သို႔/-
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္
အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမွဴးခ်ဳပ္၊
အမ်ိဳးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္၊
ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕။
ရက္စြဲ႕။ ။ေအာက္တိုဘာ (၁)၊ ၂၀၁၁ ခုႏွစ္။
စာအမွတ္။ ။ Ref : frc‐rec 04/03/2011
ဒီမိုကေရစီ သူရဲေကာင္း၊ အမ်ိဳးသား ေခါင္းေဆာင္ႀကီး ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ခင္ဗ်ား… မဂၤလာအေပါင္းနဲ႔ ခေညာင္းႏိုင္ပါေစဟု ႏုတ္ခြန္းဆက္သလိုက္ပါသည္။
ကၽြန္ေတာ္မ်ား လြတ္လပ္ေသာ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ လႈပ္ရွားမႈအဖြဲ႕မွ ေအာက္ပါအတိုင္း စာေရးေတာင္းဆိုလိုက္ပါသည္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ျပည္သူမ်ားဖက္မွ မားမားမတ္မတ္ ရပ္တည္ကာ စစ္အာဏာရွင္စနစ္ နိဂံုးခ်ဳပ္ေရးႏွင့္ ဒီမိုကေရစီႏွင့္ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရးအတြက္ ကာလၾကာရွည္စြာ အနစ္နာခံ တိုက္ပြဲ၀င္လ်က္ရွိသည့္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ကဲ့သို႔ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေကာင္း၊ သူရဲေကာင္းတစ္ဦး ရွိေနသည့္အတြက္ မိမိတို႔ အလြန္ကံေကာင္းသည္ဟု ခံယူပါသည္။ ထို႔အျပင္ ထုိကဲ့သို႔ ထူးခၽြန္ေျပာင္ေျမာက္သည့္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ရွိေသာ ျမန္မာ့ေျမေပၚတြင္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာအမ်ိဳးသားမ်ား ျဖစ္ရသည္အတြက္လည္း ၀မ္းေျမာက္၊ ဂုဏ္ယူမဆံုး ျဖစ္ေနပါသည္။
ဒီမိုကေရစီႏွင့္ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး တိုက္ပြဲတေလွ်ာက္တြင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၏ ဦးေဆာင္မႈကို ကၽြန္ေတာ္မ်ား အဖြဲ႕ အစည္းမွ လံုး၀ေထာက္ခံၿပီး၊ ဤတိုက္ပြဲတြင္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာတစ္မ်ိဳးသားလံုးသည္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ တေသြး တသားတည္းျဖစ္ပါေၾကာင္း၊ ထို႔အျပင္၊ မိမိတို႔အေနျဖင့္ ဤဒီမိုကေရစီတိုက္ပြဲတြင္ က်ရာတာ၀န္ႏွင့္ ၀တၱရားမ်ားကို ေက်ႁပြန္စြာထမ္းေဆာင္ရင္း ကၽြႏ္ုပ္တို႔၏ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ႏွင့္ ေရွ႕ဆက္၍ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္ သြားမည္ ျဖစ္ပါေၾကာင္း အသိေပးလိုက္ပါသည္။
ဆက္လက္၍ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ဦးေဆာင္လ်က္ တိုင္းရင္းသား လူမ်ိဳးစုမ်ားအေရးကို ေျဖရွင္းေရးႏွင့္ ဒုတိယအ ႀကိမ္ ပင္လံုညီလာခံ ျဖစ္ေျမာက္ေရးကို ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ အမ်ိဳးသားထု တစ္ရပ္လံုးကုိယ္စား ေထာက္ခံႀကိဳဆိုပါေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ ေရွ႕ဆက္ေဆာင္ရြက္သြားပါရန္ ဆႏၵျပဳပါေၾကာင္း အသိေပးလိုပါသည္။
ႏုိင္ငံတ၀ွန္းလံုး ယခုကဲ့သို႔ ႏိုင္ငံေရး၊ စီးပြါးေရး ကိစၥရပ္မ်ား၊ တရားဥပေဒေရးႏွင့္ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရးကိစၥရပ္မ်ား စသည့္ အက်ပ္အတည္းမ်ား ရင္ဆိုင္ေနရသည့္အခ်ိန္တြင္၊ ယခုကဲ့သို႔ စာမ်ိဳးေရးရသည္မွာ မလႊဲေရွာင္ႏိုင္၍သာ ျဖစ္ၿပီး၊ ႏိုင္ငံ့အေရးအရာကို လစ္လ်ဴရႈျခင္း၊ အခိ်န္အခါမဟုတ္ဘဲ ကိုယ့္ကိစၥရပ္မ်ားကို အတၱဆန္ဆန္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးစင္ေပၚ ဆြဲတင္ ျခင္း… အစ ရွိသည့္ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္မ်ား ရွိသည္ဟု မယူဆပါရန္ အထူး ေတာင္းပန္လိုပါသည္။
အမ်ိဳးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ ဒု-ဥကၠ႒ ဦးတင္ဦး အား ေအာက္တိုဘာ (၂) ရက္ေန႔ က RFA ျမန္မာပိုင္း အသံလႊင့္ ဌာနမွ အင္တာဗ်ဴးလုပ္ရာ၊ ဦးတင္ဦးမွ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္အတြင္း ေနထိုင္လ်က္ရွိေသာ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားအား တဖက္ႏိုင္ငံမွ ခိုး၀င္ ေနထိုင္သူမ်ားဟု ေျပာဆိုၿပီး၊ ယင္းအာဏာရွိတုန္းက တဖက္ႏိုင္ငံမွ ခိုး၀င္လာသူ ဘဂၤါလီးမ်ား၏ရန္မွ တိုင္းရင္းသား ညီအစ္ကို ရခိုင္အမ်ိဳးသားမ်ားအား အကာအကြယ္ေပးသည္ဟု ေျပာဆိုေျဖၾကားသြားသည္ကို နား ေထာင္လိုက္ရပါသည္။
အမွန္မွာ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္အတြင္းေန ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားသည္ ထိုေဒသတြင္ ပင္မ တိုင္းရင္းသားတစ္ရပ္အျဖစ္ အေျခတက် ေနထိုင္လာခဲ့သည္မွာ ႏွစ္ရာစုခ်ီေနၿပီျဖစ္၍ ပါလီမန္ ဒီမိုကေရစီေခတ္တြင္ အစိုးရအသီးသီး၏ အသိအမွတ္ျပဳမႈမ်ား ရွိခဲ့သည့္အျပင္၊ န၀တ-နအဖ အစိုးရလက္ထက္ က်င္းပခဲ့ေသာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ အသီးသီးမ်ားတြင္လည္း မဲေပးပိုင္ခြင့္ ႏွင့္ ၀င္ေရာက္ေရြးခ်ယ္ခံပိုင္ခြင့္မ်ား အျခားတိုင္းရင္းသားမ်ားနည္းတူ ရရွိခဲ့သူမ်ားျဖစ္ပါသည္။ ၿဗိတိသွ်ေခတ္ ဒိုင္အာခီ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးကာလ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွ သည္ ၂၀၁၁ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲအထိ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဆိုင္ရာ လုပ္ထံုးလုပ္နည္း မ်ားအရ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာတို႔၏ အခန္းက႑ကို ေလ့လာေသာ္၊ ႏိုင္ငံျခားသားမ်ားနည္းတူမဟုတ္ဘဲ၊ တိုင္းရင္းသားနည္းတူ အခြင့္အေရးမ်ား ေပးျခင္းခံရသည္ကို ေတြ႔ရွိႏိုင္ပါသည္။
ျမန္မာျပည္ လြတ္လပ္ေရး ရခါနီးအခ်ိန္အတြင္း ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေခါင္းေဆာင္အခ်ိဳ႕က မိမိတို႕၏ပိုင္နက္ကို ပါကိစၥတန္ႏွင့္ တြဲေပးရန္ လႈပ္ရွားမႈမ်ား အနည္းငယ္ရွိခဲ့ေသာအခါ၊ အမ်ိဳးသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ႀကီး ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ဆန္း ကိုယ္တိုင္က ”ေအာင္ဆန္း-အက္တလီ စာခ်ဳပ္” လက္မွတ္ေရးထိုးရန္ လန္ဒန္သြားေနခိုက္၊ လမ္းခရီးတြင္ ထိုရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေခါင္းေဆာင္ မ်ားအပါအ၀င္ ပါကိစၥတန္ အမ်ိဳးသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ မိုဟာမတ္ အာလီ ဂ်ိႏၷား ႏွင့္ ေတြ႕ဆံု၍ ထိုကိစၥရပ္မ်ားအတြက္ ေျပလည္မႈမ်ား ရယူခဲ့သည့္အျပင္၊ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားအား ေနာင္က်င္းပမည့္ ပင္လံုညီလာခံသို႔ တက္ေရာက္ ရန္ ဖိတ္စာတစ္ေစာင္ကိုလည္း သူကိုယ္တိုင္ ေရးသား၍ လက္မွတ္ေရးထိုး ေပးခဲ့ေလသည္။
ဦးတင္ဦး၏ ယင္းကဲ့ ထုတ္ေဖာ္ေျပာဆိုခ်က္မ်ားသည္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာတို႔၏ သမိုင္းေနာက္ခံႏွင့္ မ်က္ေမွာက္အေနအထားကို လစ္လ်ဴရႈျခင္း ဟု ခံယူရမည္ျဖစ္ၿပီး၊ ျပည္ေထာင္စု ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြင္းေနသူ လူတစ္ဦးခ်င္း (သို႔) လူမ်ိဳးစုတစ္ခု၏ ဒီမို ကေရစီ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးႏွင့္ ရပိုင္ခြင့္မ်ားကို ျငင္းပယ္ရာ ေရာက္ပါသည္။
ထို႔အျပင္ စစ္အစိုးရအသီးသီးတို႔၏ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္အေပၚ ထားရွိသည့္ ေသြးခြဲေပၚလစီႏွင့္ အစြန္းေရာက္ ရခုိင္အမ်ိဳး သား တစ္ခ်ိဳ႕၏ လုပ္ႀကံဖန္တီး ေျပာဆိုမႈမ်ားေၾကာင့္၊ ျမန္မာတိုင္းရင္းသား ျပည္သူ အမ်ားအျပားက ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာတို႔အ ေပၚ မိမိတို႕ႏိုင္ငံသား ဟုတ္ေလသလားဟု သံသယမ်ား ရွိေနသည့္ အခ်ိန္အခါမ်ိဳးတြင္ အမ်ားၾကည္ညိဳျခင္း၊ ယံုၾကည္ ကိုးစားျခင္း၊ ေထာက္ခံအားေပးျခင္း ခံေနရေသာ အမ်ိဳးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္၏ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ပိုင္းမွ ဦးတင္ဦး ကဲ့သို႔ အထင္ကရ ေခါင္းေဆာင္တစ္ဦးအေနျဖင့္ ယင္းကဲ့သို႕ ထုတ္ေဖာ္ေျပာဆိုမႈမ်ားသည္ လူမ်ိဳး၊ ဘာသာ ခြဲျခား ဆက္ဆံေရးကို အရွိန္၊ အဟုန္ ျမင့္မားရာ ေရာက္သည့္အျပင္ အမ်ား၏ သံသယကိုလည္း ယံုၾကည္မႈသို႕ တိုးျမွင့္ရာ ေရာက္ေနပါသည္။
