This Halloween, help fight one of the SCARIEST worker rights abuses:
forced child labor!
Keep reading for updates and ways to take action on these campaigns:
Chocolate: Child labor in West Africa's cocoa farms
Cotton : Forced child labor in Uzbekistan's cotton fields
Dole : Invest in worker rights, not exploitation!
Chocolate
This Saturday, thousands of young people in 47 states in the US and all across Canada will participate in the third annual "Reverse Trick-or-Treating" action. They will be giving Fair Trade chocolate back to the houses where they go trick-or-treating on Halloween along with information about labor rights abuses in the cocoa industry and the benefits of Fair Trade. It may be too late to order your action kit, but there are still two ways that you can tell the major chocolate companies that you are sick of their tricks!
Download this flyer and distribute it in your neighborhood to spread the word;
Send an e-mail to Hershey, Mars and Nestle to STOP using child labor in their cocoa! (and tell a friend to join you!)
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Cotton
Onto another frightening example of forced child labor: the cotton industry in Uzbekistan. Right now during the current harvest season, the government of Uzbekistan has continued it's policy of removing millions of children from schools all across the country in order to pick cotton -- which then ends up in the clothing we buy here in the US. On October 14th, ILRF joined with a number of union, human rights and faith-based organizations in a rally in front of the Embassy of Uzbekistan in Washington, DC to tell the government to STOP using forced child labor in the cotton industry. Check out this great video from the rally here and photographs from the rally here. Ask your member of Congress to take action here!
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Dole
One of the scariest global corporations in terms of conditions for workers is the Dole Food Company. Last week, Dole went public on the stock market and over 40 investors, unions, organizations and faith-based groups sent a letter to Dole raising concerns about their labor rights violations. You can help invest in workers by supporting ILRF instead of Dole! Make a donation for the price of a share in Dole by clicking here!
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This Halloween, help fight one of the SCARIEST worker rights abuses:
AHRC: Burma Using Torture in Criminal Cases
AHRC: Burma Using Torture in Criminal Cases
Thursday, 29 October 2009, 5:18 pm
Press Release: Asian Human Rights Commission
Much of the human rights advocacy concerning the use of torture in Burma is centred on cases of political detainees. These cases rightly deserve close attention and study. However, the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is aware that most victims of torture in Burma are not political prisoners but, as in other parts of Asia, poor citizens accused of ordinary criminal offences. The perpetrators do not discriminate. Victims range from teenage girls to the elderly.
Recently the AHRC obtained the details of a case of two young male victims who were tortured at a police station in an urban area during September 2009, over an alleged robbery. For reasons of their security, it cannot divulge the facts of this case, including the name of the police station and the officers involved. In this extract of their account, all identifying details have been omitted, but the allegations of torture are as they made them. According to the first:
"I was interrogated by eight police for three days. They said to give back what I had robbed. They covered my face with a sarong and then four or five of them assaulted me. They hit me on the cheeks and punched me in the face. They hit me with batons over a hundred times on my ankles, finger and elbow joints, shoulder blades and head. They made me stand on my tip-toes then put something with sharp points under my feet and made me hold a pose like I was riding a motorcycle, for about two hours. They prodded my back with a baton. During this time they were drunk.”
He added that his wife paid a total of the equivalent of around USD100, which is the equivalent of more than a couple of month's wages for poor people in Burma, to police so that they would not torture him. His companion also said that, "I was detained and interrogated for two days. While interrogating me they hit my cheeks and pressed a piece of bamboo on my shins and ran it up and down. They kept my wristwatch."
First, the techniques used are advanced methods of routine torturers. They are the types commonly associated with military intelligence officers or with troops in outlying areas. The motorcycle and rolling bamboo are particularly familiar methods in the documentation in those categories of cases. However, the torturers in this case were police in an ordinary suburban station. Thus the methods of torture ordinarily associated with cases of political prisoners or alleged insurgents are actually in the entire system.
Second, the torture victims are, as noted above, typical of the overwhelming majority of victims throughout Asia: poor people accused of ordinary crimes, for which the purpose of the torture is both to extract confessions and/or to obtain money. In this case, the accused were freed after some payments. However, there is no guarantee that they will remain this way. Once they have gone through this type of experience once, it can happen again at any time. In fact, one of them had already been interrogated over the same alleged crime, and both have expressed fear that they might be picked up again any day. Neither of them was taken before a judge, even though this should have happened within 24 hours of arrest.
Third, the victims claim that they were innocent and that the police know this but they tortured them anyway to conduct a fake investigation as a favour to a local businessperson. This too is a common feature of torture throughout Asia. It is also likely that the police have interrogated, tortured and taken money from other young poor men in the vicinity over the crime for which these two were also accused. One case like this can be very profitable for police. It is common to hear reports of dozens or even hundreds of people rounded up from an area in a general attempt to find some people on which to pin blame and make money at the same time.
The distinctive problem for these victims of torture, then, is not that they were tortured over an ordinary crime in an ordinary police station. This, as noted, is an experience they have in common with victims in India, Thailand, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Pakistan, among others. Rather, it is that there is nothing that they can do about it. In those other countries, the obstacles to bringing complaints of torture against the police are enormous, and the risks immense. But in them there at least exist courts that are in some way separate from the administration, rights groups and lawyers who can work on the cases with some effect and media that can report and publicise to generate public opinion.
By contrast, in Burma the only thing that the victims can really do is to lodge a complaint with high-up authorities in the police and ministries and hope that someone will believe them and take sympathy. If they try to lodge a complaint in the courts, not only will they risk police reprisals, against which they will have no protection-- since there are no groups in the country who can hide them and no media that can report on the case to assist with their safety through some publicity--but they are unlikely to get any help from the courts either. In a 1991 case of alleged police torture the Supreme Court already made clear that unless persons alleging torture have firm physical evidence--which the methods of torture used are designed to conceal--then they need not waste their time complaining to the judiciary.
Even if the victims are lucky enough to get a sympathetic judge, it may make no difference. The courts in Myanmar have no effective authority over other parts of government and are used as an arm of the executive to obtain what it wants. They are not supposed to hit back. Unless an army general or someone else in a position of real importance is supporting a court order, the police can easily ignore it or get around it. Since in this case the allegations are against police officers, the police would use many methods to prevent them from being successful, or if in the extremely unlikely event that the court actually made an order against the police, could see that the officers concerned escape punishment by absconding and changing their identities, which has been done in the past.
Therefore, persons and groups concerned with torture in Burma should be concerned not only with its simple documentation, or with torture in only certain types of cases, but should be concerned above all to expose the absence of institutions and measures to do anything about torture, specifically, the lack of an independent judiciary and also the lack of an open media in which cases can be publicized.
The Asian Human Rights Commission also notes that the 2008 Constitution, which will not come into effect until after elections are held for semi-elected parliaments, does not prohibit torture, and that Burma has not joined the UN Convention against Torture. The AHRC urges all groups and persons concerned with human rights in Burma to actively campaign for the country to join the UN Convention against Torture and to include an express provision to prohibit the use of torture into the constitution, so that at least some minimum standards can be established upon which to begin the real work of addressing its routine use in police stations, council offices, army camps and other government facilities around the country.
ENDS
“ငါ့ ..... ရဲေဘာ္ေတြ အေလၽာ္ႁပန္ေပး”-[Ye Yint Thet Zwe]
(ကိုသက္၀င္းေအာင္ က်ဆံုးစဥ္က ေရးဖြဲ ့တဲ ့
ခံစားခ်က္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ကိုသက္၀င္းေအာင္ အေၾကာင္း
ေတြးမိတိုင္း ရာသီအလီလီေျပာင္းေပမယ့္ က်ေနာ္တို ့ရင္ထဲက ခံစားခ်က္ေတြက
ေဟာင္းမသြားဘူး၊ ေျပာင္းမသြားဘူး။ဒါေၾကာင့္ကိုသက္၀င္းေအာင္က်ဆံုးျခင္း၃
ႏွစ္ျပည့္မွာ ဒီခံစားခ်က္နဲ့ဒီကဗ်ာကိုျပန္လည္ေဖၚျပလိုက္ပါတယ္။)
“ငါ့ ..... ရဲေဘာ္ေတြ အေလၽာ္ႁပန္ေပး”
‘ေသႁခင္းသည္ မဆန္း ၊ ပန္းတစ္ပြင့္ေၾကြ
ေလတစ္ေ၀့တိုက္ ၊ ႏွင္းတစ္ႃပိဳက္ကၽ
တစ္ဘ၀လွ်င္ ၊ ခဏပင္တည္း
အသင္ထာ၀ရ ၊ လူ႔ေလာကမွ
လံုး၀ေပၽာက္ဆံုးသြားႁခင္း မဟုတ္ပါ ။
(ေဒါင္းႏြယ္ေဆြ ၏
မဆန္းေသာေသႁခင္းမွ ထာ၀ရမေပၽာက္ဆံုးသူ မွ)
၁။
ကိုသက္၀င္းေအာင္ေရ ....
တဖြဖြ ... တသသ
ႏႈတ္ဖၽားက တရြရြ
ရင္ထဲက တႁမႁမနဲ႔
ကၽေနာ္တို႔တေတြ
ဆို႔နင့္ ေႂကကြဲရပံုမၽား
ငိုရိႈက္သံသဲ့သဲ့ႂကားမွာ
ခင္ဗၽားရဲ႔ ... အေသြးတူ အေမြးတူ
ေတာင္ကုန္း ေတာင္တန္းေတြကလဲ
သူတို႔ရဲ႔ရင္အံုေတြကို တ၀ုန္း၀ုန္းထုလို႔
အဲဒီႁမည္သံေတြဟာ စစ္အုပ္စုအတြက္
တိုက္ပြဲေခၚသံေတြပဲႁဖစ္တယ္
ခင္ဗၽားကေတာ့ ....
ဘ၀ကို အႏိုင္နဲ႔ပိုင္းသြားခဲ့ေပါ့ ။
၂။
ကိုသက္၀င္းေအာင္ေရ ....
