2010 Mayday declaration by FTUB
Nuclear Free Burma ေဖၚေဆာင္ေရး Signature Campaign လႈပ္ရွားမူကို ကုလသမဂၢ အေထြေထြအတြင္းေရးမ်ဴးခ်ဳပ္ထံေပးပို ့ရန္ျပင္ဆင္။
CREDIT-သတင္းမွတ္တမ္း ။ PNS-Japan
Monday, April 26, 2010
Nuclear Free Burma ေဖၚေဆာင္ေရး Signature Campaign လႈပ္ရွားမူကို ကုလသမဂၢ အေထြေထြအတြင္းေရးမ်ဴးခ်ဳပ္ထံေပးပို ့ရန္ျပင္ဆင္။
၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္ ဧၿပီလ (၂၆)ရက္။
ႏ်ဴကလီးယားကင္းစင္ေသာ ျမန္မာႏိူင္ငံ Nuclear Free Burma ေဖၚေဆာင္ေရး Signature Campaign လႈပ္ရွားမူ ကို ၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္ ေဖေဖၚ၀ါရီလမွစတင္၍ FTUB ဂ်ပန္ ေကာ္မတီမွ ဦးစီးေကာက္ခံလာခဲ့ရာ ဧၿပီလ ၂၆ ရက္ေန ့တြင္ ေကာက္ခံထားသည့္ လက္မွတ္မ်ားကို စုစီးၿပီး FTUB နာယက Dr.မင္းညို ထံ လႊဲအပ္သည့္ အစီအစဥ္ကို ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ပါသည္။
FTUB(Japan) ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ ေဒၚခင္ေဆြေအးမွ Signature Campaign လႈပ္ရွားမူႏွင့္ပတ္သက္၍ ရွင္းျပရာမွာ ျမန္မာႏိူင္ငံသည္ သဘာ၀သယံဇာတ အရင္းအျမစ္မ်ား ပိုင္ဆိုင္သည့္ ႏိူင္ငံမ်ားအနက္ နံပါတ္(၉)အဆင့္တြင္ ရွိၿပီး Hydro power ေရအားလွ်ပ္စစ္ျဖင့္ စီမ္းအင္မဂၢါ၀ပ္ အေျမာက္အမ်ားထုတ္လုပ္ႏိူင္ေသာ ႏိူင္ငံျဖစ္သည္။ ႏွစ္စဥ္ ေရအား လွ်ပ္စစ္စြမ္းအင္ ႏွင့္ သဘာ၀ဓါတ္ေငြ ့မ်ားမွ ေရာင္းခ်ရေငြသည္လည္း ျမန္မာႏိူင္ငံ၏ ႏွစ္စဥ္ ၀င္ေငြ၏ ၅၀% ေက်ာ္ရရွိလ်က္ရွိသည္။
ထိုေၾကာင့္ နအဖ မွ စြမ္းအင္လုံေလာက္မႈ မရွိဟုေသာ အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္ျဖင့္ ႏ်ဴကလီးယား စြမ္းအင္ကို ထုတ္လုပ္ရန္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းမႈမွာ လကၡံ ယုံၾကည္ႏိူင္ဘြယ္ရာ မရွိသည့္အျပင္ ႏ်ဴကလီယား စြမ္းအင္မွတဆင့္ ႏ်ဴကလီယား လက္နက္ပိုင္ဆိုင္ေသာ ႏိူင္ငံျဖစ္ရန္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနျခင္း၊ စစ္အာဏာရွင္စနစ္ သက္ဆိုးရွည္ေစရန္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနသည့္အတြက္ အခုလို Signature Campaign လႈပ္ရွားမူကို လုပ္ေဆာင္ရေၾကာင္း ရွင္းလင္းေျပာၾကားသြားပါသည္။ ဂ်ပန္ႏိူင္ငံတြင္ Sign Campaign ျပဳလုပ္ရျခင္း ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္မွာ အႏ်ဴျမဴ၏ ဆိုးက်ိဳးကို ဂ်ပန္လူမ်ိဳးတို ့ ကိုယ္တိုင္ ခံစားခဲ့ၾကရၿပီး ကမာၻတစ္၀န္း ႏ်ဴကလီးယား လက္နက္ေလ်ာ့ခ်ရန္ ႏ်ဴကလီယားအဆိပ္ အေတာက္ ကင္းရွင္းရန္ ႀကိဳးစားေနေသာ ႏိူင္ငံျဖစ္သည့္အတြက္ ဂ်ပန္ႏိူင္ငံတြင္ လႈပ္ရွားမႈကို စတင္ျပဳလုပ္ရျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။
ႏိူင္ငံေတာ္ဘတ္ဂ်က္ ေဒၚလာသန္းေပါင္းေထာင္ခ်ီ အကုန္က်ခံေနျခင္းသည္ ႏ်ဴကလီးယားစြမ္းအင္မွ ရရွိလာမည့္ အက်ိဳးကို ျပည္သူမ်ား စံစားႏိူင္မည္မဟုတ္၊ ႏ်ဴကလီးယားႏွင့္ပတ္သက္သည့္ ေခတ္မွီနည္းစနစ္ျဖစ္ ထိမ္းသိမ္း ေဆာက္ေရွာက္မႈ ၊ ေဘ းထြက္စြန္ ့ပစ္ ပစၥည္းမ်ားေၾကာင့္ ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ ျဖစ္ေပၚလာမည့္ အႏၱရာယ္ အလြန္စိုးရိမ္ရေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ ႏ်ဴကလီယား စြမ္းအင္ကို ကန္ ့ကြက္ေနသည္မဟုတ္ နအဖမွ ႏ်ဴကလီယား လက္နက္ပိုင္ဆိုင္ရန္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းေနျခင္းကို ကန္ ့ကြက္ရေၾကာင္းကို FWUBC ဒု ဥကၠ႒ ကိုဘုန္းလိႈင္မွ ေထာက္ျပ ေျပာဆိုသြားပါသည္။
ဂ်ပန္ႏိူင္ငံေရာက္ ျမန္မာႏိူင္ငံသားမ်ား၊ ဂ်ပန္ျပည္သူမ်ား ႏွင့္ ဂ်ပန္အလုပ္သမားသမဂၢမ်ားထံမွ စုစုေပါင္းလက္မွတ္ (တစ္ေသါင္း)ေက်ာ္ ေကာက္ခံရရွိထားေၾကာင္း သိရွိရပါသည္။ လာမည့္ ၂၉ ရက္ေန ့ဂ်ပန္အလုပ္သမားေန ့(ေမေဒး)ေန ့ ေနာက္ဆုံးထား ေကာက္ခံသြားမည္ျဖစ္ၿပီး ေကာက္ခံရရွိထားသည့္ လက္မွတ္မ်ားကို ကုလသမဂၢ အေထြေထြအတြင္းေရးမ်ဴးခ်ဳပ္ႏွင့္ လုံၿခဳံေရးေကာင္စီ ႏိူင္ငံမ်ားသို ့ ေပးပို ့သြားမည္ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ ဂ်ပန္အစိုးရကို တိုက္တြန္း တင္ျပသြားႏိူင္ရန္အတြက္ FTUB ဗဟိုႏွင့္ ေဆြးေႏြးတိုင္ပင္ၿပီး ဂ်ပန္ေရာက္ အင္အားစုမ်ားႏွင့္ ပူးေပါင္းပါ၀င္ၿပီး ပိုမိုက်ယ္ျပန္ ့သည့္ လႈပ္ရွားမူကို ဆက္လက္ေဖၚေဆာင္ သြားမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရပါသည္။
သတင္းမွတ္တမ္း ။ PNS-Japan
APPEAL OF FTUB JAPAN COMMITTE FOR NUCLEAR FREE BURMA SIGN CAMPAIGN TO IUF JCC WRITTEN BY PHONE HLAING
To the leaders of IUF-JCC,
We FTUB-Federation of Trade Unions-Burma would like to say thanks to all of you to invite us.-
I came here to speak on behalf of Dr. Min Nyo –Patron of FTUB, and FTUB JAPAN COMMITTE. He was invited here but he cannot attend this meeting, because he is in Thailand now.
We came here to explain and appeal for your support to our Nuclear Free Burma Sign Campaign
First of all, we want to tell you that the goal of our campaign is absolutely not to discourage nuclear energy but to discourage the Burmese Military Regime’s aim to possess Nuclear Weapons. And there is no proper safety measure and can not safeguard nuclear accidents under military régime.
The Regime has been telling the world that it needs a nuclear reactor to supply energy for the country. In reality, we have other energy resources including gas which only is enough for supply.
According to the Burmese and Chinese news sources, the Burmese regime has been building the total of 48 hydropower plants, and on completion of those projects, Burma will be able to fulfill domestic electricity demand in the near future. (app-1)
Hydropower is not the only main energy source in Burma. Our country is also sitting on the very large amount of natural gas deposits. Burma’s proven natural gas reserve ranks 39 in the world. I believe all of you are well aware of the fact that the Burmese junta is selling natural gas to Thailand and China and Burma’s half of the income is coming from natural gas sale. (app-2-a, app-2-b)
So Burma does not need nuclear power to supply its energy needs according to the data I mentioned above.
Burmese Military Regime lies to the world to fulfill its nuclear dream.
Under the regime, Burma is buying and acquiring both high technology and high-tech machines related to the nuclear weapon and missile according to the ISIS report.(app-3) ISIS is Institute for Science and International Security based in United States of America.
NUCLEAR FREE BURMA
PRESENT BY PHONE HLAING
VICE PRESIDENT OF FWUBC
BURMA BUILDING 48
hydropower plants
• May 18, 2009:
• "Myanmar Works To Meet Growing Demand of Electricity"]
• Sources: Xinhua News
• Myanmar [Burma] has been working to meet its domestic
demand of electricity,
• building up a total of 13 hydropower plants covering the power
grids of the whole nation since 1988 when the present
government took office.