ဦးတင္ဦးမွ ေျပာဆိုခဲ့သည့္အတိုင္း ယင္းအာဏာရွိစဥ္က ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာတို႔၏ ဌာေနတြင္ က်ဴးလြန္ခဲ့သည့္ ျပစ္မႈမ်ားမွတ္ တမ္းကို ေလ့လာေသာ္…
- ေက်းရြာေပါင္း (၂၆) ခုကို မီးရိႈ႕ ေမာင္းထုတ္ျခင္း၊
- ရာႏွင့္ခ်ီ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ အမ်ိဳးသားမ်ားအား သတ္ျဖတ္ျခင္း၊
- အမ်ိဳးသမီးထုအား မတရားျပဳက်င့္ျခင္း၊
- သိန္း၊ သန္းခ်ီ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာတို႕၏ ဥစၥာဓနမ်ားကို သိမ္းပိုက္ခဲ့ျခင္း …စသည့္တို႕ကို ေတြ႔ရွိရပါသည္။
အထက္ပါ ျပစ္မႈမ်ားကို ဦးတင္ဦး ကိုယ္တိုင္ ပါ၀င္၍၄င္း၊ ယင္း၏ လက္ေထာက္ ဗိုလ္ေအာင္ဒင္ အားျဖင့္၄င္း၊ လက္ ေအာက္ခံ စစ္တပ္သားမ်ား အားျဖင့္၄င္း က်ဴးလြန္ခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း တင္ျပလိုပါသည္။
ဦးတင္ဦးအား အမ်ိဳးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္၏ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ စည္းရံုးေရး ခရီးစဥ္အတြင္း ယင္းက်ဴးလြန္ခဲ့ေသာ ျပစ္မႈမ်ားႏွင့္ စပ္လ်ဥ္း၍ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာအမ်ိဳးသားမ်ားက ေမးျမန္ခဲ့ရာ၊ ယင္းက ”ထိုအခ်ိန္တြင္ ကၽြႏ္ုပ္အေနျဖင့္ ဦးေန၀င္း ခိုင္းရာ လုပ္ရသည္ ရခိုင္တိုင္း တိုင္းမႈ ဦးတင္ဦးသာ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ပါေၾကာင္း၊ သို႕ေသာ္ ယခုမူကား ဒီမိုကေရစီဘက္ေတာ္သား ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း” အစရွိသည္အတိုင္း ေျဖၾကားခဲ့သည္ကိုလည္း ေလ့လာေတြ႔ရွိရပါသည္။
မည္သို႔ပင္ဆိုေစကာမူ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာလူထုသည္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ႀကီး ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၏ စစ္ေတြ ခရီးစဥ္တြင္ မိန္႔မွာ ခဲ့သည့္ ”လူမ်ိဳးႏွစ္မ်ိဳး သင့္တင့္ေအာင္ ခ်စ္ခ်စ္ခင္ခင္၊ စည္းစည္းလံုးလံုး ေနၾကရန္” ဆိုဆံုးမမႈအေပၚ ယေန႔တိုင္ အားရ ေက်နပ္လ်က္ ရွိေနပါသည္။ တနည္းအားျဖင့္ ၁၉၆၂-ခုႏွစ္ ေန၀င္းအုပ္စိုးသည့္ ကာလမွစ၍ လူသားမဆန္ေသာ၊ လူလူ ခ်င္း စာနာမႈကင္းမဲ့ေသာ ႏွိက္ကြပ္မႈဒဏ္မ်ား အဆက္အျပတ္ အလူးအလဲ ခံေနၾကရေသာ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာတို႔မွာ ေခါင္း ေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ႏွင့္ အမ်ိဳးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္အေပၚ ယင္းတို႔ခံစားေနရမႈမ်ား နိဂံုးခ်ဳပ္မည္ဟု ႀကီးမားသည့္ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ခ်က္မ်ား ရွိေနပါသည္။ AFK Jilani (NLD-ေမာင္းေတာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္-၂၀၀၁) ၏ ”Aung San Suu Kyi, The lady of Destiny” စာအုပ္ကို ေလ့လာပါက ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာတို႔ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ အားမည္မွ် ေထာက္ခံသည္ကို သံုးသပ္ႏိုင္ပါသည္။
စက္တင္ဘာ အေစာပိုင္းက ဦးသန္းစိန္ အစိုးရ ပါလီမန္အတြင္း၊ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာနဲ႔ပတ္သက္၍ တာ၀န္မဲ့ လိမ္လည္ေျဖၾကား မႈမ်ား မေရွ႕မေႏွာင္းမွာပင္ ရခိုင္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ အႏိုင္ရပါတီ တစ္ခုမွ ဦးေဆာင္ၿပီး ရန္ကုန္တြင္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဆန္႔က်င္ေရး လႈပ္ရွားမႈမ်ား ျပဳလုပ္လာသကဲ့သို႔၊ ျပည္ပေရာက္ အစြန္းေရာက္ ရခိုင္အမ်ိဳးသား အခ်ိဳ႕ကလည္း အမ်ိဳးမိ်ဳး၊ နည္းေပါင္း စံုသံုး တိုက္ခိုက္လ်က္ရွိေနပါသည္။ ဤကဲ့သို႔ကာလမ်ိဳးတြင္ NLD ဒု-ဥကၠ႒ ျဖစ္သူမွ ယခုကဲ့သို႕ ထုတ္ေဖာ္ေျပာဆိုျခင္း သည္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ိဳးစုအား စိတ္အားငယ္ေစျခင္း၊ ၀မ္းနဲေစျခင္း စသည့္ ရသပါသည့္ ခံစားမႈေ၀ဒနာမ်ား မ်ားစြာဖြား ေပးလ်က္ရွိေနပါသည္။
နကိုယ္ကပင္ စစ္အစိုးရ၏ ပေဟဠိဆန္ေသာ လူမ်ိဳးဆိတ္သုဥ္းေရးဒဏ္ေၾကာင့္ အိုးအိမ္းစြန္႔ကာ ကမၻာ့အႏွံ႔ မိတကြဲ၊ ဖတကြဲ လွည့္လည္ေနရသည့္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာတုိ႔၏ လူသားတစ္ပိုင္းဘ၀အေပၚ ဘ၀တူနီးပါးခံစားခဲ့ရသူ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္း စုၾကည္ကလႊဲ၍ မည္သူမွ် အေကာင္းဆံုး နားလည္ေပးႏိုင္မည္မဟုတ္ဟု ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ား ယံုၾကည္ပါသည္။ ထို႔အတြက္ ေၾကာင္း ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္ေရာက္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ဒုကၡသည္မ်ားက ယင္းတို႕အေနျဖင့္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ လာေရာက္ေခၚယူမွ ေနရပ္သို႔ ျပန္ပါ့မည္ဟု ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္ႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း ခန္႔မွန္းမိပါသည္။
သို႔ရာတြင္ ဒု-ဥကၠ႒ ဦးတင္ဦးမွ ယခုကဲ့သို႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီႏွင့္ စံႏွႈန္းႏွင့္ ဆန္႔က်င္သည့္ ထုတ္ေဖာ္ေျပာဆိုမႈေၾကာင့္ ထိုကဲ့ သို႔ အေၾကာင္းအရာသည္ NLD ၏ အတြင္းေပၚလစီဟူ၍ ယူဆမႈမ်ားရွိေနပါသည္။
သို႔ျဖစ္ပါ၍ ဦးတင္ဦး၏ တာ၀န္မႈေျပာဆိုမႈမ်ားအေပၚ အမ်ိဳးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္၊ အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမွဴး၊ ျပည္သူ႔အခ်စ္ေတာ္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္မွ လိုအပ္သည့္အတိုင္းအတာျဖင့္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာတုိ႔အား ေက်နပ္ေစလိမ့္မည္ ဟု ကၽြန္ေတာ္မ်ား လံုး၀ဥႆံု ယံုၾကည္ပါေၾကာင္း တင္ျပလိုက္ပါသည္။
အမႈေဆာင္အဖြဲ႕ကိုယ္စား-
(ကိုကိုလင္း)
တြဲဖက္ တည္ေထာင္သူ
လြတ္လပ္ေသာ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ လႈပ္ရွားမႈအဖြဲ႕
ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား အခ်ဳိ႕ လြတ္လာတာကို ႀကိဳဆိုေပမယ့္ ျမန္မာအစိုးရ အေနနဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံတကာက ေတာင္းဆိုထားတဲ့ အတိုင္း ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသား အားလံုးကို ခြ်င္းခ်က္မရွိ လႊတ္ေပးဖို႕ လိုတယ္လို႕ အေမရိကန္ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး ဌာနေျပာခြင့္ရ အမ်ဳိးသမီး Victoria Nuland က သတင္းေထာက္ေတြကို ေျပာပါတယ္။
US Department of State
အေမရိကန္ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး ဌာန ပုံမွန္ သတင္းစာရွင္းလင္းပြဲတြင္ ေျပာခြင့္ရ အမ်ဳိးသမီး Victoria Nuland က သတင္းေထာက္မ်ားကုိ ရွင္းလင္းတင္ျပေနစဥ္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံက လြတ္လာတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသား စာရင္းအျပည့္အစံုကို က်မတို႕ မေတြ႕ရေသးပါဘူး။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသား အမ်ားအျပား ေထာင္ေတြထဲမွာ က်န္ေနေသးတယ္ ဆိုတာ က်မတို႕ ယံုၾကည္ပါတယ္။
သူတို႕အားလံုးကုိ ခြ်င္းခ်က္မရွိ လႊတ္ေပးဖို႕ အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စုက ေတာင္းဆို ပါတယ္လို႕ Victoria Nuland က ေျပာသြားပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားေတြ လႊတ္ေပးေရး ကိစၥဟာ ျမန္မာျပည္သူေတြ လိုလားခ်က္ကို တုန႔္ျပန္တဲ့ အေနနဲ႕ အစိုးရဘက္က ေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးရမယ့္ အေရးႀကီးတဲ့ အဆင့္တခု ျဖစ္တယ္လို႕ အေမရိကန္ အစိုးရအေနနဲ႕ ျမင္တဲ့အေၾကာင္း သူက ေျပာပါတယ္။ ဆက္လက္ၿပီးေတာ့လညး္ အေမရိကန္ အစိုးရ အေနနဲ႕ ျမန္မာ အစိုးရနဲ႕ ေဆြးေႏြး ေျပာဆိုသြားမွာ ျဖစ္တယ္လို႕ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရး ၀န္ႀကီးဌာန ေျပာခြင့္ရ အမ်ဴိးသမီး Victoria Nuland က ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ပါတယ္။
Credit : RFA Burmese
MS. NULAND: I think you know where we are with Bangladesh, that the Bangladesh Government, as you have yourself said, is looking to pursue these issues in the courts, and we have been supportive of that initiative.
