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YANGON, Myanmar — Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi said Monday that Myanmar’s government has taken positive steps toward reform in the year since she was released from house arrest but more needs to be done, including freeing hundreds more political prisoners. 

The Nobel peace laureate, speaking to more than 100 journalists on the anniversary of her release, cited her meetings with minister Aung Kyi and President Thein Sein as progress. 

( Khin Maung Win / Associated Press ) - Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi talks to journalists during a press conference at her National League for Democracy party’s headquarters Monday, Nov. 14, 2011, in Yangon, Myanmar. Suu Kyi said Monday that the government has taken positive steps toward reform in the year since she was released from house arrest but more needs to be done, including freeing hundreds more political prisoners. 

“Looking back at the past year, I think I can say that it has been eventful, energizing and to a certain extent encouraging,” said Suu Kyi, who was detained most of the past two decades by Myanmar’s former military government.

The international community’s hopes were not high after the country carefully orchestrated the Nov. 7, 2010, election. As expected, the polls brought to power a proxy party for the military, which ran the country since a 1962 coup.

But that perception has changed in recent months, as the new government eased censorship, legalized labor unions, suspended an unpopular, China-backed dam project and began talks with Suu Kyi’s pro-democracy movement.

There are still key issues to be addressed, however. Suu Kyi on Monday mentioned the plight of both political prisoners and ethnic minorities as well as the need for rule of law and an independent judiciary in the country.

“An issue of great importance to all of us who are working for democracy in Burma is that of political prisoners. Some had been released over the last year, but there are still many who remain in prison,” Suu Kyi said, using the name for the country that the pro-democracy movement prefers.

She said she had no news about wide speculation that the government would announce the release of more political prisoners Monday.

“We do not have any specific information on who has been released if anybody has been released at all,” she said.

A government-appointed human rights body on Sunday urged the president to release political prisoners or transfer them to prisons close to their families, signaling such action may be imminent.

Myanmar’s three state-owned newspapers published the open letter from National Human Rights Commission chairman Win Mra calling for an amnesty “as a reflection of magnanimity,” or to transfer political prisoners in remote prisons to facilities with easy access for their family members.

The letter’s publication is significant because the tightly controlled newspapers closely reflect government positions. An amnesty of 6,359 prisoners in October happened the same day state-run newspapers published a similar appeal.

A prisoner release in the next few days is also anticipated because a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations begins Thursday in Bali, Indonesia. Myanmar is seeking to chair ASEAN in 2014, and the release of political prisoners would be seen as a positive development favoring its bid, which is likely to be decided at this week’s summit.

No release had been announced by mid-afternoon Monday.

Myanmar is estimated to hold as many as 2,000 political prisoners.

Credit : Washington Post
အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမုိကေရစီအဖဲြ႕ခ်ဳပ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္နဲ႔ ျပည္ေထာင္စုဝန္ႀကီး ဦးေအာင္ၾကည္တုိ႔ ေအာက္တုိဘာ ၃၀ ရက္ ဒီကေန႔ ေန႔လယ္ ၁း၀၀ ကေန ၁း၅၅ အထိ စိမ္းလဲ့ကန္သာ အစုိးရဧည့္ေဂဟာမွာ စတုတၳ အႀကိမ္ေျမာက္ ေတြ႕ဆုံခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။

ႏုိင္ငံေတာ္က လုိအပ္သည္မ်ား ကူညီ ေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးေနသည့္ အေျခအေန၊ တုိင္းျပည္ စီးပြားေရး ဖြံ႕ၿဖဳိး တုိးတက္လာေစရန္ အတြက္ လြတ္လပ္စြာ ကုန္သြယ္ခြင့္၊ ကူးသန္းေရာင္းဝယ္ခြင့္ ရရွိေရးႏွင့္ လြတ္လပ္စြာ ေငြေၾကး လည္ပတ္ သုံးစဲြခြင့္ရရွိေရး၏ အေရးႀကီးမႈႏွင့္ ပတ္သတ္၍ အျမင္ခ်င္း ညီညီညြတ္ညြတ္ ဖလွယ္ခဲ့ၾကပါသည္။ ထုိ႔အျပင္ တုိင္းရင္းသား လက္နက္ကုိင္ အဖဲြ႕အစည္းမ်ားႏွင့္ ထာဝရၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ရရွိရန္ ႏုိင္ငံေတာ္က ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနမႈမ်ား၊ တုိးတက္ျဖစ္ထြန္းမႈ အေျခအေနမ်ားႏွင့္ လြတ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာခြင့္ ေပးသင့္သူမ်ား ကိစၥတုိ႔ကုိလည္း ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကပါသည္။



Credit : Burma VJ Media Network
Another e-mail from Shaik Ubaid, New York, USA:
I am a physician and a human rights activist. I am greatly concerned about the persecution and ethnic cleansing of Rohingiya Muslims of Arakan. Does your vision include a pluralistic Burma with equal rights for all, including religious minorities?


