Gandar Mount P.S.O

Human rights activists are demanding the Thai Goernment impose measures to pressure the Burmese Junta to stop its violent crackdown on mass anti-Junta protesters and called on the Government to review two mega-investment projects in Burma.

Ms Ladawan, head of Campaign for Democracy in Burma, said if Thailand suspended the construction of a hydropower dam which is on the Salween river and in the area of active Karen Ni Revolution force and a gas purchase contract it would have a direct economic impact on the Burmese Junta.

The question is whether the “Thai Government has the moral courage to take action,” she said.

Meanwhile China called on sides in Burma to exercise restraint on incident and told the foreign media not to worsen the situation by exaggerating events.

The unfolding crackdown by Burma’s Government against the democracy demonstrators, many of them Buddhist monks, has put China in a difficult position.

The Communist Government has developed close diplomatic ties with Burmese Government is major trading partner and investor.

However before the Beijing Olympics game, China has been fending off criticism that it shelters unpopular abusive regimes aroud the world.

The U.S President George W.Bush had also, earlier in September, called for reform of the council, citing disappointment with its failure to scrutinise the world’s worst human rights violators.

Two men “suspected Muslim terrorist” rammed a dump truck into agroup of jogging policemen and then and then tossed explosives into their bakkacks on August 2008, killing 16 officers and wounding others in China’s restive Central Asian border province.

The attack in Xinjiang province came just four days before the opening Peijing Olympics, an event that has put security forces nationwide on alert and that Muslim group has vowed to disrupt.

The local police called it a “suspected terrorist attack.”

The 2 attackers were captured, one was injured in the leg.

The attack was one of the deadliest and most brazen in recent years in Xinjiang province, where Muslims have waged a sporadically violent rebellion against Chinese rule.

related story on movement of Muslim terrorist in each country across the world will be continued

The prison in Insein of Rangoon, Burma and the prison in Xinjiang, China, there are abuses of due process and rule of law, are just the same.

Chinese Government and the Burmese Government used the war on terror as a front to persecute the politicians.

These trials appear to be no more than a ploy to opress religious freedom and ethnic minority groups.

To this day,execution take place immediately after sentencing, trails are totally closed off to any observers and still happen in total secrecy.

Xinjing is the only place in China where political prisoners are excuted and subjected to special forms of toture.

For instance, Peijing’s harsh pre-Olympic crackdown in China’s Muslim-populated far northwest Xinjiang region, in a closed trial of 15 minority “Muslim Uinghurs” on terrorism charges that led to the immediate execution of two of them.

The remaining are received life imprisonment.

The police had also killed 5 Uighurs men who authorites claim were part of a 15 member criminal gang allegedly trained for “holy war”.

In Burma, hundreds of politicians and students including women and Buddhis-monks have been tortured to death since 18-8-88, widespread political unrest in the country.

In Burma, Indians and Chineses, who bear in Burma, are really happy becaue they have never been involved with the politics as wellas never doubted to have been politicians or claimed to side against the Government and they only like to be in peace in line with the military Government’s policy.

But they are thinking about how to make money and how to save money.

For an example, they as the Burmese citizens and business-like bought houses,land and old factories at good location in Rangoon and Mandalay sold by the burmese.

Some of them moved to live outskirt city and the others moved to the small towns.

Bush signs law to ban gems trade

WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush on 29 July 2008 renewed a ban on imports from military-ruled Burma and also signed a new law that aims to keep Burma’s Gems from entering US markets via third-party countries.

In parallel the US treasury slapped financial sanctions on 10 companies owned or controlled by the Burmese Government or Government officials, including companies involved in the gem trade.

“On the Burmese regime,our message is: the United States believes in democracy and freedom,” Mr. Bush said during a White House ceremony in which he signed the two laws.

The Burmese freedom and Democracy Act renews a sanctions regime imposed since 2003 over the suppression of opposition leader Aung Sun Sukyi’s democracy movement.

Mr Bush also signed a new sanctions regime aimed at stopping gems including jade and rubies from entering the United State via third nations such as Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia.

The so-called Tom Lantos Block Burmese jade Act will deprive its ruling junta of hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue.

The gems trade is one of the most lucrative sources of profit for the Junta, accused of blatant human rights abuses and stifling democratic opposition.

The bill also makes the generals and their families ineligible for visas to the United States and enhances existing financial sanctions against the regime.

