Statement of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar

By Tomas Ojea Quintana, 5 February 2012, Yangon International Airport, Myanmar

I have just concluded my six-day mission to Myanmar - my fifth visit to the country since I was appointed Special Rapporteur in March 2008. I would like to express my appreciation to the Government of Myanmar for its invitation and hospitality, and for the cooperation and flexibility shown during my visit.

During the mission, I met with the Minister of Home Affairs, the Minister of Defence, the Minister of Border Affairs, the Attorney-General, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Union Election Commission, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Deputy Minister of Information, the Deputy Minister of Education, the Deputy Minister of Labour, as well as the Speaker and several members of the Pyi Thu Hluttaw. During my meetings in Nay Pyi Taw, I also met with some of the Presidential Advisors and representatives of the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, as well as with members of the various Government and Parliamentary peacemaking groups, including the Minister of Rail Transportation.

In Yangon, I had another fruitful exchange of views with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. I met with members of the recently-established National Human Rights Commission and discussed a range of human rights issues. Additionally, I met with three prisoners of conscience in Insein Prison, as well as with released prisoners of conscience, including members of the 88 Generation Students Group, some of whom I had previously addressed in my reports or had visited in prison. Also in Yangon, I met with representatives of civil society organizations and ethnic parties, as well as members of the United Nations Country Team. I thank the Resident Coordinator and the Country Team for the support provided to me during my mission. I also travelled to Kayin and Mon States where I met with the respective Chief Ministers and representatives of state government, as well as ethnic parties in state parliaments. At the conclusion of my mission, I briefed the diplomatic community.

Since my last visit in August 2011, there has been a continuing wave of reforms in Myanmar, the speed and breadth of which has surprised many international observers and many in the country. The impact of these reforms on the country and on its people is immediately perceptible. During my mission, Parliament was meeting in its third regular session and was discussing a number of important issues, including, for the first time, the country’s budget. Legislative reforms were underway, including a new draft media law which I was told would abolish censorship and provide some guarantees for the freedom of opinion and expression. Campaigning for the by-elections scheduled on 1 April had begun in earnest and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s activities and statements were covered in the national media. An initial agreement was reached with another armed ethnic group and negotiations continued with others. It was therefore important to assess the human rights situation in light of these developments and at this key moment in Myanmar’s history. My report containing my assessment will be presented to the Human Rights Council in March 2012.

Of great importance is the release of many prisoners of conscience, including a significant number in January this year, as well as many prominent figures over the past few months. I welcomed their release in all my meetings and commended the Government for taking this bold step. I stressed that they, and all people of Myanmar, should be allowed to play an active role in political and public life. In my meeting with released prisoners of conscience, I received a clear signal of their intention to engage constructively in the political process and their commitment to further democratic transition. Our discussion also addressed ongoing human rights concerns, including continuing limitations on the freedoms of association and assembly, and of opinion and expression, the continuing conflict in ethnic border areas, particularly in Kachin State, and the need to address longstanding social and economic development challenges. I am, however, concerned by information received that some of those released were being monitored or followed. I therefore urge that any restrictions on their exercise and full enjoyment of human rights should immediately be removed. 

I also met with three prisoners of conscience at Insein Prison, one of whom I had previously met during my mission last year. While I was informed that prison conditions had generally improved, I also received allegations of continuing ill-treatment by prison officials and the continuing transfers of prisoners to prisons in remote areas, often without their prior notification and without proper notification of family members. 

Of particular concern is the information I received of remaining prisoners of conscience being held not only in Insein but also in other prisons; information which was also conveyed during my meeting with released prisoners. I therefore reiterate that the Government should release all remaining prisoners of conscience without conditions and without delay. This is a central and necessary step towards national reconciliation and would greatly benefit Myanmar’s efforts towards democracy. I am keenly aware that there are continuing discrepancies in the numbers of remaining prisoners of conscience from different sources. A comprehensive and thorough investigation is needed to clarify records and determine accurate numbers. I therefore encourage the Government to consider this issue urgently, including with the assistance of the international community as necessary.

Also of significance are the many legislative reforms that have been undertaken or are underway, including the adoption of the Labour Organizations Law and the Peaceful Demonstration and Gathering Law, as well as the amendment to the Political Party Registration Law. In this respect, I am encouraged that the Parliament has been active in this legislative reform process. During my mission, I was informed that the process of drafting a revised Prisons Act, a new media law – the Printing Press and Publications Law, and a new social security law, among others, were currently underway. At the same time, I note concerns regarding some of the provisions in the newly-adopted legislation, particularly the Peaceful Demonstration and Gathering Law, and in draft laws, particularly the Printing Press and Publications Law, which I will elaborate upon more fully in my upcoming report. I also note concerns regarding the lack of adequate consultation with relevant stakeholders, including civil society, on some of the draft laws being prepared. Another concern is the insufficient attention being paid to ensure the effective implementation of the newly-promulgated and reformed laws. This can be attributed to, among other factors, the slow pace in establishing the necessary implementing regulations and procedures, and the lack of corresponding capacity of institutions to implement.

There is also a lack of clarity and progress on reviewing and reforming the laws that I have previously identified as not in full compliance with international human rights standards, such as the State Protection Law, the Electronic Transactions Law and the Unlawful Associations Act. These laws impinge upon a broad range of human rights and have been used to convict prisoners of conscience. During my mission, I addressed this issue with the Attorney General. While I welcome the assurances given that the Government is taking serious and gradual steps to reform these laws, I reiterate that this process should be accelerated.

Regardless of efforts made to reform legislation, an independent, impartial and effective judiciary within the powers of the Constitution is needed to uphold the rule of law and act as a last guarantor for safeguarding fundamental freedoms and human rights in Myanmar. The judiciary is also essential for Myanmar’s transition to democracy and should play an important role in ensuring checks and balances on the executive and the legislative. I have previously expressed concerns regarding the judiciary, and I remain concerned with its lack of independence and impartiality. In my meeting with the Chief Justice and other justices of the Supreme Court, there was little acknowledgement of any challenges and gaps, and a lack of willingness to address my previous recommendations. I therefore strongly call on the judiciary to take a proactive approach to apply laws in a way that would safeguard and guarantee fundamental freedoms and human rights in line with the Constitution and with international human rights standards. In this regard, I urge the judiciary to seek technical assistance from the international community, particularly the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and other organizations.

During the mission, I also had the opportunity to engage with members of the National Human Rights Commission for the first time since its establishment by Presidential Decree in September last year. I was informed of some actions undertaken by the Commission, including prison visits, visits to internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Kachin State, and the receipt and review of complaints from citizens. I was encouraged to hear that the resources available to the Commission may be increased significantly, including an increase in the number of staff supporting its work. 

Despite these positive developments, I am concerned that there are no indications as yet that the Commission is fully independent and effective in compliance with the Paris Principles. At present, it seems that the Commission cannot fully guarantee human rights protection for all in Myanmar. I was informed that the Commission’s draft rules of procedure were being examined by the judiciary, and were awaiting the approval of the Council of Ministers. This sends the wrong signal that the Commission is not fully independent from the Government. Also, I was informed that its prison visits were dependent on presidential authorization. Moreover, while the President appointed Commission members representing different ethnic minority groups, the vast majority of the Commissioners are retired government civil servants. And some informed me that they were neither consulted nor informed in advance of their appointment. There also doesn’t seem to be clarity on its procedures, including for handling complaints and conducting prison visits. In this respect, I was informed that interviews were conducted in the presence of prison officials. 

There is clearly a strong need to enhance the technical and substantive capacity of the Commissioners and its staff on human rights issues. I welcome the willingness of the Commission to seek training and technical assistance from OHCHR and the international community as a whole on the Paris Principles and other important substantive areas, such as handling human rights complaints and prison monitoring. 

