THANK YOU MR. SECRETARY GENERAL

Ban’s visit may not have achieved any visible outcome, but the people of Burma will remember what he promised: "I have come to show the unequivocal shared commitment of the United Nations to the people of Myanmar. I am here today to say: Myanmar – you are not alone."

QUOTES OF UN SECRETARY GENERAL

Without participation of Aung San Suu Kyi, without her being able to campaign freely, and without her NLD party [being able] to establish party offices all throughout the provinces, this [2010] election may not be regarded as credible and legitimate. ­
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

Demo infront of the National Diet of Japan,tokyo/26-1-2011

(ေပၚေပါက္လာမည့္အစိုးရကိုဂ်ပန္ေရာက္ၿမန္မာ့ဒီမိုအင္အားစုမ်ားမွ­အသိအမွတ္မၿပဳေႀကာင္းႏွင့္
ဂ်ပန္အစိုးရမွလည္းအသိအမွတ္မၿပဳရန္တိုက္တြန္းေတာင္းဆိုပြဲ
26/27/28-1-2011 pm3 to pm4) ...

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Letter to His Excellency Mr. Seiji Maehara on the Eve of Burmese military junta’s sham parliament From Network for Democracy in Burma

Letter to His Excellency Mr. Seiji Maehara on the Eve of Burmese military junta’s sham parliament
From Network for Democracy in Burma

His Excellency Mr. Seiji Maehara,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs,

Date January (25), 2011

Dear H.E Mr. Seiji Maehara,

On 31st January, the Burmese military junta will convene their sham parliament to cement their rule. The unequivocal denial of Senior General Than Shwe to review the Constitution before the election, as demanded by the NLD, has finally ended the NLD’s long quest to achieve a political dialogue between the junta leader and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the party which won a landslide victory in the 1990 election but the results of which were never recognized by the junta.
There is no doubt that the Nov. 7 elections were not only flawed, but also rigged and thoroughly fraudulent and the military’s grip on Burma is as iron-fisted as ever. This election is a means to institutionalize the military’s grip on power under the 2008 Constitution, rather than establishing a democratic system in the country.
U.S. President Barack Obama had accused Burma’s military rulers of “stealing” the country’s first election in 20 years as part of a ploy to remain in power and also U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Burma held the vote in conditions that were “insufficiently inclusive, participatory and transparent.”
We have to understand that the recent election and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s release were not the beginning of the end of repression, or the first, tangible step toward national reconciliation.
It is essential to remember that the recent elections will only produce yet another military government under a different guise, which has also happened before. In 1962, a Revolutionary Council seized power, organized a “referendum” on a new constitution in 1973, then in 1974 the military-controlled Burma Socialist Programme Party formed a “civilian” government made up of “retired army officers.”
For those reasons mentioned above, we, the member organizations of newly founded “Network for Democracy in Burma” like to appeal to Your Excellency not to acknowledge or recognize the sham parliament and the so-called constitutional government that in actual fact is the new wine in the old bottle.
We would also like to urge Your Excellency to pressure the military junta to release all the political prisoners unconditionally and immediately and start the dialogue process with democratic leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
Moreover, we would like to appeal to Your Excellency to give unwavering support both politically and materially to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi even well beyond her political party National League for Democracy was eventually disbanded by the military junta.

Sincerely yours,
Network for Democracy in Burma (in Japan),

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軍事政権による偽りのビルマ国会開会にあたっての要請

前原誠司外務大臣閣下

2011年1月25日




親愛なる前原誠司閣下


ビルマ軍事政権はその支配を強固なものにすべく、今年1月31日、偽りの国会を開会するとしています。国民民主連盟(NLD)の求めていた、総選挙前に制定された憲法の見直しを、タン・シュエ上将が全面否定したことにより、NLDが長く追求してきた、軍事政権指導者とアウン・サン・スー・チー女史、および、軍事政権は決して認めませんでしたが、1990年の総選挙で地滑り的勝利を収めた政党指導者との政治対話の実現に終止符が打たれました。

昨年11月7日に実施された総選挙は、欠陥があっただけでなく、全面的に不正に操作されたことに疑問の余地はなく、ビルマにおける軍事支配の冷酷さはこれまでと変わりありません。今回の総選挙は、ビルマにおける民主的システムを確立するよりもむしろ、2008年憲法の下、軍による政権掌握を制度化する手段として実施されまた。

バラク・オバマ米大統領は、ビルマ軍支配者が政権の座にとどまるための策略として、20年ぶりに実施された総選挙を「盗んでいる」と非難しました。また、潘基文国連事務総長は、「包括性、人々の参加、透明性のいずれも不十分」という状況下で投票が行われたと述べました。

私たちは、過日の総選挙とアウン・サン・スー・チー女史の解放が、抑圧の終わりのはじまり、あるいは、国民和解に向けた具体的な第一歩ではなかったということを理解する必要があります。過日の総選挙は、かつて起きたように、別の装いをした、もう1つの軍事政府をさらにつくりだすだけであろうということを思い出すことが重要です。1962年、革命評議会が政権を握り、1973年には新憲法に関する「国民投票」を組織しました。そして、1974年、軍事支配的な社会主義計画党が、「退役将校」からなる「文民」政府を樹立したのです。

これらの理由から、私たち、新たに結成された「ビルマ民主化ネットワーク」の構成組織は、閣下に、偽りの国会、および、実態は古い革袋に入れた新しいワインである、いわゆる立憲政府を承認あるいは理解されることのないよう要請します。

