This news article from Reuters was released on the weekend.
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Myanmar's troubles
22 Sep 2006 13:09:00 GMT
Source: AlertNet
"Living under their control means forced labour." These are the words of one of the tens of thousands of displaced villagers who spend their life on the run, choosing to live a nomadic life in the jungle rather than under the repressive Myanmar military regime, quoted in a report by the South China Morning Post. The regime is intent on subjugating opposition groups such as those from the Karen ethnic minority of eastern Myanmar, the article says.
After the U.N. Security Council voted to put Myanmar on its permanent agenda, the country should be getting more international attention than usual. But the military junta that rules Myanmar is unreceptive to outside influence and, as one senior western diplomat put it, doesn't care what the world thinks of [it].
The government monitors telephone calls, censors websites such as Hotmail and any sites related to Myanmar democracy activism, and asks internet cafe providers to take periodic "snapshots" of their customers' monitors. Only military or those with close ties to the government have mobile phones, or indeed those that can afford US$3,000 for a new line.
The country is also suffering a medical crisis. "The lack of rule of law, collapse of public health, and extensive corruption have resulted in widespread availability of medicines without control, which often means medications are adulterated or taken inappropriately," Voravit Suwanvanichkij, physician and researcher with the Centre for Public Health and Human Rights at Johns Hopkins University is quoted as saying. "The end result of which is, for entities such as malaria and TB, increasing drug resistance rates, already documented along the Thai-Burma border. Similar things may also be occurring for HIV."
Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Reuters
http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/1516/2006/08/22-130917-1.htm
