Friday, August 30, 2013

The Irrawaddy Magazine

The Irrawaddy Magazine

Investors Needed to Link New Airport to Rangoon: Officials

Posted: 30 Aug 2013 06:49 AM PDT

Passengers board an Air Bagan flight to Chiang Mai at Rangoon's international airport. (Photo: Yan Naing / The Irrawaddy)

Passengers board an Air Bagan flight to Chiang Mai at Rangoon's international airport. (Photo: Yan Naing / The Irrawaddy)

RANGOON – Financial backing from the private sector is needed to link Burma’s proposed new international airport at Hanthawaddy with Rangoon, the country’ biggest city, government officials said.

"We propose a highway and a high-speed train to Yangon," Kyaw Soe, an official at the Department of Civil Aviation, told The Irrawaddy. Unable to put a number on the likely cost of building the new transport links, Kyaw Soe counseled that "We need investors to do this; it is just a proposal at the moment."

The construction of the new airport — aiming to cater for 12 million passengers per year at Hanthawaddy, all of 80km north of Rangoon — will be undertaken by a consortium led by South Korea’s Incheon, which won a government tender for the project on Aug 12.

The new airport will be needed, the government has said, to meet growing tourist interest in the country. By 2020, visitor numbers could be anywhere from 2.8 million to 7.4 million, up from 1 million last year, according to official estimates. The top-end projections for an expanded tourism sector would be worth over US$10 billion per annum to Burma's economy — a massive jump from the approximately 1 million tourist that visited last year.

The transport plans for the new airport would not just link to Rangoon, Burma’s commercial hub and a city expected to double in size to 10 million by 2040, but also include a road link to the giant Japanese-backed Thilawa industrial park, the Transport Ministry says.

"We have a masterplan for Hanthawaddy airport which includes a plan to link to Thilawa," said Min Lwin, Head of Office at the Transport Ministry. Thilawa, currently a port located about 25 km from downtown Rangoon, will be a 2,400-hectare "special economic zone."

The proposed SEZ is key to attracting large-scale Japanese manufacturing to Burma, as it will provide a work-around for companies interested in setting up shop in the country but deterred by Rangoon's infrastructure deficits — such as a lack of office space, high land prices and unreliable electricity supply.

"We expect that they will break ground at Thilawa in December," Masaki Takahara, director of JETRO, Japan’s overseas trade mission in Rangoon, told The Irrawaddy.

Construction of the zone, slated to be finished by 2015, will be a 51-49 percent joint venture between Burmese companies and Japanese counterparts, featuring corporate giants Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and Marubeni.

Min Lwin could not give any details about whether the Hanthawaddy-Thilawa link would comprise rail as well as road, or how the proposed connection would dovetail with existing road and rail connections into Rangoon. Japan’s Itochu Corporation will, however, build a bridge linking Rangoon to Thilawa, according The Construction Ministry.

"We have formed the implementation committee and will discuss this in the future," Min Lwin says, adding that the Transport Ministry will meet with the Incheon-led consortium in September to discuss the overall airport project, which will be comprised of three phases – building the airport, construction of an adjacent ‘airport city’ and the upgrading of transport links to Thilawa.

Aside from the new Hanthawaddy international airport, two other airport projects – the expansion and upgrading of Rangoon’s current international airport and the airport at Mandalay, will be carried out in Burma in the coming years.

The existing Rangoon airport will be upgraded – mainly to cater for domestic flights – by Pioneer Aerodrome Services (PAS), while Japan’s Mitsubishi-Jalux will expand Mandalay’s airport. PAS is linked to Asia World, run by Steven Law, a US-sanctioned businessman who is the son of recently-deceased drug trafficker Lo Hsing Han.

More Than 70 Rohingyas Handed Lengthy Prison Sentences

Posted: 30 Aug 2013 06:36 AM PDT

Policemen move towards burning houses during fighting between Buddhist Rakhine and Muslim Rohingya communities in Sittwe in June 2012. (PHOTO: Reuters)

RANGOON — An Arakan State court reportedly sentenced 76 Rohingya Muslims to lengthy prison terms last week for their alleged roles in an outburst of deadly inter-communal violence in Maungdaw Township in June last year, according to a human rights group and a local media report. At least seven were sentenced to life imprisonment.