အေရွ႔ဆီက ေရာင္နီၪီးရဲ႔
အလင္းေရာင္ေအာက္မွာ
သမိုင္းက တင္ေပးလိုက္တဲ့ တာ၀န္ကို
ယံုႂကည္ခၽက္အႁပည့္နဲ႔
ဘ၀ကိုပါ ပံုအပ္ခဲ့ရင္း
ခင္ဗၽား ......
ေခတ္တေခတ္ကို ထုဆစ္ခဲ့တယ္ ။
ကိုသက္၀င္းေအာင္ေရ ......
တကယ္ေတာ့ဗၽာ
ခင္ဗၽားဟာ .....
စနစ္ရဲ႔သားေကာင္ႁဖစ္ခဲ့ရတာပါ
တႃပိဳင္တည္းမွာပဲ
ကၽေနာ္တို႔ ခင္ဗၽားတို႔ လိုခၽင္တပ္မက္တဲ့
ေခတ္တေခတ္ရဲ႔ သားေကာင္း
ေခတ္တေခတ္ရဲ႔ အာဇာနည္တေယာက္
(အဲဒီလိုလမ္းမၽိဳး)
ခင္ဗၽား ေလွ်ာက္ႁပခဲ့တယ္ ။
၃။
ကိုသက္၀င္းေအာင္ေရ .......
ခင္ဗၽားရဲ႔ ...
စြန္႔လႊတ္ေပးဆပ္မႈအေပၚ
စစ္အုပ္စုတစုလံုးဟာ
ေခၽာက္ေခၽာက္ ခၽားခၽားနဲ႔
ေႂကာက္လန္႔တႂကား ရွိေနႂကေရာ့မယ္ ။
ကိုသက္၀င္းေအာင္ေရ .....
ခင္ဗၽားကေတာ့ ...
ေသြးေၾကြးကို ေသြးေၾကြးနဲ႔ ေပးဆပ္ရမယ္ဆိုတာမၽိဳး
ႄကိဳက္ခၽင္မွ ႄကိဳက္မယ္
ကၽေနာ္တို႔ကေတာ့
ေႂကကြဲမႈရဲ႔ အတိုင္းအဆကို
ႏိႈင္းႁပလို႔ မရသူေတြမို႔
ဘယ္သူေတြ ႄကိဳက္ႄကိဳက္ မႄကိဳက္ႄကိဳက္
‘ဟာမူရာဘီ ကိုဓ ၪပေဒ’အလိုက္သာ
မၽက္လံုးတလံုးကို
မၽက္လံုးတလံုးႁခင္း
လက္တဘက္ကို
လက္တဘက္ႁခင္း
အသက္တေခၽာင္းကို
အသက္တေခၽာင္းႁခင္း
ခင္ဗၽားအပါအ၀င္ ကၽဆံုးခဲ့ရတဲ့
သူရဲေကာင္း ၀ိညာၪ္အေပါင္းတို႔အတြက္
ရင္းစားႁပန္ရခၽင္တာ တခုပါပဲ .....။
ရဲရင့္သက္ဇြဲ
”အက်ဥ္းအၾကပ္အေနအထားသို႕ ေရာက္ေနသည့္ ဗမာျပည္”
http://laminkhinkhin.blogspot.com/2009/10/blog-post_19.html.jpg)
Monday, October 19, 2009
ဒၚစမ္းစမ္း (အမ္ပီယူ၊ ဆိပ္ကမ္းျမိဳ႔နယ္ကိုယ္စားျပဳ လႊတ္ေတာ္ကုိယ္စားလွယ္)
ေအာက္တုိဘာ ၁၈၊ ၂၀၀၉
ၾသစေၾတးလ်ႏိုင္ငံ၊ ဆစ္ဒနီၿမိဳ႕တြင္ “အက်ဥ္းအၾကပ္အေနအထားသို႕ ေရာက္ေနသည့္ ဗမာျပည္” ေခါင္းစဥ္ျဖင့္ လက္ရိွ ဗမာ့ႏိုင္ငံေရး အေျခအေနမ်ားႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ လူထုႏီွးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပြဲတရပ္ကို က်င္းပခဲ့သည္။
အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ (လြတ္ေျမာက္နယ္ေျမ) ၾသစေၾတးလ်ဌာနခြဲမွ ကမကထလုပ္ၿပီး တိုင္းရင္းသား အဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ား၊ ဗမာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီအေရး တက္ၾကြလွဳပ္ရွားသူမ်ားႏွင့္ အတူပူးေပါင္း၍ ၾသစေၾတးလ်ႏိုင္ငံ၊ ဆစ္ဒနီၿမိဳ႕၊ ရီဂ်င့္ပန္းၿခံ လူထုခန္းမတြင္ လက္ရိွဗမာ့ႏိုင္ငံေရးအေျခအေနမ်ားႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး လူထုႏီွးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပြဲတရပ္ကို ယမန္ေန႕ မြန္းလြဲပုိင္းက က်င္းပျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရိွရပါသည္။
အဆိုပါ လူထုႏီွးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပြဲတြင္ ႏိုင္ေဖသိန္းျဇာ (ဥကၠ႒၊ မြန္အမ်ဳိးသားေကာင္စီ)မွ “တိုင္းရင္းသား ျပႆနာႏွင့္ စစ္တပ္အာဏာ” ေခါင္းစဥ္ျဖင့္၎၊ ေစာလြင္ဦး (ႏိုင္ငံလံုးဆိုင္ရာဥကၠ႒၊ ၾသစေၾတးလ်ကရင္အစည္းအရံုး)မွ “ကရင္ လက္နက္ကိုင္ေတာ္လွန္ေရးအေပၚ ကရင္တိုင္းရင္းသားတို႕၏ ရွဳ႕ျမင္ခ်က္” ေခါင္းစဥ္ျဖင့္၎၊ ပါေမာကၡ ေဒါက္တာ သန္းႏိုင္ (ဥကၠ႒၊ ဗမာလူမ်ဳိးစုလူမွဳေရးအဖြဲ႕)မွ “Sanctions and Engagement” ေခါင္းစဥ္ျဖင့္၎၊ ေဒၚစန္းစန္း (ဒုတိယဥကၠ႒၊ ျပည္သူလႊတ္ေတာ္ကိုယ္စားလွယ္မ်ားအဖြဲ႕၊ ဗမာႏိုင္ငံ)မွ “လက္ရိွ ဗမာ့ႏိုင္ငံေရး အၾကပ္အတည္းႏွင့္ ေရႊဂံုတိုင္ေၾကညာစာတမ္း” ေခါင္းစဥ္ျဖင့္၎ ဦးေဆာင္ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကေၾကာင္း သိရိွရပါသည္။
ယင္း လူထုႏီွးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပြဲသို႕ ၈၈ ေက်ာင္းသားေဟာင္းအဖြဲ႕၊ ABSDF(Australia)၊ ၾသစေၾတးလ်ကရင္အစည္းအရံုး၊ ဗမာလူမ်ဳိးစုလူမွဳေရးအဖြဲ႕ (ဆစ္ဒနီၿမိဳ႕)၊ Burma Campaign (Sydney)၊ ျမန္မာလူငယ္မ်ားအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ (ၾသစေၾတးလ်)၊ ျမန္မာလူမ်ဳိးစု ျမန္မာ့အသံ၊ Burma Office ႏွင့္ အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ (လြတ္ေျမာက္နယ္ေျမ) ၾသစေၾတးလ် ဌာနခြဲမွ အဖြဲ႕၀င္မ်ား၊ ဦးေဆာင္သူမ်ား စံုညီစြာ တက္ေရာက္ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကၿပီး ႏွီးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပြဲ တက္ေရာက္သူ စုစုေပါင္း (၇၀)ဦး ရိွေၾကာင္း သိရိွရပါသည္။
အဆိုပါ လူထုႏီွးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပြဲတြင္ ၁၉၉၀ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွ ေရြးေကာက္ တင္ေျမာက္ျခင္း ခံခဲ့ၾကရသည့္ အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္၏ လြႊတ္ေတာ္ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္မ်ားျဖစ္ေသာ ဦးတင္ထြဋ္ (ဧရာ၀တီတိုင္း၊ အိမ္မဲၿမိဳ႕နယ္၊ အမွတ္-၁ မဲဆႏၵနယ္)ႏွင့္ ဦးေမာင္ေမာင္ေအး (မႏၱေလးတိုင္း၊ အေရွ႕ေျမာက္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ အမွတ္-၁ မဲဆႏၵနယ္)တို႕လည္း ေဒၚစန္းစန္း (ရန္ကုန္တိုင္း၊ ဆိပ္ကမ္းၿမိဳ႕နယ္ ျပည္သူ႕လႊတ္ေတာ္ကိုယ္စားလွယ္) ႏွင့္အတူ တက္ေရာက္ခဲ့ၾကေၾကာင္း သတင္းရရိွပါသည္။
အဆိုပါ လူထုႏီွးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပြဲမွ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ (၄)ရပ္ႏွင့္ မွတ္တမ္းတင္ျခင္း (၁)ရပ္တို႕ကို ေဆာင္ရြက္ႏိုင္ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရိွရပါသည္။ နအဖစစ္ အစိုးရအေပၚ လက္နက္တင္ပို႕ျခင္း၊ တင္သြင္းျခင္းမ်ားအား တကမာၻလံုး အတိုင္းအတာျဖင့္ ပိတ္ဆို႕ဟန္႕တားသြားေရး ကမာၻ႕ကုလသမဂၢမွ က်င့္သံုးအေကာင္အထည္ေဖၚရန္ အေရွ႕တီေမာႏိုင္ငံ သမၼတႀကီး ေဒါက္တာဂ်ဳိ႕စ္ရာမိုစ့္ေဟာတာ၏ တိုက္တြန္း ႏိုးေဆာ္ခ်က္ကို အဆိုပါ လူထုႏွီးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပြဲမွ ၀မ္းေျမာက္၀မ္းသာစြာ ျဖင့္ မွတ္တမ္းတင္ခဲ့ၿပီး ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္မ်ားကို ေအာက္ပါအတိုင္း ခ်မွတ္ခဲ့ၾကပါသည္။
(၁) ၂၀၀၈ခုႏွစ္ ဖြဲ႕စည္းပံုအေျခခံဥပေဒသည္ တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ဳိးမ်ား အပါအ၀င္ ျပည္သူအေပါင္း၏ အက်ဳိးစီးပြားကို ေရွးရွဳ႕ျခင္းမရိွသည့္၊ လက္ခံႏိုင္ဖြယ္မရိွသည့္ ဖြဲ႕စည္းပံုအေျခခံဥပေဒအျဖစ္ သတ္မွတ္ဆံုးျဖတ္ျခင္း။
