Reuters - June 28th, 2003

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Military-ruled Myanmar's state-run media said Saturday detention of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was a domestic matter and criticized Western diplomats who tried to gain access to her.

The commentary in two newspapers considered mouthpieces for the junta was the first reaction in the Myanmar media to growing international outrage over Suu Kyi's detention on May 30 after a clash between members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party and a pro-junta group.

``The matters concerning NLD (and) Suu Kyi...are domestic affairs of Myanmar,'' the commentary said.

``In Western nations too, lawbreakers are arrested and actions are taken against them. Exercising its sovereign power, Myanmar is making efforts for the prevalence of peace and progress in an honest way on a self-help basis.''

Diplomatic pressure on the Myanmar junta to free Suu Kyi has gradually intensified in the last month, with Japan threatening to turn off aid and the European Union and the United States planning harsher sanctions. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) broke with tradition to criticize one of its own, urging Myanmar to free Suu Kyi.

Myanmar's ruling generals say the Nobel peace prize winner is under ``protective custody'' and will be freed soon, but have not said when.

Former colonial power Britain says the junta is holding Suu Kyi in the ``notorious'' Insein jail on Yangon's northern outskirts, the biggest prison in the British empire before 1945. The junta denies this. According to British diplomats, Home Minister Tin Hlaing has said Suu Kyi is being held under a law ``safeguarding the state from the danger of subversive elements,'' the law used to keep her under house arrest twice previously for a combined seven years.

The newspaper commentary also criticized diplomats who had tried to gain access to the residences of Suu Kyi and the NLD's vice-chairman Tin Oo to check on their wellbeing.

``Some diplomats went to the residences of Daw Suu Kyi and U Tin Oo a number of times,'' it said. ``When requested, saying they were not allowed to see them, some diplomats shoved the responsible officials aside and forced (their way) into the houses.''

A member of the International Committee of the Red Cross, in central Myanmar to visit detained NLD members, said last week he had met Tin Oo and he was uninjured.

Myanmar exiles and some diplomats say hundreds of pro-junta youths, wielding bamboo and iron rods, set upon Suu Kyi's convoy and villagers when she was touring central Myanmar, killing at least 70.

The junta said four died in the clash.

The military, which refused to recognize a landslide 1990 election victory by Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, has ruled the country under various guises since a 1962 coup.

Editor's commentary: It is true that most lawbreakers are arrested in the West but the real question here is what law has Suu Kyi broken? Another question is why government sponsored thugs who murdered 70 supporters of Suu Kyi are not arrested? Why the leaders and organizers of this massacre are still at large? Then even more questions about Suu Kyi and legal system in Burma. Since Suu Kyi didn't break any law, why she was arrested in the first place? Suu Kyi was not tried in any court in Burma and yet she is incarcerated since the massacre happened indefinitely!? Government, or should we just called them military junta, has built recently special building inside notorious Insein prison to house only Suu Kyi so it is hard to believe that she will be released anytime soon. This more looks like another ten or more years of isolation and imprisonment for being chosen by people of Burma to be their democratic leader. This is a unique case and frankly there is not a similar one anywhere in the world today so idiotic claims of obviously crazy junta leaders that West imprisons people who win democratic elections then kill their supporters and imprison their democratic leader indefinitely without a trial is plane and simply preposterous. World community must act immediately and that means cutting all economic and diplomatic ties with junta leaders in Burma. Only special UN envoy should resume contacts in order to secure Suu Kyi release and safety to people of Burma so that similar massacres do not happen in the future.

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's upper house of parliament on Wednesday approved a bill that would give authorities the right to shut down any news outlet during an election campaign if it violates election laws.

The bill, which has sparked protests from media freedom groups, was passed by the lower house a week ago and must be signed by President Vladimir Putin to become law.

The bill would add teeth to a current law that prohibits a newspaper from publishing an article critical of one candidate unless it is paid for by an opponent and carries a note to that effect. In the past, media that violated the law risked only a fine.

Supporters of the bill say it will help limit unethical campaign tactics. For example, candidates in many Russian regions have distributed free newspapers smearing their opponents, without taking credit for the publications.

But media freedom groups say the legislation could be used by officials to attack any newspaper that criticizes them.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung's government paid North Korea $100 million to get the communist state to agree to a historic inter-Korean summit in 2000, an independent counsel said Wednesday.

Independent counsel Song Doo-hwan, however, refused to characterize the cash payment as a payoff for the summit, calling it a government ``aid'' for the communist North Korea.

