This is an extract from a report from The First Post.
Read also: “Myanmar‘s generals hit where it hurts” by Asia Times Online.
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ha! i worked in the airport and did Air Bagan flite before.saw this arrogant kid flying business class on his daddy’s plane..
As a former UWCSEA student–a school that purports to cultivate internationalism and future world leaders–I am utterly nauseated that this sort of behaviour goes on. I hope very much that there are serious internal consequences and soul searching within the school.
I believe some of our foreign students are actually very passionate about the Burmese cause, and it is very unfortunate that this idiot could be allowed to wallow around in this pool of safe prosperity while his family is complicit in ensuring the continuity of the political and economic status quo in Burma.
It appears that the above reports are false and I therefore retract the above comment.
I wrote to United World College about this and this is their statement on this issue.
“Recently a newspaper article was published in reference to a student who attends United World College of South East Asia, Singapore. The article is believed to be a fabrication and consists of inaccuracies. Unfortunately, it has since been reproduced in other publication which are now circulating further afield. The original article appeared in ‘The Irrawaddy’ and indicated that the authenticity of the e-mail was unconfirmed; this has liberally been altered of late to ‘believed to be genuine’.
The school does not take kindly to any matter that is likely to bring its name into disrepute. Thus the student in question was interviewed about the contents and nature of the e-mail. It is our genuine belief that the student is neither the author of the e-mail nor has ever expressed such sentiments. The pictures that accompanied the articles were taken from student shared internet site and replicated for the article.
As you can appreciate it is difficult to counter the ‘trial by media’ process. As such, we have no intention of further inflaming these rumours by entertaining a response for the media. The family’s lawyer has written to the newspaper concerned and asked that they print a retraction – unfortunately the syndicated nature of the article means that the damage has already been done. As members of the UWCSEA community we place great emphasis on upholding the values and practices of this wonderful institution. We will neither let any member undermine our reputation but equally not partake in any injustice. We will of course continue to monitor the situation and continue to act fairly and accordingly.”
Lucy,
Thank you for the clarification. It is noted and TOC will do an update on the veracity of said report.
Editorial Team
He should still be punished and humiliated. We have to realize this: by making normal every day life harder for the people that benefit most from Burma’s ruling Junta’s oppression of its people there is possible avenue for change. If their livelihood and overall standard of living is attacked, that provides incentive for them to remember what human rights is. And sadly, children must suffer the consequences of their fathers’ and mothers actions’.
Let’s not forget that even if Htet Tay Za has done nothing wrong, he has benefited from a regime that BRUTALLY ATTACKED BUDDHIST MONKS. These people are simple, peaceful folk. How can someone enjoy a life in Singapore at the expense of their safety?
HI!
Htet Tay Za MIN
Update-latest about Tay Za sons
EU Sanctions on Tay Za’s Son Upheld
http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=18909
BANGKOK—In a May 19 court judgment that went almost unnoticed, Pye Phyo Tay Za, the son of junta-linked businessman Tay Za, lost a legal bid to have EU sanctions against him overturned and was ordered to pay the court costs for the Council of the European Union.
Pye Phyo had argued that he is neither a member of Burma’s military government nor associated with it, and does not benefit from “the administration of that government.” His lawyers, London-based law firm Carter-Ruck, claimed that “neither the applicant [Pye Phyo] nor his father received any benefits from the regime.”
Tay Za (right) celebrates with his youngest daughter and sons Pye Phyo (left) and Htet (center). Photo: The Irrawaddy
But Tay Za is widely-regarded as having built a multifaceted, multi-billion dollar business empire based on close connections with Burma’s ruling military, including junta-chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe.
And in a statement that may have undermined Pye Phyo’s own case, his lawyers also argued that, “the fact that the applicant is the son of a person whom the Council considers to have benefited from the military regime of Myanmar [Burma] does not give him the requisite connection with that regime.”
Similarly, Pye Phyo claimed that his two-year shareholding in two of Tay Za’s Singapore-listed companies, “does not show that he benefited from any advantages that his father’s companies may have received from the military regime in Myanmar.”
In rebutting the contention that neither Tay Za nor his son Pye Phyo benefit from the regime, the opposing lawyers said: “As regards family members of such leading business figures, it may be presumed that they benefit from the functions exercised by those businessmen, so that there is nothing to prevent the conclusion that such family members also benefit from the economic policies of the government.”
In light of fears that Pye Phyo’s attempt to have EU sanctions against him lifted was a ruse to enable Tay Za to find a way around sanctions, the Council said that, “the applicant was aware of the reasons for which such restrictive measures specifically apply to him, since he states in paragraph 37 of the originating application that there may be a risk of his father circumventing the freeze on his own assets by transferring his funds to other family members.”