I have stated previously and continue to believe that the upcoming by-elections on 1 April will be a key test of how far the Government has progressed in its process of reform. It is therefore essential that they are truly free, fair, inclusive and transparent. During my meeting with the Union Election Commission, I noted that developments, such as the easing of media restrictions and the revision of the Political Party Registration Law, resulting in the re-registration of a number of political parties, including the National League for Democracy, and the decision of some to contest the by-elections, may allow for the organization of more credible elections. And I was informed that the use of international observers was under consideration. 

While I was given assurances by the Chair of the Union Election Commission that the by-elections will be free and fair, I must stress that the credibility of the elections will not be determined solely on the day of the vote, but on the basis of the entire process leading up to and following election day. Thus, reports I received of campaign irregularities and restrictions on the ability of political parties to carry out campaign activities should be addressed seriously by the Union Election Commission. Additionally, lessons should be learned from the 2010 elections, and problems such as the high cost of registration, the use of advance votes, and the procedures and costs for filing a complaint should be addressed as a matter of priority. Further, respect for the freedoms of expression, assembly and association should be ensured. 

Also during my mission, I was informed about the various measures undertaken to address Myanmar’s longstanding development challenges, including economic and financial reforms, and initiatives such as the conference on development policy options organized by the Government and the United Nations Country Team. Parliament was also discussing the budget, which proposes to increase spending in health and education. While I welcome the Government’s commitment to socio-economic development and poverty reduction, many challenges remain and the situation is still dire. Concerns regarding the availability and accessibility of education and health care were specifically highlighted, as well as the need for the teaching of ethnic minority languages in schools in minority areas. Concerns regarding land confiscations and land grabbing, often without meaningful consultation of affected communities and any or adequate compensation, as well as the granting of economic concessions for energy or infrastructure projects without adequate environmental assessments done, were also brought to my attention. In this regard, I renew my call on the Government to ensure not only the realization, but also the protection of basic economic, social and cultural rights. These are fundamental rights that are equally essential to Myanmar’s democratic transition, national reconciliation and its long-term stability. 

Concerns regarding the ongoing tensions and conflict with armed ethnic groups in border areas, particularly in Kachin State, were consistently raised during my mission. I received continuing allegations of serious human rights violations committed during conflict, including attacks against civilian populations, extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, internal displacement, land confiscations, the use of human shields, the recruitment of child soldiers, as well as forced labour and portering. And I must emphasize that I received reports of violations being committed by all parties to the conflict. While I welcome the Government’s commitment to peace talks and the progress made in this regard, such as the agreements reached with various groups, including most recently, the Mon, it is vital that these allegations and reports be urgently addressed. I was informed that action had been taken on some cases involving military personnel, but much more needs to be done. It is also vital that the authorities and all armed groups ensure the protection of civilians in conflict-affected areas.

I must also emphasize that the needs of those displaced and affected by the conflict must be addressed as a matter of priority. In this regard, it is important that the United Nations and its humanitarian partners have regular, independent and predictable access to all individuals, in particular IDPs, in need of humanitarian assistance, regardless of whether they are in Government or non-Government controlled areas. Further, delivery of humanitarian assistance under the United Nations umbrella cannot be linked to ongoing negotiations between the Government and armed groups or be made conditional to the Government’s assistance to people in non-Government controlled areas.

More broadly, efforts towards finding a durable political solution to the conflict must be accelerated and are essential for broader national reconciliation. These must address the root causes of the conflict, including systematic discrimination, displacement and economic deprivation affecting ethnic minorities. I therefore renew my call to the Government to develop a comprehensive plan to officially engage ethnic minority groups in serious and inclusive dialogue to resolve long-standing grievances and deep-rooted concerns. The Government should ensure that ethnic minorities are granted fundamental rights. This includes the Rohingya community.

Finally, I remain of the firm conviction that justice and accountability measures, as well as measures to ensure access to the truth, are fundamental for Myanmar to move forward towards national reconciliation. During my mission, I made a careful assessment as to whether the National Human Rights Commission could play a role in this regard. However, considering the lack of independence and the limited capacity of the Commission, it is crucially important that the Government of Myanmar involve stakeholders, including victims of human rights violations, in order to get their advice and views on how and when to establish truth, justice and accountability measures. It is also important to learn lessons from other countries that have experience in these processes. 

I heard from many interlocutors about the importance of moving forward. But I must stress that moving forward cannot ignore or whitewash what happened in the past. Thus, facing Myanmar’s own recent history and acknowledging the violations that people have suffered, will be necessary to ensure national reconciliation and to prevent future violations from occurring.

To conclude, I have previously stated that the steps taken by the Government had the potential to bring about an improvement in the human rights situation in Myanmar and deepen its transition to democracy. My mission confirmed that a positive impact has been made; however serious challenges remain and must be addressed. There is also a risk of backtracking on the progress achieved thus far. Therefore, at this crucial moment in the country’s history, further and sustained action should be taken to bring about further change. Prior to its assumption of the Chairpersonship of ASEAN in 2014, I would encourage Myanmar to demonstrate concrete progress in improving its human rights situation. The international community should remain engaged and should support and assist the Government during this important time. 

I want to again thank the Government of Myanmar for its invitation and cooperation. I look forward to another visit to the country before my next report to the General Assembly in October 2012. I reaffirm my willingness to work constructively and cooperatively with Myanmar to improve the human rights situation of its people. 

ENDS

Source here

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အေရးတၾကီး ေျဖရွင္းစရာ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအေျခအေနေတြ က်န္ေနဆဲ

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဆိုင္ရာ ကုလသမဂၢလူ့အခြင့္အေရးကိုယ္စားလွယ္ Tomás Ojea Quintana ၏ ရန္ကုန္အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာေလဆိပ္သတင္းစာရွင္းလင္းပြဲ ေဖေဖာ္၀ါရီလ ၅ ၂၀၁၂

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ အေျပာင္းအလဲေတြ ျမန္ျမန္ဆန္ဆန္ျဖစ္ေပၚလာတာကို ႀကိဳဆိုေပမယ့္ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး အေျခအေနေတြ တိုးတက္လာဖို႔ အတြက္ အေရးတႀကီး ေျဖရွင္းေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးဖို႔ လိုေနေသးတယ္လို႔ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဆိုင္ရာ ဒီကေန႔ ညေနပိုင္း ရန္ကုန္ေလဆိပ္ သတင္းစာရွင္းလင္းပဲြမွာ ကုလသမဂၢ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး အထူးကုိယ္စားလွယ္က ေျပာၾကားလိုက္ပါတယ္။

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို ၆ ရက္ၾကာ ခရီးေရာက္ရွိေနတဲ့ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအထူးကိုယ္စားလွယ္ မစၥတာေသာမတ္ကင္တားနားဟာ ဒီကေန႔မနက္ပိုင္းက မြန္ျပည္နယ္၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္နဲ႔ ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္ၿမိဳ႕မွာ ေတြ႕ဆံုခဲ့သလို မြန္ျပည္နယ္က တိုင္းရင္းသား ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ေတြနဲ႔လည္း ေတြ႔ဆံုခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အလားတူ မေန႔ကလည္း ကရင္ျပည္နယ္မွာ ေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးတာေတြရွိခဲ့တယ္လို႔ ရန္ကုန္ ကုလသမဂၢျပန္ၾကားေရး တာ၀န္ခံ ဦးေအး၀င္းက ေျပာပါတယ္။

