2011-02-25
ရန္ကုန္မွာ ေရာက္ရွိေနတဲ့ အုိင္အယ္အုိ အရာရွိ မစၥတာ ဂုိင္း ႐ိုက္ဒါက ဒီကေန႔ ေဖေဖာ္ဝါရီ ၂၅ ရက္ မနက္မွာ ျမန္မာ့ ဒီမုိကေရစီ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကုိ ေနအိမ္မွာ သြားေရာက္ ေတြ႕ဆုံခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သတင္းရရွိပါတယ္။
(Photo: AFP)
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ကေလးသူငယ္မ်ား အ႐ြယ္ႏွင့္မမွ် ဤကဲ့သို႔ အလုပ္လုပ္ေနၾကရသည္မွာ အလုပ္သမား ျပႆနာႀကီးတခု ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ (Photo: AFP)
မစၥတာ ဂုိင္း ႐ိုက္ဒါဟာ ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရနဲ႔ အုိင္အယ္အုိအၾကား နားလည္မႈ စာခၽြန္လႊာ တႏွစ္ သက္တမ္းတုိးဖုိ႔ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံမွာ ေရာက္ရွိေနတာ ျဖစ္ၿပီး မေန႔က စာခၽြန္လႊာကုိ လက္မွတ္ေရးထုိးခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ဒီကေန႔ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္နဲ႔ ေတြ႕ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့တဲ့ အေၾကာင္းေတြကုိ အန္အယ္ဒီ ျပန္ၾကားေရးတာဝန္ခံ ဦးအုန္းႀကိဳင္က အခုလို ေျပာျပပါတယ္။
“ILO အဖြဲ႕က နအဖ အစိုးရနဲ႔ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့တဲ့ အေၾကာင္းအရာေတြကို ရွင္းျပတယ္လို႔ သိရပါတယ္။ အဓမၼ လုပ္အားေပး ခိုင္းေစမႈ ကိစၥေတြ ပေပ်ာက္ေရးအတြက္ သေဘာတူထားတဲ့ စာခၽြန္လႊာကို သက္တမ္း တႏွစ္ တိုးၿပီး ေဆာင္႐ြက္ဖို႔ သေဘာတူခဲ့ၿပီး ျဖစ္တယ္။ ၿပီးေတာ့ ေနာက္ အလုပ္သမား အက်ိဳးစီးပြား ခံစားခြင့္ေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီးေတာ့ လုပ္ပိုင္ခြင့္ေတြ တိုးခ်ဲ႕ဖို႔ ကိစၥလည္း ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့တယ္လို႔ အဲလို ေျပာပါတယ္။”
“အလုပ္သမားမ်ား အစည္းအ႐ံုးတို႔၊ သမဂၢတို႔ ဖြဲ႕စည္းေရး ကိစၥေတြလည္း ပါတယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။ အဲဒီမွာ အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉးကေတာ့ အခုလို အလုပ္သမား အက်ိဳးခံစားခြင့္ေတြကို တိုးခ်ဲ႕ၿပီးေတာ့ လုပ္ကိုင္ဖို႔ ႀကိဳးပမ္းတာကို သိရတဲ့အတြက္ေၾကာင့္ အားရပါတယ္၊ ဒီကိစၥေတြအတြက္ သေဘာလည္း တူပါတယ္၊ အဲဒီေတာ့ မည္သို႔ပင္ျဖစ္ေစ ILO လုပ္ငန္းေတြဟာ အခက္အခဲ အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးၾကားထဲမွာ ႀကိဳးပမ္းေနရတယ္ဆိုတာ သေဘာေပါက္ပါတယ္၊ ဘာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ ILO ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ ဆက္လက္ၿပီး တည္ရွိေနတာကိုက အားတက္စရာ တခုပါပဲလို႔ အဲဒီလို ေျပာလိုက္တယ္လို႔ သိရပါတယ္ခင္ဗ်။”
ဒီေတြ႕ဆုံပဲြမွာ အန္အယ္ဒီ အလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္ေတြ ျဖစ္တဲ့ ဦးဉာဏ္ဝင္းနဲ႔ ဦးဟံသာျမင့္တုိ႔လည္း တက္ေရာက္ေၾကာင္း သိရပါတယ္။
ဒီကိစၥနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လုိ႔ ဦးဉာဏ္ဝင္းကို RFA ဝိုင္းေတာ္သား ကိုေနရိန္ေက်ာ္ ဆက္သြယ္ ေမးျမန္းထားပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရႏွင့္ အုိင္အယ္အုိ စာခြ်န္လႊာ သက္တမ္းတုိး
JAMとアウンサンスーチー氏の電話会談
日時：２０１１－０２－０４（１３；４５－１４；２０）
場所：JAMの事務所（田町）
出席者：JAMから副書記長・小山正樹さん、全国オルグ・北方龍二さん、大谷直子さん
ポンミントゥンさん、ミャットゥさん、ミンスイさん
冒頭、小山さんから、これまでのJAMとFWUBCのつながりを説明した。２００２年４月２８日、FWUBC結成大会からのさまざまな支援、そしてビルマでの民主化に対する協力を詳しく話した。北方さんからは、解雇や賃金未払い等に関するさまざまな労働問題の発生と解決に向けた労働相談活動の概要を説明した。そして労働問題だけではなく、山村医師の協力による健康相談や社会問題等に関する取り組みも紹介した。会談の中では、ＪＡＭから今後も出来る限りFWUBCの組合員、在日ビルマ人たちからの相談を受け、協力するとともに、ビルマでの民主化運動を支援し、日本政府へも働きかけていきたいと話した。
アウンサンスーチー氏の話の概要は以下のとおり。
「FWUBCＦＷＵＢＣの3つの目的が気に入りました。特に最後の『自由な労働組合をビルマ国内で設立できるようにするため』という点です。民主主義国家であるからこそ、自由な労働組合を作ることが出来る、だからこそ民主主義を応援する、などの文言に私はとっても感心しました。それから、私たちとJAMと緊密な関係を構築することが大切だと思います。ビルマの労働者達とも連携を取っていただきたいのです。なぜならば、現在、ビルマでは、労働者達に現政府が労働組合を作ってあげるという情報が出ていますが、どんな組合になるのか、私には分かりません。真の労働組合はどういう形であるべきか、そして、労働者にとってなくてはならない等、労働組合の目的や役割を労働者達に知ってもらうための勉強会や、実践を前向きに行いたい。そして、民主主義は労働者達にとってどんなに重要なのかを労働者達に知ってもらい、そして、民主主義実現のため、われわれには日本政府の支援が必要不可欠であり、現政府に対しての圧力が必要であると考えます。」
在日ビルマ市民労働組合
書記長ミンスイ
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.။
ရက္စြဲ ၁-၁-၂၀၁၁
မိုကေရစီေရး မုခ်ေအာင္ရမည္.
ေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကို အုိင္အယ္အုိအရာရွိ ေတြ႕ဆုံရွင္းျပ
2010-12-20
ဒီကေန႔ ဒီဇင္ဘာ ၂၀ ရက္ ေန႔လည္ ၂ နာရီေလာက္က အုိင္အယ္အုိ ညိႇႏႈိင္းေရးအရာရွိ မစၥတာ စတိဗ္ မာရွယ္ဟာ ျမန္မာ့ ဒီမုိကေရစီေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကုိ သြားေရာက္ေတြ႕ဆုံခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအတြင္း အုိင္အယ္အုိ အဖဲြ႕အစည္းအေနနဲ႔ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနတာေတြကုိ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကုိ ေျပာျပ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့တယ္လုိ႔ မစၥတာ စတိဗ္ မာရွယ္က RFA ကုိ ေျပာပါတယ္။
(Photo: AFP)
ျမန္မာ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ႏိုဝင္ဘာ ၂၆ ရက္ေန႔က အမ်ိဳးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ (NLD) ႐ံုးမွ ထြက္ခြာသြားစဥ္ ေတြ႕ရပံု ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ (Photo: AFP)
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္နဲ႔ ဒီကေန႔ ေန႔လည္က ေတြ႕ဆုံခဲ့တယ္ဆုိတာ မွန္ကန္ေၾကာင္း၊ သူ႔အေနနဲ႔ အုိင္အယ္အုိ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနတာေတြကုိ ေျပာၾကားခဲ့ေၾကာင္း၊ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအတြင္း အုိင္အယ္အုိ အေနနဲ႔ လုပ္ေဆာင္ႏုိင္ခြင့္ ရွိတဲ့ အတုိင္းအတာအရ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနေတြကုိ ရွင္းလင္း ေျပာၾကားခဲ့ေၾကာင္း၊ အဓိက ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့တဲ့ ကိစၥေတြကေတာ့ အဓမၼ လုပ္အားေပး ေစခုိင္းေနတဲ့ကိစၥ၊ ခေလးစစ္သားကိစၥ၊ လူကုန္ကူးမႈ စတဲ့ ျပသနာေတြကုိ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ေၾကာင္း၊ အလြန္ေကာင္းမြန္တဲ့ ေဆြးေႏြးပဲြတရပ္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း မစၥတာစတိမာရွယ္က ေျပာျပသြားပါတယ္။
ဒီကေန႔ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္နဲ႔ သြားေရာက္ ေတြ႕ဆုံခဲ့တဲ့ ပဲြမွာ မစၥတာ စတိဗ္ မာရွယ္နဲ႔အတူ လက္ေထာက္ ညႇိႏႈိင္းေရးအရာရွိလည္း လုိက္ပါေတြ႕ဆုံခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရပါတယ္။
NLD Says 'No' to Election
NLD Says 'No' to Election
By Taunggyi Time သတင္း
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By THE IRRAWADDY Monday, March 29, 2010
Burma's main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), on Monday decided against registering for the general election this year, a party spokesman told The Irrawaddy.
“Without any objections, all the party leaders reached a consensus not to register the party and join the election because the junta's election laws are unjust,” said senior party official Khin Maung Swe who attended the meeting at the party's Rangoon headquarters. “We also agreed to call for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all other political prisoners.”
Members of the detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy gather at Rangoon's headquarters before its central committee meeting on March 29. (Photo: AP)
Party officials said that the lawyer of detained leader Suu Kyi read out a message from Suu Kyi to the party leaders at the meeting and said that “Daw Suu could not accept the party registering under the unjust laws, but she said that neither she nor anyone else owns the party. Therefore, the party members have to make the decision by themselves democratically.”
The party's 92-year-old party chairman, Aung Shwe, who recently voiced support for the party registering and taking part in the election, did not join in the meeting, but instead sent a letter stating that he would follow Suu Kyi's decision, according to the party spokesman.
Nearly 160 party representatives from across the country gathered at the party's headquarters to take part in the meeting. The discussion mainly heard the views of the party's central committee members. Reportedly, only one of them voiced the opinion that a political party “cannot be involved in politics without existing.”
“U Tin Wai from Kachin State expressed his opinion on party registration, but accepted the majority decision,” said Ohn Kyaing, a party official. The election laws prohibit parties from having members who are currently in detention, so a decision to register would have forced Suu Kyi out of the party.
About 50 party members wearing white T-shirts bearing a slogan saying “No” gathered in front of the party compound. Female party members were also reportedly holding a large green gourd presented to them by Suu Kyi last Tuesday through her lawyer. The word “No” is said to have been written on the gourd.
Although security was heightened with four riot police trucks deployed near the party headquarters, there were no reports of harassment of NLD leaders by the authorities.
Before the meeting, several township representatives and party youth leaders declared that they will stand by Suu Kyi's stance against registration, claiming that they can still struggle for democratic rights without a political party.
The party decision would appear to ensure that the NLD will cease to exist as a legal entity as of the May 7 deadline for party registration, according to the election law.
Many observers are currently speculating what will become of the party after it ceases to be a valid political entity, and what kind of action the regime will take against the NLD's leadership and its party members.
A political analyst in Rangoon, said that what the NLD does after May 7 would depend on the wit and wisdom of the party leaders at the local level.
Reuters correspondent Martin Perry said, “The boycott, however, could backfire and marginalize the NLD, possibly leading to its dissolution. Its credibility as a pro-democracy force will be questioned now it has spurned the chance to be part of a political transition that the junta itself says will be lengthy and challenging.”
Perry said that the decision of the NLD “came as a disappointment to the international community, which has long painted Suu Kyi and the NLD as the people's choice and the best hope for a democratic Myanmar [Burma].”
In Suu Kyi's statement, she said that the party will not come to an end, and she also relayed a message to the Burmese people saying that she will continue her efforts for democracy.
Last week, Suu Kyi reportedly told her lawyers that if the imprisoned former student leader Min Ko Naing could fight for democracy in Burma without a political “signpost,” she could do the same.
Charismatic Min Ko Naing and several student activists of the 88 Generation Students group were arrested in 2007 and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.
The election laws bar more than 2,000 political prisoners from taking part in the election which junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe described as “the very beginning of the process of fostering democracy” in his speech on Armed Forces Day in Naypyidaw on Saturday.
No date has been announced for the upcoming election, which critics have called a sham designed to keep the military in power through the facade of an elected government.
The NLD won a landslide victory in Burma's last election in 1990, but the results were never honored by the regime. Party leader Suu Kyi is currently serving an 18-month term of house arrest. With her sentence due to expire in November, Suu Kyi would not be released before the polls expected in October.
http://www.irrawadd y.org/highlight. php?art_id= 18143&page=2
Anger greets Suu Kyi conviction
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.
Myanmar says Suu Kyi to be freed in
Myanmar says Suu Kyi to be freed in
November: witnesses
By Aung Hla Tun
2 hrs 47 mins ago
YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi will be freed when her house arrest
ends in November, according to a government minister quoted by witnesses on Monday, but critics said that
may be too late for this year's elections.
Home Minister Major General Maung Oo told a January 21 meeting of local officials the 64-year-old Nobel
Peace Prize winner would be released in November, a month after many observers expect the country to hold
its first parliamentary elections in two decades.
The information could not be verified independently but three people who attended the meeting said the
comment was made to an audience of several hundred people in Kyaukpadaung, a town about 565 km (350
miles) north of the former capital, Yangon.
The three witnesses requested anonymity.