(၂) ယင္း ဖြဲ႕စည္းပံုအေျခခံဥပေဒအရ ေဆာင္ရြက္ရန္ရိွသည့္ ၂၀၁၀ခုႏွစ္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲသည္လည္း စစ္အာဏာရွင္ စနစ္ကို တရား၀င္ အသက္ဆက္ေပးမည့္ နအဖစစ္အစိုးရ၏ ေဆာင္ရြက္ခ်က္အျဖစ္ သတ္မွတ္ကာ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ျပင္းထန္စြာ ရံွဳ႕ခ်၊ ကန္႕ကြက္ေၾကာင္း ဆံုးျဖတ္ျခင္း။
(၃) အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္၏ ေရႊဂံုတိုင္ေၾကညာစာတမ္းပါ ရပ္တည္ခ်က္သေဘာထားမ်ားကို ေထာက္ခံ ေၾကာင္း ဆံုးျဖတ္ျခင္း။
(၄) နအဖစစ္အစိုးရႏွင့္ ျပည္ပအစိုးရမ်ားအၾကား ေပၚေပါက္လာရန္ရိွသည့္ ပိုမိုထိေတြ႕ဆက္ဆံမွဳေရးမူ၀ါဒႏွင့္ ယင္းမူ၀ါဒပါ လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္မ်ားသည္ စစ္အစိုးရ၊ ဒီမိုကေရစီအင္အားစုမ်ားႏွင့္ တိုင္းရင္းသားအင္အားစုမ်ားအၾကား သံုးပြင့္ဆိုင္ေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးေရးကို ဦးတည္ေစမည့္ မူ၀ါဒႏွင့္ လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္မ်ားသာ ျဖစ္သင့္ေၾကာင္း ဆံုးျဖတ္ျခင္း။
ယမန္ေန႕က က်င္းပျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့သည့္ ၾသစေၾတးလ်ႏိုင္ငံ၊ ဆစ္ဒနီၿမိဳ႕ လူထုႏီွးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပြဲသည္ ဒုတိယအၾကိမ္ေျမာက္ ျဖစ္ၿပီး ပထမအႀကိမ္ကို ၂၀၀၉ခုႏွစ္၊ ၾသဂုတ္လ(၁၆)ရက္တြင္ က်င္းပၿပီးစီးခဲ့ေၾကာင္းလည္း သိရိွပါသည္။ ဗမာ့ႏိုင္ငံေရး အေျခအေနမ်ားအေပၚ အေျခခံၿပီး ဗမာျပည္ဒီမိုကေရစီျပန္လည္ ထြန္းကားေရးအတြက္ လူထုအင္အားတရပ္ ျပည္ပ တြင္ ခိုင္ခိုင္မာမာ ထြက္ေပၚလာေစေရးကို ရည္ရြယ္၍ လူထုႏွီးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပြဲမ်ားကို ဆက္လက္ျပဳလုပ္ သြားရန္ အစီအစဥ္မ်ား ရိွေၾကာင္းလည္း သိရိွရပါသည္။ ။
Burmese activists repose faith on new Japanese government
Burmese activists repose faith on new Japanese government
by Salai Pi Pi
Wednesday, 14 October 2009 21:14
New Delhi (Mizzima) - Burmese pro-democracy activists on Wednesday met Japanese Deputy Foreign Minister in Tokyo and urged the Japanese government to pressurize Burma’s military rulers to implement change in the Southeast Asian nation.
The meeting held in the Deputy Foreign Minister’ office is the first ever after the Japanese opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) swept to a historic victory in elections in August this year.
Burmese pro-democracy activists led by Maung Maung, General Secretary of the National Coalition Union of Burma (NCUB) in exile, a coalition of political organisations, met Mr. Tesuro Fukuyama for about half an hour.
“We discussed issues related to Burmese opposition groups’ efforts to push the ruling junta to kick-start a process of national reconciliation in the country,” Dr. Min Nyo, representative of the NCUB for Japan, who was also present in the meeting, told Mizzima.
Dr. Min Nyo said, during the meeting, NCUB’s delegates also requested the Japanese government to support an effort to file a lawsuit against Than Shwe and the military leaders at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for their crimes against humanity.
Along with Fukuyama, Mr Sue Matsu, Secretary of the Japanese Members of Parliament Union, and Japan’s Labour Unions’ President Mr. Koga were also present in the meeting.
Dr. Min Nyo said Fukuyama was interested in a proposal made by the NCUB delegates to have a permanent envoy in Japan in order help Burmese opposition get access to the Japanese government on matters related to Burmese affairs.
He said the Democratic Party of Japan, which came to power after defeating the Liberal Democratic Party, is likely to shift its approach on Burma and take a stronger stand in pushing the regime to begin national reconciliation.
Japan, under LDP rule, had been soft and was into quiet diplomacy in the past. It has avoided rhetorical condemnation and criticism of the Burmese regime.
“The present Japanese Prime Minister understands Burma’s problem. He has even talked to Aung San Suu Kyi and long supported the democracy movement,” Dr. Min Nyo said.
“The DPJ has also included supporting democracy in Burma as part of its policy,” he added.
Japan has stopped new aid to Burma since opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was put under house arrest in 2003 but it continues funding emergency health projects and provides training and technological assistance.
Japan, which sided with China and Russia against US’s proposed UN Security Council resolution on Burma in 2006, threatened to suspend about 500 million Yen aid to Burma after a Japanese photojournalist, Kenji Nagai, was shot dead by a Burmese soldier during the crack down on monk-led protesters in September 2007.
However, Japan resumed relief aid to Burma after the deadly Nargis Cyclone lashed Burma’s delta areas, leaving over 130,000 people dead and missing and about 2.4 million people devastated in May 2008.
Lesson Learnt from ABTUC-TUCB"ဖဆပလအတြင္း အတူရွိခဲ့ၾကစဥ္က ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ႏွင့္ ဆိုရွယ္လစ္တို႔၏ အလံလုပြဲတခု"
"ဖဆပလအတြင္း အတူရွိခဲ့ၾကစဥ္က ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ႏွင့္ ဆိုရွယ္လစ္တို႔၏ အလံလုပြဲတခု"
ကိုသန္း (ၾကည့္ျမင္တိုင္)
လြန္ခဲ့ေသာ ႏွစ္ေပါင္း ၆ဝ ေက်ာ္ ၁၉၄၆ ခုႏွစ္၊ ႏွစ္ကုန္ပိုင္းေလာက္အထိ ဖဆပလ နယ္ခ်ဲ႕ဆန္႔က်င္ေရး အမ်ိဳးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး တပ္ေပါင္းစုႀကီးထဲတြင္ ဗမာျပည္ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ပါတီႏွင့္ ဗမာျပည္ဆိုရွယ္လစ္ပါတီတို႔ အတူရွိခဲ့ၾကသည္။ နယ္ခ်ဲ႕ဘုရင္ခံ ဆာေဒၚမန္စမစ္ႏွင့္ နယ္ခ်ဲ႕ေသြးစုပ္ေရး စီမံကိန္းျဖစ္ေသာ စကၠဴျဖဴစီမံကိန္းကို ဦးတည္ တိုက္ေနၾကသည့္ အခ်ိန္ကာလျဖစ္သည္။ ဖဆပလ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ အလံေတာ္ေအာက္ရွိ လူထုလူတန္းစား အင္အားစုအသီးသီးတို႔သည္ လူထုဆႏၵျပပြဲမ်ားျဖင့္ အင္အားျပ တိုက္ခိုက္လ်က္ ရွိၾကသည္။ နယ္ခ်ဲ႕ဘုရင္ခံ ကြဲသည့္ပြဲ ျဖစ္သည္။