Announcing the findings of his 70-day probe, Song also said South Korea's Hyundai subsidiaries sent a total of $500 million to Pyongyang shortly before the June 2000 summit, Kim's crowning achievement that helped him win the Nobel Peace Prize.

``We viewed the money Hyundai sent to North Korea as advance business investment,'' Song said in a nationally televised news conference.

``The $100 million the government sent to the North through Hyundai is characterized as a politically motivated government aid for the North.''

But Song accused Kim's government of ``active involvement in the transfers of the money, keeping them secret from the people and failing to go through a justifiable procedure for sending the money.''

The former president left office in February after a five-year tenure.

On Wednesday, Song said he has been careful to ensure that his investigation would not interrupt South Korea's efforts to seek reconciliation with the North after decades of Cold War animosity following the 1950-53 Korean War.

The investigation began when opposition leaders accused Kim's administration of paying bribes to the North to agree to the summit.

Hyundai says it gave the money to the North to secure business rights there covering tourism, railways and an industrial park.

The Russian Government has taken the country's only nationwide independent television channel off the air, citing "viewers' interests".

Some staff at TVS were on their way to work on Sunday only to learn that their station had been replaced by a sports channel.

The press ministry said it had taken the decision because of the channel's much-publicised internal financial disputes but independent journalists said the move amounted to a state coup in the media.

"What we have now is a complete state monopoly of country-wide channels," said Alexei Venediktov, editor-in-chief of the outspoken Ekho Moskvy radio station.

The editor-in-chief at TVS, veteran broadcaster Yevgeni Kiselyov, noted ironically that the channel had been cut off at 0400 on 22 June - the exact hour and date when Hitler launched his surprise attack on the Soviet Union in 1941.

2001: NTV taken over by Gazprom, Kiselyov and colleagues leave for TV6
2002: TV6 taken off air, Kiselyov and co. found TVS
2003: TVS taken off air

Full story here.

Sweden's Commission on Marine Environment has warned that the Baltic Sea is in a "critical" condition and in danger of dying unless pollution from the Russian city of St Petersburg is drastically cut.

Half of the fish species in the Baltic are at levels below the critical biological level, while pregnant Swedish women are being warned not to eat herring - a staple diet - because of dioxins.

There is little dispute that St Petersburg - Russia's second-biggest city - is the Baltic's single biggest polluter, and behind many of the problems.

Full story here.

Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is believed to be detained in the country's notorious Insein jail. Former prisoners at the jail have told the BBC's East Asia Today programme what conditions are like:

The UK foreign office has said that Aung San Suu Kyi is being held in a two-room hut in the prison, following her detention on 30 May. The block is believed to have been especially constructed for the opposition leader.

Bo Kyi, a former political detainee at Insein, said that he watched the block being built, and that it had a bedroom, a visiting room and a toilet.

Full story here.

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbian police commandos stormed a Belgrade apartment early on Friday and arrested a top war crimes suspect amid fierce clashes with his hardline nationalist supporters in the street below.

A senior Interior Ministry source confirmed that former Yugoslav National Army Colonel Veselin Sljivancanin had been taken into custody, answering a U.S. request to seize him so that Washington could approve further aid to Serbia.

The arrest of Sljivancanin, who had been a fugitive since former president Slobodan Milosevic was toppled in October 2000, climaxed a tense 10-hour standoff outside the flat where he had apparently returned to celebrate his 50th birthday.

Sljivancanin was indicted in 1995 by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague for alleged complicity in the massacre of 200 Croat and other non-Serb civilians, after Yugoslav troops captured the Danube port of Vukovar in 1991.

Sljivancanin had threatened to blow himself up rather than hand himself over to international justice. His wife told local reporters he had in the end ``surrendered voluntarily.''

Several hundred diehard nationalists filled the street on Thursday afternoon when police entered the apartment block, throwing stones, setting fires and provoking clashes not seen even when Milosevic was himself arrested in an April 2001 drama.

Well over 100 riot police and camouflage-uniformed gendarmes fired tear gas and stun grenades at the hostile crowd before a commando squad began battering down the armored door of Sljivancanin's flat shortly before midnight.

Several police and demonstrators, who included football hooligans, were injured in the clashes which flared again briefly after he was driven off to a Belgrade jail.

Sljivancanin's two co-accused in the Vukovar massacre -- one of the most notorious war crimes of Croatia's 1991-95 independence war -- are already in detention at The Hague awaiting trial.

His arrest came two days before the United States government was to certify to Congress that Belgrade is cooperating with the tribunal on rounding up war crimes suspects, a step essential for the release of further economic aid worth a total of 110 millions dollars this year.

