Published in Washington, D.C.
August 26, 2006
U.S. links to Burmese opposition rile junta
Embassy, staffer hit for meeting Suu Kyi league
By Richard S. Ehrlich
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The military regime in Burma has targeted the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon, and a Burmese woman who works at the embassy, because American and British diplomats have met opposition politicians whose leader is Aung San Suu Kyi, the world's most famous political prisoner.
Mrs. Suu Kyi has been under house arrest inside her dreary, two-story, lakeside mansion for 11 of the past 16 years.
Her National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide election victory in 1990, but the regime does not want her to rule the Southeast Asian nation. In 1991, the European Parliament awarded Mrs. Suu Kyi the Sakharov prize for human rights, and the following year the Nobel Committee in Norway announced her as winner of its 1991 Peace Prize.
The military junta in Burma, which changed the country's name to Myanmar, expressed its anger toward the U.S. Embassy in a chilling complaint in the New Light of Myanmar, the government newspaper.
Paper names staffer
"In doing so, Daw Shwe Sin Nyunt, a staff member of the information department of the U.S. Embassy, always accompanies those diplomats. She also visits the NLD HQ alone many times, to send the embassy's instructions and take whatever feedback the NLD gives.
"Thirty-seven-year-old Daw Shwe Sin Nyunt, the daughter of U Nyunt Pe and Daw Khin May Chaw, is married, and served in the culture department of the French Embassy after she had left the University of Economics as a second-year student in 1989.
"Since December 23, 2005, she has been working for the information department of the U.S. Embassy. She now lives at No. 4, 2nd Street, Shwegondine Ward West, Bahan Township," the paper announced.
Americans criticized
But this is the first time it has publicly named, blamed and shamed a Burmese citizen employed by the U.S. Embassy.
The government said it was publishing these latest "news reports with photos, to expose those diplomats and staff, as well as the NLD, for their violation of the diplomatic code of conduct and inappropriate acts."
The generals who run Burma are angry at the United States because it has urged international economic sanctions against the regime while the Bush administration finances Burmese dissidents in Thailand, Europe, the United States and elsewhere.
Mrs. Suu Kyi, 61, and her party have been weakened by repeated arrests.
She remains very popular, however, throughout impoverished Burma, despite the government's frequent description of her as a "puppet" of foreign powers anxious to exploit Burma's vast natural resources.
Burma was a British colony from the 19th century until 1948, and London is also perceived as meddling in the country's internal affairs.
"Diplomats and staff of the British Embassy frequented the NLD HQ, and sent letters and instructions to it about 30 times from January to July 2006," the New Light of Myanmar reported.
Burma's dissidents are supported by foreign "Members of Parliament and diplomats of the West, CIA agents under the guise of NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and white, terrorist, course instructors," the paper said.
The racial reference apparently points to a handful of Caucasian mercenaries who occasionally surface after offering free, or inexpensive, military training to minority ethnic Karen guerrillas fighting a 55-year-long, losing war for autonomy or independence along Burma's eastern border with Thailand.
Ex-congressman slammed
In the 1980s, Mr. Solarz supported Cambodian guerrillas fighting to end the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia Ñ a strategy that was widely condemned because Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge benefited from an indirect alliance with the U.S.-backed rebels against the Vietnamese.
The New York-based Burma Peace Foundation and its head, David Arnott, were also named. The foundation has campaigned for the unconditional release of Mrs. Suu Kyi, and advocates crippling Burma with economic sanctions.
In a time-warp lapse by Burma's junta, the generals also heaped abuse on U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose "Moynihan amendment" toughened economic sanctions against Rangoon.
Mr. Moynihan, New York Democrat, died in 2003.
Messrs. Solarz, Arnott, Moynihan and others "are producing and nurturing the expatriates" who fled Burma and now plot to overthrow the regime, the generals thundered.
The U.S. government-funded, cash-awarding National Endowment for Democracy and other groups were also named for sinister interference in Burma.
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Richard S. Ehrlich's Asia news, non-fiction book titled, "Hello My Big Big Honey!" plus hundreds of photographs are available at his website http://www.oocities.org/asia_correspondent