Kaladan Press News
Maungdaw, Arakan State: Aung Zaw Win, the Upper House parliament member (MP) from Maungdaw Township, accompanied by three other State level MPs of Maundaw Township, visited Maungdaw on April 25 after the parliamentary meetings at Nay Pyi Taw and Sittwe, the capital of Arakan State, said a participant of the meeting who asked not to be named.

“It is the first time the MPs visited Maungdaw after the parliamentary meetings at Nay Pyi Taw and state level Hluttaw representative meetings to explain among the local people what they had done for the people, and the future plans and programs of the new democratic government.”

Upper House MP Aung Zaw Win, accompanied by the state level MPs U Mra Aung, U Tha Khin, U Janheingir (a) Aung Myo Myin, and an electrical engineer named U Tin Maung Win from Rangoon, visited Maungdaw Township.

4/29/2011  နိရဥၥရာ သတင္း

တာကလူး
 
ၾကံ႕ဖြံ႕ ပါတီသည္ ေပးထားေသာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကတိကို မတည္ေၾကာင္း ေဒသခံမ်ားက စြပ္စြဲ ေျပာၾကားလိုက္သည္။

အဆိုုပါ စြပ္စြဲခ်က္ကုိ ယမန္ေန႕က ေမာင္ေတာျမိဳ႕နယ္ အလယ္သံေက်ာ္တြင္ ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ေသာ လူထု ရွင္းလင္းပြဲ အျပီးတြင္ ေဒသခံ မြတ္ဆလင္မ်ားက ေျပာဆိုလိုက္ျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။

“ သူတို႕က ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕ကို လြတ္လပ္စြာ ခရီးသြားခြင့္ေတြ ရေအာင္ လုပ္ေပးမယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံသား စိစစ္ေရး ကဒ္ေတြ လုပ္ေပးမယ္။ ပလီေတြကို ျပင္ခြင့္ရေအာင္ လုပ္ေပးမယ္။ ျခေသၤ့ (ခ်ိန္ေဟာ)ကို ေရႊးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ မဲေပးၾကပါဆိုျပီး သူတို႕က ေျပာသြားတယ္။ မေန႕က လူထု ရွင္းလင္းပြဲမွာေတာ့ ဒီကိစၥေတြကို ဘာမွ ေျပာမသြားဘူး” ဟု လူထု ရွင္းလင္းပြဲသို႕ တက္ေရာက္ခဲ့သူ တစ္ဦးက ေျပာသည္။

ၾက႕ံဖြံ႕ပါတီသည္ ယမန္ေန႕က လူထု ရွင္းလင္းပြဲကို အလယ္သံေက်ာ္ ေက်းရြာတြင္ ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ျပီး လူေပါင္း ၂၀၀၀ ခန္႕တက္ေရာက္နားေထာင္ခဲ့သည္ဟု သိရသည္။

Only just in mid April, Thailand announced that it would close down nine refugee camps on its 1400 kilometres long eastern border with Myanmar. It’s important to consider as to why Thailand wants to end its twenty years humanitarian policy of assisting refugees? What kind of prospects might be faced by the refugees once they are back in Myanmar? What are the views of the Nongovernmental Organisations (NGOs) and what other options are in pipeline for the refugees that might enable them to escape this bleak scenario? This article considers these various questions and suggests some policy options for Thailand at the end.

Four United Nations agencies - United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), World Food Programme (WFP), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) - initiated the project to cut poverty of the people living in Cox's Bazar's southern most sub-districts of Ukhia and Teknaf.

ထိုင္း-ျမန္မာနယ္စပ္က ျမန္မာဒုကၡသည္ေတြကို ထိုင္းအာဏာပိုင္ေတြအေနနဲ႔ အခုခ်ိန္မွာ ျပန္ပို႔မွာ မဟုတ္ဘူးလို႔ မိမိတို႔ ယုံႀကည္ေၾကာင္း လူဦးေရ ၊ ဒုကၡသည္နဲ႔ ေ႐ႊ႕ေျပာင္း အေျခခ်သူမ်ားအေရး ဆိုင္ရာ အေမရိကန္ လက္ေထာက္ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဝန္ႀကီး Mr. Eric Schwartz က ေျပာၾကားလိုက္ပါတယ္။

RFA နဲ႔ သီးသန္႔ ေတြ႕ဆုံေမးျမန္းစဥ္ ဧၿပီ ၂၅ ရက္ တနလၤာေန႔က အခုလိုေျပာတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ 

Chittagong, Bangladesh: In April, the regular meeting of Burmese ethnic groups living in the UK was hosted by the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, or BROUK, on April 23, according to Mr. Tun Khin, the president of BROUK.