Pye Phyo contended that he “does not frustrate the process of national reconciliation, respect for human rights or the democratization of Myanmar,” reminding the Council that he has not been involved in politics or government inside Burma.
But his younger brother, Htet Tay Za, reportedly bragged in a notorious 2007 email, sent in response to new US sanctions on the junta, that even though “the US bans us, we’re still [expletive deleted] cool in Singapore. We’re sitting on the whole Burma GDP. We’ve got timber, gems and gas to be sold to other countries like Singapore, China, India and Russia.”
Tay Za often flies to Singapore on business, where both Pye Pho and Htet were schooled. Two large banks in the city-state—OCBC and DBS—have denied functioning as repositories for billions of dollars of gas revenues derived from the Yadana pipeline project.
According to Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign UK, the case and outcome “gives an indication that stronger, carefully targeted sanctions could have an impact,” but adds that carrots should be put on the table as well as an incentive toward reform.
EU sanctions on Burma were renewed under the rubric of the “Common Position” recently. The measures are criticized for being weak and insufficiently-well targeted in some quarters, while elsewhere it is argued that sanctions have not pushed the junta toward reform, and so a new “engagement” approach is needed.
Still others say that it is not sanctions per se that are the problem, but the role of government and business in China, India, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia, all of which offer political and commercial alternatives to the junta and thereby undermine the sanctions.
World turns disapproving eyes on Singapore banquet
The Age, 9 Sep 2009, Eric Ellis
World turns disapproving eyes on Singapore banquet
WERE every high school as wonderful as Singapore’s United World College.
Each morning, a convoy of chauffeur-driven Mercedes, BMWs and SUVs sweep up to the expansive campus, dropping well-shod students dangling all manner of modish teenage bling; mobile phones, computers, designer this and that. The sumptuous grounds are more suggestive of a five-star resort than a secondary school.
With yearly fees of more than $40,000, UWC is where Singapore’s well-heeled foreign residents send their kids. That’s the common or garden expat professionals on an Asian posting, as well as Tay Za, regarded by Washington as bagman to the Burmese junta. Tay Za’s teenage boy Htet is dropped off in a chauffeur-driven Lamborghini, as his father evades US sanctions.
Some teachers are disquieted by all this but Singapore seems to subscribe to a ”don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on where money comes from. In recent years, Singapore has actively sought to become Asia’s Switzerland, the discreet depository of the super-rich, however they made their money. That led to a boom in private banking, with an attendant boom in property and high-end services for this monied elite, including education.
While the vast majority of Singaporean depositors are squeaky-clean, as anywhere, some are not. The Burmese junta banks in Singapore and the money of some of North Korea and Zimbabwe’s potentates is widely thought to be salted away here.
The big money comes from Indonesia, whose tycoons have regarded Singapore as a refuge from volatility at home. The two countries have no extradition treaty and there’s good reason for it to remain that way. Merrill Lynch estimated a third of Singapore’s 60,000-odd millionaires were Indonesian, making the city-state Jakarta’s affluent northern suburb. Re-elected on an anti-corruption ticket, Jakarta’s Yudhoyono Government suspects a good few of its countrymen in Singapore have salted away tarnished money there.
But while markets were roaring, no one really much cared.
Singapore’s private client relationship managers (RMs) were pushing high-margin exotic derivative products created by their investment banks, and the rich got richer. The atmosphere was perhaps best exemplified by the appearance of UBS executive director James Tulley, known to friends as ”Tulley Tubby”, in Singapore Tatler magazine boasting about his 30 pairs of spectacles and 100 pairs of shoes.
But the financial crisis changed everything. It devastated values, banks and depositors, and Western governments sought to crack down on tax havens and regimes reluctant to adequately disclose their financial affairs. Earlier this year, Singapore was threatened with a blacklist of financial shelters compiled by the G20. Germany’s Angela Merkel, Britain’s Gordon Brown, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and the new US president Barack Obama linked arms against international tax havens and secretive financial regimes, seeking scalps to make up for their own economies’ failings.
Now the Europeans are pressing Singapore and other financial centres to open their books. Just 3 per cent to 5 per cent of Singapore’s private banking clients are regarded as European, most of them thought to be Russian. That’s incidental in the private banking scene in Singapore but the implications beyond Europe are acute.
What Singapore doesn’t want is the same rules as the EU and the US. It also doesn’t want to be singled out among Asian financial centres if Hong Kong doesn’t face the same rules. But Singapore cherishes a self-styled reputation as an exemplary international corporate citizen, operating by globally accepted norms.
