Energy Companies in Burma Urged to Disclose Payments – The Irrawaddy
April 27th, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=18329
Section of the Yadana gas pipeline from Burma to Thailand. (Photo: The Irrawaddy)
Landmark legislation currently before the US Congress could force oil, gas and mining companies to disclose information about payments to governments of countries in which they invest around the world, including Burma.
If passed, the US Energy Security through Transparency Act will require all oil, gas and mining companies registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission to disclose data on payments made to foreign governments.
The NGO Earthrights International (ERI) said that “this will impact nearly every major oil and gas company around the world,” given that foreign companies must register with the SEC to do business in the US.
ERI’s Matthew Smith told a press conference in Bangkok today that this would also put pressure on Chinese and other Asian companies investing in Burma’s natural resources to comply.
Heightening pressure on Total, Chevron and Thailand’s PTTEP —three companies involved in the Yadana gas project and pipeline in Burma—an initiative launched on Tuesday in Bangkok called on the companies to reveal payments made to the Burmese military regime over the 18 years since Total signed a production sharing contract with Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE). The pending US legislation will not apply retrospectively, meaning that companies will only have to disclose payments going forward. (more…)
After renewing sanctions, EU seeks face-time with junta – The Irrawaddy
April 27th, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=18327
European Union (EU) foreign ministers have renewed the bloc’s “Common Position” on Burma, extending existing sanctions until April 2011.
In a statement released on Monday, the European Council expressed “serious concerns” that the recently published election laws “do not provide for free and fair elections.” and restated its call “for the release of the political prisoners and detainees, including Aung San Suu Kyi.”
However, the EU said that it “stands ready to respond positively to genuine progress in Burma/Myanmar.” In keeping with the Western trend toward dialogue with the Burmese military junta, the EU says it hopes to maintain its dialogue with Naypidaw.
The EU had previously pledged to tighten or expand sanctions if the junta did not respond to requests for reform. However, despite what the European Burma Network listed as a number of factors in what it deemed to be “a continued decline in the human rights and political situation in Burma,” since the common position was last discussed in April 2009, the bloc has not amended its existing sanctions. (more…)
The Aid Debate: what’s the problem with helping? – The Casual Truth
April 26th, 2010
http://www.thecasualtruth.com/story/aid-debate-–-whats-problem-helping
On April 9th and 10th, seven of the world’s poorest countries met in Timor-Leste (East Timor) to discuss how wealthy aid donor countries are failing in their attempts to help.
Family in in southwest Ethiopia received some start-up grants to boost farm productivity. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Calling themselves the g7, in a takeoff of the better-known G7 comprising US, Japan and other wealthy countries, the group discussed how aid could be improved.
Timor-Leste’s President Jose Ramos-Horta slammed donors for believing they can do no wrong.
A study last year showed that over US$8billion in aid had been spent in his country – Asia’s poorest – since 1999. He joked that if this had gone to ordinary Timorese, everyone would have a PhD.
However, he did acknowledge that corruption has increased in Timor-Leste, hinting that aid failures cut both ways.
Most of the aid money ultimately comes from western taxpayers – though this is changing as countries like China get involved. So should the leaders of g7 countries just be grateful and not bite the hands that feeds them?
Not really. Western taxpayers do not always know or care much about aid given by their governments.
They are generally more clued-in to one-off donations made in response to disasters or famines – known as ‘emergency assistance’.
Often this goes to specialist charities or NGOs (‘non-government organisations’ like Oxfam) that provide food, shelter and medical assistance. (more…)
Thailand not smiling anymore – The Sunday Tribune
April 25th, 2010
Bangkok – It was the third evening of a tense face-off between red shirt anti-Government protestors and a rival group who had taken to the streets to taunt the reds and urge the Government to crack down.
Red shirts at their barricade close to the Silom intersection. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
By 6pm the atmosphere was tense, even as red shirts gyrated on top of the tyre and spear-sharp bamboo wall laid across the entrance to their rally area, dancing to one of their political theme tunes set to a sort of Thai hip-hop. Across the road, around two thousand ‘no-colours’ protestors – who want the red shirts removed – stood close to dozens of riot police, and beneath hundreds of soldiers watching from the overhead train station.
At around 8pm, several blasts were heard over the street, in what was later alleged to be m79 grenades launched from the red shirt area and exploding on the roof of the overhead train station, 600 yards from the interface and in the heart of Bangkok’s banking and finance area.
People screamed and ran, including dozens of journalists already in the area to film and photograph the rival demonstrators – perhaps hoping for a repeat of the previous night’s bottle and stone throwing exchange between the red shirts and the ‘no colours’ group.
About an hour later, two more explosions were heard back up at the interface, outside a coffee shop and bank where the ‘no colours’ group had gathered. The Government later said 1 person died and 75 were injured by the explosions. This correspondent counted ten people carried away from the blood-spattered second blast site, including one Australian. (more…)
Violence looms as Thai PM refuses compromise deal – RTÉ World Report
April 25th, 2010
http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0425/worldreport.html
As the Thai Prime Minister snubs a red shirt offer to end their protest – if their demand that the parliament is dissolved in 30 days is met – more violence looms in Bangkok.
