By LALIT K JHA Tuesday, July 14, 2009
WASHINGTON — Three permanent members of United Nations Security Council—the United States, Britain and France—expressed skepticism that the Burmese junta will hold free, fair and credible general elections in 2010, while urging the military rulers to match their words with deeds.
China, on the other hand, which has been a strong supporter of the totalitarian Burmese rulers both inside and outside the Security Council, urged Western countries including the US, Britain and France to lift their economic sanctions on Burma.
View of the UN Security Council in New York. (Photo: AFP)
“Now is the time for Burma to match its words with deeds,” said Rosemary A DiCarlo, the US alternate representative for special political affairs, following a Security Council briefing on Burma by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the UN headquarters in New York.
DiCarlo expressed US disappointment that the Burmese authorities refused Ban’s request to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi.
“By turning down this simple, straightforward request, the Burmese government missed a critical opportunity to, in your words, ‘show its commitment to a new era of political openness,’” she said.
Calling on the Burmese regime to free Aung San Suu Kyi immediately and unconditionally, she said the junta is clearly not respecting the popular will by putting the leader of the country’s democratic opposition on trial for spurious charges of violating her house arrest, which itself was illegitimate. “We are deeply concerned about these proceedings,” she said.
British Deputy Permanent Representative Philip Parham said Ban’s visit was an opportunity for the junta to transform its relationship with the international community which stands ready to respond positively to real progress.
“The regime’s failure to take this opportunity has only served to isolate it further. We can only hope that we may yet see progress in the coming days; it is not too late. But if it does not come, and if we see an unjust outcome in Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial, the international community will need to follow the secretary-general’ s lead and respond robustly,” Parham said. “The onus is on the government to act.”
He said the generals heard the strong message the secretary-general delivered in Rangoon when he addressed ministers and the diplomatic and NGO communities.
“They can be in no doubt about his disappointment and the disappointment of the international community as a whole,” Parham said.
France called for stronger actions by the Security Council.
“The current impasse is no reason for the international community to do nothing. The council must respond firmly if she [Suu Kyi] is found guilty, but inaction must not be the price of its unity,” said Jean-Maurice Ripert of France.
Far from initiating a dialogue with political parties and ethnic groups, Ripert said the junta has unilaterally implemented a “road map” to democracy which had led to increased polarization.
In defense of the junta, Chinese Deputy Ambassador Liu Zhenmin said Ban’s failure to meet with Suu Kyi should not be the criterion to judge the success of the visit.
“Gen Than Shwe had not made arrangements for the secretary-general to meet with her, and the United Nations must respect that decision by a member state. During his visit, the secretary-general had held in-depth dialogues with top leaders and that would play an important role in encouraging the democratic process,” he said.
Liu said that Ban’s visit had been significant and its positive outcome deserved to be assessed fairly by the international community.
He said Burma’s problems could not be addressed in a Western manner, the junta should steadily reform and the international community should fairly assess the country’s challenges.
He called for lifting the international sanctions against Burma, a necessary step for economic development.
“Events occurring inside Myanmar [Burma] are internal affairs that should be handled by the government, as they posed no threat to international peace and security. China is against isolating and sanctioning Myanmar and its position in that regard remained unchanged,” Liu said.
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy. org
http://www.irrawadd y.org/article. php?art_id= 16320
Where there's political will, there is a way
LONGING FOR OUR FATHER -GENERAL AUNG SAN
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
US, Britain and France Doubt Credible Election; China Calls for Lifting Sanctions
More Karen IDPs Fleeing Fighting
More Karen IDPs Fleeing Fighting
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By SAW YAN NAING Monday, July 13, 2009
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More than five hundred Karen villagers in Mon Township, Nyaunglebin District, in northern Karen State have become internal displaced persons (IDPs) after they were forced to flee and hide in the jungle due to fresh attacks by the Burmese military, according to relief groups.
The Free Burma Rangers (FBR), a relief group operating in the area, reported on July 7 that the five hundred villagers, including women and children, are facing food shortages as they were unable to take sufficient food with them when they fled.
Infants are suffering from illness due to heavy rain and a lack of proper medical treatment in the jungle.
Three men were also killed during the attack, according to the FBR report.
Karen sources said that Burmese army forces and troops from battalions 333 and 555 of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) ceasefire militia are now more active in Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) Brigade 5 area in northern Karen State after ending the week-long offensive against KNLA Brigade 7 in southern Karen State.
Due to the offensive launched by the joint force of the Burmese army and DKBA troops in June in the KNLA Brigade 7 area, about 4,000 Karen civilians in Pa-an district in Karen State fled into Thailand’s Tha Song Yang district for safety.
About 20 clashes took place in KNLA Brigade 5 areas during June, and an estimated 16 Burmese soldiers were killed and 39 were injured, according to the Karen news organization, Kwe Ka Lu.
Saw Steve, a leader of a Karen relief team of the Committee for Internally Displaced Karen People (CIDKP) said, “We heard the Burmese army has been reinforced in Mon Township, Nyaunglebin District, and now there is more military activity in this area.”
Border sources and observers said that after the fall of KNLA Brigade 7, the DKBA and Burmese force will turn its attention to the KNLA’s outposts in Brigade 5 and 6 areas.
The joint force intends to clear the KNLA from areas they control along the Thai-Burma border as assigned by the Burmese military, before the Burmese regime holds its planned general election in 2010, sources have reported.
The DKBA is conscripting new members in order to complete its assignment and make up a border guard force with 326 soldiers in each battalion, sources said.
The DKBA split from its mother organization the KNU and signed a ceasefire agreement with the Burmese military government in 1995.
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
End in sight of Suu Kyi trial
United Press International
End in sight of Suu Kyi trial
Published: July 13, 2009 at 9:36 AM
YANGON, Myanmar, July 13 (UPI) -- Final arguments in the trial of jailed Myanmar opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi will be heard on July 24.
Suu Kyi won the country's general election in May 1990 by a landslide, taking 392 of the 492 seats, with the next largest party taking 23 seats. But the military refused to recognize the results, and she has been detained on various charges for 13 of the past 19 years.
Suu Kyi, 64, has been under house arrest since May 2003 and is held on charges of threatening the national security of Myanmar, formerly called Burma. The current trial is over her alleged breaking of her house arrest when John William Yettaw, a U.S. citizen, swam across a lake and gained access to her property in May.
If convicted she faces up to five more years in jail. No date has been set for sentencing if Suu Kyi is found guilty.
Analysts believe the military would like to have her officially in jail during the first multiparty elections since 1990 that they have scheduled for next year. Although the junta's constitution prevents Suu Kyi from taking part, having her out of the way would avoid any embarrassing demonstrations at rallies of officially allowed parties.
The military has given itself 25 percent of seats in any new government decided by the elections.
At a special court set up inside Insein Prison in Yangon on Friday her lawyer, a member of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy Party, argued her arrest was unlawful because it was based on the old 1974 constitution, which was replaced by another in 2008.
Her last witness gave his testimony when the trial was restarted only for the day, a week after the country's military head Than Shwe refused to let U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, on an official visit to Myanmar, see her.
In his departure speech Ban said the regime should release Suu Kyi to show the international community that the military is serious about moving towards democracy.
Amnesty International Australia renewed its call for her release this past weekend. In a written statement the pressure group called on the U.N. Security Council and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to intervene to secure her release "without conditions."
Amnesty also said there are 2,100 political prisoners in Myanmar imprisoned in terrible conditions, including in the infamous Insein Prison where Suu Kyi is being held.
"Conditions in Burma's jails, including the notorious Insein Prison where Aung San Suu Kyi has been held for weeks, are appalling. The health of prisoners is put at risk by the circumstances in which they are forced to live and political prisoners are also at risk of torture and other ill-treatment, " said Jenny Leong, spokeswoman for Amnesty International Australia.
The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said in March that the detention of Suu Kyi violates both international law and Burma's domestic legislation, Amnesty said.
Irish rock band U2 is dedicating their song "Walk On" to Suu Kyi every night on their current tour, which kicked off in Barcelona June 30.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee gave Suu Kyi the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. The European Parliament awarded Suu Kyi the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought earlier that year. The Sakharov Prize is awarded around Dec. 10 every year, the day on which the U.N. General Assembly ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
No date has been set for sentencing if Suu Kyi is found guilty.
