When Burma’s opposition figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest on 13 November last year, one of the first things she called for at her National League for Democracy party (NLD) headquarters was the “rule of law”.
For once, the government in Burma and main rival the NLD appear to be in agreement – at least on the surface – given the government and its mouthpiece the New Light of Myanmar has been full of allusions to “the law” in recent weeks. What remains however is the wildly different interpretation of what constitutes the rule of law in Burma these days. Having initiated a series of new laws under the sham 2008 constitution and its subsequent election last year, the Burmese government is suddenly all about playing by the book – which of course it wrote – in trying to contain the actions of Suu Kyi and her party. Meanwhile, the NLD continues to dismiss recently passed laws in relation to the new constitution, the election law and political party registration law, deeming them illegitimate and undemocratic.
Convict Porters on the Front Lines in Eastern Burma
This 70-page report details abuses against convict porters including summary executions, torture, and the use of the convicts as “human shields.” The military should stop forcibly recruiting prisoners as porters and mistreating them, and those responsible for ordering or participating in such treatment should be prosecuted, Human Rights Watch and the Karen Human Rights Group said;
A press release has been delivered today by the Shan Women’s Action Network (SWAN) and the Shan Human Rights Foundation (SHRF) condemning Burma Army of using rape as war weapon. The Burma Army is clearly authorizing rape as a terror policy in its offensive against the Shan State Army-North (SSA-N), according to information documented by SWAN and SHRF.
Prisoners work on land belonging to the Ministry of Agriculture in Shan State.
Rampant Abuse of Prison Labor Shows Need for UN Inquiry
(Bangkok) - The Burmese army's abusive treatment of convicts who are forced to serve as porters under dangerous front-line conditions constitutes war crimes, Human Rights Watch and the Karen Human Rights Group said in a joint report released today.
The 70-page report, "Dead Men Walking: Convict Porters on the Front Lines in Eastern Burma," details abuses against convict porters including summary executions, torture, and the use of the convicts as "human shields." The military should stop forcibly recruiting prisoners as porters and mistreating them, and those responsible for ordering or participating in such treatment should be prosecuted, Human Rights Watch and the Karen Human Rights Group said.
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.
Nine days after U Kyaw Win, Deputy Chief of the Burmese regime embassy in Washington defected, another Burmese regime diplomat has defected today in Washington, DC.
First Secretary U Soe Aung was summoned by the Burmese regime on July 12, 2011, to come back to Burma with his family within 24 hours and report to the authorities in Nay Pyi Taw by July 15, 2011. He was asked to return the house he was staying with his family, rented by the embassy, to the embassy yesterday and leave for Burma with his family at 2:00 PM. The Burmese regime also assigned another official, former Major Kyaw Tin Shein to escort him and his family on their way back to Burma and supervise his return.
Forced to flee due to the brutal repression of the military regime in Burma, Rohingya refugees have been living in camps in southern Bangladesh for nearly three decades.
The lucky ones are granted asylum in a wealthy nation.
In a three part series Ric Wasserman follows the journey of the Ahmed family from the squalor of their refugee camp to their new home on the other side of the world in cold suburban Sweden.
From Tropical Squalor to Snow Covered Suburbia
Forced to flee due to the brutal repression of the military regime in Burma, Rohingya refugees have been living in camps in southern Bangladesh for nearly three decades.
For the last three months, our reporter in Bangladesh, Ric Wasserman, has been tracing the lives of a group of these Rohingyas.
In a three part series we follow the Ahmed family, refugees living in squalor and with few lifelines.
Until one day, when their lives take an unexpected and remarkable turn.
Southeast Asia's _ and probably the world's _ most revered female political icon reached out to the region's newest female political icon when Aung San Suu Kyi extended her congratulations last week to Yingluck Shinawatra, who is set to become Thailand's first female prime minister after the Pheu Thai Party's decisive victory in last Sunday's general election. Mrs Suu Kyi, who was in the ancient Burmese city of Pagan, noted that Ms Yingluck is a woman who was chosen to be the leader of a nation in a fair democratic election. The same can be said of Mrs Suu Kyi, although of course she was prevented by the military from taking her role after her National League for Democracy Party won an overwhelming victory in 1990.
Ukhiya, Bangladesh: Kaladan Press
Camp authorities raided and seized all the equipment from a workshop at the official Kutupalong Refugee Camp on July 10, a refugee at the camp said.
