

News of first Burma visit by a US secretary of state in 50 years follows decision by Aung San Suu Kyi's NLD to re-enter politics

• Jonathan Watts
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 November 2011 09.15 EST
Obama announces Clinton visit to Burma   Link to this video  Hillary Clinton will become the first US secretary of state in 50 years to visit Burma, it has been announced, as Washington ramped up its efforts to kindle "flickers of progress" in the isolated south-east Asian nation. The visit next month, announced by Barack Obama, appeared to be a reward for Burma's reforms, which were marked hours earlier by the return to politics of the democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi. The double boost was widely applauded as a sign that Burma may be moving in from the political cold, but it contains risks: a political transformation is far from guaranteed in a government system that is still largely under the influence of the military, and the move may add to China's suspicion that the US is attempting an encirclement policy. In announcing a "historic opportunity" for a top-level diplomatic mission, Obama spelled out that Burma had a long way to go to shake off decades of repression by military leaders. The US has serious concerns over human rights abuses, the detention of political prisoners and Burma's treatment of ethnic minorities. But Obama said "after years of darkness, we've seen flickers of progress in these last several weeks" – apparently a reference to the government's release of political prisoners, economic reforms and a decision to halt a controversial dam project. News of Clinton's visit was welcomed by both the Burmese government and supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi. "It's a very good sign," Ko Ko Hlaing, chief political adviser to the president, Thein Sein, told Reuters. "I think it is a significant turn in US policy towards Myanmar … people in Myanmar will welcome, cheer Hillary Clinton because for a time in history, they have never seen a secretary of state."

 

One Year On: Has Aung San Suu Kyi’s Release Changed Burma?

One Year On: Has Aung San Suu Kyi’s Release Changed Burma? (VOA Henry Rodgewell Nov. 8, 2011)


Twelve months after Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest, a new government has begun talking to some of its critics. ActionAid, a charity working in Burma, says the opportunity to advance reforms should be seized. But outside the major cities, ethnic minority groups say the suppression of their people is only getting worse.
It’s a year since opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was released from seven years of house arrest - to rapturous cheers from thousands of supporters who had gathered outside her Rangoon home.

Her opposition to Burma’s military rulers had seen her spend 15 of the previous 21 years in detention.
The nominally civilian government has opened a tentative dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi. Some observers say this offers the best chance in decades to advance democratic reform.

British actress Emma Thompson recently traveled to Burma with the charity ActionAid, and met Aung San Suu Kyi. “She’s very cautious but optimistic," she said. "The phrase she used to me about what was happening now was, ‘it is very important that we do not proceed with indecent haste.'"

Thompson was left with optimistic impressions from her visit.

“I did see poverty of course," she said. "Deep, wrenching poverty. But I did not feel that there was a generation of people there too scared to move forward and inhabit the space that appears to be appearing. I felt that there was a dialogue, a genuine dialogue beginning to start between a very difficult government and the people.”

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