• On completion of other 35 ongoing hydropower projects, the
editorial predicts that
• Myanmar will be able to fulfill domestic electricity
demand in the future.
BURMA’S NATURAL GAS RESERVE
RINK 38 IN THE WORLD
• Burma Economy 2010
• SOURCE: CIA World Factbook 2010
• Natural gas - proved reserves(cu m) 2010 Country
Ranks,
• By Rank
• SOURCE: CIA World Factbook 2010
• 38- Burma - 283,200,000,000 -1 January 2009 est
January 28, 2010
-ISIS REPORT ON Burma: a Nuclear Wannabe, Suspicious Links
to North Korea
and High-Tech Procurements to Enigmatic
Facilities.
• Minimal Nuclear Capability
• Currently, Burma has little known indigenous
nuclear
• infrastructure to support the construction of
• nuclear facilities. Nonetheless, it has sought
to purchase
• a nuclear research reactor for about a
decade.
Minimal Nuclear Transparency
• Burma joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
• (NPT) in 1992.
• However, Burma has not agreed to update its
• commitments under the Small Quantities Protocol- SQP.
• Moreover, it has not agreed to the Additional
• Protocol,which would obligate Burma to provide far
• greater information about its nuclear activities and plans
• and allow the IAEA much greater access to Burmese sites.
• U.S. officials have expressed worries about the “nature
• and extent” of Burma’s ties with North Korea.
• Because transparency remains so minimal, the
• fundamental question remains: has Burma decided
• to embark on a covert route to nuclear weapons on
• its own or with the help of North Korea?
Suspicious or Illegal Procurement
Activities-1
• Burma is seeking abroad a large quantity of
top-notch,
• highly sophisticated goods with potential
missile
• and nuclear uses.
• According to one senior European
intelligence official.
• Its military cooperation with
• North Korea has increased over the last
several years,
• fueling concerns about nuclear cooperation.
Suspicious or Illegal Procurement
Activities-2
• North Korea could also supplement Burma’s
own foreign procurement networks, and it
• could sell nuclear goods made in
• North Korea.
• There are lingering questions about two
Pakistani nuclear scientists who reportedly
went to Burma in late 2001,
• Their whereabouts or activities since
• then remain unknown
Namchongang Trading (NCG)
• Evidence of North Korean/Burmese cooperation
includes
• the reported presence in Burma of officials from
• Namchongang Trading (NCG), a North Korean
trading
• company that is sanctioned by U.N. Security
Council.
• Syria’s reactor project depended on assistance from
NCG.
Reports of North Korea selling a
reactor
• Reports of North Korea selling a reactor to Burma date
• back to at least 2004, a time when NCG was helping
• Syria acquire its reactor. According to a 2004
• Asia Times article, citing Indian intelligence, Burma
• approached North Korea in November 2002 as a seller
• of last resort after the military regime failed to acquire a
• reactor from Russia, China, and India.
• The Asia Times article makes the additional claim that
• a reactor deal was signed between Burma and
• North Korea in early 2004. But all these claims remain
• unconfirmed.
In June 2009 Japan arrested three individuals for
attempting to illegally export
a magnetometer to Burma via Malaysia
• In June 2009, Japan arrested three individuals for
• attempting to illegally export a magnetometer to
Burma
• via Malaysia, under the direction of a company
• associated with illicit procurement for North Korean
• military programs. Authorities learned subsequently
that
• this group successfully delivered other nuclear
dual-use
• equipment to Burma.
The judge concluded that there was “thus a risk of
greatly
affecting the peace and security of Japan and the
world.”
• In November 2009, Li Gyeong Ho of Toko Boeki trading
• company was found guilty and given a two year
suspended
• sentence and a fine of six million yen (about $67,000).
• In his ruling, the judge said that all these exports or
• attempted exports involved “all dangerous
equipment
• used to develop and/or manufacture nuclear
weapons.
• The judge concluded that there was “thus a risk of
greatly
• affecting the peace and security of Japan and the world.”
procurements of extremely high
precision expensive dual-use
industrial equipment
According to a European intelligence official,
in 2006 and 2007 Burma made a series of
procurements of extremely high precision,
expensive dual-use industrial equipment,
including computer-numerically controlled
(CNC) machine tools, from companies
located in Switzerland,Germany, and Japan.
• European intelligence services
yielded that the equipment
• was multi-purpose, including
nuclear
• component manufacturing.
SECRET MISSILE OR NUCLEAR
PROGRAM
• The procurements are multipurpose
and difficult to
• correlate conclusively with a
secret missile or nuclear program.
STOP BEFORE TOO LATE
• The Syrian reactor, Iran’s gas
centrifuge uranium enrichment
program, and
• Pakistan’s highly enriched uranium
program were all enabled in large part
• because of the failure of the
international community to halt the
illicit sale
• of nuclear-related technology.
UNSAFEGUARDED NUCLEAR
PROGRAM
• The international community has a
unique opportunity to set a new
precedent
• and prevent Burma from acquiring
• materials that could eventually be
used in an unsafeguarded nuclear
program.
BURMA HAS NO REASON TO
SEEK NUCLEAR WEAPONS
• Burma has no reason to seek nuclear
weapons.
• The international community should
convince Burma
• that pledging not to do so in a truly
verifiable manner
• could provide significant benefits.
STOP BURMA REGIME’S
NUCLEAR PROGRAM NOW!!!!!
•WE FTUB ASK FOR
•YOUR SUPPORT.
•THANK YOU
In reality, the Burmese Generals are trying to possess nuclear weapons following the step of their close friend North Korea. They think that if they possess nuclear weapon, they will be in a stronger position just like the regime in North Korea and cannot be overthrown easily.
It is the real danger of threat to regional stability across Asia including Japan and other nations.
Therefore, we strongly urge the world to prevent Burma’s nuclear program.
Our FTUB has been working hard on it. At the same time, we would like to ask for your support to our campaign. And I also would like to inform you that our associate Japanese trade union JAM (Japanese Association of Metal, Machinery and Manufacturing Workers) has started to collect signatures in KANTO area( not only in their headquarters but also in all grass roots level). We are very hopeful and grateful to such cooperation.
We have already requested the support from following IUF-JCC member unions.
1.Food RENGO
2.UIZENSEN
We also asked for support from All NTT Workers Union of Japan.
We are very hopeful and grateful for their cooperation.
And we are asking for support from all the member unions of IUF-JCC too.
Thank you very much.
Phone Hlaing
Vice President
FWUBC
Federation of Workers’ Union of Burmese Citizens (in Japan)
Member of FTUB JAPAN COMMITTE.
2nd, April, 2010.
Appendixes
(1) May 18, 2009: "Myanmar Works To Meet Growing Demand of Electricity"]
Sources: Xinhua News
(2-a)Corridor of Power By Shwe Gas Movement.
(2-b) EIA - International Energy Data and Analysis for Burma
(3) Burma: a Nuclear Wannabe, Suspicious Links to North Korea and High-Tech Procurements to Enigmatic Facilities- January 28, 2010
GLOBAL CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE 2010 MILITARY ELECTIONS IN BURMA
GLOBAL CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE 2010 MILITARY ELECTIONS IN BURMA
APPEAL
To the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hon. Franco Frattini
To the Chairs of the Foreign Affairs Committees of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and Senate
To the EU Special Envoy for Burma, Hon. Piero Fassino
I strongly condemn the Burmese military junta, the sham Constitution and the unacceptable election laws which prevent the Burmese heroine, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the other over 2,100 political prisoners to stand in and cast their ballot at the upcoming elections, while the political parties – in order to continue to exist – must expel Aung San Suu Kyi and the other political prisoners and swear to protect and respect the “sham Constitution”.
These laws are the tragic confirmation of the total non-credibility of the elections and reveal the absolute lack of will, by the junta, to undertake a fast and effective transition to democracy.
These laws follow the imposition of a sham Constitution that will perpetuate the power of the military junta and which prevents freedom of political and trade union organisation, provides for the possibility of continuing to exploit forced labour and the continued violation of the fundamental human rights and guarantees the impunity of the members of the military who are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Alongside the Burmese FTUB trade union and democratic organisations, I denounce these elections as a further attempt by the military junta to keep a firm hold on power, albeit in civilian clothing, in an authoritarian and repressive manner, while the rule of law will remain a fiction used by those governments that are set on continuing to deplete the country of its natural, social and human resources.
I denounce the dramatic increase in repression of the people’s fundamental human rights, in murders, rapes, arbitrary arrest, forced labour, the use of child soldiers, and the tremendous worsening of the living and working conditions of people that has sparked large-scale strikes in the industrial areas of Rangoon, forcing thousands of workers to risk their freedom.
I support the requests of the clandestine trade union movement and all of the Burmese democratic organisations calling on the international community to subject the recognition of the upcoming elections to the following conditions:
1. the immediate and unconditional release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all the other political prisoners, and the protection of their right to take part and stand in the elections;
2. the ceasing of all attacks against the ethnic communities and democratic activists;
3. the immediate launching of a genuine and inclusive dialogue between the junta, the democratic organisations and ethnic nationalities, including a reform of the Constitution.
I call on:
• the Italian Government, Parliament and the EU Special Envoy for Burma to support the three conditions detailed above and to subject the recognition of the elections to their application, launching urgent consultations with the Burmese trade unions and democratic organisations;
• the Italian Government to commit itself to ensuring that the EU decides to further strengthen the targeted economic sanctions by including the financial and insurance sectors as well, with the prohibition to make new investments and implementing certain and effective control procedures. The sanctions should be applied flexibly, according to the positive or negative developments in the political process;
• the EU to promote these legitimate requests in its negotiations with the other Asian countries;
• the EU to actively call on the UN Security Council to approve a total arms embargo on Burma;
• the EU to support the recommendations by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Burma to set up a UN Commission of Inquiry on the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the junta.