ဖဆပလ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ႏွင့္ ဆက္သြယ္ထားေသာ ဗမာျပည္ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ပါတီ၏ ဦးေဆာင္မႈျဖင့္ ဖြဲ႕စည္းထားသည့္ ဗမာျပည္လံုးဆိုင္ရာ အလုပ္သမားသမဂၢ - ABTUC (All Burma Trade Union Congress)၊ ဗမာျပည္ဆိုရွယ္လစ္ပါတီ၏ ဦးေဆာင္မႈျဖင့္ ဖြဲ႕စည္းထားသည့္ အလုပ္သမားမ်ား အစည္းအ႐ံုးအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ (ဗမာႏိုင္ငံ) - TUCB (Trade Union Congress – Burma) တို႔က ဖဆပလ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ အလံေတာ္ေအာက္ရွိ အလုပ္သမားအင္အားစုမ်ားအျဖစ္ အင္အားျပရန္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္က ေဆာ္ၾသလ်က္ ရွိသည္။
တေန႔တြင္ သခင္လွေကၽြက က်ေနာ့္ကို ABTUC တြင္ အစည္းအေဝး သြားတတ္ရန္ ႀကိဳေျပာထားသည္။ တတ္ေရာက္မည့္ အစည္းအေဝးက ဗမာျပည္လံုးဆိုင္ရာ အလုပ္သမားသမဂၢ ဌာနခ်ဳပ္တြင္ က်င္းပမည့္ 'ဖဆပလ အလုပ္သမား အင္အားစုမ်ား အင္အားျပေရး အစည္းအေဝး' ျဖစ္သည္။ ထိုစဥ္ ဗမာျပည္လံုးဆိုင္ရာ အလုပ္သမားသမဂၢတြင္ ဥကၠ႒ သခင္ဗဟိန္း၊ ကိုေအာင္သိန္း (စာေရးဆရာ ျမေဒါင္းညိဳ)၊ ဒုတိယ ဥကၠ႒ သခင္ဗတင္ (လက္သီးပုန္း)၊ အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမွဴး ေက်ာ္ၿငိမ္း (မင္းဘူးကိုခ်မ္းသာ) တြဲဖက္အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမွဴး၊ အလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္မ်ားျဖစ္သည့္ မစၥတာရာဂ်န္ (ဆရာေအာင္ႏိုင္)၊ သခင္လွၿမိဳင္ (ဗိုလ္မွဴးရန္ေအာင္ - ရဲေဘာ္သံုးက်ိပ္)၊ သခင္ခ်စ္ (ဇင္ခ်စ္)၊ မစၥတာမူကာဂ်ီ၊ ေဒါက္တာနက္(သ္)၊ သခင္စိုး၊ ဦးကိုကိုႀကီး (ေနာင္ဗမာျပည္ ဆိုရွယ္လစ္ပါတီ ဥကၠ႒)တို႔ ျဖစ္သည္။
က်ေနာ္တို႔ အလုပ္သမားအစည္းအ႐ံုးမ်ားအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ (ဗမာႏိုင္ငံ)တြင္ သခင္လြင္ ဥကၠ႒၊ သခင္လွေကၽြ၊ သခင္လူေအး ဒုတိယ ဥကၠ႒မ်ား၊ ကိုတင္ၫြန္႔ အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမွဴး၊ ကိုဟုတ္ၾကည္ (ေငြထိန္း)၊ ဗဟိုအလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္မ်ားျဖစ္သည့္ ရဲေဘာ္ေသာင္းစိန္ (ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္) [ခ်စ္တီယား သတ္မႈျဖင့္ ႀကိဳးမိန္႔မွ လႊတ္လာသူ]တို႔သာ မွတ္မိသည္။ ကိုမ်ိဳးျမင့္ႏွင့္ ကိုသန္းေငြ (ဘီေအအိုဒီ) တို႔က ေနာက္မွ အလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္ ျဖစ္လာၾကသည္။
အစည္းအေဝး တတ္ရန္ ဒုတိယဥကၠ႒ သခင္လွေကၽြက က်ေနာ့္ကို ေခၚျခင္းမွာ က်ေနာ္သည္ ရန္ကုန္ခ႐ိုင္ ဆိုရွယ္လစ္ပါတီ အလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္ ျဖစ္ေနျခင္းေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္သည္။ သခင္လွေကၽြသည္ ဝါရင့္ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမားႀကီး ျဖစ္သည္။ က်ေနာ္ကေတာ့ ေက်ာင္းသားသမဂၢ၊ အာရွလူငယ္၊ ျပည္သူ႔အေရးေတာ္ပံုပါတီဝင္မွ ဆိုရွယ္လစ္ပါတီဝင္ ျဖစ္လာသူ၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အေတြ႕အၾကံဳ နည္းေသာသူ ျဖစ္သည္။ ဆိုရွယ္လစ္ပါတီထဲတြင္ အမည္ထြက္စ ျပဳေနသည့္ သေဘာတရား သင္တန္းဆရာ ေပါက္စ၊ အသက္ ၂ဝ ပင္ မရွိေသး၊ ဂုိဏ္းဂဏစိတ္ မကင္းေသး။
ABTUC ဘက္မွ သခင္ဗတင္ႏွင့္ မစၥတာမူကာဂ်ီတို႔ ျဖစ္သည္။ ရန္ကုန္ခ႐ိုင္ ကြန္ျမဴနစ္တီပါတီမွ ရဲေဘာ္ေအာင္ဝင္းလား၊ မမွတ္မိေတာ့။ TUCB ဘက္မွ သခင္လွေကၽြ၊ ရဲေဘာ္ေသာင္းၾကည္တို႔ ျဖစ္ၾကသည္။ ရန္ကုန္ခ႐ိုင္ ဆိုရွယ္လစ္ပါတီမွ က်ေနာ္။
အစည္းအေဝး စေတာ့ အလုပ္သမားသမဂၢႀကီး ႏွစ္ခုတို႔မွ အလုပ္သမားအင္အားကို အမ်ားဆံုး ထုတ္ျပဖို႔လည္း သေဘာတူၾကသည္။ အလုပ္သမားထု အစည္းအေဝး အခမ္းအနားတြင္ ဘယ္အလံထားမလဲ ေဆြးေႏြးၾကသည္။ အသီးသီးေသာ အစည္းအ႐ံုးမ်ားႏွင့္ သမဂၢမ်ား မိမိတို႔ဆိုင္ရာ အလံမ်ားကို လႊင့္ထူလာႏိုင္ရန္လည္း သေဘာတူသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ ဖဆပလ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ အလံတခုတည္းကို စင္ျမင့္ေနာက္ခံ လုပ္မွာလား။ ဖဆပလ အလံကို အလုပ္သမား အစည္းအ႐ံုးႏွင့္ အလုပ္သမားသမဂၢ အလံမ်ားက ဝိုင္းရံမလား၊ ေဆြးေႏြးရာတြင္ သေဘာတူညီခ်က္ မရၾက။ ေဆြးေႏြးရင္း အလံကို ထိပါးသည့္ စကားမ်ား တစြန္းတစ ထြက္လာသည္။ ABTUC အလံက တူႏွင့္တံစဥ္အလံ ျဖစ္သည္။ လက္ဝဲေထာင့္တြင္ ၾကယ္ျဖဴက လမ္းၫႊန္ၾကယ္၊ တူႏွင့္တံစဥ္က အလုပ္သမား၊ ေတာင္သူလယ္သမားကို ကိုယ္စားျပဳသည္။ ဟုတ္လို႔၊ ဘာမွ ေျပာစရာမရွိ။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ TUCB အလံက်ေတာ့ေရာ၊ လက္ဝဲေထာင့္ လမ္းၫႊန္ၾကယ္ျဖဴႏွင့္ ဗမာ့ကာကြယ္ေရးတပ္မေတာ္ ဦးထုပ္တံဆိပ္ ေဒါင္းကို ေဖာက္ထည့္ထားၿပီး တံစဥ္ မပါဘဲ တူႏွစ္ေခ်ာင္းသာ ပါသည္။ ေတာင္သူလယ္သမားအစည္းအ႐ံုး အလံက်ေတာ့ ဗမာ့ကာကြယ္ေရးတပ္မေတာ္ ေဒါင္းတံဆိပ္ အလယ္မွ ေဖာက္ထားသည့္ လမ္းၫႊန္ၾကယ္ႏွင့္တံစဥ္ တေခ်ာင္းတည္း။ တူ မပါ။ က်ေနာ္ အၾကည့္ရကပ္သည္။ အလံမ်ား သတ္မွတ္စဥ္က က်ေနာ္ ပါတီ အေရးပါသည့္ အေနအထားသို႔ မေရာက္ေသး။ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္အဆင့္မွာသာ ရွိအုန္းမည္။ ထို႔အျပင္ တူတံစဥ္ အမွတ္အသားသည္ ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ ကိုယ္စားျပဳေလ့ရွိ၍ အလံ စတင္ေ႐ြးခ်ယ္စဥ္က ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ႏွင့္ မတူေအာင္ တူတံစဥ္ကို မေ႐ြးတာ ပါခ်င္ ပါပါလိမ့္မည္။ က်ေနာ့္အေတြး ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ ၾကယ္ႏွင့္တူ၊ ၾကယ္ႏွင့္တံစဥ္ သက္သက္က မ်က္စိထဲမွာ ၾကည့္မေကာင္းတာကေတာ့ အမွန္ျဖစ္သည္။ ဒါက က်ေနာ့္အေတြးႏွင့္ က်ေနာ့္အျမင္။
