The Secretary-General talked today on the phone with H.E. U Wunna Maung Lwin, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Myanmar.
During the conversation, the Secretary-General underlined that he had publicly welcomed the reform measures announced by the new Government. He hoped that the government would now move toward concrete action and take the country forward towards peace, democracy and prosperity.
The Secretary-General emphasized that the release of the remaining political prisoners was the single most important step the international community expected the Government to take. He called for early action in this regard. The Secretary-General expressed concern at the ongoing violence with some armed groups and the impact on the civilian population and urged the Government to resolve the situation peacefully.
The Secretary-General welcomed the recent meeting between Daw Aung San Suu Kyii and Mr. Aung Kyi, Minister for Social Welfare, and the fact that she was able to engage in public activities beyond Yangon. He also encouraged the Government to engage broadly with the international community and to make use of the UN country team.
The Secretary-General looked forward to continuing his engagement with the Government of Myanmar at the forthcoming General Assembly session as well as at the next Summit of ASEAN in Bali.
link : http://www.un.org/apps/sg/offthecuff.asp?nid=1894
Mizzima News
(Interview) – Hip-hop singer and political activist Zay Yar Thaw, who was released from Kawthaung Prison on May 17, wants to create music that expresses people’s true feelings. His band, ACID, was the first Burmese hip-hop group. He was arrested in 2008 for forming an unlawful organization (Generation Wave) and for possessing foreign currency (Malaysian Ringgit). He was sentenced to six years in prison, which was commuted to four years. He was released under the presidential commutation earlier this year. Mizzima interviewed him about his prison experiences, pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and his social, political and art activities.
Burmese hip-hop singer Zay Yar Thaw, founder of General Wave, was released from Kawthaung Prison on May 17. Photo: Mizzima
Question: Since you were released from prison, what activities have you been engaged in?
Answer: After I was released from prison, I provided help to the National League for Democracy on events and ceremonies held at the party’s headquarters. For instance, they held a 10-day music festival to mark Amay Su’s (Aung San Suu Kyi’s) 66th birthday. I helped them by using my musical skills. On July 19, to commemorate the 64th Martyrs’ Day, we displayed a collection of articles. I also volunteered for a blood donation group, BG school, the Sympathetic Hands Foundation, and I did some work of the Free Funeral Services Society led by Kyaw Thu and Shwe Zeegwat and the HIV/AIDS salvation centre for children, which is operated by writer Than Myint Aung.
Q: What are you current art activities?
A: Regarding art, there is a song, “Being Abstract,” on our album “Starting” that was released by our Acid Music band in 2000. The song was jointly written by Anagga and me and sung by me. We donated the song to the Free Funeral Services Society. And I helped the Free Funeral Services Society in an MTV project.
Q: After you were released, have your activities been monitored?
A: Honestly, I am not aware of it. They might watch me or not. I don’t think about whether they watch me or not. If I think about something I should do, I’ll do it. I ‘m not worried about it.
Q: What were prison conditions like for you and other political prisoners?
A: I’ve answered this question in interviews. In every country, the living standards of prisoners are lower than that of the people [living outside the prisons]. The living standard for average people in our country is very low, so I think I don’t need to describe how low the living standard is in prison.
Q: The government says there are no political prisoners.
After his release, Zay Yar Thaw has been active in work for the National League for Democracy and other social groups. Photo: Mizzima
A: If the government wants to establish a genuine democratic country and wants to be a democratic government, releasing political prisoners will be its primary task. Only if there are no prisoners who are detained for their beliefs and opinions will we be able to make the second step to seek national reconciliation. So I believe and accept that the first step is to release all political prisoners.
Q: After you were released from prison, why did you become involved in NLD activities?
A: My opinion on Amay Suu (Suu Kyi) is not personal worship. We just respect and emulate her sacrifice, her great attitude toward the people and her courage. I want to try to be a person like Amay Suu. But it’s not a kind of blind hero worship.
Q: Will you continue your NLD activities?
A: When I met with Amay Suu, I told her that she could invite me any time I’m needed. I’ll be ready to cooperate with Amay Suu at any time and at any place.
Q: Do you have any plans for projects to reach music and art audiences?
A: If news stories or something tug at my heartstrings, I’ll create music whether it can reach an audience or not. But, I will not create music with my former attitude: just to release a music album or perform in a stage show. I want to create music that can express people’s feelings: pain, hatred and hope.
Q: Are you banned from doing artistic activities?
A: Currently, I’m not banned. But I don’t know about the future. Meanwhile, I heard that my interviews with local journals were not allowed to be published by the censors.
Q: Does censorship of literature, music, film and other forms of art affect the creation of art?
A: If art were a seed and censorship covered it, a plant could not grow from the seed. And if an artist practices a form of self-censorship, his or her creation will be different. I do not mean we want to be totally free from censorship. But, I think the censorship should be relaxed to some extent.
Q: When you were released from prison, how did your friends in the artist community react?
A: Nearly all of my friends from the musicians’ community warmly welcomed me back. I think that although they might not do the right things, they respect and value those who do.
Q: What do you want to say to your fans?
A: I would like to say that I promise that whether I am allowed to create art or not, I, Zay Yar Thaw, will do as many good things as I can for my fans who are my benefactors
(Interview) – Hip-hop singer and political activist Zay Yar Thaw, who was released from Kawthaung Prison on May 17, wants to create music that expresses people’s true feelings. His band, ACID, was the first Burmese hip-hop group. He was arrested in 2008 for forming an unlawful organization (Generation Wave) and for possessing foreign currency (Malaysian Ringgit). He was sentenced to six years in prison, which was commuted to four years. He was released under the presidential commutation earlier this year. Mizzima interviewed him about his prison experiences, pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and his social, political and art activities.
Burmese hip-hop singer Zay Yar Thaw, founder of General Wave, was released from Kawthaung Prison on May 17. Photo: Mizzima
Question: Since you were released from prison, what activities have you been engaged in?
Answer: After I was released from prison, I provided help to the National League for Democracy on events and ceremonies held at the party’s headquarters. For instance, they held a 10-day music festival to mark Amay Su’s (Aung San Suu Kyi’s) 66th birthday. I helped them by using my musical skills. On July 19, to commemorate the 64th Martyrs’ Day, we displayed a collection of articles. I also volunteered for a blood donation group, BG school, the Sympathetic Hands Foundation, and I did some work of the Free Funeral Services Society led by Kyaw Thu and Shwe Zeegwat and the HIV/AIDS salvation centre for children, which is operated by writer Than Myint Aung.
Q: What are you current art activities?
A: Regarding art, there is a song, “Being Abstract,” on our album “Starting” that was released by our Acid Music band in 2000. The song was jointly written by Anagga and me and sung by me. We donated the song to the Free Funeral Services Society. And I helped the Free Funeral Services Society in an MTV project.
Q: After you were released, have your activities been monitored?
A: Honestly, I am not aware of it. They might watch me or not. I don’t think about whether they watch me or not. If I think about something I should do, I’ll do it. I ‘m not worried about it.
Q: What were prison conditions like for you and other political prisoners?
A: I’ve answered this question in interviews. In every country, the living standards of prisoners are lower than that of the people [living outside the prisons]. The living standard for average people in our country is very low, so I think I don’t need to describe how low the living standard is in prison.
Q: The government says there are no political prisoners.
After his release, Zay Yar Thaw has been active in work for the National League for Democracy and other social groups. Photo: Mizzima
A: If the government wants to establish a genuine democratic country and wants to be a democratic government, releasing political prisoners will be its primary task. Only if there are no prisoners who are detained for their beliefs and opinions will we be able to make the second step to seek national reconciliation. So I believe and accept that the first step is to release all political prisoners.
Q: After you were released from prison, why did you become involved in NLD activities?
A: My opinion on Amay Suu (Suu Kyi) is not personal worship. We just respect and emulate her sacrifice, her great attitude toward the people and her courage. I want to try to be a person like Amay Suu. But it’s not a kind of blind hero worship.
Q: Will you continue your NLD activities?
A: When I met with Amay Suu, I told her that she could invite me any time I’m needed. I’ll be ready to cooperate with Amay Suu at any time and at any place.
Q: Do you have any plans for projects to reach music and art audiences?
A: If news stories or something tug at my heartstrings, I’ll create music whether it can reach an audience or not. But, I will not create music with my former attitude: just to release a music album or perform in a stage show. I want to create music that can express people’s feelings: pain, hatred and hope.
Q: Are you banned from doing artistic activities?
A: Currently, I’m not banned. But I don’t know about the future. Meanwhile, I heard that my interviews with local journals were not allowed to be published by the censors.
Q: Does censorship of literature, music, film and other forms of art affect the creation of art?
A: If art were a seed and censorship covered it, a plant could not grow from the seed. And if an artist practices a form of self-censorship, his or her creation will be different. I do not mean we want to be totally free from censorship. But, I think the censorship should be relaxed to some extent.
Q: When you were released from prison, how did your friends in the artist community react?
A: Nearly all of my friends from the musicians’ community warmly welcomed me back. I think that although they might not do the right things, they respect and value those who do.
Q: What do you want to say to your fans?
A: I would like to say that I promise that whether I am allowed to create art or not, I, Zay Yar Thaw, will do as many good things as I can for my fans who are my benefactors
by Nirmala Carvalho
Waves of refugees fleeing across the border to China. But the government blocks the borders and prevents the entry of aid to war zones. The Nobel Laureate is open to mediate for peace. Activist: the meeting between Suu Kyi and the Myanmar Minister is window-dressing, to gain international credibility.
The civil war between Burmese army and Kachin ethnic militias, to the north of Myanmar, along the border with China, continues to cause waves of refugees fleeing across the border. Soldiers threaten the civilian population, killing and raping women and girls, the situation is serious and the war front covers a variety of areas. So says Raw Zau, coordinator of the Kachin Refugee Committee (KRC), a humanitarian organization based in New Delhi, India, and active in bringing aid to the Burmese minority. Speaking to AsiaNews he also accuses the Burmese leadership of exploiting the image of Aung San Suu Kyi to cover the crimes committed by the regime and gain credibility within the international community.
From 9 June the northern Kachin State has been the scene of a bloody conflict that has sowed death and terror among the population. So far there have been 32 confirmed cases of sexual violence against women by the Kachin soldiers, 13 of which ended with the murder of the victim. On 26 July in a gun battle between the two sides four Burmese soldiers were killed and 12 others were wounded in an ambush by the Kachin Independence Army militia (Kia).
In order to suppress the resistance, says the activist Zau Raw, "the central government continues to prevent the entry of humanitarian aid to the war zone, in the areas controlled by the Kachin and along the border with China." Only in the last two weeks about two thousand families living in seven villages located near Bhamo, have fled their homes. Thousand others have fled from Kala Yang, Tapant and Kazue, by order of the authorities.
The coordinator of Kachin Refugee Committee (KRC) has criticized Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese opposition leader, for not taking a long position on the conflict. But recently the Nobel Laureate said she was ready to mediate between the government and ethnic groups, to achieve a ceasefire. In an open letter sent to the president Thein Sein and Kachin leaders, the activist calls for a "peaceful solution" in the interests of "all ethnic minorities in the Union of Myanmar."
Raw Zau then accused the Burmese government - which took office last April and is an emanation of the military regime - of "exploiting" the image of the "Lady" to ease international pressure. He recalls that the woman was released after the "farce" elections of November 2010 to cover allegations of fraud and early voting. And now that the army is engaged in a civil war against a minority, it is organizing "a meeting between Aung San Suu Kyi and a government minister for the sole purpose of diverting attention" from its atrocities and war crimes and crimes against 'humanity' in the ethnic areas.
Waves of refugees fleeing across the border to China. But the government blocks the borders and prevents the entry of aid to war zones. The Nobel Laureate is open to mediate for peace. Activist: the meeting between Suu Kyi and the Myanmar Minister is window-dressing, to gain international credibility.
The civil war between Burmese army and Kachin ethnic militias, to the north of Myanmar, along the border with China, continues to cause waves of refugees fleeing across the border. Soldiers threaten the civilian population, killing and raping women and girls, the situation is serious and the war front covers a variety of areas. So says Raw Zau, coordinator of the Kachin Refugee Committee (KRC), a humanitarian organization based in New Delhi, India, and active in bringing aid to the Burmese minority. Speaking to AsiaNews he also accuses the Burmese leadership of exploiting the image of Aung San Suu Kyi to cover the crimes committed by the regime and gain credibility within the international community.
From 9 June the northern Kachin State has been the scene of a bloody conflict that has sowed death and terror among the population. So far there have been 32 confirmed cases of sexual violence against women by the Kachin soldiers, 13 of which ended with the murder of the victim. On 26 July in a gun battle between the two sides four Burmese soldiers were killed and 12 others were wounded in an ambush by the Kachin Independence Army militia (Kia).