မစၥတာကင္တားနားဟာ ဒီကေန႔ မဂၤလာဒံုေလယဥ္ကြင္းကမထြက္ခြာခင္ သံတမန္ေတြနဲ႔ ေတြ႔ဆံုခဲ့ျပီး ေလဆိပ္မွာပဲ သတင္းစာရွင္းပြဲကို ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ခရီးစဥ္ ေတြ႔ရွိခ်က္ေတြကို ရန္ကုန္ UNDP ရံုးက ဒီကေန႔ညေနပိုင္းမွာ ထုတ္ျပန္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီေၾကညာခ်က္ထဲမွာ ၾကားျဖတ္ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြအတြက္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးပါတီေတြကို စည္းရံုးလႈပ္ရွားခြင့္ အျပည့္အ၀ေပးဖို႕ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြေကာ္မရွင္ကို တိုက္တြန္း ထားပါတယ္။

လႊတ္ေတာ္က ေျပာင္းလဲျပဌာန္းတဲ့ ဥပေဒ အသစ္ေတြကို ထိထိ ေရာက္ေရာက္နဲ႔ ျမန္ျမန္ဆန္ဆန္ အေကာင္အထည္ ေဖၚဖို႔ကိုလည္း တိုက္တြန္းထားသလို၊ တိုင္းရင္းသား ေဒသေတြနဲ႔ပတ္သက္လို႔ အစိုးရက အပစ္အခတ္ ရပ္စဲေရး ညွိႏႈိင္းေဆာင္ရြက္ေနတာကို ႀကိဳဆိုထားပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ စစ္ပြဲေတြနဲ႔ ဆက္ႏြယ္ျပီး ကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္မွာျဖစ္ေပၚေနတဲ့ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ခ်ဴိးေဖာက္မွဳေတြကို ေျဖရွင္းေဆာင္ရြက္ဖို႔လည္း တိုက္တြန္းထားပါတယ္။


Source : RFA Burmese

Charity Children on the Edge helps thousands of marginalised children across the world. Photo: Children on the Edge

Rachel Bentley flicks through some photographs on her laptop, stopping at one of a young woman with careworn features.

Bentley is currently focused on helping Rohingya (Burmese Muslim) refugee children in camps on the Bangladesh-Burma border

"We met her on the second day. Her husband had been badly beaten by the military as they were forced back across the border. She'd lost her week-old baby."

She then brings up another shot, this time of a sprawling, makeshift camp spreading over a lumpy landscape of mud and stunted trees.

"That's an unofficial refugee camp in Cox's Bazar district, in southern Bangladesh. Home to the Rohingya, Burmese Muslims who can neither marry, nor lead safe lives, inside Burma. They flee to Bangladesh, where they face an equally uncertain future."

Bentley, 42, director of a ground-breaking international charity called Children on the Edge, looks over the sea of shacks and children's faces, then sighs.

"Since October 2009, the camp has grown by 6,000 people, with 2,000 of these arriving in January 2010 alone. It's grown by a quarter in just those few months, to around 30,000 people."

"Now the government are threatening to expel them all again and malnutrition and starvation are stalking the population," she adds. "They're trying to eke out a living as best they can and give the children what little schooling they can afford. But for how long? They don't belong … neither in Burma or in Bangladesh. It's a tragedy that few in the world know."


A life-changing trip

It was 1990, just a few months after the Berlin Wall had tumbled and Eastern Europe's most feared dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania, had been executed – much to the delight of his people.

For one young The Body Shop volunteer, it was also the start of a journey that would change her life and that of thousands of the world's most vulnerable children today.

"Everything was changing. For the first time we were seeing these awful images of orphaned children, abandoned, hungry and helpless, held in terrible conditions inside state institutions."

Rachel Bentley was a 22-year-old law graduate when she joined The Body Shop founder Anita Roddick and a small group of volunteers on a life-changing aid trip to Romania.

"The Body Shop had never done anything like this before," she says. "It was Anita's vision to put together a team, gathering whatever we could, to go and help refurbish the orphanages."

She adds: "We slept on the floor of a clinic in rural Romania; myself, a friend, and Anita and her two daughters. Anita was very motherly," Bentley smiles. "She would go down to the market every morning and just cook up this wonderful Italian food for us and the kids."

Roddick died of a brain haemorrhage in 2007, but Rachel Bentley has taken up her mantle. Children on the Edge, the children's rights charity which Bentley shaped and now heads, was born out of that first, desperate Romanian trip.

Still with strong The Body Shop links (both have their headquarters on England's Sussex coastline), it has gone on to help marginalised and vulnerable children across Eastern Europe as well as Asia: helping ravaged Indonesian communities cope after the Boxing Day Tsunami, building schools for the blind in Bosnia, and developing "child friendly spaces" (special community centres) in war-torn East Timor.

Without Children on the Edge's help, many of these youngsters or their families would never gain access to an education, a safe place to play or a chance to recuperate from trauma. In fact little stops the organisation which has earned a nickname in the aid fraternity as the "Médicins Sans Frontières of the education world".

"Ultimately it comes down to our name: Children on the Edge," says Bentley, speaking softly from her tidy office nestled above a bright-pink bakery in the picturesque city of Chichester. "We can go in, under the radar in many cases and help extremely marginalised children."

There are now dozens of former Romanian orphans, successful young men and women, who have her to thank for their education and livelihoods.

"For me, that's the reward," Bentley replies modestly.

Born near Birmingham, England, Bentley moved with her family to the island of Fiji when she was just two years old. She then spent the next 10 years of her life on the island whilst her father worked as an engineer for an international development agency. "I grew up running around barefoot," she smiles. "I was really at ease with different cultures from a very young age."

At nine she went to an international school, then the family returned to Britain two years later when she was 11. It must have been something of a shock to the girl running barefoot on beaches and mingling in the Pacific sun with all races of the Earth.

"It was quite a shock coming back!" Bentley agrees with an infectious giggle. "We came back in the middle of winter. I was horrified to suddenly have to put on this jumper and blazer. I remember being teased about my 'Australian' accent. It was all a bit alien. I now also know all the flora and fauna of these exotic plants where I grew up, but I'm not so great on the native British species!"

But instead of a quiet life in the beautiful Sussex countryside, it was to Burma, one of the world's most repressive military regimes, that Bentley became drawn.

Vulnerable children

Burma is ruled by one of the most brutal military dictatorships in the world, headed by General Than Shwe. The military junta, called the State Peace & Development Council (SPDC), refuse to hand power to the democratically elected National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Tens of thousands have been killed, imprisoned, tortured or forced into slavery by the brutal regime. Hundreds of thousands have fled to neighbouring Thailand, India, and Bangladesh as well as nearby Malaysia and the Gulf and Arabian states.

Bentley says that she went to the border area between Burma and Thailand [where over 100,000 Burmese have settled] in 2006, to simply meet as many groups as she could.

"You get introduced to one, then another. Often they're women's groups, but not always," she says. "It's eastern and western Burma where all the troubles are going on," she goes on to explain. "So it's people groups from western Burma living in exile who set up their own organisations helping their own people within the neighbouring countries like India and Thailand, but also organising cross-border support for their people back in Burma."

"Everywhere I travel I meet vulnerable children," continues the Sussex woman, with a sad smile. "Those who've lost out to war, famine, natural disaster … In Burma, there are thousands upon thousands of them in state institutions. We wanted to operate inside the country, to help those children, but our hands were tied by the dictatorship there. There would be no way we could operate effectively there with the military government."

Her kind-looking eyes flash with anger. "Did you know that the Burmese military has destroyed twice as many villages as in Darfur? Over 100 different minorities are threatened inside Burma – they face forced labour, rape, torture and some can't even legally marry."

"Once they [the refugees] get to places like Bangladesh or other nearby countries, they're regarded as illegal immigrants, unable to work, treated as slave labour, threatened with detention or, like the women we met, often violently expelled."