It includes new reporting requirements that will provide greater transparency about the Junta in terms of financial holdings,information about countries that provide military aid to the regime,and background on Burma’s timber trade.

The US sanctions targeted two state-controlled conglomerates, the Union of Burma Economic Holdings Limited and the Burma Economic Corporation, which are both involved in the gem trade, banking and construction directly and through subsidiaries. AFP

In the early 1800s the British East India Company’s imports of Chinese tea, rare silk and Eastern spices were of far greater value than England’s coarse exports to China.

To balance this trade deficit and open up more ports to British merchants, England smuggled Turkish
and Indian opium into China, ignoring a Chinese ban on the drug.

As tea imports into England rose, so did opium imports into China.

Eventually the Americans involved in this lucrative trade,and in the 1950s the lead of one of the largest smuggling companies was Franklin D.Roosevelt’s grandfather Warren Delano II.

Near the end of the 19th century ethnic Chinese Triads,which started in the 17th century as an underground network of patriotic citizens who opposed the conquering Manchus from Mongolia, derived their name from a Chinese concept that identifies the the three sides of an equilateral triangle with man, heaven and earth.

Their members were involved in various failed revolutions over the centuries,and most triads slowly evolved into convenient vehicles for thinly veiled thuggery.

The Triads attracted adventurers who found the upward path blocked in normal society.

By the 20th century their main resources and activity were the heroin trade, extortion, gambling and prostitution.

Members held meetings, not to resolve political problems but to assign assassination jobs to Red Poles, as their hit men were called.

From the very begining China’s most powerful triad members, the Chiu Chao, helped facilitate the opium trade.

The Chiu Chao were a seagoing people from southern China who migrated to many Southeast Asian countries.

In time, the Chiu Chao dominated smuggling and opium traffic along the China coast.

When Westerners imagined wicked Chinese pirates smuggling gold bars, drugs and frightened maidens,and lurking in the dark recesses of the Spice Islands, they were picturing the Chiu Chao Kingpins heading major banks in the region control the international narcotics trade from the Golden
Triangle of Indochina through Bangkok.

A: Khun Sa was the first man to have been capable to produce the pure white heroin in Asia, the brand name of the product, Double Lions straddling on globe, printed in red colour on plastic-bag which is for a kilogramm. The best quality brand as he kept superb Chemists from Taiwan and Hong Kong. They were highly offered by Khun Sa when the SUA force built its Strongholds in Ma Hin Dek where Khun SA’s Army had recruited young soldiers as well as momentous military equipments.

Q: Did Wa and Gogang groups produce the pure heroin? and did their drug business involve in the Drug trafficking of Khun Sa?

A: The 2 groups currently (in 1980) could not be able to produce good quality of the Heroin. The only 2 things Goang Gang could do were Opium-trade and tonns of collective raw opium in their Go Gang State alone. The Wa group was also did the same but depended Way Xu Gong. Pink colour of Mitzu, No. 3 stage not yet No.4 heroin, was refined by the Go Gang and swiftly sent to Hong Kong to further refine the 3 into 4. Because it could not keep last-long. They were not involved the politics but were named as regional Defence Force by the Burmese Ruler.

Q: Did you know about the work of US. DEA and UN Drug Eradication Program in Burma?
A: We had never had any information of these Agencies. Because they were inactive. The film-makers said, “our ducumentary would be presented to our Australian Authorities to consider prevention of Drugs-flow into the country. Australian people who carried drugs into Penang and Singapore were given Capital Punishment. We had also known that Australia was being one of transitpoints between Vietnam and New York street.”

The Major replied that we knew one of Khun Sa trusted men called him as Ko Nyo who had been staying in Sydney.

Documentry film-makers from Australia risked their lives to go into jungle of the Shan land although there were some risks in every adventure.

They were keen to know about opium growth, opum trade, heroin refineries and who were controlling biggest heroin product-ion in the Shan State? etc.

They however wanted to know most was about Khun Sa and his army, Wa army, Go Gang group and
Nationalist groups revolted against the Burmese Government.

The interview made in evening and 2 hours long.

Major Koan Mong was responsible to answer the questions and said “I’m read to respond frankly to your questions, Go ahead please!”

Q: How your SSA army’s situation currently ?
A: The situation of the SSA was currently in crisis and it was to be considered.

