Word: junta
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...Such superheated political times produce strange phenomena. Last year, Fortunato Abat, a retired general who served as armed forces Chief of Staff and Defense Secretary under President Fidel Ramos, wrote a paper arguing that the country should be run by a junta composed of military men and civilians. When Abat distributed his paper to generals serving under Arroyo, the government said it was going to charge him with sedition. But when columnists wrote that Abat, 80, was just a harmless old man exercising his freedom of speech, the administration backed down. Abat didn't, however, and he's not restricting...
...Almost all the groups hoping to topple Arroyo have a similar plan, with one significant variation: who will be in the junta and, most crucial, who will head it. That lack of agreement, and the fact that there's no obvious public support for such a move, has been to Arroyo's advantage?for now. But, warns De Villa, who has launched his own reform movement, "there is a gathering political storm that will affect all of us." So far, it's a mud storm, but Arroyo will have to work hard to keep from getting buried...
...much longer. The dormitory lies in Thai territory, insists the Thai army, which on June 1 ordered the orphanage and more than 60 Shan families living nearby to move back into Burma?and closer to the scene of the fighting in April between the S.S.A. and the Burmese junta's ally, the 16,000-strong United Wa State Army (U.W.S.A.). "The Burmese army forced us to relocate," says Hku Hseng Lu, 21, who also helps run the orphanage. "Now the Thai army is doing the same. Where are we supposed...
...most vulnerable victims of policies hatched in faraway Bangkok and Rangoon. The Shan are the largest of Burma's eight main ethnic minorities, which form a third of the country's 43 million population. Many of the groups are fighting for independence from the rule of the military junta. In recent months, the Burmese army and its proxies have stepped up efforts against ethnic insurgents such as the Shan and the Karen, driving thousands of refugees into Thailand. There, they receive cold comfort. The Thai government does not grant official refugee status to the Shan, who are deemed illegal migrants...
...recent report by the New York-based NGO also documents the murder, rape, enslavement and brutal displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians during the Burmese army's long-running assault on Karen insurgents; some 650,000 people, says HRW, have been made homeless in eastern Burma alone. The junta has dismissed allegations of army atrocities against ethnic minorities as "totally untrue...