"I feel like I'm bleeding," a local said.
Burma's generals are engaged in a selling spree akin to the corrupt privatizations in Russia after the Communist era. "There's something of a grab going on," a diplomat who declined to be identified because he wanted to avoid publicly criticizing the junta told the New York Times.
"There's a sense that it may not be done for the right reasons, but it could have a beneficial effect."
In recent days, the country's Privatization Commission produced a list of 176 assets to be auctioned off sometime over the next few weeks. The 18-page list includes a wide-ranging roster of buildings in Rangoon/Yangon worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The list features buildings that were abandoned when the capital was moved to the more remote location of Naypyidaw in 2005.
Their sale would seem to ensure that the move was irreversible.many former government offices, notably the lakeside office of the attorney general, the national archives, the auditor general's headquarters, the archaeology department and the Ministry of Industry.
A businessman expected dozens of colonial-era buildings would be torn down.
"I feel like I'm bleeding," he told the NYT.
Kate Allen: Burma's Human Rights Reality
Simon Tisdall: Business as usual in Burma
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