By Saturday night, security checks were taking place on Silom road. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
The tourist-board spin calls the country Land of Smiles, but Thailand is rapidly approaching a point of no return in its 4 year old colour-coded political stand-off.
On Thursday night, I ran for cover along with hundreds of Thais and other journalists, as explosions rocked the Silom district of Bangkok, where many banks and finance houses are located. People screamed and ran in all directions, unsure if, when and where the next explosion was going to take place.
At one end of the road, a crude bamboo and tyre barricade had been erected, in the middle of one of Asia’s biggest concrete jungles. Behind the wall, thousands of anti-government redshirts occupy a one-mile stretch of Bangkok’s plush shopping areas, six weeks after beginning their rally aimed at ousting what they believe to be an illegitimate Government.
Across from the barrier, riot police and pro-Government protestors have gathered all week, with the protestors taunting their rural red shirt counterparts with insults like Khwai, or buffalo, and telling them to go home.
The pro-government side sees themselves as educated, urbane and well-to-do. They think the red shirts are pawns in the pay of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup and now lives abroad after convictions for corruption. (more…)
After Silom Explodes, Murmurs of Compromise in Bangkok – The Irrawaddy
April 24th, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=18310
The day after deadly explosions hit the main banking district of Bangkok, conciliatory voices were heard urging compromise and suggesting that talks remained possible.
Diplomats arrive at the red shirt rally area in Rajaprasong, Bangkok, on Friday. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
The calls for renewed negotiations come despite the depth of disagreement between anti-Government “Redshirts” on the one hand, and the government and its “multi-colored” supporters on the other.
After a meeting with a group of foreign diplomats, the Redshirts relaxed their previous demand that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva dissolve the Thai government immediately, asking instead for a 30-day deadline.
As the massed ranks of red-shirted protesters at Rajaprasong applauded, Redshirt leaders stood on stage in front of a banner that claimed the movement to be one of peaceful protestors, rather than terrorists—refuting the claims that grenades had been fired from the Redshirt encampment into the Silom district the previous night.
The Government has since said it has not come to a conclusion as to who was responsible for the blasts, which caused chaos and terror in Bangkok’s main banking and finance district.
Earlier on Friday morning, Redshirts and police agreed on a temporary pull-back deal after a tense 7 a.m. confrontation at the Silom/ Lumphini Park intersection when police sought the removal of the Redshirts’ tire and bamboo wall. The protesters demurred, moving their people back from the barricade, which remained intact at the original location, but refused to tear down the wall. By 10 p.m. On Friday evening, the police had moved the much-diminished pro-government, anti-Redshirt group a further 100m the other direction along Silom Road. (more…)
Election parallels between Sudan and Burma? – The Irrawaddy
April 23rd, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=18303&Submit=Submit
BANGKOK—Since Gen. Omar al-Bashir’s 1989 coup, Sudan has been run as by a military dictatorship, but not quite as long as Burma, which has been under army rule since 1962.
Still, there are many parallels between the two countries: both are multi-ethnic, poly-religious populations oppressed by a violent elite. Both are prey to a vast state security apparatus funded by natural resource revenues, in turn abetted by close links with China and Russia.
Beijing shields both countries from criticism and action at the UN Security Council, and its investment helps undermine the Western sanctions in place against both regimes. Both regimes stand accused of large-scale human rights abuses and violence against their own citizens, and a Harvard Law School report published in May 2009 drew a direct parallel between violence in western Sudan’s Darfur region and that in eastern Burma. (more…)
Bangkok eyewitness: Silom explodes – TodayFM/Newstalk
April 22nd, 2010
http://www.newstalk.ie/news/news-headlines/explosions-hit-bangkok-business-district/
Thursday evening saw chaos and bloodshed in Bangkok’s main financial and banking district. Three people reported dead and over 70 injured after five explosions rocked the Silom area of the city. The Thai Government believes the blasts were caused by m79 grenades fired from within the anti-government red shirt camp.
Injured man taken away by ambulance (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Amid chaotic scenes, this correspondent saw several bloodied and screaming casualties being lifted into ambulances by Thai soldiers. Further down the street, hundreds of Thai soldiers and riot police hunkered down under the shelter provided by the overhead rail-line.
The first explosions took place hundreds of meters away from the main protest site which is at the Silom/Lumphini Park intersection. Three blasts were heard on the roof of Sala Daeng train station, followed an hour later by two more which went off in the area where pro-Government, anti-redshirt protestors had gathered over the past few evenings.
Later, blood and shrapnel was visible on the pavement and steps outside the coffee-shop and bank where the latter explosions took place, forty meters across from the tyre-and-bamboo barricade marking the entrance into the red shirt occupied-zone, which stretches almost two km down to Rajaprasong intersection and some of Bangkok’s plush shopping malls. (more…)
Thailand’s Mexican Stand-off – The Irrawaddy
April 19th, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=18275
As soldiers and riot police gather near the main red shirt rally stage, fears grow of more violence in Bangkok
Thai troops practice formation on Monday night, outside a Mexican restaurant in Bangkok's Silom district. (Photo: Simon Roughneen©)
Watching as a pair of twenty-something ladies clambered out of a blue Mercedes saloon outside Silom metro station, before handing riot police bottles of cold water, one onlooker scoffed before beckoning this correspondent over.