The Thailand-based Arakan Project, which advocates for the rights of the Rohingyas, said a total of 76 Muslim defendants from Maungdaw Township had been sentenced at Buthidaung and Maungdaw township courts last week.

"On 20 and 21 August, Buthidaung Court sentenced 43 Rohingya detainees, all from Ba Gone Nar Village Tract in Maungdaw South, in relation to the June [2012] violence. Of them, 35 were sentenced to 17 years, four to 6 years and four to life imprisonment," the group said in a draft report that it recently submitted to the UN special envoy on the human rights situation in Burma Tomás Quintana.

On August 22, another 33 detainees were scheduled to be convicted by the Maungdaw Court, Arakan Project director Chris Lewa said on Friday, adding that she was still finding out what the court had decided.

Burmese newspaper The Voice Daily quoted a local official as saying that the Maungdaw Court handed down three life sentences. "Three Bengalis who killed one monk were sentenced to life in prison. Ten people were sentenced to 10 years," Arakan State Attorney General Hla Thein told the newspaper.

Arakan and central government officials refer to the stateless Muslim minority as "Bengalis" to suggest that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

The men were convicted for murder and a range of other charges related to the burning down of Arakanese Buddhists' homes, a primary school and a health clinic in Kandayar and Mawyawaddy villages in Maungdaw Township in June 2012, according to The Voice Daily.

Arakan State spokesperson Win Myaing confirmed with The Irrawaddy that dozens of Muslim men had been sentenced last week, but gave few details. "We heard that the court sentenced them. But we do not have detailed information to talk about this case. This authority [to discuss cases] belongs to the court," he said.

The Rohingya men spent more than one year in pre-trial detention in Buthidaung Jail before being sentenced. They are part a group of "hundreds of Rohingyas, including children and four humanitarian workers, [who] were arrested and detained for alleged involvement in violence in June 2012," the Arakan Project said, adding that many had been tortured in custody.

On June 8, Rohingyas attacked Buddhist villages in Maungdaw Township, killing a number of villagers and torching homes. Waves of inter-communal violence subsequently spread through the state and by late October, 140,000 people, mostly Muslims, were displaced and 192 had been killed.

Human rights groups have accused government security forces of supporting the Buddhist communities against the Rohingya, and of carrying out arbitrary arrest and systematic and widespread rights abuses against the Muslim minority.

Lewa said last week's sentences constituted a violation of the defendants' basic rights. "None of these people had any fair judicial process and the sentences were extremely harsh. Some of these people were certainly not even involved in the [inter-communal] violence," she said.

By comparison, Lewa said, "very few" Buddhist perpetrators of the violence were sentenced "and they received lighter sentences."

Myo Thant, a Rohingya politician with the Maungdaw-based Democracy and Human Rights Party, said many Rohingya families in the Muslim-majority area in northern Arakan State had relatives in jail, but they are unable to communicate with them, let alone support them during their trial.

He said that his younger brother, called Kyaw Naing, had been sentenced by the Maungdaw Court on July 12 to 10 years imprisonment for alleged involvement in last year's violence.

The family had been unable to hire a lawyer to aid his brother's defense, he said, "Because they did not even inform our family when they sentenced him. My family still does not dare to speak out about this despite their understanding that the court sentencing of their son was not fair."

Shwe Maung, a Muslim lawmaker from Buthidaung Township who represents the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party, said arrests in Maungdaw Township were often arbitrary and court proceedings biased against Muslim villagers.

"There is no rule of law there because the victims cannot defend themselves in court," he said. "The court only listens to one-side information and the victims have to suffer for this, as they cannot have a lawyer and their families cannot go to defend their people in court."

Burma Military’s New Rangoon Billboard Attracts Attention

Posted: 30 Aug 2013 06:07 AM PDT

In a first for Burma's armed forces, a billboard promoting a "No Child Soldiers" campaign has drawn attention in the country's biggest city. (Steve Tickner / The Irrawaddy)

RANGOON — The Burmese military, notorious over the past five decades for its use of child soldiers, erected an eye-catching billboard in downtown Rangoon this week indicating a desire to clean up its image—and perhaps its practices.

In a first for Burma's armed forces, a billboard promoting a "No Child Soldiers" campaign has drawn attention in the country's biggest city, as the quasi-civilian government increasingly cooperates with UN agencies to solve the problem of underage recruitment, although new cases of child soldiers continue to be reported.