Q: What had really happen to your army ?
A: Our leaders Col. Sam Mong, Divisional Commander, and Col. Pan Aung, Senior financier in the party had been disappeared since in August 1978 in Thai soil. We believed that they were dead. It’s the great lost and it’s also the main reason that the SSA had to be confronted with difficulties. The 2 men had been trusted and highly respected by their subordinates. In the previous days the SSA with 4,000 strengths had been the second strongest force among the revolutionary groups in Burma while the Karin KNDO was the largest Army and being the most revolutionist. We anyway would continue our political movement.

Q: We believed that currently Khun Sa’s Shan United Army holding with modern military equipments was the strongest.How did you think that?
A: Yes it’s sure,but he’s not the politician and his armed force had not been fighting against the Government forces basing through-out Shan State. He had been doing for his own rich which being large involved with heroin trade.

Q: Howmany refinery he had and howmany ton the refinery was capable to produce pure white heroin ,estimatedly, and where did the heroin go?
A: Not less than 5 refineris around the mountainous areas of Loimaw west of Salween river where raw opium was collected as Loimaw was his native place. Vast productive opium- field was also under his strict control. Besides, opium from others merchants and privade collectors in Tang Yan district sold their opium to him. Refined heroin, it’s depending on the demand, had to be stocked as one “massive demanded massive productive”. Escalating heroin activity, from the switch to a biannual harvest by poppy farmers in the Shan State to doubling of heroin addicts in the USA. Accompanies the growing influence of the triads. Throughout much of the 1980s the USA attempted to curb the supply of heroin by providing Burma with millions of US dollars for poppy fields eradication efforts.This had minimal effect, and the US suspended all aid to the Burmese Government because of its brutal supression of a nationwide Democracy movement. Since then, heroin on US street had become more abundant than ever before. That was after Khun Sa moved to Ma Hin Dek, on Thai border of Chieng Rai,1976. According to mutual interests, which had made between Burmese Junta and Khun Sa in April 1973,Khun Sa drew up the six years plan for the control and eradication of opium and opium related crops. It was doubted that the plan was created by the Burmese and the Warlord was urged to do. Khun Sa ,as the opium King, promised to corporate with internation community to fight against narcotic drugs and submitted his six years plan. This was rejected by the Carter Administration on July in the same year.

Q: Had you ever met the opium King before? We would like to know about his Drugs transportion route and his drug gangs abroad including Australia?
A: No,I had never seen him but we as the Political group always observed and detected any armed group active in the Shan State. Therefore we tracked down Khun Sa’s every step.

- More interested Q And A on drug be continued -

Had the trafficking of Heroin alarm Australians?

In 1981, being in crisis situation, the SSA force scattered troughout Shan State and had been trying to survive by recollecting funds, which mostly taxed live-stock, opium, gems, antiques and sandalwood, from various merchandisers who crossed Salween River from west to east bank and continued to Thai boders of Mae Hong Son, Chiang Dao and Mae Sai.

The regrouped SSA soldiers commanded by Major Koan Mong as a breadwiner set tax collecting points in three ferries along east bank of the river, each route of ferry which is major link to the districts borders. The goods made in Thailand were also taxed when its merchants returned homes.

During a month alone hundreds of various traders included Chinese from Go Gang State, Ka Chin State, Shan State, Mo Goke, Mandalay etc, travelling by on foot and horses, using them as goods carriers, to the Thai border while Salween river was the main interim of the long journey.

The trip between the river and the border spent about 3 days if no harassment on the way.

Sometime Burmese armed troops robbed merchants while they were on patrol, fightings between armed drug-trafficking groups and the Burmese patrolled forces were also often bursted out in moutainous ares as well.

The Burmese soldiers, when they are in the jungle, were accused as the robbers.

They might have been instructed by their big master in the Regiment.

Three Austrlians, the Film-makers of Documentry which was said to have concerned with “Drugs and Politics” in Shan State of Burma, arrived in east Salween River to meet the SSA members by crossing Mae Hong Son border.

They only said they were from Australia and had contacted UPI (Unite Press International) based in Bangkok to be here.

They firstly met the SSA’s liaison officer in Mae Hong Son and then moved forwards to the river escorted by Shan guards.

They stayed there for 4 days to take pictures of various travellers and mule-caravan moving across west bank to east bank of the river.

The three infact wished to go inner-most of the battle fields and opium-grow in central Shan State, if they had an opportunity, as hoped to record on exchanged fires between rebels and Burmeses.

SSA could could not guarantee for their safety.

Interested interview had conducted, is it true that Australia is being transit- point of Drug trafficking?