Aung San Suu Kyi:
Democracy does mean pluralism and democracy means equal basic human rights for everybody. I am confident that we can build up a really strong and united Burma. The signs are all here.
In some ways, the sufferings we have undergone together have built up a tremendous feeling of trust among each other. Our sufferings have united us. I think the world has opened up in such a way that different cultures are able to reach across to each other.

We all live in the same country - we have lived in the same country for centuries and because we have lived together so closely, we have had our problems. You have more problems with your neighbours than with people who live very far away from you - that's only natural. But I think we can also learn to be very, very good neighbours in the same way because we all live in this country we can learn to be very good and loving towards each other. We can learn to trust each other, we can learn to work together, we can learn to live together and I think that learning process has already begun. 


Aung San San Kyi at a Rally in Chin state. 
Image courtesy of Burma Campaign UK

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Aung San Suu Kyi, a Burmese human rights activist and Nobel Peace laureate, is the recipient of the 21st University of Michigan Wallenberg Medal. In a rare public address overseas, Suu Kyi will give her videotaped Wallenberg Lecture at 7:30 p.m. ET Oct. 25 before an audience in Rackham Auditorium.

The lecture will be followed immediately by a live Q&A session with Suu Kyi in Burma.


Suu Kyi, freed from house arrest nearly a year ago, has not been expressly banned from leaving her country. However, because of concerns she may not be allowed to return if she goes abroad, she continues to stay in Burma, devoting her life to the peaceful struggle for democracy and human rights.

She led her party to victory in 1990 elections, but military leaders refused to recognize the results. She has spent most of the past two decades in jail or house arrest.

Suu Kyi serves as the general secretary of the National League for Democracy, the leading opposition political party in Burma. In spite of efforts to suppress its activities, the party continues to meet, issue statements, and seek to engage with the opposition. The group refused to participate in a vote last year, insisting the election was held under unfair and undemocratic conditions.
 
Burma, with a population of 55 million, remains an isolated and impoverished country in turmoil. Human rights activists continue to be harassed, arrested, and jailed. Attacks against ethnic populations have escalated and grave human rights abuses against these populations have continued.
Thousands of democracy activists and ethnic leaders remain detained as political prisoners in Burma, notwithstanding the government's refusal to acknowledge their existence. The Red Cross has not been allowed to visit the prisons of Burma since 2006.

Recently, the government has signaled a possible easing of repression, but the outcome remains highly uncertain. In August 2011, Suu Kyi met with President Thein Sein. She was quoted in news reports saying that the two had "found areas of agreement" and that she remains "a cautious optimist." Suu Kyi has suggested that the United Nations conduct a fact-finding probe similar to the Truth and Reconciliation process spearheaded by Archbishop Desmond Tutu (also a Nobel Peace laureate and Wallenberg Medalist) in South Africa after the abolition of apartheid.


Undaunted and fearless through many years of detention and efforts to intimidate her, in speaking out for democracy and human rights in Burma, Suu Kyi exemplifies the courage and commitment to the humanitarian values of Raoul Wallenberg, according to the Wallenberg Committee.
Wallenberg, a 1935 graduate of the U-M College of Architecture, was working as a Swedish diplomat when saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews near the end of World War II.
In 1944, at the request of Jewish organizations and the American War Refugee Board, the Swedish Foreign Ministry sent Wallenberg on a rescue mission to Budapest. Over the course of six months, Wallenberg issued thousands of protective passports and placed many thousands of Jews in safe houses throughout the besieged city. He confronted Hungarian and German forces to secure the release of Jews whom he claimed were under Swedish protection, and saved over 80,000 lives.

After reporting to Soviet headquarters in Budapest on Jan.17, 1945, Wallenberg vanished into the Soviet Gulag. Although the Russians claim that Wallenberg died in 1947, the results of numerous investigations into his whereabouts remain inconclusive.

