Supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi reacted angrily to her conviction
World leaders have reacted with anger and disappointment to the conviction of Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi for violating security laws.
The UN called for her immediate release after she was sentenced to a further 18 months of house arrest - where she has spent 14 of the past 20 years.
The US, the European Union, Britain and France were among those who condemned the verdict.
But trading partners China and India have made no public comment.
The UN Security Council adjourned an emergency session without agreeing a response to the sentencing, and will resume deliberations on Wednesday.
Keeping Aung San Suu Kyi under arrest... does not serve the proclaimed national interest
Ton van Lierop
EU spokesman
Profile: Aung San Suu Kyi
Burmese reaction
International sanctions
Putting pressure on Burma
Britain's ambassador to the UN, John Sawers, who is head of the Security Council this month, said some countries, including China and Russia, had asked for more time to consider a draft statement condemning the verdict.
Ms Suu Kyi was on trial for allowing a US national, John Yettaw, into her lakeside home after he swam there uninvited. Mr Yettaw was jailed for seven years, including four years of hard labour.
Critics of Burma's military regime say the verdict is designed to prevent Ms Suu Kyi from taking part in elections scheduled for 2010.
'Sham trial'
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said he "strongly deplores" the verdict and called for Ms Suu Kyi to be freed.
"Unless she and all other political prisoners in Myanmar [Burma] are released and allowed to participate in free and fair elections, the credibility of the political process will remain in doubt," he said.
The UN special envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, said Ms Suu Kyi was "absolutely indispensable to the resumption of a political process that can lead to national reconciliation".
US President Barack Obama called for her "immediate unconditional release", describing the extension of house arrest as unjust.
ANALYSIS
Tin Htar Swe, BBC Burmese Service editor
This verdict was unexpected. Aung San Suu Kyi herself was expecting a more severe sentence when she recently told visiting diplomats that her punishment "was obviously going to be painful".
It seems that the ruling party's real intention is to make sure she cannot influence the forthcoming elections in any way.
No one will have access to her without the authorities' approval.
A spokesman for the European Union, Ton van Lierop, said the further detention of the 64-year-old was unacceptable.
"Keeping Aung San Suu Kyi under arrest under fabricated reasons violates her fundamental freedoms, and does not serve the proclaimed national interest either," he told the BBC.
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was "saddened and angry" by the verdict in what he called a "sham" trial.
In a strongly-worded statement, he condemned the "purely political sentence".
A statement from the office of Nicolas Sarkozy said the French president was calling on the European Union to impose new sanctions on Burma.
Asian response
Human rights organisations and political parties have been swift to criticise the sentence
Ms Suu Kyi's previous period of house arrest expired on 27 May. This new term will mean she is still in detention during the polls, which are expected to take place in about May 2010.
Her party, the National League for Democracy, won the last elections in 1990 but was never allowed to take power.
In Asia, the governments of Indonesia and the Philippines have been outspoken in condemning the sentence.
But, says the BBC's Jill McGivering, it is notable that two of Burma's biggest trading partners and allies - India and China - have avoided public comment on the trial.
India and China, with Thailand, have been accused by critics of propping up the military government, especially in recent years as growing economic sanctions have strangled its trade relationship with the West.