Complicating the picture is a spate of court actions in Singapore’s courts where the big Asian tycoons Singapore loves are at war with big international banks it also covets over who’s responsible for the massive GFC trading losses in their private accounts. Several cases involve ”accumulators” which involve banks signing clients to a long program of buying stocks, often bank stocks, at fixed discounted prices. That was great when Citibank was trading at $90 and the client bought shares at $45, but not much fun when Citi shares slumped to under $10, but the contracted accumulators kept, well, accumulating at $45. Banks claim caveat emptor, but no wonder clients dub the contracts ”I kill you later”.
Private banking consultant Roman Scott of Calamander Capital says private banks are in denial over the extent of the problem. And, he says, Singapore faces a tricky dilemma. He likens Indonesia and countries like it to diners in a restaurant where various regulators, unfamiliar with the menu, look to the smaller European table and chorus ”We’ll have what they’re having.” And, as it struggles to again economically re-invent itself, Singapore is hoping everyone somehow is well fed.
Singapore, a friend indeed to Burma
October 1, 2007
The island-state may have much to lose if Burma’s generals don’t retain control, writes Eric Ellis.
SINGAPORE is not just skilled at mandatory executions of drug traffickers, running an excellent airport and selling cameras on Orchard Road. It also does a very useful trade keeping Burma’s military rulers and their cronies afloat.
Much attention is focused on China and its hosting of the Olympic Games next year as a diplomatic trigger point for placing pressure on Burma’s junta. But there is a group of government businessmen-technocrats in Singapore who will also be closely – and perhaps nervously – monitoring the brutality in Rangoon. Were they so inclined, their influence could go a long way to limiting the misery being inflicted on Burma’s 54 million people.
Collectively known as Singapore Inc, they gather around the $150 billion state-owned investment house Temasek Holdings, controlled by Singapore’s long-ruling Lee family. With an estimated $3 billion invested in Burma (and more than $20 billion in Australia), Singapore Inc companies have been some of the biggest investors in and supporters of Burma’s military junta – this while its Government, on the rare times it is asked, gently suggests a softly-softly diplomatic approach toward the junta.
When it comes to Burma, Singapore pockets the high morals it likes to wave at the West.
Singapore’s one-time head of foreign trade said, as his country was building links with Burma in the mid-1990s: “While the other countries are ignoring it, it’s a good time for us to go in. You get better deals, and you’re more appreciated. Singapore’s position is not to judge them and take a judgmental moral high ground.”
But by providing Burma’s pariah junta with crucial material and equipment mostly denied by Western sanctions Singapore has helped keep the military government and its cronies afloat for 20 years, indeed since the last time the generals killed the citizens they are supposed to protect with industrial efficiency and brutality, as now.
Without the support from Singapore, Burma’s junta would be greatly weakened and perhaps even fail. But after two decades of profitable business with the generals and their cronies, that is about the last thing Singapore Inc is likely to do. There’s too much money to be made.
From hotels, airlines, military equipment and training, crowd control equipment and sophisticated telecommunications monitoring devices, Singapore is a crucial manager and supplier to the junta, and Burma’s economy.
It is impossible to spend any meaningful time in Burma and not make the junta richer, via contracts with Singapore suppliers to the tourism industry. Singapore’s hospitals also keep its leaders alive – the 74-year-old strongman Than Shwe has been receiving treatment for intestinal cancer in a government hospital in Singapore, in a ward heavily protected by Singapore security.
Much of Singapore’s activity in Burma has been documented by an analyst working in Australia’s Office of National Assessments. Andrew Selth is recognised as a leading authority on Burma’s military. Now a research fellow at Queensland’s Griffith University, Selth has written extensively for years on how close Singapore Inc is to the junta.
Often writing as “William Ashton” in Jane’s Intelligence Review, Selth has described how Singapore has sent guns, rockets, armoured personnel carriers and grenade launchers to the junta, some of it trans-shipped from stocks seized by Israel from Palestinians in southern Lebanon.
Singaporean companies have provided computers and communications equipment for Burma’s defence ministry and army, while upgrading the junta’s ability to communicate with regional commanders – so crucial as protesters take to the streets of 20 cities in Burma. The sheer scale of the protests is causing logistical headaches for the Tatmadaw, as Burma’s military is known.
“Singapore cares little about human rights, in particular the plight of the ethnic and religious minorities in Burma,” Selth writes. “Having developed one of the region’s most advanced armed forces and defence industrial support bases, Singapore is in a good position to offer Burma a number of inducements which other ASEAN [Association of South-East Asian Nations] countries would find hard to match.”