ビルマ市民フォーラム メールマガジン 2009/7/14
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ビルマ市民フォーラム メールマガジン 2009/7/14
People's Forum on Burma
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ビルマ情報ネットワーク（BurmaInfo）からのメールを転送させていただき
ます。（重複の際は何卒ご容赦ください。）
ご紹介のドキュメンタリー映画『花と兵隊』につき、フォトジャーナリストの
山本宗補さん（ＰＦＢ運営委員）のコメントがこちらに掲載されています。
http://hanatoheitai.jugem.jp/?eid=19
8月8日より上映されます。ぜひご覧ください。
ＰＦＢ事務局 宮澤
http://www1.jca.apc.org/pfb/
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
以下、ご紹介いたします。
ビルマ情報ネットワーク （www.burmainfo.org）
秋元由紀
========================================
ドキュメンタリー映画『花と兵隊』（http://www.hanatoheitai.jp/）
８月８日より、シアター・イメージフォーラムにてロードショー、他全国順次公開
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『花と兵隊』は、タイ・ビルマ国境付近で敗戦を迎えた後、祖国に還らなかった6名
の日本兵、すなわち「未帰還兵」を描いたドキュメンタリー映画である。戦争の記憶
が薄れつつあるいま、90歳を前後する彼らを20代の監督・松林要樹がとらえた。2005
年から3年に渡る長期取材で、松林はもうひとつの戦後史ともいうべき彼らの暮らし
を見つめ、その生活に寄り添うことで、新たな証言を記録した。
敗戦後、自らの意思で所属部隊を離れ、現地に残った日本兵たち。彼らは、軍隊で
培った技術を生かし、土地に根付き、新しい家族をつくった。とりわけ妻たちの存在
が異郷の地に生きる彼らを支えた。家々には、いまでも新婚当時の彼女たちの可憐な
写真が飾られている。そして、彼らは、子や孫たちと、餅をつき、蕎麦を食べ、祖国
を懐かしんでいる。
しかし、そんな望郷の想いを引き裂くように、やがて質素な部屋の一角で、壮絶な戦
争の記憶が語られはじめる――
なぜ彼らは日本に還らなかったのか？ 南国の激しい雨の間隙、晴れやかな日差しの
中で、穏やかに老後を迎える元兵士たちの平和な日常に、漆黒の時代の闇が潜んでい
る。
監督・撮影・編集：松林要樹
編集：辻井潔
音楽：津嘉田泰三
プロデューサー：安岡卓治（『Ａ』、『Ａ２』、『Little Birds －イラク 戦火の家
族たち－』、『ガーダ ‐パレスチナの詩‐』、『パレスチナ1948・NAKBA』）
製作：記録映画「未帰還兵」製作委員会
配給：安岡フィルムズ
配給協力：東風、ＫＡＷＡＳＡＫＩアーツ
（2009/106分/DVCAM/日本語・ビルマ語・タイ語他 c2009 Yojyu Matsubayashi）
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劇場公開情報
8月8日より、シアター・イメージフォーラムにて公開
（Tel : 03-5766-0114／http://www.imageforum.co.jp/theatre/index.html）
10：15～/12：30～/14：45～/17：00～/19：15～
※8/8(土)、初回上映後と２回目上映前に松林要樹監督による舞台挨拶あり
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お問合せ／東風tel:03-5389-6605
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Saturday, July 11, 2009
မဟာေအာင္ေျမ(ဓမၼပိယဆရာေတာ္)
ဘဝဟူသည္ တိုက္ပဲြအျမဲရိွသည္ဟု ဆိုႀက၏။ ဘဝက တိုက္ပြဲ ဆိုပါလား။ တကယ္ပဲ ဘဝက တိုက္ပဲြလား။
ေအးေအး ေဆးေဆး ေနလို ့ေကာ မရဘူးလား။ ေအာင္ျမင္ခ်င္သူ တိုးတက္ခ်င္သူတို ့ကေတာ့ ဘဝကို
တိုက္ပဲြအျဖစ္ ခံယူႀကသည္။ ဘဝကို တိုက္ပဲြအျဖစ္ ရႈျမင္ႀကသည္။ ဘဝကို တိုက္ပဲြ ပမာ သေဘာထားႀကသည္။
ေယာက်ာၤးတို ့ဇဲြ ေသကာမွေလွ်ာ့ရမည္ဟု ဆိုကာ ဝီရိယကို အျမဲေမာင္းတင္ထားႀကသည္။ ေအာင္ျမင္သူအမ်ားစု
က ဝီရိယ ကိုးဆယ့္ကိုးက်ပ္သားထဲကို အသိဥာဏ္ပညာ တစ္က်ပ္သားထည့္ျပီး ေရာသမေမႊလိုက္လွ်င္ ေအာင္ျမင္
မႈအထြပ္အထိပ္သို ့ ေရာက္ပါသည္ဟု ဆိုမိန္ ့ႀကသည္။ ေအာင္ျမင္မႈ၏ အဓိကေသာ့ခ်က္သည္ ဝီရိယ၊ လုံ ့လ၊ ဇြဲ ဟု
သတ္မွတ္ခဲ့ႀကသည္။
ေဘာလုံးပဲြတစ္ပဲြကန္ရာမွာ အနိုင္၊ အရံႈး၊ သေရဟု အေျဖသုံးမ်ိဳးရိွသည္။ ေဘာလုံးပဲြမွာ အနိုင္အရံႈးေပၚမွ ႀကည့္
လို ့ေကာင္းသည္။ သေရဆိုလွ်င္ သိပ္ႀကည့္လို ့မေကာင္း။ ဂိ္ုးမရိွသေရဆိုလွ်င္ ပိုဆိုးေသးသည္။ သို ့ရာတြင္ သေရ
ဆိုတာရိွေနျခင္းကလည္း ေဘာလုံးပဲြ၏ ဆဲြေဆာင္မႈ တစ္ခုပင္ျဖစ္သည္။ လိဂ္ပဲြေတြမွာဆိုလွ်င္ သေရဆိုတာက
ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ခ်က္တစ္ခု၊ အင္အားတစ္ခုျဖစ္သည္။ ထိုသေရဆိုတာကပင္ ေနာက္ဆုံးတစ္ေန ့မွာ အနိုင္အရံႈး အဆုံးအျဖတ္
ေပးတာရိွသည္။
စာေမးပဲြေျဖဆိုရာမွာေတာ့ ေအာင္တာနွင့္က်တာ၊ နိုင္တာနွင့္ ရံႈးတာ နွစ္မ်ိဳးသာရိွသည္။ သေရဆိုတာမရိွ။ ဘဝမွာ
ေကာ သေရဆိုတာ ရိွပါသလား။ ေစ်းေလာကမွာေတာ့ ျမတ္လည္းမက်န္၊ အရံႈးလည္းမျပဆိုလွ်င္ အရင္းဟု သတ္မွတ္
ႀကသည္။ အရံႈးနွင့္ အနိုင္ကို ေစ်းေလာကမွာလို အရံႈးအျမတ္တြက္လွ်င္ ဘဝမွာလည္း သေရဆိုတာရိွသည္။ တကယ္ေတာ့
လည္း အနိုင္ထဲမွာ အရံႈးရိွသလို အရံႈးထဲမွာလည္း အနိုင္ဆိုတာရိွနိုင္ သည္သာ။ ယူတတ္သည့္အေပၚမွာ တည္ပါလိမ့္မည္။
သိမ္ႀကီးေစ်း၊ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေစ်း စသည္မွာ ေစ်းေရာင္းေနသူေတြ ေစ်းေရာင္းမေကာင္းလွ်င္ ေမတၱာပို ့ေန၊ ဂုဏ္ေတာ္ ပြားေန
ပုတီးစိပ္ေန၊ တရားမွတ္ေန၊ ဥစၥာမရလွ်င္ ကုသိုိလ္ရရမည္။ ကုသိုလ္ရတာ အျမတ္မဟုတ္လား။
ကေလးဘဝမွာ ပထမမူႀကိဳ၊ ေနာက္ေတာ့ မူလတန္း၊ အလယ္တန္း၊ အထက္တန္း၊ တကၠသိုလ္အသီးသီးမွာ ပညာေတြ
သင္ စာေတြတတ္၊စာေတြက်က္၊ စာေမးပဲြေတြ ေျဖနွင့္ ႀကိဳးစားပမ္းစားအားထုတ္ေနရျခင္းသည္ ဘဝတိုက္ပဲြဟုဆိုလိုက
ဆိုနိုင္သည္။ ေက်ာင္းျပီးသြားေတာ့ ကိုယ္ဝါသနာ ပါရာ ကိုယ္သန္ရာ သို ့မဟုတ္ ဘဝအက်ိဳးေပးအရ ေရာက္ရာေနရာ၊
က်ရာတာဝန္တို ့ကို ထမ္းေဆာင္ေနရျခင္းသည္ ဘဝတိုက္ပဲြဟု သတ္မွတ္လိုက သတ္မွတ္နိုင္သည္။
တခ်ိဳ ့က ဆရာဝန္၊တခ်ိဳ့က အင္ဂ်င္နီယာ တခ်ိဳ့က ေက်ာင္းဆရာ၊ တခ်ိဳ ့က ကုန္သည္၊ တခ်ိဳ ့ကပဲြစား၊ တခ်ိဳ ့က
စာေရးဆရာ၊ တခ်ိဳ ့က သရုပ္ေဆာင္ စသည္ ဆိုင္ရာလုပ္ငန္းခြင္မွာ ရုန္းကန္ လႈပ္ရွားေနရျခင္းသည္ ဘဝတိုက္ပဲြ
ပင္ျဖစ္သည္။ တိုက္ပဲြဟူသည္ တိုက္ကတည္းက အနိုင္ရလိုသျဖင့္ တိုက္ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။ သို ့ေသာ္ နိုင္တာလည္းရိွမည္။
ရံႈးတာလည္းရိွမည္။ တခ်ိဳ ့နိုင္ ၊ တခ်ိဳ ့ရံႈး၊ အနိုင္နွင့္ အရႈံး ေရာျပြမ္းေနတာလည္းရိွမည္။ နိုင္သလိုလိုနွင့္ ရံႈး၊ ရံႈးသလိုလို
နွင့္ နိုင္ ဆိုတာေတြလည္းရိွမည္။
ဘဝဆိုတာ ရန္ကုန္ျမိဳ ့မွာ ဘတ္စ္ကားစီးရတာနွင့္ေတာ့ တူသည္။ ညေနရံုးဆင္းခ်ိန္ ဆူးေလဘုရားလမ္းမွတ္တိုင္မွာ
ေနအိမ္အသီးသီးသို ့ျပန္ႀကမည့္ ျမိဳ ါနယ္ အသီးသီးက ခရီးသည္ေတြသည္ အိမ္ျပန္လိုေဇာနွင့္ ဆိုင္ရာဘတ္စ္ကားေတြ
ေပၚကို တိုးျပီးေတာ့တက္ႀကရသည္။ တိုက္ခ်င္ရာတိုက္၊ တိုက္ျပီးေတာ့ တက္ႀကရသည္။ ဘဝဆိုတာကလည္း ဘတ္စ္ကား
ခရီးသည္ေတြပမာသာ ျဖစ္သည္။ တိုးျပီးေတာ့ တက္ေနႀကရသည္။ ဒီေတာ့ ဘဝဆိုတာ တိုက္ပဲြ အျမဲရိွသည္ဆိုေသာ
စကားက ျဖစ္နိုင္ေခ်ရိွသည္။
တိုက္ပဲြအသီးသီးမွာ တခ်ိဳ ့က အျပင္ပန္းမွာ ေအာင္ျမင္သည္၊ နိုင္သည္ဟု ယူဆရေသာ္လည္း အတြင္းပိုင္းမွာ
