August 2006

Former Top Spook Refused Passport

A senior intelligence officer who worked under former prime minister and military intelligence chief Gen Khin Nyunt has been denied a passport, a well-informed source told The Irrawaddy.

Former Maj-Gen Kyaw Win, number two man in the disbanded Office of the Chief of Military Intelligence, told close friends that he and his family applied for passports at the Home Affairs Ministry but were told that permission to leave the country could not be granted.

Kyaw Win, formerly deputy chief of the OCMI, worked closely with Khin Nyunt, who was toppled in 2004 and is now under house arrest. The bespectacled officer joined military intelligence in the early 1990s and was actively involved in ceasefire negotiations with ethnic insurgents. He was also known to be one of the chief negotiators between opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and government leaders.

Analysts believe that junta leader Than Shwe and senior government officers might suspect that Kyaw Win will seek political asylum if he leaves the country. Since the removal of Khin Nyunt and the dismantling of his OCMI, some military intelligence officers and low ranking officials have quietly left Burma and sought asylum in third countries. The risk of such a valuable and high-profile figure as Kyaw Win also defecting to the west is thought to be behind the passport ban.

The soft-spoken and intellectual Kyaw Win has written several essays and articles under different pseudonyms and has published a book of his photographic work. He enjoyed close and cordial relations with Than Shwe and escaped the 2004 purge. Immediately after the 2004 shakeup he is believed to have arranged safe passage out of the country for close associates and a former girlfriend, all of whom were able to apply for asylum in the west.

Shan Rebels Come in from the Cold

Press reports in Burma’s state-run media have said that Shan State Army-South’s Col Moengzuen, commander of Brigade 758, “returned to the legal fold.” This unexpected move, however, has left many unanswered questions.

Moengzuen is said to have surrendered with 848 comrades, and to have turned over a large cache of arms, including heavy weapons, after “realizing the national development endeavors and sincerity of the government, the entire people and the Tatmadaw [armed forces].” SSA-S officials were quick to dispute the numbers reported in state-run The New Light of Myanmar.

Last April, Moengzuen threw his support behind a “Federal Shan State,” hastily declared by the interim Shan government, a group of exiled Shan led by 68-year-old Sao Surkhanpha, eldest son of Burma’s first president Sao Shwe Thaike.

According to sources in Shan State, Moengzuen tried to persuade villagers in his region of control to support the newly declared government by holding religious ceremonies and arguing for the legitimacy of the exiled Shan government. At the same time, Burma’s ruling junta forced local residents to attend mass rallies denouncing the exiled Shan government in exile.

SSA-S leaders refused to acknowledge any exiled government, and after more than a year of lobbying unsuccessfully for its adoption, Moengzuen is thought to have allied himself with Burma’s generals. While his motives remain unclear, Moengzuen has reaped significant benefits. At a press conference announcing the surrender last month, attended by foreign diplomats, UN representatives and journalists, Burma’s Information Minister Brig-Gen Kyaw Hsan announced that the Shan rebels would be allowed to keep their weapons to defend against threats from other SSA-S brigades. Subsequent reports say that the defectors have also been given land, farming equipment and cash in return for their allegiance to the military government.

Than Shwe’s Daughter Profits from Marriage

In Rangoon’s profit and loss accounts for July, the wedding of Snr-Gen Than Shwe’s daughter Thandar Shwe can certainly count as a very profitable transaction.

It’s reliably reported by marriage watchers in Rangoon that although the nuptial celebrations early last month cost US$ 300,000, the value of gifts received totaled about $3 million.

Not that the Than Shwe family, or bridegroom Maj Zaw Phyo Win— a deputy director at the Ministry of Commerce—were themselves out of pocket at all on the deal.

The wedding bill is said by Rangoon watchers to have been picked up by several wealthy businessmen close to junta boss Than Shwe.

Wedding gifts are said to include diamonds, cars and real estate. It’s not clear who shelled out the most, but bets are on Tay Za as the chief provider. The boss of the Htoo Trading Company is rumored to have picked up the bill for part of the social celebrations and paid $300,000 or so for diamond jewelry from Belgium.

Lo Hsing-han, head of Asia World Co Ltd, and something of a drug trafficker, kindly picked up the catering tab.

Diamonds seem to have topped the bride’s gift suggestions list—and thereby driven up the price of sparklers in Burma’s chief city.

Doubtless the big spenders will be looking for a little payback down the line from Than Shwe.

The wedding’s net profit balance seems to have pleased the bride’s mother as much as Thandar Shwe, a diplomat last heard of in the role of Second Secretary at Burma’s Beijing embassy. Kyaing Kyaing had let it be known before the nuptial knot was tied that she expected her daughter’s dowry to beat the $1 million worth of gifts rumored to have been given to the daughter of Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye when she got married.