Italy must no longer remain silent.
PRESS RELEASE-BONANNI: first signatory of the CISL Appeal for Burma
PRESS RELEASE
BONANNI: first signatory of the CISL Appeal for Burma
Appeal for a commitment against the upcoming sham elections in Burma, which are set to perpetuate the military dictatorship in civilian clothing, the violation of human rights, forced labour and the prohibition against political and trade union freedom, ensuring the impunity of the military junta for its crimes against humanity.
The CISL launches an urgent appeal to the Italian Government and to the European Union to respond to the call made by the Burmese trade unions and democratic organisations to the international community for subjecting the recognition of the upcoming elections to the following conditions:
1. the immediate and unconditional release of Aung San Suu Kyi and of all the other political prisoners, and the protection of their right to take part and stand in the elections;
2. the ceasing of all attacks against the ethnic communities and democratic activists;
3. the immediate launching of a genuine and inclusive dialogue between the junta, the democratic organisations and the ethnic nationalities, including the reform of the Constitution.
Through this appeal, CISL strongly condemns the Burmese military junta and the unacceptable election laws recently introduced, which prevent the country’s heroine, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the other over 2,100 political prisoners to stand in and cast their ballot at the upcoming elections. These laws are the tragic confirmation of the total non-credibility of the elections and reveal the absolute lack of will by the junta to undertake a fast and effective transition to democracy.
CISL invites you to sign this appeal calling on:
• the Italian Government, Parliament and the EU Special Envoy for Burma to support the three conditions detailed above and subject the recognition of the elections to their implementation, launching urgent consultations with the Burmese trade unions and democratic organisations;
• the Italian Government to commit itself to ensuring that the EU decides to further strengthen the targeted economic sanctions by including the financial and insurance sectors as well, with the prohibition to make new investments and implementing certain and effective monitoring procedures. The sanctions should be applied flexibly, according to the positive or negative developments in the political process;
• the EU to promote these legitimate requests in its negotiations particularly with the Asian countries;
• the EU to actively call on the UN Security Council to approve a total arms embargo on Burma;
• the EU to support the recommendation by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Burma to set up a UN Commission of Inquiry on the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the junta.
Italy must no longer remain silent.
Sign our appeal online at the CISL website www.cisl.it or at www.birmaniademocratica.org.
NLD Says 'No' to Election
NLD Says 'No' to Election
By Taunggyi Time သတင္း
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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
US won't accept legitimacy of Myanmar's elections
Washington - The United States will not recognize the outcome of Myanmar's elections scheduled for later this year because of new laws that ban political prisoners and the country's leading democratic activist from participating, the US State Department said Wednesday. The military junta that runs Myanmar, published a law on Wednesday that stated 2,000 imprisoned dissidents cannot participate, effectively sidelining jailed activist Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the National League for Democracy.
"We made clear that, given the tenor of the election laws that they have put forward, there's no hope that this election will be credible," State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said, adding the laws make the election a "mockery of the democratic process."
The regime has yet to announce a date for the election, the last of which took place 20 years ago before the military junta seized power and began rounding up democratic activists. Suu Kyi has been in prison or under house arrest for years.
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/313477,us-wont-accept-legitimacy-of-myanmars-elections.html
The United States has applied sanctions to Myanmar to keep pressure on the regime for democratic reforms, and the Obama administration had reached out to Myanmar hoping to encourage change. But those efforts do not appear to be working.
"Our engagement with Burma will have to continue until we can make clear that the results thus far are not what we had expected and that they are going to have to do better," Crowley said.
Copyright DPA
Read more: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/313477,us-wont-accept-legitimacy-of-myanmars-elections.html#ixzz0hsW9mRk4
ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဝင္ေရး မဝင္ေရး၊ အထ အထုိင္
http://www.irrawaddy.org/bur/index.php/articles/2-articles/2712-2010-03-04-07-42-11
ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဝင္ေရး မဝင္ေရး၊ အထ အထုိင္
Thursday, 04 March 2010 14:40 ခက္ထန္
ယခုႏွစ္တြင္ ျဖစ္ေပၚလာမည္ဟု ဆုိသည့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ အတြက္ အနည္းဆံုး ရွိသင့္ ရွိသင့္ထိုက္ေသာ ျပင္ဆင္ခြင့္ ျပဳရမည့္ အခ်ိန္မွာ အနည္း ငယ္သာ က်န္ေတာ့သည္။ ထိုအခ်က္ကပင္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ၏ ျဖစ္လာလတၱံ႔ေသာ သရုပ္သကန္ကို ေဖာ္ျပေနသေယာင္ ရွိသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ ဤအေျခအေနမွာပင္ ကြဲျပားျခားနားေသာ အထိုင္ေပၚမွေန၍ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲသို႔ ဝင္ေရး၊ မဝင္ေရး ဘက္ႏွစ္ဘက္မွာလည္း အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္ ကိုယ္စီျဖင့္ ျပင္ဆင္ေနၾကသည္။ အျပန္အလွန္ ေဝဖန္ ေစာေၾကာေနၾကသည္။ မည္သို႔ေသာ အေျခခံ ကြဲျပားခ်က္ေပၚမွ ျပင္ဆင္ၾကသနည္းဟု သံုးသပ္ၾကည့္ရန္ ရွိသည္။
ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ၊ ခ်င္းမုိင္ၿမိဳ႕တြင္ ယခင္တပတ္က ၇ ႀကိမ္ေျမာက္ ျမန္မာ သတင္းသမဂၢ ညီလာခံ က်င္းပရာ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဝင္ေရး မဝင္ေရးႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္သည့္ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲ တခု ပါဝင္ခဲ့ျပီး အၾကိတ္ အနယ္ ရွိခဲ့သည္။ ဝင္ေရး ဘက္တြင္ မၾကာေသးမီက ေပၚေပါက္ လာသည့္ ဒီမိုရက္တစ္ ပါတီမွ ဦးသုေဝႏွင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရွိ NGO တခုမွ ေဒါက္တာ ခင္ေဇာ္ဝင္းတို႔က ရပ္တည္ ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ ၾကၿပီး မဝင္ေရး ဘက္တြင္ ျပည္ပ အေျခစုိက္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ အမ်ိဳးသား ေကာင္စီ (NCUB) မွ ဦးေမာင္ေမာင္က ေျပာဆိုသည္။ ယင္းသို႔ ဝင္ေရး မဝင္ေရး ဘက္ ႏွစ္ဘက္ အျပင္ နယ္ပယ္ မ်ိဳးစံုမွ လာေသာ ပရိသတ္မ်ား၏ ေမးခြန္းမ်ား၊ ေဝဖန္မႈမ်ား၊ စကားစစ္ထိုး မႈမ်ားသည္ အနည္းႏွင့္ အမ်ားဆိုသလို ျမန္မာ့ႏိုင္ငံေရး ဝန္းက်င္၏ စရိုက္ လကၡဏာကို ေရာင္ျပန္ဟပ္ ေဖာ္ျပေန သေယာင္ ရွိသည္။
ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဝင္ေရး၊ အထ
ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဝင္ေရးဆိုရာ၌ ျပည္တြင္းႏိုင္ငံေရးအင္အားစုတခ်ိဳ႕၏ ေျခလွမ္းကို ဆိုလိုပါသည္။ အစဥ္အလာ ရွိခဲ့သည့္ ဝါရင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမား တခ်ိဳ႕၊ ယင္းတို႔၏ ပါတီမ်ား၊ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ထြက္ေပါက္ဟု သေဘာထား ေပၚလြင္စြာ ေဖာ္ျပလာေသာ ျပည္တြင္း မီဒီယာမ်ားဟု ထည့္သြင္း ေရတြက္ႏိုင္သည္။ သူတို႔အဖို႔ ကာလရွည္ၾကာစြာ မလူးမလြန္႔သာသည့္ အေနအထားမွ ေရြ႕လ်ား လိုလာေသာ သေဘာကို ထင္ဟပ္သည္။ လႈပ္ရွားစရာ 'ခြင္' မရွိသည့္ အခ်ိန္တြင္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ေကာက္ရိုးတမွ်င္ အျဖစ္ ယူဆလာသည္။ လႊတ္ေတာ္တြင္ အလုိအေလ်ာက္ ေနရာရမည့္ တပ္မေတာ္သား ကုိယ္စားလွယ္ ၂၅ ရာခိုင္ႏႈန္း ဟူေသာ ျပဌာန္းခ်က္ျဖင့္ ခ်ည္တုပ္ထားသည့္တိုင္ လတ္တေလာတြင္ ေဘာင္အတြင္းမွ လႈပ္ၾကည့္ၾကမည့္၊ လႊတ္ေတာ္ကိုလည္း 'စင္' တခု အျဖစ္ ျမင္ေယာင္ၾကည့္ေနၾကသည့္ သေဘာကို ေတြ႔ရသည္။
ဝင္ေရးဘက္မွ ရပ္တည္ ေျပာဆိုရန္ ညီလာခံ တက္ေရာက္လာသည့္ွ ဦးသုေဝႏွင့္ ေဒါက္တာခင္ေဇာ္ဝင္းတို႔က အထက္ပါ အတိုင္းပင္ ရည္ညႊန္း ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ၾကသည္။ စစ္တပ္သည္ ၂၀၀၈ ဖဲြ႔စည္းအုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ပုံ အေျခခံ ဥပေဒကို အကာအကြယ္ယူ၍ တပ္ဆုတ္သည္ဟု ဦးသုေဝက ယူဆသလို၊ ႏုိင္ငံေရးသမားမ်ား မလႈပ္ဘဲေနၾကလွ်င္ ျမန္မာျပည္ အေျခအေန ပိုဆိုးသြားမည္ ဟုလည္း ေဒါက္တာခင္ေဇာ္ဝင္းက ေထာက္ျပသည္။ သူတို႔က ေရြ႕လ်ားမရသည့္ အေနအထားတြင္ စစ္အစုိးရ ဖြင့္ေပးလာသည့္ ကန္႔သတ္ခ်က္ လမ္းေၾကာင္းအတြင္းမွ ေမွ်ာလိုက္ၾကည့္ၾကမည္ဟု သေဘာရသည္။
ဤ ဝင္ေရးဘက္ကို သံုးသပ္ၾကည့္လွ်င္ အေလွ်ာ့အတင္းႏွင့္ ကစားေနရသည့္ အျဖစ္ကို ျမင္ရသည္။ ရသည့္ ေအာက္ေျခကို တဆင့္ တိုးၾကည့္မည္၊ 'ထ' ၾကည့္မည္။ သူတို႔အတြက္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ႏွင့္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ေရာက္မွ မီးစင္ၾကည့္ကေရးသည္ ဒုတိယ အစီအစဥ္ ျဖစ္ေနသည္။ ေအာက္မွ အထက္သို႔ ေမွ်ာ္ၾကည့္သည့္ စနစ္ဟု ျမင္ရသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ ထိုင္ေနအေကာင္းသား ထသြားမွ က်ိဳးမွန္းသိ ျဖစ္မည္လား၊ လႈပ္ၾကည့္မွ ျမဳပ္မည္လား ဆိုသည္က ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ရန္သာ ရွိသည္။
ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ မဝင္ေရး၊ အထိုင္
မဝင္ေရး အထိုင္တြင္ ျပည္ပေရာက္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အင္အားစုမ်ား၊ တိုင္းရင္းသား အင္အားစုမ်ား၊ ျပည္ပ မီဒီယာတခ်ိဳ႕တို႔ ပါဝင္သည္။ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမုိကေရစီ အဖဲြ႔ခ်ဳပ္ကမူ ဝင္ေရး မဝင္ေရးကို ေရႊဂံုတုိင္ေၾကညာခ်က္ျဖင့္ စည္းသတ္ထားသည္။ လိုက္ေလ်ာလွ်င္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဝင္မည္၊ မလိုက္ေလ်ာလွ်င္ မဝင္ဟု လမ္းေၾကာင္းေပးထားျပီး ျဖစ္သည္။ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ မဝင္ေရး ရပ္တည္သူမ်ား အေနျဖင့္ ၉၀ ျပည့္ႏွစ္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲရလဒ္ကို ဆုပ္ကိုင္သည္။ ၂၀၀၈ အေျခခံဥပေဒ ျပင္ဆင္ေရးကို ေတာင္းဆိုသူက ေတာင္းဆုိသည္။ ေရႊဂံုတိုင္ ေၾကညာစာတမ္းကို ေထာက္ခံေဆာ္ၾသသူက ေဆာ္ၾသသည္။ ၉၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ရလဒ္မွ အစခ်ီ၍ စစ္အာဏာပိုင္မ်ား၏ ကတိကဝတ္၊ လုပ္ထံုး လုပ္နည္းမ်ားကို လံုးဝမယံုၾကည္ဟု ျငင္းဆိုသည္။ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို လက္မခံေၾကာင္း၊ စစ္အစုိးရက ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ဆက္လုပ္လွ်င္ တုိက္ပြဲ ဆက္ဝင္မည္ဟု ဦးေမာင္ေမာင္က ဦးသုေဝ၊ ေဒါက္တာခင္ေဇာ္ဝင္းတို႔ ေရွ႕ေမွာက္မွာပင္ ေျပာခဲ့သည္။
မဝင္ေရးဘက္မွ သံုးသပ္ရမည္ဆိုလွ်င္ ေလွ်ာ့ရန္လည္း မရွိသလို၊ အေခ်ာ့လည္း မခံဟူေသာ ခံယူခ်က္ကို ထင္ဟပ္ျပသည္။ ဝင္ေရး 'အထ' အဖြဲ႔ႏွင့္ မတူဘဲ အထက္ပိုင္း ေပၚလစီျဖစ္ေသာ ၂၀၀၈ အေျခခံဥပေဒပိုင္းမွ စတင္ ကိုင္တြယ္ ျပင္ဆင္လိုျပီး က်န္ကိစၥက ဒုတိယ အစီအစဥ္ျဖစ္သည္။ အထက္မွ ေအာက္သို႔ တဆင့္ခ်င္း သြားရန္ စဥ္းစားသည့္ စနစ္ ျဖစ္သည္။ ကမာၻ႔မိသားစု အဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ားကုိ ဆြယ္တရားေဟာမည္ျဖစ္သည္။ အထိုင္အေနႏွင့္ 'ယိုင္' ဖို႔ မရွိဟု သံုးသပ္ရသည္။
အဓိကအားျဖင့္ ႏွစ္ဘက္စလံုး၏ ဦးတည္ရာ လမ္းေၾကာင္းတုိ႔မွာ ရသေလာက္ စၿပီး ေပၚလစီကို တက္ျပင္ေရး၊ ေပၚလစီ အေပၚပိုင္း ျပင္ျပီးမွ အေသးစိတ္ ဆက္သြားေရး ဟူ၍ ေျပာင္းျပန္ ျဖစ္ေနၾကသည္။ အတြင္းက 'ေဘာင္'ကို ကန္႔သတ္ခ်က္ အေနႏွင့္ လက္ခံျပီး ကစားသည္၊ အျပင္က 'ေဘာင္'ကို ဖ်က္သိမ္းပစ္ေရး အရင္ ေတာင္းဆိုသည္။ တနည္းအားျဖင့္ ဝင္ေရး အပိုင္းက အေပ်ာ့ထည္ သံုးျပီး မဝင္ေရးက အမာထည္ကို ကိုင္စြဲသည္။
တဖက္တြင္ စစ္အစုိးရက ေတြ႔ဆံု ေဆြးေႏြးေရးကို မသိက်ိဳးကြ်ံ ျပဳလ်က္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ အပါအဝင္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားမ်ားကို ဆက္လက္ ထိန္းသိမ္းထားျခင္းျဖင့္ ျပည္တြင္း အတိုက္အခံ အင္အားစုကို ခ်ည့္နဲ႔ေအာင္ လုပ္ထားဆဲ ျဖစ္သည္။ ခါးပိုက္ေဆာင္ျဖစ္ေသာ ျပည္ေထာင္စု ၾကံ့ခိုင္ေရးႏွင့္ ဖြံ႕ျဖိဳးေရး အသင္း ေျခလွမ္း သြက္လာျခင္း၊ စစ္ဝတ္စံု ခြ်တ္ရန္ ျပင္ဆင္ျခင္း၊ ပုဂၢလိကပိုင္ ေခါင္းစဥ္ေအာက္မွ စီးပြားေရး လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားကို လႊဲေျပာင္းယူလာျခင္း စသည့္ မူမမွန္ေသာ ေျခလွမ္းမ်ားကို ေတြ႔ေနရသည္။
အာဏာပုိင္တုိ႔က ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲအတြက္ လံုေလာက္သည့္ ျပင္ဆင္ခြင့္ မေပးေသးျခင္း၊ ပြင့္လင္းျမင္သာမႈ မရွိျခင္းတို႔မွာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို လက္ခံလိုသူ၊ ဝင္လိုသူမ်ားအတြက္ပင္ ထိခိုက္ေစေသာ အခ်က္မ်ားျဖစ္သည္။ ယင္းအခ်က္သည္ပင္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ဆန္႔က်င္သူမ်ား အဖို႔ ခိုင္မာေသာ အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္လည္း ျဖစ္လာေစသည္။ ဝင္ခ်င္သူမ်ားအဖို႔ ေသခ်င္သည့္က်ား ေတာေျပာင္း ျဖစ္မည္ေလာ၊ အစဥ္တစိုက္ ဆန္႔က်င္သူမ်ားအဖို႔ေရာ မည္မွ် အထိုင္ ေညာင္းဦးမည္လဲ ဆိုသည္မွာ မၾကာမီ ထြက္ရွိလာမည္ဟုေမွ်ာ္လင့္ရေသာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဥပေဒအျပင္ ေရွ႕တလွမ္းတိုးသြားမည့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ရလဒ္အေပၚ မူတည္ေပသည္။ ။
ITUC Burma Conference 2010 in Tokyo held on 11-12 Feb.
(Tentative)
Statement by the International Trade Union Confederation Conference “Building
Solidarity with Burmese workers, Tokyo”,11-12 February 2010
The 5th international trade union conference on Burma hosted in Tokyo by the
JTUC-RENGO was held in order to prepare for the ITUC’s upcoming Congress in
Vancouver in June 2010, where the future strategy of the international trade union
movement with regards to Burma will be decided.
The Conference was a working session on all the strategic options available to the
international trade union movement ahead of the announced elections in Burma in
2010. The possibility that certain governments may shift their policy towards Burma in
the wake of the elections and the international trade union movement’s policy response
were discussed. In the absence of constitutional change and dialogue, the Conference
affirmed that the elections could not be considered legitimate, It expressed its firm
opposition to the 2008 constitution adopted by the regime, and called for meaningful
dialogue before elections are held.
The Conference reaffirmed the conclusions and the solidarity expressed in 2007 during
the 4th Burma Conference held in Kathmandu and called for a strengthening of the
commitment undertaken in 2007 for the restoration of democracy and to combat the use
of forced labour in Burma. The Conference welcomed the efforts undertaken by
affiliates in the region and globally to raise awareness with their governments about
workers’ rights and democratization in Burma.