"And of course it's the children who suffer the most. There's really no life... no life at all," Bentley repeats, with a shake of her head.

Then the flicker of a smile returns as she remembers the children of the unofficial refugee camp in Bangladesh rushing out to meet her last year.

"They are Rohingya," she explains, pointing to the images on her laptop screen. "Burmese Muslims. One of the world's last great stateless nations."

Bentley is one of few western women to visit the Rohingya. Having spent the past three years travelling to Burma's neighbours – supporting basic "apartment schools" run by Chin [Burmese Christian refugees] in Malaysia and refugee schools for the Karen [also a Christian Burmese minority] in Thailand, even risking life and limb to go inside Burma where Children on the Edge brings education materials and provides teachers' stipends to minority groups running several children's nurseries – she was asked by the Rohingya to come and see their lives alongside the heavily-militarised Bangladesh-Burma border.

The conditions in the camps are some of the worst she has ever seen.

"It's become very bad. Squalid. When I spoke to the children and the mothers, I could see the fear in their eyes – they used to live alongside the Bangladeshis in their villages. Now they're being forced to move to these camps and live in terror of being sent back [to Burma]."

Most people have never heard of the Rohingya, she says. Last year boatloads of these refugees were intercepted at sea by the Thai army. After days in outdoor detention they were towed back out, then abandoned with no food or water and no motors to power their boats. Over 500 men, women and children died.

"It was shocking … disgraceful," says Bentley.

Alongside Children on the Edge, several international aid organisations and human rights groups are warning of starvation and beatings facing the Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh.

Conditions in the camp are indeed tough. According to The New York Times, the dirt paths, flimsy shacks and open sewers have grown by 6,000 people to nearly 30,000, with 2,000 arrivals in January alone.

Denied the ability to work or receive aid in Bangladesh, the population has grown as Rohingya seek refuge from a wave of violence that has forced them out of their long-established homes in other Bangladeshi towns and villages.

Researchers from the Arakan Project, a human-rights group documenting the plight of the Rohingya, claimed children from the surrounding makeshift camp were begging for food from the refugees in the one "official" (government-sanctioned) settlement.

MSF reported that: "People are crowding into a crammed and unsanitary patch of ground with no infrastructure to support them. Prevented from working to support themselves, neither are they permitted food aid. As the numbers swell and resources become increasingly scarce, we are extremely concerned about the deepening crisis."

And in an emergency report released in March, "Stateless and Starving: Persecuted Rohingya Flee Burma and Starve in Bangladesh", a doctors' organisation called Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) also argued that there were critical levels of malnutrition and a surging refugee population in Kutupalong, one of the "unofficial" camps, without access to food aid.

"In recent months Bangladeshi authorities have waged an unprecedented campaign of arbitrary arrest, illegal expulsion, and forced internment against Burmese refugees," said the report. Deaths from starvation and disease were likely if the "humanitarian crisis" is not addressed.

PHR researchers observed children with severe protein malnutrition and those with swollen limbs and often distended abdomens. One out of five children with acute malnutrition, if not treated, would die, concluded the medical teams.

A European Union delegation fact-finding in Bangladesh earlier this year issued a resolution in the European Parliament on February 11 calling on the government in Dhaka to recognise the unregistered Rohingya as refugees and to extend humanitarian support.

Nick Ryan is an author, journalist and producer here

Source  Here

Ukhiya, Bangladesh: Tropical diseases -- chicken pox, pneumonia and measles-- have spread inside Kutuplong makeshift (unregistered) camp and Lada camp recently, said a refugee elder from the Kutupalong makeshift camp.

”Many refugee children including some woman have been suffering from chicken pox and measles since middle of January 2012. The affected children are taken to the clinic of Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) where doctor provided medicine to refugees.”

“Mostly the refugee children under five to seven years old are suffering with these diseases.”

The Kutupalong makeshift camp is situated on the hills and open field where cool air waves cross the camps where the shacks of the refugees are made with plastics, bushes and branches. The refugees are suffering cool as they have no warm cloth to protect the cool waves. The refugee children are now suffering with pneumonia, cold and etc., said a refugee health worker from the camp.

A refugee kid with skin diseases in the camp

Similarly, over 12,000 undocumented refugees live in the Leda (unregistered) camp is also facing topical diseases recently, said an aide who works in the Muslim Aids.

Over 40,000 Rohingya refugees live in Kutupalong makeshift and more than 12000 refugees in Lada camp, without recognizing from UNHCR or Bangladeshi authorities.

The refugees are working with their own styles to survive their live but some time the authority and local people bar to them to go for work, said an aide member of NGO form border.

Source : Kaladan Press

KNU ဒုတိယဥကၠဌ ေစာေဒးဗစ္သာကေပါ က “ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ အခု ယာယီရထားတာက ၇၀ ၀န္းက်င္ ရွိတယ္ေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ အဲဒီသူေတြ ျပန္လည္ လြတ္ေျမာက္ ေရးအတြက္ တင္ျပ ေတာင္းဆိုသြားမွာပါ" ဟု ေျပာသည္။

ေဖေဖာ္၀ါရီလလယ္၌ ျပည္တြင္းတစ္ေနရာတြင္ ထပ္မံျပဳလုပ္မည့္ ၀န္ႀကီးဦးေအာင္မင္း ဦးေဆာင္ေသာ အစိုးရ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္အဖြဲ႕ႏွင့္ ကရင္အမ်ိဳးသားအစည္းအရံုးတို႔ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲတြင္ အမႈသစ္မ်ားျဖင့္ စြဲခ်က္တင္ ခံေနရသည့္ ကရင္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္တစ္ဦးျဖစ္သူ ပဒိုမန္းၿငိမ္းေမာင္ အပါအ၀င္ အက်ဥ္းသားမ်ား ျပန္လည္လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးကို ေဆြးေႏြးသြားမည္ျဖစ္သည္ ဟု ၎က ဆက္ေျပာသည္။
ဇန္န၀ါရီလ ၁၂ ရက္က ကရင္ျပည္နယ္၊ ဘားအံၿမိဳ႕တြင္ အစိုးရႏွင့္ KNU တို႔ ေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးပြဲ အၿပီး ပဒို မန္းၿငိမ္းေမာင္ အပါအ၀င္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားမ်ား ျပန္လႊတ္ေပးေရးကို မူအားျဖင့္သေဘာတူခဲ့ၾကၿပီး ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး အတြက္ ေနာက္(၄၅)ရက္အတြင္း ထပ္မံ ေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးမႈမ်ား ျပဳလုပ္သြားရန္လည္း သေဘာတူညီထားသည္။

ထိုေဆြးေႏြးပြဲအၿပီး ေနျပည္ေတာ္သို႔ သြားေရာက္ခဲ့စဥ္က KNUႏွင့္ ဆက္ႏြယ္၍ အက်ဥ္းက်ေနသူမ်ား စာရင္းကို တင္ျပရန္ ၎တို႔ႏွင့္ တာ၀န္ခံေဆြးေႏြးေနသည့္ အစိုးရ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေဖာ္ေဆာင္မႈအဖြဲ႕ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဦးေအာင္မင္းက ေျပာၾကားချဲ့ခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။

KNU ဗဟိုအလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္တစ္ဦးျဖစ္သူ ေစာေဒးဗစ္ေထာကလည္း ဒုကၡသည္မ်ား ျပန္လည္ေနရာ ခ်ထား ေရးကိစၥ၊ ဆက္သြယ္ေရးရံုး ဖြင့္လွစ္ထားရွိမည့္ကိစၥ၊ KNU တပ္ဖြဲ႔၀င္မ်ား မွတ္ပံုတင္ရရွိေရးကိစၥ ႏွင့္ ပထမအၾကိမ္ေဆြးေႏြးစဥ္က မၿပီးျပတ္ေသးသည့္ ကိစၥရပ္မ်ားကို ယခုလအတြင္း ဆက္လက္ ေဆြးေႏြးရန္ ရွိေသးသည္ဟု ဆိုသည္။

“ကိစၥေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ား ပါပါလိမ့္မယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ဘယ္ေလာက္အခ်ိန္ယူၿပီး ေဆြးေႏြးရမယ္ဆိုတာေတာ့ မေျပာတတ္ေသးဘူး ”ဟု ၄င္းက ေျပာသည္။ 

အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္စဲေရး ေဆြးေႏြးေနစဥ္ကာလမွာပင္ KNU ေခါင္းေဆာင္တစ္ဦးျဖစ္သူ ပဒိုမန္းၿငိမ္းေမာင္သည္ ယခင္ လူ၀င္မႈ ႀကီးၾကပ္ေရး ပုဒ္မမ်ားအျပင္ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ကို စစ္မက္ၿပိဳင္ဆိုင္တိုက္ခိုက္ရာတြင္ ပါ၀င္မႈျဖင္႔ ထပ္တိုး စြဲခ်က္ တင္ခံခဲ့ရသည္။
ထို႔အတြက္ စိတ္မေကာင္းျဖစ္ရေသာ္လည္း “အဲ႔ဒီကိစၥ ေျပလည္လိမ့္မယ္လို႔လဲ ယံုၾကည္တယ္” ဟု ေစာေဒးဗစ္ေထာက ဆိုသည္။

ဇန္န၀ါရီလ(၁၃)ရက္ေန႔က ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္သမၼတက ခြင္႔ျပဳေပးခဲ႔သည္႔ လြတ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာခြင္႔တြင္ KNUအဖြဲ႕သားအား ညအိပ္လက္ခံခဲ႔မႈေၾကာင္႔ ေထာင္ဒဏ္က်ခံခဲ႔ရသူ ဦးေစာေဆးဂလယ္ဟဲ အင္းစိန္အက်ဥ္းေထာင္မွ ျပန္လည္လြတ္ေျမာက္ခဲ႔သည္။

Source : Messenger News Journal

ျမပု႑ာမာႏွင့္သီးေလးသီး ေတာင္ငူျမဳိ ့မွာကျပခဲ့စဥ္

ယၡဳလအတြင္း ပြဲခ်ီခက္စိပ္စိပ္ကျပေနတဲ့၊ျပည္သူ႔အခ်စ္ေတာ္ လူရြင္ေတာ္ကိုဇာဂနာ တည္ေထာင္ေပးခဲ့တဲ့ သီးေလးသီးေဆးေရာင္စံုအၿငိမ့္ကို သံလွ်င္က်ဳိက္ေခါက္ဘုရားပဲြမွာ အာဏာပိုင္ေတြက ပဲြကျပခြင့္ပိတ္ပင္
လိုက္တယ္လို႔သိရပါတယ္။သီးေလးသီး အျငိမ့္အဖဲြ႔ဟာ က်ိဳက္ေခါက္ဘုရားပဲြမွာ ( ဇန္န၀ါရီ 1 ရက္မွ 3 ရက္ေန႔ထိ ) ကျပေဖ်ာ္ေျဖပါ့မည္ဆိုျပီး သန္လ်င္ျမိဳ႔ သို႔ ကားျဖင့္ လွည့္ပတ္ေျကျငာခဲ့တာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

သီးေလးသီးအျငိမ့္ကုိ ကျပခြင့္ပိတ္ပင္လိုက္တာနဲ ့ပါတ္သတ္လုိ ့ဘုရားပဲြကို ကုိယ္တုိင္သြားေရာက္ခဲ့သူ သံလွ်င္ျမဳိ ့ခံတဦးက Myanmar News Now ကို အခုလုိ ေျပာျပပါတယ္--

"ကၽြန္ေတာ္လည္း အလြန္အားေပးခ်င္ဆံုး အျငိမ့္အဖဲြ႔ျဖစ္သည့္အတြက္ အားရ၀မ္းသာစြာ ေနာက္ဆံုးေန႔တြင္သြားျကည့္ရု႔အားေပးမည္ဟုစိတ္ကူးမိခဲ့ပါသည္။
အမွန္တကယ္ 3ရက္ေန႔တြင္ သြားေရာက္အားေပးဖို႔ က်ိဳက္ေခါက္ဘုရားပဲြသို႔ သြားေရာက္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဟိုလဲ ေရာက္ေရာ ကဇာတ္ရံုတစ္ခုလံုး အေမွာင္ခ်ထားပီးရုံေရွ႔မွာ စာတမ္းတစ္ခုကို ဖတ္ပီး စိတ္ပ်က္မွူမ်ား စိတ္မေကာင္းမွူမ်ား ဆုေဆာင္းမွူမ်ားနဲ႔လွည့္ျပန္ခဲ့ရပါတယ္။ ေရာက္လာတဲ့လူအေပါင္းက လဲ ဒီအတိုင္းပါပဲ။
ရံုေရွ႔က စာသားေလး ဒီလို ဗ် " သီးေလးသီးအဖဲြ႔ ကျပခ်င္ေသာ္လည္း ဘုရားေဂါဘဂအဖြဲ႔မွ ခြင့္မျပဳသျဖင့္ မကႏိုင္ေတာ့ပါ " ဘာေၾကာင့္လဲ ဘာျဖစ္လို႔လဲ စသည္ျဖင့္ စကားလံုးမ်ိဳးစံုေပါ့ဗ်ာ အသံေတြဆူညံေနတာပဲ ရံုေရွ့မွာေပါ့။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္လဲ ရံုထဲကို ၀င္ၾကည့္လိုက္တယ္ ရံုထဲမွာ အေမွာင္ခ်တယ္ ဒါေပမယ့္ ရံုထဲမွာ လူေတြအမ်ားၾကီးပဲ ေ၀ဖန္ေနက်တာေပါ့ေနာ္ တခ်ိဳ႔က ငါ့တို႔ရြာက အေ၀းၾကီးကြ သီးေလးသီးကို အားေပးခ်င္လို႔ လာတာ အခုေတာ့ကြာ ဆိုပီး ေမတၱာပို႔တာေပါ့.... သက္ဆိုင္ရာေတြကို -- " လုိ ့ေျပာျပထားပါတယ္။

သီးေလးသီးေဆးေရာင္စံုအၿငိမ့္အဖဲြ႔သားမ်ားဟာ ၂၀၀၇ ခုနွစ္မွာ ျပည္ပေဖ်ာ္ေျဖပြဲမ်ားသြားေရာက္
ေဖ်ာ္ေျဖရင္း၊စစ္အစိုးရ၏ခ်ဳိ႔ယြင္းေနမႈမ်ားကိုအျပဳသေဘာ ဟာသပ်က္လံုးမ်ားထုတ္ျခင္းေၾကာင့္၊ျပည္ေတာ္ျပန္ရန္မျဖစ္နိုင္ေတာ့ပဲ ျပည္ပတြင္ေလးနွစ္ခန္႔ေနထိုင္ခဲ့ၾကၿပီး၊အေမရိကန္၊စကၤာပူ၊ဂ်ပန္