A senior U.S. official warned last week that without Sljivancanin in custody, certification would be ``a difficult decision,'' and urged Serbian authorities to find him.

Three Serbian men indicted by The Hague have been transferred to the tribunal in the past month.

The latest arrest leaves former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic and army commander Ratko Mladic as the two remaining top fugitives indicted for war crimes committed during the violent breakup of Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1999.

Ulan Bator (Reuters) - A mass grave containing hundreds of Buddhist monks and civilians executed in Stalinist purges in the 1930s has been found in the Mongolian capital, members of an investigative team said on Thursday.

A probe of a construction site in western Ulan Bator had revealed 348 skulls with bullet holes in the back, they told reporters. There were at least 575 victims, but the number could top 1,000, they said.

Historians say at least 30,000 intellectuals, dissidents, noblemen and monks were killed in purges by the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) in the 1930s.

More than 700 monasteries and Buddhist temples were destroyed in Mongolia, which became the world's second Communist state in 1921 under the domination of the neighboring Soviet Union.

Seizures of private property and forced of nomadic herders led to widespread unrest that was brutally crushed.

At the mass grave, some 90 percent of the dead were found with the remains of yellow and red garments and religious items usually worn by Buddhist monks, investigators said.

But objects belonging to civilians from the upper and middle classes were also found, said a historian and Buddhist monks who took part in the investigation along with officials, intelligence specialists and forensic experts.

``Most of the victims were shot in the back of the head,'' said Purevbat, a Buddhist monk, who, like many Mongolians uses only one name.

Historian Ichinnorov said the identities of many of the victims would never be known, as many were brought to Ulan Bator from the countryside.

``No matter what the external pressures, this was carried out by Mongolian people,'' Purevbat said. ``We should never forget this, and we should make people to understand that this should never happen again.''

Purevbat said most of the remains had been cremated and were being placed in stupas, Buddhist shrines, to serve as a reminder to Mongolians of a dark part of their history.

``We are not right now talking about who will bear the responsibility of these crimes,'' Ichinnorov said. ``Right now, we are trying to understand what was behind these actions and what exactly did happen.

The MPRP, has said it ``regretted'' what happened in the purges but has never apologized directly for them, saying it was under pressure from Soviet Union at the time.

The party fell from power in 1996 after Mongolia held multi-party elections following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but discontent with bungled reforms helped it back into power.

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Two European journalists and an American were arrested in Laos on murder charges, the government said Wednesday. A press freedom group called the accusations ``grotesque and absurd.''

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said the journalists were detained while doing a story about Hmong rebels, who have battled Laos' communist government since 1975, and the group criticized the government for not saying where they were being held.

The official Lao News Agency reported Wednesday that Belgian photojournalist Thierry Falise and French cameraman Vincent Reynaud were arrested with an American of Hmong origin for helping ``bandits'' kill a security official in the remote northeastern village of Khai.

It said Falise, Reynaud and the third man, Naw-Karl Mua, are being investigated, but did not elaborate.

Naw-Karl Mua is pastor of the Light of Life Lutheran Church in St. Paul, Minn. Mua's wife, Sue Mua, met Wednesday with Erich Mische, the state director for Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn.

Mische said that Coleman is sending a letter to the Lao ambassador to the United States, demanding information from Lao government that Mua is alive and healthy.

``We find it grotesque and absurd,'' said Philippe Latour, the Reporters Without Borders representative for Asia. ``Even if they were present at the killing during fighting between soldiers, they cannot be indicted for that. Otherwise, any journalist covering war could be indicted for that.''

Sodom Phetrasy, head of the Lao Foreign Ministry's press department, said the three men were arrested June 4 but would not say where they were being held.

Reporters Without Borders said three or four Laotians were arrested with them and sent a letter Tuesday seeking the group's release. The government still had not revealed their whereabouts or given them consular access, Latour said.

Falise, a former Associated Press reporter in Paris, is a freelance journalist and photographer. He has covered the plight of ethnic minorities in remote parts of Asia, including India and Myanmar. Not much is known about Reynaud.

Hmong rebels have fought from remote mountainous regions against the government since it came to power in 1975, but resistance has waned over the past decade, and it is unclear whether the rebels maintain a political agenda.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman in the capital, Vientiane, said the embassy was told it would be allowed to see the American after police are finished questioning him.

``But we're trying to press them for immediate access,'' the spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity.

A Serb policeman together with Serb railway staffers beat up a Bulgarian passenger on a Nish-bound train. The incident happened as 44-year-old Bulgarian Stefan Pirkov tried to intervene when the Serbs pressed a Bulgarian family for a 50-euro bribe.