ရံႈးေနတာ ရိွေနတတ္သည္။ တခ်ိဳ ့က အျပင္ပန္းမွာ ရံႈးေနသည္ဟု ထင္ရေသာ္လည္း အတြင္းပိုင္းမွာ ေအာင္ျမင္တာ၊
နိုင္တာေတြလည္း ရိွတတ္သည္။ လူအမ်ားစုကေတာ့ ေအာင္ျမင္်မႈ၊ က်ဆုံးမႈ၊ အနိုင္နွင့္အရံႈးကို အျပင္ပန္းႀကည့္ျပီး
ေတာ့သာ ဆုံးျဖတ္ႀကသည္။ တကယ္ေတာ့ အျပင္ပန္းႀကည့္ျပီးေတာ့ အနိုင္နွင့္ အရံႈးဆုံးျဖတ္ျခင္းသည္ မွန္ကန္တိက်
ေသာ ဆုံးျဖတ္ခ်က္ေတာ့ မျဖစ္နိုင္ေခ်။
အေလာင္းေတာ္သည္ ဘဝတစ္ခုမွာ ကုဒါလပဣိတဟူေသာ နာမည္နွင့္ ရေသ့ ျဖစ္ခဲ့သည္။ အေလာင္းေတာ္သည္
သူ လူဝတ္ေႀကာင္တုန္းက သိမ္းဆည္းထားေသာ ေျပာင္းဖူးဆန္တစ္စလယ္နွင့္ ေပါက္တူးတစ္ေခ်ာင္းအေပၚ သံေယာဇဥ္
မျပတ္လို ့ ရေသ့ဝတ္လိုက္၊လူျပန္ထြက္လိုက္နွင့္ သံသရာလည္ေနသည္။ လူျပန္ထြက္တာ ေျခာက္ႀကိမ္ေျမာက္ရိွသြားသည္။
ေနာက္ဆုံးအႀကိမ္မွာ အေလာင္းေတာ္က သံေယာဇဥ္ျဖတ္လိုက္သည္။ ေျပာင္းဖူးဆန္ထုပ္နွင့္ ေပါက္တူးကို ဂဂၤါျမစ္ထဲ ပစ္
ခ်လိုက္သည္။ ပစ္ခ်လိုက္ျပီးေနာက္ အေလာင္းေတာ္က “ေအာင္ျပီ...........နိုင္ျပီ ” ဟု အသံကုန္သုံးႀကိမ္တိုင္တိုင္ ေအာ္
ဟစ္ ေႀကြးေႀကာ္လိုက္သည္။
ထိုအခိုက္ ထိုအနီးမွာ ဗာရာဏသီမင္းကလည္း တိုက္ပဲြေအာင္နိုင္ျပန္လာျပီး ေအာင္ပဲြခံေနသည္။ အေလာင္းေတာ္၏
ေအာင္ျပီ....... နိုင္ျပီဟူေသာ အသံကိုႀကားရလို ့ အက်ိဳးအေႀကာင္း ေခၚယူေမးျမန္းသည္။ အေလာင္းေတာ္က သူ ့ ့့့ဘဝျဖစ္ေႀကာင္းကုန္စင္ကို သံေတာ္ဦးတင္ျပီး “အရွင္မင္းႀကီး။ အရွင္မင္းႀကီး ေအာင္တယ္၊ နိုင္တယ္ဆိုတာ အျပင္အပ
က ရန္သူကို ေအာင္နိုင္တာပဲ။ အကၽြနုပ္ေအာင္နိုင္တာက အတြင္းရန္ကို ေအာင္နိုင္တာ။ အရွင္မင္းျမတ္ အျပင္အပက ရန္သူ
ကို ေအာင္နိုင္တယ္ဆိုတာ အခန္ ့မသင့္ရင္ကိုယ္က ျပန္ရံႈးရဦးမယ္။ အတြင္းရန္ကို ေအာင္နိုင္တာကမွ ေအာင္နိုင္မႈစစ္စစ္
ျဖစ္ပါတယ္” ဟု ေလွ်ာက္တင္ေလသည္။
မိမိတို ့အျပင္အပ ဘဝတိုက္ပဲြမွာ ေအာင္ျမင္တာေတြ အနိုင္ရတာေတြ ရိွတယ္။ ေက်ာင္းသားဘဝမွာ စာေမးပဲြေအာင္ႀက
သည္။ ဆရာဝန္၊ အင္ဂ်င္နီယာ စသည္ျဖစ္ေတာ့ ပညာေရးမွာ ေအာင္ျမင္သည္။ လုပ္ငန္းရွင္ႀကီးျဖစ္ေတာ့ စီးပြာယးေရးမွာ
ေအာင္ျမင္သည္။ စာသင္၊ စာျပ၊ ေဆးကု၊ သရုပ္ေဆာင္ စသည့္ ကိုယ့္လုပ္ရပ္ ကို အမ်ားက အသိအမွတ္ျပဳအားေပးႀက
ေတာ့ ကိုယ့္ကိုယ္ကိုယ္ ေအာင္ျမင္သည္ ဟု ဂုဏ္ယူႀကသည္။ အျခားျပိဳင္ရဆိုင္္ရ ထိ္္ပ္တိုက္ေတြ ့ရေသာပြဲေတြမွာ
ေအာင္ျမင္မႈ၊ အနိုင္ရမႈေတြသည္ အမွန္ေတာ့ အားရေက်နပ္ဖြယ္ေကာင္းေသာ အာမခံခ်က္ရိွေသာ ေအာင္နိုင္မႈမ်ိဳးေတာ့
မဟုတ္ေသးေခ်။
ဘုရားလက္ထက္ေတာ္က သူေဌးသမီးကုဣလေကသီသည္ ႀကံႀကံ ဖန္ဖန္ သူသတ္ကုန္းသို ့ သတ္ဖို ့ရန္ထတ္လာေသာ
ရာဇဝတ္သားသူခိုးကိုမွ စဲြစဲြလမ္းလမ္းခ်စ္မိရွာသည္။ သူခိုးဆိုေတာ့ သူခိုးအက်င့္ကမေပ်ာက္။ သူခိုးႀကံပဲႀကံသည္။
ကဣလေကသီကို ေတာင္ေပၚညာေခၚသြား လက္ဝတ္ရတနာေတြကို ခၽြတ္ယူကာ ေတာင္ေအာက္တြန္းခ် သတ္ဖို ့ႀကံစည္
သည္။ လူတစ္ေယာက္လုံးေတာင္ ရထားျပီးမွ အားလုံးကို ပိုင္ဆိုင္ေနျပီမဟုတ္လား။ ဘာလိုေသးေတာ့လို ့လဲ။ ေတာ္ေတာ္
တုံးသည့္ေကာင္ပဲ။ လူဆိုးသူခိုးကို ကယ္ရုံတင္မက ယုံမွတ္ကာ ပုံအပ္မိေတာ့ ကုဣလေကသီ ဒုကၡေရာက္ရရွာသည္။
ဝ႗္ေႀကြးေႀကာင့္လား၊ ေရစက္ေႀကာင့္လား၊ တစ္ခုခုေတာ့ တစ္ခုခု။
ကုဣလေကသီကလည္း ခပ္ည့ံညံ့မိန္းမေတာ့မဟုတ္။ မာယာနွင့္ဖ်ားေယာင္းျပီး သူက ဦးေအာင္တြန္းခ်ပစ္လိုက္သည္။
ေတာင္ေစာင့္နတ္က ကုဣေကသီကို ပညာရွိပါေပသည္ဟု ခ်ီးက်ဴးစကားဆိုသည္။ ကုဣလေကသီလည္း ရွက္ရွက္နွင့္
အိမ္ကိုမျပန္ရဲေတာ့။ ေျခဦးတည့္ရာသြားရင္းက ပုရဗိုဇ္မေတြေက်ာင္းေရာက္၊ ပုရဗိုဇ္မဝတ္၊ ေနာက္ေတာ့ ဘိကၡဳနီမဝတ္ျပီး
ရဟႏၱာမႀကီးျဖစ္သြားသည္။ ဘဝဆိုတာ အဆိုးႀကီးဆိုးျပီးလွ်င္ အေကာင္းႀကီးေကာင္းတတ္သည္။ သို ့ေသာ္ လူတိုင္းေတာ့
လည္း ဟုတ္မည္မထင္။
တရားသဘင္မွာ ရဟန္းေတာ္ေတြ စပ္မိစပ္ရာေျပာႀကေတာ့ ကုဣလေကသီ ေထရီမသည္ တကယ့္စစ္ပဲြႀကီးတစ္ပဲြကို အနိုင္
ႏဲႊခဲ့တာပဲဟု ခ်ီးက်ဴးစကားေျပာႀကသည္။ ရဟန္းေတြစကားဘုရားႀကားရေတာ့ “ရဟန္းတို ့ အျပင္အပကရန္သူေတြကို
ေအာင္နိုင္တယ္ဆိုတာ စစ္မွန္တဲ့ ေအာင္နိုင္ျခင္းမဟုတ္ဘူး။ မိမိကိုယ္တြင္းက ကိေလသာရန္သူကိုနိုင္မွသာ စစ္မွန္တဲ့နိုင္ျခင္း
ေခၚတယ္။ စစ္ေျမျပင္မွာ ရန္သူစစ္သည္ေတာ္ဆယ္သိန္းကို နိုင္လိုက္ျခင္းဟာ ျမင့္ျမတ္တဲ့နိုင္ျခင္းမဟုတ္ဘူး။ တစ္ေယာက္
တည္းေသာ မိမိကိုယ္ကိုနိုင္မွသာ ျမင့္ျမတ္တဲ့နိုင္ျခင္းျဖစ္တယ္။ ကိုယ့္ကိုယ္ကိုယ္နိုင္မွ တကယ့္သူရဲေကာင္းစစ္စစ္ပဲ” ဟု
မိန္ ့ေတာ္မူသည္။
ဘဝဟူသည္ တိုက္ပဲြျဖစ္သည္။ သို ့ေသာ္ မိမိတို ့တိုက္ေနတာက အျပင္ေလာကကို မ်က္နွာမူျပီးတိုက္ေနႀကသည္။
တကယ့္တိုက္ပဲြစစ္စစ္က မိမိကိုယ္တြင္းမွာသာ ျဖစ္သည္။ မိမိ အဇ်ၥတၱကိုယ္တြင္းကို မ်က္နွာမူျပီးတိုက္ပဲြဝင္ရမည္။ ကိုယ္
တြင္းက ကိေလသာရန္သူကို ရွာေဖြျပီး ေခ်မႈန္းရမည္။ အျပင္ရန္ကို ေခ်မႈန္းေနလို ့ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးရမည္မဟုတ္။ အတြင္းရန္
ကို ေခ်မႈန္းနိုင္မွသာ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးစစ္စစ္မွန္မွန္ရရိွလိမ့္မည္။
ဘဝတိုက္ပဲြမွာ ပညာေရး၊ စီးပြားေရး၊ အိမ္ေထာင္ေရး၊ လူမႈေရး၊ နိုင္ငံေရး စသည္ဆိုင္ရာေအာင္ျမင္မႈေတြ ရိွႀကသည္။ အနိင္
ရတာေတြ မ်ားခဲ့ပါျပီး။ သို ့ေသာ္ ကိုယ့္ကိုယ္ကိုယ္ေတာ့ မနိုင္ႀကေသးပါ။ ကိုယ့္စိတ္ကိုယ္ေတာ့ မနိုင္ႀကေသးပါ။ ကိုယ့္ေလာဘ၊
ကိုယ့္ေဒါသ၊ ကိုယ့္အတၱ စတာေတြေတာ့ နိုင္ေအာင္မတိုက္နိုင္ႀကေသးပါ။ ကိုယ့္ကိုယ္ကိုယ္နိုင္မွ၊ ကိုယ့္စိတ္ကိုယ္ နိုင္မွ၊
ကိုယ့္ေလာဘ၊ ေဒါသ၊ အတၱ၊ မာန ေတြကိုနိုင္မွ တကယ့္ေအာင္နိုင္သူ၊ ေအာင္ျမင္သူျဖစ္ပါလိမ့္မည္။ ေရႊဘိုျမိဳ ့ အဝင္
မဟာေအာင္ေျမဘုရားဝင္းအတြင္း၌ အေလာင္းဘုရားစစ္မခ်ီခင္ အျမဲနင္းခဲ့ေသာ မဟာေအာင္ေျမဟူ၍ ယခုတိုင္ရိွသည္။
ဗုဒၶအလိုအရေတာ့ တကယ့္မဟာေအာင္ေျမသည္ မိမိတို ့နွလုံးအိမ္အတြင္းမွာသာရိွသည္။ မိမိ၏ စစ္မွန္ေသာေအာင္ပဲြကို
မိမိ၏နွလုံးသားအတြင္းမွာသာ ရွာေဖြ ေတြ ့ရိွနိုင္သည္။
အရွင္သံဝရလကၤာရ
ဓမၼပိယဆရာေတာ္
၂၀၀၉-ေမလထုတ္-အေတြးအျမင္(အမွတ္-၂၀၆)မွ ကူးယူေဖာ္ျပသည္။
Thursday, July 9, 2009
UNSG’s Remarks on Myanmar to Diplomatic Missions, UN Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations
ျမန္မာဘာသာျပန္ကို အဂၤလိပ္ဘာသာေနာက္တြင္ဆက္လက္ဖတ္ရႈနိုင္ပါသည္
(ဘာသာျပန္၍ေမးပို ့ေပးေသာအန္ကယ္ဦးေမာင္ေမာင္လွႀကိဳင္အားေက်းဇူးအထူးတင္ရိွပါသည္)