A group of camp security personnel, camp police, and office staff including the Camp-in-Charge went to refugee mechanic Md. Ayas’s shack and seized all equipment from his workshop inside his shack for the reason that refugees are not allowed to work in the camp.
By Roland Watson
It is a very dynamic time in Burma right now. There are a number of new and significant trends, and most of these are positive for the pro-democracy movement. Indeed, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi recently said, in her speech to the Community of Democracies, that “Burma will achieve in the not too distant future what we have been working for for so long.”With dynamism, however, comes uncertainty. There are many different unknowns about Burma,factors over which we have little information or which are difficult to predict.
This article examines these factors from the position of how we can best shape them to achieve the long desired goals of freedom and democracy for the Burmese people.
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.
နိဒါန္း။ ။
ကြ်န္ေတာ္၏ ကိုယ္ေတြ႕ခံစားခ်က္ကို အဂၤလိပ္ဘာသာျဖင့္ ေရးသားၿပီး “I Do not Want to Go to a Zoo Any More” ေခါင္းစဥ္ၿဖင့္ အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံထုတ္ “Yellow Medicine Review” A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art, and Thought စာစဥ္၏ (Spring) ေႏြဦးရာသီ ၂၀၀၈ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ ေဖၚျပခဲ့ပါသည္။ အဂၤလိပ္ဘာသာျဖစ္သျဖင့္ ျမန္မာပရိသတ္မ်ားၾကားတြင္ လူသိနည္းခဲ့ပါသည္။ ထို႔ေၾကာင့္ ၎ ကိုယ္ေတြ႕ျဖစ္စဥ္ ေဆာင္းပါးကို ျမန္မာလို ဘာသာျပန္၍ ပိုမို ျပည့္စုံေစရန္ အေသးစိတ္ အျဖစ္ အပ်က္ အခ်ဳိ႕ကိုပါျဖည့္စြက္ကာ ေဒါင္းအိုးေဝ စာေစာင္ အတြက္ေရးသားလိုက္ေသာ္ လည္းစာေစာင္လိုအပ္ ခ်က္ ထက္ႏွစ္ဆမက ပိုသြား သည့္အတြက္ အင္တာနက္မွၿဖန္႔ရန္ဆံုးၿဖတ္လိုက္ပါသည္။ ယၡဳေဆာင္းပါး ထက္ ပိုမိုျပည့္စုံေသာ ကိုယ္ေတြ႕မွတ္တမ္း ကို ဇြန္လအေရးအခင္းေတြ ဆက္လက္ ေရးသားပါမည္။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ အေတြ႕အႀကဳံမ်ားကို ေနာင္ လာေနာင္သားမ်ား အတုယူ၍ တိုင္းျပည္ အက်ဳိး ဆထက္တံပိုး က်ဳိးစားလုပ္လိုစိတ္မ်ား ျဖစ္ေပၚလာခဲ့လွ်င္ ႀကိဳးစား ေရးရက်ဴိးနပ္ပါသည္။
Education is a key challenge for Rohingya refugees
KUALA LUMPUR, 8 June 2011 (IRIN) - Graduating from primary school was just a dream for Rohingya teenager Ali Tofik, who, until 2010, lived in Myanmar's northern Rakhine State, where access to education, particularly secondary education, is limited.
In recent decades, this ethnic and religious minority has been stripped of its citizenship and property rights by Myanmar's military-dominated government, leading to human rights abuses and exploitation and resulting in mass exodus.
Some 200,000 fled to Bangladesh over the years, with smaller numbers to Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and elsewhere in the region by boat.
Now the 17-year-old is keen to get ahead, learning the Malay language with a group of younger students in the two-room Malaysian school. English, Malay, mathematics and science are taught on the second floor of a business block in the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur.
"I would like to become a teacher so that I can help my people and I can teach them and talk with the international community," explains Tofik, who fled Myanmar with his family a year ago.
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.
BKK Post, Editorial
Southeast Asia's _ and probably the world's _ most revered female political icon reached out to the region's newest female political icon when Aung San Suu Kyi extended her congratulations last week to Yingluck Shinawatra, who is set to become Thailand's first female prime minister after the Pheu Thai Party's decisive victory in last Sunday's general election. Mrs Suu Kyi, who was in the ancient Burmese city of Pagan, noted that Ms Yingluck is a woman who was chosen to be the leader of a nation in a fair democratic election. The same can be said of Mrs Suu Kyi, although of course she was prevented by the military from taking her role after her National League for Democracy Party won an overwhelming victory in 1990.
