Other Presidential Documents San Suu Kyi has been free to carry out her party duties as General Sec- retary, and, in a change from conditions in her pre-detention days, to travel freely throughout Burma. Since her release, Aung San Suu Kyi has made trips to Moulmein, Mandalay, and Hpa'an. She has also presided over a slow revival of the NLD as a political party. Virtually crushed by the gov- ernment during the days leading up to Aung San Suu Kyi's detention in September 2000, the NLD has now re-assembled most of its party leader- ship and reopened 62 out of over 300 offices throughout Burma. It has also benefited from the release of more than 300 of its party members who had been held as political prisoners. Unfortunately, the steps the government has taken to rebuild confidence with the NLD have not been matched by equally serious steps towards a political dialogue on constitutional issues. As a result, questions still remain regarding the government's overall com- mitment to political transition. In regard to human rights, the government's record remains poor. The re- gime has, however, improved its cooperation with international human rights organizations, finally agreeing to allow the ILO to appoint a liaison officer in Rangoon and to conduct on-site surveys in Burma of areas along the Thai/Burmese border that have been identified by Amnesty Inter- national and others as "hot spots" for forced labor. It has also continued to work with the International Committee of the Red Cross on improve- ments in prison conditions and released almost 400 political prisoners over the past two years. Unfortunately, hundreds remain in prison, several stu- dents were arrested for expressing political dissent in recent months and substantive improvements in prison conditions have yet to be realized. We are also deeply concerned by ongoing egregious human rights abuses of ci- vilians in ethnic regions, including killing, torture, rape, forced labor, and forced relocations. The regime has responded to accusations leveled by human rights groups in Thailand of widespread army rapes in Shan State with investigations by three separate teams from the Burmese Army, the Ministry of Home Affairs, and the Myanmar National Women's Cooperative Association, but concluded--incredibly--that there was no evidence that Burmese Army personnel had been involved in any rapes in Shan State be- tween 1996 and 200% That conclusion, together with the lack of any inter- national involvement in the investigation, has left international observers in serious doubt about the government's willingness to deal effectively with Burmese Army abuses in areas of internal conflict. The areas of Burma under effective control of ethnic groups make Burma one of the world's largest producers of opium, heroin, and amphetamine- type stimulants, despite the fact that its overall output of opium and heroin has declined sharply in recent years, partly as a result of improved Bur- mese government counternarcotics efforts. Opium production in Burma has now declined for five straight years, and, in 2002, Burma produced less than one-quarter the opium and heroin that it did six years before. Unfortu- nately, as opium production has declined, the production of methamphetamines has increased, particularly in outlying ethnic majority regions governed by former insurgents, areas that are not under firm gov- ernment control. According to some estimates, as many as 400 to 800 mil- lion methamphetamine tablets may be produced in Burma each year, al- though these estimates are difficult to verify. In }uly, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a countrywide assessment of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Burma and con- 317
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