Here are three press clippings about Phyu Phyu Tin. The [him] moderator wishes there was a bit more emphasis on principles before personalities.
The [him] moderator is not sure he fully agrees with the statement from Altsean that “Internationally the human rights community also spoke up for her release." The media organisations Mizzima, DVB, and Irrawaddy spoke up. But the [him] moderator thought the international human rights community and international HIV activists were remarkably silent on the issue of her detention.
The [him] moderator has also added a note from the Three Diseases Fund making comments following the first of the two Irrawaddy articles.
[him] moderator
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Outspoken Burmese AIDS Activist Freed
Joseph Popiolkowski
VOA
A Burmese AIDS activist detained since May for advocating the release of the country's top political prisoner has been freed. As Joseph Popiolkowski reports from VOA's Asia News Center in Hong Kong, the release follows a scathing report on Burma's human rights abuses from one of the world's best known humanitarian organizations.
Phyu Phyu Thin's release Tuesday comes six weeks after her arrest for attending prayer services aimed at gaining freedom for Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's democracy leader.
Phyu Phyu Thin runs a small AIDS clinic that distributes antiretroviral medication to patients. She has been vocal about the plight of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel peace laureate detained by Burma's military government since 1990.
Debbie Stothard is coordinator of the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, a regional human rights group, and believes that outside pressure made a difference.
"Many local activists in Burma spoke up against her detention," said Stothard. "It did put a lot of pressure on the military authorities to release her. Internationally the human rights community also spoke up for her release."
"And the U.S. government, as well, spoke up and made interventions. We still need to keep up the pressure to ensure that Phyu Phyu Thin does not get arrested again, but also to secure the release of Phyu Phyu Thin's friends and colleagues who were arrested along with her," she added.
Last week, the International Committee of the Red Cross publicly condemned Burma's military government. It said the government was guilty of killing unarmed civilians and forcing prisoners to work as army porters, among other abuses. The ICRC rarely condemns governments publicly, preferring to relay its concerns through private channels.
Stothard says a series of prayer vigils was mounted to bring awareness to Aung San Suu Kyi's incarceration. She says 30 activists remain in police custody from the most recent crackdown while Burma has more than 1,000 other political prisoners locked up.
"Phyu Phyu Thin is one of the people who was detained this year simply for having prayed for Aung San Suu Kyi's release. Apparently it's a state crime if you pray for the release of political prisoners," she said.
Aung San Suu Kyi, 62, led the National League for Democracy to a landslide election victory in 1990 but the military regime in Burma, also known as Myanmar, has refused to honor the results or convene parliament.
http://voanews.com/english/2007-07-03-voa12.cfm
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Freed HIV/AIDS Activist Calls for Government Cooperation
Htet Aung
Irrawaddy
July 3, 2007
Newly-freed HIV/AIDS activist Phyu Phyu Thin called on the Burmese government on Tuesday to set aside its differences with the country's opposition and to join the fight to control the disease and help its victims.
Phyu Phyu Thin, 36, was back at work assisting and advising HIV/AIDS patients less than a day after her release from more than one month's detention. She interrupted a meeting with visiting patients at her home to appeal in an interview with The Irrawaddy: "Let's set aside who you are and which side you stand [the government or the opposition]...We are ready to cooperate not only with the government but also with any organizations to combat HIV/AIDS."
Phyu Phyu Thin, a member of the opposition National League for Democracy, was arrested on May 21 at her home after taking part in a campaign of prayer for the release of the party leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
No explanation was given for her arrest, and she staged a hunger strike to back her demand to be told why she was being held. She said she broke off the hunger strike after one week when a senior Rangoon Division police official promised her that she would hear positive news within a few days. At the time of her release on Monday evening she was told she could continue with her work, she said.
Phyu Phyu Thin said the government had a primary responsibility to combat HIV/AIDS, "but there are no government organizations that are giving such services as we do...What we can give to the patients is time, sympathy and caring...We can't stand aside by doing nothing."
Currently, Phyu Phyu Thin and other youth members of the NLD are providing care and counseling services for about 200 patients nationwide, including government civil servants, police, army personnel and even some members of the regime-supported Union Solidarity and Development Association-the organization whose members took part in the arrest in May of activists participating in the prayer campaign for Aung San Suu Kyi's release.
Phyu Phyu Thin told The Irrawaddy that the network of volunteers caring for HIV/AIDS patients needed to be expanded because of the nationwide prevalence of the disease.
The group of activists she heads provides 24-hour care and counseling for HIV/AIDS patients, accommodation in Rangoon for out-of-town patients and sends medicines to those living in rural areas.
The NLD has problems financing HIV/AIDS programs because it is unable to open a bank account to handle funds from outside Burma. For example, it is unable to access funding from the EU "Three Diseases Fund" initiative because the money was transferred in US dollars, which were a prescribed currency.
"We have no bank account to receive the funding the 3-D Fund gives us in dollars," said Phyu Phyu Thin. "If we use the dollars, the authorities can arrest us because holding and using dollars here is illegal."