加えて、軍事政権に対し、すべての政治犯を即時に無条件解放し、民主化指導者アウン・サン・スー・チー女史との対話プロセスを開始するよう、強く働きかけていただくようお願いいたします。

さらに、政治および物資の両面から揺るぎないご支援を、軍事政権によって解散を余儀なくされた国民民主連盟以上に、アウン・サン・スー・チー女史に賜りますようお願い申し上げます。


ビルマ民主化ネットワーク日本

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ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီအေရးေတာ္ပုံလႈပ္ရွားမႈဖိတ္ႀကားျခင္း

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ကြန္ယက္(ဂ်ပန္)NDB-Japan
ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီအေရးေတာ္ပုံလႈပ္ရွားမႈဖိတ္ႀကားျခင္း
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ကြန္ယက္(ဂ်ပန္)NDB-Japan
မွဦးစီး၍ ေအာက္ပါအစီအစဥ္အတိုင္း နိုင္ငံေရးလႈပ္ရွားမႈ မ်ားကို က်င္းပျပဳလုပ္မည္
ျဖစ္ပါေသာေႀကာင့္ ဂ်ပန္နိုင္ငံေရာက္ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီေရးတိုက္ပဲြဝင္အဖဲြ ့အစည္း
အားလုံးပူးေပါင္းပါဝင္ႀကပါရန္ေလးစားစြာ ဖိတ္ႀကားအပ္ပါသည္။

အခမ္းအနားအစီအစဥ္မ်ား
◆ဇန္နဝါရီလ(၃၁)ရက္ေန႔တြင္ နအဖကျပဳလုပ္မည့္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ေခၚယူျခင္းနွင့္အဆိုပါ လြတ္ေတာ္မွတဆင့္ ေပၚေပါက္လာမည့္ ဟန္ျပ အရပ္သား အစိုးရအေပၚ ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံေရာက္ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီ အင္အားစုမ်ားမွ လံုးဝအသိအမွတ္မျပဳေၾကာင္း နွင့္ ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံအစိုးရမွလည္းအသိအမွတ္ မျပဳရန္အတြက္ တိုက္တြန္း ေတာင္းဆိုမည့္
ဆႏၵျပပြဲမ်ားကို
☛(၁) ၂၀၁၁၊ဇန္နဝါရီလ၂၄ရက္ႏွင့္၂၅ရက္ေန႔မ်ားတြင္……..MOFAေရွ႔တြင္ လည္းေကာင္း၊
(KASUMI KASEKI ဘူတာ ထြက္ေပါက္-C-8)
အခ်ိန္(ညေန -၃-နာရီမွ-၄-နာရီအထိ)

☛(၂)၂၀၁၁၊ဇန္နဝါရီလ၂၆ရက္/၂၇ရက္/၂၈ရက္္……..ဂ်ပန္လႊတ္ေတာ္ေရွ႔
(KOKAI GIJIDOO MAE ဘူတာ ထြက္ေပါက္ -၂-)
အခ်ိန္(ညေန -၃-နာရီမွ-၄-နာရီအထိ)
☛(၃)၂၀၁၁၊ဇန္နဝါရီလ၃၁ရက္ေန ့တြင္…….. နအဖ မွ လြတ္ေတာ္ ေခၚယူၿပီး အဆိုပါ လြတ္ေတာ္မွ ေပၚေပါက္လာမည့္ ဟန္ျပ အရပ္သား အစိုးရအေပၚ ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံေရာက္ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီ အင္အားစုမ်ားမွ လက္မခံေၾကာင္း ဆန္က်င္ ကန္႔ကြက္သည့္ အခမ္းအနား
ေနရာ-နအဖအခြန္ရုံးေရွ
အခ်ိန္(ညေန -၃-နာရီမွ-၄-နာရီ-၃၀-အထိ)
ေလးစားစြာျဖင့္-
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ကြန္ယက္(ဂ်ပန္)NDB-Japan
☆ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီတိုက္ပဲြမုခ်ေအာင္ရမည္☆

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ILO Welcomes Burma's Proposed New Labor Laws

Ron Corben | Bangkok 18 January 2011

The International Labor Organization (ILO) says it is encouraged by proposed legislation in Burma to allow greater freedom for labor unions, but remains concerned about the use of forced child labor in the military and private sector.

The ILO representative in Burma, Steve Marshall, speaking to reporters Tuesday, said Burma’s military is preparing legislation that will allow for legal trade unions, with rights to strike. Marshall said this is a further step in signs of economic reform.

The legislation is set to be presented before a new parliament elected last November and due to hold its first session in late January. Marshall said the legislation marks a major step in the country’s labor rights.

"Obviously, the issue of freedom of association, which is effectively the right of workers and people to be represented which includes the issues of, for example, collective bargaining, it would include the issues of the right to strike ... they are critical and if passed into law make a big change in terms of the way in which the society is able to develop," said Marshall.

The military government in Burma, also known as Myanmar, already has ratified the internationally recognized Freedom of Association Convention, which is the standard set by the ILO.

Marshall says, though, that while the introduction of the legislation is a step towards an improved labor market in Burma, the overall reform program remains in its early days.

Human rights groups say while unions and associations have been a feature of Burma’s economic and political life, they have been tightly regulated by the military.

Trade unionists also have been jailed for activities "not sanctioned’ by the military." Thailand-based rights group, Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), says of the more than 2,100 political prisoners currently detained, 44 are labor activists.