In order to suppress the resistance, says the activist Zau Raw, "the central government continues to prevent the entry of humanitarian aid to the war zone, in the areas controlled by the Kachin and along the border with China." Only in the last two weeks about two thousand families living in seven villages located near Bhamo, have fled their homes. Thousand others have fled from Kala Yang, Tapant and Kazue, by order of the authorities.
The coordinator of Kachin Refugee Committee (KRC) has criticized Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese opposition leader, for not taking a long position on the conflict. But recently the Nobel Laureate said she was ready to mediate between the government and ethnic groups, to achieve a ceasefire. In an open letter sent to the president Thein Sein and Kachin leaders, the activist calls for a "peaceful solution" in the interests of "all ethnic minorities in the Union of Myanmar."
Raw Zau then accused the Burmese government - which took office last April and is an emanation of the military regime - of "exploiting" the image of the "Lady" to ease international pressure. He recalls that the woman was released after the "farce" elections of November 2010 to cover allegations of fraud and early voting. And now that the army is engaged in a civil war against a minority, it is organizing "a meeting between Aung San Suu Kyi and a government minister for the sole purpose of diverting attention" from its atrocities and war crimes and crimes against 'humanity' in the ethnic areas.
By မေအးေအးမာ (VOA)
ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္ထဲက စစ္ေတြ၊ ေက်ာက္ျဖဴ၊ ရမ္းၿဗဲ၊ သံတဲြ၊ ေက်ာက္နိေမာ္ စတဲ့ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ေတြမွာ ေနထုိင္ၾကတဲ့ ႏုိင္ငံသားစိစစ္ေရးကဒ္ျပား ကိုင္ေဆာင္ခြင့္ရသူ အစၥလာမ္ ဘာသာ၀င္ေတြရဲ႕ လြတ္လပ္စြာခရီးသြားလာခြင့္ကို ၁၉၉၄ ခုႏွစ္က စလို႔ ပိတ္ပင္ထားခဲ့ရာကေန ၂၀၁၁ ခုႏွစ္ ဇူလိုင္လ ေနာက္ဆံုးပတ္ကစၿပီး ေထာက္ခံစာ မယူဘဲ ခရီသြားလာခြင့္ကို စၿပီး ခြင့္ျပဳေပးလိုက္ၿပီ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီအေၾကာင္းကို ထိုင္းအေျခစိုက္ သတင္းေထာက္ မေအးေအးမာက တင္ျပထားပါတယ္။
ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္တြင္းမွာ ႏုိင္ငံသားစိစစ္ေရးကဒ္ျပား ကိုင္ေဆာင္ၿပီး လြတ္လပ္စြာသြားလာခြင့္မရဘဲ ပိတ္ပင္ထားမႈကို အစိုးရသစ္တက္လာၿပီးေနာက္ပိုင္းမွာ ေဒသခံေတြက ႏုိင္ငံသားအခြင့္အေရးေပးဖုိ႔အတြက္ ဇြန္လအတြင္းမွာ တင္ျပေတာင္းဆိုခဲ့ၾကၿပီးတဲ့ေနာက္ အခုလို ခရီးသြားလာခြင့္ေတြမွာ ခြင့္ျပဳခ်က္မယူဘဲ သြားလာႏိုင္ခဲ့တာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ေဒသခံတဦးေျပာျပတာကေတာ့ -
“အခုသြားလာခြင့္ရတာက စစ္ေတြ၊ ေက်ာက္ျဖဴ၊ ရမ္းၿဗဲ၊ ေက်ာက္နိေမာ္၊ သံတြဲ။ ေနျပည္ေတာ္အစိုးရက ဘယ္လိုအေၾကာင္းျပသလဲေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ မသိရပါဘူး။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ဒီ ရက္ ၂၀ ေလာက္မွာ ျပည္နယ္မွာ အစည္းအေ၀းေခၚတယ္လို႔ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ သိရတယ္။ ခရိုင္အဆင့္ အရာရွိေတြ အစည္းအေ၀းေပါ့ေနာ္။ အဲဒီအစည္းအေ၀းမွာ ျပည္နယ္မႉးက ခရိုင္အဆင့္အရာရွိေတြကို ေနျပည္ေတာ္ရဲ႕ ညႊန္ၾကားခ်က္ကို ဖတ္ျပတယ္လို႔ေျပာတယ္ခင္ဗ်။ အဲဒီအထဲမွာ ႏိုင္ငံသားစိစစ္ေရးကဒ္ ကိုင္ေဆာင္ထားတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြကို လြတ္လပ္စြာခရီးသြားလာခြင့္ ေပးတယ္၊ ပံုစံေလး ယူေဆာင္ခြင့္ လံုး၀မျပဳ ဆိုတဲ့ဟာကို က်ေနာ္တို႔ သိရပါတယ္။”
အမ်ဳိးသား လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးနဲ႔ ဒီမိုကရက္တစ္ပါတီဝင္ တဦးလည္းျဖစ္၊ ျပည္သူ႔လႊတ္ေတာ္ကိုယ္စားျပဳ ေကာ္မတီရဲ႕ အဖြဲ႔ဝင္တဦးလည္းျဖစ္၊ ဘူးသီးေတာင္ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ အမွတ္ (၁)၊ ျပည္သူ႔လႊတ္ေတာ္ ကုိယ္စားလွယ္ျဖစ္သူ ဦးေက်ာ္မင္းဟာ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္တြင္းမွာပဲ အခုလို ႏုိင္ငံသားစိစစ္ေရးကဒ္ျပားကို မမွန္မကန္ လုပ္တယ္ဆိုတဲ့ စဲြခ်က္ေတြနဲ႔ သူ အပါအ၀င္ မိသားစုတစုလံုးဟာ ႏွစ္ရွည္ေထာင္ဒဏ္ေတြ ခ်မွတ္ခဲ့ရပါတယ္။
ဒီလို လြတ္လပ္စြာခရီးသြားလာခြင့္ေတြ ခြင္ျပဳလုိက္ၿပီဆိုတာေၾကာင့္ သူ႔ကို ဖမ္းဆီးထားမႈကို ျပန္လည္ လႊတ္ေပးသင့္တယ္လို႔ ေဒသခံေတြက ဆုိပါတယ္။ သူဟာ မတရားသျဖင့္ ဖမ္းဆီးတာကိုခံခဲ့ရတယ္လို႔ ေဒသခံက ဆက္ေျပာျပပါတယ္။
“သူတို႔က ႏုိင္ငံသားစိစစ္ေရးကဒ္ျပား ရွိလ်က္သားနဲ႔ျဖစ္တာ။ ၁၉၉၀ ခုႏွစ္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ သူက အေရြးခ်ယ္ခံရတယ္။ အေရးခ်ယ္ခံရၿပီးေနာက္ပိုင္းမွာ သူတို႔က ရန္ကုန္ကို မိသားစုလိုက္ေျပာင္းသြားတယ္ဗ်။ ေျပာင္းသြားၿပီးေတာ့မွ သူတို႔ရဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံသားစိစစ္ေရးကဒ္ေတြက ဘယ္လိုရတာလဲ၊ ရန္ကုန္ကိုဘယ္လို ေရာက္တာလဲေပါ့ဗ်ာ စသည္ျဖင့္ အျပစ္မရွိအျပစ္ရွာၿပီးေတာ့ အဲဒီလုိမ်ိဳး သူတို႔ကို ဖမ္းၿပီးေတာ့ မိသားစုေတြ ေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားက ေထာင္ထဲကို ေရာက္ကုန္တယ္ဗ်။ အရင္တုန္းက လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးဆံုး႐ံႈးၿပီးေတာ့ ဒီလိုမ်ိဳး ေထာင္ထဲကိုေရာက္ေနတဲ့ မူစလင္ေတြရွိတယ္။ ခရီးသြားလာခြင့္မရဘဲနဲ႔ ခရီးသြားလို႔ ေထာင္ထဲေရာက္ေနတဲ့ မူစလင္ေတြရွိတယ္။ ဒီဟာေတြကို နည္းမ်ိဳးစံုနဲ႔ဖမ္းထားတာေတြကို က်ေနာ္တုိ႔က ေဖာ္ထုတ္ၿပီးေတာ့ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးလမ္းေၾကာင္းနဲ႔ လက္ရွိႏိုင္ငံေတာ္အစိုးရဆီမွာ တင္ျပႏိုင္တယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ အခြင့္အေရးတခုခုေတာ့ ရႏုိင္လိမ့္မယ္လို႔ က်ေနာ္ ျမင္တယ္ေလ။”
ရန္ကုန္ စီးပြားေရးတကၠသိုလ္က ဘြဲ႔ရခဲ့ၿပီး ရန္ကုန္ ပညာေရးတကၠသိုလ္ကပါ ဘီအီးဒီဘြဲ႔ ရခဲ့တဲ့ ဦးေက်ာ္မင္းဟာ လက္ေထာက္ ၿမဳိ႕နယ္ ပညာေရးမႉး၊ အလယ္တန္း ေက်ာင္းအုပ္ႀကီး စတဲ့ ႏုိင္ငံေတာ္ တာဝန္ေတြကို ထမ္းေဆာင္ခဲ့ဖူးပါတယ္။ ဒီလို တာ၀န္ေတြယူခဲ့တဲ့ ဦးေက်ာ္မင္းကို ျမန္မာအစိုးရက ႏိုင္္ငံသားစိစစ္ေရးကဒ္ကို အေၾကာင္းျပဳ ဖမ္းဆီးၿပီး ေထာင္ဒဏ္ ၄၇ ႏွစ္နဲ႔ ဒဏ္ေငြ ၂ သိန္းခြဲအျပင္ အျပစ္ဒဏ္ေတြခ်ၿပီး မိသားတစုလံုးဘ၀ပ်က္တဲ့အထိ လုပ္ေဆာင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္တြင္းမွာ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြမလုပ္ခင္၂၀၀၈ ခုႏွစ္ ဖဲြ႔စည္းပံုအေျခခံဥပေဒကို မဲေပးေရး ကာလတုန္းက ႏိုင္ငံသားစိစစ္ေရးကဒ္ ကိုင္ေဆာင္ဖုိ႔ အခြင့္အလမ္းမရရွိခဲ့တဲ့ ေဒသခံေတြကို အျဖဴေရာင္ ယာယီမဲထည့္ဖုိ႔ ကဒ္ေတြလုပ္ေပးခဲ့ဖူးပါတယ္။
ဒီကဒ္ေတြကို ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြမွာ မဲထည့္ဖို႔အတြက္တုန္းကလည္း လုပ္ေပးခဲ့ၿပီး ေဒသခံေတြကို ပညာေရး၊ က်န္းမာေရး၊ ခရီးသြားလာခြင့္ေတြ ရမယ္ဆိုတဲ့ ကတိေတြကို အာဏာပုိင္ေတြက ေပးခဲ့ဖူးပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ဒီကဒ္ေတြနဲ႔ ပညာေရး က်န္းမာေရး အခြင့္အလမ္းေတြ မရရွိခဲ့တာေၾကာင့္ ဒီကဒ္ကိုင္ေဆာင္ထားတဲ့ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံသားေတြကိုလည္း ထည့္သြင္းစဥ္းစားေပးေစခ်င္တယ္လုိ႔ ဆုိပါတယ္။
“ႏိုင္ငံသားလဲျဖစ္တယ္။ တိုင္းရင္းသားမိဘႏွစ္ပါးက ေမြးဖြားလာတဲ့သူေတြလဲ ျဖစ္တယ္။ ေငြေရးေၾကးေရး အခက္အခဲေၾကာင့္ ႏိုင္ငံသားကဒ္ေတြ မလုပ္ခဲ့ဘဲနဲ႔ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြနဲ႔ ၂၀၀၈ ခုႏွစ္ဖြဲ႔စည္းပံုမွာ မဲေပးတဲ့အခ်ိန္ေတြမွာ အျဖဴကဒ္ေတြ ထုတ္ေပးထားတာေတြရွိတယ္။ သူတို႔က ဒီကိစၥကို ဘာမွ ျပန္ၿပီးေတာ့ လဲလွယ္ေပးျခင္းလဲ မရွိဘူး။ ဒီအျဖဴကဒ္ေတြ ကိုင္ေဆာင္ထားတာကိုယ္က မည္သည့္ႏိုင္ငံသားလို႔ မသတ္မွတ္ရလို႔ သူတို႔ကဒ္ထဲမွာပါတာက တေၾကာင္း၊ ေနာက္တခုက ပညာေရးဆိုင္ရာ ဆံုး႐ံႈးမႈေတြ အမ်ားႀကီးပဲ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ေတြ႔ရတယ္။ က်န္းမာေရးဆုိင္ရာ ဆံုး႐ံႈးမႈေတြ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ အမ်ားႀကီး ႀကံဳေတြ႔ရတယ္။ အဲဒီေတာ့ ဒါေတြကိုလဲ သက္ဆိုင္ရာ တာ၀န္ရွိပုဂၢိဳလ္ေတြက ျပန္ၿပီးေတာ့ အေရးတယူနဲ႔ ျပန္လည္ လဲလွယ္ေပးႏိုင္မယ္ဆိုရင္ ႏိုင္ငံသားအခြင့္အေရးေတြဟာ ပိုၿပီးေတာ့ ခံစားရလိမ့္မယ္လို႔ က်ေနာ္ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္တယ္။”
ႏိုင္ငံသားစိစစ္ေရးကဒ္ ရရွိဖို႔အတြက္ ေငြေၾကးအကုန္အက်ခံၿပီး မလုပ္ႏုိင္သူေတြ၊ လုပ္ခြင့္မရသူေတြ၊ ႏိုင္ငံသား စိစစ္ေရးကဒ္ရွိၿပီး ခရီးသြားလာခြင့္ ပိတ္ပင္ခံရသူေတြ အေနနဲ႔ က်န္းမားေရး အေျခအေန ဆုိးရြားတဲ့အခါ ၿမိဳ႕ႀကီးေတြကိုသြားၿပီး ေဆးကုသခြင့္မရလို႔ ေသဆံုးရတဲ့အျဖစ္ေတြ၊ အထူးသျဖင့္ ပညာေရးလုိလားတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြအေနနဲ႔ တကၠသိုလ္ ဆက္တက္ခြင့္မရတာ၊ ဘဲြယူလုိ႔မရတာေတြ စတဲ့ ပညာေရးဆုိင္ရာ အခြင့္အလမ္းေတြလည္း ဆံုး႐ံႈးခဲ့ရပါတယ္။ အခုအခါမွာေတာ့ ႏုိင္ငံသားစိစစ္ေရးကဒ္ေတြ ကိုင္ေဆာင္ထားၿပီး လြတ္လပ္စြာ သြားလာခြင့္ေတြ ရၿပီဆုိတဲ့အတြက္ အစိုးရသစ္လက္ထက္မွာ ႏိုင္ငံသားအခြင့္အေရးတခ်ိဳ႕ ရရွိလာၿပီလို႔ ယူဆသူေတြလဲ ရွိလာပါတယ္။
By: Sai Wansai
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s open letter to President Thein Sein, together with the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), Karen National Union (KNU), New Mon State Party (NMSP) and Shan State Army (SSA), is a move which must be welcomed.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s open letter to President Thein Sein, together with the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), Karen National Union (KNU), New Mon State Party (NMSP) and Shan State Army (SSA), is a move which must be welcomed.Sai Wansai
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has pinpointed the importance of peaceful co-existence among co-inhabitants of the Union of Burma and that it is a paramount task for every party concerned to make it a reality.
