Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
05BANGKOK2636
2005-04-19 00:49:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Bangkok
Cable title:  

BURMESE PRO-DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT IN THAILAND: DOWN

Tags:  PGOV PHUM PREF TH BM BURMA 
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This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 BANGKOK 002636 

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR EAP, EAP/BCLTV, PRM. HQ USPACOM FOR FPA HUSO

E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/08/2015
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PREF TH BM BURMA
SUBJECT: BURMESE PRO-DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT IN THAILAND: DOWN
BUT NOT OUT

REF: A) CHIANG MAI 87 B) RANGOON 440

Classified By: Political Counselor Robert J. Clarke, Reason: 1.4 (d)

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 BANGKOK 002636

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR EAP, EAP/BCLTV, PRM. HQ USPACOM FOR FPA HUSO

E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/08/2015
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PREF TH BM BURMA
SUBJECT: BURMESE PRO-DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT IN THAILAND: DOWN
BUT NOT OUT

REF: A) CHIANG MAI 87 B) RANGOON 440

Classified By: Political Counselor Robert J. Clarke, Reason: 1.4 (d)


1. (SBU) SUMMARY: Nearly 2,000 out of 2,707 United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) persons of
concern (POC) have reported to Thai immigration offices in
Bangkok and three provincial offices in Northern and Western
Thailand. The largest number reported to the Mae Sot
immigration office in Tak province, where 786 persons showed
up to register and were later transported to the remote Nu
Pho refugee camp on the Thai Burma border. In Bangkok, 243
more registered and await transport to border camps. All the
POCs who registered by March 31 know that they are eligible
for potential -- even likely -- resettlement to a third
country in the near future. Burmese pro-democracy groups are
still concerned and evaluating their tenuous status in
Thailand and the effect the loss of some of their membership,
many of whom have reported to Nu Pho as POCs, could have on
their struggle. The groups' Thai government contacts, who
have so far allowed them to operate in Thailand, have been
silent about the future, leading some Burmese activists to
call this initial post-deadline phase a "honeymoon period."
END SUMMARY.

MOST POCs REGISTER FOR MOVEMENT TO REFUGEE CAMPS


2. (U) Out of 2,707 POCs on a list agreed to by the Royal
Thai government (RTG) and UNHCR as eligible for POC status
and thus required by the RTG to be in the refugee camps by
March 31, 1,995 voluntarily registered and 752 did not. 418
persons were moved to the Ban Don Yang Camp in Sangklaburi
Province, 410 persons to the Tham Hin Camp in Ratchaburi
province, and 786 were moved to Nu Pho camp in Tak province.
243 persons registered in Bangkok at the Special Detention
Center (SDC),and another 49 persons were allowed to stay in
Bangkok hospitals for medical reasons. Those at the SDC will
be moved at a later date to one of the border camps.

PROCESSING TO CAMPS GOES SMOOTHLY


3. (U) During a trip to Mae Sot on April 4 and 5, Poloff met
with staff from the refugee relief assistance NGO, Thai-Burma

Border Consortium (TBBC),and representatives of the UNHCR.
Our contacts commented that in light of the relatively short
notice (the official decision to enforce the March 31
deadline was announced on March 7),the transfer of the 786
persons who registered from Mae Sot town to the Nu Pho camp
went very well. They noted that morale among the Burmese POCs
was generally upbeat. Even after the 5 hour drive from Mae
Sot town to Nu Pho, the new arrivals seemed to be settling in
well. There was a shortage of permanent housing but
construction for new housing had already begun. Most of the
POCs were scattered throughout the camp, residing in Buddhist
temples, mosques, schools and community centers. 87 former
staff and their families from Dr. Cynthia Maung's Mae Tao
clinic were among the new arrivals and staying in some of the
new permanent housing and assisting in the monitoring of 14
unaccompanied minors, including several former child
soldiers. Approximately 17 persons (49 including dependents)
were allowed to stay out of the camp for medical reasons,
most of them pregnant women. 40 per cent of the POCs are
Karen, another 40 per cent are Burman and the remaining 20
per cent are of various ethnic groups, including some from
the Arakan youth organization.


