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Week of December 1, 2000
YANGON The International Labor Organization urged its 174 members to review their relations with the country, with an eye to imposing economic sanctions. The ILO says the government uses forced labor.
Week of October 6, 2000
YANGON The military regime blockaded the headquarters of Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition National League for Democracy to prevent any celebrations of the party's 12th anniversary.
Week of August 4, 2000
Yangon The military regime reopened universities on July 24, three-and-a-half years after closing them to stop anti-
Week of June 30, 2000
Washington The Supreme Court struck down a Massachusetts state law imposing sanctions on Myanmar. The nine judges who heard the case unanimously upheld an appeals court ruling that the Massachusetts law violated the constitutional right of the federal government to make foreign policy."
Week of June 23, 2000
Geneva The International Labor Organization (ILO) is ready to pressure Myanmar into ending its use of forced labor, after an ILO delegation went to Yangon in May at the request of the government to evaluate conditions. An early version of the text of a resolution under discussion said there has been no movement to improve the situation in the country. The junta had hoped they could refute international allegations of widespread abuses. China, Japan, India and Malaysia opposed 33 other countries in the Geneva vote. The resolution gives the government until December to comply before sanctions are considered."
Week of June 2, 2000
YANGON The new United Nations special envoy to Myanmar, Malaysia's Razali Ismail, will make his inaugural trip to Yangon in June. His predecessor, Alvaro de Soto, criticized by many as aloof, got nowhere in advancingthe dialogue between the regime strategist Lt.-Gen. Khin Nyunt and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Razali's appointment is welcomed by Myanmar. Foreign Minister Win Aung told Asiaweek: "I hope as an Asian he will understand more of our program."
Week of April 14, 2000
YANGON The city's failed 130-room "Floating Hotel" will be towed to Singapore for inspection and then taken to East Timor where it will serve as housing for U.N. personnel.
Week of November 26, 1999
YANGON Change brewing? The junta says it will reconsider allowing World Bank officials to visit the country and possibly engage in restructuring talks. Burma-watchers also predict imminent personnel changes at top government levels accompanied by economic reforms and possibly moves toward introducing a new constitution.
Week of November 19, 1999
BANGKOK CAME UNDER FIRE for forcibly returning tens of thousands of illegal workers to Myanmar. The concern came after reports that Myanmar troops threatened to shoot the returnees while blocking their passage across the border. The cross-border push also resulted in allegations of 15 incidents of rape - all charges which Yangon rejects. Critics say the repatriation drive couldn't have been launched at a worse time - relations between Bangkok and Yangon are at a low ebb in the wake of October's hostage-siege in Myanmar's embassy in Bangkok.
Week of November 12, 1999
INDIAN NEWSPAPERS REPORT THAT Pakistan is interested in building an air base at Haka in Myanmar's Chin State. The Asian Age says Pakistani military teams are making frequent visits to Yangon.
Week of November 5, 1999
YANGON Food shortages caused by misrule and bad agricultural policies are common in rice farming areas, according to the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission. The government dismissed the group's accusations that the army resells food stolen from villagers and confiscates rice and livestock as "groundless" and "regretful."
Week of October 29, 1999
BANGKOK Newspapers report growing resentment along the Myanmar-Thai border by villagers against exiled Myanmar students and activists following the Oct. 2 hostage incident at Yangon's embassy in Bangkok. PM Chuan Leekpai reinforced the sentiment after a group of students briefly held five UNHCR officials captive at a camp along the border on Oct. 18: "If such problems arise in the future, Thailand may ask other countries to share the burden of Burmese exiles," he warned. Australia, Canada and the U.S. say they will accept 3,000 of them, but it appears many do not want to leave.
Week of October 22, 1999
BANGKOK A few days after Thailand threatened to round up exiled Myanmar students and send them to a third country, the U.S. offered to help resettle some of them. The Thai decision came after five gunmen, claiming to be pro-democracy Myanmar students, raided Myanmar's embassy in Bangkok and took 38 people hostage. The Yangon government accuses the Thais of allowing exiled activists in Thai camps to launch campaigns into Myanmar.
YANGON A North Korean delegation attended the World Health Organization meeting in Yangon. It is the first group from Pyongyang in nearly two decades - since the 1983 terrorist bombing of a Buddhist shrine that killed 18 visiting South Korean cabinet ministers in an assassination attempt on President Chun Doo Hwan.
Week of October 15, 1999
YANGON Alvaro de Soto , a U.N. assistant secretary-general, will again travel to meet with junta leaders this month, his fifth visit. He is trying to persuade the government to negotiate with the opposition National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi. In exchange, the U.N. has held out the promise of financial aid.
Week of October 8, 1999
YANGON Police blocked roads to the headquarters of the opposition National League for Democracy in preparation for the party's 11th anniversary.
