Myanmar soldiers shot dead China farmer: Beijing

[Ray]

Myanmar soldiers shot dead China farmer: Beijing

BEIJING -- China said Tuesday it had lodged an official complaint with Myanmar after two soldiers illegally crossed the border into southwest China and shot dead a local resident earlier this year.

It was the first time Beijing has commented on the Jan. 12 incident along the China-Myanmar border in Yunnan province.

Chinese state-run media had made no previous mention of the shooting and it was not clear why Beijing — a key ally and major investor in Myanmar — had remained tight-lipped about the incident until now.

"The Chinese side lodged solemn representations with the Myanmar side asking it to find out the truth, punish the perpetrators and compensate the bereaved families," foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told a regular briefing.

"The Myanmar side said it paid attention to the representations and is stepping up investigations."

Kachin News, a Thailand-based website which covers news from Kachin State in northern Myanmar and has close contact with ethnic minority rebels in the area, reported in January that an ethnic Kachin farmer had been shot dead in China.

Lahpai Zau Lawn, 53, "was shot at close range in the abdomen and twice in the head," the report said, citing the man's relatives who live in a village on the Chinese side of the border.

The report said the incident may have been a reprisal after two Myanmar soldiers who crossed the border into China in December in search of food were detained by local villagers and handed to Chinese authorities.

A spokesman for the Myanmar Embassy in Beijing was not immediately available for comment.

Beijing's official confirmation of the shooting came after the China Daily said Tuesday state-owned China Power Investment Corp. was pushing Myanmar to restart construction of a US$3.6 billion dam in the Southeast Asian nation.

In September Myanmar President Thein Sein ordered a halt to the controversial Myitsone hydropower project, electricity from which is destined for China, following strong public opposition.

The mega dam is located on the Irrawaddy river in Kachin state.

Environmentalists have warned the project would inundate an area about the size of Singapore, submerging dozens of villages, displacing at least 10,000 people and irreversibly damaging one of the world's most biodiverse areas.
Myanmar soldiers shot dead China farmer: Beijing - The China Post

This is ridiculous.

China is such a close ally of Myanmar and yet the strong arm of the regime in Myanmar - the Army is being accused of crossing the border and killing an innocent Chinese farmer, who is at peace with merely farming his land and beyond politics.

And what is more ridiculous is that China remains tight-lipped when the incident occurred and is raking it up so late. Why what has cause the Chinese Govt to wake up so late?

While the Chinese in their usual style has hidden the news that they killed a Kachin farmer in China after the two Myanmar soldiers went and killed the Chinese, it cannot hide the fact that all is not hunky dory in the border areas and can become a flashpoint.

Even if the Chinese Govt wants the Dam in Myanmar to be activated, one wonders if the recently liberalised regime in Myanmar will agree, given that it will affect 10,000 Kachins who are not very favourable to the regime in Yangon and who the Yangon regime wants to woo!

China apparently is up a gum tree and they will have to climb it faster and get stuck if Aung San Soo Kyi comes to power since she is taken by China to be western stooge!

 

[SADAKHUSH]

Honeymoon with Myanmar is over and heading for divorce. What was the one key factor that has set Myanmar on fast track towards reforms, it will be interesting to interview the ex Military Generals and find out the truth about it. I can only speculate of various possibilities one of them being two visits to India by their President with in a short period of six months. Was PM Manmohan Singh able to persuade him with some kind of intelligence reports about China's real intention about Myanmar? I would like to hear from other forum members as well on this topic.

 

[Ray]

India may have played some role, but in all probability, there could be some quid pro quo between the regime and the West.

 

[Ray]

t all seems like ancient history. Yet the question remains why an entrenched military regime, in power since 1962, is doing all this now, and so fast. In comparison with the bloody political upheavals in the Middle East, Myanmar's political revolution has been top-down and largely peaceful. The changes may yet prove to be more profound than in Libya or Egypt.

Long-term anxieties contributed to the generals' change of heart. After decades of failed socialist planning followed by a few more of military crony capitalism, the regime became increasingly aware that once-rich Myanmar had in its hands fallen embarrassingly far behind the neighbours. At some point, this humiliation trumped the ability of a few to make very corrupt fortunes....

Many presumed that these sanctions did not worry the generals because they could rely on Chinese aid instead. Not so. Particularly in northern Myanmar, the often arrogant and sometimes brutal behaviour of Chinese companies in the end alienated even the government. What is more, the sort of technical and educational assistance—"capacity-building" in the jargon—that Myanmar now craves is just what China does not do. Thus the generals have been obliged to turn back to the West, and political reform.


Myanmar's startling changes: Pragmatic virtues | The Economist

 

[Virendra]

This divorce is in general a good news for India but what is in it for us specifically and in short term?
Should I be relieved now and consider that Coco islands will most probably not be allowed for Chinese spying?

Regards,
Virendra