The letter added that armed conflicts within the non-Burman ethnic areas have created human tragedy, suffering, loss of lives, economic deterioration and destruction of costly physical infrastructures.
The use of force wouldn’t bring the warring parties nearer and that only negotiation and political dialogue could deliver the desired genuine peace and reconciliation.
She added that only within the atmosphere of peace would a genuine nation-building process be successfully implemented.
In closing, she made herself available to do everything in her power for the termination of armed conflicts and building peace within the Union of Burma.
In closing, she made herself available to do everything in her power for the termination of armed conflicts and building peace within the Union of Burma.
While this is, undoubtedly, a sincere and noble act from the part of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, it is also essential to look deeply into the underlying core conflict issues and Burmese military leadership mindset, as to why it is so uncompromising and unyielding, when it comes to facilitating genuine reconciliation and democratisation process.
First, successive military dominated regimes, including the present military-backed Thein Sein government, see Burma as an existing unified nation since the reign of Anawratha thousands of years ago. As such, all other non-Burmans - Shan, Kachin, Chin, Arakanese, Mon, Karen and Karenni - are seen as minorities, which must be controlled and suppressed, lest they break up the country.
On the other hand, the non-Burmans maintain that the Union of Burma is a newly developed territorial entity, founded by a treaty, the Panglong Agreement, where independent territories merged together on equal basis.
Given such conceptual differences, the Burmese military goes about with its implementation of protecting "national sovereignty" and "national unity" at all cost. This, in turn, gives way to open conflict resulting in more suppression and gross human rights violations. The intolerance of the military and its inspiration to "racial supremacy" and political domination and control has no limit and this could be seen by its refusal to hand over power to the winners of 1990 nation-wide election, the NLD, SNLD and other ethnic parties. The genuine federalism platform, which the NLD and ethnic nationalities embrace, is a threat to its racist mind-set. And as such, the non-Burman ethnic groups aspiration of “unity in diversity” or “genuine federalism” is viewed by successive military regimes, including the present Thein Sein government, as a “disintegration ploy “, which will break up the country, if ever allowed to be implemented.
Secondly, the woes of Burma today are deeply rooted in the inadequate constitutional drafting of 1947. The Union Constitution was rushed through to completion without reflecting the spirit of Panglong. The ethnic homelands were recognised as constituent states but all power was concentrated in the central government or the government of the Burma Mother state.
Almost all the non-Burmans and Burman democratic opposition groups are in agreement that the ethnic conflict and reform of social, political and economics cannot be separated from one another. And the only solution and answer is to amend the 1947 Constitution according to Panglong Agreement, where equality, voluntary participation and self-determination, of the constituent states, formed the basis for the Republic of the Union of Burma.
Again, instead of reforming and addressing the grievances of the non-Burman ethnic nationalities, the junta’s orchestrated the present 2008 constitution - dubbed Nargis constitution, due to the rigging of referendum vote by the junta shortly after Cyclone Nargis - is just doing the opposite, which is designed to give the military a clear political monopoly and military supremacy in all aspects of governing the country.
As a result, the non-Burman ethnic nationalities’ aspiration of “federalism, proportional share of power, in a true sense, in at least one major decision-making body in the central government so that they can protect themselves, and plausible guarantees that the military will not resume attacks on them” were not mentioned or provided in the 2008 constitution.( Source: Analysis of the 2008-SPDC Constitution for Burma - David C. Williams, Executive Director, Center for Constitutional Democracy)
Thirdly, rightly or wrongly, the Burmese military has appointed itself to be the sole saviour of the country and the believe that the army under its command is the only institution that is capable of governing the country. In other words, the junta is entitled to rule over the civilian, with the help of the army.
Fourthly, Burmese military leadership urge for assimilation of non-Burman ethnic nationalities is closely intertwined with its version of forging national identity.
The views of successive Burmese governments, including the present, military-backed Thein Sein regime, concerning national identity has never been clear. They have been at a loss even as to what sort of name they should adopt; that is the reason why they are still using "Bamar“ and "Myanmar" interchangeably for what they would like to be termed a common collective identity, in other words, national identity. The reality is that when one mentions "Myanmar", "Bamar", "Burmese" or "Burman", such words are usually identified with the lowland majority "Bamar” and have never been accepted or understood by the non-Bamar ethnic nationals as a common collective identity to which they also belong.
For about a little more than a decade ago, the then Burmese military regime changed the name of Burma to Myanmar. Its aim is to create a national identity for every ethnic group residing within the boundary of the so-called Union of Myanmar. But since the name Myanmar has always been identified with the lowland "Bamar", the SPDC’s effort in trying to establish a common national identity among the non-Bamar ethnic nationals is doomed to fail. On top of that, this national identity was not chosen with the consent of the non-Bamar ethnic groups, but coercively thrust down their throats by the hated Burmese military dictatorship.
The point to note here is that the successive Burmese governments' nation-building process has totally shattered, failing even to take root after all these years, not to mention the forging of common national identity. It would be more pragmatic to accept the existing diversified “national identities” of all ethnic nationalities as a fact and work for a new common identity in the future federal union with the consent and participation of all ethnic groups, Burman included.
The point to note here is that the successive Burmese governments' nation-building process has totally shattered, failing even to take root after all these years, not to mention the forging of common national identity. It would be more pragmatic to accept the existing diversified “national identities” of all ethnic nationalities as a fact and work for a new common identity in the future federal union with the consent and participation of all ethnic groups, Burman included.
Finally, the misconception of majority-minority configuration has been so entrenched; at least in media and academic studies, it needs some clarification.
The Burman are majority in Burma Proper and in numerical sense, but become a minority in the Shan, Arakan, Chin, Kachin, Karenni, Karen, and the Mon states, where respective ethnic groups are in majority within their own territories.
Besides, Burma was formed in 1947 by virtue of the Panglong Agreement, one year prior to independence. This agreement was signed between the interim government of Ministerial Burma, headed by Aung San, and leaders of the Federated Shan States, the Chin Hill Tract, and the Kachin Hill Tract. It could be said that this agreement is the genesis of the post-colonial, current Burma.
Thus, the indigenous groups of Burma -- Shan, Arakanese, Chin, Kachin, Karenni, Karen, Mon and including the Burman -- are neither minorities nor majorities, but equal partners or co-inhabitants in a union of territories, the Union of Burma.
Fundamentally, the grievances of the non-Burman ethnic nationalities stem from the inadequate drafting of constitutions, whether they are 1947, 1974 or the recent one in 2008. The flare up of the recent armed conflict in Kachin, Shan, Karenni, Karen and Mon states has its root in the flawed constitutional drafting.
On 9 June 2004, during the SPDC's held national convention to draw up the 2008 constitution, 13 ethnic ceasefire armies put forward a joint proposal for the formation of a federal union. But no action or follow up action was taken on this advice till the end of national convention. This has been taken as a real drawback and disappointment for the ethnic ceasefire armies.
Thereafter, many instances of the non-Burman ethnic groups’ proposal within the national convention and outside of it were only met with deafening silence from the part of the then ruling junta, the SPDC. (Please see appendix for more information on ethnic initiatives and statements)
According to the 2008 constitution of chapter Vll, under the heading “Defence Services”,
Paragraph number 338, it states: “All the armed forces in the Union shall be under the command of the Defence Services”.
This paragraph has been quoted, time and again, as an argument that the ceasefire armies must come under the Burma Army. But the point is that the suggestion and proposal of a federal set up as a political system, during the drafting of 2008 constitution, by the attending ceasefire armies and ethnic political parties were rejected. And the aftermath half-hearted participation of the ceasefire armies, due to the heavy handedness of the junta could not be viewed as a whole-hearted acceptance of this particular paragraph, which in effect would mean the end of their self-determination struggle.
The junta was pressuring the ceasefire armies, even before the change of military-back, Thein Sein government. It even was able to overrun the Kokang ceasefire army in August 2009, when its Border Guard Force (BGF) plan was rejected. But the mainstream ceasefire armies like KIA, UWSA, SSA-N and NDAA continue to resist the Burma Army’s BGF plan.
As such, the ceasefire armies have every right to defend themselves and their homelands, and owe no legal commitment to the 2008 constitution, much less the paragraph 338.
To wind it up, the central issue is still the “constitutional crisis”. And in order to make a meaningful approach leading to a more accommodating, win-win outcome, there is no way around rather than the amendment of the present constitution, or better still, drafting a new constitution. For all the warring parties, negotiating the differing positions along the line of “pluralism” and “unity in diversity” is the only hope left to resolve the ongoing armed, ethnic conflict.
The author is General Secretary of the exiled Shan Democratic Union.
APPENDIX
April 7, 1993:
The convention is suspended again after ethnic nationality delegates protest against the proposed centralized political structure.
The convention is suspended again after ethnic nationality delegates protest against the proposed centralized political structure.
June 7, 1993:
Lt. Gen. Myo Nyunt reopens the convention by stating that the new constitution must guarantee a leading role for the Defense Services in national politics.
Lt. Gen. Myo Nyunt reopens the convention by stating that the new constitution must guarantee a leading role for the Defense Services in national politics.
September 16, 1993:
The National Convention is suspended again, as ethnic minority representatives continue to propose a federal system. According to official reports, delegates have agreed to the 104 principles for the draft constitution.
The National Convention is suspended again, as ethnic minority representatives continue to propose a federal system. According to official reports, delegates have agreed to the 104 principles for the draft constitution.
December 23, 1995:
The convention acknowledges and then rejects a Shan Nationalities League for Democracy proposal for the constitution to accept the principle of sovereignty invested in the people.
The convention acknowledges and then rejects a Shan Nationalities League for Democracy proposal for the constitution to accept the principle of sovereignty invested in the people.