QUESTION: And finally if I may, quick on Burma. Burma’s government now, they have taken some steps to release some journalists and also some prisoners. But what the Burmese Government – I mean, the opposition leaders are asking: There are thousands of prisoners of war or prisoners – political prisoners in Burma, and they should be released without any conditions, especially those Buddhist monks.
MS. NULAND: Well, first let me just say, because I think we haven’t spoken about it in a couple of days, that we do welcome the recent release of some political prisoners in Burma. We see it as an important step that responds to the aspirations of the Burmese people. We have not yet seen a complete list. We do believe that there are still a large number of political prisoners in prison, and we call for all of them to be released. But this is an important step, and we are continuing to talk to the Burmese Government and others about these issues.
Credit : RFA Burmese
MS. NULAND: I think you know where we are with Bangladesh, that the Bangladesh Government, as you have yourself said, is looking to pursue these issues in the courts, and we have been supportive of that initiative.
QUESTION: And finally if I may, quick on Burma. Burma’s government now, they have taken some steps to release some journalists and also some prisoners. But what the Burmese Government – I mean, the opposition leaders are asking: There are thousands of prisoners of war or prisoners – political prisoners in Burma, and they should be released without any conditions, especially those Buddhist monks.
MS. NULAND: Well, first let me just say, because I think we haven’t spoken about it in a couple of days, that we do welcome the recent release of some political prisoners in Burma. We see it as an important step that responds to the aspirations of the Burmese people. We have not yet seen a complete list. We do believe that there are still a large number of political prisoners in prison, and we call for all of them to be released. But this is an important step, and we are continuing to talk to the Burmese Government and others about these issues.
ျမန္မာအစိုးရ မၾကာခင္ကေပးခဲ့ေသာ လြတ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာခြင့္သည္ အကန္႔အသတ္ႏွင့္သာ ျဖစ္ၿပီး ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား အမ်ားအျပား အက်ဥ္းေထာင္မ်ားထဲတြင္ က်န္ရွိေနဆဲ ျဖစ္သည္။

အမ်ားက ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ခဲ့ေသာ ၈၈ မ်ိဳးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသား ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားျဖစ္သည့္ ကိုမင္းကိုႏုိင္၊ ကိုကိုႀကီး၊ ကိုေဌးႂကြယ္၊ ကိုမင္းေဇယ်ာတို႔ လြတ္ေျမာက္ရာတြင္ မပါဝင္ေပ။ အလားတူ ကိုေဇာ္သက္ေထြး၊ ေနဘုန္းလတ္ႏွင့္ အရွင္ဂမၻီရတို႔ ကဲ့သို႔ေသာ နယ္ပယ္စံုမွ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားမ်ား မလြတ္ေျမာက္ေသးသည္ ကိုလည္း စိတ္ပ်က္ဖြယ္ရာ ေတြ႕ရေပသည္။
ယခုကဲ့သို႔ အက်ဥ္းသားလႊတ္ေပးသည့္ အစိုးရ၏ လုပ္ေဆာင္ခ်က္ႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ အခ်က္ႏွစ္ခ်က္ ေတြ႕ရသည္။
ပထမ တခ်က္မွာ လက္ရွိ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ အစိုးရအေနျဖင့္ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲမႈမ်ား ျပဳလုပ္ေနၿပီ၊ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ေျခလွမ္း စတင္ေနၿပီဟု ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ေသာ္လည္း ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားမ်ား လႊတ္ေပးေရးတြင္ ေႏွာင့္ေႏွးေနခဲ့သည္ကို ေတြ႕ရသည္။
ထိုသို႔ ေႏွာင့္ေႏွးေနျခင္းမွာ အဘယ္ေၾကာင့္နည္း။
ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားမ်ား အေရးကို ျမစ္ဆံုဆည္ စီမံကိန္းကဲ့သို႔ ရဲရဲဝံ့ဝံ့ မဆံုးျဖတ္ဘဲ တြန္႔ဆုတ္ေနျခင္းက အစိုးရအေနျဖင့္ ၎၏ အေနအထားကို စိတ္မခ်ေသးေၾကာင္း ထင္ရွားေနသည္။
ထို႔အျပင္ အစိုးရထိပ္ပိုင္း ပုဂၢိဳလ္မ်ားက ႏိုင္ငံတကာမီဒီယာမ်ားႏွင့္ ႏုိင္ငံျခား အစိုးရမ်ားကို ေျပာရာတြင္ ႏုိင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသား ဦးေရ တေထာင္ေအာက္သာ ရွိသည္ဟု ဆိုသည္။
သို႔ေသာ္ ၂၀၀၇ ခုႏွစ္ ေနာက္ပိုင္းမွ စတင္၍ ျမန္မာျပည္တြင္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား ဦးေရ ၂၀၀၀ ခန္႔ ရွိသည္ဟု ျပည္တြင္း ျပည္ပက ယံုၾကည္ထားခဲ့သည္။
ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားဦးေရ အစစ္အမွန္ကို ျပည္ထဲေရးဝန္ႀကီး ဌာနႏွင့္ ေထာက္လွမ္းေရးက အသိဆံုး ျဖစ္ေပလိမ့္မည္။
တခ်ိဳ႕ေသာ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား မ်ားမွာ ႏုိင္ငံေရးမႈႏွင့္ မဟုတ္ဘဲ အမႈဆင္ခံရၿပီး သာမန္ျပစ္မႈ က်ဴးလြန္သူမ်ား အေနျဖင့္ အစစ္ေဆးခံၾကရသည္။ ထုိ႔အျပင္ အက်ဥ္းေထာင္ မ်ားထဲတြင္ တုိင္းရင္းသား ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားမ်ားလည္း အမ်ားအျပား ရွိႏုိင္ပါေသးသည္။
ဒုတိယအခ်က္မွာ ယခုလြတ္ေျမာက္သည့္ အထဲတြင္ ၈၈ မ်ိဳးဆက္ ေက်ာင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားကို ခ်န္ထားခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။ ထုိသူမ်ားအား တမင္ခ်န္ထားျခင္းက သမၼတဦးသိန္းစိန္၏ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္လား၊ သို႔မဟုတ္ သူ႔အစိုးရ၏ ေနာက္ကြယ္တြင္ ႀကိဳးကိုင္ေနဆဲဟု ယူဆရသည့္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မႉးႀကီးေဟာင္း သန္းေရႊ၏ ၾကားဝင္စြက္ဖက္မႈမ်ား ပါဝင္ေနျခင္း ေၾကာင့္လား စသည္ျဖင့္ ေတြးဆစရာမ်ား ရွိခဲ့သည္။
ယခု လြတ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာခြင့္အေပၚ ႏုိင္ငံတကာက အားရေက်နပ္မႈ မရွိေသာ္လည္း ျပည္တြင္းတြင္မူ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ခ်က္ မ်ားစြာ ရွိခဲ့သည္ကို ေတြ႕ရသည္။ လြတ္ေျမာက္လာသူမ်ားကိုလည္း အားရဝမ္းသာ ႀကိဳဆိုခဲ့ၾကသည္။
အက်ဥ္းသားမ်ားအား လႊတ္ေပးခဲ့ျခင္းကိုမူ ႀကိဳဆိုရေပလိမ့္မည္။
သို႔ေသာ္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား အားလံုးကို လႊတ္ေပးရမည္ ျဖစ္ၿပီး အားလံုးလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအတြက္ ဆက္လက္ ေတာင္းဆို ၾကရမည္ ျဖစ္သည္။
၈၈ မ်ိဳးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသား ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား အပါအဝင္ တျခားေသာ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား အားလုံးကို လႊတ္ေပးမွသာ အမ်ိဳးသားရင္ၾကားေစ့ေရးကို တည္ေဆာက္ႏုိင္လိမ့္မည္ဟု ယံုၾကည္ေသာေၾကာင့္ျဖစ္သည္။
Credit :ဧရာ၀တီ
By Waihnin Pwint Thon>>
The dictatorship is seeking legitimacy through token gestures – my father is among thousands of political prisoners still in jail
Former inmates leave Insein Prison in Yangon, Burma, after the president, Thein Sein, issued a prisoner amnesty. Photograph: Khin Maung Win/AP
When rumours first emerged that the Burmese government was planning to release some political prisoners, I told myself not to get my hopes up. Since 2008, when my father was sentenced to 65 years in jail for his political activities, I have been trying to come to terms with the fact that I may never see him again. His health is not good, but the government won't let him get proper medical treatment.