Suu Kyi, detained for 14 of the past 20 years, was sentenced to a further 18 months of detention last August
for harboring an American who swam uninvited to her lakeside home, raising questions over whether the
election will be a sham.
That incident took place in May 2009, just before an earlier period of house arrest was due to end. Taking
into account the three months she spent in a prison guesthouse after the incident, her 18-month sentence
would end in November.
The planned election would be the first since 1990, when Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD)
party scored a landslide victory that the country's junta refused to recognize.
Maung Oo also said detained NLD vice-chairman Tin Oo would be released on February 13, and that the
government would pursue an international-style market economy after holding "free and fair" elections,
including loosening restrictions on car imports.
Tin Oo, 82, a former defense minister and retired general, has been in prison or under house arrest for more
than a decade.
တျခားေသာ အမ်ဳိးသားကို မုန္းတီးျခင္းသည္ အမ်ဳိးသားေရး မဟုတ္ဟု ေဒၚစုေျပာၾကား
တျခားေသာ အမ်ဳိးသားကို မုန္းတီးျခင္းသည္ အမ်ဳိးသားေရး မဟုတ္ဟု ေဒၚစုေျပာၾကား
ဖနိဒါ
ဗုဒၶဟူးေန႔၊ ႏုိဝင္ဘာလ 11 ရက္ 2009 ခုႏွစ္ 15 နာရီ 22 မိနစ္
မဇိၩမ (ခ်င္းမုိင္) ။ ။ တျခားေသာ အမ်ဳိးသားမ်ားကို မုန္းတီးျခင္းသည္ အမ်ဳိးသားေရး မဟုတ္ဟု အတိုက္အခံ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က ေျပာဆိုလိုက္သည္။
”သူ (ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္) တခုပဲ ေျပာပါတယ္။ အမ်ဳိးသားေရးဆုိတာ အင္မတန္ေကာင္းတယ္။ အမ်ဳိးသားေရးဆုိတာ ကုိယ့္အမ်ဳိးသားကို ေကာင္းစားေစခ်င္တဲ့ ေစတနာ ေမတၱာေတြ ေကာင္းတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ္လုိ႔ တျခားအမ်ဳိးသားကို ထိခိုက္ေစတဲ့ဟာ၊ တျခားအမ်ဳိးသားကုိ မုန္းတီးတာဟာ အမ်ဳိးသားေရး မဟုတ္ဘူးဆုိတာပဲ ေျပာလုိက္တယ္”ဟု အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ ေျပာေရးဆိုခြင့္ရွိသူ ဦးဥာဏ္ဝင္းက ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ေျပာစကားကို ကိုးကား၍ မဇိၩမကုိ ေျပာသည္။
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္
ေရွ႕ေနလည္းျဖစ္ေသာ ဦးဥာဏ္ဝင္းႏွင့္ ေနအိမ္ခ်ဳပ္က်ခံေနရေသာ ပါတီေခါင္းေဆာင္တို႔ ယေန႔နံနက္တြင္ ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ တကၠသိုလ္ရိပ္သာလမ္းရွိ သူမ၏ ေနအိမ္တြင္ ေတြ႔ဆံုခဲ့ၾကရာ ေျပာၾကားလိုက္ျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။
ယေန႔သည္ ျမန္မာ့႐ိုးရာ ျပကၡဒိန္အားျဖင့္ တန္ေဆာင္မုန္းလျပည့္ေက်ာ္ ၁၀ ရက္ေန႔ျဖစ္ၿပီး ၈၉ ႏွစ္ေျမာက္ အမ်ဳိးသားေန႔ ျဖစ္သည္။ အဂၤလိပ္ ကိုလိုနီ အစိုးရလက္ေအာက္ ၁၉၂၀ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ေသာ ပညာေရးအဆင့္ ျမႇင့္တင္ေစလိုေသာ ေကာလိပ္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ား၏ သပိတ္စတင္ေသာေန႔ကို အမ်ဳိးသားေန႔ဟု သတ္မွတ္ခဲ့ၾကသည္။
စစ္အစိုးအႀကီးအကဲ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မႉးႀကီး သန္းေရႊကလည္း အမ်ဳိးသားေန႔မိန္းခြန္း ေျပာၾကားသည္ကို ယေန႔ထုတ္ စစ္အစိုးရအာေဘာ္ ျမန္မာ့အလင္း သတင္းစာတြင္ ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။
မ်က္ေမွာက္ကာလတြင္ ေခတ္သစ္ကိုလိုနီနယ္ခ်ဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံႀကီးမ်ားက အျခားႏုိင္ငံမ်ား၏ ျပည္တြင္းေရးကို ဝင္ေရာက္စြက္ဖက္ၿပီး နယ္ပယ္အသီးသီး ကို လႊမ္းမိုးျခယ္လွယ္ရန္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းေဆာင္ရြက္လ်က္ ရွိသည္ဟု ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မႉးႀကီး၏ ေျပာဆုိသည့္ စကားကို ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။
ထို႔အျပင္ ၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ က်င္းပႏုိင္ေရး ျပင္ဆင္ေနသည့္အတြက္ ျပည္သူမ်ားက ပူးေပါင္း ေဆာင္ရြက္ရန္လည္း ေတာင္းဆို လိုက္ေသးသည္။
ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအေပၚ အေမရိကန္၊ ဥေရာပသမဂၢအဖြဲ႔ဝင္ ႏုိင္ငံမ်ား၊ ၾသစေၾတးလ်ား အပါအဝင္ စီးပြားေရးႏွင့္ သံတမန္ေရးရာ ပိတ္ဆို႔အေရးယူမႈမ်ား ႐ုတ္သိမ္းေရးတြင္ ပါဝင္ကူညီေပးမည္ဆိုေသာ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ႏုိဘယ္လ္ဆုရွင္က စစ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ထံ စာေရးသား ေပးပို႔ၿပီးေနာက္ ေနာက္ဆက္တြဲ အျဖစ္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္သည္ အမ်ားျပည္သူ ျမင္ကြင္းတြင္ ျပန္လည္ေပၚထြက္လာခဲ့ကာ သူမ၏ ေျပာစကားမ်ားလည္း တဆင့္စကားအျဖစ္ ပံုမွန္ထြက္ေပၚလာေနခ့ဲသည္။
ရန္ကုန္ရွိ အန္အယ္ဒီ ႐ံုးခ်ဳပ္တြင္ က်င္းပေသာ အမ်ဳိးသားေန႔ အခမ္းအနားအတြက္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က ဦးဥာဏ္ဝင္းမွတဆင့္ ႏႈတ္ျဖင့္ သဝဏ္လႊာပါး ေက်းဇူးတင္စကား ဆိုလိုက္သည္။ ျပည္နယ္ႏွင့္ တုိင္း အသီးသီးမွ ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား မအားလပ္သည့္ၾကားမွ အခမ္းအနား တက္ေရာက္ျခင္းအေပၚ ေက်းဇူးတင္သည္ဟု သူမက ေျပာၾကားသည္။
အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္က စစ္အစိုးရအေနျဖင့္ ေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးအေျဖရွာရန္ ထပ္မံေတာင္းဆိုလုိက္ျပန္ၿပီး ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၊ ဦးတင္ဦး၊ ရွမ္းအမ်ဳိးသားမ်ား ဒီမုိကေရစီ အဖဲြ႔ခ်ဳပ္ ဥကၠ႒ ဦးခြန္ထြန္းဦး၊ အတြင္းေရးမႉး စုိင္းညြန႔္လြင္ႏွင့္ အျခားတုိင္းရင္းသား ေခါင္းေဆာင္ မ်ားအား အျမန္ဆံုးလႊတ္ေပးရန္ လိုအပ္သည္ဟု ဆိုသည္။
ထို႔အျပင္ အဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ ႐ံုးမ်ားကုိ ကာလရွည္ၾကာ ပိတ္ထားျခင္းမွ ျပန္လည္ဖြင့္ခြင့္ျပဳရန္ႏွင့္ လြတ္လပ္စြာ စည္း႐ံုးခြင့္၊ တရားဝင္ စည္း႐ံုးခြင့္ေပးရန္၊ ၁၉၉၀ ျပည့္ႏွစ္ ပါတီစံု ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲတြင္ အႏုိင္ရၿပီးမွ ဖ်က္သိမ္းခံပါတီမ်ား အပါအဝင္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးပါတီမ်ားကို ႏုိင္ငံေရး မွတ္ပံုတင္ခြင့္ေပး၍ စည္း႐ံုးခြင့္ျပဳရန္တို႔ကုိ စစ္အစုိးရအေနျဖင့္ အျမန္ဆံုး ေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးရန္ လုိအပ္ေၾကာင္း ေၾကညာခ်က္တြင္ ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။
အန္အယ္ဒီ ျပန္ၾကားေရးအဖြဲ႔ဝင္ ဦးအုန္းႀကိဳင္က အမ်ဳိးသားေန႔ အထိန္းအမွတ္အျဖစ္ “ဒီအမ်ဳိးသားေန႔မွာ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က အခုလုိ ႏႈတ္နဲ႔ သဝဏ္လႊာပါးခြင့္ရတာဟာ ထူးျခားတယ္လုိ႔ ေျပာခ်င္ပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာ့ႏုိင္ငံအေရး ေျပလည္မႈ အလားလာ တုိးတက္လာသလားလုိ႔ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ႏုိင္တယ္ဆုိရင္ေတာ့ အားတက္စရာ ျဖစ္တယ္လုိ႔ ေျပာခ်င္ပါတယ္” ဟု ေျပာသည္။