The International Labor Organization (ILO), which has long campaigned for an end to child soldiers, said the new billboard campaign was a step in the right direction by the Burmese military, known as the Tatmadaw.

"The recent 'No Child Soldiers' billboard and poster campaign is extremely positive and acts to further reconfirm the commitment of the government and the Tatmadaw to addressing the problem of child soldiers," Steve Marshall, the ILO's liaison officer in Rangoon, told The Irrawaddy on Friday.

"The campaign will work in several ways, but in particular it demonstrates to the people of Myanmar [Burma], at all levels, that the Tatmadaw as a professional force wants the right type of recruits with which to provide its important defense services. In so doing, it will also play a useful additional role in educating the community that Myanmar Law is clear that the recruitment of children under the age of 18 years is illegal."

The billboard comes as two families in the city publicly alleged at a press conference in Rangoon on Thursday that the military had recruited two of their children.

Khaing Saw Lin, a 15-year-old boy, was allegedly recruited in June and has been training at a military center in Thabeikkyin Township, Mandalay Division, according to Myint Win, who has been assisting the families and is a member of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party.

He said the 15-year-old had been a high school student in South Dagon Township.

"We found that he was registered under a different name at the military center, after we talked with some military officers," the NLD member said. "His name is Zaw Htet Oo now, and they even made a fake ID, which said he's 23 years old."

Despite the family's requests, the military has not released the boy, the NLD member added.

"We are waiting for his release," he said. "If it doesn't happen, we will talk to organizations that are helping with cases of child soldiers."

The ILO has worked for years in cooperation with the government and the Burmese military to raise awareness about the issue of underage recruitment, as part of a greater project to eliminate forced labor.

Marshall said the goal was to discharge child soldiers and to stop the practice of underage recruiting. He urged families who had lost children to the military to contact a local military branch representative to initiate their discharge. "If this is for some reason not possible, they should have no hesitation in contacting the ILO liaison office," he told The Irrawaddy.

The ILO office in Rangoon would then have the recruitment addressed through a forced labor complaints mechanism with the Burmese government.

Rights groups have accused the Burmese military as well as armed rebel groups in the country of using child soldiers for decades—accusations which the military long denied under the former regime.

Burma's quasi-civilian government, which came to power in 2011, signed an agreement with the United Nations to end the practice of child soldiers in the country.

The military discharged 68 underage child soldiers earlier this month, according to the United Nations. A month earlier, it released 42 children and young adults who had been recruited for soldiering and other duties.

The latest report by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Burma's government had made progress in reducing the recruitment of children to serve as fighters but still needed to stamp out the practice.

The report said seven ethnic armed groups, including the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), also recruit and use child soldiers.

The KNLA in July signed an agreement to protect children from armed conflict and prevent the recruitment of child soldiers.

Photo of the week

Posted: 30 Aug 2013 05:56 AM PDT

bigasmall

Nok Air Joins Cadre of Foreign Airliners Linking With Burma

Posted: 30 Aug 2013 04:47 AM PDT

Thai passengers disembark from a Nok Air flight. (Photo: The Irrawaddy)

RANGOON — With demand for flights into Burma rising, Thailand's Nok Air will launch a new route from the Thai border town of Mae Sot to the Mon State capital of Moulmein, state-run media announced Friday.

Budget tickets priced between US$55 and $80 will be available for the 25-minute flight, The New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported, with travelers able to pay in Burmese kyat, Thai baht or US dollars.

The new air route, which will be serviced beginning on Sunday, will greatly reduce travel time between the Thai border town and Moulmein, which currently takes more than six hours overland.

The Mae Sot-Moulmein flight is expected to largely benefit Thai tourists and pilgrims who travel to Mon State for a glimpse of Kyaiktiyo Pagoda, also known as Golden Rock.

Kyaiktiyo Pagoda is a well-known Buddhist pilgrimage site, and its iconic stupa-topped, gold-leaf covered rock is a popular attraction for tourists, particularly among the majority-Buddhist Thai contingent.

Airline Manager Aye Min Tun told The New Light of Myanmar that the Nok flights out of Mae Sot were slated to depart every morning.