The officers attacked the Bulgarian man, threaten to force him off the train and then ordered him to pay a "fine" of 50 euros. However, Pirkov parted with 20 euro as he said he did not carry more cash on him.

Pirkov insists that the Serb officers forced all passengers in his compartment to pay bribes.

He is an official of the Bulgarian State Railways and was on his way back home after a symposium in Vienna.

The Bulgarian national has obtained a medical certificate proving the battery. Pirkov will file a lawsuit against the Serb state.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- Slobodan Milosevic's former state security chief was extradited Wednesday to the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands and taken into U.N. custody, the court said.

Once a top security official of the former Yugoslav president and an expert in covert operations, Jovica Stanisic was flown on a commercial flight from Belgrade to the Netherlands, where he will stand trial for alleged atrocities in two Balkan wars.

U.N. prosecutors allege that under Stanisic's command Serbia's dreaded secret police committed atrocities against non-Serbs during the ethnic wars in Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s.

Stanisic's lawyer, Vladan Vukcevic, said in a telephone interview he would fly to The Hague with his client, but gave no other comment.

The U.N. indictment alleges that Stanisic, along with his deputy Franko Simatovic, engaged in a ``joint criminal enterprise'' by sending Serbian paramilitary forces to fight alongside local Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia during the violent land grab there.

Simatovic, who already was in the tribunal's custody, pleaded innocent last week to war crimes charges at his first court appearance.

The ``persecution on political, racial and religious grounds ... and forcible removal of non-Serbs from large areas of Croatia and Bosnia'' led to the charges that include four counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the customs of war.

Serving under Milosevic until 1998, Stanisic and Simatovic were arrested in Belgrade earlier this year during a separate investigation into the March 12 assassination of Serbia's Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic.

No links have been established between them and that assassination, but during their detention the U.N. war crimes charges were revealed. Therefore, the two men remained behind bars, awaiting extradition to the U.N. court in The Hague.

In a recent arraignment before a Belgrade judge, Stanisic also denied the war crimes charges but said he would not contest extradition and hoped to prove his innocence before the U.N. court.

The extradition of Stanisic was delayed because of his poor health and a recent colon surgery.

His lawyers demanded that he be temporarily released on health grounds, but Serbian authorities refused, which prompted Stanisic to demand that, instead, he be transferred as soon as possible to the U.N. detention center in the Netherlands because conditions and medical care there are better.

As the chief instigator of the ethnic clashes, Milosevic has been charged with 66 counts of war crimes, including genocide and has been on trial since 2001.

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- U.S. diplomats who visited the site of political clashes in Myanmar saw bloody clothes and homemade weapons, suggesting far more people may have been killed than the four reported by the military junta, a U.S. Embassy official said Thursday.

The official said evidence gathered at the site also indicated the fighting in northern Myanmar, which broke out around democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's motorcade as she toured the region last Friday, was orchestrated by the government. The junta detained her after the clash and has not disclosed her whereabouts.

``What they found corroborates eyewitness reports circulating of a premeditated ambush on Aung San Suu Kyi's motorcade,'' the official said on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. official said the two diplomats who visited the scene of the attack found signs of ``great violence,'' including bloody clothing, numerous homemade weapons and smashed headlights and mirrors. The official would not detail all the information suggesting a premeditated attack but said it included photographs and physical evidence.

Myanmar's junta has said the fighting began when Suu Kyi's motorcade drove through a crowd of townspeople protesting her visit and that four people were killed. Exile groups allege that government-backed forces staged an ambush and that 70 or more people may have been killed over two days.

Exiled opposition figures in Thailand say the Nobel Peace Prize winner may have received head injuries in the violence. The junta insists that Suu Kyi and colleagues detained with her are fine -- although it refuses to divulge where they are held.

The exiled figures say the clash was planned by the junta to justify a crackdown on Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy.

U.S. officials said Thursday that some of those claims were corroborated by diplomats who visited the scene.

``Circumstances and reports from individuals in the region indicate that the attack was conducted by government-affiliated thugs,'' U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said in Washington. ``The debris remaining at the scene suggests a major clash, which could easily have resulted in serious injuries to large numbers of people.''

At least 19 members of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party were also detained. The military, which has put Suu Kyi under house arrest several times since 1989, has repeatedly sought to quash her movement and said she was taken into ``protective custody.''

Tight media controls and the remote location of the clash made it impossible to confirm what happened. Phone lines to the area appear to have been cut.

Myanmar's government is under pressure to produce Suu Kyi by Friday, when U.N. special envoy Razali Ismail visits.