Forced labour is still prevalent in Burma despite the ILO Commission of Inquiry in
1998 and people reporting cases of forced labour continue to be persecuted. Even after
the conclusion of the Supplementary Understanding in 2007, giving immunity to
victims and complainants, people have been arrested and too many remain in prison.
The Conference expressed outrage at the continued reprisals against complainants and
against the fact that the present number of detainees were as high as 23.
The Conference welcomed the holding of the first congress of the FTUB in March 2009
and the subsequent affiliation of the Burmese trade union to the ITUC and the
ITUC-AP in 2009. The Conference expressed the urgent need to address more
aggressively the situation with regards to freedom of association in Burma. The
Conference stressed that while it was important to maintain the pressure on the issue
of forced labour it should be considered, how the issue of freedom of association could be
given greater attention, especially within the framework of the ILO. It therefore
proposed tabling a complaint leading to the establishment of an ILO Commission of
Inquiry on freedom of association in Burma.
The discussion happened against the backdrop of an increasing number of strikes in
Burma by discontented workers and growing divisions within the military. In the course
of the Conference, the FTUB received information about a strike by 12000 workers
inside Burma.
The overall strategy within the ILO was discussed in depth, both with regards to forced
labour and freedom of association. The Conference reaffirmed its strong support for the
decisions of the ILO Governing Body and the Conclusions of the 2006 ILC Selection
Committee to pursue a referral to the International Court of Justice.
The strategy with regards to investment in Burma was the subject of serious
discussions. The Conference reaffirmed the commitment towards divestment and to
maintain pressure on all companies operating in Burma as their operations directly or
indirectly serve to prop the illegitimate regime. It was proposed that the different
database and information sources on pension funds and companies investing and/or
operating in Burma be better coordinated to bring more aggressively targeted pressure
to bear.
The Conference concluded that there was a need to aggressively follow-up on the call by
the ILO to Governments, Workers and Employers to take all “appropriate measures to
ensure that the said member cannot take advantage of such relations to perpetuate or
extend the system of forced or compulsory labour referred to by the Commission of
Inquiry… and report back in due course and at appropriate intervals to the Governing
Body” within the framework of its Resolution adopted in 2000.
The Conference reiterated the resolve of the international trade union movement to
support the struggles of our Sisters and Brothers in Burma and their capacity through
the FTUB to carry out their just fight for democracy and workers’ rights. The
Conference agreed a plan of action to strengthen the capacity of the FTUB by providing
support for a reinforcement of its structures. It finally committed to mobilizing support
amongst ITUC affiliates for the funding of an expansion of FTUB’s activities and
training programs.
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.
ေနအိမ္ အက်ယ္ခ်ဳပ္မွ လြတ္ေျမာက္လာသူ ဦးတင္ဦးက ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၏ လမ္းညႊန္ခ်က္အတိုင္း ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး ဆက္လက္ေဆာင္ရြက္ သြားမည္ဟုေျပာ
ရန္ကုန္ ၊ ေဖေဖၚဝါရီ ၁၃။
ျမန္မာ့တပ္မေတာ္၏ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးေဟာင္းႏွင့္ NLD ၏ ဒုဥကၠဌ ျဖစ္သူ ဦးတင္ဦးသည္ ယေန႔ ညေနပိုင္းက ေနအိမ္ အက်ယ္ခ်ဳပ္ က်ခံေနရရာမွ ျပန္လည္ လြတ္ေျမာက္လာခဲ့ၿပီးေနာက္ သတင္းေထာက္မ်ား၏ ေမးျမန္း ခ်က္မ်ားကို ေျဖၾကားရာတြင္ ဒီမိုကေရစီအေရးအတြက္ ဆက္လက္ ေဆာင္ရြက္သြားမည္ဟု ေျပာၾကားခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရပါသည္။
ေနအိမ္အက်ယ္ခ်ဳပ္ႏွင့္ အက်ဥ္းေထာင္တို႔တြင္ ခုႏွစ္နီးပါးခန္႔ ေနခဲ့ရသူ ယခု အသက္ ၈၃ႏွစ္ ရွိၿပီ ျဖစ္သူ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးေဟာင္းႏွင့္ NLD ၏ ဒုဥကၠဌ ျဖစ္သူ သူရ ဦးတင္ဦးသည္ ယေန႔ည ၈နာရီ ၃၀ က ေနအိမ္ အက်ယ္ ခ်ဳပ္မွ ျပန္လည္ လြတ္ေျမာက္လာၿပီ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။
၁၉၆၄ခုႏွစ္မွ ၁၉၆၆ ခုႏွစ္အထိ တပ္မေတာ္၏ ကာကြယ္ေရး ဦးစီးခ်ဳပ္အျဖစ္ တာဝန္ ထမ္းေဆာင္ခဲ့ဘူးသူ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးေဟာင္း သူရ ဦးတင္ဦးက လြတ္ေျမာက္လာၿပီးသည့္ေနာက္ NLD ၏ ဒုဥကၠဌ တာဝန္ကို ဆက္လက္ ထမ္းေဆာင္သြားမည္ဟု ေျပာဆိုခဲ့သလို လက္ရွိေနအိမ္ အက်ယ္ခ်ဳပ္ က်ခံေနရဆဲျဖစ္ေသာ ျမန္မာ့ အတိုက္အခံ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၏ ဦးေဆာင္မႈ အတိုင္း ဆက္လက္ေဆာင္ရြက္ သြားမည္ဟု ထုတ္ေဖၚေျပာၾကားခဲ့ပါသည္။
၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္အတြင္း က်င္းပမည္ဟု နအဖက ေၾကျငာထားခဲ့ေသာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲႏွင့္ ပါတ္သက္ေသာ သေဘာ ထားကို သတင္းေထာက္မ်ား၏ ေမးျမန္းခ်က္ကို ေျဖၾကားခဲ့ရာတြင္ ဦးတင္ဦးက NLD ပါတီေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ NLD ပါတီ ၏ အဆံုးအျဖတ္အတိုင္း ဆက္လက္ ေဆာင္ရြက္သြားမည္ဟု ေျပာၾကား သြား ခဲ့ပါသည္။
ဦးတင္ဦးသည္ ၂၀၀၃ ခုႏွစ္ ေမလ၃၀ရက္ေန႔က က စစ္ကိုင္းတိုင္း ဒီပဲယင္းတြင္ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ေသာ လုပ္ႀကံခံရမႈတြင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ အတူ ပါဝင္ခဲ့ၿပီး ေနာက္ပိုင္းတြင္ ကေလးေထာင္တြင္ ဖမ္းဆီး ခ်ဳပ္ေႏွာင္ျခင္း ခံခဲ့ ရပါသည္။
၂၀၀၄ခုႏွစ္ ေဖေဖၚဝါရီလ ၁၄ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ဦးတင္ဦးအား စစ္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္သူမ်ားက ရန္ကုန္သို႔ ေလယာဥ္ျဖင့္ ျပန္ပို႔ ခဲ့ၿပီး ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ကို အႏၱရယ္ျပဳမည့္ သူမ်ားေဘးရန္မွ ကာကြယ္ေစာင့္ေရွာက္ေရး ဥပေဒျဖင့္ ေနအိမ္ အက်ယ္ ခ်ဳပ္က်ခံျခင္း ခံခဲ့ရသည္မွာ လြတ္ေျမာက္လာေသာ ယေန႔ အထိ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။
ဦးတင္ဦးသည္ ကေလးေထာင္တြင္ ၈ႏွစ္ႏွင့္ ၁၆ရက္ ေနခဲ့ရသည္သည့္ အျပင္ အထက္ပါ ဥပေဒအရ ေနအိမ္ အက်ယ္ခ်ဳပ္ ျဖင့္ ၆ႏွစ္နီးပါးခန္႔ ေနထိုင္ခဲ့ရပါသည္။
ဦးတင္ဦးက သတင္းေထာက္မ်ားကို ဆက္လက္ ေျပာဆိုရာတြင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရး အတြက္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၏ ဦးေဆာင္မႈ အတိုင္း ဆက္လက္ ေဆာင္ရြက္သြားမည္ဟု ေျပာျပသြားခဲ့ပါ သည္။
ျပည္တြင္း သတင္းေထာက္(ေရႊဝါေရာင္ သတင္းလႊာ)
国際労働組合総連合（ITUC）東京ビルマ会議 2010年2月11日－12日
国際労働組合総連合（ITUC）東京ビルマ会議 2010年2月11日－12日
ビルマの労働者との連帯構築
Statement by the International Trade Union Confederation Conference
“Building Solidarity with Burmese workers, Tokyo”,
11-12 February 2010
ITUC Statements Eng Japanese
The Jakarta Post - Malaysia plans IDs for refugees to prevent arrest
The Jakarta Post - Malaysia plans IDs for refugees to prevent arrest
The Associated Press , Kuala Lumpur | Mon, 02/01/2010 1:14 PM | World
Malaysia plans to issue identification cards to refugees who are recognized by the United Nations, allowing them to stay in the country temporarily and avoid arrest as illegal immigrants.
Malaysia, which has declined to join the U.N. convention on refugees for fear of attracting a flood of migrants, previously has arrested refugees frequently as illegal aliens.
Mostly from Myanmar, the refugees often have spent months in overcrowded detention center and faced caning and deportation.
The plans announced Monday reflect a softening of Malaysia's position toward the refugees, although it continues to refuse them official recognition.
Home Ministry Secretary General Mahmood Adam said the government would work with the U.N. refugee agency to issue the cards so immigration enfocement personnel would recognize and spare U.N.-designated refugees.