Excellencies,
Distinguished guests and colleagues
Ladies and Gentlemen,
This is my second visit to Myanmar in just over a year. Both visits have been at critical times for the country's future.
My first visit was in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. This devastating natural disaster, which took so many lives and created so much hardship, touched hearts across the globe. In Myanmar's moment of need, the world responded generously.
I want to personally thank everyone here today for your remarkable contributions to the relief and recovery effort.
You have saved lives, rejuvenated communities and made it possible for many thousands of people to reclaim their livelihoods. You have helped Myanmar to overcome adversity. It is important that this work continues.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I felt the tragedy of Cyclone Nargis deeply -- as a fellow Asian and as Secretary-General.
I am Asia's second Secretary-General. The first was Myanmar''s U Thant. I revere his memory. I also recall his wise words.
U Thant said: “The worth of the individual human being is the most unique and precious of all our assets and must be the beginning and end of all our efforts. Governments, systems, ideologies and institutions come and go, but humanity remains.”
This is why I have returned.
As Secretary-General, I attach the highest importance to helping the people of this country to achieve their legitimate aspirations.
The United Nations works for people – their rights, their well-being, their dignity. It is not an option. It is our responsibility.
I have come to show the unequivocal shared commitment of the United Nations to the people of Myanmar.
I am here today to say: Myanmar – you are not alone.
We want to work with you for a united, peaceful, prosperous, democratic and modern Myanmar.
We want to help you rise from poverty.
We want to work with you so your country can take its place as a respected and responsible member of the international community.
We want to help you achieve national reconciliation, durable peace and sustainable development.
But, let me emphasize: neither peace nor development can thrive without democracy and respect for human rights.
Myanmar is no exception.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The challenges are many. But they are not insurmountable.
We know from experience that securing Myanmar's peaceful, democratic and prosperous future is a complex process.
None of Myanmar's challenges can be solved on their own. Peace, development and human rights are closely inter-related.
Failure to address them with equal attention will risk undermining the prospects for democracy, durable peace and prosperity.
However, we also know that where there is a genuine will for dialogue and reconciliation, all obstacles can be overcome.
The question today is this: how much longer can Myanmar afford to wait for national reconciliation, democratic transition and full respect for human rights?
The cost of delay will be counted in wasted lives, lost opportunities and prolonged isolation from the international community.
Let me be clear: all the people of Myanmar must work in the national interest.
I said this yesterday when I met with representatives of Myanmar's registered political parties and with those armed groups that have chosen to observe a cease-fire. I encouraged them respectively to honour their commitments to the democratic process and peace.
Nonetheless, the primary responsibility lies with the Government to move the country towards its stated goals of national reconciliation and democracy.
Failure to do so will prevent the people of Myanmar from realizing their full potential.
Failure to do so will deny the people of Myanmar their right to live in dignity and to pursue better standards of life in larger freedom.
These principles lie at the core of the United Nations Charter, whose opening words are “We the peoples”.
The founding Constitution of independent Myanmar echoes these noble words. We must work together to ensure that Myanmar's future embodies these principles too.
With this in mind, I bring three messages.
First, respect for human dignity is the precondition for peace and development everywhere.
Myanmar was one of the first United Nations Member States to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It subscribed early on to the consensus that respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms is indispensable to political, economic and social progress.
Unfortunately, that commitment has not been matched in deed. Myanmar's human rights record remains a matter of grave concern.
The Government has articulated its goals as stability, national reconciliation and democracy.
The upcoming election –the first in twenty years – must be inclusive, participatory and transparent if it is to be credible.