အခမ္းအနားသုိ႔ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမုိကေရစီအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ ျပည္နယ္ႏွင့္ တုိင္းအသီးသီးမွ ကုိယ္စားလွယ္မ်ား၊ ဝါရင့္ႏုိင္ငံေရးသမားမ်ား အဖြဲ႔ဝင္မ်ား၊ ျပည္သူ႔လႊတ္ေတာ္ ကိုယ္စားျပဳေကာ္မတီ - CRPP ႏွင့္ ရခုိင္ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမုိကေရစီ အဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္တို႔ အပါအဝင္ လူဦးေရ ၁၀၀၀ ခန္႔ တက္ေရာက္ ခဲ့သည္။
ျမန္မာ့ႏိုင္ငံေရး ျဖတ္သန္းမႈတြင္ ကာလရွည္စြာ ပါဝင္လာခဲ့သည့္ ဝါရင့္ႏုိင္ငံေရးသမားအစုကလည္း ေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးေရး ျပဳလုပ္ပါဟု ေျပာဆိုလိုက္သည္။
Top US officials meet Myanmar junta, Suu Kyi
Top US officials meet Myanmar junta, Suu Kyi
YANGON, Myanmar – The U.S. wants better relations with military-ruled Myanmar if it makes concrete steps toward democracy, a senior American diplomat said Wednesday after holding the highest-level talks with the junta and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 14 years.
Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said he explained Washington's new policy, which reverses the Bush administration's isolation of Myanmar, also known as Burma, in favor of dialogue with a country that has been ruled by the military since 1962.
The goals of the new policy are "strong support for human rights, the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all other political prisoners and the promotion of democratic reform," Campbell said in a statement at the end of his two-day visit.
Campbell and his deputy, Scot Marciel, are the highest-level Americans to visit Myanmar since 1995.
Earlier Wednesday, Campbell, the top State Department official for East Asia, greeted Suu Kyi with a handshake after she was driven to his lakeside hotel in Yangon where they met privately for two hours, U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Mei said. The content of the talks was not immediately known.
Suu Kyi, 64, has been detained for 14 of the past 20 years. Dressed in a pink traditional Burmese jacket, she was upbeat as she emerged from the hotel.
"Hello to you all," she said to photographers before getting into the car that whisked her back to her tightly guarded home.
Myanmar's junta has praised the new U.S. policy, but shown no sign it intends to release Suu Kyi or initiate democratic and electoral reforms demanded by Suu Kyi's party ahead of elections planned for next year.
But the military government has made some gestures, such as loosening the terms of Suu Kyi's house arrest and allowing her more meeting with visitors such as Campbell, in hopes that the U.S. will ease political and economic sanctions.
Campbell said he told junta officials that the U.S. "is prepared to take steps to improve the relationship but that process must be based on reciprocal and concrete efforts by the Burmese government."
Campbell was continuing talks he began in September in New York with senior Myanmar officials, which were the first such high-level contact in nearly a decade. He met Wednesday morning with Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein, Mei said.
Campbell said he emphasized that Myanmar "should abide by U.N. resolutions with regards to proliferation." He did not elaborate, but was apparently referring to arms purchases from North Korea. There is also some speculation, though no evidence has been made public, that Myanmar is seeking to develop nuclear weapons with North Korea's help.
State television, which on Tuesday ignored the Americans' visit, broadcast footage of Campbell's meetings with both Suu Kyi and the prime minister.
Suu Kyi was recently sentenced to an additional 18 months of house arrest for briefly sheltering an uninvited American, in a trial that drew global condemnation. The sentence means she will not be able to participate in next year's elections, which will be the first in two decades.
U.S. sanctions, first imposed more than a decade ago, failed to force the generals to respect human rights, release jailed political activists and make democratic reforms. The Obama administration decided recently to step up engagement as a way of promoting reforms.
Washington has said it will maintain the sanctions until talks with Myanmar's generals result in change.
Campbell is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Myanmar since a September 1995 trip by then-U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright.
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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.
Myanmar's Suu Kyi welcomes US plan to engage junta
YANGON (AFP) – Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has welcomed US plans to engage diplomatically with the country's military rulers, her lawyer said Thursday.
Her comments came a day after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised the possibility of an eventual easing or lifting of sanctions if US engagement produces political changes in Myanmar.
"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said that direct engagement is good," her lawyer Nyan Win said after meeting her at her home in Yangon to discuss her appeal against her recently extended house arrest.
Suu Kyi to be released?
Suu Kyi to be released?
YANGON- THE party of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi said on Tuesday it was hopeful that she would be unconditionally released after a court agreed to hear an appeal against her recent conviction.
Lawyers for the Nobel laureate and the country's ruling junta are due to present legal arguments on September 18, after Suu Kyi challenged last month's guilty verdict for sheltering an American man who swam to her lakeside home.
