WAR OF WORDS: Military calls for 'cease-fire'

Published on Jun 29, 2002

Radio, TV stations ordered to stop airing anti-Burma programming as reaction from Rangoon is assessed

Only two salvos have been fired, but the Thai military halted its propaganda war against Burma yesterday, ordering media outlets under its control to stop broadcasting anti-Burma programmes.

Lt-General Suraphan Pomkaew, a spokesman at the Defence Ministry, said military-run radio and television networks will not air the programmes "for a few days" while officials at the ministry monitor the reaction from Rangoon.

"We hope there will be a good signal from Rangoon over the weekend, otherwise a new round of retaliation will be imposed in the next few days," Suraphan told The Nation. He added that senior military officers will meet next week to determine the next move.

Sources said the government ordered the halt after receiving a contact from Rangoon offering to find a compromise solution to problems arising from insults to the Thai monarchy carried in the Burmese press.

Suraphan said the military planned only a few shots in any case.

"The military has done enough retaliation and now it's time to listen to the result of our shots and the response from the opponent," he said. "We can only do such activities for so long."

A Burmese who arrived in Bangkok from Rangoon said the junta is still "moody", and stirring up nationalist fervour among citizens in the capital and its suburbs. Buildings in Rangoon are widely decorated with the red national flag, he said.

The Thai military on Wednesday began waging a war of words in response to a series of insults to the Thai monarchy by the state-run English-language newspaper The New Light of Myanmar. The move was accompanied by a protest from the Supreme Command both for the insults and for shelling and a border intrusion by Burmese troops that injured two Thai soldiers.

Thailand demanded an apology from the junta, and from newspaper columnist Ma Tin Win, who is now persona non grata in Thailand.

More than 200 Thai radio stations and the two television networks under military control produced programmes aimed at rectifying what they said were distortions in the history of Thai-Burmese relations made by the Burmese columnist.

But Ma Tin Win told the Burmese service of BBC radio that she would not stop writing "the truth" about relations between the two countries.

"The Thai media produce false stories," she told the BBC. "Nobody is telling me what to write. As a patriot, I have to write true stories to inform our people," she said. She added that she would not stop the work she has done for more than 40 years.

Ma Tin Win is an official at Rangoon's Institute of Education. She received a master's degree and a doctorate in education in Russia.

She regularly attacks Thailand and the monarchs of the ancient Kingdom of Ayutthaya whenever the two countries are in conflict.

She was in Thailand five years ago for a study tour in Phitsanulok arranged by the Thai Education Ministry, according to Wirat Niyomtam, director of the Myanmar Studies Centre at Naresuan University.

Supalak Ganjanakhundee

THE NATION

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