Myanmar's way forward must be rooted in respect for human rights
This is why I say that all political prisoners, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, should be released without delay.
When I met General Than Shwe yesterday and today, I asked to visit Ms. Suu Kyi. I am deeply disappointed that he refused.
I believe the government of Myanmar has lost a unique opportunity to show its commitment to a new era of political openness.
Allowing a visit to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi would have been an important symbol of the government's willingness to embark on the kind of meaningful engagement that will be essential if the elections in 2010 are to be seen as credible.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi must be allowed to participate in the political process without further delay.
Indeed, all the citizens of Myanmar must be given the opportunity to contribute fully to the future of this country.
National reconciliation cannot be complete without the free and active participation of all who seek to contribute.
The country must embark on a process of genuine dialogue that includes all concerned parties, all ethnic groups and all minorities.
People must be free to debate and to engage in political dialogue, and they must have free access to the information that will help them participate meaningfully in the democratic process.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Any transition is difficult. Myanmar has already undergone transitions from sovereign kingdom, to occupied colony, and now independent State.
This history carries a twin legacy of armed conflict and political deadlock, including recent painful events: the repression of demonstrators in 1988, the cancellation of the 1990 election results, and the clampdown on peaceful dissent that continues to this day.
At the same time, there have been some positive efforts that should be recognized.
Although still fragile, the cease-fire agreements between the Government and armed groups have reduced the level of conflict. The United Nations has wide-ranging experience in making such gains irreversible.
Sovereignty, territorial integrity and national unity are legitimate concerns for any government.
We contend that opening and broadening the political space is the best way to ensure that each group and each individual becomes part of the greater collective project.
The military, all political parties, ethnic minority groups, civil society, and indeed every son and daughter of Myanmar has a role to play in this country's transition.
Only mutual compromise, respect and understanding can lay the foundations for durable peace, national reconciliation and democracy.
My second message is on addressing the humanitarian needs of Myanmar's people.
I am glad I have been able to return to see the progress made in the Irrawaddy Delta. The loss of some 130,000 people was tragic, but the rebuilding I saw today was impressive.
The tragedy showed the resilience of the people of Myanmar. It also demonstrated that people throughout the world care deeply about Myanmar and its people.
Above all, the response to Cyclone Nargis proved the value of engagement over isolation.
The unprecedented cooperation between Myanmar, the United Nations and ASEAN through the Tripartite Core Group, with the support of the donor community, has demonstrated that humanitarian imperatives and the principles of sovereignty do not conflict.
Humanitarian assistance -- in Myanmar as elsewhere -- should never be held hostage to political considerations. We can and must work together to ensure access to humanitarian and development assistance to all those in Myanmar who need it.
This brings me to my third message. It is time for Myanmar to unleash its economic potential.
Myanmar sits in the middle of Asia's economic miracle. Harnessing Myanmar to the rapid advances taking place around it is the surest way to raise living standards.
I welcome the Government's policy of opening up to outside trade and investment, and its efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, control HIV, combat human trafficking and curtail opium production.
But the reality is that millions continue to live in poverty. Standards of living in Myanmar remain among the lowest in Asia.
The people of Myanmar need jobs, they need food security and they need access to health care.
We must work to ensure that the people of Myanmar can benefit from and contribute to the regional and global economy.
We must recognize that the region and the world have much to gain from a stable, prosperous and democratic Myanmar. We must work together for that goal.
The Government of Myanmar must seize the moment.
It must take advantage of the opportunities that the international community is prepared to offer to the people of Myanmar.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I came here as a friend.
My duty is to uphold the ideals and principles of the United Nations Charter.
My role is to encourage all of you – the Government, political parties, ethnic groups, civil society – to move forward together as one people and one nation.
Nothing is insurmountable or impossible when the people's interest is placed above divisions.
The region and the world are changing fast. Myanmar only stands to gain from engagement -- and from embarking on its own change.
The Government of Myanmar has repeatedly stated that cooperation with the United Nations is the cornerstone of the country's foreign policy.
We ask it to match deeds with words.
The more Myanmar works in partnership with the United Nations to respond to its people's needs and aspirations, the more it affirms its sovereignty.
Similarly it is incumbent on the international community as whole to work together to help Myanmar meet our shared goals: a united, peaceful, prosperous and democratic future, with full respect for the human rights of all the country's people.
Kyae zoo tin bar tae.
ဂုဏ္သေရ႐ွိ လူႀကီးမင္းမ်ား၊ ဧည့္သည္ေတာ္မ်ားႏွင့္ေရာင္းရင္းမိတ္ေဆြမ်ားခင္ဗ်ား