As a result, the only anti-retroviral therapy was available at the government's Wai Bar Gi Infectious Diseases Hospital and AZG clinics of the Dutch branch of the French-based Medecins sans Frontieres. Supplies of the drug were limited, and since the beginning of this year, AZG clinics in Rangoon were unable to treat new patients with it, Phyu Phyu Thin said.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=7759
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Note from the Three Diseases Fund:
An article that appeared in The Irrawaddy on 3 July 2007 'Freed HIV/AIDS Activist Calls for Government Cooperation' contained some slight inaccuracies concerning the operation of The Three Diseases Fund.
The Three Diseases Fund (3DF) has been established by Australia, the European Commission, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK to help address the health needs of poor and vulnerable people in Myanmar.
To do so, the 3DF supports a programme of activities carried out by international and local NGOs, the UN, the private sector, and local-level government service providers to help reduce the transmission of HIV and AIDS, TB and malaria and to enhance the provision of treatment and care for those suffering from these diseases.
The 3DF was designed following consultations with a wide range of interested parties including the government of Myanmar, political parties and civil society groups both inside and outside the country.
3DF funds are n
ot available to any organisation with political affiliations. Furthermore, 3DF resources are only made available in local currency for implementing organisations within Myanmar that are providing services to address the three diseases.
Should you require further information regarding any aspect of the 3DF please do not hesitate to contact Mikko Lainejoki, Chief Executive Officer, The Three Diseases Fund, 137/1 Than Lwin Road, Yangon, Myanmar Tel: + 951 534 498, 504 832
Steve.NEEDHAM@ec.europa.eu
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The [him] moderator notes that the following article must have been written a couple of months ago.
A Brave, Caring Woman Now Also Needs Help
Naomi Mann/Rangoon
Irrawaddy
July 2, 2007
It's 9 a.m.-the time for Phyu Phyu Thin to visit the next boarding house for HIV/AIDS patients that she and other members of Burma's National League for Democracy have established in Rangoon. Unlike many aid organizations here, she doesn't have the luxury of a 4WD Pajero. Instead she has to squeeze into a local bus. Much of her long day is spent traveling between hostels and hospitals, time she could better spend helping the patients.
The hostels themselves are little more than holding pens. There is no electricity, no running water-not even beds. The 15 or so patients they normally house sleep side by side on reed mats. Food is cooked on charcoal braziers, although this often proves unaffordable and so pre-cooked meals have to be brought in from outside.
As Phyu Phyu Thin gives out the medicine she has brought, she tries to reassure the patients, raise them from their apathy, comfort the homesickness of those from remote rural areas where health care is non-existent.
Her voice exudes a benign authority that inspires both confidence and consolation. Shifting from their mats, they huddle around her like children around a storyteller. She does this day after day without respite-even her own house has become a refuge.
Phyu Phyu Thin has been an active member of the NLD since the popular uprising of 1988. Like so many other activists, she has also suffered imprisonment and torture at the hands of the ruling junta.
In September 2000, she was among a group of party members who had gathered outside Rangoon railway station to wave goodbye to their leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who had been freed from house arrest and was on her way to upper Burma. The 'special police' intervened and took the group away in masks in the back of a small van for interrogation. The group was later imprisoned in Rangoon's notorious Insein prison.
"I was with two other women", she told me. "For three days, we were kept in separate windowless rooms, there was no light of any kind so we never knew the time of day. There was no toilet and we had to lie in our own excrement. Without warning, we would be pulled out and questioned."
She was arraigned at a mock trial and sentenced to a prison term of indeterminate length. She shared a cell with several other female prisoners. "We survived by creating a routine-exercise in the morning, followed by chanting of Buddhist prayers, which we would then discuss. Our hopes were kept alive by rumors of a visit by the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross]. It was our only chance of communication with the outside world, but it never happened." She was released after four months and four days.
Her dedication, since that time, bears testimony to the commitment felt by members of the NLD toward those most at risk from the deepening humanitarian crisis that has engulfed Burma for well over a decade.
During the 1990s, the junta were in a state of denial, either that the problem of HIV existed or that it was important. Before 1993, it was illegal to carry a condom and until recently anyone found with one was considered to be a prostitute.
The generals resolutely stuck to the line "Myanmar's population does not take part in pre-marital sex or sex outside of marriage." As the number of victims began to mount, they were forced to rethink this attitude and a number of foreign NGOs were allowed to establish themselves in Rangoon. Some reports say that this openness only occurred after close family members of the ruling elite had themselves been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.
The NLD established its own HIV care and prevention section in 2002, after receiving a three week training from the UN, the only one it has ever been permitted.
With its rust colored gates and concrete floors, the small NLD office on Shwegondaing road looks more like a garage than the headquarters of an elected government. The dim and dusty interior is a clutter of old wooden furniture, without a computer in sight.
On one wall, hangs a colorful portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi, looking youthful and energetic, in stark contrast to the rather gaunt and tired looking figure I had briefly shaken hands with in 2003, a few days prior to the Depayin massacre, immediately after which she was rearrested. The office is often a hive of activity and it's a squeeze to maneuver through it to find Phyu Phyu Thin.