Week of September 24, 1999
YANGON A visit slated for mid-September by U.N. assistant secretary-general Alvaro de Soto, aimed at unblocking Myanmar's political stalemate, was indefinitely postponed. The U.N. is considering linking World Bank aid to political reform in a bid to encourage the junta to engage in talks with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Week of September 17, 1999
YANGON Military police arrested Londoner Rachel Goldwyn, 28, for singing a revolutionary song and chanting pro-democracy slogans. News of her arrest came only days after that of another British human rights campaigner. James Mawdsley, 26, was jailed for 17 years. British embassy officials are still waiting to see Goldwyn, who they think is being held at a Yangon police station.
Week of September 10, 1999
YANGON The military regime arrested six high-school students for distributing pamphlets urging the public to join an anti-government uprising on Sept. 9. Another 29 students who took part in a revolt against the ruling regime on Aug. 12 have been charged under an emergency law and face seven years' jail with hard labor.
Week of September 3, 1999
YANGON During his first trip to Myanmar as Thailand's Foreign Minister, Surin Pitsuwan met with military leaders in Yangon and co-chaired the fifth Thai-Myanmar Joint Commission meeting with his Burmese counterpart Win Aung. Cross-border suppression of narcotics and crime formed the basis of the talks.
Week of July 2, 1999
YANGON The government accused Britain of leading a campaign to oust it from multilateral groups such as the International Labor Organization, which all but expelled the regime on June 17. The ILO denounced the military government for inflicting on workers what it called "nothing but a contemporary form of slavery," including forcing laborers to work on infrastructure projects and as porters for the army. Meanwhile, a U.S. court in Massachusetts struck down a law that penalized companies for doing business with Myanmar. Such legislation interferes with the federal government's right to make foreign policy, the court ruled.
Week of June 11, 1999
YANGON The U.S. embassy will not confirm her appointment, but Priscilla Clapp, who was most recently deputy chief of mission in South Africa, will become the Americans' highest ranking diplomatic official in Yangon. Clapp will serve as chargÈ d'affaires - the U.S. has not had an ambassador there since it downgraded relations after the regime refused to honor the 1990 election results.
Week of June 4, 1999
BANGKOK Myanmar officials sat silently at the first EU-ASEAN talks since a row erupted two years ago over Yangon's human-rights record. Myanmar's passive role was the compromise between the two blocs over the country, which joined ASEAN in 1997.
Week of May 21, 1999
YANGON Seven MP-elects of the National League for Democracy have denied claims by the party's hierarchy that they were forced by the government to recommend opening a dialogue with the regime. NLD leaders around party secretary-general Aung San Suu Kyi condemned the group as "lackeys of military intelligence." But Tin Tun Maung, one of the MPs calling for talks, said they had done nothing wrong: "Our motive was to seek another solution to the political impasse and we harbor no guilty conscience in this matter."
Week of April 16, 1999
MYANMAR'S EMBASSY IN COLOMBO, SRI LANKA, apparently speaking for the Yangon government, expressed its sadness on hearing of the death of Michael Aris, husband of oppositionist Aung San Suu Kyi. The announcement also expressed a willingness to help her to return to England to attend Aris's funeral - which Suu Kyi had already rejected for fear she would not be allowed to return to her homeland. The next issue is whether her two sons will be allowed to visit her.
Week of April 2, 1999
BANGKOK A compromise giving Myanmar a "passive role" at May's Joint Cooperation Committee meeting between ASEAN and the E.U. makes way for the first meeting between the two blocs in two years. The agreement allows Myanmar to be present at the meeting as an observer along with Laos, which also joined ASEAN in 1997, and possibly Cambodia, which is still waiting to become an official member.
THE GROUP OF SEVEN countries are considering waiving all their development aid loans, worth some $20 billion, to 41 low-income, heavily indebted countries - mostly in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar would be the Asian beneficiaries.
Week of March 19, 1999
CHIANG RAI PM Chuan Leekpai hosted Myanmar's generals Than Shwe and Khin Nyunt for a two-day state visit. At the top of the agenda was pressure from Chuan for more cooperation in fighting cross-border drug trafficking.
Week of March 5, 1999
YANGON Interpol went ahead with its three-day conference on the narcotics trade despite a boycott by Western critics of the Burmese government. Home Affairs Minister Tin Hlaing minced no words when he criticized some of those absent:"As two of the largest markets for heroin in the world, the U.S. and Britain bear special responsibility to work with the rest of the international community in every way possible," he said at the opening ceremony.
Week of February 12, 1999
ON JAN. 31, THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY of the start of the Karen uprising, General Bo Mya, head of the Karen National Union, lashed out at ASEAN for propping up the Yangon government. Around 93,000 Karen refugees shelter in a string of holding camps along the Thai frontier with Myanmar most of whom are believed to be loyal to Bo Mya Mya.''
Week of January 15, 1999
YANGON Rumors that the military junta would deport oppositionist Aung San Suu Kyi before Independence day on Jan. 4 proved unfounded. It is doubtful any country would aid the government by taking Suu Kyi, the daughter of independence leader Aung San.
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