But as the rumours persisted, and diplomats talked up the prospect of a large number of political prisoners being released, I could not help but start to hope. The UN has raised the case of my father with the government, and one UN body has ruled his detention is illegal. Dictatorships in Burma do regular prisoner amnesties, usually including some political prisoners. Perhaps this time he would be freed.
Since becoming president earlier this year, Thein Sein has played a clever political game. He has made promises of reform, and allowed slightly more political debate, and a slight relaxation of censorship. A steady drip, drip of small but seemingly positive steps has created an impression of change happening.
It would be a mistake, though, to think that Thein Sein is a moderate, as we understand the word. This is a man who was named by the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma in 1998 for ordering soldiers under his command to commit human rights abuses. In recent months he has sent his soldiers to the ethnic Shan and Kachin states, where they are gang-raping women and even children. Some are so brutally raped they die afterwards.
Thein Sein is not, as some claim, fighting a battle against hardliners, trying to bring democracy and human rights to Burma. His goal is continued dictatorship, but he appears more willing to make some compromises to get sanctions lifted, and to gain international legitimacy. I hoped that this would mean many political prisoners would be released.
This is a key practical benchmark for judging change. The US and EU have said that prisoners must be released before sanctions are lifted. Despite knowing Thein Sein isn't a genuine reformer, part of me still hoped that he would turn words into action and release most political prisoners, even if his motivations are not what he wants the world to believe. But he didn't.
It now appears that the number of political prisoners released will be in the low hundreds, leaving more than a thousand still in squalid jails, including my father. I am extremely disappointed, not just for myself, but for what this signifies for the prospects of change in my country.
Thein Sein appears to be trying to make the minimum amount of concessions to get the maximum in return. These releases will probably be enough to persuade the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) to allow Burma to take its turn as chair of the organisation in 2014. I hope that the British government, the EU and US will not be fooled by this token release, and start to relax sanctions. If they do relax sanctions, the pressure for further releases, and genuine reform will lessen.
Those freed from prison are not truly free. They live in a country that is still a dictatorship, even if it now has a civilian face. The repressive laws under which they were arrested remain in place. I still cannot safely return to my homeland. We will know change is coming when all political prisoners are released, when there is a nationwide ceasefire, not increased conflict and human rights abuses, and when there is a genuine dialogue process, which includes genuine ethnic representatives.
It is wonderful to see the prisoners who have been released, and for their families, but there are still so many families yet to be reunited. Like me, my mother had hoped against hope that my father would be released. She told herself not to get her hopes up, she has been disappointed too many times before. Yet she tidied the house just in case, and cooked a special meal, my father's favourite. In the end, my mother and sister had to eat the meal alone. More than a thousand other families had to do the same.
Some governments and observers have got carried away recently talking up prospects of change in Burma. I hope this will be a reality check for them. Burma's rulers have been lying to the international community for decades, always promising change is just round the corner. Some have fallen for the lies yet again. Until all prisoners are released and there is a nationwide ceasefire, don't believe the hype.
Credit :Waihnin Pwint Thon · 13/10/2011 · guardian.co.uk
ဒုတိယအႀကိမ္ လြတ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာခြင့္အရ ေအာက္တိုဘာ ၁၂ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ လြတ္ေျမာက္လာသည့္ ယံုၾကည္ခ်က္ေၾကာင့္ အက်ဥ္းက်ခံေနရသူ ၂၀၆ ဦး၏ အမည္စာရင္း
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Since Thein Sein took office as Burma’s President on 30 March, the regime has continued to perpetrate crimes against humanity and war crimes with total impunity. Reports of serious international crimes have increased significantly in line with the escalation of the ongoing Tatmadaw offensives in Kachin, Shan, and Karen States.
Women and children have been particularly vulnerable. Tatmadaw soldiers raped and killed women during their offensive in Kachin and Shan States. The regime also continued to recruit children into the military in order to offset the steady increase in desertions.
In the past six months, the following crimes against humanity and war crimes have been documented:
• At least 30 cases of rape and sexual violence perpetrated by military personnel.
• Over 400 complaints of children recruited as child soldiers.
• At least 35 civilians killed.
• Systematic use of forced labor in ethnic areas.
• Forced displacement during military attacks that targeted civilians.
• At least 11 activists and media persons arbitrarily detained or imprisoned.
• Over 100 villagers arbitrarily detained in Kachin and Shan State during “counter-insurgency” operations.
• Continued use of torture.
• Systematic persecution of Muslim Rohingya in Northern Arakan State.
In the past six months, the following crimes against humanity and war crimes have been documented:
• At least 30 cases of rape and sexual violence perpetrated by military personnel.
• Over 400 complaints of children recruited as child soldiers.
• At least 35 civilians killed.
• Systematic use of forced labor in ethnic areas.
• Forced displacement during military attacks that targeted civilians.
• At least 11 activists and media persons arbitrarily detained or imprisoned.
• Over 100 villagers arbitrarily detained in Kachin and Shan State during “counter-insurgency” operations.
• Continued use of torture.
• Systematic persecution of Muslim Rohingya in Northern Arakan State.
The 46-year-old billionaire who enjoys close relations with the ruling generals is also president of the Myanmar Gems and Jewelry Entrepreneurs’ Association. He downplayed the affect of gem sanctions, and said China more than made up for the lack of Western foreign investment, particularly in the jade market in which he is a major investor.
‘The sanctions made him more rich’, he said
ျမန္မာသတင္းႏွင့္ စီးပြားေရးသမား ဦးေတဇႏွင့္ေမးျမန္းခန္း
Rights group Human Asia may only have been campaigning here for under six years, but the small Korean NGO aims to have a big impact on the region.
The organization which raises awareness on human rights across Asia has set out on an ambitious mission to establish a regional human rights protection mechanism, and it is starting by educating Korea.
And Human Asia program manager Lee Joo-yea thought a Seoul-based organization would be well-placed to lead a forum where representatives of many Asian countries can meet to find common ground on rights.
“Our long-term aim is to get a human rights convention for Asia,” she said. “The first step is getting a lot of human rights organizations together for an NGO-led forum.”
While Asian countries such as Thailand and the Philippines do not have the economic resources, and others have questionable human rights records to overcome, Lee believes that Korea now has the economic and diplomatic clout to lead in the field.
“We are looking to see who can be the leader of the (Asian) human rights movement,” she said.
“Japan has a past that they are not particularly proud of -― they colonized countries. China is economically successful but has so many human rights violations. It is not that Korea is totally innocent but at least the international community states that Korea is not so guilty ... In that sense we are really proud that we can come in to try to develop the human rights movement in Asia.”
The organization started in 2006 is working to educate people on human rights here and has already drawn interest from the National Human Rights Commission of Korea for a regional human rights forum, hoped to be held in the next three years.

Human Asia campaigners raise awareness of the plight of Rohingya refugees in a recent demonstration in Korea. (Human Asia)
While Lee is optimistic that common ground can be found among Asian countries, she recognizes that there are many hurdles to overcome, including neighboring nations’ differing agendas such as food security in Bangladesh to migrant workers’ rights in Korea.
She also recognized that further education was needed to put human rights on the agenda here.
“It is very hard because people have very different ideas about what human rights are,” she said.
“We don’t have any general human rights teaching in schools or universities. Most of the young students don’t have any basic idea of human rights.
“They think that human rights are something that belong to others. They don’t think of human rights as something they can use to empower themselves.”To change this, the organization has focused for the last six years on education.
It holds regular workshops for activists, human rights academies and has set up a human rights course with Korea University Graduate School of International Studies, with students attending from countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo and Bangladesh as well as Korea. But now the charity is working to get more people outside of academia involved.“We are starting to run more campaigns to bring in ordinary members of the public as we want to expand our activities to include not just education but also toward more active campaigns,” Lee said. The NGO’s grassroots movement is also developing abroad with branches run by high school students cropping up in America ― in California, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Massachusetts.
In Korea, the charity has held street campaigns for Rohingya Refugees here, originally from Burma. It has also supported groups such as the Jumma people who fled persecution in Bangladesh to become refugees in Korea, and made a field trip to the country to learn more about human rights concerns there. As well as helping under-represented people, each campaign aims to accustom participants to the idea that they can become rights activists in their own way, too. “Korea has developed in various areas including economically, but you don’t have that kind of development in human rights.
We need to narrow this gap,” said Lee.“In Korea we have a very active civil rights and labor movement and the term human rights was always around but here people often associate the term with struggle, or fighting, or something political.“Even (our country’s) leaders, they think that human rights (can be used as) a tool for them to achieve a leadership position in Asia.”Lee said Human Asia aims to shift the focus from gleaning international prestige to helping people, avoiding many Asian NGOs often narrow scope that was often “very political and either right wing or left wing.”She added:
“We don’t necessarily represent the whole of Asia but by bringing together other civil society organizations and creating a forum we can discuss our different concerns.
”By Kirsty Taylor (kirstyt@heraldm.com)
By Dr.Zarni>>
All the “dramatic” developments in Burma, including the release of 6,000-plus prisoners, are, as US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell put it, certainly welcome. Likewise, the man from the International Crisis Group was singing the praise of Naypyidaw on the BBC World Service News hour with Robin Lustig on 11 Oct .
And yet despite these loud applauses of “changes” in Burma, the Burmese public is finding it very, very difficult to feel hopeful.