The HIV/AIDS section comprises just one cupboard and a rickety table at which we sit to talk. Given such meager resources, it's hard to imagine how any kind of organized effort can be made to help the growing number of HIV/AIDS patients who daily come for help at NLD offices up and down the country.
For most, the NLD is their only source of hope, since health care outside Rangoon is minimal, international organizations few and far between and family members and friends more likely to recoil in fear at the appearance of AIDS than lend a helping hand. Indeed, Phyu Phyu Thin explains, one of the greatest tasks she faces is to educate a largely illiterate and uneducated population about the realities of the disease.
The NLD's volunteer program for the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS involves either taking people for blood tests or helping those already diagnosed to obtain free anti retroviral treatment at one of five clinics run by Medecins sans Frontieres in Hlaing Thayer, Insein and Thaketa. These are three of Rangoon's poorest townships where seven out of 10 people who come to be tested are diagnosed positive. When we met, she was meeting more than 10 patients a day.
Enormous obstacles are put in her path by a regime apparently bent on sabotaging every initiative she tries to make. The regime stifles any humanitarian endeavor the NLD attempts to engage in, making it illegal to receive funding and prohibiting contact with any other aid agencies. To accomplish this they employ a "divide and rule" strategy where aid organizations are forced to sign a "memorandum of understanding" stating that they will not work with the democratic opposition. Failure to comply is threatened with expulsion from Burma.
The memorandum has sown the seeds of distrust and suspicion on both sides. Certain agencies have accused the NLD of incompetence, claiming the medicines they manage to procure are often of dubious quality. For its part, NLD youth activists accuse these same organizations of wastefulness and corruption. They cite the example of condoms, supposed to be delivered at affordable prices, regularly being sold at higher prices-the proceeds pocketed by unscrupulous employees.
Even more worrisome, despite promises to the contrary, they allege that MSF Holland, the largest provider of free treatment in Burma, is actually cutting back. Since Christmas 2006, according to Phyu Phyu Thin, 10 patients she and her colleagues have referred to the MSF clinics for help have died after being refused treatment. No adequate explanation has yet been offered.
These reports and denials point to the rift that currently exists between the NLD and the larger aid community, a situation directly caused by the junta's unwillingness either to allow NGOs to
work freely or admit a role for the NLD in the humanitarian crisis. This is despite the fact that the party possesses a country-wide network of offices and representatives capable of responding directly to local needs. Furthermore, as an elected government, it has a mandate to provide health care.
Phyu Phyu Thin takes me to one of the MSF clinics, which turns out to be a bamboo hut on the edge of nowhere. There are pigs rooting beneath the floor and it is uncomfortably hot. Before us in a line, a dozen or so emaciated figures, some held by family members, others propped against posts, are waiting to be seen.
A piece of blue plastic material strung over the roof is our only protection against the sun and everything is bathed in a surreal aquamarine. This is Burma's "front line" in the battle against HIV/AIDS.
HIV/AIDS activists aligned with the NLD are routinely followed by undercover policemen. Phyu Phyu Thin said activists who were recently arrested were accused of forming a terrorist cell to train suicide bombers. Last year, several activists wearing red ribbons of solidarity were arrested after peacefully holding a memorial service for a recently deceased colleague. The arresting officers told them the red ribbon was in fact a Muslim shawl and the regalia of insurgents.
Some of these same policemen reportedly turn secretly to the NLD for advice when worried that they might have contracted HIV.
Foreign governments find themselves treading a tightrope in their dealings with the NLD. on the one hand, they need the support of the opposition to add legitimacy to their aid efforts. on the other hand, some diplomats appear to doubt the motives of opposition activists and accuse them of politicizing an otherwise humanitarian issue.
Both the NLD and the exiled National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma have made their position on foreign aid clear, saying that international agencies have an obligation to work in close cooperation and consultation with the elected NLD leadership and the ethnic minorities.
The ill-fated Global Fund claimed to have taken special care to ensure that the NLD had a strong say in where funds should be allocated, one reason perhaps why its activities were monitored so closely. The British Department for International Development's country plan 2004 clearly states that "programs and projects should, as far as possible, be defined, monitored, run and evaluated in consultation with civil society and all democratic groups, including the National League for Democracy."
One of the most important tasks the NLD can perform is making certain that valuable funds do not fall into the hands of the many so-called "GONGOs"- Government Organized Non Governmental Organizations.)
Phyu Phyu Thin has little time to concern herself with the politics of aid. "The situation is worse now than ever before," she says. "I get 40 to 50 new cases a month of people urgently in need of treatment and there's nowhere for them to go, not even in Rangoon." In her opinion, "there's too much emphasis on education and not enough on treatment; treatment should come first".
There are an estimated 600,000 people with HIV in Burma, and Phyu Phyu Thin worries that the stream of migrants with the virus and seeking treatment in Rangoon may soon become a flood. Her young coworker, Ko Ye, interrupts, "but more marriages". We look at him quizzically. "Under the MSF scheme, married spouses get the same free treatment. Now everyone's marrying".
Irrawaddy.org
http://www.irrawaddy.org/
