Voices For Burma Newsletter November 2005

In this update:

1. Quote of the month
2. Welcome
3. Website updates
4. VFB news
5. Burma in the news
6. Comment

1. Quote of the month

“We want tourists to come and spread the word. Take our photograph and put it on the Internet. Foreigners are our protection.”

U Lu Maw, another of the Moustache Troupe – quoted in a report on tourism to Burma by the Vienna-based Institute of Integrative Tourism and Development March 2003

2. Welcome!

Thank you for registering for the Voices For Burma bi-monthly newsletter. If you have received this in error or wish to be removed from the list, please email us at voicesforburma@hotmail.com and entitle your email ‘Newsletter removal’ and we will oblige.

We guarantee that we will never supply your email address or any details to third parties. We understand the nature of the beast that we are campaigning against and will not jeopardise the safety of those in Burma or allow the authorities to prevent people who want to get into Burma from getting visas. VFB guards its information and is not attached to any commercial interests.

3. Website Updates

Our major project over the past few months has been to make our existing website more user friendly and temporarily we have moved to www.voicesforburma.net. We are in the process of transitioning a user-interactive website, where you will be able to take part in a debate area on tourism and other matters; fill out a questionnaire of your Burma visit; and/or have your say about various books on Burma in our new Book Review area.

Our website is now managed by web technicians at Burma Information Technology, based in New Delhi - a group of young Burmese refugees.  Their work is impressive - so if you or a friend are looking for a new web technician, keep these guys in mind.  

5. VFB news

- A Burmese man seeking asylum in Australia is to be imminently deported by the Australian Department of Immigration and Multiculture and Indigenous Australians (DIMIA).

The Balmain for Refugees Group of the Balmain Uniting Church, backed by backbencher Member of Parliament (MP) Petro Georgio, Labor MP Tanya Plibersek, Amnesty International and VFB, are behind a campaign to allow him to remain in Australia. He has spent time in Villawood Detention Centre, and has been strung along by the Federal Court system for many years. If you are an Australian citizen who is appalled at the treatment of asylum seekers by DIMIA and at mandatory detention policies; and want to know more about the case of this man or would like to help, please contact us.

- VFB welcomes a new committee member called Emily.  Emily brings her experience of working with the Burmese people in Thailand and Burma to VFB.

- The VFB committee met in late October and planned the strategy for the coming months. We evaluated our successes and our failures too. We redefined our objectives to:

a. Raise awareness of the situation in Burma
b. Promote ethical and responsible tourism in Burma
c. Provide up-to-date, unbiased and reliable travel information on Burma
d. Provide a forum for debate on Burma
e. Promote democracy in Burma through activism within and outside of the country.

- At the meeting we decided to work on a new ‘Green List’ of travel companies that we consider to being ethical providers of tours.  This campaign will kick off early next year, and we hope that information you provide to us in the questionnaire on our new website will help us compile this list.

Voices for Burma recently met with the Managing Director of Trans Indus travel to discuss the travel industry in Burma. We hope that this will be the start of a solid relationship with those in the travel industry.

- One of VFB’s Directors recently quizzed controversial British MP, George Galloway, before he was accused of lying to a US Senate committee, at a public meeting in Manchester, England. Our VFB Director asked how to install democracy in Burma. Mr Galloway, speaking without notes for the entire two hour meeting, answered that we must strengthen the democratic forces within the country. He did not want war or sanctions. He reminded the audience of the effect of sanctions in Iraq, which he argues, killed far more than the war that he brands ‘illegal’. 

At an Article 19 event in London, chaired by the BBC’s George Allagiah, Voices for Burma challenged John Jackson, formerly of the Burma Campaign UK, over the benefits of tourism in Burma. At the meeting, Dr Zar Ni of the Free Burma Coalition made an impassioned plea for the Burma movement to adopt a fresh approach to his mother country, along the lines of his article in The Independent newspaper in England.

6. Burma in the news

- Rarely is it ever quiet on the news front in Burma and this month it is no different. The junta, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to move their capital, well the main administrative buildings anyway, 400km north to Pyinmana. The new location was poignantly, for all Burmese, the site that General Aung San held his military HQ during World War Two. Reports suggest that anti-aircraft technology has been positioned around the new capital and deep tunnels have been dug. This is a mark of the junta’s paranoia of foreign invasion.

- The junta, the master of surprise and bewildering policies, has decreed that petrol prices should rise by a massive nine times; just like that. Only in Burma, or maybe in North Korea could one find such astonishing executive decisions.

- The regime have announced that they are planning to develop a nuclear research reactor. Why not, I hear you cry!

- VFB is pleased to find in the news that UNICEF have decided not to leave the country and instead to increase their efforts in the country to halt the spread of AIDS.

- There are murmurings in the news of a road between Bangladesh and Burma, linking it with the rest of Asia.

- There are reports of two new border-crossing openings but these reports are yet to be independently verified.

- The National League for Democracy, the rightful legislators in Burma, have been meeting with representatives of the junta, without their charismatic and Nobel Peace Prize winning leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi present. It remains to be seen what, if any, progress was made at the talks.

7. Comment

It’s been a wild time for the people of Burma: their capital’s administrative resources and staff have been shifted 400km north to afford greater protection from foreign attack; petrol has risen a ridiculous 9 times; an AIDS organisation had decided to stay and fight the virus, but for the people democracy is no closer than it has ever been. Now, more than ever, it has become essential for foreign visitors to be ethical with their trips to Burma.

With the Chinese leader in the UK this month to meet British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, VFB demands that the man who went to war against Iraq in part to bring democracy, makes the feelings of democracy-loving people all over the world known to the leader of Burma’s main supporter: China. When China recently announced that if Taiwan dares to declare its independence from the ‘motherland’, then the Chinese would invade, the Burmese junta made their feelings known by supporting this abhorrent Chinese declaration of war.

VFB wants the British Prime Minister to tell the Chinese, in no uncertain times, that people the world around want an end to this parasitical relationship and it is the human duty of the leader of the world’s largest country to support the people of one of the poorest countries on earth.

We dish out the strongest criticism to the Australian government; to deport a Burmese man to Burma, where he will almost certainly face imprisonment is a disgrace. At this eleventh hour we ask for the Immigration Minister to change her mind. It is not too late.

VFB relies on volunteers -  we are all volunteers and we need more help. VFB has ambitious plans to help those in Burma with some revolutionary forward-thinking polices, but we need help to realise these goals. We are not asking for money; we are just asking for something more precious: your time..