Ten armed Burmese nationals in Thailand admitted they were sent by Burma: Min Lwin 4.
Burmese spies in Thailand spy on both Thais and defected Burmese: Bangkok Post 7.
“There are Burmese government agents everywhere”: Andrews 2.
Tatmadaw intelligence report on KNU, NGOs: Min Lwin 7.
BBC reporter stalked by unsavvy spy: McGeown.
Friendship Bridge’s opening ceremony: The Irrawaddy 1.
Map of the Asian Highway: United Nations 10.
Royal Thai Government paid for the bridge: The Nation 1.
Cost 80 million baht: The Nation 1; Bangkok Post 6.
Years of delays: The Nation 1; Bangkok Post 4.
Thailand earning $28 million a month from Myawaddy-Mae Sot trade: According to the Tak Chamber of Commerce, reported in Lawi Weng 4.
1,400 feet of concrete: The Nation 1; The Irrawaddy 1; Lintner 3.
Burmese movies forbidden from depicting poverty: Kyi Wai 3.
The battle for Myawaddy: Bangkok Post 1; Falla, p. 28; Martin Smith, p. 270.
Blown-up oil depot and freaked-out cows: Bangkok Post 2.
Pascal Khoo Thwe compares modern Burma to Nazi Germany on p. 187.
Foreigners not allowed to continue past Myawaddy: Thompson.
Reproduction of Shwedagon Pagoda in the new capital: The Irrawaddy 8; Andrews 1.
Civil servants given days to pack up: BBC News 3; McGirk; Sipress; Pedrosa.
Information minister said in BBC that the junta needed a more strategic location: BBC News 3.
Information minister told Al Jazeera that the junta needed more space and more pastoral scenery: Pedrosa.
In 2002, Aung San Suu Kyi told the BBC, “We have not yet come to the point where we encourage people to come to Burma as tourists”: BBC News 1.
Mandalay moat refurbished with slave labor: Burma Campaign UK 4.
Rough Guides is one guidebook without a Burma volume. Said the FAQs on its website, “Rough Guides don’t publish a guide for Burma because the democratically elected leader, who is currently held under house arrest, has called for a tourism boycott.”
Tourism isn’t on the CIA’s World Factbook list of Burma’s industries.
Burma vs. Thailand:12 times the infant mortality rate: UNICEF, pp. 119-120.
15 times the child mortality rate: UNICEF, pp. 119-120.
Second-highest child mortality rate in Asia: UNICEF, p. 117.
Life expectancy nearly a decade lower: UNICEF, pp. 119-120.
GNI 1/15 of Thailand’s: UNICEF, pp. 119-120.
Spends 40¢, rather than $63, per capita on health care: Nelwan.
Provides 0 percent of child vaccinations rather than 100: Hansford.
Burma vs. the world:One of only five countries forbidding Boy Scouts: Amalvy. (The other four are China, North Korea, Laos, and Cuba.)
Poorest country on the continent: UNICEF, pp. 142-145.
One of seven poorest in the world: UNICEF, pp. 142-145.
The exact amount of Burma’s weapons expenditures is hard to know. One prominent expert estimated that the country had bought $2 billion worth from just China as of more than a decade ago.
On Doctors Without Borders’s shit list: DWB.
Has more child soldiers than any other country: Becker.
One of eight worst violators of religious freedom: US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
One of ten worst human rights violators: US Department of State 8, Introduction.
Tied with Iraq for second place in corruption: Transparency International.
Home to fourth-worst dictator: Wallechinsky.
KNU “world’s most pleasant and civilised guerrilla group”: Falla, p. 107.
Activists’ lawyers and families imprisoned: Saw Yan Naing 4; Wai Moe 3 and Min Lwin 9 (respectively).
2 million Burmese migrant workers in Thailand, three quarters of them illegal: TBBC 2.
Particularly vulnerable to abuse are the women migrants, not just from their employers and authorities but from other migrants and street gangs, who say things like “Burmese women are illegal migrants and we can’t be arrested if we rape them”: Lawi Weng 1.
Lots of women and children from Burma are sex slaves in Thailand: More info can be found at Development and Education Programme for Daughters and Communities’ website: depdc.org. The book about them I decidedly didn’t enjoy reading was Human Rights Watch 1.
XII.