"As long as they are recognized as refugees by the U.N., they can stay here temporarily, " he told The Associate Press. "They cannot work here, but they can do odd jobs."
He could not give an exact timeline but said the initiative was in the "final stage."
According to the U.N. agency, about 75,600 refugees and asylum-seekers were in Malaysia as of November. Most fled persecution in Myanmar.
Yante Ismal, a spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, welcomed the development and further discussions to form a documentation system.
"Proper documentation for refugees is essential to their protection," she said.
All of the refugees in Malaysia are waiting to be resettled to a third countr that officially accepts refugees, which grants them legal status and the right to work.
Burma has nuclear ambitions: report
http://www.mizzima.com/news/world/3465-burma-has-nuclear-ambitions-report-.html
Burma has nuclear ambitions: report
Saturday, 30 January 2010 15:57 Mungpi
New Delhi (Mizzima) – Burma’s military junta nurses nuclear ambitions, though there is insufficient evidence to prove the regime is building a secret nuclear reactor or facilities, a leading ‘Think Tank’ from the United States said.
David Albright, Paul Brannan, Robert Kelley and Andrea Scheel Stricker, well-known experts of proliferation of nuclear weapons, in a report said the Burmese regime’s suspicious links to North Korea and Russia’s agreement to sell a nuclear reactor to Burma in 2001 has led to suspicion of the junta’s nuclear intentions.
The report published by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) on January 28, 2010, said “Although evidence does not exist to make a compelling case that Burma is building secret nuclear reactors or fuel cycle facilities, as has been reported, the information does warrant governments and companies adopting extreme caution in any dealings with Burma.”
The authors of the report said, suspicions about Burma’s nuclear intentions came after the junta reached an agreement with Russia to sell a research reactor in 2001 and the resumption of a formal military relationship between North Korea and Burma in 2007 intensified.
Though information available is incomplete, US officials are concerned that the Burmese regime’s relationship with North Korea could possibly extend to nuclear cooperation, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying, in July 2009, “We know there are also growing concerns about military cooperation between North Korea and Burma, which we take seriously.”
Philip J. Crowley, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, on Thursday told reporters in Washington, “We – in our discussions with Burma, do have concerns about certain activity and the potential – that create risks to the global non-proliferation agenda.”
The report, titled ‘Burma: A Nuclear Wannabe; Suspicious Links to North Korea; High-Tech Procurements and Enigmatic Facilities’, said certain equipment, which could be used in a nuclear or missile programme, went to isolated Burmese manufacturing compounds of unknown purpose.
Evidence on Burma and North Korea’s relationship supports that the two countries have discussed nuclear cooperation, “but is not sufficient to establish that North Korea is building nuclear facilities for Burma’s military junta, despite recent reports to the contrary,” the report said.
“Nonetheless, no one can ignore the possibility of significant North Korean nuclear assistance to this enigmatic, military regime,” said the authors, giving the example of North Korea’s secret sales of a reactor to Syria, which went unnoticed even by the world’s best intelligence agencies until late in the reactor’s construction.
The authors also urged governments and companies to be vigilant in examining Burma’s enquiries or requests for equipment, whether via Burmese governmental entities, Burmese trading companies or other foreign trading companies because Burma is buying a wide variety of suspicious dual-use goods internationally.
“Companies should treat enquiries from Burma no differently than those from Iran, Pakistan, or Syria,” the report said.
Another evidence, leading to suspicion of Burma’s nuclear ambition is the reported presence of officials from Namchongang Trading (NCG), a North Korean trading company that has sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the authors said.
While the nature of cooperation between Burma and NCG, which also reportedly assisted Syria’s reactor project, remains largely unknown, the NCG was said to have sold equipment to Burma or provided some type of technical assistance.
Though there is no concrete evidence of North Korea supplying Burma a reactor, the report said, “Any involvement by NCG in Burma is bound to increase suspicions about such a sale.”
The report also analyses the possibilities of Burma using North Korean trading entities to acquire overseas sensitive nuclear and nuclear dual use goods.
“Its military cooperation with North Korea has increased over the last several years, fuelling concerns about nuclear cooperation. North Korea could also supplement Burma’s own foreign procurement networks, and it could sell nuclear goods made in North Korea,” the report said.
The authors said, given the evidence, there remain sound reasons to suspect that the military regime in Burma might be pursuing a long-term strategy to make nuclear weapons. However, contrary to public reports, the military junta does not appear to be close to establishing a significant nuclear capability.
“Information suggesting the construction of major nuclear facilities appears unreliable or inconclusive,” the report said.
Although Burma and North Korea appear to be cooperating on illegal procurements, who is helping who cannot be determined with the available information, the authors said.
“Nonetheless, the evidence supports that the regime wants to develop a nuclear capability of some type, but whether its ultimate purpose is peaceful or military remains a mystery,” the report said.
The authors, while concluding, suggest that the outstanding questions about the regime’s activities require that there be more scrutiny of Burma to ascertain if there is an underlying secret nuclear programme.
“A priority is to establish greater transparency over Burma’s and North Korea’s activities and inhibit any nuclear or nuclear dual-use transfers to Burma. A related problem is ensuring that Burma is not helping North Korea acquire nuclear and other military goods illegally,” the report suggested.
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.
ミャンマー総選挙、１０月１０日軸に調整 軍政筋明かす2010年1月7日9時8分
ミャンマー総選挙、１０月１０日軸に調整 軍政筋明かす2010年1月7日9時8分
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【バンコク＝山本大輔】ミャンマー（ビルマ）の軍事政権が独自の「民政移管プロセス」の一環として今年中の実施を表明している総選挙について、軍政筋は６日、１０月１０日の投票を軸に調整が進んでいると明らかにした。現職閣僚の多くが４月までに辞任して立候補する予定で、投票時期については「選挙活動に半年ほどが必要」との判断が働いているという。
軍政筋によると、選挙は人民代表院（下院＝定数４４０）と民族代表院（上院＝同２２４）で同時に実施され、４月前後に選挙法や政党法などが公表される見通し。軍政は閣僚を辞任する高位軍人らに加え、翼賛組織「連邦団結発展協会（ＵＳＤＡ）」のメンバーらに２～３の翼賛政党を設立させるとみられている。
