More heavy rain hits N Korea, flooding buildings

This picture, taken by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency on July 30, 2012 shows houses being flooded at Anju city in South Phongan province, caused by typhoon and downpour.

ANJU: UN staff planned to visit storm-pounded counties in North Korea on Tuesday, after two days of heavy rain submerged buildings, cut off power, flooded rice paddies and forced people and their livestock to climb onto rooftops for safety

The rain Sunday and Monday followed downpours earlier this month that killed nearly 90 people and left more than 60,000 homeless, officials said.

The floods also come on the heels of a severe drought, fueling renewed food worries about a country that already struggles to feed its people.

Two-thirds of North Korea’s 24 million people face chronic food shortages, a UN report said last month, while asking donors for $198 million in humanitarian aid for the country. South Korean analyst Kwon Tae-jin said the recent flooding, coming so soon after the dry spell, is likely to worsen the North’s food problems.

North Korea-based United Nations staff will visit the two hardest-hit counties to see what help the UN team in the country might provide, Christopher de Bono, Unicef’s chief of communications for East Asia and the Pacific, said Tuesday.

He had no other details.
On Sunday and Monday, rain hit the capital, Pyongyang, and other regions, with western coastal areas reporting heavy damage.

In Anju city in South Phyongan province, officials reported 1,000 houses and buildings were destroyed and 2,300 hectares of farmland were completely covered.

The Chongchon River in Anju city flooded on Monday, cutting communication lines and submerging rice paddies and other fields, said Kim Kwang Dok, vice chairman of the Anju City People’s Committee, who told The Associated Press that the disaster is the worst in the city’s history.

Boats made their way through the muddy water that covered the city’s streets Monday. Many residents sat on their homes’ roofs and walls, watching the rising water.

A young man wearing only underwear stood on a building’s roof with two pigs; four women sat on another rooftop with two dogs.

Helicopters flew to various areas to rescue flood victims, state media reported.

Casualties from the latest rains were not immediately reported.

If it rains again before the water drains, the damage will be greater, Kim said.

Earlier this year, North Korea mobilized soldiers and workers to pour buckets of water on parched fields, irrigate farms and repair wells as what officials described as the worst dry spell in a century gripped parts of both North and South Korea.

North Korea does not produce enough food to feed its people, and relies on limited purchases of food as well as outside donations to make up the shortfall. It also suffered a famine in the mid- and late 1990s, the FAO and World Food Program said in a special report late last year.

Pakistan Railways avoids service disruption, for now

LAHORE: The financially troubled Pakistan Railways managed to continue its passenger train operations on Monday as it received desperately needed supply of over 200,000 litres of oil at the eleventh hour.
The situation started deteriorating last week when the railways was running out of diesel. To continue its operations, the management purchased diesel from the open market instead of waiting for supplies from the Pakistan State Oil (PSO).
Railway officials stressed that there was no payment dispute with the PSO and said the delay in fuel consignments was only due to the long distance a train has to cover for providing oil to different sheds.
The Lahore Loco shed got about 210,000 liters of diesel at 12.30 pm on Monday, which will be enough for the next three to four days. The Lahore division needs 60,000 litres of oil daily to run 24 express and passenger trains.
Talking to Our Sources, a railway official said, "We have no clue what would happen after this fuel ends as there is no other PSO consignment in the pipeline."
Last week, he said, was very tough as the railways ran out of money required for the purchase of fuel from the open market, but the management of Business Express, which has been outsourced to a private firm, provided relief as it paid some of the outstanding amount.
"The railways purchases fuel from this amount as no train is running in profit. For the last couple of days, we were facing difficulties in buying oil from the open market because of rumours of a possible increase in prices of petroleum products," the official said.
The fuel shortage disturbed the railways' schedule. It cancelled the departure of Faisalabad-bound Ghauri Express while rest of the express trains ran late.
However, a spokesperson for the Pakistan Railways ruled out any fuel shortage, terming it propaganda. He also denied payment problems with the PSO, saying the railways was still very far from its credit limit.
"There are 15 sheds to which the train has to provide fuel. Lahore is the last destination and that causes delay. The sheds have been provided with some one million litres of oil, which will be enough for the next four days. After that, a fresh consignment will provide fuel to all the sheds as per schedule," he said.
The spokesperson stressed that no train service was cancelled, but some trains left the platform a little bit late.
Commenting on the purchase of diesel from the open market, the spokesperson said whenever the administration feared about the late arrival of consignments, they purchased oil from the open market to continue with its operations.