Anger greets Suu Kyi conviction
ေနအိမ္ အက်ယ္ခ်ဳပ္မွ လြတ္ေျမာက္လာသူ ဦးတင္ဦးက ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၏ လမ္းညႊန္ခ်က္အတိုင္း ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး ဆက္လက္ေဆာင္ရြက္ သြားမည္ဟုေျပာ
ရန္ကုန္ ၊ ေဖေဖၚဝါရီ ၁၃။
ျမန္မာ့တပ္မေတာ္၏ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးေဟာင္းႏွင့္ NLD ၏ ဒုဥကၠဌ ျဖစ္သူ ဦးတင္ဦးသည္ ယေန႔ ညေနပိုင္းက ေနအိမ္ အက်ယ္ခ်ဳပ္ က်ခံေနရရာမွ ျပန္လည္ လြတ္ေျမာက္လာခဲ့ၿပီးေနာက္ သတင္းေထာက္မ်ား၏ ေမးျမန္း ခ်က္မ်ားကို ေျဖၾကားရာတြင္ ဒီမိုကေရစီအေရးအတြက္ ဆက္လက္ ေဆာင္ရြက္သြားမည္ဟု ေျပာၾကားခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရပါသည္။
ေနအိမ္အက်ယ္ခ်ဳပ္ႏွင့္ အက်ဥ္းေထာင္တို႔တြင္ ခုႏွစ္နီးပါးခန္႔ ေနခဲ့ရသူ ယခု အသက္ ၈၃ႏွစ္ ရွိၿပီ ျဖစ္သူ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးေဟာင္းႏွင့္ NLD ၏ ဒုဥကၠဌ ျဖစ္သူ သူရ ဦးတင္ဦးသည္ ယေန႔ည ၈နာရီ ၃၀ က ေနအိမ္ အက်ယ္ ခ်ဳပ္မွ ျပန္လည္ လြတ္ေျမာက္လာၿပီ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။
၁၉၆၄ခုႏွစ္မွ ၁၉၆၆ ခုႏွစ္အထိ တပ္မေတာ္၏ ကာကြယ္ေရး ဦးစီးခ်ဳပ္အျဖစ္ တာဝန္ ထမ္းေဆာင္ခဲ့ဘူးသူ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးေဟာင္း သူရ ဦးတင္ဦးက လြတ္ေျမာက္လာၿပီးသည့္ေနာက္ NLD ၏ ဒုဥကၠဌ တာဝန္ကို ဆက္လက္ ထမ္းေဆာင္သြားမည္ဟု ေျပာဆိုခဲ့သလို လက္ရွိေနအိမ္ အက်ယ္ခ်ဳပ္ က်ခံေနရဆဲျဖစ္ေသာ ျမန္မာ့ အတိုက္အခံ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၏ ဦးေဆာင္မႈ အတိုင္း ဆက္လက္ေဆာင္ရြက္ သြားမည္ဟု ထုတ္ေဖၚေျပာၾကားခဲ့ပါသည္။
၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္အတြင္း က်င္းပမည္ဟု နအဖက ေၾကျငာထားခဲ့ေသာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲႏွင့္ ပါတ္သက္ေသာ သေဘာ ထားကို သတင္းေထာက္မ်ား၏ ေမးျမန္းခ်က္ကို ေျဖၾကားခဲ့ရာတြင္ ဦးတင္ဦးက NLD ပါတီေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ NLD ပါတီ ၏ အဆံုးအျဖတ္အတိုင္း ဆက္လက္ ေဆာင္ရြက္သြားမည္ဟု ေျပာၾကား သြား ခဲ့ပါသည္။
ဦးတင္ဦးသည္ ၂၀၀၃ ခုႏွစ္ ေမလ၃၀ရက္ေန႔က က စစ္ကိုင္းတိုင္း ဒီပဲယင္းတြင္ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ေသာ လုပ္ႀကံခံရမႈတြင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ အတူ ပါဝင္ခဲ့ၿပီး ေနာက္ပိုင္းတြင္ ကေလးေထာင္တြင္ ဖမ္းဆီး ခ်ဳပ္ေႏွာင္ျခင္း ခံခဲ့ ရပါသည္။
၂၀၀၄ခုႏွစ္ ေဖေဖၚဝါရီလ ၁၄ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ဦးတင္ဦးအား စစ္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္သူမ်ားက ရန္ကုန္သို႔ ေလယာဥ္ျဖင့္ ျပန္ပို႔ ခဲ့ၿပီး ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ကို အႏၱရယ္ျပဳမည့္ သူမ်ားေဘးရန္မွ ကာကြယ္ေစာင့္ေရွာက္ေရး ဥပေဒျဖင့္ ေနအိမ္ အက်ယ္ ခ်ဳပ္က်ခံျခင္း ခံခဲ့ရသည္မွာ လြတ္ေျမာက္လာေသာ ယေန႔ အထိ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။
ဦးတင္ဦးသည္ ကေလးေထာင္တြင္ ၈ႏွစ္ႏွင့္ ၁၆ရက္ ေနခဲ့ရသည္သည့္ အျပင္ အထက္ပါ ဥပေဒအရ ေနအိမ္ အက်ယ္ခ်ဳပ္ ျဖင့္ ၆ႏွစ္နီးပါးခန္႔ ေနထိုင္ခဲ့ရပါသည္။
ဦးတင္ဦးက သတင္းေထာက္မ်ားကို ဆက္လက္ ေျပာဆိုရာတြင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရး အတြက္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၏ ဦးေဆာင္မႈ အတိုင္း ဆက္လက္ ေဆာင္ရြက္သြားမည္ဟု ေျပာျပသြားခဲ့ပါ သည္။
ျပည္တြင္း သတင္းေထာက္(ေရႊဝါေရာင္ သတင္းလႊာ)