The regime has ordered her to spend another 18 months under house arrest, softening the original sentence of three years' hard labour. However, the house arrest is still long enough to keep Myanmar's opposition leader away from the political scene during elections scheduled for 2010.
'There could be changes as the court has accepted our appeal,' said Nyan Win, her lawyer and a spokesman for her National League for Democracy (NLD), referring to Yangon divisional court's decision on Friday to hear the case. 'We are hoping for her unconditional release, which is also what we wanted.'
'We will meet with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi this week after we got permission from the authorities. We need to get last instructions from her for the final arguments,' Nyan Win said. Daw is a term of respect in Burmese.
The appeal would focus on the fact that a 1974 constitution under which the 64-year-old was originally detained had been superseded by a new constitution approved last year, her lawyers have said.
The guilty verdict sparked international outrage and the imposition of further sanctions against Myanmar's powerful generals, who have already kept Suu Kyi locked up for 14 of the past 20 years.
Suu Kyi insisted on her innocence during the trial held at Yangon's notorious Insein Prison, saying that she allowed US military veteran John Yettaw to stay for two nights at her home because he was ill.
Mr Yettaw was sentenced to seven years' hard labour for the stunt in early May, but was freed after a visit by US senator Jim Webb last month on what the regime said were compassionate grounds because of health problems. -- AFP http://www.straitst imes.com/ Breaking% 2BNews/SE% 2BAsia/Story/ STIStory_ 426926.html
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Businessmen keep wary eye on Kachin situation
News - Shan Herald Agency for News
Tuesday, 08 September 2009 08:31
Burmese and Chinese businessmen, who have invested in Laiza town, the headquarters of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), are keeping a wary eye on the relationship between the Burmese military junta and the KIO.
Relations between the junta and the ethnic ceasefire group in Kachin State have soured and are terribly strained after the junta proposed that it transform its armed wing, the Kachin Independence Army into the Border Guard Force, which the KIO rejected. Instead it told the junta brass that it wants the KIA to change to a Kachin Regional Guard Force (KRGF) and also demanded a stake in the new Kachin State Government to follow the 2010 general elections.
Businessmen in Laiza are closely monitoring the situation because if it deteriorates, they will move their properties. They are especially alert after news leaked out about meetings between the KIO and the junta brass, a local businessman said.
On September 4, senior KIO leaders and the organisation’ s regional administrative officers and campaigners held a meeting in Laiza Hotel in the morning.
"I want to keep watch until October. If the situation worsens we will leave. Some shops are already closed. I do not know where they have moved their goods," a shop owner said.
The investors are mostly Chinese. They have invested in motorcycle companies, construction tool firms, textile shops, and shops dealing in electronic and related items.
Ceasefire groups on the Sino-Burma border, which have opposed transformation to the Border Guard Force, have no plans to extend their business since tension began mounting and clashes occurred between the Burmese Army and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) last month.
Now, some Chinese businessmen have closed their shops in Laiza. Some shops have downed shutters in Laiza market, a local said.
Many people have hired rooms and space on the Chinese side of Laiza. Chinese authorities are therefore compiling a list.
"Locals are also moving their belongings. People from China have lots of investments in Kachin State. Some people have already moved their goods and belongings. While some shops are already closed, gambling dens are still open," he added.
Most businessmen are from China and some are from Myitkyina and Bhamo, who have opened stores in Laiza.
Even though people are apprehensive, the KIO has not made any public announcement on the prevailing situation.
Local sources, said after the Burmese Army and Kokang Army fought gun battles near the Sino-Burma border in northern Shan State, the junta has deployed more troops near Laiza town.
KIO along with other ceasefire armed groups are being pressurized by the junta to transform to the Border Guard Force within October. As such people watching the situation with keen interest and apprehension. http://www.bnionlin e.net/news/ shan/6984- businessmen- keep-wary- eye-on-kachin- situation. html
Asean Officials to Discuss Suu Kyi Pardon Proposal
Asean Officials to Discuss Suu Kyi Pardon Proposal
By THE IRRAWADDY Tuesday, August 18, 2009
A Thai government proposal for a request by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) to the Burmese junta to pardon Aung San Suu Kyi is expected to be discussed at a meeting of senior Asean officials in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, on Wednesday and Thursday.
Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said on Monday that the pardon proposal had been winning more support among Asean member countries, according to a report in the Bangkok English-language daily The Nation.
Cambodia and Vietnam, however, were reported to be still opposed to the proposal.
“We respect Burma's justice system but are concerned about the unity of Asean too, since Aung San Suu Kyi's case makes Asean and Burma a common target,” Kasit was quoted in The Nation.
Kasit noted that Cambodia and Vietnam, as well as Indonesia and Singapore, had spoken positively about the rate of progress in Burma.
American Senator Jim Webb, who met Burmese junta leader Than Shwe in Naypyidaw last week, said in a CNN interview on Monday that an Asean request for a pardon for Suu Kyi would be a “major step forward in resolving the situation.”
Webb said: "I am of the understanding that we are possibly going to see from Asean. a petition of some sort that would ask for amnesty for her as well.”
During his visit to Burma, Webb, chairman of a US Senate foreign relations sub-committee on East Asia, secured the release of John Yettaw, the American who intruded into Suu Kyi’s home and then found himself on trial alongside the pro-democracy leader. Yettaw was sentenced to seven years imprisonment, while Suu Kyi was given a further 18 months’ house arrest.
Burma will also be on the agenda of an Asean summit in October in Thailand, when leaders of the grouping will announce the formation of the Asean Human Rights Body. Observers say Burma is one of the issues challenging the credibility of the first human rights body in the region.
http://www.irrawadd y.org/article. php?art_id= 16594
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Army attacks displace thousands of civilians in Myanmar
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19 August 2009
While the world’s attention was focused on the trial and subsequent sentencing of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese army is quietly busy in crushing ethnic minorities, says Human Rights watch. Last three weeks have seen displacement of more than 10,000 ethnic Shans.
New York: Burmese army attacks against ethnic Shan civilians in northeastern Burma (Myanmar) have displaced more than 10,000 people in the past three weeks, Human Rights Watch has said.
It has called on Burma's military government to immediately end attacks against civilians and other violations of international humanitarian law.
Burmese Army.jpg
Burmese troops have been battering civilians as part of the longstanding campaign against ethnic minorities/ Photo credit: New Statesman
Following democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s sentence last week to return to house arrest on August 11, Human Rights Watch reiterated its call to the United Nations Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Burma.
It also calls to create a commission of inquiry to investigate possible war crimes and crimes against humanity by all parties to the fighting in Burma's ethnic minority areas.
"While the world has been focused on the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese troops have been battering civilians as part of the military government's longstanding campaign against ethnic minorities," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
Marginalised and brutalised
"These attacks in Shan state should remind the international community that in addition to the persecution of the Burmese political opposition, Burma's ethnic minorities are systematically marginalised and brutalised by the Burmese government and army."
According to credible reports by Shan human rights groups, the Burmese army, or Tatmadaw, has deployed seven army battalions to clear civilians from large areas of Laikha township and parts of Mong Kerng township in central Shan state between July 27 and August 1.