２００８年５月に成立した新憲法では、上下両院の議席の４分の１は軍が指名することになっており、選挙で決まるのは残りの議席。ここに軍の影響下にある議員を大量に送り込み、選挙後も実質支配を続ける体制を作り上げるのが軍政側の狙いだ。
選挙を見据えた動きも出始めた。軍政は、数十万人の公務員の給与を今月末の支給分から一律２万チャット（実勢レートで１８４０円）増とする方針を決めたが、政府職員の票の取り込みを狙った措置とみられている。
外交筋によると、民主化運動指導者アウン・サン・スー・チーさんが率いる国民民主連盟（ＮＬＤ）など、反軍政勢力にも選挙への参加を認める可能性が高い。民主的な選挙を装い、選挙後の新政権の承認を国際社会から引き出す狙いだ。
ただ、軍政の弾圧でＮＬＤは組織の弱体化が進んでいるとされ、スー・チーさんの軟禁解除も「軍政は容易には応じない」（外交筋）との見方が強い。スー・チーさんが自由に活動できなければ、選挙に参加しても厳しい戦いを強いられるのは必至で、ＮＬＤは参加の是非を慎重に検討しているとみられる。
http://www.asahi.com/international/update/0107/TKY201001060449.html
၂၀၁၀ စိန္ေခၚမႈကို ပအို၀္းအမ်ဳိးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္က ရင္ဆိုင္ဖို႕ အဆင့္သင့္ျဖစ္
ဒီဇင္ဘာ ၇ - ၉ ရက္ေန႕အထိ က်င္းပခဲ့သည့္ ပအို၀္းအမ်ဳိးသားညီလာခံ (ဓါတ္ပံု ခြန္ေအာင္ခမ္း)
ေ႐ြးခ်ယ္တင္ေျမာက္ခံရသည့္ ပအို၀္းေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား (ဓါတ္ပံု ခြန္ေအာင္ခမ္း)
၂၀၁၀ စိန္ေခၚမႈကို ပအို၀္းအမ်ဳိးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္က ရင္ဆိုင္ဖို႕ အဆင့္သင့္ျဖစ္
ေသာၾကာေန႕၊ 11 ဒီဇင္ဘာလ 2009 သွ်မ္းသံေတာ္ဆင့္
ယခုလ ၇ ရက္ေန႕ မွ ၉ ရက္ေန႕အထိ က်င္းပခဲ့သည့္ ပအို၀္းအမ်ဳိးသားညီလာခံမွ ပအို၀္းအမ်ဳိးသား လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ PNLO ထူေထာင္ေၾကာင္းထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကျငာခ်က္ျဖင့္၂၀၁၀ စိန္ေခၚမႈအား ရင္ဆိုင္ဖို႕ အဆင္သင့္ ျဖစ္ေနေၾကာင္း ဥကၠဌအျဖစ္ ေ႐ြးခ်ယ္တင္ေျမႇာက္ခံရသည့္ ဗိုလ္မႉးႀကီး ခြန္ဥကၠာက ေျပာသည္။
“အခု ပအို၀္းအမ်ဳိးသားညီလာခံ ကေန ဖြဲ႕စည္းထားတဲ့ ပအို၀္းအမ်ဳိးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ဟာ လက္႐ုံးရည္ ႏွလံုးရည္နဲ႕ ပူးေပါင္းဖြဲ႕စည္းထားတာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ နအဖ ၂၀၁၀ စိန္ေခၚမႈကို ပအို၀္းအမ်ဳိးသားလြတ္ ေျမာက္ ေရးအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္က ရင္ဆိုင္ဖို႕ အဆင္သင့္ျဖစ္ေနၿပီ” - ဟု ဗိုလ္မႉးႀကီးခြန္ဥကၠာ က ေျပာသည္ဟု ေၾကျငာခ်က္၌ေဖၚျပထား ပါသည္။
၁၁/၁၂/၀၉ ၌က်ေရာက္သည့္ ႏွစ္ေျခာက္ဆယ္ျပည့္ ပအို၀္းအမ်ဳိးသား ေတာ္လွန္ေရးေန႕မတိုင္မွီ ပအုိ၀္း အဖြဲ႕အစည္း အားလံုး စုစည္းၿပီး ၃ ရက္ၾကာ ညီလာခံ က်င္းပကာ PNLO ပအိုးအမ်ဳိးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ ထူေထာင္ေၾကာင္း လည္း ေၾကျငာခဲ့သည္။
“အျခားအဖဲြ႕အစည္းနာမည္ မသံုးေတာ့ဘူး၊ ဆိုင္ရာလုပ္ငန္းေတြေတာ့ ဆက္လုပ္မယ္။ အမႈေဆာင္သစ္ ဥကၠဌသစ္ေ႐ြးခ်ယ္ တယ္။ အနာဂတ္အမ်ဳိးသားေရးအတြက္ စည္း႐ုံးမႈရခဲ့တယ္ဆိုေတာ့၀မ္းသာတယ္ဗ်ာ”- ညီလာခံတက္ေရာက္ သူပအုိ၀္း လူငယ္ ခြန္ေအာင္ခမ္းက ေျပာပါသည္။
အသစ္ဖြဲ႕စည္းလိုက္သည့္ PNLO သည္ ခြန္တိေဆာင္ ဦးေဆာင္သည့္ PNLO ႏွင့္ အမည္တူေသာ္လည္း အျခားအဖြဲ႕အ စည္းမ်ားစြာ၏ အမည္တုိ႕ပူးေပါင္း၍ မွည့္ထားျခင္းျဖစ္သည့္အေလ်ာက္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္သစ္ ေကာ္မတီအသစ္ ျဖင့္ျပန္ လည္ဖြဲ႕စည္းလိုက္ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။ အမ်ဳိးသားတန္းတူေရးရပ္တည္ခ်က္ ရည္မွန္းခ်က္ပန္းတိုင္ႏွင့္ အဖြဲ႕အစည္းမူကိုေတာ့ ေျပာင္းလဲျခင္းမ႐ွိဟု ဆို၏။
“က်ေနာ္တို႕ ပအုိ၀္းအမ်ဳိးသား တစုတစည္းျဖစ္ေအာင္လုပ္ႏိုင္ခဲ့သလို အမိသွ်မ္းျပည္ႀကီးလြတ္ေျမာက္ဖို႕ မိမိေမြးရာပါ အခြင့္ အေရးတိုက္ယူဖို႕ ဦးတည္ခ်က္ခ်ႏုိင္ခဲ့တယ္။ တျခားတုိင္းရင္းသားေတြလဲ အဲလိုျဖစ္ေစခ်င္တယ္။ ဒါမွ သွ်မ္းျပည္သား အခ်င္း ခ်င္းၾကား သတင္းျပန္ၾကားေရးမွာေရာ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရာမွာေရာ အလြယ္တကူလက္တြဲႏိုင္မွာ” - ဟု ပအို၀္းလူငယ္ ခြန္ေအာင္ခမ္းက သွ်မ္းသံေတာ္ဆင့္သို႕ ဆက္ေျပာျပပါသည္။
ထိုင္း - ျမန္မာနယ္စပ္တေနရာ၌ က်င္းပသည့္ သံုးရက္ၾကာညီလာခံမွ ဖြဲ႕စည္းႏုိင္ခဲ့ေသာ PNLO ပအို၀္းအမ်ဳိးသားလြတ္ ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္တြင္ SPNLO ခြဲထြက္ ခြန္တိေဆာင္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္သည့္ PNLO အဖြဲ႕ ၊ ဗိုလ္မႉးႀကီး ခြန္ဥကၠာ ဦးေဆာင္ သည့္ PPLO အဖြဲ႕အျပင္ အျခားအဖြဲ႕အစည္းအမ်ားအျပားပါ၀င္ေၾကာင္း၊ ညီလာခံတက္ေရာက္သူ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ ၁၀၀ ေက်ာ္႐ွိေၾကာင္း သိရပါသည္။
ပအို၀္းတုိင္းရင္းသားမ်ားသည္ ကရင္ျပည္၊ မြန္ျပည္၊ ပခူးတိုင္း၊ မႏၱေလးတိုင္း၊ ကယား ေခၚ ကရင္နီျပည္ႏွင့္ သွ်မ္းျပည္ ေတာင္ပိုင္းတို႕တြင္ ပ်ံ႕ႏွံ႕ေနထိုင္ၿပီး ၁၉၄၉ ဒီဇင္ဘာ ၁၁ ရက္ေန႕၌ ‘ပအို၀္း လံုးဘူး’ PaO Solidarity ဖြဲ႕စည္းကာ ပေဒသရာဇ္သွ်မ္းေစာ္ဘြားမ်ား ကုိ စတင္ေတာ္လွန္ခဲ့သည္။ ထိုေန႕ကိုအစြဲျပဳ၍ ပအို၀္းေတာ္လွန္ေရးေန႕ျဖစ္လာခဲ့သည္။
သွ်မ္းျပည္ေစာ္ဘြားမ်ား အာဏာစြန္႕ရန္ ဆံုးျဖတ္ၿပီးေနာက္ ၁၉၅၈ တြင္ လက္နက္ခ်သည္။ သို႕ေသာ္ ၈ ႏွစ္အၾကာတြင္ ပအို၀္း အမ်ဳိးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ PNLO အမည္ျဖင့္ စစ္အစိုးရကို ျပန္လည္ဆန္႕က်င္ေတာ္လွန္ခဲ့သည္။
ေနာက္ပိုင္း တာခဲလယ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္သည့္ ဗမာျပည္ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ပါတီ ေထာက္ခံသည့္ SNPLO (၁၉၉၄ အပစ္ရပ္ ) ေခၚ ပအို၀္းနီ တပ္ဖြဲ႕ ႏွင့္ ပအို၀္းျဖဴေခၚ ဦးေအာင္ခမ္းထီ ဦးေဆာင္သည့္ PNO (၁၉၉၁ အပစ္ရပ္ ) အဖြဲ႕ဟူ၍ႏွစ္ဖြဲ႕ကြဲသြား ခဲ့သည္။ အခု ဖြဲ႕စည္းလိုက္သည့္ PNLO မွာ ဦးေအာင္ခမ္းထီ ဦးေဆာင္သည့္ PNO အပစ္ရပ္အဖြဲ႕ မပါ၀င္ေသးေသာ္လည္း ရန္ေဆာင္တိုက္ပြဲမ်ား ဆင္ႏြဲမည္မဟုတ္ေၾကာင္း ညီလာခံအတြင္းေျပာဆိုေဆြးေႏြးဆံုးျဖတ္ခဲ့ၾကသည္ဟုဆိုသည္။
အဆိုပါဖြဲ႕စည္းလိုက္သည့္ PNLO ပအို၀္းအမ်ဳိးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္တြင္ ဒီမိုကေရစီစနစ္ျဖင့္ ပထမဆံုးေ႐ြးခ်ယ္ တင္ေျမာက္ခံရသည့္ ပုဂၢိဳလ္မ်ားမွာ ဗိုလ္မႉးႀကီးခြန္ဥကၠာ ဥကၠဌ၊ ဗိုလ္မႉးခ်ဳပ္ ခြန္တိေဆာင္ ဒု ဥကၠဌ၊ ခြန္ျမင့္ထြန္း အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉး၊ ဗိုလ္မႉးခြန္သူရိန္ တြဲဖက္အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉး ၁ ၊ ခြန္မ်ဳိး တြဲဖက္အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉး ၂ ၊ ခြန္အို၀္း ႏွင့္ ခြန္ေအာင္ေက်ာ္ ဗဟိုေကာ္မတီ၀င္ အပါအ၀င္ေကာ္မတီ၀င္ ၁၅ ဦး႐ွိသည္ဟုသိရသည္။
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The Burmese junta increases forced labour and child soldiers
ILO Report: The Burmese junta increases forced labour and child soldiers
50% increase in complaints of forced labour and more than half involving children and young people enrolled in the army. The military junta has inserted a provision in the Constitution that authorizes the use of civilians in the construction of roads, infrastructure, such as porters or minesweepers.
Yangon (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The alleged cases of forced labour in Myanmar increased by 50% over the past five months, over half concerns the recruitment of children and young people among the ranks of the army. This is shown by a recent report by the International Labour Organization (ILO), which admits the "ineffectiveness" of pressure to the Burmese government.
Last June, the ILO criticized a provision of the Constitution of Myanmar – which the junta drafted and ratified in a farce referendum in 2008 - that justifies the exploitation of forced labour as punishment for crimes or "in case of assignments entrusted by the Union [Myanmar], in accordance with law and in the public interest.”
As of 28 October, allegations of forced labour made to the ILO offices are 223. These are supplemented by the recruitment of 112 children in the army over the past seven months. Aye Myint, an activist for the rights of workers in Pegu, Bago division, told the dissident newspaper The Irrawaddy that the young people were recruited between May and November "and families have submitted complaints.
Defence of human rights groups confirm that the Burmese military junta continues a campaign of forced recruitment of minors into the army. Children are picked up from school, bars, cinemas or in the evening as they return home. They are threatened and beaten if they resist. Completed training, they are sent to war zones to fight against ethnic rebels.