国際労働組合総連合（ITUC）東京ビルマ会議 2010年2月11日－12日
国際労働組合総連合（ITUC）東京ビルマ会議 2010年2月11日－12日
ビルマの労働者との連帯構築
Statement by the International Trade Union Confederation Conference
“Building Solidarity with Burmese workers, Tokyo”,
11-12 February 2010
ITUC Statements Eng Japanese
The Jakarta Post - Malaysia plans IDs for refugees to prevent arrest
The Jakarta Post - Malaysia plans IDs for refugees to prevent arrest
The Associated Press , Kuala Lumpur | Mon, 02/01/2010 1:14 PM | World
Malaysia plans to issue identification cards to refugees who are recognized by the United Nations, allowing them to stay in the country temporarily and avoid arrest as illegal immigrants.
Malaysia, which has declined to join the U.N. convention on refugees for fear of attracting a flood of migrants, previously has arrested refugees frequently as illegal aliens.
Mostly from Myanmar, the refugees often have spent months in overcrowded detention center and faced caning and deportation.
The plans announced Monday reflect a softening of Malaysia's position toward the refugees, although it continues to refuse them official recognition.
Home Ministry Secretary General Mahmood Adam said the government would work with the U.N. refugee agency to issue the cards so immigration enfocement personnel would recognize and spare U.N.-designated refugees.
"As long as they are recognized as refugees by the U.N., they can stay here temporarily, " he told The Associate Press. "They cannot work here, but they can do odd jobs."
He could not give an exact timeline but said the initiative was in the "final stage."
According to the U.N. agency, about 75,600 refugees and asylum-seekers were in Malaysia as of November. Most fled persecution in Myanmar.
Yante Ismal, a spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, welcomed the development and further discussions to form a documentation system.
"Proper documentation for refugees is essential to their protection," she said.
All of the refugees in Malaysia are waiting to be resettled to a third countr that officially accepts refugees, which grants them legal status and the right to work.
Burma has nuclear ambitions: report
http://www.mizzima.com/news/world/3465-burma-has-nuclear-ambitions-report-.html
Burma has nuclear ambitions: report
Saturday, 30 January 2010 15:57 Mungpi
New Delhi (Mizzima) – Burma’s military junta nurses nuclear ambitions, though there is insufficient evidence to prove the regime is building a secret nuclear reactor or facilities, a leading ‘Think Tank’ from the United States said.
David Albright, Paul Brannan, Robert Kelley and Andrea Scheel Stricker, well-known experts of proliferation of nuclear weapons, in a report said the Burmese regime’s suspicious links to North Korea and Russia’s agreement to sell a nuclear reactor to Burma in 2001 has led to suspicion of the junta’s nuclear intentions.