အစည္းအေဝးမွာ ေျပာၾကဆိုၾကေတာ့ တူတံစဥ္က အလုပ္သမားကို အမွတ္အသားျပဳသည့္ အလံဟု ABTUC မွ သခင္ဗတင္ ေျပာတာက မွန္ေနသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ က်ေနာ္တို႔အလံကို ထိပါးရိကပါး ေျပာေတာ့လည္း မခံခ်င္၊ သည္ေတာ့ က်ေနာ္ဆိုသည့္ ေထာင့္မက်ိဳးသည့္ လူက "ခင္ဗ်ားတို႔ အလံက တံစဥ္ႀကီး ပါေနေတာ့ အလုပ္သမားအလံ စစ္စစ္မဟုတ္ဘူး။ အလုပ္သမား လယ္သမားအလံ ျဖစ္ေနတယ္။ အခု ဖဆပလ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္က ျပဳလုပ္မယ့္ အင္အားျပပြဲဟာ အလုပ္သမားအင္အားျပပြဲ႔၊ ေတာင္သူလယ္သမား မပါဘူး" ဟု ကပ္ေျပာသည္။ က်ေနာ္ ကပ္ေျပာသည့္ စကားသည္လည္း ဟုတ္ေနေတာ့ သခင္ဗတင္ ေဒါပြသြားသည္။
"ခင္ဗ်ားေျပာတဲ့ မူသေဘာအရဆိုလွ်င္ ခင္ဗ်ားတို႔ ဖြဲ႕မယ့္ ေဗဒင္ဆရာမ်ား အစည္းအ႐ံုးမွာ ၾကယ္တလံုးနဲ႔ ေက်ာက္သင္ပုန္း တခ်ပ္၊ ျမဴနီစီပါယ္ အလုပ္သမား အစည္းအ႐ံုးမွာ ၾကယ္တလံုးႏွင့္ တံျမက္စည္း တေခ်ာင္းထည့္" စသည္ျဖင့္ ေျပာပါေလေတာ့သည္။ က်ေနာ္ကလည္း ကပ္ေျပာမည့္သာ ေျပာသည္။ ကိုယ္ဟာက အဟုတ္ မဟုတ္သည္ကို သိသည္။ က်ေနာ္ကိုယ္တိုင္ သခင္ဗတင္ အေျပာကို သေဘာက်ၿပီး တဟားဟား ရယ္သည္။ သည္ေတာ့ သခင္ဗတင္ စိတ္ေျပသြားဟန္ တူသည္။ သခင္လွေကၽြကေတာ့ က်ေနာ့္ သက္သက္႐ြဲ႕ေျပာေနတာကို သိၿပီး "ေတာ္ပါေတာ့ဗ်ာ" ဟု ေျပာသည္။ မစၥတာမူကာဂ်ီကေတာ့ နားေထာင္ေနသည္။ ဘာမွ ဝင္မေျပာ။
က်ေနာ္လည္း ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ပါတီက ရဲေဘာ္မ်ားႏွင့္ ယခု တႀကိမ္သာ အျငင္းခံု ျဖစ္ဖူးသည္။ အမ်ားအားျဖင့္ က်ေနာ္ႏွင့္ ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ပါတီက ရဲေဘာ္မ်ားႏွင့္ သင့္ျမတ္သည္က မ်ားသည္။ ရန္ကုန္ခ႐ိုင္ ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ပါတီမွ ရဲေဘာ္သာၫြန္႔၊ ရဲေဘာ္တင္ေစာတို႔ႏွင့္ သိကၽြမ္းသည္။ ေနာင္တြင္ ပထမ အေရွ႕ေျမာက္စစ္ေဒသမွဴး ျဖစ္လာသူ ကိုစိုးသိမ္းႏွင့္လည္း စစ္ၿပီးခါစတုန္းက ၾကည့္ျမင္တိုင္တြင္ သိခဲ့ဖူးသည္။
သခင္ဗတင္ ဆိုလွ်င္ က်ေနာ့္ထက္ ဝါရင့္သမာၻရင့္ ပုဂိၢဳလ္ ျဖစ္သည္။ သခင္ဘဝတြင္ေရာ ဗမာ့ လြတ္လပ္ေရး တပ္မေတာ္ - ဘီအိုင္ေအ ဘဝတြင္ပါ အဆင့္ျမင့္တာဝန္မ်ား ထမ္းေဆာင္ခဲ့ရသူ ျဖစ္သည္။ က်ေနာ္ကလည္း အရွင္ေမြး ေန႔ခ်င္းႀကီးသူ ျဖစ္သည္။ သခင္ဗတင္ မ်က္စိထဲတြင္ က်ေနာ့္ကို မေလာက္ေလး မေလာက္စားဟု ထင္ျမင္မည္။ ေနာက္ေတာ့မွ သူတို႔ကို မခန္႔ေလးစား ေျပာသည့္ ဆိုရွယ္လစ္ေပါက္စ က်ေနာ့္အေၾကာင္း ေမးယူရလိမ့္မည္။ လက္ေဝွ႔ စကားျဖင့္ ေျပာရလွ်င္ က်ေနာ္က ဘင္တန္ဝိတ္တန္းမွ ဟဲဗီးဝိတ္တန္းသို႔ တတ္ထိုးသူဟု ျမင္ေကာင္း ျမင္ပါလိမ့္မည္။ ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးမႈ မညီညာေသာ အေျခအေနတြင္ ဒါမ်ိဳးေတြ ျဖစ္ႏိုင္သည္။
သခင္ဗတင္ႏွင့္ ဗမာျပည္ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ပါတီတို႔ႏွင့္ ဆက္ႏြယ္မႈကိုေတာ့ က်ေနာ္ သိပ္ထဲထဲဝင္ဝင္ မသိ။ ရင္းရင္းႏွီးႏွီးလည္း မဆက္ဆံဘူး။ ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ပါတီ လက္နက္ကိုင္ေတာ့ ပါသြား မသြားပင္ က်ေနာ္မသိ။ သခင္ဗတင္ႏွင္ ဗိုလ္မွဴးႀကီးလက်္ာတို႔ အလြန္ရင္းႏွီးေၾကာင္းေတာ့ က်ေနာ္ သိသည္။ ဗိုလ္လက်္ာပိုင္ မုတၲမ ကုမၸဏီတြင္လည္း သခင္ဗတင္ အဆင့္ျမင့္တာဝန္ ထမ္းေဆာင္ခဲ့သည္ကို ဦးသိန္းေဖျမင့္က က်ေနာ့္ကို ေျပာျပခဲ့ဖူးသည္။ ဦးသိန္ေဖျမင့္သည္ "ေခတ္မီသူတိုင္း ပင္လယ္ငါး စားသည္" ဆိုေသာ ေက်ာ္ၾကားသည့္ မုတၲမ ပင္လယ္ငါးဖမ္း ကုမၸဏီ၏ ေၾကာ္ျငာေဆာင္ပုဒ္ကို ေရးသားခဲ့သူ ျဖစ္သည္။
က်ေနာ္ အထက္တြင္ ေဖာ္ျပခဲ့သည့္ အလံလု၊ အလံၿပိဳင္ပြဲ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ေသာ ဖဆပလ အလံေတာ္ေအာက္ အလုပ္သမားအားျပပြဲအၿပီးတြင္ ဘာရလဒ္မွ မရရွိခဲ့။ ေနာက္ထပ္ အစည္းအေဝး ေခၚျဖစ္သလား က်ေနာ္ မမွတ္မိေတာ့။
တခု ေသခ်ာတာကေတာ့ ဖဆပလ အလံေတာ္ေအာက္ အလုပ္သမား အားျပပြဲကို ABTUC ႏွင့္ TUCB တို႔ ပူးတြဲ မလုပ္ျဖစ္ေတာ့ဘဲ သီးျခားစီခြဲ၍ လုပ္ခဲ့ၾကသည္။
က်ေနာ္ ဤေဆာင္းပါကို ေရးသည္မွာ အဓိပၸာယ္မရွိ ေညာင္ျမစ္တူး ပုတ္သင္ဥ ေဖာ္ျခင္းမဟုတ္။ သမိုင္းသင္ခန္းစာ ယူေစလို၍ ျဖစ္သည္။ က်ေနာ့္လို အထအန ေကာက္ၿပီး ျငင္းခံုမည့္အစား ညီၫြတ္စြာ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္႐ြက္ႏိုင္မည့္ အေျခအေနမ်ိဳး ဖန္တီးယူႏိုင္ပါသည္။
ဥပမာအားျဖင့္၊ ဖဆပလ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္၏ ဦးေဆာင္မႈျဖင့္ က်င္းပမည့္ အစည္းအေဝးျဖစ္၍ ဖဆပလ အလံေတာ္ကို အလယ္ဗဟို ခပ္ျမင့္ျမင့္ထားၿပီး ABTUC ႏွင့္ TUCB အလံမ်ားကို ေဘးမွ ခပ္ေစာင္းေစာင္းရံၿပီး ထားရွိႏိုင္သည္။ ယင္းေနာက္ အလုပ္သမားအင္အားျပ အစည္းအေဝး တတ္ေရာက္လာၾကသည့္ အလုပ္သမားသမဂၢမ်ားႏွင့္ အလုပ္သမားအစည္းအ႐ံုးမ်ားက မိမိတို႔ အလံမ်ားကို ကိုင္ေဆာင္လာႏိုင္ၾကသည္ဟု ေဆြးေႏြးၾကမည္ဆိုလွ်င္ ၿပီးသည္။ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ဆန္း အလိုဆႏၵအတိုင္းလည္း ျဖစ္သည္။ ခုေတာ့ အလံၿပိဳင္ပြဲကို ဂိုဏ္းဂဏ အစြဲအလမ္းျဖင့္ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကသျဖင့္ နယ္ခ်ဲ႕ဘုရင္ခံႏွင့္ စကၠဴျဖဴအစိုးရကို အလုပ္သမားမ်ားက ညီၫြတ္စည္း႐ံုးၿပီး တခဲနက္ အင္အားျပ ထိုးႏွက္ျခင္း မျပဳႏိုင္ၾက။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ အလံလု အစည္းအေဝးအေၾကာင္းကို ၾကားသိရလွ်င္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာ္ခ် ဆလံတုိက္သြားခ်င္ သြားပါလိမ့္မည္။
အမွတ္တိုင္း ဝန္ခံရလွ်င္ ယင္းအစည္းအေဝး မေအာင္ျမင္ျဖစ္ရျခင္းမွာ မိမိတို႔အားနည္းခ်က္ကို သိလ်က္ျဖင့္ ရန္စကား ေျပာမိခဲ့သည့္ က်ေနာ္ တာဝန္မကင္းပါ။
ဤသည္ကေတာ့ လြန္ခဲ့ေသာ ႏွစ္ေပါင္း ေျခာက္ဆယ္ေက်ာ္က အမွားျပဳလုပ္မိခဲ့သည့္ ေနာင္မွရခဲ့ေသာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးေနာင္တ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။
ဤေဆာင္းပါး ေရးခ်ိန္တြင္ သခင္ဗတင္၊ သခင္လွေကၽြ၊ ရဲေဘာ္ေသာင္းစိန္၊ မစၥတာမူကာဂ်ီတို႔ မရွိၾကေတာ့။ ။
(ရနံ႔သစ္ မဂၢဇင္း၊ အမွတ္ ၉၊ စက္တဘၤာ ၂ဝဝ၉ ထုတ္မွေန ျပန္လည္ကူးယူ ေဖာ္ျပလိုက္တာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္)
The Lives of Two Nobel Laureates
The Lives of Two Nobel Laureates
By Nehginpao Kipgen
13 October 2009
http://www.khaleejt imes.com/ DisplayArticleNe w.asp?xfile= /data/opinion/ 2009/October/ opinion_October6 3.xml§ion=opinion
As the season of the world’s prestigious prize announcements are underway, the circumstances of two renowned Nobel Peace Prize recipients are riveting: the stories of Barack Obama of the United States of America and Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma.