The ILO’s chief goal in Burma has been to assist in ending forced labor and it has an agreement with the military government that enables complaints to be lodged with the organization’s country offices. Last year the ILO received 370 complaints, marking a sharp increase over recent years.

Marshall said the ILO remains concerned over ongoing issues of child labor and recruitment of child soldiers into Burma’s armed forces. He said there have been signs of progress in dealings with the armed forces.

"In the area of child soldiers - yes - there is a general positive move," said Marshall. "In the last year, for example, 73 children - as a result of complaints made to the ILO - were released and discharged from the military."

The military government recently announced a program of national military service for both men and women that may come into effect beginning in 2012.

Burma’s army, faced with problems of recruitment and desertion, has looked to underage recruitment using labor brokers. Marshall said the proposed national service is expected to have a direct impact on child recruits.

Marshall added that many children often are lured into forced labor due to poverty when families are unable to pay for the child’s education.

But forced labor remains a major problem across Burma, with rights groups citing villages forced to construct roads and other work for the military, while jailed prisoners also are recruited for local industries.

A further assessment of Burma’s labor practices is expected to take place in February, when an ILO mission, including labor specialists, will appraise the reforms and new labor legislation. http://www.voanews.com/english/news/asia/southeast/ILO-Welcomes-Burmas-Proposed-New-Labor-Laws-114145209.html
--------------------------------------------

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Trade unions may be allowed back into Burma

RADIO AUSTRALIA NEWS
Girish Sawlani

The Burmese government is set to table new legislation that could allow workers to establish trade unions.

The proposal has been welcomed by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which says it's working with the Burmese government to improve workers' rights in the impoverished nation.

The ILO's representative in Burma, Steve Marshall, says it's a significant move by the government.

"It is obviously extremely significant, the situation has arisen that the constitution that was adopted in 2008 has a provision that makes allowance for the right of persons, particularly workers to be represented, which would lead them to the situation of collective bargaining."

Since the Burmese military's crackdown on the country's trade union movement, many groups have been driven from the country or reduced to underground associations.

Recently, suspected trade unionists were still being arrested and imprisoned despite the government having already ratified the ILO convention on the Freedom of Association.

But international pressure has seen the government adopt a lighter approach to workers' dissent.

Since November 2009, there have been a series of strikes in Rangoon, with workers protesting and demanding higher wages - with little or no interference from armed forces.

And as far as the new legislation is concerned, Mr Marshall says the initiative is driven by the government.

"It was brought to our attention by senior government representatives that with the adoption of the new constitution, it was the intention to put those principles into practice."

'It is being driven from inside the government at a very senior level, which is excellent."

The latest developments come amid calls from Southeast Asian neighbours for Western nations to either lift or ease their crippling sanctions against Burma.

Moves to permit the establishment of trade unions could vindicate ASEAN's stance that Burma has made significant progress towards democracy, especially since the release of opposition figurehead, Aung San Suu Kyi.

But many, including Dr Myint Cho, an exiled Burmese national who now heads the Burma Office in Sydney, say they are still sceptical about the government's motives.

Dr Cho says he has seen such gestures before.

"I have seen it so many times before, when the previous regime formed a non-independent trade union under the control of the government. So they controlled totally the movement of the trade union in the past."

"Right now, because of international pressure for the workers' rights in Burma, the regime is trying to use this kind of initiative as a public relations move to relax international pressures."

Even if legislation gets passed through parliament, Dr Myint Cho doesn't expect the new trade unions to be genuinely independent.

"Under the current military controlled government, that kind of parliament is just a sham and it cannot operate freely,"

"So of course the pressure from the current military regime, the parliament will adopt some kind of policies in dealing with the trade unions around the world, as well as the International Labour Organisation. So I don't expect the newly formed trade union organisations will be independent and genuine."

Steve Marshall, from the International Labour Organisation, says while there will be scepticism his organisation is adopting a wait and see approach.

"We do need to put into consideration that this is a very major step and we don't know at this stage what structure will be put into place,

Whether it will be a full liberal trade union type structure or whether it will be one of the other models that exist elsewhere in the world which are slightly more constrained."

"That is something that we will be continuing to discuss with the government in terms of the structures concerned."

The bill is set to be tabled before the country's

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FWUBC ျပည္တြင္းနိုင္ငံေရးရံပုံေငြ-လစဥ္(ယန္းတစ္ေထာင္)အလႉရွင္စာရင္း(၁၆-ဇန္နဝါရီ-၂၀၁၁ေန ့စာရင္း)

၁။ဦးတင္ဝင္း
၂။ေဒၚတင္ႏြယ္ဝင္း
၃။ေဒၚမာလာ
၄။ဦးသန္းထြန္းနိုင္
၅။ဦးဘုန္းလိႈင္
၆။မေႏြရည္ဦး
၇။မညိုညိုစန္း
၈။ေမာင္ျမတ္ေထြး
၉။ကိုေဌးျမင့္
၁၀။ဦးျမင့္ေဆြ
၁၁။ကိုလွစိုးဦး
၁၂။ကိုေနလင္းေအာင္
၁၃။ကိုစိုးမင္းသိန္း
၁၄။ကိုစိုးမင္းျငိမ္း
၁၅။ဦးေနေအာင္
၁၆။မဇင္ေဝျဖိဳး
၁၇။မမီမီခိုင္
၁၈။ကိုေအာင္မ်ိဳးမင္း
၁၉။ကိုေက်ာ္သိန္းလြင္
၂၀။ကိုထိန္ဝင္း
၂၁။ကိုဇာနီေအာင္နိုင္
၂၂။ကိုထြန္းေအာင္လင္း
၂၃။မျမင့္ျမင့္လိႈင္
၂၄။မေမနွင္းေဝ
၂၅ကိုေအာင္ေအာင္မိုး
၂၆။ကိုဝင္းႀကိဳင္
၂၇။မသင္းသင္းဦး