ဒါဟာ တႏွစ္ေက်ာ္အတြင္း ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို ဒုတိယအႀကိမ္ေျမာက္လာေရာက္ျခင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ႏွစ္ႀကိမ္စလုံး ဟာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕အနာဂတ္အတြက္ အေရးႀကီးတဲ့အခ်ိန္မ်ားပင္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ပထမ ကၽြန္ေတာ္လာေရာက္တဲ့အခ်ိန္ဟာ နာဂစ္မုန္တုိင္း၀င္ေရာက္ၿပီးခ်ိန္အတြင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီ ေၾကာက္မက္ ဘြယ္သဘာ၀ေဘးအႏၱရာယ္ဟာ အသက္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာကုိယူသြားခဲ့တယ္၊ ၾကမ္းတမ္းတဲ့အေျခအေနေတြကုိလဲ ဖန္တီးခဲ့တယ္၊ တကမၻာလုံးရဲ႕ ႏွလုံးသည္းပြတ္ေတြကုိလဲခံစားရေအာင္လႈပ္ကုိင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕လုိအပ္ ေနခ်ိန္မွာ ကမၻာက ရက္ရက္ေရာေရာ တုန္႔ျပန္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ကယ္ဆယ္ေရးနဲ႔ ျပန္လည္ထူေထာင္ရန္ႀကိဳးပမ္းခ်က္ျဖစ္တဲ့ သင္တုိ႔ရဲ႕ ထင္႐ွားတဲ့ ပ့ံပုိးကူညီမႈမ်ားအတြက္ အား လုံးကုိ ေက်းဇူးတင္႐ိွပါေၾကာင္း ဒီေန႔ ဒီေနရာကေန ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေရးအရ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ ေျပာၾကားလုိပါတယ္။
သင္တုိ႔ဟာ အသက္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာကုိကယ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္၊ လူ႔အသုိင္းအ၀ုိင္းကုိျပန္လည္႐ွင္သန္လန္းဆန္းေစပါတယ္၊ ေထာင္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာေသာျပည္သူေတြကုိ သူတုိ႔ရဲ႕ ေနထုိင္မႈဘ၀မ်ားအား ျပန္လည္အသက္ဆက္ေစႏိုင္ခဲ့ပါ တယ္။
ဂုဏ္သေရ႐ိွလူႀကီးမင္းမ်ားခင္ဗ်ား
အာ႐ွတုိက္သားတေယာက္အေနနဲ႔ေရာ အေထြေထြအတြင္းေရးမႉးခ်ဳပ္အေနနဲ႔ပါ နာဂစ္မုန္တုိင္းဒဏ္ကုိ ေၾက ကြဲစြာခံစားရမိပါတယ္။
ကၽြန္ေတာ္ဟာ အာ႐ွတုိက္ရဲ႕ ဒုတိယေျမာက္အေထြေထြအတြင္းေရးမႉးခ်ဳပ္ပါ။ ပထမေျမာက္ပုဂၢဳိလ္ကေတာ့ ျမန္ မာႏိုင္ငံသား ဦးသန္႔ပါ။ သူ႔ရဲ႕မွတ္ဉာဏ္ကုိ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ ျမတ္ႏိုးၾကည္ညိဳပါတယ္။ သူရဲ႕ပညာ႐ိွစကားကုိလဲ အ မွတ္ရပါတယ္။
ဦးသန္႔ကဆိုမိန္႔ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ “လူသားတဦးခ်င္းစီရဲ႕တန္ဘုိးဟာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ရဲ႕အဘုိးတန္ပိုင္ဆိုင္မႈေတြအနက္ အလြန္ထူးျခားၿပီး အလြန္တန္ဘုိး႐ိွလွပါတယ္။ အစုိးရမ်ား၊ စံနစ္မ်ား၊ အေတြးအေခၚမ်ားနဲ႔ အသင္းအပင္းအ ဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ား ၀င္လိုက္ ထြက္လုိက္နဲ႔ ျဖစ္ေနေပမင့္ လူသားဂုဏ္ရည္ကေတာ့ ဆက္လက္တည္႐ိွ ေနမွာပါ” တဲ့။
ဒါေၾကာင့္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ျပန္လာခဲ့တာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
အေထြေထြအတြင္းေရးမႉးခ်ဳပ္အေနနဲ႔ သူတုိ႔ရဲ႕ တရား၀င္ဆႏၵျပင္းျပမႈမ်ားရ႐ိွေစႏိုင္ရန္အတြက္ ဒီႏိုင္ငံျပည္သူ မ်ားအား ကူညီႏိုင္ေရးကုိ အေရးအႀကီးဆုံးအျဖစ္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ ဦးထိပ္ပန္ဆင္သယ္ေဆာင္လာပါတယ္။
ကုလသမဂၢဟာ လူအမ်ားရဲ႕ အခြင့္အေရးမ်ား၊ ခ်မ္းသာသုခမ်ား၊ ဂုဏ္အ႐ိွန္အ၀ါမ်ားအတြက္ ေဆာင္႐ြက္ေပး ေနပါတယ္။ ဒါဟာ စိတ္ႀကိဳက္ေ႐ြးခ်ယ္လုပ္ေပးေနျခင္း မဟုတ္ပါ။ ဒါဟာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ရဲ႕တာ၀န္ပုိင္းပါ။
ကုလသမဂၢရဲ႕ ျပတ္သားၿပီးတာ၀န္ခြဲေ၀ကာ ျပဌာန္းႏွစ္ႁမႇဳပ္ေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္းကို ျမန္မာျပည္သူမ်ားအား ျပသ ရန္ကၽြန္ေတာ္လာေရာက္တာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ဒီေန႔ ဒီေနရာမွာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ေျပာပါရေစ။ ျမန္မာ- သင္သည္ အထီးက်န္မဟုတ္ပါ။
စည္းလုံးညီၫြတ္တဲ့၊ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းတဲ့၊ ေပါႂကြယ္၀တဲ့ ေခတ္သစ္ဒီမုိကေရစီ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြက္ သင္တုိ႔နဲ႔အတူ အလုပ္လုပ္ရန္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ လုိလားပါတယ္။
ဆင္းရဲတြင္းမွ႐ုန္းထႏိုင္ရန္ သင္တုိ႔ကုိကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ ကူညီလုိပါတယ္။
ႏိုင္ငံတကာအသုိင္းအ၀န္းရဲ႕ ေလးစားခံရတဲ့ တာ၀န္သိတဲ့အဖြဲ႕၀င္ေနရာကုိ သင္တုိ႔ႏိုင္ငံရယူႏိုင္ရန္အတြက္ သင္တုိ႔နဲ႔အတူ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ လုပ္ေဆာင္လုိပါတယ္။
အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရး၊ တည္တံ့တဲ့ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးနဲ႔ ေရ႐ွည္ခံ ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးတုိးတက္မႈမ်ားအတြက္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ တုိ႔ သင္တုိ႔ကုိကူညီလုိပါတယ္။
ဒါေပမင့္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္အေလးအနက္ျပဳေျပာပါရေစ - ဒီမုိကေရစီနဲ႔ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးေလးစားလိုက္နာမႈမ႐ိွလွ်င္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေသာ္၄င္း၊ ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးတုိးတက္မႈေသာ္၄င္း ႐ွင္သန္မွာမဟုတ္ပါဘူး။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဟာ ခၽြင္းခ်က္မဟုတ္ပါ။
ဂုဏ္သေရ႐ိွလူႀကီးမင္းမ်ားခင္ဗ်ား
စိန္ေခၚမႈေတြက အမ်ားႀကီးပါ။ ဒါေပမင့္ ေက်ာ္လႊားလုိ႔မရႏိုင္တာေတာ့ မဟုတ္ပါ။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းတဲ့၊ ဒီမုိကေရစီစံနစ္႐ိွတဲ့ သာယာ၀ေျပာ ေပါႂကြယ္၀တဲ့အနာဂတ္ကုိ ကာကြယ္ထိန္းသိမ္း ရမဲ့ကိစၥဟာ ႐ႈပ္ေထြးတဲ့လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း အေတြ႕အႀကဳံမ်ားအရ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ သိ႐ိွရပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြက္ မည္သည့္ စိန္ေခၚမႈကုိမဆုိ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံခ်ည္းသက္သက္ မေျဖ႐ွင္းႏိုင္ပါ။ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး၊ ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးတုိးတက္ေရးနဲ႔ လူအခြင့္အေရးဟာ အျပန္အလွန္ ႏြယ္႐ွက္ ဆက္စပ္ေနပါတယ္။
ဒီအခ်က္ေတြကုိ တူညီတဲ့အာ႐ုံစုိက္ အေလးထားမႈမ႐ိွပဲ ေျပာဆုိေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္းဟာ ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး၊ တည္တ့ံ တဲ့ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးနဲ႔ သာယာ၀ေျပာေရးတုိ႔ရဲ႕ အလားအလာေကာင္းျခင္းကုိ ေမွးမွိန္ ေသးသိမ္ေစပါတယ္။
ဒါေပမင့္၊ ေတြ႕ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးေရးနဲ႔ျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရးအတြက္ စစ္မွန္တဲ့ဆႏၵ႐ိွမယ္ဆုိရင္ အခက္အခဲအားလုံး ကုိ ေက်ာ္လႊားေအာင္ျမင္မွာပါ။
‘အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရး၊ ဒီမုိကေရစီအသြင္ကူးေျပာင္းေရးနဲ႔ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးကုိ အျပည့္အ၀ အေလးထားေရးအတြက္ ေစာင့္ဆုိင္းဘုိ႔ ျမန္မာဟာအခ်ိန္ဘယ္ေလာက္ၾကာၾကာႀကိဳးပမ္းႏိုင္မွာလဲ’ ဆုိတာဟာ ယေန႔ေမးခြန္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ကၽြန္ေတာ္ ႐ွင္းလင္းေျပာျပပါရေစ။ အမ်ဳိးသားေရးအတြက္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသားအားလုံး ေဆာင္ရြက္ရမွာျဖစ္ပါ တယ္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ မွတ္ပုံတင္ထားတဲ့ႏိုင္ငံေရးပါတီမ်ားမွကုိယ္စားလွယ္မ်ားနဲ႔ အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္စဲေရးေလ့လာ ေနတဲ့ လက္နက္ကုိင္အုပ္စုမ်ားနဲ႔ ယမန္ေန႔ကေတြ႕ခဲ့စဥ္မွာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ေျပာခဲ့တာပါ။ ဒီမိုကေရစီလုပ္ငန္းစဥ္နဲ႔ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအတြက္ သူတုိ႔ရဲ႕ ျပဌာန္းႀကိဳးပမ္းမႈကုိ ဂုဏ္ျပဳရန္အတြက္ သီးျခားစီ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ ေျပာၾကားအားေပး ခဲ့တာပါ။