Many Americans awoke surprised on October 9 when the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2009 peace prize to the 44th president of the United States of America. In fact, the president himself said he was “surprised and deeply humbled” and does not deserve to be in the company of many other transformative figures who have been honoured. By receiving the prize in less than a year in the White House, Obama has become the fourth sitting US president to be honoured by the Nobel Committee. The other three recipients were: Jimmy Carter in 2002, Woodrow Wilson in 1919, and Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.
Though there are pockets of criticisms and reservations on the selection, the Nobel Committee was convinced that it was too good to ignore Obama’s emphasis on disarmament and diplomacy. The committee was reportedly buoyed by Obama’s vision of a nuclear-free world, laid out in a speech in Prague in April and at the United Nations in September.
In his historic address to the Muslim world from Cairo in June, Obama tried to reinvigorate the relationship between the United States and the Muslims. He offered a new beginning of relationship based upon mutual interest and mutual respect, and common principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
While the prize may add to his international image, Obama’s popularity at home is declining in recent months. The October 1-5 Associated Press poll showed that 56 per cent of Americans approved his job performance. September 17-20 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that only half of all Americans backed his handling of foreign policy. According to Gallup poll, Obama had 83 percent approval rating in January.
On the other end of the world, there is another Nobel Peace Laureate who has spent her life under very different circumstances. Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights” in 1991. Suu Kyi has spent 14 of the last 20 years in detention since July 1989.
During the general election in 1990, Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won 392 of the 485 seats contested in the 492-member assembly. The military-backed National Unity Party (formerly known as Burma Socialist Programme Party) secured only 10 seats. Despite the resounding victory, the party was never allowed to form a government. Obama was privileged to be born in a country where fundamental democratic principles are respected, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Obama is expected to be in Oslo in person to deliver an acceptance speech in December. In 1991, her son Alexander Aris received Suu Kyi’s prize. In his speech, Aris said: “I know that if she were free today my mother would, in thanking you, also ask you to pray that the oppressors and the oppressed should throw down their weapons and join together to build a nation founded on humanity in the
spirit of peace.”
Aung San Suu Kyi continues to be a staunch advocate and believer of non-violence who likes to resolve the conflicts in Burma peacefully. In the latest sign of positive development, at her request, Suu Kyi was allowed to meet diplomats from the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia on October 9 to discuss their views on sanctions on Burma. This issue, for a while, has been Than Shwe’s (junta chief) key condition for entering a dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi.
Sadly in Burma, there is no independent Gallup poll to gauge the popularity of Suu Kyi. Nevertheless, she remains to be a promising leader who can be widely accepted by the different ethnic groups of the country.
While Obama is building his international image through diplomacy, Suu Kyi in her utmost capacity is working to establish a democratic society
in her country.
Nehginpao Kipgen is a researcher on the rise of political conflicts in modern Burma (1947-2004) and general secretary of the US-based Kuki International Forum.
Burma constitution 'provides impunity' for abuses
Burma constitution 'provides impunity' for abuses
Oct 9, 2009 (DVB)-Burma 's redrafted 2008 constitution provides impunity for human rights abuses and should not be the bedrock for elections next year, a damning report has claimed.
Many of the provisions of the constitution suggest that "instead of being a true catalyst for lasting change, it further entrenches the military within the government and the associated culture of impunity," the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) said.
Its report, Impunity Prolonged: Burma and its Constitution, says that within the constitution, the regime has granted itself impunity for sexual violence, forced labor and the recruitment of child soldiers.
Burma, it says, is "one of the most difficult challenges in the world in relation to making progress toward combating impunity."
Khin Omar, coordinator of the Thailand-based Burma Partnership, said the constitution will "force military rule on Burma forever".
"[It is] the most problematic element as to whether we move further toward being a failed state or whether we move towards national reconciliation," she said.
The report says that "officers and troops systematically use rape and other forms of sexual abuse as a strategy of war."
It then cites a clause within the constitution stating that: "No proceeding shall be instituted against the said Councils (the military) or any member thereof or any member of the Government, in respect to any act done in the execution of their respective duties. "
Burma expert Robert H Taylor told DVB however that "No one has proven that [rape] is public policy," adding that "we don't know how the military deals with instances of rape".
He cited anonymous sources that claim the government has action against people accused of assault and rape, but added that the constitution "has its problems, but which doesn't?"
In a sign that the regime responds to international pressure, the report cited an agreement between the junta and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to address forced labour and child soldiers.
The 2008 constitution was ratified in the weeks following cyclone Nargis last May, in which 140,000 people were killed and millions of acres of land destroyed. Despite the cyclone, the government claimed a 99 percent turnout, with 92.4 percent voting in favour.
A report released last year by Hong Kong-based constitutional expert, Professor Yash Ghai, said that "the cynicism with which the regime held the referendum and manipulated the results was on a par with the cynicism and coercion by which the draft was prepared".
The ICTJ have called on the international community to withhold support for elections in Burma next year. Khin Omar echoed the calls, and said that a constitutional review must take place before the elections do.
Reporting by Joseph Allchin http://english. dvb.no / news. php? id = 2940
World Leaders Fiddle While the World Burns: Time for a New Climate Strategy
New post at "Global Labor Strategies"
World Leaders Fiddle While the World Burns: Time for a New Climate Strategy
Obama’s climate czar Carol Browner said last week there will be no U.S. climate protection legislation before the Copenhagen conference and that she doesn’t know if a global agreement on binding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions can be made in Copenhagen. She added that she had hope for progress because the world's top leaders recognize global warming is a problem.
As the torturous Copenhagen negotiations and the already-inadequate U.S. climate protection legislation falter, the earth is being imperiled by a failure of its political systems. We know what needs to be done to halt global warming; we have the technology and resources to halt it; we know the consequences of not doing what we know must be done. If the “world’s top leaders” recognize that “global warming is a problem” and do nothing about it, they are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
While the earth burns, the “world’s top leaders” are standing around pointing the finger at each other like a bunch of arsonists trying to distract the world’s attention from their handiwork. The U.S. attacks China for its growing carbon emissions. China, backed by 130 other third world countries, justly attacks the developed countries for their failure to take responsibility for their damage to the planet’s atmosphere – but then continue their plans to build new climate-destroying coal-fired power plants week by week. The EU piously condemns the U.S. position, but doesn’t care enough to take the Americans on.
The failure of current climate protection strategies tells us that the current strategy of lobbying governments to fix global warming will not work.
In the past, the failure of establishments to solve problems that they and their people recognize has often led to the emergence of radical movements demanding real change. Remember, for example, how betrayed government promises for racial equality and nuclear disarmament helped spawn the civil rights, ban-the-bomb, and new left movements of the 1960s.
The complicity of governments and the corporations and investors for whom they are so often speaking to halt the destruction of our biosphere may similarly help spawn a new climate protection movement: a convergence of those in the environmental, labor, food, globalization, anti-poverty, peace, student, and other movements who grasp urgency and believe radical action as the only way forward.
We have learned a great deal more about the science of climate change and what must be done to halt it. But we have barely begun to discuss what kind of political change is necessary to do what must be done. Here are some principles to discuss for an alternative climate protection strategy:
1. Existing institutions, specifically states and markets, have decisively proven themselves unable to halt the plunge toward destruction of the biosphere.
2. National and world political systems are as dysfunctional for survival today as feudal principalities were for protecting their people in the face of capitalism and the modern nation state.
3. States are not legitimate if they allow their terrain or their institutions to be used to destroy the global environment. They have no right to govern. They are climate outlaws whose authority it is not only our right but our obligation to challenge.
4. Property rights are not legitimate if property is used to destroy the global environment. Corporations that emit greenhouse gasses have no right to their property. They too are climate outlaws whose possessions it is not only our right but our obligation to challenge.
5. A climate protection movement must be conceived, not as governments agreeing to climate protection measures, but as people imposing rules on states, markets, and other institutions. We can begin to apply these rules locally by direct action wherever we are; we can support each others’ action around the globe; and we can support the right of all the world’s people to monitor and halt climate destroying emissions.
6. The legitimation for policy and action must be global necessity, not just national or other limited interest.
7. The blockades of coal facilities by direct action that have recently emerged in countries around the world form a brilliant beginning to this process. A new climate movement must expand that effort to impose climate protection rules by direct action.
8. Governments, corporations, and other institutions that threaten the survival of the planet should be subject to global popular boycotts and sanctions.
9. National and international economic policies must be redesigned to maximize global resources going to climate protection, rather than competing over the location of "green" production.
We need to make true for climate protection what President Dwight D. Eisenhower said about peace: "I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it." Popular demand forced competing governments to agree to a nuclear test ban treaty. Today global popular demand for climate protection should utilize the same dynamic to tell governments and corporations that they will be regarded as nothing but outlaws if the continue to destroy the earth’s environment.
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Harming the Young: Sexually Abused Children in Burma and the Migrant Communities of Thailand
Harming the Young: Sexually Abused Children in Burma and the Migrant Communities of Thailand
October 3, 2009
WCRP:
Introduction
Burma’s military junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) is notorious for its oppression of the democratic opposition led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and for human rights violations against ethnic nationalities who participate in liberation movements. In response to these violations and constant suppression, citizens are continually fleeing Burma.
There are over 1 million Burmese migrants working illegally and unsafely in Thailand1. Nearly 140,0002 refugees from assorted Burmese ethnic groups are seeking shelter in Thailand’s refugee camps and over 500,0003 people are displaced on Burma’s eastern border.
The following report details the many ways in which children, living in Burma or in migrant communities, are sexually harassed and abused due to the unstable environment created by the SPDC.
Background (Conflict and migration)
In Burma, armed conflict has occurred throughout Shan State, Kayeh (Karenni State), Karen State, Mon State and Tenasserism Division, where millions of members of ethnic minorities are living. The SPDC has named these conflict zones ‘Black Areas’, denoting their “unsecured” nature. The SPDC subsequently uses this to justify the numerous human rights violations it commits in the areas.