Taliban happy Pakistan reopened Nato supply line

Trucks containing Nato supplies. — Reuters Photo

KANDAHAR: As the United States trumpeted its success in persuading Pakistan to end its seven-month blockade of supplies for Nato troops in Afghanistan, another group privately cheered its good fortune: the Taliban.  
One of the Afghan war’s great ironies is that both Nato and the Taliban rely on the convoys to fuel their operations — a recipe for seemingly endless conflict.
The insurgents have earned millions of dollars from Afghan security firms that illegally paid them not to attack trucks making the perilous journey from Pakistan to coalition bases throughout Afghanistan — a practice the US has tried to crack down on but admits likely still occurs.
Militants often target the convoys in Pakistan as well, but there have been far fewer reports of trucking companies paying off the insurgents, possibly because the route there is less vulnerable to attack.
Pakistan’s decision to close its border to Nato supplies in November in retaliation for US air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani troops significantly reduced the flow of cash to militants operating in southern and eastern Afghanistan, where the convoys travel up from Pakistan, said Taliban commanders.
Pakistan reopened the supply route in early July after the US apologised for the deaths of the soldiers.
”Stopping these supplies caused us real trouble,” a Taliban commander who leads about 60 insurgents in eastern Ghazni province told The Associated Press in an interview.
”Earnings dropped down pretty badly. Therefore the rebellion was not as strong as we had planned.”
A second Taliban commander who controls several dozen fighters in southern Kandahar province said the money from security companies was a key source of financing for the insurgency, which uses it to pay fighters and buy weapons, ammunition and other supplies.
”We are able to make money in bundles,” the commander told the AP by telephone.
”Therefore, the Nato supply is very important for us.”
Both commanders spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted by Nato or Afghan forces, and neither would specify exactly how much money they make off the convoys.
The US military estimated last year that $360 million in US tax dollars ended up in the hands of the Taliban, criminals and power brokers with ties to both. More than half the losses flowed through a $2.1 billion contract to truck huge amounts of food, water and fuel to American troops across Afghanistan.
The military said only a small percentage of the $360 million was funnelled to the Taliban and other insurgent groups. But even a small percentage would mean millions of dollars, and the militants, who rely on crude weaponry, require relatively little money to operate.
The military investigated one power broker who owned a private security company and was known to supply weapons to the Taliban.
The power broker, who was not named, received payments from a trucking contractor doing business with the US Over more than two years; the power broker funnelled $8.5 million to the owners of an unlicensed money exchange service used by insurgents.
A congressional report in 2010 called ”Warlord, Inc.” said trucking contractors pay tens of millions of dollars annually to local warlords across Afghanistan in exchange for guarding their supply convoys, some of which are suspected of paying off the Taliban.
The military instituted a new, roughly $1 billion trucking contract last September with a different set of companies that it claims has reduced the flow of money to insurgents by providing greater visibility of which subcontractors those firms hire, said Maj Gen Richard Longo, head of a US anti-corruption task force in Afghanistan.
But it’s very difficult to cut off the illegal transfers completely, he said.
”I think it would be naive on my part to suggest that no money is going to the enemy,” said Longo.
”I think there is still money flowing to criminals, and I think that the nexus between criminals and the insurgency is there.”
Rep John Tierney, the Democrat from Massachusetts who led the Warlord, Inc report, said the new contract has resulted in some increased contractor oversight and accountability, but ”the Department of Defense must take more aggressive steps to keep our military personnel safe and to protect taxpayer dollars from going to our enemies in Afghanistan.”
The US pushed Pakistan hard to reopen the Nato supply line through the country because it had been forced to use a longer route that runs into northern Afghanistan through Central Asia and costs an additional $100 million per month.
The Taliban commanders interviewed by the AP said the northern route was less lucrative for them because fewer trucks passed through southern and eastern Afghanistan, and contractors seemed to have less money to direct toward the insurgents. It’s unclear if that is a result of the new trucking contract implemented by the military.
But the commanders said they were determined to get their cut as the flow of trucks resumes from Pakistan — a process that has been slowed by bureaucratic delays, disputes over compensation and concerns about security.
“We charge these trucks as they pass through every area, and they are forced to pay,” said the commander operating in Ghazni. “If they don’t, the supplies never arrive, or they face the consequence of heavy attacks.”
Prior to the November attack, the US and other Nato countries shipped about 30 per cent of their non-lethal supplies from Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi through two main crossings on the Afghan border.
The route through Pakistan will become even more critical as the US seeks to withdraw most of its combat troops by the end of 2014, a process that will require tens of thousands of containers carrying equipment and supplies.
“We have had to wait these past seven months for the supply lines to reopen and our income to start again,” said the Taliban commander in Ghazni. “Now work is back to normal.”