Susan Rice’s comment about Burma comes from her January 2009 confirmation hearing, quoted in Jha 1.
For a picture of Laura Bush at Mae La, see Wiseman. For a jubilant press release about the mosquito-net donation, see United Nations Foundation.
Clinton barred new US investment in Burma in 1997: Code of Federal Regulations.
Freedom and Democracy Act: Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act of 2003.
“outpost of tyranny”: Rice; BBC News 2.
G.W. Bush called Burma out: In 2006, 2007, and 2008. Text available at gpoaccess.gov.
Block Burmese Jade Act: Tom Lantos Block Burmese JADE (Junta’s Anti-Democratic Efforts) Act of 2008.
The White House representative and policy coordinator for Burma nominee was Michael Jonathan Green. Daily Digest.
Refugees testifying to Congress: Jha 4.
Experts testifying to Congress: Jha 3.
Australian sanctions: Stephen Smith.
EU sanctions/arms embargo: Burma Campaign UK 3.
The Jennifer Aniston/Woody Harrelson video was just one of a slew of celebrity-packed videos released in the US Campaign for Burma’s “30 Days for a Million Voices/Burma: It Can’t Wait” series. Some of them are funny, and some of them are randomly inappropriate (I’m talking about you, Sarah Silverman). Find spots starring everyone from Judd Apatow to Tila Tequila to Sheryl Crow at the US Campaign for Burma’s YouTube channel.
For the Lady, an album dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi, was released by Rhino in 2004. U2 was involved. Obviously.
Open celebrity letter was released by Not On Our Watch.
Htoo Moo told me about his participation in the malaria epidemiology studies, and Dr. François Nosten confirmed all the details. The latter also did a lot of lamenting about those mosquito nets Laura Bush brought.
Alan Hoffman was a lobbyist for Unocal: OpenSecrets.org 1.
Alan Hoffman was Joe Biden’s chief of staff: Columbia Books Inc. data.
Chevron gets sweet tax concessions and should “consider voluntary divestment over time”: Tom Lantos Block Burmese JADE (Junta’s Anti-Democratic Efforts) Act of 2008. The EU is also still into Burma’s oil and gas: For an interview in which the CEO of French Big Oil company Total says that critics of his company’s involvement there “can go to hell,” see McNicoll.
Foreign countries pulled out Burma aid post-’88 uprisings/regime ushered in new era of allowing foreign investment: Thant Myint-U, pp. 328-330.
Remember, from chapter 8, that the Thais started making trade deals with Burma in 1990—pretty soon after all that 1988 dissent-squashing.
Sanctions advocates: Most people. The governments of the US and Australia and Europe, for example, as well as the main Burma-advocacy groups of the US and the UK, the US Campaign for Burma and Burma Campaign UK. Sanctions-haters: For two other writers’ takes, check out Kristof and Pedersen.
China’s building a pipeline for overland Burma energy transport: CNPC.
80 percent of China’s imported crude goes through Strait of Malacca: Energy Information Administration 1; Energy Information Administration 2; Shwe Gas Movement.
Thailand has rights to 1.7 trillion cubic feet of gas in one concession: PTTEP.
Indian firm gets 5 trillion cubic feet of gas: ONGC Videsh.
Russia has several firms drilling: Burma Campaign UK 2.
France, Thailand, and Chevron operate a wildly profitable pipeline: EarthRights International 4, p. 77.
Daewoo plans to make more than $10 billion over 25 years in Shwe gas fields: Kim.
ASEAN’s free-trade agreement with India: ASEAN.
India has agreed to invest billions in two hydroelectric dams: Burma Rivers Network 1.
EU discussing ASEAN free-trade agreement/UK doesn’t want it to benefit Burma: Hansard 2.
England has oil and gas dealings in Burma, too: Burma Campaign UK 2.
165 percent increase in China’s mining/oil and gas/hydro investment: EarthRights International 2, p. 1.
Burma-China trade up to $2.6 billion: UN Comtrade Database.
Burma’s estimated $2.5 billion trade surplus/$5 billion in currency reserves: Turnell.
Burma says greedy-ass Americans would buy elephants on credit if they could: The Irrawaddy 6.
Reagan administration spent millions for Agent Orange chemical and spraying planes: US Department of State 3.
Shans complained about deadly poison, not wild about farming for food post-spraying: Mirante, pp. 222 and 225, respectively.