ကိုရီးယား၊မေလးရွား၊ထိုင္းနိုင္ငံအနွံ႔အၿငိမ့္မ်ားကျပရင္းေနခဲ့ရာမွ ကိုေဂၚဇီလာ၊စိန္သီး၊ဇီးသီးနဲ႔ေခ်ာစုမ်ဳိးတို႔ေလးဦးက ၂၀၁၁နွစ္က၊ရပ္သားအစိုးရ၏ျပည္ပေရာက္ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံသားမ်ားျပန္ေခၚရာတြင္ ပထမဆံုးျပန္သြားၾကသူမ်ားျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ၾကယ္သီး၊ပန္းသီး၊ျမစပၢါယ္ငံုတို႔သံုးဦးက သူတို႔ဆရာကိုဇာဂနာလြတ္မွျပန္ၾကမယ္ဆိုၿပီး ခ်င္းမိုင္နွင့္၊မဲေဆာက္တို႔တြင္ အနုပညာလုပ္ငန္းမ်ားလုပ္ကိုင္ရင္း၊ေထာင္မွလြတ္လာေသာ ကိုဇာဂနာ၏ျပန္လည္ေခၚယူသျဖင့္ျပည္တြင္းသို႔ျပန္၀င္ၿပီး၊ကိုဇာဂနာအပါအ၀င္
ျမတ္ပုဏ္ဏမာအဖြ႔ဲနွင့္သီးေလးသီးေဆးေရာင္စံုအၿငိမ့္ပူးေပါင္းေဖ်ာ္ေျဖမႈျဖင့္
အစိုးရသစ္၏ခြ်တ္ေခ်ာ္ေနေသးသည့္ အေျခအေနမ်ားကိုရဲရဲ၀့ံ၀ံ့ပ်က္လံုးထုတ္ခဲ့တာေၾကာင့္ လူထု၏အားေပး
မႈနဲ႔အတူ ပြဲခြင္စိပ္စိပ္ကျပေနေသာအခ်ိန္မွာ အခုလိုပြဲပါမစ္အပိတ္ခံရျခင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

မဂၤလာဒံုၿမိဳ႕နယ္ ပ်ဥ္းမပင္အုပ္စု ျမသီတာရပ္ကြက္ ျမသီတာ မိသာဟာရ ခရစ္ယာန္ ဘုရားရွိခိုးေက်ာင္းမွာ ဇန္န၀ါရီလ ၂၉ ရက္ တနဂၤေႏြေန႕က ဘုရားဝတ္ျပဳေနစဥ္ ရပ္ကြက္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးမႈး ဦးေလးႏြယ္က က်ဴးေက်ာ္နယ္ေျမဆိုၿပီး လာေရာက္ပိတ္ပင္ခဲ့တယ္လို႔ သိရပါတယ္။ဒီဘုရားေက်ာင္းကို သင္းအုပ္ဆရာ ဖိလမြန္က ၂၀၀၀ ခုႏွစ္က စတင္ တည္ေထာင္ခဲ့တာျဖစ္ၿပီး အခုအခ်ိန္မွာ တနဂၤေႏြေန႕တုိင္း လာေရာက္ဝတ္ျပဳသူ အေယာက္သံုးဆယ္ေလာက္က ရွိေနၿပီျဖစ္ပါတယ္။အခုလိုလုပ္တာဟာ အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ လူ ့အခြင့္အေရးေၾကျငာ စာတမ္း အပိုဒ္(၁၈)ျဖစ္တဲ့ လူတိုင္း လြတ္လပ္စြာ ကိုးကြယ္ခြင့္ရွိရမယ္ဆိုတဲ့ အခ်က္ကို ခ်ိဳးေဖာက္ေနတာလဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္။၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ မဲအမ်ားဆုံး အႏိုင္ရရွိခဲ့တဲ့ ျပည္ေထာင္စု ၾကံ႕ခိုင္ေရးႏွင့္ ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးေရးပါတီရဲ႕ သေဘာထားထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္ နံပါတ္ (ဃ) မွာ လူမ်ဳိးမေရြး ဘာသာမေရြး လြတ္လပ္စြာ ကိုးကြယ္ခြင့္ရွိေစရမယ္လို႕ ထုတ္ျပန္ထားပါတယ္ခင္ဗ်ား။

As follow-up survey for opinion poll on the President’s inaugural speech which was conducted in May 2011, public perception on the implementation of the President’s commitments was surveyed in the month of November 2011. The survey results showed that 63% (743) of 1,181 people thought press freedom was now common in the country and 19% of 743 people were very satisfied with that.

Perception on implementation of the President’s commitments

63% (743) of 1,181people think that press freedom is now common in the country and 19% of 743 people are very satisfied with that.

Regarding the environmental issue, only 17% of total 409 respondents are satisfied with the President’s commitments while 56% (664) of total 1,181 respondents viewed that the government is emphasizing the environmental affairs and 25% of 664 people are very satisfied with the environmental actions taken by the government.

31% of total 409 respondents are satisfied with activities related to economic reforms and 42% (492) of total 1,181 respondents responded that it is now in progress but only 12% of 492 people are very satisfied with that.

Satisfaction on different aspects of President’s inaugural speech (N=409) May 2011

Rank of implementation in progress of President’s commitments (N=1,181) Nov. 2011

Perception on the top five issues implementation in progress (N=1,181) Nov. 2011

Source here

SPEAKING FREELY By Nancy Hudson-Rodd

The Myanmar delegation to the United Nations in Geneva complained last year that some members failed to show due diplomatic respect by referring to their country as Burma rather than Myanmar. Now most diplomats and news publications refer to the country as Myanmar as a reward the regime's recent so-called reforms. But is this respect justified and are long-time Myanmar observers now suffering from selective amnesia?

Last year, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, recently released from years of house arrest, remotely addressed the annual World Economic Forum in Davos "on behalf of the 55 million people of Burma who have largely been left behind". Suu Kyi, who has long supported Western sanctions imposed against her country's military regime, appealed to international participants to promote Burma's genuine democratization, human development and economic growth.

Her National League for Democracy (NLD) party a week later detailed the kinds of policies needed to promote positive change and rebutted claims that Western sanctions were only detrimental to Burma's people, not leadership. The party argued that "criticism of sanctions served to divert attention from the main problems plaguing the country" which it listed as blatant cronyism, corruption, and the military regime's refusal to release their iron-clad grip on power.

It also argued that the legislative assemblies formed out of the 2010 elections, which the NLD did not contest and hence was subsequently banned, are totally dominated at both the national and regional levels by the combined body of the military's Union Solidarity Development Party and the non-elected military representatives who account for 25% of all legislative seats. Moves to designate these assemblies as the country's only political forum reduced democratization in Burma to a "parody", the NLD said.

A year later, optimistic reports of positive change flow freely from the country. President Thein Sein has portrayed himself as a leader who sincerely wants to improve citizens' livelihoods, alleviate poverty and include the NLD in the political process. He has formed a new Human Rights Commission, opened previously closed doors to international diplomats and their corporate sponsors, and relaxed laws to promote more international investment and development.

The timing has been impeccable. International corporations, many nervous over Europe's debt crisis and America's sustained sluggishness, are eager to find fresh new places for their funds and Burma is suddenly emerging as a possible destination. As the chairman of the Singapore-based Rogers Holdings told Bloomberg Television last November, "If you can find ways to invest in Myanmar you will be very, very rich over the next 20, 30, 40 years."

China and Thailand currently account for more than 70% of total investment in Burma, but as the executive vice president of the Stock Exchange of Thailand recently said, "Every Western company complaining about sanctions is looking around. The more the merrier ... There are vast opportunities in Myanmar."

Following those words, a high-level American business delegation that will include Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is due to visit the country in February in the latest sign of strengthening US ties with the long-isolated, military-run country. European businesses are known to be interested in various sectors, including natural resources and infrastructure, the President of the Thai-German Chamber of Commerce recently said while opening the new European-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Business Center in Bangkok.