Burma’s Political Prisoners book: ‘Abhaya – Burma’s Fearlessness’ with foreword by Aung San Suu Kyi


In 1962 a military coup lead by General Ne Win saw Burma, an isolated Buddhist country in South-East Asia, come under the power of one of the world’s most brutal regimes. For the past five decades, thousands of people have been arrested, tortured and given long prison sentences for openly expressing their beliefs and for daring to defy dictators who tolerate no form of dissent or opposition to their rule.

Today, more than 2,000 political prisoners including monks, students, journalists, lawyers, elected Members of Parliament and over 300 members of Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition party, The National League for Democracy, are incarcerated in Burma’s notorious prisons.





In Burma and across the world, almost 300 hundred former political prisoners have come together to raise awareness of the tragic plight of their colleagues still detained in jail. Photographed standing with their right hand raised, palm out-turned facing the camera, the name of a current political prisoner is shown written on their hand. The sacred Buddhist gesture of Abhaya, “Fear Not”, is not only an act of silent protest, but also one of remembrance and fearlessness.



“The people featured in this book have all had to learn to face their fears squarely during the decades they have passed in the struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma. Their commitment has been their courage. It is important that they and what they stand for should not be forgotten, that their sufferings as well as their aspirations should be remembered.”

“I hope that all who read this book will be encouraged to do everything they can to gain the freedom of political prisoners in Burma and to create a world where there are no political prisoners” Aung San Suu Kyi

View the project in its entirety at www.enigmaimages.net
To,
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
Secretary General
NLD, Rangoon, Burma

Dated 5 October, 2011.


Dear Madam,
I, as a founder member of the Arakan State NLD (together with U Oo Saw and U Ba Daung) and as a NLD candidate contested in 1990 general election and as an author of a book "Aung San Suu Kyi - The Lady of Destiny," strongly protest the baseless, bias and racist statement of U Tin Oo in an interview with RFA on 2 October 2011, regarding the(Rohingya) Muslims of Arakan. We are outraged, shockd and dismayed for his blunt statement forgetting the real history of Arakan.

In 1959, with the order of U Tin Oo Rohingya people from 24 villages of Maungdaw North and 8 villages from Buthidaung North were by force driven out to the then East Pakistan. Many houses were brunt down and many females were raped. In his visit to Akyab in1988,when we asked about it, he replied that at that time he was a soldier and his age was 30s and now [1988] he was a politician and his age was 65.At the age of 30s he had thrown 32 Rohingya villagers to the then East Pakistan, now at the age of 88 U Tin Oo is trying to make 3 million Rohingyas stateless and hopeless.

He should learn the history. History says Rohingyas were the descendants of the original [Indo-Aryan]people of the soil and others were after the Mongolian invasion in 10th century He should also read the report of the NLD [acting] Secretary General U Chit Khine report at grand Gandhi Hall NLD Conference in 1988 where it is clearly declared that the NLD had recognized Rohingyas as an indigenous ethnic group of Burma. Thank you Madam!
Please accept the assurance of my highest esteem.

Yours faithfully,
Abul Faiz
Arakan State NLD founder member and Organiser
Tel :+ 880 1674811079
Myanmar Pro-Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi speaks at a ceremony to mark International Democracy Day in National League for Democracy party (NLD) head office at Yangon September 15, 2011. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun



(Reuters) - A leading British foreign policy think-tank said on Friday it had chosen Myanmar democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi as the winner of its prestigious prize this year.
The Royal Institute of International Affairs awards its Chatham House Prize annually to the person its members believe has made the most significant contribution to the improvement of international relations in the previous year.

It said Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate, had become an international symbol of democracy and peaceful resistance, having spent most of the last two decades in some form of detention because of her efforts to bring democracy to Myanmar (formerly called Burma).
Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will accept the prize on Suu Kyi's behalf at a ceremony in London on December 1.

Suu Kyi, 66, whose British husband Michael Aris died in 1999, has always refused to leave Myanmar for fear of not being allowed back.
"International awareness helps our struggle for democracy in Burma, and our struggle provides us with an insight into the yearnings of all peoples for peace and freedom," Suu Kyi said in a statement released by the think-tank.

Suu Kyi was released last November from 15 years of house arrest for campaigning for democracy in Myanmar, which has been under military rule for five decades.
As a gesture to improved ties from the army-backed government that came to power in March, President Thein Sein and Labour Minister Aung Kyi recently met with Suu Kyi, the leader of the country's democratic opposition.