Selth says Singapore also provided the equipment for a “cyber war centre” to monitor dissident activity, while training Burma’s secret police, whose sole job appears to be ensuring democracy groups are crushed.
Monitoring dissidents is an area where Singapore has expertise. After almost five decades in power, the Lee family-controlled People’s Action Party ranks behind only the communists of China, Cuba and North Korea in leadership longevity.
“This centre is reported to be closely involved in the monitoring and recording of foreign and domestic telecommunications, including the satellite telephone conversations of Burmese opposition groups,” Selth writes.
Singaporean government companies, such as the arms supplier Singapore Technologies, dominate the communications and military sector in Singapore. Selth writes: “It is highly unlikely that any of these arms shipments to Burma could have been made without the knowledge and support of the Singapore Government.” He notes that Singapore’s ambassadors to Burma have included a former senior Singapore Armed Forces officer and a past director of Singapore’s defence-oriented Joint Intelligence Directorate. “It is curious that Singapore chose to assign someone with a military background to this new member of ASEAN and not one of its many capable professional diplomats.”
Selth writes that after Burma’s 1988 crackdown, in which 3000 democracy protesters were killed, “the first country to come to the regime’s rescue was in fact Singapore”.
In an interview with the chief executive officer of Singapore Technologies, Peter Seah, at his office in Singapore, the Herald asked about the model of an armoured personnel carrier made by his company that sat on his office table. Seah said his company sold the vehicles “only to allies”. Did that include Burma, given Singapore helped sponsor the military regime into ASEAN? Seah was not specific: “We only sell to allies and we make sure they are responsible.” He did not say how. For its part, Temasek does not respond to questions about its activities in Burma.
A Singaporean diplomat to Burma, Matthew Sim, wrote a handbook for Singaporean businesspeople, Myanmar on My Mind. It is full of tips for doing business in Burma, although odd given Singapore’s contempt for corruption and lawbreakers. “A little money goes a long way in greasing the wheels of productivity,” he writes.
A chapter headed Committing Manslaughter When Driving describes the appropriate action for a Singaporean if they accidentally kill a pedestrian in Burma. “Firstly, the international businessman could give the family of the deceased some money as compensation and dissuade them from pressing charges. Secondly, he could pay a Myanmar citizen to take the blame by declaring that he was the driver in the fatal accident. An international businessman should not make the mistake of trying to argue his case in a court of law when it comes to a fatal accident, even if he is in the right. He highly probably will spend time in jail regretting it. It is a sad and hard world. The facts of life can be ugly.”
Describing Singapore’s usefulness to Burma, Sim says “many successful Myanmar businessmen have opened shell companies” in Singapore “with little or no staff, used to keep funds overseas”. The companies are used to keep business deals outside the control of Burma’s central bank, enabling Singaporeans and others to make transactions with Burma in Singapore, he says.
Sim may be referring to junta cronies such as Tay Za and the druglord Lo Hsing Han. Lo is an ethnic Chinese, from Burma’s traditionally Chinese-populated and opium-rich Kokang region in the country’s east, bordering China. Lo controls a heroin empire and one of Burma’s biggest companies, Asia World, which the US Drug Enforcement Agency describes as a front for his drug trafficking. Asia World controls toll roads, industrial parks and trading companies.
Singapore is the Lo family’s window to the world, a base for controlling several companies. Lo’s son Steven, who has been denied a visa to the US because of his drug links, is married to a Singaporean, Cecilia Ng. The two reportedly control a Singapore-based trading house, Kokang Singapore Pty Ltd. The couple transit Singapore at will. A former US assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Robert Gelbard, has said half of Singapore’s investment in Burma has been “tied to the family of narco-trafficker Lo Hsing Han”.
Tay Zar, who is linked romantically to a daughter of Than Shwe, is also well known in Singapore. His fleet of Ferrari, Lexus and Mercedes cars was shipped to Burma from Singapore. When on the island, he likes to stay at the tacky Meritus Mandarin hotel on Orchard Road, close to the hospitals favoured by his senior military patrons from Burma.
Tay Za was featured in the Singaporean media last year toasting the launch of his new airline, Air Bagan, with the head of Singapore’s aviation authority. Dissident groups say the trade-off for Tay Za’s government business contracts in Burma is to fund junta leaders’ medical trips to Singapore.
So when the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, vows to impose financial sanctions on Burma’s regime, as he did this week, perhaps he should be calling Singapore’s bankers rather than Australia’s.
from:smh.com.au
Concern to Htet Tay Za’s Sister:
i wanna be on you….(on you) if u dont’ like dat, den send it rite back….i jst wanna be2! be on YOU!!!!!!!