Not even Burma’s highly regarded political comedian Zaganar could say he was happy in spite of his new found freedom today when he was released from Myitkyina jail where he was serving 34 years behind bars. He told the Burmese local Eleven Media Group before boarding the Rangoon-bound plane, "Based on my current experiences I dare not think changes are real and big this time either."
Time magazine quoted his remark to the Associate Press: "I am not happy at all, as none of my 14 so-called political prisoner friends from Myitkyina prison are among those freed today".
So, how are we really to understand these much-trumpeted “changes” in Burma?
These changes do not include the change of heart among Burma’s rulers. They are in fact principally related to only two things.
First, the regime's felt need to realign its geopolitical interests.
The military’s uneasiness about its need to rely on China for international protection runs deep. Today China is also Burma’s number one foreign investor, all of it in mega-development, infrastructural and resource extractive projects.
And for Naypyidaw dealing with an increasingly aggressive, powerful and rich Beijing, without the backing of the West and the mainstream Burman public, is like fighting with one hand tied behind the back.
Tangible improvements on the human rights, political and development fronts are part of the price the generals have to pay to balance Beijing's growing influence.
Second, the generals and ex-generals have an acute desire to prove that they are not failures at nation-building, as the bulk of the Burmese public thinks. That’s understandable. The military has had nearly half a century to govern, develop and bring about peace and prosperity for all—not just themselves and their families. But they have turned the world’s rice basket into a basket case.
Hard facts on the ground speak louder than the military’s institutionalized fiction that the senior and junior generals vis-à-vis civilians are brilliant nation-builders. The generals’ Burma is ranked second to last, just ahead of Somalia, on Transparency International's Corruption Index. Public provision of health services exists only in name. There are no social safety nets. Period.
Public education, the largest provider of schooling, at all levels lies in ruin. Ninety-nine percent of university graduates don’t know what BA or BSc stands for, let alone how to spell Bachelor of Arts or Science correctly. And forget the home-grown PhDs.
This extremely low quality of human resources is not the exclusive problem of civilian educational and bureaucratic institutions. The bulk of the 4,000-plus graduates from the Defense Services Academy, the Defense Services Technological Academy and the Defense Services Medical Academy failed entrance examinations at Russian educational institutes where they were sent as “state scholars” under civilian disguise.
There are pockets of communities whose socioeconomic and humanitarian conditions are closer to those of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa than to those of an Asian country about to “take off” developmentally. Many spend more than 70 percent of their meager household income on food alone, while wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the Chinese and a handful of cronies, who in part play the role of portfolio managers for the generals and ex-generals.
The country’s ecology and communities face serious threats to their survival from some mega-development projects such as dam construction—seven on the Irrawaddy, Burma’s Nile, alone—and the two major Chinese gas and oil pipelines and Thailand’s $13 billion Special Economic Zone construction in the country's far south.
The generals’ offer of peace is largely motivated by their strategic plan to either split these groups or placate them momentarily. They should not be misunderstood as the generals’ “quest for peace and ethnic equality” or as a political solution to the non-Burman population's six decades of ethnic grievances and thwarted federalist aspirations.
While successive military governments have paid lip service to the country’s farmers, the bulk of the country’s population, the generals don’t have enough money to endow a national agricultural bank and a rural development fund. For the money is sucked into two dozen armament projects, including German-run fiber-optic networks and the assembly work of Made-in-N. Korea missile components, and buying several squadrons of state-of-the-art Russian Mi-G 29s and Mi-24 gunship helicopters.
But while Burma's erstwhile military rulers survey the ruins they have left as their legacy, one accomplishment serves to put their minds at ease: the institutionalized ruling ethos enshrined in the Nargis Constitution of 2008.
As the winds of change are said to be blowing the public in Burma, we should be asking some fundamental questions which will allow all of us to see these changes in their proper contexts.
Here is my favorite set of bench marks:
First, is the military weaning itself from its misguided view that it is the only institution capable of keeping the country together and developing her?
The emergence of formal institutions such as “Parliament,” the “presidency,” a “human rights commission,” and so on, is all well and fine. But they don’t mean a thing unless power relations between the military at all levels and the society at large, including the cronies and the legitimate businessmen and women, change along more egalitarian lines.
If Burma is to return to normalcy—after half a century of generals’ ruinous rule—the first thing that needs to change is its Orwellian “soldiers superior, civilians inferior” attitude.
Second, the medieval self-perception as “natural rulers”—the guardians of the nation—so typical of the ruling generals and ex-generals needs to be reassessed in a nationwide open dialogue, and be binned once and for all.
The only tangible way to prove that Burma is moving from the medieval political space to the 21st century semi-liberal place is to hold a plebiscite on the Constitution, which places the military above the law and legalizes military coups d'etat.
Third, the military needs to stop viewing and treating the non-Burman ethnic minorities, who make up 35-40 percent of the total population and who control nearly half of the country, like semi-colonial people to be bossed about.
There are two different Burmas, or Burma experiences. It is not enough to talk about some positive changes or the country being on the cusps of “irreversible” changes in the “Burma Proper,” to borrow the old British colonial lingo. We need to bring in the other Burma—where people still live in active war zones and dormant conflict regions.
Fourth, the new government of President Thein Sein should do the economically and ecologically right thing.
It is a standard democratic practice for any government that claims to enjoy a popular mandate to govern to review critically all existing massive commercial contracts with foreign powers such as China, India, Thailand, South Korea and Australia, as well as with investors such as the global oil and gas companies. Because many of these contracts were signed by the previous military government without any popular input or consultation of any kind, the overall review of these contracts would send an unequivocal message to the public at home and the skeptics abroad that the new Naypyidaw means business. There should be a blanket moratorium on all mega-development projects such as the Tavoy Special Economic Zone and the two Chinese pipelines, which go through conflict zones and are poised to harm communal welfare and the environment.
Finally, there have been Russian-style massive transfers of public assets to the generals and a handful of cronies, including former drug lords and their families who have laundered their money with the generals’ knowledge. The issue of who controls the country’s wealth needs to be discussed publicly and, above all, in the new Parliament.
I know this is a tall order for both those in power and the public. Raising these issues, which some will consider “inconvenient,” in no way implies that anyone who raises them is cynical, idealistic or unrealistic. Because the issues I have identified here are of paramount importance to the public welfare and the long-term future of the country, the public and the government alike ought to start thinking and talking about them.As we say in Burma, when the situation calls for it, no issue is out of bounds.
Our country’s future and the well-being of the public depend on whether and how these fundamental issues are addressed now.
Just as it happened throughout the coastal territories from the Arabian Peninsula to the Barbary Coast and the shores of Gibraltar and Iberian Peninsula (and beyond) via Alexandria, Tripoli and Tunis to the west, and to the shores of Mozambique (originally Musa-bin-Baik) via Zanzibar and Mombasa to the south, and to the lower Gangetic Delta (Bangladesh) and beyond (to the Strait of Malacca) via the Malabar Coast of India to the east, the maritime trade route in the India Ocean in those days (pre-dating European colonization) used to be controlled by the Arab/Persian Muslims. As they traded they also created pockets of settlements, and interacting with and marrying into the local populace, which slowly changed the local customs and culture.
After the rapid expansion of Islam in the 7th century, according to Dr. Moshe Yegar, “Colonies of Muslims, both Arab and Persian, spread all along the sea trade routes… As early as the middle of the 8th century, a sizable Muslim concentration could be found in along the southern coast of China, in the commercial ports of southern India, and Southeast Asia…. Merchants brought silk, spices, perfumes, lumber, porcelain, silver and gold articles, precious jewels, jewelry, and so forth from these countries, and some of the trade made its way to Europe.” “Because sailing ships were dependent on monsoon winds and seasons, it was essential for Arabs and other Muslim traders,” writes Yegar, “to set up domiciles in ports that were located in the heart of local communities. Muslim settlements spread rapidly in Asian port cities as Muslim merchants became vital to the economy of the local communities.”
The local inhabitants of Arakan, as noted in the British Burma Gazetteer (1957), had interactions with the so-called Mohammedans – the ‘Moor Arab Muslims’ (merchants/traders), dating at least to the time of Mahataing Sandya (8th century CE). As to the Muslim settlements in Arakan, the renowned scholars of the early 20th century, Professor Enamul Haq and Abdul Karim Shahitya Visarad wrote in 1935: “The Muslim influence in Roshang [Mrohang: the capital of Arakan during the Mrauk-U kingdom] and modern Chattagram [Chittagong] has been noticeable from ancient times. The Arab traders established trade link with the East Indies in the eighth and ninth century AD. During this time Chittagong, the lone seaport of East India, became the resting place and colony of the Arabs. We know from the accounts of the ancient Arab travelers and geologists including Sulaiman (living in 851 AD), Abu Jaidul Hasan (contemporary of Sulaiman), Ibnu Khuradba (died 912 AD), Al-Masudi (died 956 AD), Ibnu Howkal (wrote his travelogue in 976 AD), Al-Idrisi (born last half of 11th century) that the Arab traders became active in the area between Arakan and the eastern bank of the Meghna River [in today’s Bangladesh]. We can also learn about this from the Roshang national history: when Roshang King, Maha Taing Chandra (788 – 810 AD) was ruling in the 9th century, some ship wrecked Muslim traders were washed ashore on ‘Ronbee’ or ‘Ramree’ Island. When they were taken to the Arakanese king, the king ordered them to live in the village (countryside) in his country. Other historians also recognized the fact that Islam and its influence developed in Arakan in the 9th and 10th century AD.” [Explanatory notes within the parentheses [ ] are mine. It is worth noting that in the dialect prevalent in Chittagong and Arakan the vocal sounds ‘Ha’ and ‘Sha’ are interchangeable. Thus the words Roshang and Rohang are interchangeable. – H.S.]
R.B. Smart writes in the British Burma Gazetteer as follows: “The local histories relate that in the ninth century several ships were wrecked on Ramree Island and the Mussalman crews sent to Arakan and placed in villages there. They differ but little from the Arakanese except in their religion and in the social customs which their religion directs, in the writing they use Burmese, but amongst themselves employ colloquially the language of their ancestors.”