Burmese Traders Urge China to Cut Border Tariffs

The Sino-Burmese border in Shan State’s Muse. (Photo: Renaud EGRETEAU) Burmese businessmen are complaining of increased import tariffs imposed by the Chinese authorities at the Sino-Burmese border that have slashed their profits.
Traders say taxes have been increased on Burmese exports while loans for firms seeking to trade with Burma have been made more difficult to acquire during China’s slowest economic growth in more than three years.
“The Chinese authorities changed their policy on Burma after the new government. They increased taxes on our products,” local exporters told The Irrawaddy. “The Chinese government has increased taxes on agricultural products, mining products, jade and jewelry, etc.”
Rice imports from Burma to China are subject to a whopping 65 percent tax and so such trade only usually takes place through illegal cross-border smuggling. Burmese rice is of such poor quality that it falls short of World Trade Organization standards making it privy to high penalties.
Every month over 70,000 metric tons of rice flows to China illicitly from Burma and local rice exporters are urging Naypyidaw to encourage Beijing to help legitimize the trade by imposing a reasonable level of tax.
“We will talk with ministries in China to trade our agricultural products legally. We will ask them to buy our rice,” said rice trader Win Myint during an industrial meeting in the Burmese capital Naypyidaw at the beginning of June.
Beijing also increased tax on Burmese jade from 15 to 33 percent and so reducing demand from Chinese dealers, claim traders attending a jade exhibition in Naypyidaw.
“We cannot sell our jade products to Western and European countries because of sanctions. Therefore we sell our jade to China and their jade traders had to pay 15 percent tax on jade materials to their government before,” a jade trader from Mandalay told The Irrawaddy.
“China can then make handicrafts and jade accessories from Burmese materials and sell these on to Western countries with a high profit. After the Chinese government increased the tax on jade materials bought from Burma, Chinese traders lost money in the jade business as they cannot get the same profit.”
If we can sell our jade as products and accessories, we wouldn’t sell to China but export directly to Western countries instead, he added. While the Asean-China Free Trade Area came into effect on Jan. 1, this does not apply for cross-border trade which remains subject to locally-set tariffs.
Currently the Chinese government also does not provide the same low interest loans to jade dealers as other businesses, claim local businessmen. When Burmese traders sell jade at the Sino-Burmese border, they have to pay 12 percent tax on the product’s value to Burma’s Ministry of Mining as well as 33 percent tax to the Chinese government.
The price of groundnut oil is also problematic because Chinese traders buy the raw material and manufacture oil over the border rather than purchasing the finished product from Burma at higher prices, said Khin Soe, owner of Ayeyarwaddy Peanut Oil Trading Company.
“Our government should ask China to accept edible oil from Burma instead of buying the groundnuts themselves and producing oil over the border,” he said. “We want to sell value-added products which can create job opportunities and develop of local industries at home.”
Burma’s fisheries sectors also face high taxes from China on imported seafood amounting to 13 percent.
“We can get free tax on our products from China as China also agrees to trade with Asean countries according to AFTA [Asean Free Trade Area],” said Tun Aye, chairman of the Myanmar Fishery Products Processors and Exporters Association.

Burma Rejects UN Criticism of Riot Response

---

People shift through damaged buildings in Sittwe, capital of Rakhine state, western Burma, June 16, 2012.

Burmese officials have told a visiting U.N. human rights expert that security forces exercised "maximum restraint" in responding to deadly riots between Buddhists and Muslim Rohingyas in the country's west last month.

In a statement Monday, the Burmese foreign ministry said it "strongly rejects" accusations that authorities engaged in abuses and excessive force to end the violence that killed more than 70 people in Rakhine state. Burmese officials discussed the situation in Rakhine with U.N. expert Tomas Ojea Quintana on Monday.

