Thai Govt Responds to Karen Landmine Fears – The Irrawaddy
February 5th, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17752
BANGKOK—Acting Thai government spokesperson Dr. Panitan Wattanayagorn has told The Irrawaddy that the Thai authorities have been assured by their Burmese counterparts that the areas to which 3,000 Karen refugees are to be repatriated are clear of landmines.
Earlier, while addressing a forum on the Thai Internal Security Act at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Dr. Panitan said that the Thai government was assured of the sincerity of the Burmese junta, saying, “We do not look down on our neighbors as others may do. We have no reason to accuse them of anything wrong.”
However, at a press conference held at the National Human Rights Commission in the Thai government complex, Karen Women’s Organization (KWO) spokesperson Blooming Night Zan refuted the claims, saying that there is ample evidence that the area to which the refugees will be repatriated is mined. She pointed to injuries sustained by some of the refugees who crossed the border to tend to livestock left behind, including a pregnant woman who had her foot blown apart. (more…)
Forced Repatriation of Karen Refugees to Start – The Irrawaddy
February 4th, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17743&Submit=Submit
Thai authorities will start deporting 3,000 Karen refugees living in Tha Song Yang camp back to Burma on Friday.
Karen refugees walk along a road on the Thai-Burmese border around 100 km north of Mae Sot in June 2009. (Photo: Getty Images)
Karen Women’s Organization (KWO) spokesperson Blooming Night Zan said that 35 families comprised of 165 people will be the first to be repatriated, while speaking at a press conference in Bangkok on Thursday.
This is despite pleas from the refugees and from more than 70 Thai and Thai-based Burmese NGOs that the group be allowed to stay in Thailand.
The refugees fled fighting in Burma between the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) and the Karen National Union (KNU) in June 2009, and now fear for their safety if they return to their homes in a heavily mined area still occupied by the DKBA. The DKBA is an ally of the Burmese army.
All 3,000 refugees are to be sent back to Burma by Feb. 15, according to Surapong Kongchantuk, the vice-chair of the Human Rights Subcommittee on Ethnic Minorities, the Stateless, Migrant Workers and Displaced Persons of the Lawyers Council of Thailand.
Surapong said that repatriation should be suspended until landmines are cleared from the refugees’ region of origin, and until the refugees are willing to go back voluntarily.
UNHCR spokesperson Kitty McKinsey told The Irrawaddy: “We met the Thai authorities on Jan. 28 to discuss this issue, and we reached an agreement with them that no forced repatriation would take place.” She said that the UNCHR expects the Thai authorities to honour that agreement.
Blooming Night Zan said that this is the second time the Thai military has sought to send the refugees back to Burma, despite the fact that “landmines are a real danger and there is no indication that these are clear.” (more…)
Assessing Thai Coup Rumors – ISN/The Irrawaddy
February 3rd, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17733
NEWS ANALYSIS/BANGKOK—Coup-mongering is nothing new to Thailand, but speculation about an impending putsch was revved-up last week when a column of more than twenty armored vehicles was seen on the streets of Bangkok.
The column was on its way from Bang Sue railway station to their barracks in Pathum Thani. Apparently the vehicles are being readied for deployment to Darfur, a dusty and desolate terrain vastly different from anything in Thailand. Thai troops are serving as part of the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force in the vast western Sudan province.
It usually takes more than a few armored trucks to mount a coup, however, and, unexpected as the sight may have been, it takes more than a lone armored column on city streets to suggest that a coup is looming.
But with Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva in Europe at the Davos World Economic Forum, and an upcoming February 5-14 visit to the US by Army Chief Gen Anupong Paochinda, the coup gossip has gathered steam over recent days, suggesting that elements in the army could move in the absence of either man. (more…)
Burma Election Announcement in February? – The Irrawaddy
February 2nd, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17726&Submit=Submit
BANGKOK — According to sources in the Burmese military, junta leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe will announce the election timetable and law by the end of February.
The sources, who cannot be named due to the sensitivity of the information discussed, say that the army is recruiting candidates from outside its own ranks to compete in military-backed parties during the election, targeting businesspeople and community figures such as teachers in townships and villages across the country.