March 21, 2001:
A statement is issued by seven ethnic nationality groups that had concluded military ceasefires (“ethnic ceasefire groups”) with the government—the Kayan New Land Party (KNLP), Karenni National People’s Liberation Front (KNPLF), New Mon State Party (NMSP), Palaung State Liberation Organization (PSLO), Shan Nationalities People’s Liberation Organization (SNPLO), Shan State Army (SSA), and Shan State National Army (SSNA)—calling on the SPDC to begin a more inclusive negotiating process for political development and democracy and national unity.
A statement is issued by seven ethnic nationality groups that had concluded military ceasefires (“ethnic ceasefire groups”) with the government—the Kayan New Land Party (KNLP), Karenni National People’s Liberation Front (KNPLF), New Mon State Party (NMSP), Palaung State Liberation Organization (PSLO), Shan Nationalities People’s Liberation Organization (SNPLO), Shan State Army (SSA), and Shan State National Army (SSNA)—calling on the SPDC to begin a more inclusive negotiating process for political development and democracy and national unity.
May 11, 2004:
Eight ethnic ceasefire groups, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), Kayan New Land Party (KNLP), Karenni National People’s Liberation Front (KNPLF), New Mon State Party (NMSP), Palaung State Liberation Organization (PSLO), Shan Nationalities People’s Liberation Organization (SNPLO), Shan State Army (SSA), and Shan State National Army (SSNA), issue seven points for changes to the convention:
Eight ethnic ceasefire groups, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), Kayan New Land Party (KNLP), Karenni National People’s Liberation Front (KNPLF), New Mon State Party (NMSP), Palaung State Liberation Organization (PSLO), Shan Nationalities People’s Liberation Organization (SNPLO), Shan State Army (SSA), and Shan State National Army (SSNA), issue seven points for changes to the convention:
- The right to discuss Objective 6 (military’s leading role in the future affairs of the state) again and revise it, since it does not fit with the democratic principles and does not reflect the wishes of the people;
- The right to discuss and revise the points that are not in line with democratic procedures and principles;
- The right to hold consultation with anybody and any organizations that can provide good advice for the sake of the Union while attending the National Convention;
- The right of delegates to freely communicate with their mother organizations and to seek advice for discussion while attending the convention;
- The right of the representatives of the people elected in the 1990 elections to participate in the convention;
- The right of ceasefire organizations, and non-ceasefire organizations after entering into ceasefires, to join the National Convention;
- To revoke Law No.5/96 that was announced in June 1996 to protect the National Convention.
July 7, 2004:
Thirteen of 17 ethnic ceasefire groups issue a joint proposal for devolving authority to future state assemblies and for those assemblies to maintain armed militias. The nine points submitted to the NCCC were:
Thirteen of 17 ethnic ceasefire groups issue a joint proposal for devolving authority to future state assemblies and for those assemblies to maintain armed militias. The nine points submitted to the NCCC were:
- To include a list of concurrent legislative powers for the states;
- To give residual powers to the states;
- To add a separate section on ethnic affairs in the union legislative list;
- To include a defense and security planning section in each state’s legislature;
- To include a literature/language section in each state’s legislature;
- To include a section for ethnic minority tradition in each state’s legislature;
- To let the states draft their own constitutions;
- To let the states make specific foreign policies in dealing with neighboring countries regarding various issues such as issuing border passes and border trade;
- To let the states collect local taxes and finance.
February 17 – 31 March, 2005:
The National Convention conducts another session with 1,075 delegates attending, including members of ethnic ceasefire groups, to discuss legislative power sharing. Some Shan delegates leave the convention in February following the arrest of leaders of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, which won the second highest number of seats in the 1990 general election, including the SNLD chairman Hkun Htun Oo and the leader of the Shan State Army-North, Maj. Gen. Sao Hso Ten.
The National Convention conducts another session with 1,075 delegates attending, including members of ethnic ceasefire groups, to discuss legislative power sharing. Some Shan delegates leave the convention in February following the arrest of leaders of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, which won the second highest number of seats in the 1990 general election, including the SNLD chairman Hkun Htun Oo and the leader of the Shan State Army-North, Maj. Gen. Sao Hso Ten.
Mid-July 2007:
The Kachin Independence Organization, one of the largest ethnic ceasefire groups, which signed a peace accord with the government in 1994, releases a 19-point list of demands to the SPDC calling for significant reforms to the constitutional process, including, point one:
The Kachin Independence Organization, one of the largest ethnic ceasefire groups, which signed a peace accord with the government in 1994, releases a 19-point list of demands to the SPDC calling for significant reforms to the constitutional process, including, point one:
As currently intended, the Union will be composed of constituent states; we believe that specifying these additional goals clearly and concretely will be necessary. One, that the constituent state union system of state be technically and genuinely a system of federation of states, and two, that this system of state organization be fully transparent in its implementation. We are mindful of the fact that, whereas, the Constitution of 1947 specified a Union that is a federation of states, what actually transpired was a system where all political power was centralized, as in a unitary system, instead of a federation, and one constituent state alone held that power. Therefore, to effectively preclude a recurrence of this fate, and the calamitous results, we urge in the strongest sense possible, that a specific constitutional mandate be included for a federal system of union and for its judicious implementation.
(Source: Chronology of Burma’s Constitutional Process – Human Right Watch -http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/burma0508chronology.pdf)
By NAW NOREEN
Muslims in five principal townships in western Burma have been granted permission by the immigration department to travel freely, providing they carry ID cards.
The decision comes nine months after the elections last year and campaign pledges by the eventual winner, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), that it would increase mobility for Burma’s long-persecuted Muslim minority.
A man in Arakan state’s Sandoway said that the decision may be related to letter sent to the government by residents of the town in which they complained that the civil rights ascribed in the 2008 constitution, which was adopted when the new government came to power in March, were not being recognised.
Until recently Muslims in Arakan state were required to get permission from their local authorities before travelling outside of designated regions, regardless of whether they had ID or an alien residency permit.
But in April this year, authorities stopped granting permission, meaning that large communities were banned from moving around outside of their townships.
“We are happy about this,” the Sandoway man said of the latest development. “We have been struggling with health, money, social and education issues for about 20 years.
“We are happy that the government, who now sympathises with our woes, is recognising us as Burmese civilians and protecting our rights. It is important for us to be responsible and good citizens so we won’t lose these rights again.”
Muslims have long been persecuted by the Buddhist government in Burma; the ethnic Rohingya minority in particular is denied any sort of legal status and hundreds of thousands have fled to Bangladesh.
The government claims that four percent of Burmese are practising Muslims, but the US state department, which has labelled Burma one of the world’s most religiously intolerant states, claims the figure could be considerably higher.
Following a report in early 2010 by UN Special Rapportuer to Burma Tomas Ojea Quintana that claimed the Burmese government had been persecuting Muslims, the then-ruling junta began issuing identity cards to the Rohingya.
Various rights groups have warned that the Burmese government is attempting to rid the country of Muslims by making their lives in Burma unbearable; up to 400,000 Rohingya are living as refugees in Bangladesh, which has also been reluctant to grant them any sort of registration.
Link: :http://www.dvb.no/news/travel-restrictions-for-muslims-loosened/16803
တိုင္းရင္းသားျပည္သူအေပါင္း
အမ်ိဳးသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ႀကီးႏွ
လက္နက္ကိုင္ပဋိပကၡေတြ အျမန္ဆံုးရပ္ဆုိင္းဖို႔ ၊ ျပသနာ ေတြကိုေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးအေျဖရ
ဦးအုန္းႀကိဳင္
သတင္းႏွင့္ျပန္ႀကားေရးဌာန
အမ်ိဳးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႔ခ်
အမ်ိဳးသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ႀကီးႏွ
လက္နက္ကိုင္ပဋိပကၡေတြ အျမန္ဆံုးရပ္ဆုိင္းဖို႔ ၊ ျပသနာ ေတြကိုေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးအေျဖရ
ဦးအုန္းႀကိဳင္
သတင္းႏွင့္ျပန္ႀကားေရးဌာန
အမ်ိဳးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႔ခ်
တုိင္းရင္းသား ေဒသေတြမွာ အစိုးရတပ္ေတြနဲ႔ တုိင္းရင္းသား လက္နက္ကုိင္ အဖြဲ႕ေတြၾကား တုိက္ပြဲေတြ အျပင္းအထန္ ျဖစ္ပြားေနတာေၾကာင့္ အပစ္အခတ္ ရပ္စဲေရးနဲ႔ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ေတြကို ပံ့ပုိးဖုိ႔အတြက္ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမုိကေရစီေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က ကုိယ္စြမ္းရွိသ၍ ပါ၀င္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းေပးဖုိ႔ အဆင္သင့္ ရွိတဲ့အေၾကာင္း ေျပာဆုိခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒီေန႔ သမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ဆီ ေပးပုိ႔ခဲ့တဲ့ အိတ္ဖြင့္ေပးစာထဲမွာ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က အဲဒီလို ေျပာဆုိခဲ့တာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီေျပာဆုိခ်က္နဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး တုိင္းရင္းသား လက္နက္ကုိင္ အဖြဲ႕ေတြဘက္ကလည္း ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္နဲ႔ တသေဘာတည္း အတူတူရွိတဲ့အေၾကာင္း တုံ႔ျပန္ခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ အျပည့္အစုံကုိ ေဒၚခင္မ်ဳိးသက္က တင္ျပေပးထားပါတယ္။
လြတ္လပ္ေရးဖခင္ႀကီးဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ဆန္းရဲ႕သမီး၊လူထုေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က ျပည္တြင္းစစ္မီး ၿငိမ္းေအးေစဖို႔ ႀကိဳးပမ္းတဲ့ အေနနဲ႔ အစုိးရသစ္ အဖြဲ႕က သမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္နဲ႔တကြ KIO ကခ်င္လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႕၊ KNU ကရင္အမ်ဳိးသား အစည္းအ႐ုံး၊ NMSP မြန္ျပည္သစ္ပါတီနဲ႔ SSA ရွမ္းျပည္တပ္မေတာ္ေတြဆီကုိ အိတ္ဖြင့္ေပးစာတေစာင္ ေပးပုိ႔ခဲ့တယ္လို႔ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမုိကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ ေျပာခြင့္ရ ဦးအုန္းႀကိဳင္က ေျပာပါတယ္။
“ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က ကုိယ္တုိင္ပါ၀င္ ေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးခ်င္တဲ့ ေစတနာနဲ႔ အိတ္ဖြင့္ေပးစာတေစာင္ ထုတ္ျပန္လိုက္တာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ျဖစ္ေပၚေနတဲ့ လက္နက္ကုိင္ ပဋိပကၡေတြကုိ အျမန္ဆုံး ရပ္ဆုိင္းဖုိ႔၊ ျပႆနာကုိ ေတြ႕ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးၿပီး အေျဖရွာၾကဖို႔ အႏူးအၫြတ္ တုိက္တြန္းထားပါတယ္။”အိတ္ဖြင့္ေပးစာထဲမွာ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က အပစ္အခတ္ ရပ္စဲေရးနဲ႔ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ေတြကုိ ပံ့ပုိးဖုိ႔အတြက္ ကုိယ္စြမ္းရွိသမွ် ႀကိဳးပမ္းဖို႔ အသင့္ရွိပါတယ္လို႔ ေျပာတယ္။ ဘယ္လိုပုံစံနဲ႔ ႀကိဳးပမ္းဖို႔ အစီအစဥ္ ရွိပါသလဲ။
“ပါ၀င္ ေဆာင္ရြက္ခ်င္တဲ့ ေစတနာ အရင္းခံနဲ႔ ထက္သန္ေနတဲ့ ေစတနာကို ေဖာ္ျပလိုက္တာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဘယ္လိုေဆာင္ရြက္မလဲ ဆုိတာကေတာ့ ျဖစ္ေပၚလာတဲ့ အေျခအေနေပၚမွာ မူတည္မွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။”