—be continued—

Khun Sa continued order his gun men to kill his rival, the quality leaders of the SSA Nationalists, 2 years after the killing of Col. Sam Mong and his comrades.

Col. Pan Aung, Sao Boon Dai, President of the Political wing in the party, and Sao Seng Han, Foreign Affairs, were consecutively killed by closerange gun-shot in downtown Chiang Mai.

Soe Zung and Sao Boon Dai, both had frequently denounced Khun Sa’s policy as it was similar to the policy of former Cambodian Leader Bhon Pot.

Similar death occurred in Mae Hong Son when Major Sam Lek and Major Sam Car, SSA section commanders ,were shot near their homes in Kar Harn village outskirts Mae Hong Son.

The last one to be killed was Col.Sai Lek who accepted Khun Sa’s invitation that to work for the combined forces under leaders of KhunSa and Moe Haing, whose Mong Tai Army (MTA) established on 3 March 1985.

After Moe Haing died in 1991, Sai Lek with his men moved to Mong Mai headquarter and stayed there for months- long only, he suffered serious illness for a week under intensive care by a Shan Medical Dr., who is the regular Doctor (forgot his name) at Ho Mong Headquarters.

He had been responsible for the killing of Col.Sai Lek as he was seen to have injected medicine into Sai Lek’s blood-stream.

Sai Lek died at 5 am ,according to his personal guadrs and his friends sitting around him.

VDO camera had recorded the incidence of Sai Lek’s situation, being under ill treatment of the Doctor, until his death.

It was beyond doubt that Khun Sa oredred the killing.

It could not believe that such a man with tough body ,aged a bout 45,was easily died by minor illness.

He, half India-half Shan, as battalion commander had been known as one of the most active in military operrations and wanted by the Government.

His armed struggle in the jungle as long as about 25 year and with much experience of a series of fightings against the Burmese army had always rejected cease-fire talks with the Burmese.

But when the SSA was undermined and in the situation of political turning point, Col. Sai Lek Coincidenly accepted Khun Sa’s offer which he never thought that would be dangerous to his life.

It was also miscount of the victim.

Another top leader wanted by the Burmese and remained to be slain was Sao Wai, the son of first President of Burma Sao Shwe Theik, moved to Canada with his family from Chieng Mai.

He had been also invited by Khun Sa twice to head politics in the party.

He quited the politics since Col. Sam Mong disappeared and living in Chieng Mai long time as ordinary people before leaving for Canada for good.

Between 1978-1996 (in the period of 17 years)

The Shan soldiers, in a dilema, had to make a decisive answer for their future after being no return of their leaders.

Synchronously, some returned to the strongholds in the northern Shan State while others joined the SURA (Shan United Revolution Army) headed by Moe Haing.

The news of brutal assasination of the three behaved by Fa Lung and Khun Sa had to be concealed as could as poosible to save their dignity.

The murder of the three might not satisfy the Burmese Military Ruler so that Khun Sa must carry on the killing.

The top leaders and high-ranking officers active in the SSA’s political wing and military-operation commanders were to be slain.

To carry out this assignment, Khun Sa needed more time to have a good chance for his gunmen who stand up to the enemy and are involed with gun-running as well.

Khun Sa had many chances to fatally shoot the SSA member one by one after the SSA was seperated into four groups.

(1) Group led by Col.Soe Tent made cease-fire with the Government, (2) Group headed by Col.Sam Mai joined Moe Haing’s SURA force, (3) Group of High-Ranking politicians included Sao Boon Dai, Sao Wai, Khun Jar Nu, Sao Seng Han and Soe Zung, all were not only highly educated from Rangoon University but also well talking in English, retired and stayed in Chiang Mai and, (4) Group being the armed soldiers under command of Col.Sai Lek continued armed struggle around Namp Kham and Mu Se aeras closed China border.

Another one, also important in the Shan Revolution Council and Commander in chief, was Sao Soe Leant, graduated in Political Science, with his wife and 5 children surrendered to the Government because of disappointed with disunity in the party as well as its influence had been diminished.

As the members in the Shan group were separated and staying in different places.

Therefore they were the target of shooting and coincidently the victims were negligent in assasination disposed by Khun Sa.

The consecutive assasination carried on in Chieng Mai as Shan leaders were shot down in different ocasions one by one.

The dead were Soe Zung, Sao Seng Han and Sao Boon Dai.

—– Related story to be continued —–