Chemical was under EPA review at the time: Environmental Protection Agency.
Wrobleski went on to work for JWI as lobbyist, then prez: OpenSecrets.org 2.
Burma wins world’s-top-opium-producer title/usurped by Afghanistan in 1999, 2003: UNODC 3, p. 34.
Tens of thousands of Burmese textile workers out of jobs/State Department says they’re taking up sex work instead: Daley.
Burmese timber coming into US via China: Global Witness.
Burmese gems coming into US via Thailand/$8 billion in jewelry exports from there: US Government Accountability Office/p. 11.
More foreign companies invested in Burma’s energy sector in 2008 than ever: Boot 3; Burma Campaign UK 2.
Foreign investment doubled in first nine months of 2008/2007 Foreign investment in oil and gas more than triple that of 2006: Burma Ministry of National Planning and Development surveys cited in Associated Press 3 and 1, respectively.
Chevron said that if it leaves, someone worse will just take its place: (Then-Vice Chairman Peter Robertson: “I know for a fact that they are better off by us being there than by anybody else being there.”) Boot 1.
Dam projects causing all sorts of personal and planetary destruction: Burma Rivers Network 2.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development complaint against Daewoo: EarthRights International 3.
The Burmese People v. Unocal: EarthRights International 1; Redford.
Norway banned investment in a Chinese firm for providing for Burma’s military: Ministry of Finance (Norway).
Germany, Singapore, and Pakistan sold the junta military equipment: Lintner . Russia, Ukraine, and Serbia did, too: Amnesty 1, pp. 62-70.
Cargo ships of weapons unloaded in the middle of the night: Min Lwin 12.
North Korean weapons: Lintner.
Burmese foreign minister and North Korea agree to be friends after a 25-year fight: Associated Press 2; Mungpi 2.
China gets to buy all Daewoo’s Shwe gas: Daewoo International; Shwe Gas Movement, p. 1.
Chinese weapons: See chapter 11 sourcing, under “Burma vs. the world.”
BP bought Burmah Castrol for $5 billion in 2000: BP.
Herbert Hoover found fortune in Burma: Nash, pp. 433-439; Liggett, pp. 193-197.
“little inclined to yield to threats”: Scott 1, p. 17.
19th-century British envoys to Burma, and their failures: Hall, pp. 97-100; Symes.
Ill-fated Thais, Chinese, Mon: Thant Myint-U, p. 106.
Ill-fated Manchu of 1767: Thant Myint-U, pp. 101-104.
Ill-fated Portuguese of 1613: Hall, p. 50; Thant Myint-U, pp. 78-79.
Throwdown with Kublai Khan: Thant Myint-U, pp. 60-61.
His Excellency King Bagyidaw’s most excellent title: Scott 1, p. 87.
King Thibaw declares war, impending elephanterie on England: Scott 1, p. 41.
Burma army soldiers underpaid: Desertions and assassinations, too, are becoming a problem. Min Lwin 3.
UN admits failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia and Herzegovina: United Nations 6; United Nations 5.
2005 World Summit resolution of responsibility to protect: United Nations 11.
Case for genocide built before the 2007 draft resolution on Burma: Horton. For a summary of Horton’s paper, which runs more than 600 pages, see Nicholas Thompson.
Systematic rape now recognized as key feature of genocide: Aegis Trust and United Nations Department of Public Information.
“Your blood must be left in the village”: Apple, p. 24.
Soldiers force minority women into marriage as enslavement: United Nations 7.
ANU’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre aware of special Karen-killing terror squad of the Tatmadaw: Ball.
Terror squad’s tactics: Rogers, p. 158.
Academics, journalists, activists say Karen not subject of genocide: Nicholas Thompson.
More than 3,000 ethnic villages destroyed in Burma: TBBC 6.
Comparable to the number destroyed in Darfur: International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, p. iii.
Nearly 3 million displaced in Darfur: IDMC 6, p. 1.
Again, well more than half a million displaced in eastern Burma alone: TBBC 9.
Millions have fled the country: At least 750,000 Rohingya, Human Rights Watch 5, p. 6; some 2 million migrant workers in Thailand, TBBC 2; a couple of hundred thousand refugees inside Thailand (TBBC 3) and out (UNHCR 9).