4. (U) Many of the POCs had already sent complaints to NGOs
about the spartan living conditions: thin mattresses on
floors, no electricity, no cell phones and no computers or
internet access. Yet many, including several medics, medical
doctors and teachers, also readily chipped in to organize and
provide assistance. Because of their help, UNHCR and TBBC
noted, registration and movement to the camp went smoothly.


5. (U) One problem noted in the media was the alleged
presence of Burmese military intelligence on the Thai-Myanmar
Friendship Bridge. Several witnesses confirmed seeing a
uniformed Burmese officer photographing POCs in the Thai
Immigration compound at the foot of the bridge on the Thai
side. UNHCR and TBBC staff at the registration site could
not, however, confirm the presence of Burmese intelligence in
the actual compound as reported in some press reports.

DR. CYNTHIA'S CLINIC: QUIET BUT STILL WORKING


6. (C) Mae Tao clinic founder, Dr. Cynthia Maung, and several
of her staff spoke with Poloff in an unusually quiet office
at her famous clinic, which has been providing healthcare to
Burmese refugees, internally displaced persons (IDP) and
migrants for over 15 years. Symptomatic of changes underway
in the Burmese exile community in Mae Sot, the clinic had
just a handful of outpatients there for treatment, but
several beds were full with the usual patient load of
pregnant women, new mothers and several cases of malaria.
Dr. Cynthia lamented the loss of 87 of her 200 staff over the
last 18 months, 30 of whom left last week. "Our work here in
Mae Sot will be affected the most," she said, adding that
many of her office staff and most experienced trainers had
left for Nu Pho. Her immigration status in Thailand or
"permit to stay" and those of 10 others at Mae Tao clinic is
unaffected. She also admitted that there is an unending
stream of workers from inside Burma willing to replace the
lost staff. The problem is training them. Dr. Cynthia noted
that the clinic's work with IDPs inside Burma will be mostly
unaffected as those working with medical "backpack" teams
don't stay in Thailand anyway.

BURMESE POLITICAL GROUPS: WORKING WITH LESS


7. (C) On the political side, the Association for Assistance
to Political Prisoners (AAPP) is now down to about 3 to 4
core leaders, according to the group's Joint Secretary, Bo
Kyi, who met with Poloff in Bangkok on his way to the United
Nations Human Rights Commission (UNCHR) meeting in Geneva.
At Bo Kyi's urging, Poloff agreed not try to contact other
AAPP representatives in Mae Sot at this sensitive time. Bo
Kyi noted that the AAPP may move its office in Mae Sot in the
near future and play a very low key role on the Thai side,
although he maintained that his group's assistance activities
to political prisoners inside Burma will remain mostly
unaffected.


8. (C) In Chiang Mai, ConGen hosted a lunch discussion on
April 1 for Bangkok Poloff and Burmese information groups
that conduct journalism and human rights documentation
training. Pro-democracy dissidents who also attended
outlined many of the concerns highlighted in Ref A and
expressed apprehension about colleagues and family who had
already registered in Mae Sot town and been transported to Nu
Pho camp. All of the groups U.S. officers spoke with, except
the Human Rights Education Institute of Burma (HREIB),have
lost staff. Many of the senior leaders of dissident
organizations had a POC letter from UNHCR but have either
turned the letter in to the Mae Sot UNHCR or have just not
shown up to register. These exiles have made separate
arrangements that allow them to operate in Thailand, either
getting a Burmese "passport" with a Thai visa, or a work
permit under Thailand's migrant labor scheme. These are
usually arranged with help through Thai intelligence and/or
Ministry of Interior or Police and are usually under a
different name.

LOST SOME "FOOT SOLDIERS"


9. (C) Representatives from Internews, the Open Society
Institute (OSI),the National League for Democracy--Liberated
Area (NLD-LA),the National Council of the Union of Burma
(NCUB) and the Human Rights Education Institute of Burma
(HREIB) all had a similar message -- we've lost many of our
"foot soldiers" who served as office workers performing data
entry, bookkeeping, and word processing, to produce the
varied human rights and information publications along the
border. But the front-line leadership of many of these
groups is, for now, OK.