“The Kachin, Chin, Karen, and Rohingya ethnic groups attended the regular meeting, and it was held at No 10 Station Road, Walmthamstow, London.”

"We must disclose who provided the Bangladesh passports to Burmese citizens and which travel agents are involved in the incident," he said.

In another incident, Bangladesh border security forces arrested 45 Burmese Muslims on Sunday in the border area of Teknaf as they were entering Bangladesh through border points along the Naff River, which demarcates the border between the two countries. 

The 45 Burmese citizens were handed over to Bangladesh police after their arrest by Border Guards Bangladesh. 

Link : http://www.narinjara.com/details.asp?id=2931

Dr. Habib Siddiqui

[Author’s note: This paper is based on author’s speech at the PENN HUMAN RIGHTS FORUM on “The Rohingyas of Burma and Bangladesh” on Friday, March 31, 2006 in the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. The material in this paper came from author’s personal contacts with the Rohingya Diaspora community and information that is available in the reports of various human rights groups, notably the Amnesty International, the Human Rights Watch and the Karen Human Rights Group.]

Part 1: Nightmare, fiction or a living reality?

Imagine this. You are living in a country that does not recognize you as a citizen in spite of the fact that your forefathers lived there for centuries. If that were not enough of a traumatic experience, consider that other ethnic groups who are fighting the regime for self-determination and human rights consider you as outsiders. It must be your worst kind of nightmare when you realize that half of your people have been forced to take asylum or refuge outside, and you may be the next in line to seek a way out of this living hell.

Meet the most influential people in the world. They are artists and activists, reformers and researchers, heads of state and captains of industry. Their ideas spark dialogue and dissent and sometimes even revolution. Welcome to this year's TIME 100
One of the world's most celebrated advocates of democracy is facing prison time after a bizarre visit by an American who swam to her home. Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was charged with violating the terms of her house arrest and moved to prison after John Yettaw was caught swimming away from her lakeside compound on May 5. Suu Kyi, the winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, has been under house arrest for 13 of the past 19 years after clashing with the country's brutal ruling junta. The charges against Suu Kyi, who is 63 and reportedly in poor health, come just weeks before the scheduled end of her detention and carry a sentence of up to five years. Yettaw, 53, reportedly stayed for two nights in her central Rangoon compound after arriving unexpectedly from the lake complaining of cramps and exhaustion. He also faces prison time. A lawyer for Suu Kyi called Yettaw a "nutty fellow" and says she pleaded with him to leave. Some observers say the military is seizing on the incident to prolong Suu Kyi's detention and discourage pro-democracy forces ahead of next year's elections. (See pictures of Burma after Cyclone Nargis.) 

BANGKOK (TrustLaw) – Tens of thousands of stateless Muslim Rohingya women and girls who fled persecution in Myanmar for safety in Bangladesh are facing abuse and sexual violence at the hands of Bangladeshis and members of their own refugee communities with little chance of redress, a human rights group said in its latest report.

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has made some improvements in its treatment of refugees, according to a report by the Washington based Refugees International (RI).

The report, which has a specific focus on Burmese refugees, said Malaysian authorities in the past year made no attempt to deport refugees and showed that they had increased their respect for identity cards issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

It noted that since 2009, the number of registered refugees in Malaysia had increased from 45,000 to more than 80,000.

About 90% of them are from Burma, where ethnic minorities like the Chin, Rohingya and Karen are said to be subject to systematic human abuses.

 Reuters

BANGKOK/DELHI (AlertNet) – Tens of thousands of stateless Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh face abuse, starvation and detention in a "silent crisis" that could lead to a humanitarian emergency if the authorities do not do more to protect them, a report by Refugees International (RI) said.