Further comparisons between the two are impossible and unfair at this time, but it can only be hoped that Ms Yingluck will emulate Mrs Suu Kyi's longstanding devotion to justice and democracy for her people, which she has maintained at the cost of extreme personal sacrifice.
The Burmese pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, explores what freedom means in the first of the 2011 Reith Lecture series, 'Securing Freedom'.
BANGKOK - The trappings of the old military regime that ruled Myanmar are slowly fading from view under new democratically elected president Thein Sein and his promises of reform. At the same time, a budding power struggle between the president and vice president Thin Aung Myint Oo has pitted moderate versus hardline agendas and stalled significantly the new government's economic and political progress.
One hundred days after assuming the presidency in Burma, former General Thein Sein has failed to take any meaningful steps towards political, legal, and economic reforms. Thein Sein’s policies have been a continuation of the State Peace and Development Council’s programs.
This five-page briefer reveals that it was “business as usual” for the Burmese military despite President Thein Sein’s much-promoted image as a “softliner”.
The briefer finds that the Tatmadaw continued to commit crimes against humanity and war crimes in Burma against both urban and rural populations. Tatmadaw troops continued to attack, kill, and rape ethnic civilians, while over 2,000 political prisoners continued to be detained under atrocious conditions.
In this April, 2009 photo, two Australian naval vessels intercept a boat carrying asylum seekers of Australia's shores. (Photo: AP)
Australia urgently needs to stop the snake heads who are delivering an unceasing inflow of unlawful or illegal boat arrivals demanding admission to the country as refugees. The solution being proposed by the Labor government led by Julia Gillard, however, has kicked off a storm of political controversy in Canberra, where it remains stalled.
July 7, 2011
The Honorable Mr. Barack Obama
President of the United States of America
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC 2050
By Mail: to above address
By Fax: (202) 456 2461
By Email: C/O Mr. Daniel Russel (Senior Director for Asian Affairs) and Ms. Samantha Power
(Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs) at the National Security Council
BURMA: Banking Sanctions and Establishment of a United Nations Commission of Inquiry
Dear President Obama,
It has now been almost two years since your administration launched its new engagement policy with the military government in Burma. Senior officials from the State Department have visited the country several times, met with Burma’s leaders, and tried to persuade them to implement positive changes in the country, as demanded by the people of Burma and the international community. The steps they have urged include (1) unconditional and immediate release of all political prisoners, (2) establishment of a substantive dialogue with democratic forces led by the National League for Democracy and the ethnic minorities of Burma on transition to democratic bgovernment under the rule of law; and (3) allowing humanitarian assistance to populations
affected by armed conflict in all regions of Burma, as described in the Tom Lantos Block Burmese JADE Act 2008 (The JADE Act). Sadly, as of today, these conditions remain unfulfilled.
Convict Porters on the Front Lines in Eastern Burma
တပ္မေတာ္သားေတြအားလုုံးကိုု အာဏာရွင္ေတြက ကၽြန္ဇာတ္သြင္းလိုုက္တာပဲ။ ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ ငါတိုု႔အားလုုံးဟာ စစ္ကၽြန္ေတြခ်ည္းပဲ။ ကၽြန္ၾကီးေတြက ကၽြန္ကေလးေတြကိုု အႏိုုင္က်င့္ေနၾကတာကိုု အခ်င္းခ်င္း ျပန္သတ္ျဖတ္ရင္း အာဏာရွင္ေတြနဲ႔ စနစ္ကိုု အျမစ္ျဖတ္ဖိုု႔ ေ၀းလာၾကတယ္လိုု႔ ေျပာခ်င္တယ္။
Southeast Asia's _ and probably the world's _ most revered female political icon reached out to the region's newest female political icon when Aung San Suu Kyi extended her congratulations last week to Yingluck Shinawatra, who is set to become Thailand's first female prime minister after the Pheu Thai Party's decisive victory in last Sunday's general election. Mrs Suu Kyi, who was in the ancient Burmese city of Pagan, noted that Ms Yingluck is a woman who was chosen to be the leader of a nation in a fair democratic election. The same can be said of Mrs Suu Kyi, although of course she was prevented by the military from taking her role after her National League for Democracy Party won an overwhelming victory in 1990.
By ARASA / ASIA SENTINEL Thursday, July 7, 2011