Your browser may not support display of this image. In Mon State since 2000, the SPDC has deployed over 20 military battalions. Additionally, they have implemented a population transfer project under which Burman workers are relocated Mon areas to replace Mon workers who have migrated to Thailand. Many retired SPDC personnel have been allowed to stay in Mon villages, and have been given ‘authority’ by local Burmese army commanders. In many cases, these retired Burmese soldiers and Burman migrant workers sexually harass and beat children.rmese migrant workers at a seafood production factory in Mahachai
Burmese migrant workers at a seafood production factory in MahachaiFacing widespread human rights violations, conflict, economic hardship and taxation, many Mon and other ethnic minorities decide to flee illegally to Thailand for better incomes and new jobs. In order to avoid police, they travel through jungles, rivers, and mountains.
Regularly children are withdrawn from school and the entire family migrates in search of new jobs. Of the thousands of migrant workers that move daily into Thailand, an uncountable number are children. Since the general population in Burma is unaware of any laws condemning ‘child labor’ or that the Burmese government has signed the Convention on the Rights of Children (CRC), children also migrate to Thailand for work.
It is very difficult for migrants to obtain legal status, and the majority work illegally in unsafe conditions in Thailand. Female migrants face additional difficulties, as they cannot always find work and many of them have to rely on their husbands, fathers and male friends for survival. Most female migrants stay in narrow rooms, in rented houses that are not secure. Because of these unsafe conditions, females living in the migrant communities of Thailand are often raped or sexually harassed by neighbors, Thai police or gangs.
Some Thai and international NGOs have helped workers in Thai migrant communities prevent sexual violence and abuse. However, because the migrant communities are so large, it is difficult to prevent harassment in every location.
Children are particularly vulnerable in Southern Burma
Conflict Zones or ‘Black Areas’
Armed conflict is fairly constant in Southern Burma. The New Mon State Party (NMSP), the largest Mon ethnic political group, agreed to a ceasefire with the SPDC in 1995, although several Mon splinter groups continue to fight with the SPDC creating conflict zones with in Mon State. Similarly, the SPDC, by collaborating with Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), a Karen ceasefire group, has launched a military offensive against the main Karen rebel group, Karen National Union (KNU). The offensive has created several conflict zones within Karen state. ‘Black areas’ also litter parts of Tenesserim division, within which the SPDC regularly fights with Mon and other ethnic minority groups.
The SPDC is constantly active in Ye Township in Mon State and in Yebyu Township in Tenesserim Division. When the SPDC launches military offensives in these conflict zones, the villagers endure various violations. Children are often sexually assaulted and or beaten, while men and women are taken as porters, or accused of being rebel supporters and killed.
Your browser may not support display of this image. An example, taken from a report made by the Human Rights Foundation of Monland (HURFOM), is detailed below:
Burmese Army troops in northern Tenesserim Division forced all residents of Amae village (Mae Taw village in Burmese) to abandon their homes and plantations in November. On the same day, the troops raped a 17-year-old girl and severely beat a young man.
Captain Pan Zar and 80 troops from Infantry Battalion (IB) No.107 entered the village on November 11, 2008. After accusing the residents of supporting an armed Mon rebel group in the area, the troops ordered the villagers to relocate. Each household was also ordered to pay the soldiers 50,000 kyat, and the residents were prohibited from visiting farms and plantations in the area.
The villagers were given virtually no time to prepare for their departure. sources said they left the next day, bringing only what they could carry and leaving behind the majority of their belongings, as well the timber and other valuable construction materials in their homes.
The soldiers assaulted at least one villager as they ordered the villagers to relocate. “One young man from the village asked the captain, ‘if you do like this, where will we go to live?’ said an eyewitness from Amae. “The captain replied, ‘you can go and live anywhere, but not in this area. After that he grabbed the young man and hit him in the head with the butt of his rifle. Once the young man had fallen down, the captain hit the young man’s leg and it broke.”
According to another source, soldiers also raped a 17-year-old girl as she worked on a betel-nut plantation nearby. The resident, who spoke with the victim’s mother and then quoted her to HURFOM, said that she was crying as time she told the story. “My daughter is only 17-years-old. She was raped by 7 soldiers,” the source quoted the mother. “Those soldiers are not humans. They are like animals. They are the same as evil, both the captain and his soldiers. My daughter nearly died, and now she has tried to kill herself many times.”
The 60 households found themselves in extra-ordinarily difficult circumstances. “Now we are in a very bad situation because we could not take much food or household things. And we have not much money. We also have to find land to live on and all new materials for building a home. It is so expensive we cannot afford it,” said a former resident. “Now I am staying at my friend’s house, but I cannot stay there for a long time. I have to find a way to solve the roblem – I want to migrate to Thailand to find a job, but I have no money even for transportation. My wife, my two sons and I have no idea where we will go.”
This is only one of many stories from Tenasserim Division, although many Mon families have suffered. Mon and Karen human rights workers cannot travel freely to several parts of Southern Burma, and as a result the majority of sexual assaults remain largely undocumented.
Non-Conflict Zones in Mon State
An increasing number of children in Mon areas have been sexually harassed, following the increased deployment of Burmese Army battalions in Mon State, part of the Army’s implementation of the ‘population transfer project’.
Your browser may not support display of this image. Hundreds of Burmans from Central Burma, (Pegu and Rangoon Divisions) have migrated to Mon State seeking jobs, as workers in Mon state are paid better than workers in other parts of Burma. A day can earn 1,500 kyat per day in Central Burma, while they could earn 3,000 to 3,500 kyat per day in a non-conflict zone in Mon state.
Migrant workers are employed at a variety of locations in Mon State; rice paddy fields, rubber and orchard plantations, transportation jobs, brick-making factories, etc. They also live on the rice paddy fields, plantations and in the forests near the villages. Several reports have been made about migrant workers stealing from or harming local Mon State villagers. Because of such activities, children are not safe in their homes, while traveling to the rice paddy fields, while working or living on the plantations, or at the factories.
Below is an example from Kya Inn Seikyi Township in Karen State:
In November 2008, a 15-year-old girl was raped and savagely murdered by a Burman man. A 47-year-old eyewitness from Innk Gwa village, Kyar Inn Seik Kyi Township explained the event.
The girl was from Pakapaw village, Kyar Inn Seik Kyi Township, also known as Moulmein district in the New Mon State Party Controlled Area. The girl worked as a beef seller, and on the day she was killed, had gone to her uncle’s village to sell beef. At 4:00 pm after the shop was closed, her uncle sent her back to her village before returning home himself.
On the return trip she was raped by a 33-year-old Burman man. After raping her, he killed her by striking her on the head with a machete. According to the eyewitness, “I saw him throw her dead body into a field at a farm which is very close to the village. I think it happened around 5 or 6 pm. I ran and collected some farmers who were working around there and we arrested him and brought him to the New Mon State Party (NMSP) Moulmein district headquarters.” The crime of rape and murder will most likely result in an extended jail sentence, though the length of a possible sentence could not be confirmed.
“We feel sorry for the Burman people and offer them jobs and allow them to live in our village. Sadly, a girl in our village was raped and brutally killed by a Burman man. Before, our village was a very peaceful place. But now as more Burman people have moved in, we have been cheated, had our motorbikes stolen, faced outright hostility, and now one of us has been killed” a source reported, who had recently spoken to a villager from the area.
He added, “Most of the migrant workers are from upper Burma and are working here or in other villages in the area.” He surmised, “There are approximately 1,000 Burman people in our village, and have increased in population this year”.
The source also reported a villager saying “Most of our villagers migrated to Thailand and left their farms and homes. We have a shortage of workers and therefore we must use the migrant workers who arrive from upper Burma looking for work.
In some cases, even though the village headmen inform the commanders of local military battalions of criminal conduct and abuses, their complaints are not taken seriously, and detained culprits are not arrested or prosecuted.
In some areas, Burmese battalion commanders appoint Burman migrant workers as village headmen, or as heads of local militia forces. Community leaders then lose their authority and control of the villagers.
Sexual harassment in Mon migrant workers’ communities
Domestic Violence
In Thailand, migrant workers have very restricted accommodations and of them live in fear because they do not have work-permit cards. When an entire family migrates to Thailand, they usually live in very narrow houses or rooms. There is no separate space or private areas in these living situations. Father, mother and children all share the same space. In such circumstances, girls often face sexual harassment from male relatives.
In the example below a father repeatedly attempts to rape his 14-year-old daughter:
On December 28th 2008, a 14-year-old girl, Ma K—T—W—, was raped by her father in Mahachai, Samut Sakhon Province, Thailand.
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The girl, a Burmese migrant teenager, was raped in December while her mother was in the hospital. According to a neighbor, “Her father tried to rape her many times until he succeeded while his wife was in the hospital. After she had been raped, she dared not to tell her mother and was also afraid of being raped again; she ran away from home with the help of a Thai man.”
The girl’s mother called her and asked her to return home. She also asked why she ran away with the Thai man. The girl told her mother the reasons and explained that she was afraid to be home alone. Her mother then sent her to a village in Mon State.
A few months later she returned to Thailand to help her sick mother. One day, her mother went to a celebration with relatives and left her in the house. At around 3:00 p.m., after the girl had finished taking a bath, her drunken father tried again to rape her.
The girl escaped and immediately phoned her aunt and asked for her mother to come back home. Her mother knew the reason and though she wanted to complain to her husband, she was afraid of being beaten and dared not to inform Thai police.
Your browser may not support display of this image. Her concerned neighbors, however, informed the Labor Right Promotion Network (LPN) and asked to have him arrested.
According to a source close to the victim, “Her mother doesn’t want to put her husband in jail because she is sick and relies on him. She couldn’t survive without his help, though he committed rape many times and needs to be punished. Therefore, LPN board members are not permitted to set him free.”
In some situations, because of financial and tradition circumstances wives do not challenge their husbands actions.
Gang rape
Migrant communities in Thailand are not properly protected and many families fear the local authorities. To avoid precarious situations, migrants usually stay in their rented rooms until leaving for work. Local gangs are aware that the migrant communities are not properly protected, and their members often exploit defenseless migrant families.