Prominent candidates are likely to include leaders of the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), a “civil society organization” supported by the junta. The USDA has an estimated membership of 20 million people, many of whom have been forcibly recruited. (more…)
The China Trade-off – The Irrawaddy
February 1st, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17688
The China-Asean free trade deal is a milestone as Southeast Asian nations test the waters of economic competitiveness.
Cover of February print edition of The Irrawaddy
Almost one-third of the world’s population is covered in the China-Asean Free Trade Area (CAFTA), which came into being on Jan. 1. However, CAFTA is only the third largest free trade zone in the world, after the European Economic Area and the North American Free Trade Agreement zone (NAFTA). Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) governments hope that their economies will benefit as businesses get easier access to Chinese markets.
Most of the optimism seems to be coming from China, however, as the long-negotiated deal becomes a reality. The Chinese news agency, Xinhua, ran numerous feel-good stories talking up the merits of the new agreement, quoting officials, business people and academics in Asean states in a series of reports outlining the possible benefits of freer trade. With Chinese exports to the US and Europe down and not likely to recover anytime soon, Asean countries offer China more economic opportunity, as the more developed member-states seek to boost domestic consumption.
However, Asean was immediately put on the defensive, with Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan refuting claims that CAFTA would be detrimental to the bloc. In a press release marking the new agreement, he said, “Asean has the capacity to be the supply chain for China’s booming economy, which has been very much propelled by the gradual trade liberalization under the China-Asean FTA (Free Trade Agreement).” (more…)
Debating aid and Haiti – ISN
January 29th, 2010
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=111942
Aid to Haiti has largely failed in the past, and now faced with the daunting task of rebuilding the capital from the bottom up, many wonder whether international development plans will be lost in the rubble, Simon Roughneen
All over Port-au-Prince, thousands of buildings will need to be razed and rebuilt (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
writes for ISN Security Watch.
Much of Haiti’s capital lies in ruins after the devastating January 12 earthquake. Up to 200,000 people are thought to have died, many now buried in mass graves outside the city. Hundreds of thousands more are homeless, sleeping in the open or in makeshift camps cobbled together with whatever blankets or sheeting people could get hold of. Delivering sufficient quantities of emergency assistance to so many people is proving a logistical nightmare, with the already limited Haitian infrastructure pulverized by the disaster.
While the emergency phase is from over, already Haiti and interested parties such as the US and Canada are looking to the longer term, and trying to raise money and figure out ways to help the western hemisphere’s poorest country get back on its feet – if it ever was fully so – in the months and years ahead.
As memories of the disaster fade, this will be a tall order. Already various notions of a ‘Marshall Plan’ for Haiti have been floated, evoking the US-led public-private partnership that helped rebuild Europe after World War II. Moreover, the task at hand has reignited the debate over the utility of development aid, with some wondering just how effective such a scheme could be in a Haiti that has received around $9billion in foreign assistance in recent decades.
The aid failure
Garaudy Laguerre is head of the Institute for Advanced Political and Social Studies in Port-au-Prince. He told ISN Security Watch, “This earthquake has profoundly affected or destroyed the little state structure that existed, it has also exposed, in our view, the failure of international aid in the way it has been conducted and used in Haiti.” (more…)
More Differences Between the Haiti-Burma Disasters – The Irrawaddy
January 28th, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17680
Quake survivors in Port-au-Prince are living in the open, in makeshift camps. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Haiti President René Préval on Wednesday said that the country’s legislative elections would be postponed indefinitely due to the impact of the Jan. 12 earthquake. The change of plans stands in stark contrast to the Burmese junta, which didn’t let the devastation wrought by Cyclone Nargis in May 2008 get in the way of a nationwide constitutional referendum that proceeded as planned mere days later.
Haiti’s polls were scheduled for Feb. 28 and were seen as an important next step in stabilizing Haiti’s fragile democracy. Brazil-led UN peacekeepers have operated in Haiti since 2004, after politicized gang violence.
“The electoral campaign should have opened tomorrow and for obvious reasons, that won’t be able to happen,” Préval said in an interview at his temporary office.