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တကယ္ေပ်ာ္စရာေကာင္းရဲ ့လား … ႏွစ္သစ္

အခ်ိန္က မေရာက္ေသးဘူး
လူေတြက တေယာက္ၿပီး တေယာက္
ေရာက္လာၾကတယ္ …
စကား၀ိုင္းေတြရဲ ့
ေရခ်ိန္က ျမင့္တက္လာၿပီ …..။

တိုင္းေရး ျပည္ေရး
ေတာ္လွန္ေရး ေ၀ဖန္ေရး
အသံမ်ား အဆံမ်ား
စကားလံုးျဖင့္
ေသြးေခ်ာင္းစီး သတ္ျဖတ္မႈမ်ား
ဘီယာဗူးခြံမ်ား
အရက္ပုလင္းမ်ား
အဆီျပန္မ်က္ႏွာမ်ား
အခ်ိန္က နီးလာၿပီ ……..။

ဘယ္သူ ဘယ္၀ါ
ေရာက္မလာေသးဘူးလား
အေသအခ်ာ ေျပာထားရက္နဲ ့
ဒီမွာ လူစံုေနၿပီ
တဖ်စ္ေတာက္ေတာက္ ေရရြတ္ပူပန္(ပင္)
အခ်ိန္က နီးလာၿပီ …….။

ေရ(ရည္)တြက္သံမ်ား ဆူညံလာ
ေဟး သံၿပိဳင္ေအာ္သံ
ဟက္ပီးနယူးရီးယား
ဖန္ခြက္ခ်င္းတိုက္ၾက
လူခ်င္းေပြ ့ဖက္ၾက
ေပ်ာ္ရႊင္မႈ အဆိုင္အခဲေတြနဲ ့ ျပစ္ေပါက္ၾက
အခ်ိန္ေရာက္ၿပီ …..။

ေပ်ာ္ရႊင္စရာ ျမင္ကြင္းဟာ
ေၾကကြဲစရာေတြနဲ ့ ျပည့္ႏွက္ေနတယ္
ေကာင္းကင္ကို ေမာ့ၾကည့္တဲ့အခါ
ၾကယ္ေႂကြေတြက
ငါ့ကို … ႏႈတ္ဆက္သြားၾက …..

သံတိုင္ေတြေနာက္က
အုတ္နံရံေတြအေနာက္က
ေနာင္ေတာ္ အမေတာ္တို ့
ညီငယ္ ညီမငယ္ ရဲေဘာ္တို ့
ႏွစ္သစ္ရဲ ့ညမွာ … သင္တို ့ကို
ဘယ္သူမွ သတိတယမရွိၾကလည္း
အသင္တို ့ကေတာ့
ယံုၾကည္ခ်က္နဲ ့ ႏွစ္ေတြကို
သစ္ၿမဲသစ္ေနၾကမယ္ဆိုတာ
ငါ …ယံုတယ္။

သင္တို ့မလြတ္ေျမာက္သေရြ ့
ေရာက္ေရာက္လာတဲ့ ႏွစ္သစ္ေတြဟာ
ငါတို ့အတြက္
ေပ်ာ္ရႊင္စရာ မဟုတ္ပါ ….
မိတ္ေဆြတို ့ ေရ
ႏွစ္သစ္ဟာ ငါတို ့အတြက္
ေပ်ာ္ရႊင္စရာမဟုတ္ပါဘူး …….။

(မိတ္ေဆြမ်ားခင္ဗ်ား လြတ္လပ္စြာကြဲလြဲခြင့္ရွိပါသည္)

ရဲရင့္သက္ဇြဲ ၃၁ ၁၂ ၂၀၁၀

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News & Articles on Burma-Friday, 31 December, 2010

News & Articles on Burma
Friday, 31 December, 2010
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Suu Kyi calls for reconciliation push
MYANMAR: Remittances support survival
Junta’s Drug ‘Exports’ to China Test Economic Ties
Martin reaffirms Ireland's support for Burma's pro-democracy groups
North's long struggle for peace spurs on Suu Kyi
U.S. wants more engagement with Suu Kyi
US Urges Burma to Free Political Prisoners Ahead of Independence Day
Asian ‘martyrs’ underscore poor year for human rights
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Suu Kyi calls for reconciliation push

31 December 2010 | 10:27:03 PM | Source: AAP

Burma's democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi called for citizens of her country to rejuvenate their struggle for national reconciliation in 2011 in a New Year's message.

She asked the people of Burma "to struggle together with new strengths, new force and new words in the auspicious new year", in the message released by her National League for Democracy (NLD) party on Friday.

"We must struggle by establishing people's political and social networks to get national reconciliation as well as a truly united spirit," she added.

The 65-year-old was released from more than seven years' house arrest on November 13, days after Burma's widely criticised first election in 20 years, in which the junta-backed party has claimed overwhelming victory.

Suu Kyi was locked up for the poll, which her party boycotted. This led to a split in the opposition movement, with some NLD members leaving to form a new party to contest the election.