BUT THE WORK WILL GO ON...


10. (C) While HREIB, which conducts training in human rights
documentation and reporting and other capacity-building
activities, doesn't have a human resources problem, the
ability of its staff and trainees to travel easily and to
train in Thailand, is severely limited at this time. The
"fee" for one-way travel for three persons from Mae Sot to
Chiang Mai (350 kilometers) is now up to 7,000 baht ($185),
including a complementary Thai intelligence escort. One
training session can cost over 30,000 baht ($790),just for
travel expenses. Without these special arrangements,
trainers and trainees would be subject to arrest by police
and immigration. Most groups operating in Mae Sot feel that
they are relatively safe on their own in the town of Mae Sot.
But when HREIB last year tried to conduct training, the site
was raided by Thai immigration on the second day and everyone
was asked to leave.

..PERHAPS MORE ON THE OTHER SIDE


11. (C) The real change of focus for HREIB will most likely
be their trainees. They expect that most of their future
trainees now will come from inside Burma, from ethnic Karen,
Kayah, Karenni and Shan groups who don't operate much on the
Thai side anyway. HREIB staff admitted this was not
necessarily a bad thing but will require a shift in where the
training sessions are held, who does the training and the
frequency of follow up sessions.

NLD AFFECTED BUT STILL TALKING ACTIVELY


12. (C) Nyo Ohn Myint of the NLD-LA stated that his group is
among the most affected -- down to 5 members from a high of
230 several years ago. The leadership now has to pull
"double duty," attending meetings in Thailand or abroad,
while trying to maintain day-to-day production of
newsletters, email alerts and funding proposals. Ngo Ohn Myi
noted that Mae Sot almost seems like a "ghost town". Most
activists felt more at risk there than in Chiang Mai, where
they can blend with the much larger urban population. He
added that outside Chiang Mai many Burmese exiles are
frequently subject to pressure for bribes by police, whether
at traffic stops or anywhere in public. (Note: Poloff noted
four checkpoints along the drive east from Mae Sot to the
provincial capital of Tak. End Note.)


13. (C) While the NLD LA and representatives from the Burma
Fund, Win Min and Aung Naing Oo, were lamenting their
situation in Mae Sot, they perked up when they spoke of
activities inside Burma. They claimed to have regular, back
channel communications with Aung San Suu Kyi (ASSK). (Note:
Embassy Rangoon notes that ASSK,s ability to communicate
with anyone outside of her compound remains highly restricted
and no independent observer is known to have seen her since
UN Special Envoy Razali visited Burma in March 2004. End
Note.) Win Min stated that the NLD has plans for a
coordinated public action on June 18, ASSK,s birthday, which
may include work stoppages, stay at home campaigns, or
complete avoidance of major public area, such as temples,
markets or other public gathering places.

14. (C) The National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB),s
Political Defiance Committee (PDC) representative in Mae Sot
told poloff that he was enthused by recent public statements
by Buddhist clergy critical of the SPDC and the
"unregistered" vehicles seized from Khin Nyunt cronies, some
of which were apparently donated to temples and now must be
returned to the GOB (See Ref B). The monks claimed that some
senior monks had criticized SPDC leaders not only for their
failure to control corruption, but also for involving the
clergy by donating contraband to temples. Poloff's PDC
source also gave details of recent arrivals in the border
area, including two eyewitnesses to the May 2003 Depayin
incident which led to the deaths of at least 70 persons and
the re-arrest of ASSK. The arrivals also included three
former immigration and police officers with former military
intelligence connections who fled Burma for fear of arrest.