Troops have reportedly burned down more than 500 houses as they attacked 39 villages in the area. Human Rights Watch believes this recently scaled-up forced relocation operation is part of an intensified counterinsurgency campaign, as Tatmadaw units attack the Shan State Army-South (SSA-S), an insurgent armed group that operates in the area.
The SSA-S has been conducting deadly ambushes regularly for years and on July 15, SSA-S forces attacked the 515th Light Infantry Battalion in Laikha, killing 11 Tatmadaw soldiers. There are reports that many of the displaced civilians are moving toward the Thailand-Burma border.
The Thailand-Burma Border Consortium annual internal displacement survey reports that more than 13,000 civilians were displaced in 2008 in Laikha and surrounding townships because of increased Tatmadaw operations against the SSA-S. This follows years of similar operations.
Between 1996 and 1998, the Tatmadaw effectively cleared central Shan state of its civilian population. Burmese army forces have been responsible for deliberate attacks on civilians, summary executions, rape, torture, destruction and forced relocation of villages, and use of child soldiers and forced labor. More than 350,000 civilians were forcibly displaced during that campaign, many of them becoming refugees in neighboring Thailand.
Flouting the laws of war
"While the Burmese Army flouts the laws of war, Shan civilians pay the price," said Adams.
"The ongoing Burmese army attacks in Shan state demonstrate the vicious modus operandi of the Tatmadaw and its disdain for the lives and well-being of civilians."
Recent attacks by the Tatmadaw and their proxy forces, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, forced some 5,000 ethnic Karen across the border into Thailand in June. The civilians, mostly women and children, were fleeing fighting, forced labour, and the widespread sowing of landmines.
According to the Thailand-Burma Border Consortium's annual survey, nearly half a million people are internally displaced in eastern Burma, either in government relocation sites, within non-state armed groups ceasefire zones, or in so-called free-fire areas highly vulnerable to Tatmadaw patrols that maintain an unlawful "shoot on sight" policy against civilians.
Human Rights Watch has documented abuses against civilians in ethnic areas of Karen state in eastern Burma and in Chin state in western Burma. Abuses such as extrajudicial killings, torture and beatings, and confiscation of land and property continue with impunity.
The refugee problem
There are more than 140,000 Burmese refugees along the Thailand border in nine temporary refugee camps. Although 50,000 refugees have been resettled to third countries like the United States, Norway, and Canada, more refugees continue to arrive, fleeing the armed conflict in eastern Burma.
Thailand does not recognise people from Shan state as refugees, and refuses to permit the establishment of refugee camps for ethnic Shan, fearing a larger influx of civilians fleeing repression from northeastern Burma.
Instead, those Shan who reach Thailand eke out an existence as migrant workers, often without legal status.
Human Rights Watch called on the government of Thailand to offer sanctuary to refugees fleeing abuses in Shan state in accordance with international law.
Although Thailand is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, it is bound by the customary international law prohibition against returning people to countries where they face persecution.
Institute commission of inquiry
Human Rights Watch reiterated its calls to the United Nations Security Council to establish a commission of inquiry into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Burma and to pursue a comprehensive arms embargo against Burma.
Human Rights Watch said that Burma should become a regular topic for discussion on the Security Council agenda, to pressure the Burmese government to respect basic freedoms of its citizens and continue to inform Security Council members of its progress. Security Council Resolution 1674 on the protection of civilians in armed conflict states that "peace and security, development and human rights are the pillars of the United Nations and the foundations for collective security."
A May 2009 report by the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, "Crimes in Burma", reviewed United Nations human rights reports for several years and concluded that human rights abuses are widespread, systematic, and part of state policy. The report, endorsed by five eminent international jurists, cited cases of forced relocation, sexual violence, extrajudicial killings, and torture. It similarly called for a commission of inquiry to be established by the Security Council to investigate potential crimes against humanity and war crimes in Burma.
Human Rights Watch said an arms embargo could stop the supply of weapons, military assistance, and technology that enable continued attacks against civilians in ethnic conflict areas. China and Russia, both of whom supply weapons to Burma, are the military government's main diplomatic supporters and continue to block stronger international action against the ruling junta.
On August 13, the UN Security Council issued a weak press statement on Burma that both "reiterate[s] the importance of the release of all political prisoners," but also affirms Security Council members' "commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity" of Burma.
"The UN Security Council should end its inaction and authorise a commission of inquiry into human rights abuses and enforce an arms embargo," said Adams.
"This will not happen unless China and Russia stop protecting Burma's generals."
Aung San Suu Kyi left to pay the price for John Yettaw’s indiscretion
August 17, 2009
The Times online - Aung San Suu Kyi left to pay the price for John Yettaw’s indiscretion
Richard Lloyd Parry: Analysis
First it was Bill Clinton in North Korea, escorting home two scared US journalists from the clutches of Kim Jong Il. Now, Senator Jim Webb returns from Burma with the hapless American eccentric, John Yettaw.
For a politician, there are few more glorious moments than jetting home from a despotic regime with imprisoned compatriots in tow. But the liberation of Mr Yettaw was the least important and interesting achievement of Mr Webb’s trip.
Whether you regard Mr Yettaw as a well-meaning buffoon or an arrogant busybody, he hardly deserved such a prompt and high-level intervention.
The ironies of his release this weekend are painful. In setting him free, the Burmese junta manages to project an image of magnanimity for cancelling a sentence out of all proportion to Mr Yettaw’s “crimes”. And, as he flies back to obscurity in Missouri, Aung San Suu Kyi and her two female companions are left to pay the price of his fecklessness.
Mr Webb did at least see Ms Suu Kyi and their conversation must have been an interesting one. For the senator is a firm supporter of an approach very different from her uncompromising idealism. In the absence of any ideal solutions for dealing with the regime, he believes in making the most of a bad lot and in engaging with the junta, dropping sanctions, and also backs participation in the bogus-sounding election promised for next year.
These would be highly risky steps, but the time is long overdue for a serious debate about alternatives to the present policies of Ms Suu Kyi and her Western supporters, which have achieved nothing very obvious other than high-minded isolation.
For encouraging such a conversation, Senator Webb deserves credit.
He would have done much to overcome stereotypes about American parochialism, and made a valuable point to the dictatorship, if he had requested Ms Suu Kyi’s release before that of Mr Yettaw, rather than vice versa.
မန္မာနိုင္ငံအလုပ္သမားသမဂၢမ်ားအဖြဲ ့ခ်ဳပ္ မွ လူထုေခါင္းေဆာင္အားေထာင္ဒဏ္ခ်မွတ္ျခင္းအေပၚ
မန္မာနိုင္ငံအလုပ္သမားသမဂၢမ်ားအဖြဲ ့ခ်ဳပ္ မွ လူထုေခါင္းေဆာင္အားေထာင္ဒဏ္ခ်မွတ္ျခင္းအေပၚ
ျပင္းထန္စြာကန္ ့ကြက္ ျပီး ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္ လႊတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအားနိုင္ငံတစ္ကာသမဂၢမ်ားနွင့္
ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္သြားမည္ျဖစ္ေႀကာင္းေႀကညာခ်က္
Suu Kyi Sentence Stirs World Outrage
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By WAI MOE Tuesday, August 11, 2009
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World leaders have expressed outrage over the 18-month sentence in the trial of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and the European Union plans tougher sanctions against the Burmese regime.