The report published by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) on January 28, 2010, said “Although evidence does not exist to make a compelling case that Burma is building secret nuclear reactors or fuel cycle facilities, as has been reported, the information does warrant governments and companies adopting extreme caution in any dealings with Burma.”
The authors of the report said, suspicions about Burma’s nuclear intentions came after the junta reached an agreement with Russia to sell a research reactor in 2001 and the resumption of a formal military relationship between North Korea and Burma in 2007 intensified.
Though information available is incomplete, US officials are concerned that the Burmese regime’s relationship with North Korea could possibly extend to nuclear cooperation, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying, in July 2009, “We know there are also growing concerns about military cooperation between North Korea and Burma, which we take seriously.”
Philip J. Crowley, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, on Thursday told reporters in Washington, “We – in our discussions with Burma, do have concerns about certain activity and the potential – that create risks to the global non-proliferation agenda.”
The report, titled ‘Burma: A Nuclear Wannabe; Suspicious Links to North Korea; High-Tech Procurements and Enigmatic Facilities’, said certain equipment, which could be used in a nuclear or missile programme, went to isolated Burmese manufacturing compounds of unknown purpose.
Evidence on Burma and North Korea’s relationship supports that the two countries have discussed nuclear cooperation, “but is not sufficient to establish that North Korea is building nuclear facilities for Burma’s military junta, despite recent reports to the contrary,” the report said.
“Nonetheless, no one can ignore the possibility of significant North Korean nuclear assistance to this enigmatic, military regime,” said the authors, giving the example of North Korea’s secret sales of a reactor to Syria, which went unnoticed even by the world’s best intelligence agencies until late in the reactor’s construction.
The authors also urged governments and companies to be vigilant in examining Burma’s enquiries or requests for equipment, whether via Burmese governmental entities, Burmese trading companies or other foreign trading companies because Burma is buying a wide variety of suspicious dual-use goods internationally.
“Companies should treat enquiries from Burma no differently than those from Iran, Pakistan, or Syria,” the report said.
Another evidence, leading to suspicion of Burma’s nuclear ambition is the reported presence of officials from Namchongang Trading (NCG), a North Korean trading company that has sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the authors said.
While the nature of cooperation between Burma and NCG, which also reportedly assisted Syria’s reactor project, remains largely unknown, the NCG was said to have sold equipment to Burma or provided some type of technical assistance.
Though there is no concrete evidence of North Korea supplying Burma a reactor, the report said, “Any involvement by NCG in Burma is bound to increase suspicions about such a sale.”
The report also analyses the possibilities of Burma using North Korean trading entities to acquire overseas sensitive nuclear and nuclear dual use goods.
“Its military cooperation with North Korea has increased over the last several years, fuelling concerns about nuclear cooperation. North Korea could also supplement Burma’s own foreign procurement networks, and it could sell nuclear goods made in North Korea,” the report said.
The authors said, given the evidence, there remain sound reasons to suspect that the military regime in Burma might be pursuing a long-term strategy to make nuclear weapons. However, contrary to public reports, the military junta does not appear to be close to establishing a significant nuclear capability.
“Information suggesting the construction of major nuclear facilities appears unreliable or inconclusive,” the report said.
Although Burma and North Korea appear to be cooperating on illegal procurements, who is helping who cannot be determined with the available information, the authors said.
“Nonetheless, the evidence supports that the regime wants to develop a nuclear capability of some type, but whether its ultimate purpose is peaceful or military remains a mystery,” the report said.
The authors, while concluding, suggest that the outstanding questions about the regime’s activities require that there be more scrutiny of Burma to ascertain if there is an underlying secret nuclear programme.
“A priority is to establish greater transparency over Burma’s and North Korea’s activities and inhibit any nuclear or nuclear dual-use transfers to Burma. A related problem is ensuring that Burma is not helping North Korea acquire nuclear and other military goods illegally,” the report suggested.
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