Nok Air will also launch a new route on Oct. 1 from Mae Sot to Rangoon, Burma's commercial capital, where a consortium led by Pioneer Aerodrome Services, an affiliate of the Burmese conglomerate Asia World, was recently awarded a contract to expand Rangoon International Airport.

As the budget airline of Thai Airways International, Nok Air services 100 flights a day in Thailand.

Meanwhile, fellow budget airliner AirAsia has announced plans to launch regular flights from Bangkok's Don Mueang Airport to Naypyidaw, according to a report by Travel Daily News. According to Thai AirAsia CSO Tassapon Bijleveld, the airline will offer promotional fares until Sept. 8 for travel between Oct. 28, 2013 and Aug. 5, 2014.

"AirAsia is the first and only low-fare airline to serve this route from Don Mueang Airport," he said, adding that new 180-seat Airbus A320s would be used for the one-hour flight between the two Southeast Asian capitals.

The move by AirAsia comes a week after Thai airline Bangkok Airways said it would become the first international carrier to fly directly to the Burmese capital.

Sagaing Police Arrest More Suspects After Latest Sectarian Unrest

Posted: 29 Aug 2013 11:53 PM PDT

Buildings burn last weekend in Htan Gone village, Sagaing Division, in this photo published on the Facebook page of Ye Htut, the deputy minister of information and the presidential spokesman. Members of a 1,000-strong Buddhist mob torched dozens of homes and shops in northwestern Burma following rumors that a Muslim man tried to sexually assault a young woman. (Photo: Ye Htet / Facebook)

MANDALAY — The police are continuing to arrest suspects after a Buddhist mob set fire to dozens of Muslim-owned homes and businesses in northwest Burma's Sagaing Division last weekend in the latest communal violence to hit the country.

Eleven people were initially arrested after a 1,000-strong Buddhist mob rioted late last Saturday night in Htan Gone village, 16 kilometers (10 miles) south of the town of Kantbalu. Police said this week that they were continuing to arrest more suspects from 12 neighboring villages.

"Currently I cannot disclose exactly how many people have been detained," a police spokesman in Htan Gone, told The Irrawaddy. "At the very start of the conflict, we arrested 11 culprits. We had been ordered to do so."

Forty-eight houses and 13 shops owned by Muslims were reportedly burned in the rioting, displacing 292 people.

State-run media reported that fire trucks arriving to the scene were initially blocked by the rioters, who attacked the rescuers with swords, sticks and slingshots. Police fired a warning shot to clear a path for the fire trucks, after earlier firing another warning shot to disperse the mob. A police battalion and firefighters managed to control the fires by about 3:30 am, more than seven hours after the rioting began.

"Responsible persons from respective police stations have been arranging to arrest those who set the fires in the village during the conflict," said Kyi Naing, a minister for border affairs and security in Sagaing Division told The Irrawaddy.

"We wanted to bust the culprits earlier but we couldn't, as we were occupied with the duties of putting down the fires and preventing further religious rioting."

A shelter was set up for displaced Muslim residents at an Arabic school in Htan Gone's Quarter No. 1. Some displaced residents are also staying with relatives.

"Frankly speaking, we don't dare return to our houses yet," Than Nweh, whose café was burned down in the rioting, told The Irrawaddy.

The conflict reportedly began after rumors circulated last Saturday that a young Muslim man had attempted to rape a Buddhist woman.

The man was brought to the village police station and transferred to Shwe Bo Prison, but a mob of about 100 men gathered at the station and demanded that police hand him over. Rioting began after the police refused. At the height of the violence, up to 1,000 people were rampaging through the village, according to the Information Ministry.

Aung Kyaw Myint, an administrator of Zi Pin village, said he witnessed part of the incident between the Buddhist woman and Muslim man from which the rumors of attempted rape arose.

He said a 17-year-old Muslim boy met a 25-year-old woman who was riding a bicycle home and attempted to hold her hands.

"On that day, the young lady came running to us from the paddy field to ask for help. So we chased after that boy," Aung Kyaw Myint said. "That boy was running to the village of the young lady, instead of his village. So we went to the village searching for him. After the boy was caught, he was taken by two policemen. In the aftermath of the issue, more and more people accumulated and a crowd went out to stir up problems in Htan Gone village."