သုိ႔ေသာ္၊ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကုိ ေျမာ္မွန္းထားတဲ့ အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရးနဲ႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ရည္မွန္းခ်က္ပန္းတိုင္ မ်ားကိုေရာက္႐ိွရန္ အဓိကတာ၀န္မွာ ႏိုင္ငံ့အစုိးရေပၚက်ေရာက္လ်က္႐ိွေနပါတယ္။
ဒီတာ၀န္မ်ားကုိေက်ပြန္စြာမေဆာင္႐ြက္ႏိုင္လွ်င္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသားမ်ားအား သူတုိ႔ရဲ႕ ‘စြမ္းရည္ အျပည့္အ၀ကုိ နား လည္သေဘာေပါက္ျခင္း’ မွ ဟန္႔တားထားရာေရာက္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။
ဒီတာ၀န္မ်ားကုိေက်ပြန္စြာမေဆာင္႐ြက္ႏိုင္လွ်င္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသားမ်ားရဲ႕ ဂုဏ္သေရ႐ိွစြာေနထုိင္ႏိုင္ခြင့္နဲ႔ ပုိမုိ လြတ္လပ္မႈျဖင့္ သာလြန္ေကာင္းမြန္တဲ့ လူမႈအဆင့္အတန္းမ်ားခံစားခြင့္ကုိ ျငင္းပယ္ရာေရာက္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။
ဒီ အေျခခံစည္းမ်ဥ္းမ်ားဟာ ‘ကၽြႏု္ပ္တုိ႔သည္ ျပည္သူမ်ားျဖစ္ၾကသည္’ ဆုိတဲ့စကားမ်ားျဖင့္ အဖြင့္နိဒါန္းခ်ီထား တဲ့ ကုလသမဂၢပဋိဉာဥ္စာတမ္းရဲ႕ ေက်ာ႐ိုးအတြင္းမွာတည္႐ိွေနပါတယ္။
ဒီ မြန္ျမတ္တဲ့စကားမ်ားကုိ လြတ္လပ္တဲ့ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံရဲ႕ စတင္ေရးဆြဲခဲ့တဲ့ ဖြဲ႕စည္းအုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ပုံအေျခခံဥပေဒကလဲ ပဲ့တင္ထပ္ထားပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕အနာဂတ္မွာ ဒီစည္းမ်ဥ္းစည္းကမ္းမ်ားကုိ အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ဘုိ႔ ေသခ်ာေစေရးအတြက္လဲ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ အတူတကြလုပ္ေဆာင္ၾကရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ဒီအခ်က္ကုိ ကြန္ေတာ္စိတ္ထဲမွာထည့္ထားၿပီး အမွာစကား ၃ ခုကို သယ္ေဆာင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ပထမဦးစြာအေနနဲ႔ ဘယ္ေဒသမွာမဆုိ လူသားဂုဏ္ရည္ကုိ အေလးထားေလးစားျခင္းဟာ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးနဲ႔ ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳး တုိးတက္ေရးအတြက္ မ႐ိွမျဖစ္လုိအပ္ခ်က္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဟာ အျပည္ျပည္ဆုိင္ရာလူ႔အခြင့္အေရးေၾကညာစာတမ္းကုိ ပထမ စတင္လက္ခံခဲ့တဲ့ ကုလသမဂၢ အဖြဲ႕၀င္ႏိုင္ငံမ်ားမွာ တႏိုင္ငံအပါအ၀င္ျဖစ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ႏိုင္ငံေရး၊ စီးပြါးေရးနဲ႔ လူမႈေရးတုိးတက္မႈမ်ားအတြက္ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးနဲ႔ အေျခခံလြတ္လပ္မႈမ်ားအား ေလးစား ဘုိ႔ အမ်ားဆုံးျဖတ္ခ်က္ဆႏၵကို ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံက ေစာစီးစြာ ေထာက္ခံခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ကံမေကာင္းအေၾကာင္းမလွစြာပဲ ဒီျပဌာန္းႀကိဳးပမ္းမႈဟာ အမွန္တကယ္မွာ အံ၀င္ခြင္က်မႈ မ႐ိွခဲ့ပါ။ ျမန္မာ့လူ႔အ ခြင့္အေရးမွတ္တမ္းဟာ အလြန္အမင္း စုိးရိမ္ေသာကျဖစ္စရာအေၾကာင္းအရာအေနနဲ႔ တည္႐ွိေနလ်က္ပါ။
ျမန္မာအစုိးရဟာ သူ႔ရဲ႕ရည္မွန္းခ်က္မ်ားျဖစ္တဲ့ တည္ၿငိမ္မႈ၊ အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရးနဲ႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး တုိ႔ကုိ ေျပာဆုိေနပါတယ္။
အႏွစ္ ၂၀ အတြင္း ပထမဆုံးအေနနဲ႔က်င္းပမွာျဖစ္တဲ့ လာမဲ့ေ႐ြးေကာက္ပြဲဟာ ဂုဏ္ထယ္တင့္တယ္ေစလုိလွ်င္ အားလုံးပါ၀င္ၿပီး အျမင္ၾကည္လင္မႈ ႐ိွရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ ေ႐ွ႕ဆက္မဲ့ခရီးမွာ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးကုိေလးစားလုိက္နာမႈ အျမစ္တြယ္ရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ဒါေၾကာင့္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္အပါအ၀င္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားအားလုံးကုိ အျမန္ဆုံးလႊတ္ေပးရမယ္လုိ႔ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ေျပာခဲ့တာပါ။
ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ၾကီးသန္းေ႐ႊနဲ႔ မေန႔ကနဲ႔ဒီေန႔ ေတြ႕ရတဲ့အခါ ေဒၚစုၾကည္ကုိေတြ႕ဘုိ႔ေတာင္းဆုိခဲ့ပါတယ္။ သူကျငင္းပယ္ လုိက္တဲ့အတြက္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္မ်ားစြာစိတ္ပ်က္ခဲ့ရပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာအစိုးရဟာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးပြင့္လင္းမႈရဲ႕ က႑သစ္မွာ ျပဌာန္းႀကိဳးပမ္းမႈကိုျပသႏိုင္မဲ့ အခြင့္အေရးထူးတခု ဆုံး႐ႈံး သြားၿပီလုိ႔ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ယုံၾကည္လုိက္ပါတယ္။
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္အားေတြ႕ဆုံခြင့္ေပးလိုက္ျခင္းဟာ ၂၀၁၀ ေ႐ြးေကာက္ပဲြကုိ အမ်ားယုံၾကည္လက္ခံႏိုင္မႈ ႐ိွေစေရးအတြက္ အေရးႀကီးတဲ့ အဓိပၸါယ္႐ိွေသာေဆာင္႐ြက္မႈကုိ စတင္လုပ္ေဆာင္ရန္ အစုိးရကဆႏၵ႐ိွေၾကာင္း ကိုေဖာ္ျပတဲ့ အေရးႀကီးတဲ့ျပယုဂ္ျဖစ္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။
ဒီနိုင္ငံရဲ႕အနာဂတ္အတြက္ ျပည့္၀တဲ့ ပါ၀င္ေဆာင္႐ြက္ႏိုင္ခြင့္အား ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသားအားလုံးကုိ အမွန္တကယ္ ေပးရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ပါ၀င္ေဆာင္႐ြက္လုိသူမ်ားအားလုံး လြတ္လပ္တက္ႂကြစြာပါ၀င္မႈမ႐ိွလွ်င္ အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရးဟာ မျပည့္စုံႏိုင္ပါ။
သက္ဆုိင္တဲ့ပုဂၢဳလ္မ်ား၊ တုိင္းရင္းသားအုပ္စုမ်ားနဲ႔လူနည္းစုမ်ားအားလုံးပါ၀င္တဲ့ စစ္မွန္တဲ့ ေတြ႕ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးမႈ လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ကုိ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဟာ စတင္ေဆာင္႐ြက္ရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ျပည္သူအမ်ားဟာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးေဆြးေႏြးမႈမွာ လြတ္လပ္စြာအေျခအတင္ေျပာႏုိင္ရမယ္၊ လြတ္လပ္စြာပါ၀င္ႏိုင္ရမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီမိုကေရစီလုပ္ငန္းစဥ္မွာ အဓိပၸါယ္႐ိွစြာပါ၀င္ႏိုင္ေရးအတြက္အေထာက္အကူျဖစ္ေစမဲ့ သတင္းအ ခ်က္အလက္မ်ားကုိ လြတ္လပ္စြာ သိ႐ွိရယူႏိုင္ရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ဂုဏ္သေရ႐ိွ လူႀကီးမင္းမ်ားခင္ဗ်ား
အသြင္ကူးေျပာင္းမႈတုိင္းဟာ ခက္ခဲလွပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဟာ သက္ဦးဆံပုိင္စံနစ္ကေန ကုိလုိနီစံနစ္၊ အခု
တခါ လြတ္လပ္တဲ့ႏိုင္ငံအျဖစ္ အသြင္ကူးေျပာင္းခဲ့ပါတယ္။
သမုိင္းဟာ လတ္တေလာမွာ နာက်င္ဘြယ္ျဖစ္ရပ္မ်ားအပါအ၀င္ ‘အေမြ’ႏွစ္မႊာပူးကို သေနၶေဆာင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
လက္နက္ကုိင္ပဋိပကၡ နဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံေရးေ႐ွ႕မတုိးသာေနာက္မဆုတ္သာအေျခအေနေတြပါ။
အခ်ဳပ္အျခာပုိင္ဆုိင္မႈ၊ နယ္ေျမတည္တံ့ခုိင္ၿမဲမႈ နဲ႔ အမ်ဳိးသားညီၫြတ္ေရးတုိ႔ဟာ ႏိုင္ငံတုိင္းရဲ႕ တရား၀င္ စိုးရိမ္ ေသာကမ်ား ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ႏိုင္ငံေရး၀န္းက်င္ကုိ ဖြင့္ေပးျခင္းနဲ႔ ခ်ဲ႕ထြင္ျခင္းဟာ ပုိမုိႀကီးမားတဲ့ စုေပါင္းေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္းရဲ႕ အစိတ္အပုိင္းအ ျဖစ္ အုပ္စုတစုခ်င္းနဲ႔ လူတဦးခ်င္းပါ၀င္ႏိုင္မႈအတြက္ အာမခံရန္ အေကာင္းဆုံးနည္းလမ္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ကၽြန္ ေတာ္တုိ႔ ရဲရဲႀကီးေျပာႏိုင္ပါတယ္။
စစ္တပ္၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအဖြဲ႕အစည္းအားလုံး၊ တုိင္းရင္းသားလူနည္းစုမ်ား၊ အမ်ားျပည္သူနဲ႔သက္ဆိုင္ေသာအဖြဲ႕အ စည္းမ်ားနဲ႔ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ သားသမီးတုိင္း အမွန္တကယ္ကုိ ႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕အသြင္ကူးေျပာင္းေရးမွာပါ၀င္ၾကရမွာ။