“It’s not fair,” said the middle-aged lady, who said she is a lawyer “living in Bangkok” and giving her name only as Phatarphon. “What is not fair?” I asked. “the soldiers and police get cold drinks”, she said, “but those people are sitting in the hot sun for more than one month.”
A group of around fifty red shirts stood fifty meters away, across the busy intersection at the entrance to Lumphini Park. Behind lay the main red shirt protest, comprising thousands, stretching over a kilometer down to the main shopping area in Bangkok, where the leaders stage pounds to incessant speeches and intermittent song. A line of protestors crouched behind green netting and barbed war, with sharpened bamboo spears propped against the wire, as if awaiting a cavalry charge.
“Why you just take photo here?” asked one of the protestors. Explaining that I was on way across the junction to take photos of the police and troops stationed across, this seemed to placate the interrogator, who demanded “sure you don’t say any stupid about us!”
Red shirts behind their barricade facing onto the Silom intersection near Lumphini Park, Monday night. Soldiers sit overhead, 40 m across. (Photo: Simon Roughneen©)
The red shirts are backed by and support the former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup and in late February saw over US$1 billion of his assets seized by the Thai courts, due to conflict of interest and corruption charges dating to when he was in office. After almost-nightly videolink addresses to the red shirts when the protests began on March 12, Thaksin has remained relatively-quiet in recent days, though he gave an interview to Reuters earlier Monday, where he sought fresh elections. The red shirts want new elections, as they deem the current Government to be illegitimate. it was formed after courts dissolved a pro-Thaksin, red shirt-backed party in late 2008, and coalition allies of Thaksin switched sides, giving the Democrat Party enough support to form a Government.
By nightfall Monday night, Thai troops were crouching behind sandbags up on the ‘Skywalk’, a pedestrian walkway running above street-level and leading to the Silom and Sala Daeng rail stations. The area is touted as Bangkok’s “Wall St”, a commercially-vital district housing banks and finance houses. The red shirts earlier threatened to take their demonstration to this economic hub, after occupying the the Rajaprasong intersection – site of southeast Asia’s second-largest shopping mall – for more than one week.
Hundreds of armed troops and riot police have manned the area since early Monday morning, erecting razor-wire and sheltering down side-streets, including Patpong Road, one of the city’s red-light streets. There troops and police sat and patrolled somewhat awkwardly, though breaking into sporadic banter with the ladies sat outside the streets bars and massage parlors.
Whether or not the deployment is merely to prevent the red shirts moving into Silom, or is a prelude to a crackdown on the protestors, remains to be seen. The red shirts have said they will not march into the financial area, reversing an earlier pledge to do so on Tuesday April 20. Meanwhile army spokesperson Col. Sansern gave this uncompromising-sounding prognosis of what needs to be done: “Whatever will be will be. If we have to clash, we will … We need to enforce the law decisively. We can’t just think that ‘we don’t want casualties’, otherwise the country can’t move forward,” Sansern said. (more…)
Fallen Angels in Bangkok – ISN
April 16th, 2010
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=115035
As the Government moves in to arrest protest leaders and alleged ‘terrorists’ in Bangkok, more violence looms in the city.
Red shirts gathered at Rajaprasong intersection in Bangkok. (Photo: Simon Roughneen©).
Even as the eponymous protagonist in Shakespeare’s Macbeth descended into madness, there were fleeting moments of sentience; enough, at least, for him to deliver some memorably prescient insights.
‘Blood will have blood‘, he said, implying that once blood is spilled, more will follow. And so three weeks after the anti-government red shirts poured their blood on the gates of the Thai Prime Minister’s Abhisit Vejajjiva’s residence and the country’s Government House, the gruesome symbolism was transfigured into tragic reality last weekend, with 19 civilians and 5 soldiers killed in the ‘The Battle of Bangkok’. Over 800 people were injured, as tourists looked on, and there are calls for the Government to establish an inquiry into what happened in Bangkok – or to give it its less well- known abbreviated name – Krung Thep or ‘City of Angels’.
Before that comes to pass, however, what anti-government red shirts are deeming “a final battle” looms. And that took a dramatic turn this morning, when special forces surrounded a Bangkok hotel where red shirt leaders and alleged ‘terrorists’ are staying. At least one red shirt leader escaped by climbing down from a hotel window, while forces remained outside the hotel.
The protestors have bunkered down in the commercial heartland of Bangkok, a sea of red stretching like an X in four directions along the Rajaprasong intersection. In temperatures reaching the high 30s, thousands are more expected to join the estimated 30000 already stretched on rattan mats, queuing for street food, and drenching each other with flour and water as part of the now-muted Thai New Year celebrations. All in the shadow of locked glossy malls and two story-high Prada and Gucci billboards, with the songs and speeches of red shirt leaders interrupted every few minutes by the zooming Skytrain passing overhead. (more…)