The conflict in Htan Gone is the latest sectarian violence to hit Buddhist-majority Burma. Clashes between Buddhists and Muslims in west Burma last year left about 150,000 people displaced and about 200 dead. Violence spread earlier this year, with anti-Muslim riots breaking out in towns in central Burma and east Burma.

Burmese Beauty Queen Wins Over Facebook Fans

Posted: 29 Aug 2013 10:52 PM PDT

Burmese model Khin Wint Wah (R) poses with two other participants in the Miss Supranational 2013 in Belarus. (Khin Wint Wah / Facebook)

RANGOON — Burmese beauty queen Khin Wint Wah, who is participating in the Miss Supranational 2013, an international beauty pageant being held in the eastern European country Belarus, has caught the attention of many Burmese Facebook users. The 19-year-old model gathered almost 50,000 likes on the social networking site since mid-August.

After arriving on Aug 17 in the capital Minsk, Khin Wint has been taking part in promotional activities and rehearsals for the event, along with models from 98 countries. The finale will take place on September 6 and the winner will walk away with US$30,000 in prize money.

Photos of competition rehearsals placed on showing Khin Wint Wah's Facebook page on August 18 have since garnered the interest of Burma's growing number of Facebook users. By Friday morning, the photos had gathered nearly 48,000 likes.

Khin Wint Wah, who studies botany in Rangoon, was selected to represent Burma after winning a domestic beauty competition for Miss Supranational 2013 pageant program in August. She told the organizers' website that she was delighted that she could join the competition.

"I was very excited, because I had never traveled overseas before… My country is very beautiful, but so is Belarus," Khin Wint Wah was quoted as saying. "There are so many people … who are supporting me. It makes me feel happy and confident. I want them to know that I am doing my very best to take this crown back to my country, and that I love them very much."

Asked about the ongoing reforms taking place in Burma, Khin Wint Wah said, "Now it is more open, so you are all welcome to visit my beautiful and colorful country."

Started in 2009, the Miss Supranational pageant is organized by the Panama-based World Beauty Association. Last year's event was held in Poland, but this year the World Beauty Association chose Belarus — often referred to as Europe's last dictatorship as it's been ruled by President Alexander Lukashenko for almost 20 years — as the location for its beauty pageant.

A World Beauty Association spokesperson said on the organization's website that event would help with "promoting Belarus to the world."

Former China Security Chief Faces Corruption Probe: Report

Posted: 29 Aug 2013 10:39 PM PDT

Former Chinese Politburo Standing Committee Member Zhou Yongkang attends the closing ceremony of the National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 14, 2012. (Photo: Reuters / Jason Lee)

BEIJING — China's senior leadership has agreed to open a corruption investigation into Zhou Yongkang, one of China's most powerful politicians of the past decade, stepping up its anti-graft campaign, the South China Morning Post reported on Friday.

The reported move against Zhou—a retired member of the Politburo's all-powerful Standing Committee and the former domestic security tsar—follows the five-day corruption trial of ousted politician Bo Xilai, who was widely considered a key Zhou ally.

The Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the report when contacted by Reuters. The State Council Information Office, the public relations arm of the government, did not respond immediately to faxed questions about the report.

Zhou also could not be reached for comment on the report and Reuters could not independently verify it.

He was one rank higher than Bo in the power structure and would be the first Politburo Standing Committee member—retired or sitting—to be investigated for economic crimes since the end of the Cultural Revolution nearly 40 years ago, the Hong Kong-based newspaper said.

Citing sources familiar with the leadership's thinking, it said the decision to investigate was made in view of rising anger inside the party at the scale of the corruption problem and the wealth that Zhou's family has amassed.

President Xi Jinping ordered officials in charge of the case to "get to the bottom of it," the paper said.

Most sources and political analysts have said they doubt Zhou is under investigation because it would risk opening a Pandora's box that could lead to calls for probes into other retired Standing Committee members, including ex-premier Wen Jiabao and his wife and son.

The New York Times reported last year that Wen's family had accumulated at least $2.7 billion in "hidden riches," a story China labeled a smear.

Earlier this month US-based Chinese news site Duowei said Zhou was being investigated for graft. However, the report was later withdrawn.

In a sign Zhou may not be in trouble, the websites of the official People's Daily and China News Service reported on Thursday that Zhou had sent flowers to the funeral of top nuclear scientist Liu Xiyao, as did Xi.