Speaking by video link to a conference in New York on Wednesday, Suu Kyi said she was hopeful of seeing signs of change "very soon" in her country.

(Reporting by Adrian Croft; Editing by Sophie Hares)

Credit :Reuters

CGI will convene separate one-on-one conversations with two of the most visionary peacebuilders of our time, Desmond Tutu and Aung San Suu Kyi. This session will begin with a conversation with Desmond Tutu, who will highlight a wide range of innovative human rights initiatives, including his recent work to end child marriage. Next, this session will feature a live, remote broadcast discussion with Aung San Suu Kyi, the General Secretary of the National League for Democracy. Drawing upon her own struggles for human rights, democratic governance, and ethnic reconciliation, Suu Kyi will highlight strategic actions that CGI members can take on these issues.

ဒီကေန႔ အေမရိကန္ နယူးေယာက္ၿမိဳ႕မွာတိုက္ရိုက္ထုတ္လႊင့္က်င္းပသြားခဲ့တဲ့ အေမရိကန္ သမၼတေဟာင္း ေဘလ္ ကလင္တန္ (Bill Clinton) ထူေထာင္ထားတဲ့ Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) ရဲ႕ ႏွစ္ပတ္လည္ အစည္းအေ၀းမွာၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ႏုိဘယ္လ္ဆုရ ဘုန္းေတာ္ႀကီး ဒက္စမြန္တူးတူးအပါအ၀င္ အေမရိကန္ သမၼတေဟာင္း ေဘလ္ ကလင္တန္နဲ႕အတူ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမုိကေရစီ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က တုိက္႐ုိက္အေမးအေျဖစကားေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္.





 

Is Nobel Peace Prize winner and democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi the best hope for freedom in Myanmar?




Credit :


YANGON (AFP) - Myanmar's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi said Wednesday she believes the country's army-backed president wants "real positive change" amid warmer relations between the regime and its most famous critic.
Suu Kyi met President Thein Sein on Friday in her highest-level discussions since she was freed from seven years of house arrest soon after a November election that was marred by claims of cheating and the absence of her party.
"From my point of view, I think the president wants to achieve real positive change," she told reporters on Wednesday.
Suu Kyi was warned to keep out of politics in June, but has since engaged in increasing dialogue with the government, which is nominally civilian but remains dominated by former generals.
The Nobel laureate was speaking after a meeting with Tomas Ojea Quintana, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, and said the pair had covered a variety of subjects including the fate of political prisoners.
It was the first meeting between the envoy and the democracy champion, who was locked up during his last visit in February 2010.
"I am really satisfied. I am encouraged to have seen him as he is an expert in this issue," she said of Quintana.
Myanmar allowed the UN envoy into the country for the first time in more than a year amid signs that the government wants to improve its international image.
Quintana described his discussions with Suu Kyi as "very important, fruitful and productive", in brief comments after the meeting.
The UN envoy, who has been an outspoken critic of Myanmar's rulers in the past, is due to hold a press conference on Thursday at the end of a five-day visit that has included a trip to the new parliament in Naypyidaw and talks with senior regime figures.
Earlier on Wednesday, Quintana visited Yangon's notorious Insein prison, which is believed to hold some of Myanmar's around 2,000 political prisoners.
After his trip to the country last year, the envoy angered Myanmar's ruling generals by suggesting that human rights violations in the country may amount to crimes against humanity and could warrant a UN inquiry.
He has since been refused visas to visit several times.
The international community has called for a number of reforms in Myanmar including the release of political prisoners, improved human rights and dialogue with the opposition


Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi led hundreds of supporters through the streets of Rangoon in a Martyr's Day march Tuesday to honor her father and other fallen national heroes.


New Delhi (Mizzima) – The Burmese National League for Democracy party–claiming freedom of association is a universal human right–plans to take its legal status case to the United Nations Council of Human Rights (UNCHR).

According to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, freedom of association and organization is a universally recognized human right. However, the NLD has been threatened by the new government, which has called it an illegal organization. The NLD plans to submit its case within two weeks.

“According to these procedures, the case can be presented to the UNCHR when all the domestic legal remedies are exhausted in a certain country,” NLD spokesman and lawyer Nyan Win told Mizzima.