There are commercial reasons to be optimistic. Myanmar is developing a US$8.6 billion port and industrial complex at the coastal town of Dawei which is designed to cover an area 16 times bigger than Thailand's largest manufacturing park. Thanet Sorat, head of the Federation of Thai Industries, said recently "What makes Dawei interesting is Myanmar itself. It was closed for so long and now the government is more open. Thai companies see many opportunities there due to cheap labor costs and many natural resources."

However, the government's and military's continued rights abuses in the same region are less widely publicized. The Human Rights Foundation of Monland (HRFM) recently reported widespread violations against citizens in Dawei's Tenasserim Division. In fishing villages along its coastal areas, the Navy's administrative unit extorts monthly household fees, commandeers fishermen's boats and drivers to transport staff and troops, demands rations from the local population, and forces people to act as security guards, according to HRFM.

Last year, the same navy unit allegedly confiscated over 1,000 acres [405 hectares] of rubber and perennial fruit plantations from local farmers. None of the agrarians were compensated for their lost lands. Over 3,000 more acres of rubber plantations have been surveyed for confiscation, according to reports. Many local authorities now make money by granting permission to displaced former land owners to work as cheap labor on their confiscated plantations for a monthly fee.

The recently released 38-page Burmese language book, Forced Expropriations of Farmland and Partial Victories, published by the Farmers Rights Defenders Network, also tells the story of villagers' struggle against army-backed companies taking their land for industrial development.

To date the new National Human Rights Commission, run by the Home Ministry, has not investigated any of these claims. "There is no real change and development yet in spite of the government's claim. This is because the abuses that locals in the region face are committed by local military men, who do not seem to care and respect the government's order and power," remarked a local former school teacher quoted in the HRFM report.

Cosmetic change

So are the positive changes supposedly taking place in Burma more cosmetic than substantive? And does Thein Sein's nominally civilian, military-backed government deserve the international recognition and rewards it has recently and may in future receive, including the lifting of economic and financial sanctions?

One condition for removing Western sanctions has been the release of political prisoners. Those who have been released by recent presidential pardons committed no crimes yet at any time may be sent back into prison to complete their sentences if they do anything deemed as improper by authorities. Significantly, the amnesties have not been based on any law but rather the whim of the leader.

Over 1,000 political prisoners still remain imprisoned, according to the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners Burma (AAPPB). The real number is unknown. No independent review of prisons, prison labor camps, and agricultural production camps have been allowed since 2005 when the International Commission of the Red Cross was denied access.

Despite all the talk of reforms, none of the arbitrary laws and regulations that have been used to crush dissent have been changed. And there remain many unanswered but highly pertinent questions that Western governments looking to engage Thein Sein's supposedly reformist regime should be asking.

For instance, where are products of agricultural prison labor camps being sold? What compensation schemes are in place for government-confiscated lands, crops, and resources? Where is the discussion of land ownership and rights, particularly at a time foreign investors look to establish presences in the country?

To be sure, Suu Kyi's announcement that the NLD will re-enter politics confers a degree of legitimacy on President Thein Sein and his nominally elected parliamentary government. Her endorsement of what so far has been a limited democratization process has attracted eager corporate interest but little improvement in civil liberties and human rights - the reasons economic sanctions were imposed in the first place.

All laws passed since 1988, when the military slaughtered over 3,000 pro-democracy demonstrators, have been passed through executive decrees rather than legislative processes. There is no independent judiciary. There is no rule of law. The 2008 Constitution, rammed through in a sham referendum, is designed to ensure continued domination of the military regime. Anyone who speaks out against the regime still risks being thrown into prison. The press is still pre-censored. Change has been marginal, at best.

Despite the pretensions to democracy, Thein Sein's government still depends on one of the largest armed forces in Southeast Asia for its survival. With no serious prospect of a foreign invasion, this standing force remains solely to control the population. A culture of impunity has long existed in Burma, where government officials and military personnel have gone wholly unpunished for a litany of widely documented abuses.

The 2008 constitution perpetuates that culture of impunity by giving blanket amnesty for serious crimes committed by former junta members, including former leader Senior General Than Shwe. It also denies victims the right to remedy for past violations as the military still hold disproportionate influence over Thein Sein's government. Authorities continue to restrict access to mechanisms of citizen complaint while harassing and taking legal action against those who have dared to challenge the military's authority over civilian affairs.

NLD stalwart Win Tin, who was held as a prisoner of conscience for 19 years, has said he sees "no difference, no change" with the new government. He has argued that the newly established Human Rights Commission is similar to the previous ineffectual ones set up by past military regimes. "There is no change. If you go to the countryside you find poor people who are facing violations of their human rights," Win Tin said.

Win Tin's is the voice of moral authority few Western governments and corporations want to hear these days. But the long, hard fought struggle for freedom and justice in Burma continues and truth speakers should be supported rather than ignored. While the West blindly supports Thein Sein's shallow democratic transition, it increasingly runs the rising risk of being on the wrong side of Burma's history.

Nancy Hudson-Rodd is a human geographer and honorary senior research fellow at the Edith Cowan University in Australia.

Source here

ရုုိဟင္ဂ်ာနဲ႕ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရးၿပႆနာ အပိုုင္း(၄) မွာ

ၿမန္မာႏုုိင္ငံက ႏိုုင္ငံသားဆိုုင္ရာဥပေဒနဲ႕ ႏိုုင္ငံသားမဟုုတ္သူေတြအေပၚ တင္းက်ပ္ပိတ္ပင္မႈ ေတြအေၾကာင္းတင္ၿပထားပါတယ္။



ရုုိဟင္ဂ်ာနဲ႕ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရးၿပႆနာအပိုင္း(၅) 

အခုုေနာက္ဆုုံးပိုုင္းအေနနဲ႕ ၿမန္မာႏုုိင္ငံအတြင္းရင္ဆိုုင္ေနရတဲ့ အေၿခအေနနဲ႕ ရုုိဟင္ဂ်ာအေရးအာရုုံဆိုုက္ခံရမႈ နည္းပါးတဲ့အေၾကာင္းေတြကိုု တင္ၿပလိုုက္ပါတယ္။

National Endowment for Democracy, Washington, DC

Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Michael H. Posner

February 02, 2012 

Thank you. It’s terrific to be invited by an organization I admire greatly, the National Endowment for Democracy, to speak about an issue that I care about deeply: Burma and its future.

I must say, though, that it’s a bit hard to come to the NED on the heels of the Secretary of State’s speech at the NDI annual dinner in December what I consider to be one of her finest speeches, on the future of democracy. If any of you missed that speech, I commend it to you.

I also want to thank the NED team that has played a leading role in promoting democracy and civil society in Burma for more than 20 years.

And I’d like to recognize the many other friends and colleagues here who have stood with the Burmese people for decades, both through their programs to promote democracy and their humanitarian work — the folks from the Open Society Institute, the Norwegian Burma Committee, DANIDA, the International Rescue Committee, and in fact every group here at the Burma Donor’s Forum and many, many more. I salute you all for your continued dedication to this important work.

Most of all, I want to honor the Burmese activists who have sacrificed so much to bring about the changes that we are here today to discuss.

Hindsight being 20-20, we can look back over the year 2011 and see that governments around the world have made choices that have profound effects on their people.

In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak could not stand in the way of the winds of change that swept through Tahir Square, and the transition to democracy continues to move forward. And although we must expect many difficulties and even setbacks in every democratic transition, the Egyptian people are now charting their own future and seeking to build the kind of durable, inclusive democracy they deserve.

In Syria, Bashar al-Assad and his government made a different choice, attempting to cling to power. Since that decision more than 5,400 people, mostly peaceful demonstrators, have been killed by government security forces. This week we are continuing to work with the Arab League to shape an appropriate and effective international response at the UN Security Council, part of our effort to end this tragic chapter in Syrian history.