State media typically do not report such stories on party figures who have fallen from grace, so the brief news items could be interpreted as a signal he remains in the hierarchy's good books.

Oil Connection

Chinese authorities revealed this week a probe into China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), which Zhou joined as a senior manager in the early 1990s.

Four top managers at the company have been named as being under investigation in recent days, including group deputy general manager Li Hualin, who once served as Zhou's secretary.

The newspaper said it understood the new probe would center on Zhou's time as a party boss in Sichuan province and at CNPC.

In particular, investigators would examine whether Zhou and his family benefited through oilfield and property deals facilitated by his son, Zhou Bin, and other allies, it said.

Sources told the newspaper it was too early to say whether Zhou—who controlled legal and law enforcement affairs for 10 years from 2002—would face public prosecution or an internal party probe.

Three other Zhou allies are currently under investigation, including the deputy party boss of Sichuan, Li Chuncheng, who had for many years overseen development of the province's prosperous capital, Chengdu.

The South China Morning Post said party investigators typically move against top aides and underlings of a primary target first to weaken their political base.

Awaiting Verdict

Zhou was implicated in rumors last year that he hesitated in moving against Bo.

Former Chongqing party boss Bo is awaiting a verdict on corruption, bribery and abuse of power charges.

The domestic security forces Zhou ran also suffered a humiliating failure when they allowed blind rights advocate Chen Guangcheng to escape from 19 months of house arrest and flee to the US Embassy in Beijing, which happened last year too.

Such fumbles gave then-president Hu Jintao and his successor President Xi a shared motive to put a growing array of police forces and domestic security services under firmer oversight.

Xi has made fighting deeply engrained graft a central theme of his new administration, and has promised to take down "tigers"—in other words very senior people—as well as "flies" lower down on the food chain implicated in corruption.

Zhou would be the most senior person caught up in Xi's dragnet to date.

He joined the Politburo Standing Committee in 2007 while also heading the central Political and Legal Affairs Committee, a sprawling body that oversees law-and-order policy.

That double status allowed Zhou to dominate a domestic security budget of $110 billion a year, exceeding the defense budget.

But the hulking, grim-faced 70-year-old stepped down, along with most members of the Standing Committee, at the 18th Party Congress last November and formally retired in March this year.

At the same time, the position he occupied was downgraded, and his successor Meng Jianzhu is only a member of the Politburo, the 25-member body that reports to the elite Politburo Standing Committee.

Since the 1990s, China's efforts to stifle crime, unrest and dissent have allowed the domestic security apparatus—including police, armed militia and state security officers—to accumulate power, which worried many within the party.

Still, Zhou's time in charge of domestic security saw a huge swelling in the number of "mass incidents"—China's euphemism for public protests—fueled by frustration at a yawning wealth gap and official corruption, despite the fact that the Party cracks down hard on dissent.

Japanese Mother Tells of Heartbreak Years After N Korea Abducted 13-Year-Old Daughter

Posted: 29 Aug 2013 10:24 PM PDT

A North Korean prison policewoman stands guard behind fences at a jail on the banks of Yalu River near the Chongsong county of North Korea, opposite the Chinese border city of Dandong, on May 8, 2011. (Photo: Reuters)

TOKYO — For two decades after 13-year-old Megumi Yokota vanished on her way home from school one November evening, Japanese police called her parents whenever they found an unidentified body.

Unimaginably, the teenager had been abducted and taken to North Korea, her mother told a UN Commission of Inquiry panel in Tokyo on Thursday, but there was no clue what had happened to the cheerful girl who liked to sing until reports began to emerge in 1997 of the presence of Japanese in North Korea.

"Up until then, whenever they found a body, or there was a murder, or a skeleton got snagged in the fishing net of a boat, anywhere in Japan, the police would get in touch with us," Sakie Yokota told the commission, the first time Pyongyang's human rights record has been looked at by an expert panel.

"We lived in a sadness that I thought would drive us mad."

Megumi is one of 13 Japanese that Kim Jong-il, the late father of current leader Kim Jong-un, admitted in 2002 had been kidnapped in the 1970s and 1980s to help train spies. Pyongyang says eight of them are dead, including Megumi, but Japan wants more information.