Reporter Zoe Daniel with National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Reporter Zoe Daniel with National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
In a crumbling, rambling old home by a lake sits a diminutive woman thoughtfully responding to the volley of questions from a relative stranger. Aung San Suu Kyi may be small, polite and gentle but don’t be misled. Even now in her mid 60s she’s an immoveable, seemingly unshakeable force and a powerhouse of ideas and aspirations for the people of Burma.

The outsider is Foreign Correspondent’s Zoe Daniel who had spent months negotiating an interview with Burma’s most famous figure and then planning how to pull it off. Since Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest she’s been under constant covert and overt surveillance by the authorities, so sealing a time and place for this exchange is one thing - getting there and getting it done is another.


By Phil Thornton, Diplomat


Aung San Suu Kyi's backers say it's time for her to meet the public. She's been attacked once by junta supporters. Could it happen again?

‘They tried to assassinate her then…and today…the military hardliners still want her dead. They won’t do it themselves, but they’ll use drunken thugs like they did in Depayin,’ says Moe Zaw Oo, joint secretary of the exiled branch of the National League for Democracy.
Back in May 2002, following her release from 19 months of house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi, with permission from the military regime, embarked on a mammoth political tour of 95 townships. She met with various ethnic groups including Shan, Kaichin and Karen. She also opened NLD offices in rural areas.
Suu Kyi’s ability to attract large, passionate crowds confirmed her position as a national leader – and a huge threat to the regime. Years of house arrest and official vilification by the regime have done little to diminish her popularity. From makeshift stages, Suu Kyi urged the thousands of enthusiastic supporters who came to meet her in each town to continue to struggle for democracy and to respect human rights.

By Trefor Moss, The Diplomat


Burma’s opposition leader may have achieved less than the Chinese premier. But Suu Kyi’s less is definitely more.

Britain welcomed two distinguished Asian guests at the end of last month. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited London as part of a European tour to sign trade agreements and help sandbag the leaking Eurozone. The following day, Aung San Suu Kyi took over the BBC’s airwaves from back home in Burma to deliver the first of two highly-anticipated lectures, entitled ‘Liberty’ and ‘Dissent’, about her pro-democracy campaign.
Both came armed with criticisms. Wen’s were for his British hosts. ‘On human rights, China and the UK should respect each other, respect the facts, treat each other as equals, engage more in co-operation and less in finger-pointing,’ Wen said in a public rebuke to his British counterpart, David Cameron. Clearly irritated by the UK’s patronising and moralising refrain (as he saw it) about China’s lax human rights record, Wen went in for some patronisation of his own. China has a 5,000 year history, he observed, which has taught the Chinese not to lecture other countries, but to respect them on an equal basis – an evident hint that this was a  lesson that the arriviste British might also eventually learn. Wen signed $2.25 billion in trade deals with Cameron, threw in two pandas for Edinburgh Zoo, and decamped to Germany.

The Burmese pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, explores what freedom means in the first of the 2011 Reith Lecture series, 'Securing Freedom'.






Mr Rudd said yesterday he had met with the country's new president, Thein Sein, and had made a personal appeal for the release of 2000 other political prisoners, telling him that doing so would transform international views of the new government.

He spoke to reporters during a stop-over in Singapore on his way home from a visit to Burma.


The future of Aung San Suu Kyi and her amazing movement for democracy in Burma is hanging in the balance this week, and we could make the difference.

Suu Kyi has bravely called on the military regime to free the thousands of monks and peaceful activists still held in horrific prisons, some in cramped dog cages. Unprecedentedly, thousands of Burmese have risked their own safety to join her call for freedom through an online petition! Yesterday, the regime issued an ominous warning to Suu Kyi – and the Generals may be deciding right now between dialogue or another brutal crackdown.
http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_aung_san_suu_kyi_2/?vl 
 
Photo: AP/Khin Maung Win

Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi (file photo)Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi speaks to journalists after meeting with European Union special envoy to Myanmar Piero Fassino and European Union diplomatic official Robert Cooper at her home in Rangoon (file photo)
The leader of Burma’s opposition movement has urged the U.S. Congress to do what it can to make sure that her government adheres to a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution on Burma.

Aung San Suu Kyi told members of Congress a resolution that the U.N. Human Rights Council passed in March is a clear guide for what needs to be done to bring democracy to Burma.


In her first appearance before Congress, Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi testified before a House committee on Wednesday in a videotaped address.

The Nobel Peace laureate and well-known pro-democracy activist spoke calmly and deliberately in the video, mentioning little of her own experience of living for much of the past two decades under house arrest.

    • Rohingya Exodus