လက္နက္ကုိင္ တုိင္းရင္းသားအဖြဲ႕ ၄ ဖြဲ႕အေနနဲ႔ ဆက္သြယ္ခ်င္ရင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကုိ ဘယ္လိုဆက္သြယ္လို႔ ရပါမလဲ။
“အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမွဴးကေတာ့ အဲဒီ အဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြက တာ၀န္ရွိတဲ့ ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေတြ၊ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြကို ေတြ႕ခ်င္တာပါပဲတဲ့။ ဒါေပမဲ့ အခုအေျခအေနကေတာ့ဗ်ာ က်ေနာ္တို႔က တရား၀င္ လက္ခံေတြ႕ဆုံဖုိ႔ဆုိတာ ဘယ္လိုလုပ္ ျဖစ္မလဲ။ အေျခအေနက အဲဒီလို ရွိပါတယ္။ အဲဒီေတာ့ အေျခအေနေတြက ေပးလာလုိ႔ ေတြ႕ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးခြင့္ရမယ္ ဆုိရင္ေတာ့ ၀မ္းေျမာက္၀မ္းသာ ေတြ႕ခ်င္ပါတယ္လို႔ အဲဒီလို ေျပာပါတယ္။ ေဒၚစု ေစတနာအမွန္ကုိ ေဖာ္ျပတာပါ။”
ကရင္ျပည္သူေတြအတြက္ ရာစုႏွစ္ တ၀က္ေက်ာ္ လက္နက္ကုိင္ တုိက္ခုိက္ေနတဲ့ ကရင္အမ်ဳိးသား အစည္းအ႐ုံး (KNU) တာ၀န္ခံ ေဒၚေနာ္စီဖိုးရာစိန္ကေတာ့ ဒီလို လက္နက္ကိုင္ၿပီး တုိက္ခုိက္ေနၾကေပမဲ့ KNU က တုိက္ခုိက္မႈေတြဟာ ကုိယ့္ကုိယ္ကုိ ကာကြယ္တဲ့သေဘာ ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သလို ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအတြက္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ရဲ႕ ဆႏၵနဲ႔ တထပ္တည္း ရွိတယ္လို႔ ဆုိပါတယ္။
“သူ႔သေဘာထားက က်မတို႔နဲ႔ ထပ္တူထပ္မွ် ရွိေနပါတယ္။ က်မတုိ႔ ဗမာျပည္ ႏုိင္ငံေရး ျပႆနာက စစ္ေရးနဲ႔ ေျဖရွင္းႏုိင္တာ မဟုတ္ဘူး၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးနည္းနဲ႔ ေျဖရွင္းမွ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ရႏုိင္မယ္ဆုိတဲ့ သူ႔ရဲ႕ သေဘာထားကို က်မတုိ႔ ႀကိဳဆုိတယ္။ က်မတုိ႔က လက္ခံထားမယ္၊ ၿပီးေတာ့ ဗမာျပည္ရဲ႕ ႏုိင္ငံေရး ျပႆနာကိုေတာ့ ဒီလို ၀ုိင္း၀န္းၿပီးေတာ့ တာ၀န္ယူဖို႔ အေရးႀကီးတယ္။ ၿပီးေတာ့ ျပည္သူလူထုေတြကလည္း ပါ၀င္ဖို႔အတြက္ က်မ ေျပာခ်င္ပါတယ္။”
ကရင္ျပည္နယ္ထဲမွာတင္ မကဘဲ ၁၉၉၄ ခုႏွစ္ကတည္းက ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ရယူထားတဲ့ ကခ်င္လက္နက္ကုိင္ အဖြဲ႕နဲ႔လည္း မၾကာခင္ လေတြအတြင္း ပစ္ခတ္ တုိက္ခုိက္မႈေတြ ရွိလာခဲ့တာမို႔ တုိင္းရင္းသား ေဒသခံေတြ ဒုကၡမ်ဳိးစုံ ႀကဳံေနရတာပါ။ ကခ်င္လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႕ (KIO) ရဲ႕ ဒုတိယ ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး တာ၀န္ခံ ဗုိလ္မွဴးႀကီး ဂ်ိမ္းစ္လြန္ေဒါင္းကေတာ့ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဆြးေႏြးမႈေတြ လုပ္ႏုိင္ဖို႔အတြက္ အပစ္အခတ္ ရပ္စဲေရးကို စၿပီးလုပ္ဖို႔ လိုအပ္သလုိ အခုလို ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ကုိယ္တုိင္ ပါ၀င္လာတာဟာ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ ေအာင္ျမင္ဖုိ႔အတြက္ လမ္းစပါလုိ႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။
“ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအဆင့္ကုိေတာ့ မေျပာပါနဲ႔ဦး၊ နံပါတ္တစ္ အပစ္အခတ္ ရပ္စဲထားရမယ္၊ အပစ္အခတ္ ရပ္စဲၿပီးမွ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးကို ျပန္ၿပီး ေဆြးေႏြးမွာ ျဖစ္တယ္။ အဲဒီ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ရမွသာလွ်င္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအရ အစစအရာရာ တဆင့္ၿပီးတဆင့္ ေဆြးေႏြးသြားဖုိ႔ ရွိတယ္။ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က ျပည္တြင္းကသာ မကဘဲ ျပည္ပကနဲ႔ လူတကာက ၀ုိင္းၿပီးေတာ့ သူ႔ကုိ အားထားၾကတယ္။ အဲဒီလို ပုဂၢိဳလ္ဟာ ဒီလိုပါ၀င္တယ္ဆုိရင္ ျပည္တြင္းေရးသာမက ျပည္ပကပါ အာ႐ုံစူးစိုက္မႈကို ဆြဲယူႏုိင္လိမ့္မယ္။ အဲဒီအခါမွာ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔အားလုံး သေဘာထား ႀကီးစြာနဲ႔ ၀ုိင္းလုပ္ၾကမယ္ဆုိရင္ ဒီလုပ္ငန္းက ေအာင္ျမင္ႏုိင္တယ္။”
ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအတြက္ ေတြ႕ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးမႈေတြ လုပ္မယ္ဆုိရင္ တုိင္းရင္းသား အဖြဲ႕အစည္း တဖြဲ႕ခ်င္းစီ မဟုတ္ဘဲ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံထဲက တုိင္းရင္းသားအားလုံး ပါ၀င္ၿပီး NLD နဲ႔ အစိုးရ အာဏာပုိင္ ၃ ဖြဲ႕စလုံး ပါ၀င္ၿပီး ေဆြးေႏြးဖို႔ လုိအပ္တယ္လို႔လည္း KNU အဖြဲ႕ တာ၀န္ခံ ေဒၚေနာ္စီဖုိးရာစိန္က ေျပာပါတယ္။
Link : http://www.voanews.com/burmese/news/dassk-open-letter-126323348.html
By WAI MOEIn this photo taken on Feb. 12, 2011, Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, right, greets members of her National League for Democracy during a cerebration to mark the 64th Union Day at its headquarters in Rangoon. (Photo: AP)
Burma’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi said on Thursday that she is ready to become involved in efforts to resolve ongoing armed conflicts between Naypyidaw and ethnic armed groups.
“I am ready to get involved and try to support ceasefire and peace processes with all of my efforts,” Suu Kyi wrote in an open letter to President Thein Sein and leaders of the ethnic armed groups the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the Karen National Union (KNU), the New Mon State Army (NMSA) and the Shan State Army (SSA).
In the letter, she called for a ceasefire and peaceful solution in the near future to the ongoing conflicts in the interest of “all ethnic people living in the Union of Burma.”
She also said that using force in conflicts only has a bad impact on both sides. She said the military way could not achieve national reconciliation, which could only be reached through political dialogue.
“If we resolve conflict political through dialogue, we will get real national solidarity, which can guarantee the peace of the Union,” the pro-democracy leader said. “We can develop the nation only when the Union is peaceful and stable.”
Suu Kyi said in the letter that the ongoing armed conflicts in Kachin, Shan, Karen and Mon states between the government army and ethnic armed groups have caused local ethnic populations to suffer and also affected neighboring countries.
The new administration led by President Thein Sein came into office on March 30. However, since then, tensions between Naypyidaw and armed groups in ethnic areas in northern and eastern Burma have intensified, with fresh conflicts breaking out with the KIO and the SSA, two former ceasefire groups.
The ethnic groups mentioned in Suu Kyi’s open letter said they would welcome her involvement in efforts to resolve Burma's ethnic tensions as a positive step toward national reconciliation.
“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s efforts for peace are a really good move. Not only ethnic armed groups but also all pro-democracy forces in the country want and have long called for a political dialogue to resolve ongoing conflicts,” La Nan, joint-secretary of the KIO, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday, shortly after reading the letter.
Since Suu Kyi is a key political figure in Burma and the country's most internationally recognized figure, her involvement is ceasefire efforts would be good for all ethnic people, La Nan said, adding the KIO leadership is scheduled to discuss the letter.
Zipporah Sein, general secretary of the KNU, said the group welcomes Suu Kyi’s efforts and concern about the conflicts in ethnic areas, adding that “the KNU takes the same stand that conflicts have to be resolved politically through dialogue.”
“We need peace for the Union. But the prolonged conflicts are caused by dictatorships, not ethnic minorities,” she said.
Nai Hang Thar, the secretary of New Mon State Party, said, “We welcome anyone who wants to work for peace, because that is what we need in this country. If Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is going to work on it, so much the better.”
In responding to Suu Kyi’s readiness to help resolve conflicts in ethnic area, Col Sai Htoo, the assistant secretary general of the Shan State Army, said he would like to thank the Nobel Peace Prize laureate for her efforts.
“However, real peace and stability in the nation depends on the regime’s willingness to achieve them,” Sai Htoo added.
Possible Ceasefire?
Meanwhile, KIO sources have said that the group appears to be moving closer to a ceasefire agreement with the Burmese government.
“According to recent letters from a key government negotiator, including one received today, they [the government] seem to want a ceasefire with Kachin troops as soon as possible,” said La Nan, speaking to The Irrawaddy on Thursday.
“We do not know what kind of dilemmas they are facing, but they seem quite urgent about signing a treaty. But we want a more solid and long-term ceasefire agreement,” he said, adding that the two sides have held talks and exchanged a number of letters in recent days.
He added that Col Than Aung, Kachin State’s minister for security and border affairs, sent a draft ceasefire agreement that now includes a post-ceasefire political dialogue—something that Naypyidaw refused to agree to in the past.
“Previously the government side repeatedly rejected our calls for a nationwide ceasefire, but in the draft agreement we received, the government side acknowledged that a ceasefire in the whole country was needed to achieve a genuine peace,” he added.
He said the KIO wants the government to announce a nationwide ceasefire within 15 days of signing the agreement, and for the ceasefire to come into effect within 48 hours.
Link : :http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21791
“I am ready to get involved and try to support ceasefire and peace processes with all of my efforts,” Suu Kyi wrote in an open letter to President Thein Sein and leaders of the ethnic armed groups the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the Karen National Union (KNU), the New Mon State Army (NMSA) and the Shan State Army (SSA).
In the letter, she called for a ceasefire and peaceful solution in the near future to the ongoing conflicts in the interest of “all ethnic people living in the Union of Burma.”
She also said that using force in conflicts only has a bad impact on both sides. She said the military way could not achieve national reconciliation, which could only be reached through political dialogue.
“If we resolve conflict political through dialogue, we will get real national solidarity, which can guarantee the peace of the Union,” the pro-democracy leader said. “We can develop the nation only when the Union is peaceful and stable.”
Suu Kyi said in the letter that the ongoing armed conflicts in Kachin, Shan, Karen and Mon states between the government army and ethnic armed groups have caused local ethnic populations to suffer and also affected neighboring countries.
The new administration led by President Thein Sein came into office on March 30. However, since then, tensions between Naypyidaw and armed groups in ethnic areas in northern and eastern Burma have intensified, with fresh conflicts breaking out with the KIO and the SSA, two former ceasefire groups.
The ethnic groups mentioned in Suu Kyi’s open letter said they would welcome her involvement in efforts to resolve Burma's ethnic tensions as a positive step toward national reconciliation.
“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s efforts for peace are a really good move. Not only ethnic armed groups but also all pro-democracy forces in the country want and have long called for a political dialogue to resolve ongoing conflicts,” La Nan, joint-secretary of the KIO, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday, shortly after reading the letter.
Since Suu Kyi is a key political figure in Burma and the country's most internationally recognized figure, her involvement is ceasefire efforts would be good for all ethnic people, La Nan said, adding the KIO leadership is scheduled to discuss the letter.
Zipporah Sein, general secretary of the KNU, said the group welcomes Suu Kyi’s efforts and concern about the conflicts in ethnic areas, adding that “the KNU takes the same stand that conflicts have to be resolved politically through dialogue.”
“We need peace for the Union. But the prolonged conflicts are caused by dictatorships, not ethnic minorities,” she said.
Nai Hang Thar, the secretary of New Mon State Party, said, “We welcome anyone who wants to work for peace, because that is what we need in this country. If Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is going to work on it, so much the better.”
In responding to Suu Kyi’s readiness to help resolve conflicts in ethnic area, Col Sai Htoo, the assistant secretary general of the Shan State Army, said he would like to thank the Nobel Peace Prize laureate for her efforts.
“However, real peace and stability in the nation depends on the regime’s willingness to achieve them,” Sai Htoo added.
Possible Ceasefire?
Meanwhile, KIO sources have said that the group appears to be moving closer to a ceasefire agreement with the Burmese government.
“According to recent letters from a key government negotiator, including one received today, they [the government] seem to want a ceasefire with Kachin troops as soon as possible,” said La Nan, speaking to The Irrawaddy on Thursday.