KAREN GROUPS MOSTLY UNAFFECTED FOR NOW


15. (C) Karen National Union (KNU) executive committee
members David Tharckabaw and Mahn Sha Lah Phan (also of the
NCUB PDC),told poloff that they see the POC deadline to
report to camps as just another victory for the "business
interests," a win over the "nationalist interests" in the
Thai military and government. Both said that they still have
local support from the intelligence and military community
along the border, but appeared uncertain about how long they
can hold out against Thai business goals of developing
"national economic zones" in Tak province and beyond. They
said they expected the U.S. to intervene if there were a
"crackdown", i.e. arrest and deportation by the Thais. They
sensed the Thais are so preoccupied at the moment with
problems in the South of Thailand that they hadn't much time
to worry about the Burma border. The recent failure of
cease-fire talks and their apparent "down-grading," where
only a SPDC regional commander was present who would only
discuss certain areas of Karen territory, was not well
received by either KNU membership or the Thais after the KNU
delegation returned last month. Subsequently, pressure from
the Thai to come to some sort of cease-fire agreement has
lessened.


16. (C) Our KNU contacts stated that, by their estimation,
the Burmese Army (BA) along the Karen front is in a shambles.
Low morale, poor health, sanitation and food, and many
instances of human rights violations indicate a demeaned and
undisciplined BA force, they said. The KNU said the Burmese
soldiers are easy to track and to evade, often are commanded
by very junior officers, and often use child soldiers as
porters or to lay landmines. One recent SPDC defector told
them, "We are officers in name only." (Comment: Local
religious and community leaders in the Karen State capital of
Hpa-An told visiting Embassy Rangoon officers on April 7 that
"there is no question" the GOB is the most influential
authority in Karen State and that BA troops are in "firm and
confident control" of almost all territory in the state. End
Comment). Only a few active KNU members opted for POC status
and transfer to camps, so Tharckabaw and Mahn Sha claimed
that their administrative and organizing activities inside
claimed KNU territory in Burma will remain unaffected.
However, the KNU executive committee members did appear
concerned about their communications and public relations
platform in Thailand being more restricted or even taken
away. Poloff inquired about the former "rebel capital" of
Manerplaw, which was taken by the Burma Army in 1995 and was
at one time home to representatives from various ethnic rebel
armies, nearly all of which now enjoy cease-fire agreements
of one kind or another with the SPDC. The KNU contacts
maintained that they could easily retake it but don't have
the resources to maintain and hold it as a base if the Burma
Army were to mount a counteroffensive


17. (C) Poloff also met with the executive members of the
Committee for Internally Displaced Karen People CIDKP). They
described their position as "tenuous," but said the RTG
tolerates them as long as they remain exclusively in Mae Sot.
This does not really present a problem, as their relief and
education activities, focused across the border in Karen
state, do not require them to go beyond Mae Sot (and as long
as there is not significant spillover fighting along the
border). The CIDKP noted that since former Burmese Prime
Minister Khin Nyunt,s ouster in October 2004, there has been
an increased tempo of attacks by the SPDC as well as more
reports of human rights violations.


18. (C) Comment: After granting several extensions, the RTG
stood firm on its March 31 deadline for "urban refugees" to
register to enter camps to await resettlement. The RTG
message and position was: you are either a refugee in the
camp, a POC in the refugee camp awaiting a resettlement
interview, or a registered migrant worker. At this time, the
RTG does not seem inclined to pursue a course of all-out
door-to-door arrests and subsequent deportations of Burmese
who do not fall into these categories. (Note: NSC Chief
General Winai recently reiterated privately that the RTG has
no intention of doing any such thing. End Note.) While many
of the Burmese pro-democracy movements based here believe
that this latest development will have an impact on their
effectiveness, most of them also acknowledge that they are
still able to continue to perform limited work under "special
arrangements" with their "Thai friends," i.e. sympathetic
Thai intelligence or security authorities. Many Burmese
political activists view the movement of the POCs to the
camps as a significant uptick in the ebb and flow of Thai
restrictions on their activities, but many of their groups
had already been losing people to resettlement over the last
year and a half. The RTG deadline just speeded up this
process. It should be remembered that the registrants
choosing to go to the camps believe that they will be
resettled within a relatively near future, many to the United
States. One longtime Australian expat in Chiang Mai, an
ardent supporter of the Karen and many Burmese activists,
noted to Poloff, "Maybe the Thais are doing the Burmese
activists a favor," by insisting on the POC deadline. END
COMMENT.


19. (U) This message was cleared by Chiang Mai and Rangoon.
BOYCE