In the instance below, gang members in Bangkok pretended to be Thai police officers and raped a young girl:
A 12-year-old Burmese migrant child was gang raped by 5 Thai men posing as police in Minburi Sub-district, Bangkok.
Early in the morning, at around 2 a.m. on May 2nd, a group of 5 men came to the apartment where a Burmese migrant family was living. Pretending they were Thai policemen coming to check their work permit cards, they ordered the workers to open the door. Upon entering they half-heartedly checked work permit cards, ignoring some of the residents, and proceeded to search each room.
According to the aunt who was living with the child, “They captured the two children by showing us their guns and they stole a mobile phone which cost around 5,000baht as well as another 25,000baht in cash.” The girl who is from Ye township, works with her aunt at a construction site in Minburi, while her mother works farther away in Bangkok.
The men then drove away with the two children and after a few minutes stopped their car near a banana farm. One man held the 18-year-old boy at gunpoint while the others took the girl out beside the road. According to the 18-year-old boy, each of the men then raped the young girl.
“During the rape she nearly lost consciousness because of the pain. After they raped her, they left both children on the side of the road with 100baht to get a ride back home. The girl was so terrified she couldn’t speak,” said the victim’s aunt.
Lost and unable to get back home, the children proceeded to walk along the road. Back home the aunt had prepared a search party to sweep the neighborhood, and luckily found the two children at about 6am.
The 5 men were not immediately followed for fear an encounter would bring additional violence. The Burmese workers were also worried about being arrested as some of them did not posses a work permit card.
Additionally the victim’s mother didn’t want to contact the police about the case because, as a migrant worker, if the police needed to question her about the incident, she would have to go to the police station. Leaving work and missing that time could result in the loss of her job.
The migrant family did inform their employer about the incident, but he took no action other than to send the child to the hospital for a medical check. The employer never contacted the police for fear the 5 men might have actually been police officers. He was concerned that if they were real police the men would make problems for him and his business, as well as the potential loss of face over the incident.
However the doctor who preformed the medical examination informed the employer that in fact the rape of the 12-year-old was not a small issue, and because of its significance the police should be contacted
When workers from Burma migrate to Thailand, they do not want to leave their children alone with other villagers. In some cases parents have withdrawn their kids from schools so that the families can migrate together. When they arrive in Thailand, the children are not able to attend school and are too young to work in factories. Therefore, children have to stay alone in the apartments, rental houses or play grounds. Children in these situations are extremely vulnerable to attacks, sexual harassment, or exploitation by traffickers.
Sexual assaults by employers
In Thailand, many migrant women are sexually abused or raped by their employers. They rarely report the abuses, and as a result sexual harassment is on the rise among female Burmese migrants in Thailand.
In some cases, when the Thai wives are absent from their homes, the domestic workers are repeatedly raped and harassed by the Thai husbands. In some instances wives allow their husbands to harass the domestic worker; some Thai wives believe that it is normal for a Thai man to have a minor wife.
It is dangerous for under-aged girls to be domestic workers. Below is an instance of a Thai man sexually assaulting a young girl:
On July 7th, 2008, a 16-year-old Mon woman working in Zin Song Bun village, Om Noi Su-district, Krathum Bean district, Samut Sakhon Province, Thailand was abused and sexual harassed by her employer, during a routine massage.
Mi Win, worked as a house keeper and was also in charge of taking care of a 60-year-old patient. The patient suffered from a number of ailments and could no longer walk. Part of her duty included daily massages, and moving him from his bed to his wheelchair. She was required to follow him should he need assistance.
According to Mi Win, “He had touched my breasts and hugged me three or four times before. This was the fourth time he tried to sexually abuse me during 10 months of working there. I was so afraid I quit my job.”
She went on, “I am not only taking care of the patient, I also have to work from 6 am until well after dark. I have to do a lot of house work including sweeping, washing clothes, and I have to bathe their dogs three times a week. It is a lot of work for 3,000 baht and I was exhausted every day. However, I had to deal with it to support my poor family in Burma.”
Mi Win comes from Karen State, Ha-An Township and has been working as a house keeper in Thailand for about a year and a half.
Many female migrants are stuck in domestic work and encounter sexual harassment. Often times they have little to no contact with their friends and do not know how to flee. Additionally, many of them do not leave their employers houses, do not have work-permits, and are afraid of losing their jobs or being arrested by the police.
Childhood sexual abuse on the Thai-Burma border and in Burma’s rural communities
Instances of sexual abuse with in Burma are hard to document because of the controlled press, the limited number of organizations specializing on children’s rights and cultural boundaries that frequently restrict and confuse abused children. In interviews with NGOs on the border, WCRP gathered important information about ongoing childhood abuse and victims’ recovery processes.
The approach and abuse
In most refugee camps and border villages, refugees and villagers’ shelters are narrow and provide little or no safety for the female population. Commonly, while parents head to work children are left at home alone, or with relatives. Because of the lack of safety and parental supervision, social and relief workers in border areas have noticed an increase of sexually abused children.
A Mon woman community leader, from Three Pagodas Pass explained:
Your browser may not support display of this image. “I often heard about the sexual harassment toward girls in the villages. Most of the girls are parentless. Their parents left to go to Thailand and they stay with relatives, sometimes with elderly grandpas and grandmas. The men who tried to rape them firstly bought some food or came to the door and pretended to be the child’s parent. Then, they have an opportunity, and they rape them.
“Many children never… speak out about what has happened to them after being sexually harassed. Like the new leaves on a tree are destroyed, the children seriously suffer ‘mental stresses’. They are afraid to meet with people or to stay alone and the avoid staying near men.”
Sexual abuse is not always blatant; often in border communities neighbors or family members are the predators.
In the following example a little girl is raped by her neighbor:
In January 2008, on the Burmese side of the Thai-Burma border town, Three Pagodas Pass, a 4-year-old Burman girl was raped by her neighbor, a 30-year-old Burman.
The victim lived with her mother in a small rented house. Everyday the girl biked home from nursery school and waited for her mother to return from the factory. While waiting, the child would often play at the neighbor man’s house.
By promising a toy, the neighbor man lured the waiting girl to a secluded shaded area behind his house. There he held the child on his lap and raped her. After the man released the girl, she returned home to wait for her mother.
The mother was completely unaware of the assault.
2 days later the mother overheard her child crying during urination. She immediately examined her daughter’s vagina and noticed severe injuries. The girl then explained that the neighbor man “put his stick” inside her.
They immediately went to the free hospital in Paline Japan where a medic contacted Stop Violence Against Women Program (VAW).
VAW took the child and mother to Kwai River Christian Hospital in Sangkhlaburi and paid for their transportation, food and medical cost. There a doctor confirmed that a man had penetrated the young girl and tested for dieses.
Burmese township authority arrested the man and he was tried at a court in Three Pagodas Pass Town. It has not been confirmed whether or not he was sentenced to jail time.
Abused children need to learn how to identify perpetrators. If girls are harassed by their fathers, step-fathers or a man from the neighboring house, they have few opportunities to relate their stories or receive help.
Because it is difficult for migrants and people living in border communities to collect evidence and prove a rape, offenders often go free and continue to abuse children.
While rape is a common form of child abuse, sexual assault can have many forms which parents and community members should be aware of. The child rights coordinator from Human Rights Education Institute of Burma gave WCRP a few examples of sexual abuses they have documented:
· Children are threatened or lured away from the community and raped.
· Inappropriate but non-violent touching
· Photographing naked children.
· Watching pornography with children.
Parents, community leaders, religious leaders, villagers and teachers need to be extensively educated about sexual abuse. Additionally, school teachers must understand the nature of sexual abuse, so they can explain, warn, and protect their students.
Mental and physical suffering
Children, especially girls, that are sexually abused suffer from severe mental and physical problems. Rarely are there organizations within Burma equipped to handle these post-trauma problems. The director of Social Action for Women (SAW), an organization that provides protection for children, explained to WCRP;
“Most sexually abused children suffer mental problems. Soon after the harassment happens, we have found that they suffered from ‘fear’. They felt so afraid of men and would not like to stand in front of a group of people. They felt there is a black spot (unlucky turn) in their lives.”
Children who are sexually harassed are commonly too terrified to tell their parents. They are afraid of their parents’ punishments and accusations of carelessness. In some cases girls are unknowingly pregnant.
According to a field coordinator from the Labor Rights Promotion Network (LPN) “after a child is sexually abused they feel helpless, frightened and extremely insecure.” He added “The number of child rape cases are increasing in migrant areas and the assailant is usually a family neighborhood character.”
If NGOs knew a child was being harassed then they could protect the child from the predator. Mental suffering is a long-term issue and communities need to have recovery or rehabilitation centers to treat the children’s mental and physical ailments.
Physically, children can be infected with sexually transmitted diseases, specifically HIV/AIDS, and endure strenuous injuries. Child protection NGOs and healthcare workers examine injuries, test for diseases, provide medical assistance and safe houses in some areas. Most children who are saved by NGOs or other authorities need immediate medical and physical treatment or rehabilitation. Unfortunately, it is difficult for children in the migrant communities of Thailand and almost impossible for children in Southern parts of Burma to contact NGOs, and consequently most sexual assaults go untreated.
Conclusion and suggestions for future protection of children
If abuse from the SPDC continues, and unsafe living conditions persist in the migrant communities of Thailand and Southern Burma, then children will continue to suffer.
Within migrant communities, the Thai authority should be creating a safe environment and an atmosphere of security rather than one of fear. At the same time, the SPDC should be protecting the rights of children, promoting these rights, and adhering to the CRC. Currently the regime constantly violates the convention, and no one holds them accountable.
Until the SPDC changes its actions, or an international force holds them responsible for the uncountable human rights violations it commits, children in Southern parts of Burma will continue to be raped and assaulted.
1 Human Rights Foundation of Monland; Without a Choice: Increased economic migration from Mon State to Thailand, September 2008
2 Thai-Burma Border Consortium
3 Thai-Burma Border Consortium
Written by HURFOM · Filed Under Monthly Report
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