On Thursday the United States called again on Burma to free political prisoners and engage in dialogue to promote democracy, as the military-led country prepares for its 63rd independence anniversary on January 4.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1456051/Suu-Kyi-calls-for-reconciliation-push
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MYANMAR: Remittances support survival
Photo: Stacey Winston/ECHO

Remittances are lifelines for residents in Myanmar, where foreign direct investment is weak and international markets are almost non-existent
DALA THAYA, 31 December 2010 (IRIN) - Remittances to Myanmar continue to be a lifeline for communities strapped for cash and short of food throughout the country, according to researchers and migration experts.

While officially recorded remittances to Myanmar accounted for only 0.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2009, a 2008 university study calculated remittances were at least four times higher than the official figures.

Australia-based Macquarie University estimated average annual remittances to Myanmar from Thailand alone - US$300 million - amounted to five times the level of overall foreign direct investment in Myanmar.

“Some 96 percent of respondents [Burmese workers in Thailand] nominated [their family’s] survival as their first order priority,” said Claudia Natali, labour migration programme manager for the International Organization for Migration in Thailand, referring to the university survey.

According to the World Bank, $150 million in remittances was sent to Myanmar in 2008 through formal channels - the most recorded in over a decade.

But most migrants use an informal system called `hondi’ to transfer remittances to Myanmar, bypassing official recordkeeping.

“Persons moving irregularly across the border are entrusted to deliver agreed amounts of money from migrants in Thailand to family members in the migrants’ source community,” said Natali.

Migration

The number of Burmese migrants who entered Thailand “regularly” - with legal permission - between July 2010 and November 2010 was 702, according to the Thai government. But most Burmese migrants working in Malaysia or Thailand enter without documentation.

A memorandum of understanding between Thailand and Myanmar, which foresees mechanisms for migrants to enter and stay legally in Thailand for employment, was only implemented in July 2010.

In the Thai border town of Mae Sot, many Burmese migrants work in garment factories, while in southern Thailand they work on palm oil plantations or as fishermen.

“Those seeking work in Malaysia are usually village residents or lower middle class young men recruited formally by overseas employment agencies in Myanmar,” said Natali.

“It cost $1,300 to send my son to Malaysia,” said U Kyaw, a retired army sergeant in Myanmar’s capital, Yangon, whose pension, equivalent to 40 US cents a day, is barely enough to cover his expenses.

“I borrowed $600 from a rich relative, the agent gave us a loan of $400 and the family put the rest up,” said the 63-year-old father of three.

His youngest son Mya, who left for Malaysia to work as a day labourer in March 2010, now sends back $150-$200 a month. By contrast Thein, the eldest son, earns some $80 a month driving a bus in Yangon.

Poverty line

Once known as the “rice bowl of Asia”, Myanmar’s per capita GDP in 2009 was just over $1 a day.

Maung, the youngest of three brothers, exchanges the highly volatile Burmese currency into US dollars on the black market, where 10,000 Burmese kyats equalled $10 in December, versus the official bank exchange rate of $1,560. Over the course of a year, each brother earns on average $5 a day. “Luckily, my sister works in Malaysia. Last year she sent back $2,000,” said the 16-year-old.

After nearly 20 years of various trade and aid sanctions, the vast majority of people in Myanmar survive thanks to small-scale local businesses, according to US-based research group Asia Society.

The average citizen spends more than 70 percent of his or her income on food, according to a March 2010 Asia Society report.

The researchers calculated this was the highest proportion in Southeast Asia.

mh/pt/cb http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91498
-----------------------------------------------
Junta’s Drug ‘Exports’ to China Test Economic Ties
By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Dec 31, 2010 (IPS) - As military-ruled Burma prepares to unveil its new political cast, an enduring link between the junta and the country’s notorious drug lords is poised to come under the spotlight.

Among the candidates who won in the South-east Asian nation’s first election in 20 years on Nov. 7 are six well- known drug barons. They represented the Union Solidarity and Development Party, the junta’s political front, which triumphed comfortably in the poll.

The bespectacled Kyaw Myint is among this gang of six who emerged victorious in a poll clouded with questions of fraud for the estimated 1,163 seats in the national parliament and regional assemblies that were up for grabs.

The elected national and regional legislators are to begin their new role in Burma by the first week in February. The opening of the new parliament 90 days after the November poll is the sixth step in the junta’s seven-step political roadmap to create a "discipline-flourishing democracy" in Burma, or Myanmar as it is also known.

Prior to slipping into his role as a legislator, the 51- year-old Kyaw Myint was better known as a junta-backed militia chief "notorious among local people as (a) drug dealer in the Shan State North’s Namkham township," reveals the Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN), a media organisation run by journalists from Burma’s Shan ethnic minority.

"Many ferry crossings on the Mao-Ruli river that serves as a boundary between China and Burma are guarded by Kyaw Htwe aka (also known as) Li Yonping, younger brother of Kyaw Myint," adds SHAN.

Yet this political identity for Kyaw Myint, with the junta’s blessings, will test the growing economic bonds between Burma and its giant north-eastern neighbour China. According to official figures released by Burmese officials, China has pumped in over eight billion U.S. dollars in foreign direct investment this year to tap Burma’s resource- rich environment.

The investments by Chinese state-run companies in the oil and gas, hydropower and mining sectors mark a dramatic increase from what Chinese investments were five years ago – some 194 million dollars.

"Myanmar and China have grown closer over the past four years and Beijing is on the verge of displacing Thailand as the country that tops investment in Myanmar," says a South- east Asian diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But one Burmese "export" to China has Beijing concerned, the diplomat added. "Beijing is worried at the increase in drugs flowing from Burma to its south-western Yunnan province."