Préval has been criticized by many Haitians, particularly in the vocal and influential expat lobby based in the US, for his apparent reticence after the earthquake. A New America Media/Bendixen & Amandi poll surveyed Haitians living in South Florida and across the country and found 63 percent disapprove of how Préval’s government has responded to the natural disaster.
With government buildings destroyed, the government has been forced to meet at a police station and under a nearby tent.
Préval says he did not want to be seen to be milking the disaster for public relations benefits. He said that as he toured Port-au-Prince the night of the earthquake and the next day, “A lot of people would have chosen to go and be filmed touring hospitals, to talk to the injured. . . . I chose to get to work and try to find help to deal with the catastrophe.” (more…)
Haiti Aid Response Far Better than Nargis – The Irrawaddy
January 25th, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17652
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—The slow delivery of humanitarian aid to Haitians has become something of an embarrassment, if not a scandal. All last week, I encountered earthquake survivors who either had not received any relief such as food, water, basic shelter, or had not seen any aid workers in their part of the city. Still others said I was the first foreigner they had met, which in some cases was a week or more after the disaster.
It is possible to write some of this off as white lies, with people trying to clamor for attention by making the case that their street or block has been neglected, and therefore should be prioritized. However, the ubiquity of these complaints and pleas suggests that most are more likely to be true than not. (more…)
Doing good, not doing so good – The Sunday Tribune
January 24th, 2010
Simon Roughneen in Port-au-Prince – Rachel Voltaire shuffled disconsolately on a narrow, rubble-strewn lane, which runs alongside a camp set up to shelter 700 Haitian survivors of the January 12 earthquake.
Happy recipient of Canadian-donated hygiene kit in Turgeau, Port-au-Prince (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
The area is called Delmas, one of Port-au-Prince’s worst-hit suburbs. Buildings lie flattened, and the locals say that many bodies remain underneath. Ms Voltaire’s story is a harsh mix of tragedy and Kafkaesque catch-22 that makes her downbeat demeanour all the more understandable.
“ I was kicked out of the US coz I didn’t have no green card”, she drawled. She arrived back in Haiti just days before the earthquake, her five children split between cousins in Georgia and an ex-husband in Miami.
“I ain’t got family left here, more than twenty were killed in the earthquake. My mom, my sisters, their kids, everyone.”
She has savings in Citibank, but all the branches in Port-au-Prince were destroyed. “My ex sent me fifty dollars, but the CMA (a Haitian version of Western Union) doesn’t have no cash, so I can’t get my fifty bucks”, she explains.
“What’m I gonna do?” she asks. “Are those guys gonna help?”, pointing at the GOAL volunteers pacing through the squalid camp to see what the people need, and how it can be delivered. Paul Kelly is a civil engineer from Louth. He tells the ‘community leaders’ to draw up a list of families staying at the camp as soon as possible, so the aid agency can allocate shelter, food and hygiene kit donated by the Irish and US Governments. (more…)
Haiti ends search for survivors – RTÉ World Report
January 24th, 2010
http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0124/worldreport.html
Tent city: hundreds of camps like this one have been set up all over Port-au-Prince (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Even as a man is pulled alive from the rubble 11 days after the earthquake, the search for survivors is being called off. The focus moves onto the emergency relief operation.
“Why is there not enough for everybody”, said Clement, who walked a mile uphill on Port-au-Prince’s narrow, debris-strewn streets to get to one of the first aid deliveries to some of the estimated 3 million Haitians affected by the earthquake.
Moving around the stricken Caribbean capital last week, I met dozens of groups in different parts of the city who said that they had not received any aid one week after the disaster. Others told me I was the first foreigner they had met.
Anger, frustration and confusion animated most of the Haitians I met last week. And tragedy, on a scale unimaginable. 10000 people a day are being buried in mass graves outside the city, over 100000 so far. Thousands more lie under the rubble.
At GOALs first aid distribution last Wednesday, an atmosphere of tension and anticipation filled the air. With hygiene, shelter and food relief donated by the Irish, American and Canadian Governments, there was enough for 300 families in this first run.
Not enough for everyone who showed up, waiting in the hot afternoon sun. Tensions grew as some people received aid, while others, who came from districts outside the area of the city where this consignment was to be delivered, were trying to access material aimed for others. (more…)