The ILO document explains that, following complaints from families, “59 child soldiers were demobilized, 30 cases are currently pending and awaiting the start of the nine others". Forced labour in Myanmar takes on many forms: construction of roads and infrastructure, use of civilians as porters for the army or minesweepers.
The government has signed an agreement with the International Labour Organization "not to punish" those who report cases of forced labour. In many cases happens, however, that local officials (civilian and military) retaliate, through harassment or violence against those who dare to rebel.
The Karen Human Rights Group (Khrg) is launching a new appeal for "a real step forward in defending the rights of children affected by war." The problem of child soldiers has dragged on for years in Myanmar: a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in 2002 estimated that at least 70 thousand members of the Burmese army are under the age of 18.
http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=16903&size=A
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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Endangering the Next Kim Dae-jung
Endangering the Next Kim Dae-jung
Washington sends confusing signals to the people who could bring change from within.
By MICHAEL J. GREEN
Since taking office President Barack Obama has used strong words to describe the importance he places on human rights, democracy and the rule of law. In July, he told China's high-powered delegation to the first U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue that "support for human rights and human dignity is ingrained in America" and that the "religion and culture of all peoples must be respected and protected, and that all people should be free to speak their minds." In his September 24 address to the United Nations General Assembly, he promised "that America will always stand with those who stand up for their dignity and their rights." As the president prepares to travel to Asia this month, should anyone in the region doubt the United States' commitment to these values?
Unfortunately, there is doubt. Despite Mr. Obama's statements, the administration' s specific actions on issues ranging from Burma to Tibet are creating the impression that Washington has a growing list of concerns that trump human rights and democracy. The president and his team deserve support for attempting new approaches to intractable problems. It makes sense to talk directly to the junta in Burma and to broaden the agenda for cooperation with China. The problem is that the administration' s emphasis on engagement is leading the region's autocrats and dictators to see an opening for further repression at home.
The most obvious case is Tibet. The Dalai Lama has met with the American president at the White House during every visit to Washington since 1991. Initially, the Obama administration signaled it would continue this tradition during the Tibetan spiritual leader's planned visit in October, but later changed its mind. The White House may have hoped a subtler approach to the Tibet problem would pave the way for a successful presidential visit to China and yield quiet results for Tibet. Fair enough—but the opposite is happening. The Chinese are raising the ante on the Tibetans, demanding that the Dalai Lama cease all foreign travel and meetings with other international leaders as a precondition for resuming stalled Sino-Tibetan talks. Beijing is also putting pressure on other nations to follow the U.S. example, including India, which politely gave Beijing a firm "no" to its demand that Delhi stop the Dalai Lama from visiting his followers in disputed Arunachal Pradesh.
Rather than viewing gestures on Tibet as evidence of goodwill to be rewarded, the Chinese reaction has been to pocket the concessions and demand more—steadily asserting its position that regime behavior and internal affairs are not the business of the international community. In the long run, this will only complicate efforts to encourage China to use its increasing power as a responsible stakeholder.
There are also confusing signals on Burma. After a "Burma policy review," the administration reasonably concluded that neither sanctions nor engagement alone were likely to change the behavior of the regime and announced that the U.S. was going to try a new approach that employed both. In September Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell testified to the Senate that the U.S. would not ease sanctions without meaningful steps by the junta and reserved the right to strengthen sanctions if there is not progress. This was the right basis for beginning the dialogue. But the administration has also stated that engagement will be a sustained and long-term process, implying it would not necessarily hinge on the regime's short-term behavior.
In response, Burma's prime minister, General Thein Sein, announced in late October that the U.S. had "softened its approach." The junta also symbolically allowed international diplomats to have access to Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. However, the junta has concurrently increased its internal suppression of ethnic minorities and democracy activists since the administration' s policy review and engagement strategy began. In June the Burmese military drove 5,000 members of the Karen minority across the border into Thailand, the largest exodus of Karen in a decade. In August the junta sentenced Ms. Suu Kyi to an additional 18 months of house imprisonment. In August and September the junta began a major military offensive against the Kokang people in northern Burma, driving over 30,000 refugees into China. Just last week the regime arrested 50 students, journalists and political activists, even as the U.S. prepared to send its first senior-level delegation to Burma this week for high-level talks with the junta.
Tibet and Burma illustrate the administration' s serious dilemma: how to prevent its commitment to engagement from being perceived as a sign of shifting U.S. priorities and a greater tolerance for repression. It is damaging enough that Beijing and Naypyidaw are receiving this signal, but even minor adjustments in U.S. policy have a major ripple effect among friendly states also grappling with how to encourage greater democracy and human rights in the region. The European Union was poised to activate stronger sanctions against Burma but is now hesitating. Members of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations were engaging in a painful but important internal debate about how to implement the human-rights and democracy principles in their new charter with respect to Burma, but at their most recent summit in Thailand the focus was entirely on what the U.S. would do to help solve the problem.
The president should use his visit to Asia to correct the confusing signals Washington is sending about the U.S. commitment to human rights and democracy. The administration does not need to abandon its aim of seeking results through direct dialogue with Burma's leadership nor curtail its ambitious agenda for cooperation with China. But the administration should not be afraid that a clear stand on human rights and democracy will jeopardize those goals.
President Obama can begin by announcing his clear intention to meet with the Dalai Lama early next year and pressing Chinese President Hu Jintao to resume dialogue with the Dalai Lama's representatives without preconditions. Mr. Obama can use the trip to clarify, in his meetings with Southeast Asian leaders on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, that the U.S. will increase targeted financial sanctions on Burma if repression continues to escalate. The U.S. should also re-engage Burma's neighbors to pressure the regime for change by stating that the U.S. will continue its new approach only if Ms. Suu Kyi is released and there are real opportunities for the democratic opposition and ethnic minorities to participate in a fair political process.
Finally, he should use his public addresses to single out and demonstrate support for those dissidents and prisoners of conscience who will someday emerge as the future Kim Dae-jungs and Vaclav Havels of Asia. For it is they who face the greatest uncertainty if America's intentions remain unclear.
Mr. Green is senior advisor and Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and associate professor at Georgetown University. This is the first article in an occasional series on the Obama administration' s human-rights record. http://online. wsj.com/article/ SB10001424052748 7039329045745101 92259822258. html?mod= googlenews_ wsj
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Free Trade AND Human Rights
http://blog.labour.org.nz/
Free Trade AND Human Rights
Posted by Maryan Street on November 1st, 2009
Last week I was in Kuala Lumpur for the signing of the Malaysia-NZ Free Trade Agreement (see previous blog on that subject). I had arranged before I left NZ to use some of my time there to visit the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) compound in KL. I had been there once before and wanted to know how things had improved - or not. Malaysia had had an appalling record of dumping people, especially Burmese refugees whom it didn’t want, into the arms of traffickers, until an enquiry by the US Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee exposed it and got the Malaysians to improve their practices. I met with a senior staffer in the office of Senator Dick Luger who worked on this committee recently in Washington and got an update on Malaysia from him.
The UNHCR Rep in KL is Alan Vernon. He told me that things have improved in Malaysia and the UNHCR is no longer getting the reports they had been getting of the trafficking on the Thai-Malaysia border. Burmese refugees used to be rounded up by the Malaysian police and deposited on the Thai border where traffickers would take the women and children for prostitution and domestic service, and the men for labouring work who knows where. They are only hearing of about 100 such cases a year now, compared with 1000-2000 a year previously.
91% of the 300-400 people being processed per day at the compound are Burmese refugees. They end up in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and NZ, among other countries. Some of them end up in my town, Nelson, as well as Auckland, Palmerston North, Hamilton and Wellington. These are people with desperate stories of human suffering inflicted by the most evil regime on the planet. Some have become good friends now and they appreciate everything NZ has given them, while they are not blind to our faults. They retain their ardent politics and live for the day Burma returns to democratic rule, preferably under Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, their most recently democractically-elected leader (1990), who has been living under house arrest for 14 of the last 19 years.
In Malaysia, there are no laws protecting refugees. Children of refugees are not allowed to go to school; refugees are arrested and detained without charge for prolonged periods of time; they are harassed in their workplace by police. They have exchanged one kind of fear in Burma for another kind of fear in Malaysia.
The day I visited the UNHCR compound, I met families and individuals who were trying to get in to the US. They are processed in the UNHCR facility, treated well by interpreters, medical staff and teams of interviewers from the soon-to-be host country. They want to be somewhere else. They want to be someone else. They want their children to be educated and have a greater chance of a full and rewarding life than they had.
Win Myin Htut - Chin Burmese refugee at UNHCR compound, KL
People wait all day in the heat for their chance at freedom.
These people are in the final stages of processing. Next stop - the US!
People present at the compound with a range of health problems - most frequently anxiety disorders, as well as the illnesses of poverty, malnutrition, some with HIV/AIDS. Parents must go crazy with worry for their children. Here is a family who have been in Malaysia for 4 years and who are hoping to move on soon. He is a farmer - although the difference in the meaning of that word in Burma and the US is striking.
Chin family at UNHCR in KL - UN interpreter front left
Malaysia has a Human Rights Commission and I met one of its Commissioners. But they are kept on a tight leash and their Annual Report has never been presented to, or debated in, Parliament. The national Human Rights Day is boycotted by the human rights NGOs. Sometimes people say “how can we trade with countries which have such appalling human rights records?” The truth is, trade happens. We can make some gains through the labour clauses we negotiate alongside the FTAs. But even more importantly, a country gets opened up by trade and exposed to other ways of doing things. Trade becomes the vehicle for other conversations.
I hope John Key is having those other conversations, as Helen Clark used to do on a regular basis in the context of free trade negotiations and settlements.
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This entry was posted on Sunday, November 1st, 2009 at 11:48 pm and is filed under Foreign Affairs, ethnic, human rights, international. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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