As noted by renowned historian Professor Abdul Karim, “The important point to be noticed about these shipwrecked Muslims is that they have stuck to their religion, i.e. Islam and Islamic social customs. Though they used Burmese language and also adopted other local customs, they have retained the language of their ancestors (probably with mixture of local words) in dealing among themselves. Another point to be noted is that the Arab shipwrecked Muslims have retained their religion, language and social customs for more than a thousand years.”
These shipwrecked Arab Muslims became the nucleus of the Muslim population of Arakan; later other Muslims from Arabia, Persia and other countries entered into Arakan.
Dr. Moshe Yegar says, “Beginning with their arrival in the Bay of Bengal, the earliest Muslim merchant ships also called at the ports of Arakan and Burma proper… Muslim influence in Arakan was of great cultural and political importance. In effect, Arakan was the beachhead for Muslim penetration into other parts of Burma even if it never achieved the same degree of importance it did in Arakan. As a result of close land and sea contacts maintained between the two countries, Muslims played a key role in the history of the Kingdom of Arakan.”
It is no accident that Akyab (today’s Sittwe, the capital of Arakan state of Burma, situated on the south-eastern bank of the Naaf River) is a Farsi name, as are so many other towns and villages named, and how over the centuries most of these local inhabitants along the coastal towns and villages, tired of a corrupt form of their ancestral region, would convert to Islam. And this happened centuries before Muslim rulers governed some of those territories.
Professor Enamul Haq and Abdul Karim Shahitya Visarad wrote: “The Arabic influence increased to such a large extent in Chittagong during mid-10th century AD that a small Muslim kingdom was established in this region, and the ruler of the kingdom was called ‘Sultan’. Possibly the area from the east bank of the Meghna River to the Naaf was under this ‘Sultan’. We can know about the presence of this ‘Sultan’ in the Roshang [Mrohang, the capital Arakan during the Mrauk-U dynasty] national history. In 953 AD Roshang King, Sulataing Chandra (951- 957 AD) crossed his border into Bangla (Bengal) and defeated the ‘Thuratan’ (Arakanese corrupt form of Sultan), and as a symbol of victory setup a stone victory pillar at a place called ‘Chaikta-gong’ and returned home at the request of the courtiers and friends. This Chaik-ta-gong was the last border of his victory, since according to Roshang national history – ‘Chaik-ta-gong’ means ‘war should not be raised’. Many surmise that the modem name of Chittagong district originated from Chaik-ta-gong.”
If the story of Arakanese king -- mentioned in its Chronicles -- moving into Chittagong can be believed, in southern Bangladesh, especially in Chittagong, not only was there a Muslim community present but also a Muslim Sultanate ruling there in the 10th century. It may explain why Dr. Than Tun, the former Rector of Mandalay University and Professor of History at the Rangoon University, believed that the kings mentioned in the Inscription might have been Rohingyas, who lived in the eastern part of the Naaf River. He writes, “In the Kyaukza or stone inscription of 1442, it was written that some Muslim kings of Arakan were the friends of king of Ava.”
In their masterpiece, Arakan Rajshavay Bangla Shahitya, Professor Enamul Haq and Abdul Karim Shahitya Visarad continued, “In this way the religion of Islam spread and the Muslim influence slowly extended from the eastern bank of the Meghna to Roshang Kingdom in the 8th and 9th centuries. From the travelogues of the Egyptian traveler to India, Ibn Batuta (14th century AD) and from the accounts of the Portuguese pirates in the 16th century, the influence of the ‘Moors’ or Arabs was waxing till then. So it is evident that long before the Muslim race was established in Bengal in the 13th century, Islam reached to this remote region of Bengal. A conclusion may easily be drawn that after the establishment in Bengal, Islam further spread in the region. That is why Bengali literature was for the first time cultivated among the Muslim of the region. Since the 15th century onwards the Muslims of this region began to engage themselves in the study of Bengali, that is, began to write books in Bengali, of which we have lots of proofs.”
The Muslim saints, the Sufis, who came in hundreds to the shores of Bay of Bengal had a fabulous influence in proselytizing the local inhabitants to Islam. The Arakanese chronicle gives reference to the traveling of Sufis in that country at the time of the king Anawarhta (1044-1077 CE) during Pagan period. Even, a Russian merchant, Athanasius Nitikin, who traveled in the East (1470), mentions regarding activities of some Muslim Sufis of Pegu. The Merchant pictured Pegu as "no inconsiderable port, inhabited by Indian dervishes. The products derived from thence are manik, akhut, kyrpuk, which are sold by the dervishes.” As noted by Dr. Mohammed Ali Chowdhury, these dervishes were Muslims, and probably of Arab descent, and that at that time some Muslims (from nearby Muslim India) had settled in those places.
As it happened throughout history, wherever Muslims went and settled, they were able to proselytize the local people. The simplicity of their faith, views about salvation, egalitarian characteristics and ease of practice, and their ethos - morals, values, dealings, manners and customs -- had a profound effect on the local population to gravitate them to the faith of these strangers, the newcomers, away from the degenerative form of their own religion that they had endured. These migrant Muslims married into the local populace and parented children.
In his book, The Essential History of Burma, historian U Kyi writes, “The superior morality of those devout Muslims attracted large number of people towards Islam who embraced it en masse.”
This essential piece of history of the Muslims of the coastal regions of today’s Bangladesh and Arakan state of Burma is simply ignored by chauvinist elements within the Rakhine and Burmese community. They cannot imagine Islam amongst the ordinary masses without rulers being of the same faith. They also forget that Islam from its very inception has been a simple practical religion, away from the curses of racism, supremacist concepts and caste system that so overwhelmingly dominated the then Buddhist and Hindu culture. While the temples, statues, mandirs and pagodas were built with gold and precious ornaments, and monks and priests held the demigod status enjoying the benefits of the vast material resources that were endowed to them for their upkeep, ordinary people went hungry and poor, and were forced to lead a life of begging and eternal servitude. It is no accident of history either that vast majority of people in places like Malaysia, southern Philippines and Indonesia, where no Muslim army went, would one day become Muslims and abandon their ancestral religions.
The restoration of the deposed king Narameikhla (Mong Saw Mwan) to the throne of Arakan by the Muslim Sultan Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah of Bengal, thus ushering in the Mrauk-U dynasty (1430-1784 CE), is a turning point in the history of Arakan. From this time onward, many of its rulers, indebted to the Muslim Sultan adopted Muslim names (and may even have converted to Islam), a practice that would continue for the next two centuries, until 1638 CE. It is worth noting here that when Narameikhla was dethroned in 1404 CE by the Burman forces, he chose to flee to Muslim Bengal instead of either the Buddhist-ruled Tripura or the Hindu-ruled territories of India.
When the king Naramikhla reached the capital, he was widely acclaimed by his people. He was aided by two contingents of 50,000 Muslim soldiers (first under General Wali Khan and later under Sandi Khan) many of whom later settled in Arakan. They became his advisers and ministers making sure that the territory was not lost again to the Burmans.
The first thing Naramikhla did after regaining his throne was to transfer the capital from Launggyet to Mrohaung, which in the hands of Bengali poets and people became Roshang (Rohang). Those Muslims established the Sandi Khan Mosque in Mrohaung. Their descendants, as noted by the Bengali poets of the 17th century, held high positions during the Mrauk-U dynasty. During the successive centuries the Muslim population in Arakan grew in large numbers as a result of inter-marriage, immigration and conversion. [In my travels around the Diaspora communities, I have come across many of the descendants of those soldiers who came and settled in Arakan during Narameikhla’s time. As Anthony Irwin had noted some 70 years ago, these Muslims look quite different than average Bangladeshis; many of them have distinct Arab and Persian touch about them; many even have Mongoloid touch.]
As a vassal state of the Muslim Sultanate to the west, Arakan adopted the superior Muslim culture from the west in its courts, and minted coins with Arabic inscription of the Muslim article of faith (kalima). In this way, Arakan remained subordinate to Bengal until 1531. Interestingly, however, as noted above, its kings continued using Muslim titles even after they were liberated from dependency on the sultans of Bengal. As to the reason behind this practice, Dr. Yegar writes, “[T]hey were influenced by the fact that many of their subjects had become Muslims. Indeed, many Muslims served in prestigious positions in the royal administration despite its being Buddhist.” In Rakhine Maha Razwin (Great History of Arakan), Tha Thun Aung describes mass conversion of many Arakanese to Islam in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Because of her geographical proximity with the south-eastern parts of Bengal, Arakan developed both political and cultural ties with its neighbor to the north-west. Major Muslim settlements developed along the rivers of Lemru, Mingen, Kaladan, Mayu and Naaf. Its courts and royalties patronized Bengali literature. Some of the best known classical Bengali poets (Alaol, Dawlat Qazi and Mardan) came from Arakan. Its capital city essentially became the breeding ground for Bengali literature in the 17th century. This Mrauk-U period also came to be known as the ‘Golden Age’ in the history of Arakan.
It is also worth mentioning here that as a result of rather lax administrative control of Chittagong by the Mughal and Afghan rulers, and the intermittent rebellion by the Sultans of Bengal against the central government in Delhi, the territory was lost to Arakan between 1580 and 1666 CE. So the ties between Chittagong and Arakan were no less striking than those visible today in places like Texas and California with Mexico.
In their masterpiece work "Arakan Rajsabhay Bangala Shahitya,” Abdul Karim Shahitya Visarad and Dr. Enamul Haq wrote, "The way Bangali flourished in the court of the 17th century Arakan, nothing of that sort is found in its [Bengal’s] own soil. It is surprising that during the exile of Bengali language in Arakan, it was greatly appreciated by the Muslim courtiers of the Arakanese kings and the Muslim poets of East Bengal, especially those of the [greater] Chittagong Division.”