“We do not know what kind of dilemmas they are facing, but they seem quite urgent about signing a treaty. But we want a more solid and long-term ceasefire agreement,” he said, adding that the two sides have held talks and exchanged a number of letters in recent days.
He added that Col Than Aung, Kachin State’s minister for security and border affairs, sent a draft ceasefire agreement that now includes a post-ceasefire political dialogue—something that Naypyidaw refused to agree to in the past.
“Previously the government side repeatedly rejected our calls for a nationwide ceasefire, but in the draft agreement we received, the government side acknowledged that a ceasefire in the whole country was needed to achieve a genuine peace,” he added.
He said the KIO wants the government to announce a nationwide ceasefire within 15 days of signing the agreement, and for the ceasefire to come into effect within 48 hours.
Link : :http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21791
In this June 8, 2011 photo, Burmese refugee children attend their school class in a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (Photo: AP)
BANGKOK — While a new refugee swap deal between Australia and Malaysia will offer hope to some of the tens of thousands of Burmese refugees in Malaysia, there are different views on whether the arrangement lives up to international standards.
The “Arrangement on Transfer and Resettlement” was signed in Kuala Lumpur on July 25 by Malaysia's Home Affairs Minister Hishammuddin Hussein and Australia's Immigration and Citizenship Minister Chris Bowen. It will transfer 4,000 refugees in Malaysia to Australia over the next four years, in return for Malaysia taking in 800 asylum-seekers arriving in Australia or interdicted at sea en route to Australia after July 25. Australia will pay for the deal, predicted to cost around US $325million over the current four-year implementation timetable, with Australia already saying the deal could be expanded.
As Burmese nationals make up an estimated 80-90 percent of refugees in Malaysia, the deal offers some hope to the small additional percentage that will benefit from the arrangement over the coming four years.
“We are happy that at least some of the people will get the opportunity to have a new life in Australia,” said Simon Sang Hre, who works with the Chin Refugee Committee in Malaysia, assisting what his organization estimates at 42,000 ethnic Chin refugees from Chin State in Burma, speaking to The Irrawaddy by telephone from Kuala Lumpur.
However, there are mixed feelings about the deal. Latheefa Koya, an adviser to Lawyers for Liberty, a Malaysian NGO, told The Irrawaddy that “the thousands of refugees, mostly Burmese, who have yet to be registered with the UN Refugee Agency cannot benefit.”
Of particular concern are Burmese Rohingya fleeing persecution in western Burma, where they are denied citizenship and consequently cannot register as refugees in Malaysia, adds Latheefa Koya. “This deal is unlikely to benefit the Rohingya in Malaysia,” she said.
According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Malaysia, there are some 94,400 refugees and asylum-seekers registered with the organization. Of these “86,500 are from Myanmar [Burma], comprising some 35,600 Chins, 21,400 Rohingyas, 10,100 Myanmar Muslims, 3,800 Mon, 3,400 Kachins and other ethnicities from Myanmar.” UNCHR says that there are around 10,000 unregistered asylum-seekers or refugees in Malaysia, though some NGOs believe there are tens of thousands of unregistered refugees.
Others have criticized the deal as flawed due to Malaysia's refusal to sign up to international refugee laws. In a statement issued in response to the signing of the Australia-Malaysia deal, Australia's Human Rights Commission President Catherine Branson said that “while the Commission recognized the need for regional and international cooperation on asylum seekers and supported the resettling in Australia of an increased number of refugees,” she was “concerned that Malaysia was not a signatory to the Refugee Convention.”
According to Bill Frelick, refugee program director at Human Rights Watch, the deal should not have been signed, as “the gap in the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers between Australia and Malaysia remains enormous.”
A March 2011 survey of over 1,000 refugees in Malaysia by the Health Equity and Initiatives in March of this year found that 70 percent of the interviewees showed symptoms of anxiety, depression and stress as a result of human trafficking, forced labor and unemployment.
However, the Australian government claims the deal will not result in any abuses of the 800 to be sent to Malaysia. According to a July 25 press statement by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Minister Bowen, “The arrangement reaffirms Malaysia's commitment that transferees will be treated with dignity and respect in accordance with human rights standards, that it will respect the principle of non-refoulement, the key tenet of the Refugee Convention, and that asylum claims will be considered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).”
Yante Ismail, a spokesperson for UNHCR Malaysia, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday that “UNHCR assesses that the final Arrangement and its implementing guidelines contain these safeguards, and are workable.”
However, even the positive aspects of the deal are being criticized for potentially creating a two-tier system. Once the 800 arrivals are processed, they will receive benefits that the the 94,400 registered refugees in Malaysia do not get, such as work rights and access to education and health care.
Link: http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21788
Zin Linn
Harsh conditions are being faced by the Burma Army’s ordinary soldiers and junior officers, especially after the recent decrease of supplies to their family members. The problem has caused several responsible commanding officers to tend resignations, the Shan Herald Agency for News (S.H.A.N.) said.
Among those commanding officers, Lt-Gen Myint Soe, Chief of the Bureau of Special Operations (BSO) ‘1’ also takes part. BSO ‘1’ which composed of more than 200 brigadier-generals and colonels, oversees security in Kachin, Chin and Sagaing regions.
The indirect protest from those military officers has brought “reformist” President Thein Sein and “hardliner” Vice President Tin Aung Myint Oo to meet head-on.
Thein Sein had reportedly asked “Naypyitaw”, believed to be the retired Senior General Than Shwe, to suspend all the military campaigns currently being waged in Karen, Shan and Kachin states, to relieve of the pressure before dealing with the problems of the rank and file, according to Shan Herald Agency for News.
According to President Thein Sein, Burma Army troops must be withdrawn away from the headquarters of the ethnic groups. But, Tin Aung Myint Oo thought the military operations, particularly against the Shan State Army (SSA) North, ought to continue and that the problems inside the Army could be resolved after receiving a loan from China.
“We must destroy the groups one after another,” one of the generals supporting Tin Aung Myint Oo’s view was quoted as saying. “And the total control of the SSA areas (west of the Salween) will enable us to defeat the Wa (east of the Salween).”
The United Wa State Army (UWSA) has reportedly ordered all of its frontline units on 24-hour alert along the Salween river, a shared border with its ally the Shan State Army (SSA) ‘North’. The UWSA have alerted all of its troops to be ready to defend Wa State, although they do not want war. They will not fire the first shot, said a senior Wa officer.
Throughout these days, several soldiers from Burma Army troops warring with the Shan State Progress Party/ Shan State Army (SSPP/SSA) in Shan State South have reportedly been deserting from the battlefields, local sources reported.
The disagreement between “reformist” President Thein Sein and “hardliner” Vice President Tin Aung Myint Oo were so bitter it seemed ‘Naypyitaw’ had become “too small for the two men to live together,” according to the source. “Both sides looked to Than Shwe to stick his oar in, which he did,” source said. Thein Sein and Tin Aung Myint Oo have to stay in status quo helping unity of the armed forces. By doing so, Than Shwe advised, the unity of the Burma Army, should be maintained at all costs, the source said. The source said it has a document in possession to support his report, According to (S.H.A.N.).
Lt-Gen Yawdserk, leader of the Restoration Council of Shan State / Shan State Army (RCSS/SSA), better known as the SSA South, said the report corresponded to the situation on the ground. “Wanhai (the SSA North HQ) was supposed to have been taken last week,” he said. “But so far Burmese troops around Wanhai have not made any significant move.”
At the same time, troops from neighboring townships are being ordered to march toward Kehsi Township in Shan State South. Kehsi is 25 miles southwest of Wanhai.
The SSA South leader said his units had been engaged in ambushes against Burma Army convoys moving to Mongnawng, some 30 miles south of Kehsi, yesterday.
However, this war upon the ethnic population launched by Burma Army generates not only deserters from Burmese military but also victims from Shan villages.
Currently, political activists in Burma have been taking historic risks with a signature-campaign to release political prisoners and to stop the aggressive wars on ethnic people what they say is discrimination by the President Thein Sein government.
Currently, the military-dominated Burmese government and the Kachin rebels are in the process of signing a ceasefire agreement. KIO, a member of the ethnic alliance United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), has offered to stop fighting as a nationwide ceasefire. But Burmese authorities said they would negotiate cease-fire in Kachin State first. Then in accordance with the example of Kachin State, they would try to achieve a cease-fire in other states, La Nang a spokesman for KIO said.
Some political analysts believe releasing over 2,000 political prisoners and stopping the aggressive wars on ethnic people are the most important topics to be addressed by the new ‘Thein Sein government’.
Releasing political prisoners and calling peace to armed ethnic groups would provide evidence to the international community that government is genuine about bringing about political change and embracing real democratic values.
DVB News- by ေနာ္နုိရင္း
ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ စစ္ေတြ၊ သံတြဲ၊ ေက်ာက္ျဖဴ နဲ့ ေက်ာက္နီေမာ္ စတဲ့ၿမို့ေတြမွာရွိတဲ့ မြတ္စလင္ဘာသာဝင္ေတြ အရင္က ခရီးသြားလာခြင့္ ကန့္သတ္ခံထားရေပမယ့္ အခု ခရီးသြားခြင့္ရၿပီလို့ မြတ္စလင္ဘာသာဝင္တဦးက ေျပာပါတယ္။
မြတ္စလင္ ဘာသာဝင္ေတြဟာ ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံသား စိစစ္ေရ ကတ္ျပားရွိရင္ လြတ္လပ္စြာ ခရီးသြားလာခြင့္ရွိေၾကာင္း လူဝင္မႈႀကီးၾကပ္ေရးကတဆင့္ သတင္းရတယ္လို့ သံတြဲၿမို့ေန မြတ္စလင္တဦးက ေျပာပါတယ္။
“စစ္ေတြ၊ ေက်ာက္ျဖဴ၊ ရမ္းၿဗဲ၊ ေက်ာက္နီေမာ္၊ သံတြဲ၊ အဲဒီေဒသေတြမွာ ရွိတဲ့ မြတ္စလင္ဘာသာဝင္ နိုင္ငံသားေတြဟာ နိုင္ငံသားကတ္ ရွိခဲ့ရင္ ခရီးသြားလာခြင့္ကို လြတ္လပ္စြာ ခရီးသြားလာနိုင္တယ္ ဆိုတဲ့ သတင္းကို က်ေနာ္တို့ လဝက ဆီက ရတာေပါ့။ သူတို့ ဒီ ရက္ ၂၀ ေလာက္ကတည္းက က်ေနာ္တို့ ဒီသတင္း ရတာပါ။ ဘာျဖစ္လို့ သြားလာခြင့္ ပိတ္တာလဲဆိုေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တို့ စာတင္ထားတာေတြ ရွိတယ္ဗ် ဥပေဒေၾကာင္းအရေလ ဒီအစိုးရအေပၚမွာ က်ေနာ္တို့ နိ္ဳင္ငံသား အခြင့္အေရးေတြ ဆံုးရွံဳးေနမႈအေပၚမွာ က်ေနာ္တို့ ၂၀၀၈ ဖြဲ့စည္းပံုအရ နိုင္ငံသားရဲ့ ခံစားခြင့္ေတြ ရရွိဖို့၊ ပညာသင္ၾကားခြင့္ေတြ ရရွိဖို့၊ က်န္းမာေရးေဆးကုသခြင့္ေတြ ရရွိဖို့ ဆိုတဲ့ ဥပေဒေတြ က်ေနာ္တို့က ေထာက္ျပၿပီးေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တို့ စာတင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီမွာ သူတို့ စဉ္စားတယ္လို့လည္း က်ေနာ္တို့က သံုးသပ္မိတယ္ေပါ့။”
ရခိုင္ျပည္မွာ ေနထိုင္တဲ့ မြတ္စလင္ဘာသာဝင္ေတြဟာ အရင္က ခရီးသြားလာခြင့္ ပိတ္ပင္ကန့္သတ္ခံထားရၿပီး ခရီးသြားရင္ ခရီးသြားလာခြင့္ ပံုစံ ၄ကို သက္ဆိုင္ရာဆီမွာ သြားယူေနၾကရတာပါ။
နိုင္ငံျခား သားေတြ၊ ဧည့္နိုင္ငံသားေတြ ပံုစံ ၄ ယူရသလို ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံသားစိစစ္ ေရးကတ္ျပား ကိုင္ေဆာင္ထားသူေတြပါ ပံုစံ ၄ ကို ယူၿပီးမွ ခရီးသြားခြင့္ရပါတယ္။ အခုႏွစ္ ဧၿပီလအတြင္းမွာေတာ့ ခရီးသြားလာခြင့္ပံုစံ မထုတ္ေပးေတာ့ပါဘူး။
ခရီးသြား လာခြင့္ပိတ္ပင္ခံထားရမႈေၾကာင့္ မြတ္စလင္ဘာသာဝင္ေတြဟာ စီးပြားေရးက်ပ္တည္းၿပီး စားဝတ္ေနရေရးအခက္အခဲနဲ့ ၾကံုေတြ႕ခဲ့ရပါတယ္။
နိုင္ငံသားတေယာက္အေနနဲ့ လြတ္လပ္စြာသြားလာခြင့္ရတဲ့အတြက္ ဝမ္းသာေၾကာင္း သံတြဲၿမို့ခံ မြတ္စလင္တဦးက ေျပာပါတယ္။
“ဝမ္းသာတာ ေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ အႏွစ္ ၂၀ ေလာက္ က်ေနာ္တို့မွာ က်န္းမာေရး၊ စီးပြားေရး၊ လူမႈေရး၊ ပညာေရး အရမ္းကို က်ပ္တည္းခဲ့တယ္ေလ။ ဒီအေနအထားမွာ ဒီ နိုင္ငံေတာ္က က်ေနာ္တို့ရဲ့ ခံစားခ်က္ေတြကိ္ဳ သူတို့ စာနာေထာက္ထားၿပီးေတာ့ ဒီလိုမ်ိဳး က်ေနာ္တို့ကို နိုင္ငံသားအျဖစ္ အသိအမွတ္ျပုၿပီးေတာ့ နိ္ဳင္ငံသားအခြင့္အေရး မဆံုးရွံဳးေအာင္ အသိအမွတ္ျပုတာကို က်ေနာ္တို့အေနနဲ့ အမ်ားႀကီး ဝမ္းသာတာေပါ့။ ဒီဟာေတြကိုလည္း ေနာက္ထပ္ ဆံုးရွံဳးမႈေတြ မျဖစ္ေအာင္ က်ေနာ္တို့ဘက္က နိုင္ငံသားေကာင္း ပီပီ နိ္ဳင္ငံတာဝန္ကို ေက်ပြန္စြာနဲ့ ေနထိုင္သြားဖို့လည္း အေရးႀကီးပါတယ္။”
ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ဘက္ မြတ္စလင္ဘာသာဝင္ေတြ အခုလို လြတ္လပ္စြာ သြားလာခြင့္ရေနေပမယ့္ မနၲေလးတိုင္း မိတၲိလာၿမို့ဘက္က မြတ္စလင္ဘာသာဝင္ ေတြကေတာ့ ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့ ရက္ပိုင္းကပဲ သူတို့ရဲ့ ဘာသာဝင္သျဂႌုင္း ဖ်က္ဆီးခံရတဲ့အတြက္ ရုန္းရင္းဆန္ခတ္္မႈ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အခင္းျဖစ္ခ်ိန္ အာဏာပိုင္ေတြေရာက္လာၿပီး ေျဖရွင္ေပးခဲ့သလို အေစာင့္အၾကပ္ေတြလည္း ခ်ထားပါတယ္။
Link: http://burmese.dvb.no/archives/13365
Karlis Salna, AAP South-East Asia Correspondent
Muhammad Rafique can't deny his hopes have been boosted by the Malaysia deal, but tears well up in his eyes as he explains that 15 years as a refugee have taught him not to be so foolish as to trust such feelings.