Razali told The Associated Press in Kuala Lumpur he expected to meet junta leader Gen. Than Shwe to push for Suu Kyi's release. ``Suu Kyi must be released,'' he said.

As he prepared to leave for Myanmar, the diplomat said he would investigate the violence by talking to all sides ``to get factual details of what took place.''

In late 2000, Razali brokered reconciliation talks between the government and Suu Kyi, whose party won 1990 general elections but was blocked by the military from taking power. The talks had provided hope that the country's political impasse could be bridged, but the dialogue reached a standstill last year.

Razali said senior U.N. officials had asked him to proceed with the visit even though the junta has refused to give assurances that he would be allowed to meet her.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has also asked to see Suu Kyi and colleagues believed detained with her -- among them the vice-chairman of her party, Tin Oo.

Western countries, including the United States, have demanded the release of Suu Kyi and leaders of her party. Her party's offices have been closed across the country.

Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her nonviolent struggle to promote democracy.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union launched a range of diplomatic sanctions against Cuba Thursday after three hijackers were executed and 75 dissidents and independent journalists were jailed on the communist-run island.

The limited measures by the EU, Cuba's largest trading partner and foreign investor, come after the European Commission froze Cuba's request to join the Cotonou Agreement aid accord.

The EU said it was taking the steps after the ``recent deplorable actions of the Cuban authorities aiming not only at violating fundamental freedoms in Cuba, but also at depriving civilians of the ultimate human right, that of life.''

Current EU president Greece said in a statement the 15-nation bloc had decided unanimously to limit bilateral high-level government visits and to reduce the profile of member states' participation in cultural events.

It would also invite Cuban dissidents to celebrations of EU national days and review its relations with Cuba.

The EU said it had sent a diplomatic demarche to Havana, expressing deep concern about the ``continuing flagrant violation of human rights'' and of fundamental freedoms of members of the Cuban opposition and of independent journalists.

It repeated its call to the Cuban authorities to release immediately all political prisoners.

``The EU, mindful of increasing reports about poor detention conditions of prisoners with serious health problems, appeals to the Cuban authorities that, in the meantime, the prisoners do not suffer unduly and are not exposed to inhumane treatment.''

President Fidel Castro, in power since a 1959 revolution, has said the executions of the three men, who had hijacked a ferry to go to the United States, had been necessary to stop a mass exodus encouraged by Washington.

The dissidents were convicted of treason for allegedly working with the United States to undermine Castro's government.

Membership of the Cotonou Agreement could see a big rise in European aid for Cuba, where economic hardship is widespread since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

After the Commission froze its request to join, Havana withdrew its application altogether.

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- Myanmar authorities turned away students from universities on Monday, the first day of a new semester, suspending classes just days after they detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and closed her party's offices.

The crackdown on Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy party follows a violent clash Friday between her supporters and thousands of pro-government protesters, which officials said left four people dead and 50 injured in northern Myanmar.

University sources said on condition of anonymity Sunday that authorities had decided to suspend classes at all universities and colleges under the Ministry of Education.

No reason was given for the suspension, and there was no immediate official announcement.

Myanmar's university campuses in the past have been hotbeds of pro-democracy activism. After intermittent closures since 1988, they were shut down after 1996 student demonstrations and remained closed until mid-2000.

The latest order applies to institutions under the education ministry, but classes were also suspended Monday at the Science and Technology Ministry's Yangon Technology University, known for student activism.

It was unclear whether universities and colleges under other ministries, many of them vocational institutions, were affected.

Students at the gates of the University of Foreign Language in Yangon said no prior notice was given about the suspension of classes.

``I am surprised and disappointed with the closure. I am about the get my degree in another four months,'' said a university student who asked not to be named.

It was not immediately known whether the closures were related to the ongoing crackdown on Suu Kyi and the NLD.

The junta said Saturday that it had placed Suu Kyi and 19 members of her party into ``protective custody'' after a clash between her supporters and thousands of pro-government protesters in northern Myanmar. Four people were killed and 50 injured in the violence.

The scheduled reopening of the country's primary and high schools, which was earlier delayed by authorities because of ``intense summer heat this year'' and to ease parents' concerns about SARS, has been further postponed by two weeks.

The schools are scheduled to reopen on July 1 instead of June 16, a school teacher said on condition of anonymity.

Despite the Suu Kyi detention, a U.N. special envoy who brokered talks between her and the military government will proceed with a planned visit to the country, an aide said Monday.

Razali Ismail, a veteran Malaysian diplomat, believed it was ``not prudent'' for him to comment publicly for now on the detention of Suu Kyi and the closure of her National League for Democracy's offices last weekend, the aide said on condition of anonymity.