Shortly after the sentence was announced on Tuesday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicola Sarkozy quickly responded.
“I am both saddened and angry at the verdict today…following the sham trial of Aung San Suu Kyi,” Brown said in a statement, adding that the sentence was further proof that the regime is “determined to act with total disregard for accepted standards of the rule of law and in defiance of international opinion.”
“This is a purely political sentence designed to prevent her from taking part in the regime’s planned elections next year,” Brown said. He said that the 2010 elections will not have credibility or legitimacy unless Suu Kyi and other political prisoners are released, and they are allowed to participant in the poll.
Britain will assume the chair of the UN Security Council in August. Brown said, “I also believe that the UN Security Council—whose will has been flouted—must also now respond resolutely and impose a world wide ban on the sale of arms to the regime.”
The leader of another UNSC veto power, French President Sarkozy, also reacted strongly, calling for the European Union to pass tougher sanctions against the Burmese regime.
Sarkozy said that the verdict was “brutal and unjust,” and he will ask the EU to respond quickly by adopting new sanctions.
He said the EU’s new sanctions “must in particular target the resources that they [the junta] directly profit from, in the wood and ruby sector.” He said the gas industry, which supplies Thailand and other countries, should be spared from sanctions, according to the statement.
The EU, now under the presidency of Sweden, also condemned the sentence. The EU presidency statement said that the proceedings against Suu Kyi which stem from “charges which were brought twenty years after she was first wrongfully arrested, have been in breach of national and international law.”
Threatening tougher sanctions on Burma, the EU presidency said that the EU will further reinforce its restrictive measures targeting the Burmese regime, including its economic interests.
“The EU underlines its readiness to revise, amend or reinforce its measure in light of the developments in Burma/Myanmar,” said the statement.
The European Parliamentary Caucus on Burma called the military regime “the real criminal” and said the international community should wake up and take stronger action against the regime.
Among members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (Asean), the Philippine Foreign Minister Alberto G. Romulo said that the verdict is “incomprehensible and deplorable.”
Thailand, the current chairmanship of Asean, has not yet issued a statement. Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said that Thailand will consult with other Asean members before deciding Asean’s next move on Burma following the sentencing, according to The Nation, an English-language newspaper.
After the sentence, several leading campaign groups, such as US Campaign for Burma and Burma Campaign UK, called for the UNSC to pass an arms embargo on the Burmese regime.
“The dictatorship is directly defying the United Nations Security Council,” said Zoya Phan, the international coordinator for the London-based Burma Campaign UK, in a press release. “It is time the generals faced consequences for their actions; a global arms embargo should be imposed immediately.”
In a statement released soon after the verdict was announced, British Foreign Office minister Ivan Lewis said that the British government would urge the UN to impose further sanctions.
"Specifically we now want to see an arms embargo against the regime. We want to see Burma's neighbors, the Asean countries, China, Japan, Thailand, apply maximum pressure," he said.
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
Delays in the trial of Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi have fuelled the rumour mill about what the secretive junta is really up to
Delays in the trial of Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi have fuelled the rumour mill about what the secretive junta is really up to as elections draw closer
Writer: By Larry Jagan Published: 9/08/2009 at 12:00 AM Newspaper section: Spectrum
The delay in the trial of Burma's democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has fuelled intense speculation about why the military junta is dragging out the court ruling and what its real agenda is. As Burma's top general Than Shwe has often told subordinates, international pressure "is like an elastic band" - when it's pulled tight nothing should be done as it only makes matters worse. When the elastic band is relaxed "we proceed with our plans".
There is no doubt that the international pressure is very taut at the moment, and the delaying tactics appear to fit neatly into Than Shwe's strategy of dealing with the opposition leader's continued detention. But he must know that the campaign in support of Aung San Suu Kyi will not subside.
The democracy icon is poised to learn her fate on Tuesday when the judges reconvene their secret court inside Insein prison. She is on trial for allegedly breaking the conditions of her house arrest, when she gave food and shelter to an uninvited American who swam to her lakeside residence. If found guilty, she faces a maximum of five years in jail.
The verdict was originally scheduled to be announced more than a week ago, but the court postponed its decision on the grounds that it needed more time to consider the legal arguments in relation to the 1974 constitution - which Aung San Suu Kyi's lawyers insist is no longer relevant.
There is no doubt that one of the regime's main concerns is the possibility of street protests when the verdict is announced. The state-run media warned the public against protesting for several days before the scheduled court verdict last week. They particularly wanted to avoid the Aug 8 anniversary of the mass pro-democracy movement which toppled the previous military ruler, Ne Win.
Benjamin Zawacki, Amnesty International's Bangkok-based Burma researcher, said the delay could be a tactic to "bait any potential demonstrators or activists anticipating a guilty verdict to identify themselves, and then switch the date of the verdict so there is enough time to crack down on them".
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At least 30 National League for Democracy (NLD) activists were arrested in Rangoon and other towns on the eve of the original verdict hearing, although many have since been released.
Some Burma watchers say that Aung San Suu Kyi being found guilty is a fait accompli.
"These charges are a complete and crude fabrication, a pretext to keep Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in detention," the former UN human rights rapporteur for Burma, Professor Paulo Pinheiro, told Spectrum.
British ambassador to Burma Mark Canning, who completed his posting there last month, said: "The trial has been entirely scripted and the end already decided before hand," he said after a rare occasion when he was allowed to attend the court hearing.
Public sentiment echoes that of the diplomats. "No one is in any doubt about the outcome," said Moe Moe, a taxi driver in the country's main commercial city.
"Those men in green in Naypyidaw [the new capital] know she is the people's hero and the real leader of this country."
But is it as cut and dried as the diplomats would have us believe, or is Than Shwe unsure of how to handle the case with one eye on next year's election and the ongoing problem Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters would present him with after a transition to his homegrown version of "democracy"?
Than Shwe plans to announce the formation of an interim government that will hold administrative power for at least one year, until the elections are staged, according to senior military sources in Naypyidaw.
He and other senior generals around him, especially Maung Aye, plan to stand down when the time is right, after the elections planned for next year. New houses are being built for them near Maymeo. The regional commander has confiscated large tracts of land there and new residences for the top military brass are already being built, according to Burmese military sources.
All government ministries have been told to complete all their outstanding work by the end of August, especially the preparation of statistical information.
Aung Thaung, the minister and a close confidant of Than Shwe's, recently told his deputies that there would be a new government soon, and he may no longer be the minister. Most of the
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current crop of ministers have also told their staff they will no longer be ministers by the end of the year. It is understood that members of the interim government will not be allowed to run in the elections, which is why the ministers will resign their posts and not take part in the pre-election administration.
"According to Than Shwe's plans, all the current ministers will have to resign, if they are to join a political party and fight the forthcoming elections," said the independent Burmese academic, Win Min.
Many analysts believe Than Shwe has been waiting for the verdict to further marginalise Aung San Suu Kyi before proceeding with his plans for a a civilian administration ahead of the elections. "The whole country will really be surprised to see how power is handed over," he reportedly told a high-ranking visiting foreign official.