On the walls inside the squalid shack where he lives with his wife and young child are a map of Burma and a poster of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The 34-year-old, an ethnic Rohingya who arrived in Malaysia from Burma when he was 19, is desperate to know whether he and his family might be among the 4000 refugees that will be resettled in Australia.
Under the deal signed in Kuala Lumpur on Monday, Australia will resettle 1000 bona-fide refugees a year over four years, in exchange for Malaysia taking the next 800 asylum seekers that arrive in Australia by boat.
But Rafique and his family are just three among more than 90,000 refugees in Malaysia.
"I want to go to Australia with my family. I hope to have a chance to go to Australia," he said.
It's obvious when he speaks that he sees their chances as bleak.
His English is poor and, having been a refugee for his entire adult life, Rafique has no skills.
He believes his chances are even poorer because the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which will have input into who makes it into the 4000, "doesn't like to send Muslim people to Australia".
"I am worried the UNHCR don't want to pick me and my family. I fear the UNHCR will not want to listen to me."
Unlike the 800 asylum seekers that will be transferred from Australia, Rafique has no rights to work or access to education.
He has little access to health care, and like many of the refugees waiting in a long queue in Malaysia, Rafique suffers from anxiety and depression brought on by the parlous life he and his family live, and their uncertain future.
A study by the non-government organisation, Health Equity and Initiatives (HEI), in March this year found that 70 per cent of asylum seekers and refugees in Malaysia suffered symptoms of anxiety, depression and stress as a result of human trafficking, forced labour and unemployment.
Xavier Pereira, the director of HEI, said the figure was three times higher than in any normal population.
"Both men and women are equally affected, especially those who are unemployed, involved in human trafficking and forced labour," he said.
The level of anxiety was much higher among those who were yet to be granted refugee status, according to the study of 1074 asylum seekers and refugees, aged between 18 to 70 years.
Rafique has been ripped off by agents that have promised to help with resettlement in another country, and he admits to having paid a people smuggler in a failed attempt to make it to Australia on a boat.
He cannot return to Burma, according to Amnesty International, because as he is from the Rohingya minority, the Burmese authorities would refuse to grant him citizenship, rendering him stateless.
In Burma, he would suffer from systematic persecution, including forced labour, forced eviction, land confiscation, and severe restrictions on freedom of movement.
He says he will now do the right thing and wait, and hope for a chance of resettlement in Australia.
But he says others will still pay people smugglers and get on the boats in a perilous crossing to Australia, despite the deal with Malaysia meaning that within 72 hours, they will be sent back.
"They will still go, whatever chance they have, they must try to go, even if it means they go to the back of the queue," Rafique said.
Link : http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=8039181669102650263
ၿပီးတဲ့ရက္သတၱပတ္ၾသစေၾတးလ်အေနာက္ျခမ္းထုတ္TheWeekendWestသတင္းစာမွာ ျမန္မာတိုင္းမ္တည္ေထာင္သူမစၥတာ ေရာ့စ္ ဒန္ကေလကိုၾသစေၾတးလ်နိုင္ငံ ျပန္လည္ေရာက္ရွိေနတုန္းသတင္းေထာက္MalcolmQuekettက ေမးျမန္းေရးသားထားတဲ့ သတင္းတပုဒ္ပါ။သူဟာ ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ ေထာင္ဒဏ္တလက်ခံခဲ့ၿပီး အခု ၾသစေၾတလ်အေနာက္ျခမ္းမွာ အားလပ္ရက္အျဖစ္ အလည္ျပန္ေရာက္ေနတာ ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔သိရတယ္။ေထာင္ထဲမွာေနစဥ္ညဖက္အိပ္ခ်ိန္မွာ ေျခေထာက္လွိမ့္စရာ ေနရာေလာက္သာရွိၿပီး.. တေန႔ကို(၈)နာရီခန္႔(၂)ႀကိမ္သာအျပင္ဖက္လမ္းေလွ်ာက္ခြင့္ရခဲ့တယ္။၄၇ရက္ၾကာ ေထာင္က်ရက္ရဲ႕တ၀က္ခန္႔မွာ ေဆး႐ံုေဆာင္ကို ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ေနထိုင္ခဲ့ၿပီး အဲဒီမွာ ျပင္းထန္တဲ့ ေအအိုင္ဒီအက္စ္ေ၀ဒနာရွင္တခ်ဳိ႕အပါအ၀င္လူေပါင္း၆၀ခန္႔ရွိသည္ဟု ေထာင္အေတြ႕အၾကံဳတခ်ိဳ႕ကို ေျပာဆိုထားေလသည္။
ဒန္ကေလ ရဲ႕ ေျပာဆို ခ်က္ အရ.. ျပီးခဲ့တဲ့ နွစ္ ပိုင္းမ်ား ကတည္းက.. ဗမာ ရဲ မ်ားက..သူ႕ကို ေစာင့္ ၾကည့္ ေနခဲ့ ျပီး.. သူ႕ကို ဗမာျပည္ထဲက.. ေမာင္းထုတ္ဖို႕ ၾကံစည္ တဲ့..ေထာင္ေခ်ာက္ ထဲ မွာ.. မွားယြင္းျပီး..သူ က် ခဲ့ ရတယ္ လို႕ ဆို သည္။ အစိုးရ အတြင္းပိုင္း လူတခ်ိဳ႕က..က်ေနာ့္ကို.. အစိုးရ ဆန္႕က်င္သူ လို႕ ယံုၾကည္ ေနၾကတာ ေတြ ရွိတယ္..တကယ္ေတာ့..မဟုတ္ပါဘူးဟု ေျပာဆိုခဲ့သည္။
သူ ကံဳေတြ႕ခဲ့ရတဲ့ ေထာင္ေခ်ာက္နဲ႔ပတ္သတ္လို႔ ေျပာျပတာေတြကေတာ့ ဇန္န၀ါရီလမွာ ကလပ္တခုကိုအသြား အမ်ိဳးသမီးတေယာက္က ခ်ည္းကပ္လာခဲ့တယ္။ သူက ျငင္းဆိုခဲ့ေပမဲ့.. အမ်ဳိးသမီးက သူ႕ေနာက္ကိုအတင္းလိုက္လာခဲ့ၿပီး ေနာက္ဆံုး သူ႔အခန္းထဲထိ ပါလာခဲ့တယ္။ ၁၅ မိနစ္ေလာက္အၾကာမွာ အမ်ိဳးသမီးရဲ႕အျပဳအမူေတြေၾကာင့္ မူးယစ္ေဆးသံုးစြဲထားတာကို သတိျပဳမိတဲ့အတြက္ တကၠစီနဲ႔ျပန္ဖို႔ လိုက္ ပို႔ခဲ့တယ္။ လမ္းမွာ အမ်ိဳးသမီးက ကားထဲကေန ခုန္ထြက္သြားတယ္။ သူလည္း အိမ္ကိုျပန္လာခဲ့ၿပီး နာရီအနည္းငယ္အၾကာမွာ အဲဒီ အမ်ိဳးသမီးနဲ႔အတူ ရဲေတြေရာက္လာေတာ့တာပါပဲလို႔ ဆိုသည္။
အမ်ဳိးသမီးက က်ေနာ္ သူ႔လည္ပင္းကို ညႇစ္တယ္လို႔ဆိုတယ္။ တရားခြင္မွာလည္း ဆရာ၀န္က ဘာသက္ေသအမွတ္အသားမွ မေတြ႕ ေၾကာင္း ထြက္ဆိုသြားတယ္။ က်ေနာ္လည္း ဘာမွမလုပ္ခဲ့ပါဘူး။ တကယ္ေတာ့ နိုင္ငံေရးကစားပြဲေတြ စလာတာပါပဲ။ သူတို႔ဂုဏ္သိကၡာကို ကယ္ဖို႔ က်ေနာ့္ကို ထိုးေကြၽးတာပါ။ ဒါေတြအားလံုးဟာ အစိုးရအတြင္းကလူေတြရဲ႕က်ားကြက္ေတြပါပဲ။ သူတို႔ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္က က်ေနာ့္ ကို လမ္းေပၚက ေမာင္းထုတ္ဖို႔ပဲ။ သူတို႔ျဖစ္ေစခ်င္တာက ဒီသတင္းလုပ္ငန္းကိုညႇစ္ယူၿပီး သူတို႔အားလံုး ခ်ဳပ္ကိုင္ထားလိုက္ခ်င္တာပဲ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ သူတို႔မေအာင္ျမင္ခဲ့ပါဘူးလို႔ ဒန္ကေလက သတင္းစာကို ေျပာဆိုခဲ့သည္။ သူ႕ရဲ႕အသနားခံစာကိုလည္း လက္ခံလိမ့္မယ္လို႔ ယံုၾကည္သည္ဟု ဆိုသည္။
ခင္ဗ်ား ဘာမွ အမွားမလုပ္ခဲ့ပဲ ေထာင္ေခ်ာက္ဆင္ခံခဲ့ရတယ္ဆိုရင္ ဘယ္လိုမဆို အဆံုးမေတာ့ အမွန္တရားက ေပၚလာမွာပါပဲလို႔ ေနာက္ ဆံုးမွတ္ခ်က္ေပးခဲ့ၿပီး ဗမာျပည္မွ ဒီေရျမင့္တက္လာေနတယ္လို႔ ခံစားခဲ့ရမိတယ္။ အေႏွးနဲ႔အျမန္ဆိုသလို လြတ္လပ္တဲ့သတင္းမီဒီယာ ေတြ ေပၚလာမွာပါလို႔လည္း အေကာင္းျမင္သံုးသပ္ထားေလသည္။
ျဖစ္ပ်က္ခဲ့တဲ့ အမူကိစၥအားလံုးမွာ.. ေဒၚလာ ၂ သိန္း ၅ ေသာင္းကုန္က်ခဲ့ေပမယ့္ သူနာက်ည္းမႈမျဖစ္ပါဘူး။ ဒါဟာ ကစားပြဲတခုပါပဲလို႔ ဗမာအစိုးရကို စိမ္ေခၚလိုက္သည္။
Credit - Moe Ma ka
Myanmar has become the No. 1 source of Web attack traffic worldwide as the Asian country makes its debut in a cyberthreat index covering the first quarter of 2011, according to new report.