U.N. officials confirm this. "Yes they (Beijing) are concerned not only with ATS (amphetamine-type stimulus) but also with heroin," says Gary Lewis, East Asia and Pacific regional representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The spike in the number of methamphetamine pills seized in China in 2009 underscores such worries. "In 2009, China reported total seizures of more than 40 million pills. This represented as almost six-fold increase from 6.25 million pills seized in 2008," UNODC says in a December 2010 report on the ATS trade in Burma, whose north-eastern part comes within the narcotics producing Golden Triangle region.

"The Chinese government has been reporting a sharp increase of drug trafficking into China from the Golden Triangle region by means of constantly changing drug trafficking routes and methods," states the 45-page report, ‘Myanmar – Situation Assessment on Amphetamine-Type Stimulants’. "Reports have pointed to transnational drug syndicates attempting to sell stored drugs, with a resulting sharp increase of drug smuggled into China."

"The seizure of 3.2 tonnes of heroine and approximately the same quantity of methamphetamine in Yunnan province accounted for half of the total quantity of illicit drugs seized in China in 2009," the report adds. "Three of the self-administered regions in Myanmar are located on the border with Yunnan province. Methamphetamine pills seized in Yunnan province are – at the very least – trafficked through these Special Regions."

Burma’s rise as a major production centre of methamphetamine pills, with the drug factories located in the north-eastern Shan State, adds to its previous notoriety as a supplier of opium and heroin.

Burma’s emergence as an ATS producer followed a decision by the junta to launch a 15-year drug elimination programme in 1999. The Drug Elimination Plan (DEP) targeted the poppy fields in the north and eastern regions of the country, which accounted for 163,000 hectares under opium cultivation in the mid-1990s.

Before the DEP, Burma was known as the world’s largest producer of illicit opium, "accounting for approximately 700 metric tonnes annually between 1981 and 1987," according to UNODC. "(That dropped) to 21,600 hectares in 2006, the lowest ever recorded."

However, this 83 percent decline in poppy cultivation under the DEP has not seen a change in the cross-border trade of ATS, which follows the routes once frequented by drug caravans that moved heroin from Burma into China.

"The border is very porous and there are no markers to say where the Burmese border ends and the Chinese border begins," says an official from Thailand’s Central Narcotics Control Agency. "It is easy to move drugs from Burma’s Shan State into China’s Yunnan province in remote areas where there are no checkpoints."

"The caravans move at night. They take the drugs in backpacks," the official tells IPS on condition of anonymity. "The Chinese government is faced with a problem because the domestic market is large." (END) http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54007
---------------------------------------------
The Irish Times - Friday, December 31, 2010
Martin reaffirms Ireland's support for Burma's pro-democracy groups

MINISTER FOR Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin has restated Ireland’s support for the struggle of pro-democracy groups inside Burma during a telephone conversation with recently released Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

“We wanted to articulate our delight at her release and convey our respect for the iconic nature of her position now in terms of democracy,” Mr Martin said last night. “She sounded relaxed and in good form. She came across as strong and very clear-minded.”

During the 25-minute conversation, which had been arranged through UN channels, Mr Martin praised the Nobel laureate’s peaceful campaign for democratic reform.

“She was very anxious that we would continue to support that aspect of her work,” he said. “She was anxious to develop closer links with Ireland, particularly on the diplomatic side, in terms of getting easier mechanisms for contact.”

He assured Ms Suu Kyi of the importance both Ireland and the EU attach to her continued freedom and personal safety following her years of arbitrary detention by the Burmese junta.

“She wanted to convey her deep thanks and appreciation to the people of Ireland for their support,” Mr Martin said.

During the conversation, Ms Suu Kyi made reference to the Burmese being referred to as “the Irish of the east” during colonial times.

Mr Martin told her of the Northern Ireland peace process. “She was anxious for good reading material on that,” he said.

Ms Suu Kyi was awarded the freedom of Dublin City in 2000. The Minister said the subject of a possible visit to Ireland was not broached in a “substantive” way during the phone call.

“We would be delighted to invite her to Ireland but obviously that would depend on her own schedule,” he added.

They also discussed recent events in Burma including the deeply flawed parliamentary elections which took place in November.

Mr Martin stressed the need for all political prisoners to be released as the first step in a process of political dialogue involving all groups in Burma.http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/1231/1224286545096.html
-------------------------------------------------
North's long struggle for peace spurs on Suu Kyi
By ine Kerr Political Correspondent

Friday December 31 2010

THE world's most prominent political dissident joked yesterday how her people had been referred to as "the Irish of the East".

Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi spoke to Foreign Affairs Minister Micheal Martin for 20 minutes and the pair discussed the peace process here.

Mr Martin said he had promised the celebrated pro-democracy leader that he would send her a collection of books on the North.

During their telephone conversation, Ms Suu Kyi told of how the British had sometimes called the Burmese the "Irish of the East".

"I laughed at that," said Mr Martin.

"We discussed how Northern Ireland had come a long way through the peace process and she asked about good reading materials. We are going to gather materials and send them on to her."

The Northern peace process was discussed in the context of Ms Suu Kyi telling the minister about the challenges facing the Burmese people in their struggle for democracy and human rights.

"She was very much clued into Ireland and has great affection for this country," the minister said following his conversation with the iconic leader.

Ms Suu Kyi, who won the 1991 Nobel Peace prize for her non-violent struggle for democracy, was first arrested in 1989.

She was detained for 15 of the past 21 years before her release from house arrest in November.