So far there have been no hints as to who will be in the interim administration. Some analysts speculate that it may even include a senior member of the NLD - which would then preclude them from running for office in next year's elections.
This would also be one way of giving this body credibility - both nationally and internationally. It is possible that Than Shwe wants Aung San Suu Kyi herself to participate in the interim administration, a senior government official recently told Spectrum.
For Than Shwe, there is another major consideration - what to do with Aung San Suu Kyi after the elections. While it may be relatively easy to keep her locked up until then, the problem is that releasing her afterwards would only ensure she would be an enormous thorn in the side of any civilian government.
So Than Shwe's plans must involve finding a way to neutralise her and at the same time give her her freedom. That is the key issue Than Shwe now has to grapple with, and until he decides what to do with her, she will remain in detention.
The timing of the election is crucial to what happens next week. All indications are that it is likely to take place towards the end of next year. So the further away it is, the more likely it is that the process will be drawn out - first a verdict, then another delay before sentencing, and appeals to the high court.
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If Than Shwe is considering ways to co-opt Aung San Suu Kyi, then there must be secret talks or contact between the two. Leading opposition figures in Rangoon, including her lawyers, categorically dismiss these suggestions. Diplomats are equally sceptical.
"But if there were such talks I wouldn't tell diplomats - and certainly not journalists," a western diplomat in Rangoon told Spectrum. After all, it took months for news of the regime's secret talks with Aung San Suu Kyi to emerge, when she was under house arrest in 2000. Those, brokered by the UN envoy Razali Ismail, led to her release in May 2002.
"Whatever happens, Aung San Suu Kyi will be freed before the elections take place," claimed a senior government official with close links to Than Shwe.
The Guardian - Desmond Tutu: my tribute to Burma's opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi
The Guardian - Desmond Tutu: my tribute to Burma's opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi
In the week when Amnesty International awarded Burma's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi its highest accolade, Ambassador of Conscience, a fellow Nobel laureate pays tribute
This article was written in response to a feature about Aung San Suu Kyi by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark which was published on 11 November 2008
Desmond Tutu
The Guardian, Thursday 30 July 2009
I think of my sister Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi every day. Her picture hangs on the wall of my office, reminding me that, thousands of miles away in Asia, a nation is oppressed. Every day I ask myself: have I done everything I can try to end the atrocities being committed in Burma? And I pray that world leaders will ask themselves the same question. For if they did, the answer would be "no", and perhaps their conscience will finally force them to act.
Humankind has the ability to live in freedom and in peace. We have seen that goodness has triumphed over evil; we have witnessed political transitions in South Africa, and elsewhere, evidencing that we live in a moral universe. Our world is sometimes lacking wise and good leadership or, as in the case of Burma, the leadership is forbidden to lead.
Aung San Suu Kyi has now been detained for more than 13 years. She recently passed her 5,000th day in detention. Every one of those days is a tragedy and a lost opportunity. The whole world, not just the people of Burma, suffers from this loss. We desperately need the kind of moral and principled leadership that Aung San Suu Kyi would provide. And when you add the more than 2,100 political prisoners who are also in Burma's jails, and the thousands more jailed in recent decades, the true scale of injustice, but also of lost potential, becomes heartbreakingly clear.
Like many leaders, Aung San Suu Kyi has had to make great personal sacrifices. It is cruel enough to deprive an innocent person of her freedom. Burma's generals are crueller still. They try to use her as leverage to make her submit to their will. They refused to allow her husband to visit one last time when he was dying of cancer. She has grandchildren she has never even met. Yet her will and determination have stayed strong despite her being kept in detention for so many years.
More than anything, the new trial and detention of Aung San Suu Kyi speaks volumes about her effectiveness as a leader. The only reason the generals need to silence her clarion call for freedom is because they fear her and the principles she stands for. She is the greatest threat to their continuing rule.
The universal demand for human freedom cannot be suppressed forever. This is a universal truth that Than Shwe, the dictator of Burma, has failed to understand. How frustrated must he be that no matter how long he keeps Aung San Suu Kyi in detention, no matter how many guns he buys, and no matter how many people he imprisons, Aung San Suu Kyi and the people of Burma will not submit. The demands for the freedom of Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners of Burma grow louder and echo around the world, reaching even his new capital hidden in central Burma. Words, however, are not enough. Freedom is never given freely by those who have power; it has to be fought for.
The continuing detention of Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's other political prisoners is a crime and an indictment of an international community that often substitutes the issuance of repeated statements of concern for effective diplomacy. The UN treats the situation in Burma as if it is just a dispute between two sides, and they must mediate to find a middle ground. The reality is that a brutal, criminal and illegal dictatorship is trying, and failing, to crush those who want freedom and justice. The international community cannot be neutral in the face of evil. That evil must be called what it is, and confronted.
Change is overdue to the framework within which the international community approaches Burma. Twenty years of trying to persuade Burma's generals to reform has not secured any improvement. Forty visits by UN envoys have failed to elicit any change. The warm embrace of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) did not improve the behaviour of the regime towards Burma's citizens whether Christian, Buddhist or Muslim. The regime rules with an iron fist and those under its rule have suffered long enough.
Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters have time and again offered to dialogue with the regime. They offered a path of reconciliation and non-violent transition. Even as Aung San Suu Kyi stood before the regime's sham court, facing five years' imprisonment, we heard her voice loud and strong. She said: "There could be many opportunities for national reconciliation if all parties so wished."
Burma's generals must now face the consequences of their actions. The detention of Aung San Suu Kyi is as clear a signal as we could get that there will be no chance of reform and that the regime's "road map to democracy", including the call for elections, in 2010, is an obstacle to justice.
A new report from Harvard Law School, Crimes in Burma, commissioned by some of the most respected jurists in international law, has used the UN's own reports to highlight how Burma's generals have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Burma's generals are criminals, and must be treated as such. Than Shwe should be held accountable for abominable atrocities: his soldiers rape ethnic women and children, they torture, mutilate and murder at will. In eastern Burma, more than 3,300 ethnic villages have been destroyed, more than in Darfur. Civilians are deliberately targeted and shot on sight.
Than Shwe spurned the compassion of those willing to provide assistance following Cyclone Nargis. Instead, he conducted a referendum and he declared his undemocratic constitution the victor while victims perished from the cyclone's devastation. These are war crimes and crimes against humanity. Than Shwe and the rest of the generals cannot be allowed to go unpunished. The UN must establish a commission of inquiry, with a view to compiling evidence for prosecution. Failure to do so amounts to complicity with these crimes.
An international arms embargo must also be imposed immediately. Those countries supplying arms to Burma are facilitating these atrocities. Countries across the world must declare their support for a global arms embargo, making it impossible for China to resist such a move at the Security Council.
Aung San Suu Kyi and the people of Burma deserve nothing less than our most strenuous efforts to help them secure their freedom. Every day we must ask ourselves: have we done everything that we can? I pledge that I will not rest until Aung San Suu Kyi, and all the people of Burma, are free. Please join me.
Desmond M Tutu is the former Archbishop of Cape Town and recipient of the Nobel peace prize
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