Released Wednesday, the latest edition of Akamai's quarterly "State of the Internet report" noted that Myanmar's sudden appearance at the top of the chart was "certainly unusual". This was the first time the country placed in the ranking, which has a four-year history, noted the content network delivery provider. It added that the attacks from Myanmar seemed related to attack traffic in late-February and early-March which targeted port 80.
According to Akamai, Myanmar accounted for 13 percent of the observed attack traffic despite only targeting 25 unique ports, among which 45 percent of the attack were targeted at port 80. In contrast, the United States--ranked No. 2--accounted for 10 percent of attack traffic with tens of thousands of targeted ports. Attack activities from the U.S. were strongly indicative of general port scanning and not specifically-targeted attacks, said the company.
Compared to the previous quarter, Taiwan dropped one rank to No. 3, accounting for 9.1 percent of global attack traffic. Other Asia-Pacific economies in the top 10 chart were China at No.5 with 6.4 percent, India at No.7 with 3.8 percent, and Hong Kong at No. 8 with 3.3 percent.
At the continental level, the Asia-Pacific region accounted for nearly half of the observed attack traffic worldwide, said Akamai.
In the top 10 ranking for attacks from mobile networks, two Asia-Pacific markets made it to the charts with Malaysia at No. 3 with 7.7 percent of traffic, while Australia ranked in at No. 4 with 7.2 percent.
Akamai noted that the attacks from mobile networks were likely from infected PC-type clients connected to wireless networks using mobile broadband technologies, and not by infected smartphones or similar mobile-connected devices.
Aside from Web attacks, the report also ranked countries with the fastest Internet connection. Similar to last quarter, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan remained the top 3 fastest countries, and were the only three Asian economies to make the top 10 list.
(Photo:ScreeshotfromCNNfootage)ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဒုကၡသည္ေတြအေရးနဲ႔ပတ္သက္ျပီးၾကားနာပြဲတစ္ရပ္ကိုမေန႔ကအေမရိကန္ကြန္ဂရက္စ္္လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးကာ္မရွင္ေရွ႕ေမွာက္မွာက်င္းပခဲ့ရာမွာ ျမန္မာ့အေရး ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနတဲ့ US Campaign For Burma အဖြဲ႕ရဲ႕ ညႊန္ၾကားေရးမွဴးတစ္ဦးျဖစ္သူ Jennifer Quigley က ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ဒုကၡသည္ေတြ အေၾကာင္း တင္ျပခဲ့ပါတယ္။
႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ဒုကၡသည္ေလွမ်ားအား ထိုင္းေရတပ္က ပင္လယ္ျပင္ထဲသို႔ ျပန္ပို႔ခဲ့ပံုအေၾကာင္း CNN ႐ုပ္ျမင္သံၾကား သတင္းဌာနက ရုိက္ကူးျပသခဲ့သည့္ မွတ္တမ္းတင္ ဗီဒီယုိကို Amnesty International အဖြဲ႔က ၂၀၀၉ ခုႏွစ္ အတြက္ သတင္းမီဒီယာဆု ခ်ီးျမင့္ခဲ့ပါသည္။
ၾကားနာပြဲမွာ Ms. Quigley က ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြရဲ႕ လက္ရွိ အေျခအေန၊ ျမန္မာ စစ္အစိုးရရဲ႕ ဖိႏွိပ္ခံရမႈ သမိုင္းေၾကာင္း ေတြကို တင္ျပခဲ့ျပီး ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြရဲ႕ အေျခအေန အေၾကာင္း သတင္း အခ်က္အလက္ေတြ ရယူရာမွာ ေအာက္ေျခပိုင္း အဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြရဲ႕ အသံုး၀င္ပံုေတြကိုလည္း တင္ျပခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒါ့အျပင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ တျခား တိုင္းရင္းသား လူမ်ိဳးစုေတြဟာလည္း စစ္အစိုးရရဲ႕ ဖိႏွိပ္မႈက မလြတ္ကင္းၾကပါဘူး၊ အထူးသျဖင့္ ဖြံ႕ျဖိဳးေရး နဲ႔ စီးပြားေရး စီမံကိန္းေတြရွိတဲ့ ေနရာေတြမွာ ဖိႏွိပ္မႈ ပိုျပီး တိုးမ်ားတဲ့ အေျခအေနေတြ ေတြ႕ရပါတယ္လို႔ သူက ေျပာသြားပါတယ္။
By acorcoran
I was interested in this story—Nashua, NH fretting about whether it would get more refugees if Manchester gets a moratorium—anyway. But, then I note that we are quietly resettling Rohingya refugees in New Hampshire.
For years I followed the story of Rohingya Muslim refugees leaving Burma and it interested me because for years the US State Department resisted the pressure from NGOs to resettle them here. (The Rohingya are also among the illegal aliens trying to get into Thailand and Australia). But, at some point in 2010 we started resettling Rohingya in American towns and cities and so I gave up posting much on them—it was kind of hopeless.
BTW, here is one of 98 posts I’ve written on Rohingya in a special category entitled Rohingya Reports. It is a post from April 2010 about how the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) was pushing hard to add Rohingya to their collection of ethnic groups to add diversity to your town! If anyone in New Hampshire wants to know more about Rohingya, just read through those 98 posts going back to 2007.
USCRI is the federal contractor that subcontracts the International Institute of New Hampshire. operating in Manchester. Incidentally, another USCRI subcontractor was closed by the US State Department in Waterbury, CT after a real (honest to goodness) investigative reporter found the refugees living in squalor and dared to write a series of articles about it.
Lutheran Social Services is a competing contractor. If Manchester gets a moratorium, presumably Lutheran Social Services will get the job (and the per head payment!) since they must control the Nashua turf.
So that is some of the background, now here is the story from the Nashua Telegraph from last week:
As Manchester city officials attempt to put a halt on new refugees being placed in the city, it’s unknown what the impact would be on Nashua if the moratorium were granted.
Manchester Mayor Ted Gatsas submitted a letter to the U.S. Department of State requesting a two-year moratorium on new refugees being resettled in the city.
The state’s largest city has been the primary resettlement location for refugees in New Hampshire. Between 2002 and 2009, Manchester received 1,807 of the state’s 2,966 new refugees, or roughly 60 percent.
By comparison, Nashua, the state’s second-largest city, received only 70 refugees during that same period, much fewer than Concord and Laconia, which received 778 and 260, respectively.
The most recent group of refugees to come to Nashua were roughly a dozen Rohingya people, seeking refuge from the Burmese government. More are expect to be resettled in Nashua in the coming year.
Amy Marchildon, who oversees refugee resettlement in New Hampshire for Lutheran Social Services, said Nashua is in line to receive another 50 to 70 Rohingya refugees over the next year, but there’s no way to know for sure whether those numbers will pan out.
I wonder why the states cower so and don’t just tell the US State Department NO! Or, at least do what Tennessee has done and start to take more local goverment control of refugee resettlement.
By Htun Aung Kyaw
Burmese opposition leader ASSK and the Burmese regime’s minister Aung Kyi met for the first time when the so called newly elected democratic regime took over power on July 25, 2011 at noon time in the government guest house. Both parties said the meeting was satisfactory and they are willing to cooperate together for the betterment of the Burmese people in future. After the meeting NLD party made a press conference and laid out three points that both parties agreed on.
1. Emergence of the rule of law.
2. Narrow the gap of mistrust.
3. Work for the betterment of the people.
Emergence of the rule of law
It all depends on the regime court. The regime needs to respect the law that has been written on their one sided 2008 constitution. We need to see how they respect their own law, which heavily favors the military's ability to maintain the upper hand in any interaction with civilians. Even though the constitution was one sided, it supposedly allows citizens to form independent organizations such as labor unions, peasant associations, student unions, and so forth. After the new government's 100 days in power, those organizations still cannot legally exist, nor are they allowed to form in Burma, even after some lawyers and activists tried to form them. 88 Generation leaders who demonstrated against the high consumer prices were put behind bars and are serving 65 year prison term for their believe in good governance. In addition, those people were not recognized as political prisoners, and instead were marked as criminals. Freedom of speech, freedom of organization, and freedom of publishing are still denied. Those issues need to be solved by the regime alone, and not NLD. The regime need to show it has higher tolerance level than the previous regime.
Narrow the gap of mistrust.
The first way for the regime to build trust is to release political prisoners unconditionally without delay. Then ease the ban on internet, publications, freedom of speech, and open the public forum to listen to the voice of various classes. Let them speak what they want it, and hear it without threat. The government officials need to go to the field and open up to the public as people’s servants, not as power hungry bullies. If some government officials break the law or are using his/her authority to commit a crime, put him/her in jail without hesitation and prove that rule of law exists. Allow the NLD party to organize as they wish if they did not break any laws. Recognize NLD as a political party and stop harassing its members throughout the country. NLD members whose properties were nationalized need reimbursement from the government. Allow Aung San Suu Kyi and NLD leaders to make tours throughout the country without harassment, allow the foreign aid to NGOs and political parties including USDA if the aid was for them. Start working together and helping, not only with the NLD party, but also with other political parties to help cyclone victims and patients who cannot afford to buy medicines. Stop attacking ethnic national areas and start a dialogue together with the help from NLD party to cease bloodshed. If the regime has the guts to do that, mistrust will change and see the government as a trust worthy partner not as an enemy.
Work for the betterment of the people.
No forced labor, no extra-judicial killings, no favoritism, cronyism, or monopoly in the business sector, and most importantly, creation of an independent judicial system which has full power to investigate the president, if he did wrong, are necessary for the betterment of the people. The emergence of independent newspapers, which can publish any news if the facts are correct, should be encouraged. Publishers should also be guaranteed from prosecution for publishing the truth, even if government officials are involved in the crime. Please help and support the NGOs with their social work for people in need, and more to the point, please fund them if necessary. Building schools and hospitals instead of buying tanks and jet fighters. Use 10% to 20% percent of GNP for education and health and reduce defense spending to 20-25% percent.
Htun Aung Gyaw
email :hag2cornell@yahoo.com
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ဇြန္လ ၁၇ ရက္ ၊ ၂၀၁၂ Source: guardian.co.uk ျမန္မာျပည္သစ္အတြက္ အနာဂတ္မွာ ေအာင္ျမင္မွာလား၊ က်ရွဳံးမွာလားဆိုသည္ကို ညႊန္ျပေသာ စမ္းသပ္မွဳ တစ... -
MP U Shwe Maung Explained on Amendment 1982 Citizenship Law on 25 July 2012. MP U Shwe Maung explained on amendment of 1982 Citizenship Law... -
ရက္စြဲ – ေမ ၂၉ ၊ ၂၀၁၂ သို ့ အယ္ဒီတာ၊ နိရဥၥရာ သတင္းဌာန နိရဥၥရာ သတင္းဌာနမွ ေမလ ၂၉ ရက္ေန ့ ထုတ္ျပန္သည့္ ရမ္းျဗဲတြင္ အသက္ ၁၆ ႏွ...
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Read letter here Read history of Rohingya here Download letter PDF here Download History of Rohingya PDF here credi... -
12/07/2012 Joint press release HUMANITY GONE ... -
More than 40% of people living in Burma belong to one of the military-ruled nation's different minority groups. The government recognis...
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လူသားတိုင္း ရသင့္ရထိုက္ေသာ ရပိုင္ခြင့္၊ ခံစားခြင့္ မ်ားကို လူမ်ိဳးဘာသာမေရြး ရရွိသင့္ပါသည္။ သို႔မွသာ Human Rights – (လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး) ကိုတန္ဖို... -
RB News March 31, 2018 Minbya, Arakan State : On March 30 morning, a Prayer Leader or Imam was brutally beaten and injured by a Rakh... -
By Dr. Maung Zarni Since the first wave of Rohingya genocide in Feb 1978 which expelled nearly 200,000 refugees from all across Wester... -
Even if the Rohingyas were not native to what we call Burma today, our birthplace, the inhuman and inhumane treatment of nearly 1 million Ro...
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Amartya Sen: Burma's "slow genocide" of Rohingyas
Watch Professor Amartya Sen speak on what he calls Burma's 'slow genocide' of Rohingya, Harvard, 4 Nov 2014