The minister said he had briefly referred to a long-standing invitation for Ms Suu Kyi to visit Ireland.

"We would love to have her here but appreciate her focus must be on Burma at the moment," the minister said.

In March 2000, the pro-democracy leader was given the Freedom of Dublin City, and later made the Freewoman of Galway in 2005.

Both Dublin City Council and Galway County Council are reissuing invitations for the Nobel Peace prize winner to visit Ireland and receive the awards.

Mr Martin said her "spirits were upbeat".

"She was very anxious to thank the Irish people for their support and continued support," Mr Martin said.

Pro-democracy and human rights groups inside Burma are facing daily harassment, intimidation and persecution, Ms Suu Kyi told the minister.

The two also discussed the flawed parliamentary elections which took place in November and the humanitarian relief efforts after the damage caused by Cyclone Giri in October.

Ms Suu Kyi has been anxious since her release to speak to countries which supported the campaign for her release and to ensure their continued support for the people of Burma.

The minister also underlined the need for the release of all political prisoners as the first step in a process of political dialogue in Burma.

Earlier this week, Ms Suu Kyi made the shortlist for the annual Tipperary International Peace Award.

- ine Kerr Political Correspondent

Irish Independent http://www.independent.ie/national-news/norths-long-struggle-for-peace-spurs-on-suu-kyi-2479588.html
------------------------------------------------
U.S. wants more engagement with Suu Kyi
Published: Dec. 30, 2010 at 1:34 PM

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Washington aims to engage the military junta in Myanmar with the aim of advancing democracy and freeing political prisoners, a spokesman said.

Myanmar had general elections in November in what the military junta said was a step toward a democratic government. International observers doubted the claims as the junta-supported Union Solidarity and Development Party handily won the contest.

Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest shortly after the election.

Mark Toner, a deputy spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said Washington hopes to engage Suu Kyi and the junta leaders in 2011.

"We've sought a path of principled engagement with the Myanmar government," he told reporters during a press briefing in Washington. "We haven't had a great deal of success."

The international community following Suu Kyi's release said Myanmar could do more to address concerns about the 2,000 political prisoners behind bars in the country.

"(C)ertainly we call on the release of all of Myanmar's political prisoners and hope to work more closely with Aung San Suu Kyi and the opposition there," added Toner.

The opposition leader in a mid-December interview with Germany's Deutsche Welle said "it would help a great deal" if Europe, for its part, did more to help usher in reforms in Myanmar. http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2010/12/30/US-wants-more-engagement-with-Suu-Kyi/UPI-39331293734057/
-----------------------------------
US Urges Burma to Free Political Prisoners Ahead of Independence Day
VOA News 30 December 2010

The United States is calling on Burma's military rulers to free all political prisoners and engage in dialogue with opposition groups as the country prepares to mark its 63rd independence anniversary.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner issued a statement Thursday saying the Burmese government must take action to meet the aspirations of its diverse peoples and improve relations with the Obama administration. He also congratulated the people of Burma ahead of their independence day on January 4.

The Burmese military released opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from years of house arrest last month, but only after holding a rare general election denounced by Western nations and opposition groups as a sham. Rights groups also say the Burmese military continues to detain more than 2,100 political prisoners.

Toner reiterated U.S. calls for the release of those prisoners and said the Burmese military must engage in an "inclusive and meaningful dialogue" with all citizens in pursuit of "genuine national reconciliation."

He said the United States is "unwavering" in its support of an independent, peaceful, prosperous and democratic Burma. He also said Washington looks forward to the day when the Burmese people will succeed in "peaceful efforts" to freely exercise what he called "their universal human rights."

Some information for this report was provided by AFP. http://www.voanews.com/english/news/asia/US-Urges-Burma-to-Free-Political-Prisoners-Ahead-of-Independence-Day-112678334.html
----------------------------------------------
Friday, 31st December 2010
Focus
Asian ‘martyrs’ underscore poor year for human rights
AFP
In some of 2010’s most compelling images, Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi emerged from her home after years in detention and an empty chair marked the absence of Liu Xiaobo from his Nobel prize ceremony.

Asia’s two human rights martyrs serve as compelling reminders that a region celebrated for its economic vibrancy also harbours some of the world’s most intractable and brutal regimes.

And despite outrage from foreign governments, and an increasing awareness among Asia’s billions who have embraced the internet and social media, the region’s dictatorships and corrupt regimes show no sign of bending.

“There seems to have been a downturn in respect for human rights,” said Dave Mathieson from the Asia division of Human Rights Watch. “There’s been a more sophisticated backlash against global human rights norms.”

Countries that had once argued that western notions of democracy were not in keeping with “Asian values” were now instead muting criticism by staging parodies of the democratic process, he said. “A lot of states talk about democracy and say – at least we’re holding elections, it’s progress. When of course most of them are illiberal processes that just support the status quo.”

Myanmar’s ruling generals held the impoverished country’s first elections in two decades in November, ignoring complaints that barring Suu Kyi’s opposition party rendered the ballot illegitimate.

The 65-year-old democracy icon last month walked out of her lakeside home where she has been locked up for 15 of the past 21 years, smiling and in high spirits, but her future remains precarious and at the mercy of the junta.

In Sri Lanka, January elections were held after the island’s long-running civil war against Tamil Tiger rebels ended in an onslaught that has drawn allegations of war crimes.

President Mahinda Rajapakse was re-elected by a huge margin over his opponent, former army chief Sarath Fonseka. He alleged he was the victim of massive fraud and was then promptly arrested and jailed.