Sudan’s mortality rate for children under five: UNICEF, p. 120.
Eastern Burma’s under-five mortality rate: Back Pack Health Worker Team, p. 32. An earlier survey found a prevalence of 276 to 291 per 1,000 live births. Lee et al.
Darfur death count: GenocideInDarfur.net.
400,000 killed in Burma by 1990: Martin Smith, p. 101.
Body count “would reach as high as millions”: General Saw Maung, quoted in Pedersen, p. 121, and Martin Smith, p. 101.
Slow and indirect genocide is still genocide: The Prosecutor v. Clément Kayishema and Obed Ruzindana, paragraph 115; The Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu, paragraph 505.
Intent can be inferred: The Prosecutor v. Clément Kayishema and Obed Ruzindana , paragraph 527.
“the result of policy at the highest level, entailing political and legal responsibility”: United Nations 4.
Refugee-camp kids’ drawings: La Guardia.
“Soon the Karen will no longer exist”: You can see one of these messages in the footage of Give Them a Chance to Read.
25,000 Karenni in camps in Thailand/more than 50,000 internally displaced: Thompson.
Shan race = enemy to be destroyed: Thomson.
Shan women = targets of rape for “admixture of blood”: Horton, section 13.8.
No atrocity crimes in the ’07 draft resolution: United Nations 8.
China and Russia veto: United Nations 9.
Armenian genocide finally recognized by UNHRC: United Nations 1; Adalian.
Jurists say Rwanda and Darfur are precedents for Burma: International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School.
“world cannot wait”/“prima facie case of international criminal law violations”: International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, pp. iv and 2-3, respectively.
More than 50 congresspeople sent letter to President Obama: US Campaign for Burma.
Rohingya:Report: From the esteemed William Schabas (project manager: Nancie Prud’homme). Available on the Irish Centre for Human Rights website.
Hundreds of thousands driven out of Burma: Human Rights Watch 5, p. 6; Refugees International.
“Rohingya are . . . ugly as ogres”: Human Rights Watch 5, p. 7, quoting a letter Consul General Ye Myint Aung wrote to heads of foreign missions. HRW has a copy of the letter on file.
25 percent suffer acute malnutrition: Young.
Forced labor/wrongful imprisonment/no citizenship/no traveling/no anything without permission: Human Rights Watch 5.
Caught trying to get
jobs and sentenced to prison: Saw Yan Naing 2.
A couple hundred thousand in Bangladesh/about 60,000 in camps/settlements: Prud’homme.
Making big news: Even Angelina Jolie got involved. Srivalo.
Being towed back out to sea: Lawi Weng 2.
“do something to assist the people of Burma”: US Department of State 5.
“engaged in ethnic cleansing against minorities within Burma”: Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act of 2003.
China, Russia, Japan rejected proposal to talk about Burma in 2006: Lynch.
UN secretary-general advocate of noncoercive measures: Luck, p. 1.
Noncoercive measures not going to work: And the UN knows it. You can see both Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, grumbling about how little progress the diplomatic process has made in Burma in Wai Moe 1 and Jha 2.
Villagers buried to their necks and bludgeoned with a shovel: Nicholas Thompson.
Burma gets less than a tenth of the aid Cambodia does: Watkins et al., p. 292.
People with AIDS on meds waiting list: Kyi Wai.
Relief is less than $3 per person/vs. $50 in Sudan: Watkins et al., p. 292.
US Burma policy ignoring Karen/other ethnicities’ crises/massacres: You can see them being pointedly unincluded in the concerns listed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (“It’s so critical that [Aung San Suu Kyi] be released from this persecution that she has been under. And if she were released, that would open up opportunities, at least for my country, to expand our relationship with Burma, including investments in Burma.”) and State Department spokesman Ian Kelly (“We want a government that responds to the needs of its people; a government that frees political prisoners unconditionally, including Aung San Suu Kyi; and the start of a dialogue, of a constructive dialogue, with the political opposition there.”) in US Department of State 11 and Jha 5, respectively.
Wa:Being headhunters, naked, dirty, scary: Chapter 22 of Scott 3 is all about the Wa. You can even see photographic proof of their propensity for nudity there, if you want.
Helped communists hold Burmese territory until the late ’80s: Thant Myint-U, p. 323; Kramer.
Commander wanted by the US: US Department of State 12.
For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question Page 34