Washington, DC – Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who fled repression in Burma  have no protection from abuse , starvation, and detention in Bangladesh because of a lack of documentation, Refugees International highlighted in a report released today. In the report, Bangladesh: The Silent Crisis, Refugees International is urging the international community to work with the Bangladeshi government to register undocumented refugees and improve protection for all vulnerable Rohingyas.

Members of the Burmese Democracy Network (BDN) launched a petition drive on Sunday urging the new government to release all political prisoners unconditionally and to create an environment where Burmese people living abroad, organizations in exile and refugees can return home safely.

The BDN is the name of the unofficial network of people that has formed at the urging of Aung San Suu Kyi following her release in Nov. 2010. Members of this network have now initiated a campaign, which began on the Burmese New Year, the goal of which is to get people to sign a letter to President Thein Sein requesting that he agree to the group's demands.

Maungdaw, Arakan State: Patients from Arakan State who wish to cross the border into Bangladesh for medical treatment have to spend a large amount of money in order to receive border passes from the concerned authorities of Maungdaw, said a patient who has been to Bangladesh for treatment.

“At present, in Burma, there are no available medicines or specialist doctors in northern Arakan, so patients who are suffering from serious diseases, such as heart disease, kidney failure, cancer, chronic ulcers, Hypertatist B or C, are very unfortunate. A few of them are able to go to Bangladesh for treatment, but only those who can afford the expenditures. The rest of patients die without proper medical treatment in their hometowns.”

April 15, 2011.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you. Thank you so much for this extraordinary honor. It means a great deal to me personally and on behalf of my government and my country. I want thank Herr Gothelf for your kind remarks and for your leadership of the institute, and to Deutsche Bank and others for hosting us. Thank you. And to my friend and colleague, the foreign minister, I have so enjoyed our working relationship together, and I appreciate the very kind words said about me. But more than that, I appreciate our cooperation and our partnership. There is a lot of work to do in the world when you are a foreign minister, probably at any time of history, but it seems a particularly complex agenda facing Guido and me on behalf of both of our countries. So I am personally and – very touched and very grateful to you.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The most important step Myanmar can take to improve its international relations is to free its more than 2,000 political prisoners, a U.S. official said Monday, as Washington prepares to appoint a special envoy to the country.

Joseph Yun, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, described the November release of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi after years of house arrest as "very significant."

But Yun urged Myanmar to go further. He described the government recently installed after elections that were boycotted by Suu Kyi's party as "much the same people as before," which means they are dominated by the military.

BBC News

The EU has relaxed some of its sanctions against members of Burma's government, signalling a more flexible approach by the West.

Travel and financial restrictions have been suspended on four ministers - including the foreign minister - and 18 vice-ministers in the new government.

It is the first easing of curbs since they were imposed in 1996 in response to abuses by the military junta.It follows the swearing-in last month of a new nominally civilian government.

An unknown chemical weapon is being developed in highly-secured areas in the country’s north, by workers wearing protective suits and guarded by Burmese military personnel, according to witnesses.

The secret site where the weapon is being developed is situated in Mabein Township, in southern Shan State, close to the border with Kachin State, according to locals and timber loggers.

လင္းသန္႔ (Irrawaddy News)

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဆုိင္ရာ ကုလသမဂၢ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး အထူးကိုယ္စားလွယ္ မစၥတာ ေသာမတ္စ္ အုိေဟးကင္တာနာသည္ျမန္မာအစုိးရသစ္ထံ ျပည္၀င္ခြင့္ဗီဇာရရွိေရးအတြက္ စာေရးေတာင္းဆုိလုိက္သည္ဟု လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး လွဳပ္ရွားသူမ်ားအသုိင္းအ၀ိုင္းမွ သတင္းရရွိသည္။

လာမည့္ ေမလတြင္ ျမန္မာျပည္သြားေရာက္ခြင့္ရေရးအတြက္ ဆြစ္ဇလန္ႏိုင္ငံ ဂ်နီဗာၿမိဳ႕ရွိ ျမန္ မာ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္မွတဆင့္ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေသာ အစုိးရသစ္ထံသို႔ စာေရးေတာင္းဆုိလုိက္ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။