These scholars further wrote, “The study of Bengali literature that the Muslim initiated reached perfection under the aegis of the courtiers of the Roshang kings. It is needless to say that the Kings’ Court of Roshang got filled up with Muslim influence long before this. From the beginning of the 15th century AD the Kings’ Court of Roshang by luck was compelled to heartily receive the Muslim influence…
…. [T]he powerful intrusion of the Muslim influence that penetrated into the Kings’ Court of Roshang in the fifteenth century AD grew all the more in the following centuries. This influence gradually grew so strong that it reached the highest point in the seventeenth century. The Bengali literature in this century shows the full picture of the Muslim influence in the King’s Court of Roshang.”
How can this piece of history about flourishing Bengali literature and the presence of Muslim courtiers and subjects in Arakan be ignored by any objective analyst?
Nor should one forget that when the Mughal Prince Shah Shuja, the Governor of Bengal (1639-59), chose to take asylum in 1660 CE instead of submitting to the authority of Aurangzeb – the new Mughal Emperor, he chose Arakan, which already had many high ranking Muslims serving the king of Arakan. He was accompanied by his family members and retinues, which included hundreds of bodyguards. Upon arrival, however, the Mughal Prince was betrayed by the Arakanese king Sanda Sudamma. While there are competing accounts as to what had ultimately happened to the fate of the Prince, including one account that suggests that Shah Shuja and his family members were treacherously murdered (and another that suggests that he was able to flee to Manipur with some of his retinues), there is little doubt that many of his guards who were attacked savagely by the Maghs of Arakan fled to the nearby jungle. Some of the surviving guards were later made royal archers and bodyguards serving the Arakanese king. Their descendants, known as the Kamans or Kamanchis (bowman), are to be found settled mostly in Rambree Island. Some of the followers of Shah Shuja escaped the persecution of Maghs and crossed to Burma. The king of Ava settled them in Ramethin, Shwebo, Maydu and Meiktila. Their descendants can be found today in these places.
There was yet another kind of interaction between the Kingdom of Arakan with its eastern neighbor Bengal, beginning in the 17th century, when gaining strength, the kings of Arakan would allow the plunder of Bengal, and Bengali captives – tens of thousands - would be brought to work as slaves in Arakan. When the Portuguese moved to the Bay of Bengal, they were allowed to set up their military posts in Arakan. In return, the Portuguese aided the Rakhine Maghs in their piracy in Bengal, terrorizing its people and harassing the Mughal forces. The joint Magh-Portuguese marauding expeditions into Bengal continued well after they were routed out of Chittagong in 1666 by Shaista Khan, the Mughal Viceroy (Subedar) of Bengal and his son General Bujurg Umid Khan. Taking captives, most of whom were Muslims, forcing them into slavery was an important part of those raids.
Friar Manrique, a Portuguese priest who visited Bengal and Arakan and who spent six years in the Augustinian Church at Dianga (Deang, near Chittagong town), was himself a witness to such Magh-Portuguese piratical raids. He wrote, “They usually made there general attacks three or four times in the year, irrespective of minor raids which went on most of the year, so that during the five years I spent in the kingdom of Arracan, some eighteen thousand people came to the ports of Dianga and Angarcale.”
As can be seen from Manrique’s account, the number of those captives was not small, and was in excess of 3,000 per year, and continued for well over a century of piracy.
This is further evidenced by the fact that when the Chittagong fort fell into the hands of the Mughals, 10,000 Bengali (both Muslim and Hindu) captives got liberty and they went to their homes. While the Portuguese pirates sold their captives and/or forcibly baptized them into Christianity, the Magh pirates forced theirs into slave labors in the paddy fields along the Kaladan River (the river was named after these Kalas). So these captives also helped in increasing the Muslim population of Arakan. The descendants of these captives mostly reside now in Kyauktaw and Mrohaung Townships of Arakan.
According to historian Professor Abdul Karim, “In the 17th century the Muslims thronged the capital Mrohaung and they were present in the miniature courts of ministers and other great Muslim officers of the kingdom. An idea of their presence is available in the writings of Muslim poets like Alaol who wrote that people from various countries and belonging to various groups came to Arakan to be under the care of Arakanese king. The Portuguese Padre Fray Sebastien Manrique visited Arakan and stayed for some time; he was also present in the coronation ceremony of the Arakanese king held on 23 January 1635. He gives a description of the coronation procession and says that of the several contingents of army that took part in the coronation, one contingent wholly comprised of Muslim soldiers, let by a Muslim officer called Lashkar Wazir. The leader rode on Iraqi horse, and the contingent comprised of six hundred soldiers. In other contingent, led by Arakanese commanders also there were Muslim soldiers. This evidence of Sebastien Manrique combined with the fact that there were several Muslim ministers in Arakan gives a good picture of the presence of the Muslim in Arakan in the 17th century. The influence of the Muslim officers over the king of Arakan is also evident from the episodes mentioned by Sebastien Manrique.”
The Muslims of Arakan, therefore, are an amalgam of new migrants - Shaikhs, Syeds, Qazis, Mollahs, Alims, Fakirs, Arabs, Rumis (Turks), Moghuls, Pathans - from various parts of the Muslim world that settled during and before the Mrauk-U dynasty, including the captives (the so-called Kolas) brought in from various parts of Bengal and India, and the indigenous Muslims (the children of Bhumiputras who had converted to Islam over the centuries). They created the genesis of what we call the Rohingya Muslims. To put it succinctly: the Rohingya Muslims are the descendants of the indigenous 'Kalas' that either converted or mixed with the Muslim settlers/travelers/Sufis (including Arab/Persian merchants, traders) to the region, the non-returning soldiers who came to restore Narameikhla to the throne of Arakan, the unwilling captives and others that called Arakan their ancestral home. Hence, the Rohingya Muslims are not an ethnic group, which developed from one tribal group affiliation or single racial stock, but are an ethnic group that developed from different stocks of people.
As already demonstrated, the conversion of these indigenous people to Islam has been no different than what has happened throughout history in the last 14 centuries along the coastal regions from Mozambique to Malacca. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that the Rohingyas of Arakan while having some similarities in matters of physical features, and borrowing religious, linguistic and cultural heritage with their neighbors to the west would develop their own distinct identity, albeit a hybrid or mosaic one. They are neither Chittagonians nor are they Bengalis [Bangladeshis].
The Rohingya Muslims - the ‘Musulman Arakanese’ - as Anthony Irwin noted, ‘are quite unlike any other product of India or Burma that I have seen.’ Similarly, Moshe Yeager noted, “There is very little common – except common religion – between the Rohingyas of Arakan and the Indian Muslims of Rangoon or Burmese Muslims…”
While their ancestral territory would later be colonized by the Tibeto-Burman Buddhists - the ancestors of today’s Rakhines - whose cultural ties have been towards the east, it is the strength of their group character that the Rohingyas of Arakan were able to retain their linguistic and genealogical ties to the soil. After all, the Rakhines are genetically, culturally and linguistically closer to the Burmans (of Burma). On the other hand, as Dr. Yegar noted ‘the Rohingyas preserved their own heritage from the impact of the Buddhist environment, not only as far as their religion is concerned, but also in … their culture.’
As the children of the indigenous people of Arakan, the Rohingyas have as much right, if not more, as the Rakhine Buddhists, to identify themselves with the name that they prefer to describe them. If the late-coming Tibeto-Burman admixture has no problem in calling itself the Rakhaing of Arakan, no outsider (and surely not its abuser) has any right to either define the Rohingya maliciously or deny the same privilege in self-identifying itself.
To call these indigenous people of Arakan -- who identify themselves as the Rohingyas in Burma – “unwanted guests” is like calling the Native Americans unwanted refugees who had settled in America after the Europeans. As much as no massacre of yesteryears and ghettoization of the Native Americans today in designated American Indian Reservation camps can obliterate their genuine right, place, history and identity, no propaganda and government or non-government sponsored pogroms can erase the rightful identity of the Rohingya people of Burma. They are the children of the soil of Arakan.
To be continued .............
ႏိုင္ငံေက်ာ္ ဟာသအႏုပညာရွင္။ လူမွဳကူညီေရးလုပ္ငန္းလုပ္ေဆာင္သူ သရုပ္ေဆာင္ ဒါရိုက္တာ ေမာင္သူရ (ေခၚ) ဇာဂနာ ဒီကေန့ လြတ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာခြင့္နဲ့ ကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္ျမစ္ၾကီးနားေထာင္က ျပန္လြတ္ပါတယ္၊ ျမစ္ၾကီးနားေထာင္မွာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား ၁၈ ဦးရွိတဲ့အနက္ သူအပါအ၀င္ သုုံးဦးသာ လြတ္ေျမာက္တယ္လို့ သူက ေျပာပါတယ္၊
Zargana Arrival in Rangoon Airport
By AFP

Comedian Zarganar was released
Burma freed one of its most famous political prisoners on Wednesday under an amnesty that was expected to include at least dozens more dissidents jailed in the authoritarian state.
The freedom of an estimated 2,000 political prisoners, who include pro-democracy campaigners, journalists, monks and lawyers, has long been a key demand of Western powers that have slapped sanctions on Burma.
Zarganar, a prominent comedian and vocal government critic, was among those released on Wednesday as part of a pardon of more than 6,300 prisoners by the new leadership, his family said.
“I have talked to him. He is free now,” the activist’s sister-in-law Ma Nyein told AFP, adding that that he was expected to be flown home from Myitkyina in northern Kachin state where he was being held.
Zarganar was arrested in 2008 after organising deliveries of aid to victims of Cyclone Nargis, which left 138,000 people dead or missing and prompted international criticism of the regime’s slow response.
The famous satirist, who was a vocal critic of the old military junta, was sentenced to 59 years’ imprisonment, later reduced to 35 years. He is believed to suffer from heart disease.
It was not immediately clear how many dissidents were included in the amnesty.
But a government official, who did not want to be named, said about 30 political detainees would be freed in Rangoon, mostly members of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD).
Separately, an NLD member said about two dozen political prisoners would be released elsewhere.