The news out of Burma has been much more hopeful, as the government has taken a series of actions to change course after years of isolation and human rights abuses. When I travelled there in December with Secretary Clinton, we saw the possibility of real democratic change that could eventually lead to a much brighter future for Burma.

The statements from Nawpidaw are certainly encouraging. At a dinner in Singapore on Monday night, President Thein Sein said, according to press reports, quote: "We want our people to take part in the democratic reform process and we want democracy to thrive in Myanmar. I wish to assure you that I shall endeavor to establish a healthy democracy in Myanmar."

If the leaders continue on this path of democracy and openness, they will free all remaining political prisoners. They will hold fair elections on April 1, allow their people a genuine say in how they are to be governed, end restrictions on the media and the Internet, end the divisive ethnic conflicts, and begin to build a more integrated and peaceful society.

If they continue to pursue this path, they will end their international economic and political isolation, attract aid and investment, and be in a position to build a strong and inclusive economy that shares prosperity widely. Of course that won’t transform Burma overnight. But it will begin to build the kind of government Burma’s people deserve.

I come to speak with you today with great humility, because I am not a Burma expert, and I know that many of you have worked on Burma for years or decades.

I had not visited the country until last fall, when I went first with Special Envoy Derek Mitchell in November, and then again with Secretary Clinton in December. What I do bring to this discussion is experience with countries that are beginning down the long hard road towards democracy. And based on that experience I feel it is a rare privilege to be able to offer help to a country at such an important time.

But our engagement starts from a clear-eyed assessment of where there has been progress and what remains to be done. Let’s start with the progress. We have seen movement on at least three important fronts. First is the release of political prisoners. Since October, the government has released more than 500 political prisoners. That includes most of the highest-profile prisoners. Some of these people had spent decades in jail for nonviolent expression of their political views.

Min Ko Naing, for example, was an 88 Generation student leader who spent most of the last 15 years in jail. He was re-arrested for organizing peaceful walking demonstrations in Rangoon in 2007 and sentenced to 65 years. Sixty-five years. Last week he and four other freed 88 Generation leaders held a press conference in and promised to “support those who want to build justice, freedom and equality” in Myanmar.

There is U Kyaw Min [OO JAW Min], a Rohingya rights activist who was elected as a Minister of Parliament in 1990 but then sentenced to 47 years in 2005 after he met with an international delegation investigating forced labor in Burma. His wife, two daughters and son were also rounded up and sentenced to 17 years simply for being his family members. Today he is free. His wife and two daughters were also freed with him. His son, however, remains in jail.

And there is Hla Hla Win [H-LAH H-LAH WIN], a young journalist arrested while interviewing monks and community leaders on video. She was first charged with having an illegally imported motorcycle, then when she was discovered to be a journalist she was sentenced to an additional 20 years for violating the Electronics Act, which prohibits uploading or downloading data deemed damaging to security. She also was released last month.

President Obama applauded the releases of prisoners of conscience as “a crucial step in Burma’s democratic transformation and national reconciliation process.” These released prisoners—lawyers, journalists, bloggers, activists, ethnic and religious leaders—will be key in building Burma’s future.

A second area where the actions of the Burmese government are significant is the opening to greater debate and discussion of political issues. In the last year the government has engaged Aung San Suu Kyi in a substantive dialogue. It has amended electoral laws, allowing the National League for Democracy and other opposition parties to register as political parties and begin preparing for the April by-elections. It has begun to ease some restrictions on media and civil society, and is beginning to allow humanitarian access for the United Nations and NGOs to conflict areas.

A third, related area where the government has undertaken reforms is in building a stronger democratic foundation. Last year the government passed a new labor law that expands the rights of workers and will allow unions to become legal again for the first time since the 1970s. In December, the Parliament passed new legislation protecting the right of assembly.

We have heard reports that work on a revised press freedoms law is underway. And the government established a new Human Rights Commission.

But much remains to be done. Hundreds of political prisoners are still being held, and a number of the laws used to arrest and detain them remain on the books. Censorship has been relaxed—but the censorship board remains in place. NGOs are allowed to operate—but many have not been allowed to legally register.

Probably the most important and most difficult remaining challenge is the need to end violence in ethnic minority areas and to advance an inclusive, meaningful dialogue leading towards genuine national reconciliation.

The government has struck preliminary ceasefire agreements with the Shan State army and with the Karen National Union, which has been involved in one of the longest-running civil wars anywhere in the world. At the same time violence in Kachin State has worsened, with reports of serious human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law.

Ultimately the ethnic violence is rooted in political causes, and it will require negotiated political solutions on both sides to address the underlying grievances.

In the coming months and years we must steel ourselves for challenges that will inevitably come with this transition. Over the years, it’s my observation that when ossified societies begin to loosen up, the process is neither smooth nor linear.

That is why this Administration is committed to a long-term engagement, one that both continues to push for reform and change, while at the same time offering encouragement and support.

As Secretary Clinton said, “The United States will meet action with action.” In response to the January 13 prisoner release, Secretary Clinton announced that we will exchange ambassadors. In a step-by-step fashion, we hope to build a relationship based on mutual respect and tangible progress on the issues that matter most to improving the daily lives of people.

Where Burma goes from here will depend on the political will of its leaders and the willingness of the government’s opponents to engage. And this political will needs to flow from two directions – from the top down, and from the bottom up.

The President and his advisors have created a kind of top-down reform process that has pushed through initiatives at a rapid pace. And this is to their credit. These changes have opened political space. But opening the political space doesn’t bring meaningful change unless people move into that space and start to use it.

It’s like an empty house. If the house is in bad shape, you may have to shore up the roof and hang some drywall before you can even move in. Then you need to bring in some furniture, move in, hang pictures that express your vision of what a home should look like, and invite a bunch of friends over for dinner, or plant a garden. Then that empty house starts to become a home.

To make Burma a home for all of its people requires broad, grassroots engagement by the widest possible range of politically active citizens. Ethnic leaders and bloggers. Lawyers defending clients. Lawmakers writing new media freedom laws. Factory workers forming unions and negotiating for better conditions and higher pay. Human rights advocates working with local powerbrokers to stop forced labor. NGOs working to bring child soldiers home.

All of these groups will need to push for structural changes from the bottom up, at the same time as the political leadership works to push reform from the top down.

I don’t know where those two forces meet. It’s not for us to say. It’s up to the Burmese to find the place where the two sides meet, to build trust on both sides, and to negotiate a space where they can coexist peacefully. That process is how durable, systemic change begins.

So the project of reforming the system from within is immense. It will require both political will from the top down and dynamism from the bottom up. Those who have profited from power in every country are often resistant to sharing it, and thus a backlash is always possible.

I’ve been accused of irrational optimism. But I do believe there is reason to be optimistic. That doesn’t mean that we assume everything is going to work or that we rush our engagement faster than reforms warrant. But it does mean that we reconsider long held assumptions; recognize the dynamic change that is occurring, and seize the opportunities to support the people, and especially politically active civil society, to pursue real, sustainable reforms from within.

And frankly there is another reason why my optimism isn’t irrational. Her name is Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Her country is fortunate to have a leader of her principles and her caliber to inspire and guide it through these tumultuous times.

On my last visit, I was struck by the warmth and the welcome given the Secretary.

The crowds who lined the streets for miles to welcome her.

The beautiful hug she got from Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

The man who took an American official’s hands at the airport and said with tears in his eyes, “Thank you for coming to our country.”

The desire, expressed to us by so many Burmese, to rejoin the world – and not just the international banking system, but the international community.

Change is never guaranteed, but there is an appetite for change. And I know that all of you continue to work extremely hard to be part of it.

So I will stop here and am happy to answer your questions. Thank you.

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