Last week, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said the Burmese government's response to the communal violence "may have turned into a crackdown targeting Muslims, in particular members of the Rohingya community."

Earlier this month, London-based rights group Amnesty International also said it has "credible reports" of Rakhine Buddhists and security forces targeting Rohingyas and other Rakhine Muslims with "physical abuse, rape, destruction of property and unlawful killings."

The Burmese foreign ministry said it "totally rejects" what it calls "attempts by some quarters to politicize and internationalize this situation as a religious issue." It said Burma is a multi-religious country where people of different faiths have lived together in peace for centuries.

Quintana said he plans to visit Rakhine on Tuesday.

The UNHCR has said last month's riots displaced about 80,000 people, with most living in camps or with host families in nearby villages. The Burmese government has said most of the refugees are Muslims.

The riots began after the rape and murder of a local Buddhist woman on May 28 and a subsequent revenge attack by Buddhists who killed 10 Muslims on June 3. Burma's government refuses to recognize the country's estimated 800,000 Rohingyas as an ethnic group and many Burmese consider them to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Also Monday, Quintana visited Rangoon's Insein Prison to meet with political prisoners, including Wai Phyo Aung, who is suffering from cancer. The detainee's wife Ma Htay Htay attended the meeting and said the U.N. expert promised to help.

“He said he has been calling for the release [of political prisoners] along with [the] international community, and told us that he will push further for the release of my husband as he is terminally ill," she said. "He also pledges that he will try to let the international community know how my husband’s health -- liver cancer and paralysis --  has deteriorated from a lack of proper medical care.”

Burma has released hundreds of political prisoners since last year, when a civilian government with close ties to the military came to power, ending decades of harsh military rule. But some rights groups say hundreds of prisoners-of-conscience remain in government detention and should be freed.

Opening for Investment, Burma Faces Human Rights Challenges

STATE DEPARTMENT — More foreign firms are moving into Burma with the easing of U.S. and European sanctions, following recent political reforms. But the Obama administration says it expects U.S. investors to lead by example in improving labor conditions, amid concerns that a more open Burma could worsen human trafficking.

U.S. and European sanctions hurt Burma's banking sector, making it harder for foreign firms to invest.

But with those sanctions eased, Google, Coca-Cola and General Motors are leading the charge into Burma. Meeting with corporate leaders before the largest-ever U.S. trade mission to the country, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she expects them to be agents of positive change by doing business responsibly.

Clinton has told Burmese President Thein Sein that Washington will respond to reforms on an action-for-action basis, as his government legalizes trade unions, eases media censorship, and frees political prisoners.

But with a 30 percent poverty rate, UNICEF's Burma representative Ramesh Shrestha says one of the biggest risks in Burma is child exploitation. "If government opens up as it said, democratically, then obviously it opens up for everything. That would mean the existing bad control of the situation might be loosened up. That would mean people would do what they want to do. This could be legal or illegal, all these things could happen," he said.

Jesse Eaves, the senior policy adviser for child protection at the aid group World Vision, says the important thing is that positive steps are being made. "We have seen countries like Burma starting to really take a look at what is happening in its own borders, what is happening to their citizens and trying to take the proper response to it," he said.

Eaves says World Vision is raising awareness about human trafficking and child exploitation in Burma by working with survivors to speak out. "It is amazing the change that you can see just by addressing the issue, by bringing it out in the open and shining a light on it," he said. "I think the biggest problem we see is that most people do not know what it is that they are looking at. They may just think, 'This is normal. This is what we have always done.'"

Lex Rieffel, an economic expert at the Brookings Institution, says the speed of Burma's economic reform could challenge welfare and development programs. "We have seen a pattern where countries that invest heavily in natural resources tend to under invest in human resources.  Experience tells us that it is the investment in human resources that pays off in the long term," he said.

But Britain's investment chief Nick Baird says foreign firms can make a big impact in Burma. "It is not just economic, but working together in an open and transparent and responsible business way, will actually help the stability of this country," he said.

The message is echoed by the new U.S. ambassador to Burma, Derek Mitchell, who says outside investment can move the country toward greater transparency and accountability.