A mass pardon of dissidents would be arguably the clearest sign yet of change under a new government that has reached out to critics including Suu Kyi, who was freed in November after seven straight years of detention.
State television announced on Tuesday that more than 6,300 elderly, sick, disabled or well-behaved prisoners would be granted an amnesty from Wednesday “on humanitarian grounds”.
It said freeing detainees would allow them to “help to build a new nation”.
Many political prisoners were sentenced to decades in prison and have endured “torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” according to Amnesty International.
President Thein Sein, a former general and senior junta figure, has surprised critics by signalling a series of political reforms since taking power following a controversial election last November.
He has been applauded by international observers for holding direct talks with Suu Kyi, who spent most of the past two decades locked up by the junta.
A top US official, Kurt Campbell, on Monday hailed “dramatic developments” in Burma including what he described as “very consequential dialogue” between the Nobel Peace Prize winner and the leadership.
He hinted that concrete moves towards democracy by Burma could lead to an easing of sanctions.
“We will match their steps with comparable steps,” he said.
The new regime, which came to power after elections held a few days before Suu Kyi’s release, appears keen to improve its image and in August held the first talks between her and Thein Sein.
Suu Kyi, whose party won 1990 elections but was never allowed to take power, has said she believes Thein Sein genuinely wants to carry out reforms, but cautioned it was too soon to say whether he would succeed.
ျမစ္ျကီးနား အက်ဉ္းေထာင္က ဒီကေန့ မနက္ ၈ နာရီခြဲက ေလးျကိမ္ ေျမာက္ အက်ဉ္းက်ရာကေန ျပန္လြတ္ေျမာက္လာတဲ့ ကမၻာေက်ာ္ ျမန္မာ့ လူရွြင္ေတာ္ ဇာဂနာက အစိုးရကို စတင္ ေဝဖန္ ေျပာျကား လိုက္ပါတယ္။
zaganarဇာဂနာက အျပင္ေရာက္တာနဲ့ အစိုးရကို ခ်က္ခ်င္း သေရာ္ပါတယ္။နိုင္ငံေတာ္ သမၼတက အမ်ိုးသား ျပန္လည္ သင့္ျမတ္ေရးကို တကယ္ သြားတယ္ဆိုရင္ အခု ပံုစံထက္ နိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဉ္းသား အားလံုးကို လွြတ္ေပး သင့္တယ္လို့ အက်ဉ္းေထာင္က ထြက္ထြက္ျခင္း ဘီဘီစီနဲ႕သီးသန္႕ေမးျမန္းခန္းမွာ ေျပာသြားတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။အခု ပံုစံက နိုင္ငံေက်ာ္ ေရာ့ခ္ အဆိုေတာ္ ေလးျဖဴကို ကေလးသီခ်င္း ျဖစ္တဲ့ ေရာင္စံု ေဘာလံုး သီခ်င္းကို ဆိုခိုင္းသလို ေလျဖတ္ေနတဲ့ သက္ၾကီးအမ်ိုဳးသမီးကို မိတ္ကပ္လိမ္းျပီး အရပ္ထဲ လႊတ္သလို ျဖစ္ေနတယ္လို႕ဥပမာ ဥပေမယ်ေတြနဲ့ ထိထိ ေရာက္ေရာက္ ေဝဖန္ ေျပာၾကား ပါတယ္။
သူ့အေနနဲ႕သမၼတကို ေျပာခြင့္ရမယ္ ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ သူတို႕ေတြဟာ သမၼတ ဦးေဆာင္တဲ့ အစိုးရသစ္ လက္ထက္မွာ အဖမ္းခံထားရတဲ့ သူေတြ မဟုတ္တဲ့ အေျကာင္း၊ နိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသား ဆိုတဲ့ စကားလံုးကိုလည္း ကေလးဆန္ဆန္ အျငင္းပြား ေနတဲ့ သူေတြ မဟုတ္ ေျကာင္း ေျပာလိုျပီး အခုေတာ့ သူ လြတ္လာေပမယ့္ သူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြ ေထာင္ထဲမွာ ရွိေနဆဲ ျဖစ္လို့ စိတ္မေကာင္းေၾကာင္းေျပာပါတယ္။တျခား Media Player ျဖင့္ ဖြင့္ပါလြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ေတြ ပိုရေတာ့မလား၊ ေျပာေရးဆိုခြင့္ေတြ သာလာနိုင္မလားလို့ ဘီဘီစီက ေမးတာကိုေတာ့ ေျပာခြင့္ရေနတယ္လို့ေတာ့ သူျကားတဲ့အေျကာင္း၊ သတင္းစာေတြထဲမွာလည္း စတုတၳ မ႑ိဳင္ဆိုတဲ့ စကားလံုးကို လွိုင္လွိုင္သံုးထားေျကာင္း၊ ဒါေပမဲ့ စတုတၳ မ႑ိုင္က ဘယ္သူမ်ားလဲလို့ ေသခ်ာ ေစ့ငုလိုက္ေတာ့ ျပန္ျကားေရးဝန္ႀကီးျဖစ္ေနတာ ေတြ့ရတယ္လို့ ကမၻာေက်ာ္ ျမန္မာ့ လူရွြင္ေတာ္ျကီးက အက်ဉ္းေထာင္က ထြက္ထြက္ျခင္း အစိုးရကို သေရာ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ဒီကေန႕သူတို႕ကို လႊတ္တာဟာ သမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ရဲ့ လြတ္ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာခြင့္ သက္သက္ေျကာင့္ မဟုတ္ဘဲ နိုင္ငံေရးမႈနဲ႕ျပန္ဖမ္းဆီး ေထာင္ခ်လို႕ရတဲ့ ၄၀၁ ကိုလည္း အေျကာင္းျပခ်က္နဲ့ ထည့္ထားတာကို လႊတ္ဝရမ္းထဲ ေတြ႕ရတယ္လို့ ဇာဂနာက ဘီဘီစီကို ေျပာပါတယ္။ (ဘီဘီစီ)
"ကိုဇာဂနာႏွင့္Eleven Media Groupအင္တာဗ်ဴး"
ျမစ္ၾကီးနားအက်ဥ္းေထာင္မွ ျပန္လည္ လြတ္ေျမာက္လာသည့္ ကိုသူရ(ေခၚ)ကိုဇာဂနာအား ရန္ကုန္သို႔ လာေရာက္ရန္ ေလယာဥ္ေပၚ မတက္မီအခ်ိန္အတြင္း Eleven Media Group မွ ေမးျမန္းခ်က္အခ်ိဳ႕ကို ေဖာ္ျပလိုက္ပါသည္။
ေမး- အခု ျပန္လြတ္လာတဲ့ အေပၚမွာ ကိုသူရအေနနဲ႕ ဘယ္လိုခံစားရပါသလဲ။
ေျဖ- ေအးေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ လြတ္လာတာေတာ့ လြတ္လာတာေပါ့။ ဒီလိုလြတ္လာေပမယ့္ က်န္ခဲ့တဲ့သူေတြအတြက္ စိတ္မေကာင္းျဖစ္မိတယ္။
ေမး- လက္ရွိအခ်ိန္မွာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံက အေျပာင္းအလဲဆီသြားေနတယ္ဆိုတဲ့ အေပၚမွာ
ကိုသူရလည္း သိထားတာေတြရွိမွာပါ။ ဒီအေပၚမွာ ဘယ္လိုျမင္မိပါသလဲ။
ေျဖ- အေျပာင္းအလဲဆိုတဲ့ ကိစၥမွာ အခု ေတြ႕ၾကံဳေနရတာေတြေၾကာင့္ အေျပာင္းလဲၾကီး ျဖစ္ေနျပီလားဆိုတာကို မယံုရဲေသးဘူး ျဖစ္ေနတယ္။
ေမး- ေတြ႕ၾကံဳေနရတဲ့ အေျခအေနဆိုတာ အဲဒီက အေနအထားကိုေျပာတာလား၊ အကုန္လံုး ျပန္မလြတ္လာေသးတဲ့ အေျခအေနကို ေျပာတာလား။
ေျဖ- မစို႕မပို႔လႊတ္တာကိုပဲ ေျပာခ်င္တာပါ။
ေမး- အခုလိုလြတ္လာျပီးတဲ့ေနာက္ ဘာေတြဆက္လုပ္ဖို႕ စဥ္းစားထားတာရွိလဲ။
ေျဖ- ဘာမွေတာ့ မစဥ္းစာရေသးပါဘူး။ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္ညီေတြအတြက္ သီခ်င္းေတြ၊ ျပက္လံုးေတြ လုပ္ရပါဦးမယ္။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕ အလုပ္လုပ္ရမယ္။ လုပ္ရမယ့္ အလုပ္ေတြ မျပီးေသးဘူး။ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအလုပ္ေတြကို ဆက္လုပ္ရဦးမယ္။
ေမး- ႏိုင္ငံေရးအလုပ္ဆက္လုပ္မယ္ဆိုတာက လက္ရွိအခင္းအက်င္းထဲကေန ပါတီတစ္ခု၊ ပါတီ၀င္ တစ္ဦးအေနနဲ႕ ၀င္ပါမွာကို ေျပာတာလား။
ေျဖ- ပါတီေထာင္ဖို႕၊ ပါတီ၀င္လုပ္ဖို႕ဆိုတာထက္ ၈၈တုန္းက ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕ ဘာေၾကာင့္ လမ္းေပၚထြက္ခဲ့ၾကလဲ။ ပ်င္းလို႕ထြက္ခဲ့ၾကတာမဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ လိုခ်င္တာေတြ ရွိလို႕ ထြက္ခဲ့ၾကတာပါ။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕ တကယ္လိုခ်င္တာ ရျပီလား။ အျပည့္အ၀ မရေသးဘူးဆိုရင္ ရေအာင္လုပ္ၾကရမယ္။ ရန္ကုန္ေရာက္မွပဲ ဆက္ေျပာၾကတာေပါ့။ အခုေတာ့ ေလယာဥ္ေပၚတက္ရေတာ့မယ္။
Credit :weekly Media
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