Grisly new photos emerged last month of piles of dead bodies and execution-style killings allegedly taken during the final stages of the war, during which up to 30,000 ethnic Tamil civilians perished, according to several rights watchdogs.

Myanmar and Sri Lanka both count as a key ally China, whose own rights record was on display when jailed dissident Mr Liu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia in a ceremony Beijing attacked as “political theatre”.

China mounted a fearsome response to the Nobel committee’s decision, pressuring around 20 countries to boycott the ceremony and blacking out live broadcasts of the event by CNN and the BBC in China.

On Tuesday, Mr Liu marked his 55th birthday in a prison in northeast China, prompting renewed calls from rights groups for the Nobel laureate’s immediate release from an 11-year jail sentence for breaching anti-sedition laws.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20101231/world-news/asian-martyrs-underscore-poor-year-for-human-rights


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လူထုေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၏ ႏွစ္သစ္ကူး ႏွစ္သစ္ကူး ႏွဳတ္ခြန္းဆက္ သဝဏ္လႊာ

(ဒီမိုေဝယံထံမွကူးယူတင္ျပပါသည္)

ႏွစ္သစ္ကူး ႏွဳတ္ခြန္းဆက္ သဝဏ္လႊာ


ႏွစ္ေဟာင္းလြန္ေျမာက္ ႏွစ္သစ္ေရာက္ခ်ိန္တြင္ ကၽြန္မ၏ ႏိုင္ငံေရးဘဝ ျဖတ္သန္းမွဳကို ျပန္လည္ သံုးသပ္ၾကည္႔ေသာအခါ.. ျပည္သူလူထု၏ ဒီမိုကေရစီႏွင့္ လူအခြင့္အေရးအတြက္ ၾကိဳးပမ္းသည္႔ကာလ၊ ေနအိမ္အက်ယ္ခ်ဳပ္ က်ခံသည္႔ကာလ၊ ျပန္လည္ လြတ္ေျမာက္လာသည္႔ကာလ ဟူ၍ ကာလသံုးပါးကို ေတြ႔ျမင္ရပါသည္.။


ယင္းကာလသံုးပါးစလံုးတြင္ ကၽြန္မအတြက္လည္းေကာင္း၊ ကၽြန္မ၏ ရည္မွန္းခ်က္အတြက္ လည္းေကာင္း.၊ က်မ၏ ၾကိဳးပမ္း ေဆာင္ရြက္မွဳမ်ား အတြက္လည္းေကာင္း၊ ေထာက္ခံသူ အားေပးသူ ကူညီသူ အေျမာက္အမ်ားရွိပါသည္။ ႏိုင္င့ံေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား၊ ဘာသာေရးေခါင္းေဆာင္ၾကီးမ်ား၊ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ႏိုဘယ္ ဆုရွင္မ်ား အပါအဝင္..ပုဂၢိဳလ္မ်ား၊ ကုလသမဂၢ၊ ဥေရာပသမဂၢ၊ အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ လြတ္ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာခြင့္ အဖြဲ႕ စသည္စသည္ပါဝင္ေသာ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ား၊ အေမရိကန္ႏွင့္ ဥေရာပႏိုင္ငံအမ်ားအျပားမွ ႏိုင္ငံသူ ႏိုင္ငံသားမ်ား၊ ျပည္တြင္းျပည္ပမွ ကၽြန္မတို႔ တိုင္းရင္းသား ျပည္သူမ်ား ပါဝင္ၾကပါတယ္..။


ထိုသူမ်ား၏ ကာယကံအားျဖင့္၊ ဝစီကံအားျဖင့္၊ မေနာကံအားျဖင့္ ရိုင္းပင္း ကူညီခဲ့သူမ်ားအတြက္ ကၽြန္မက အထူးတလည္ ေက်းဇူးဥပကာရ တင္ရွိပါေၾကာင္း အထူးတလည္ ေဖာ္ျပအပ္ပါတယ္..။


အထူးသျဖင့္ ယခုတစ္ၾကိမ္ ျပန္လြတ္ရာတြင္ ပိုမို တက္ၾကြေနေသာ လူငယ္မ်ားအပါအဝင္ ျပည္သူမ်ားမွ အင္တိုက္အားတိုက္ ေထာက္ခံ အားေပးမွဳေၾကာင့္ ကၽြန္မအလြန္ ဝမ္းေျမာက္ ၾကည္ႏွဴးရပါသည္။ အမ်ိဳးသားျပန္လည္ သင့္ျမတ္မွဳရရွိေရး စစ္မွန္ေသာ ျပည္ေထာင္စုစိတ္ဓာတ္ တဖန္ႏိုးထ ရွင္သန္လာေရးတို႔ အတြက္ ျပည္သူ႔ႏိုင္ငံေရး လူမွဳကြန္ယက္ၾကီး တစ္ရပ္ ထူေထာင္ျခင္းျဖင့္ ကၽြန္မတို႔ မျဖစ္မေန ၾကိဳးပမ္းရပါဦးမယ္။ မဂၤလာႏွစ္သစ္တြင္ ခြန္သစ္အားသစ္ လုပ္ငန္းပံုစံသစ္ျဖင့္ တိုင္းရင္းသားျပည္သူအားလံုး လက္တြဲၾကိဳးပမ္းၾကပါစို႔ဟု ႏွဳိးေဆာ္ရင္း ႏွဳတ္ခြန္း ဆက္သလိုက္ပါသည္.။


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မိုကေရစီေရး မုခ်ေအာင္ရမည္.


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