Burma: The ignored genocide

I have been reluctant to write about Burma (Myanmar) and what is happening to Muslims there. Many readers have told me that I should. My answer was always that I needed to know more before I could give my opinion. I then started following what was being written and said in the international media, like NPR radio and BBC, and here in Saudi Gazette. I found particularly useful the articles of Tariq Almaeena and Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdy. I also read the responses of the Burmese readers of this paper.

According to Dr. Al-Ghamdy (a former Saudi diplomat who specializes in Southeast Asian affairs), Arakan (Rakhine) province of today’s Burma was an independent kingdom for much of its history. “A vast region stretching from western Burma to the Bengal region, Arakan was weakened when war broke out with the Mughal rulers in India, especially when it lost the Chittagong region to the Mughals. The region’s weaker position and instability led to its annexation to the Burmese state.”
The British invaded and controlled the state, but after the end of World War II, they granted the state its independence, in 1948. The Arakan people demanded their own independence. They did not accept the “self rule” awarded to them by the Socialist government under General Ne Win in 1974. Arakan Muslim “mujahideen” led an armed rebellion to create an Islamic state. However, they were a minority among the people of the region, who belonged to various sections of the pluralist Burmese society.

In retaliation, Muslims found their nationality abrogated and the majority Buddhists taking repressive measures against them with government support. Since the 1960s, they have been subjected to ethnic cleansing, and many have been driven to neighboring Bangladesh, where they live in refugee camps. Others fled to neighboring Thailand, and to Saudi Arabia. More followed, as frequent massacres continued.

This year on June 3, according to Wikipedia, “11 innocent Muslims were killed by the Burmese Army and Buddhist mobs after bringing them down from a bus. A vehement protest was carried out in the Muslim majority province of Arakan, but those protesting fell victim to the tyranny of the mobs and the army. More than 50 people were reported killed and millions of homes destroyed in fires as Muslim-ethnic Rohingya and Buddhist-ethnic Arakanese clashed in western Burma.”

Under intense economic and security pressure, the Bangladesh government decided to close its borders. World relief agencies, as well as UN and Islamic leaders and organizations, tried to convince them to reconsider, promising more aid and support. Among these were the UN High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR), the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Asian Human Rights Commission.

However, with over half a million refugees already there, Bangladesh argued that the pressure should be on the Burmese government to stop the massacres and take back its own people. Allowing more refugees to enter Bangladesh, they pointed out, might create a misunderstanding in Myanmar.

To me, what is happening to the Rohingyas is similar to events in the Muslim south of the Philippines, Eastern China, Chechnya, Bosnia and Kosovo. In all these lands, Muslim states were overtaken by larger non-Muslim nations. When they sought independence, they were suppressed by the stronger majority. Massacres and deprivation of essential and national human rights led to genocide and ethnic cleansing.

The world stood watching while Russian, Serbian, Chinese and Filipino forces and militias exercised their “Final Solution” to the “Muslim Problem.” In Europe, they finally woke up as a result of coverage by the global media and public opinion pressure. Thanks to strong US leadership, the holocaust was finally put to an end, and Muslims were allowed to have their own states and live in peace.

Not so in Burma. Western media presence has been weak. UN focus has been even weaker. The US, the European Union, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, as well as the Muslim world, seem to have left the massive task of resolving the issue to nongovernmental organizations and charities.

The Burmese government finally decided to interfere and sent the army and security forces to control the violence and to attempt to convince the refugees who escaped to neighboring provinces to return home. Fearing political interference, the military rulers allowed international help, albeit reluctantly, selectively and gradually. And the opposition leader, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi finally spoke out.

Acknowledging that she might lose much of her popularity at home, she denounced the crimes committed against unnamed local communities. In her first statement to parliament, she called for laws to protect minority rights. “The majority of the people in a society should have sympathy for the minority,” she said. Some of her international fans expected her to take a stronger stand, but one should consider that she has to deal with the military junta ruling the country, and to consider her majority Buddhist constituency. There is an urgent need for immediate solutions, but in the long run much more is required. Burmese refugees in Bangladesh, and elsewhere, must be allowed to return home. Self rule should be given to Muslims in their own state. Help and guarantees from the Burmese government and international community must be granted to the the people in the affected areas of the country in support of resettlement and rebuilding efforts. After all that the world has gone through in the last century, we cannot afford to ignore genocides and holocausts.