The dispute over the abductees has been a major stumbling block in normalizing relations between the two countries and progress has stalled in recent years, though Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has expressed hope that movement may be possible under the third generation of the founding Kim family.

The North denies that it abuses human rights and has refused to recognize the commission, denying access to investigators.

The nightmare began for the Yokotas in 1977, when Megumi failed to return from playing badminton at school.

"We felt a huge fear," Sakie told the UN panel, her voice shaking. "I took her little brothers by the hand and we ran out in the dark, looking on beaches and calling Megumi, Megumi."

Searches by police and sniffer dogs showed she had reached a street corner just blocks from her home, then the trail went cold.

Following the 2002 visit to North Korea by former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi at which Pyongyang admitted the abductions, it came out that Megumi had married and had a child, though North Korea said she had died some years previously.

Later Pyongyang sent back bones that they said were Megumi's, but DNA testing found they were those of a man.

"Three photos came back with the bones, our first sight of Megumi as an adult. I cried and cried," Sakie said. "Both my husband and I apologized for not being able to help her."

Commission head Michael Kirby, a retired Australian judge, told Reuters that the goal of the inquiry, which will be submitted by the end of the year, was to give a voice to the Yokotas and similar families.

At the very least, it wants to give the families the peace of knowing what happened.

"Who else has engaged in kidnapping—and not kidnapping of nuclear scientists, Internet experts—the kidnapping of a chef, a guard, a schoolchild, a housewife whose two young children were left crying in a creche?" he said.

"It certainly calls out for evidentiary answers. If the evidentiary answers are not given, North Korea will only have itself to blame if the commission of inquiry and the world community believes what these witnesses have told."

Sakie Yokota said that Megumi would turn 49 in October.

"She was just 13 years old," she said. "Did they mistake her for an adult and take her, or did they have something else in mind? We'll never know. Until she comes home."

Additional reporting by Reuters reporter Leng Cheng in Tokyo.

Sri Lankan Minister Criticizes UN Rights Chief

Posted: 29 Aug 2013 10:12 PM PDT

Sri Lankan army snipers in ghillie suits march during the War Victory parade in Colombo May 18, 2013. (Photo: Reuters)

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A Sri Lankan Cabinet minister questioned the impartiality of the visiting United Nations human rights chief on Thursday, accusing her of supporting ethnic Tamil separatists because of her own Tamil background and having secret talks with activist groups outside of her official program.

Navi Pillay, a South African of Indian Tamil origin, is on a weeklong visit to Sri Lanka to review its progress in investigating alleged abuses during the long civil war between government troops and separatist Tamil rebels that ended four years ago.

Housing Minister Wimal Weerawansa said that after she completed her visit, Pillay would prepare an "extremist and unjust report" that is unfair to Sri Lanka because of her ethnicity.

"Navi Pillay came here, as a Tamil woman, to satisfy the wishes of Tamil separatists," Weerawansa told reporters, adding that a fair report cannot be expected from her.

"She looks at problems in a partial manner, with a preconceived judgment," he said.

Weerawansa also accused Pillay of holding secret meetings with activist groups outside of her official schedule and receiving "forged documents and faked photos."

Pillay's spokesman Rupert Colville said the rights chief was conducting the mission as she would in any country.

Pillay is to present her findings to the UN Human Rights Council next month. The council passed a resolution in March urging Sri Lanka to more thoroughly investigate alleged war crimes committed by government soldiers and the rebels. It also called on Pillay's office to orally report on Sri Lanka's progress in September and submit a detailed report next March.

Government troops defeated the Tamil Tigers in May 2009, ending their attempt to create a separate state for Tamils. A UN report said government troops may have killed 40,000 Tamil civilians in the final phase of the war.

On Tuesday, Pillay visited Mullivaikkal village in northern Sri Lanka, the site of the final battle of the civil war, where hundreds of civilians are alleged to have died. War survivors there complained to Pillay about missing relatives, military land grabs and a life without basic facilities more than four years after the war's end.

Many civilians and rebels said to have surrendered to the military toward the end of the fighting are reported missing.

The rebels are accused of killing civilians, using them as human shields and recruiting child soldiers.

Human rights groups say the military has seized about 6,400 acres (2,589 hectares) of land from war victims since the end of the fighting and now runs farms on the land.

Also Thursday, Pillay met with government officials, including Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe.
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