အျပန္အလွန္ အေပးအယူလုပ္ၫိႇႏိႈင္းျခင္း၊ ေလးစားျခင္းနဲ႔ နားလည္မႈတုိ႔သာလွ်င္ ၾကာ႐ွည္တည္တ့ံမဲ့ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္း ေရး၊ အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရးနဲ႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီေရးတုိ႔အတြက္ အေျခခံအုတ္္ျမစ္ခ်ေပးႏိုင္မွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ကၽြန္ေတာ္ရဲ႕ ဒုတိယအမွာစကားကေတာ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသားမ်ားရဲ႕ လူသားခ်င္းစာနာတဲ႔လိုအပ္ခ်က္မ်ားကုိ ေဖာ္ျပ လုိပါတယ္။
ဧရာ၀တီျမစ္၀ကၽြန္းေပၚေဒသမွာျဖစ္ထြန္းခဲ့တဲ့တုိးတက္မႈမ်ားကုိ ၾကည့္ျမင္ႏိုင္ရန္ ျပန္လည္ေရာက္႐ိွလာႏိုင္စြမ္း အတြက္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္၀မ္းသာလွပါတယ္။
အလုိခ်င္ဆုံးကေတာ့ နာဂစ္မုန္တုိင္းဒဏ္ကုိတုန္႔ျပန္ျခင္းဟာ သီးျခားခြဲျခားထားျခင္းအေပၚ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္႐ြက္ ႏိုင္ျခင္းရဲ႕တန္ဘုိးကုိ သက္ေသျပႏိုင္တာပဲ။
အလႉ႐ွင္အသုိင္းအ၀န္းရဲ႕ကူညီပံ့ပုိးမႈျဖင့္ ‘သုံးပြင့္ဆုိင္ ေက်ာ႐ိုးအုပ္စု’အျဖစ္ ျမန္မာ၊ ကုလသမဂၢနဲ႔ အာဆီယံတုိ႔ အတြင္း မႀကံဳစဖူးပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္းဟာ လူသားခ်င္းစာနာမႈအေရးပါျခင္းနဲ႔ အခ်ဳပ္အျခာအာဏာပုိင္မႈရဲ႕ စည္းမ်ဥ္းစည္းကမ္းတုိ႔ဟာ ပဋိပကၡ မျဖစ္ၾကဘူးဆုိတာ သက္ေသျပသြားပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံနဲ႔ မည္သည့္ေနရာတြင္မဆုိ လူသားခ်င္းစာနာမႈအကူအညီဟာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအတြက္တုန္႔ျပန္ရမဲ့ ဓားစာ ခံ မျဖစ္သင့္ပါဘူး။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ႐ိွ လူသားခ်င္းစာနာမႈနဲ႔ တုိးတက္မႈအေထာက္အကူမ်ား လုိအပ္ေနသူအားလုံး ရ႐ိွႏိုင္ေရးအာမခံခ်က္႐ိွေအာင္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ အတူတကြေဆာင္႐ြက္ႏိုင္ရမယ္၊ လုပ္ကုိလုပ္ရမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
အခုဟာကေတာ့ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ရဲ႕ တတိယ အမွာစကားျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
အခုအခ်ိန္ဟာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအေနနဲ႔ သူရဲ႕ စီးပြါးေရးစြမ္းအင္အလားအလာေကာင္းမ်ားကို ထုတ္ေဖာ္ဘုိ႔အခ်ိန္ ျဖစ္ ပါတယ္။
‘အာ႐ွစီးပြါးေရးအံ့ဘြယ္’ အလယ္မွာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဟာရပ္တည္ေနပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံအ၀ွမ္းမွာ လ်င္ျမန္တဲ့တုိးတက္မႈ မ်ားအတြက္ ျမန္မာကုိ ‘ကႀကိဳးဆင္ေစျခင္းဟာ’ လူေနမႈအဆင့္အတန္းျမင့္မားေရးအတြက္ အေသခ်ာဆုံးနည္း လမ္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာအစုိးရရဲ႕ ကုန္သြယ္မႈအတြက္ ျပင္ပကိုလမ္းဖြင့္ေပးျခင္း၀ါဒ၊ ေထာင္စုဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးတုိးတက္မႈရည္မွန္းခ်က္မ်ား ရေအာင္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းမႈ၊ အိတ္ခ်္အုိင္ဗီြေရာဂါထိန္းခ်ဳပ္မႈ၊ လူကုန္ကူးမႈတုိက္ဖ်က္ေရးနဲ႔ ဘိန္းထုပ္လုပ္မႈအဆုံးသတ္ ေရးတုိ႔ကုိ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ႀကိဳဆုိပါတယ္။
ဒါေပမင့္ အမွန္လက္ေတြ႕မွာေတာ့ ျပည္သူသန္းေပါင္းမ်ားစြာဟာ ဆက္လက္ဆင္းရဲေနဆဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ လူေနမႈအဆင့္အတန္းဟာ အာ႐ွရဲ႕ အနိမ့္ဆုံးထဲမွာပါ၀င္ေနတုန္းပါ။
ဒီျမန္မာျပည္သူမ်ားဟာ အလုပ္မ်ားလိုအပ္ေနပါတယ္။ စားနပ္ရိကၡာဖူလုံမႈေတြလုိအပ္ေနပါတယ္။ က်န္းမာေရး ေစာင့္ေ႐ွာက္ခံယူႏိုင္မႈေတြ လုိအပ္ေနပါတယ္။
ေဒသဆုိင္ရာနဲ႔တကမၻာလုံးဆုိင္ရာ စီးပြါးေရးမွ အက်ဳိးအျမတ္ရႏိုင္ေအာင္နဲ႔ ပါ၀င္ပံ့ပုိးေပးႏိုင္ေရးအတြက္ ျမန္မာ ျပည္သူမ်ားကို အာမခံရဘုိ႔ ကြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ လုပ္ေပးရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
တည္ၿငိမ္ၿပီး သာယာ၀ေျပာေပါႂကြယ္တဲ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွ ေဒသနဲ႔ကမၻာက အက်ဳိးအျမတ္ေတြပုိမုိရ႐ွိလာ မွာကုိ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ အသိအမွတ္ျပဳရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီရည္မွန္းခ်က္အတြက္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ ေဆာင္႐ြက္ေပး ရပါ့မယ္။
ျမန္မာအစုိးရကလဲ ဒီအခ်ိန္အခါကုိ အမိအရ ရယူရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
အျပည္ျပည္ဆုိင္ရာအသုိင္းအ၀န္းက ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံျပည္သူမ်ားကုိ လက္ကမ္းရန္ျပင္ဆင္ေနသည့္ အခြင့္အလမ္း မ်ားရဲ႕ အက်ဳိးသက္ေရာက္မႈကုိ ျမန္မာအစုိးရက ရယူရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ဂုဏ္သေရ႐ွိ လူႀကီးမင္းမ်ားခင္ဗ်ား
ကၽြန္ေတာ္ ဒီကုိ မိတ္ေဆြတဦးအျဖစ္ေရာက္လာခဲ့တာပါ။
ကၽြန္ေတာ့္တာ၀န္က ကုလသမဂၢပဋိဉာဥ္ရဲ႕ အေကာင္းဆုံးစံမ်ားနဲ႔စည္းမ်ဥ္းစည္းကမ္းမ်ားကုိ ထိန္းသိမ္းဘုိ႔ပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အခန္းက႑ကေတာ့ သင္တုိ႔အားလုံး - အစုိးရ၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ား၊ တုိင္းရင္းသားအုပ္စုမ်ား၊ လူမႈအဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ား - ကို ျပည္သူတရပ္အေနနဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံတခုအေနနဲ႔ အတူတကြ ေ႐ွ႕ဆက္ေ႐ြ႕လ်ားဘုိ႔ အား ေပးရန္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
က႑အားလုံးရဲ႕အေပၚမွာ ျပည္သု႕အက်ဳိးကုိထား႐ွိလုိက္တဲ့အခါ မေက်ာ္လႊားႏိုင္တာ သုိ႔မဟုတ္ မျဖစ္ႏိုင္တာ ဆုိတာ မ႐ွိပါဘူး။
ေဒသနဲ႔ကမၻာဟာ လ်င္ျမန္စြာေျပာင္းလဲေနပါတယ္။ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္းမွ၊ ၿပီးေတာ့ မိမိကိုယ္တုိင္ေျပာင္းလဲ မႈကုိ စတင္လုပ္ျခင္းမွ အက်ဳိးျဖစ္ထြန္းဘို႔ ျမန္မာဟာ ရပ္တည္လုိ႔သာ ေနပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာအစုိးရက ကုလသမဂၢႏဲ႔ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္းဟာ ႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရး၀ါဒရဲ႕ အေျခခံအုတ္ျမစ္ျဖစ္ တယ္လုိ႔ ထပ္ခါတလဲလဲ ေျပာလ်က္႐ွိပါတယ္။
စကားေတြနဲ႔ အလုပ္ေတြ ကုိက္ညီဘုိ႔အတြက္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ ေတာင္းဆုိပါတယ္။
သူ႔ျပည္သူမ်ားရဲ႕လုိအပ္ခ်က္မ်ားနဲ႔ ျပင္းျပတဲ့ဆႏၵမ်ားကုိတုန္႔ျပန္ဘုိ႔ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဟာ ကုလသမဂၢနဲ႔ ပုိမုိပူးေပါင္း လုပ္ေဆာင္ေလ ႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ အခ်ဳပ္အျခာပုိင္ဆုိင္မႈကုိ အခုိင္အမာျပဳႏိုင္ေလ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ဒီအတူပါပဲ။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔္ရဲ႕ေ၀မွ်ခံယူထားတဲ့ရည္မွန္းခ်က္မ်ားျဖစ္တဲ့ ျပည္သူအားလုံးရဲ႕လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးကုိ အျပည့္အ၀ေလးစားျခင္းနဲ႔အတူ ညီၫြတ္တဲ့ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းတဲ့ သာယာ၀ေျပာတဲ့ ဒီမုိကေရစီနည္းလမ္းက်တဲ့ အနာ ဂတ္အတြက္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံလက္လွမ္းမွီႏိုင္ေအာင္ ကူညီရန္ အတူတကြလုပ္ေဆာင္ဘုိ႔ ႏိုင္ငံတကာအသုိင္းအ၀န္း မွာလဲ တာ၀န္႐ွိပါတယ္။
ေက်းဇူးတင္ပါတယ္။
( ၂၀၀၉ ဇူလုိင္ ၄ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ အစုိးရမဟုတ္ေသာ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ား (NGO) ၊ သံတမန္မ်ား၊ ျပည္တြင္း သတင္းေထာက္မ်ား စုစုေပါင္း ၅၀၀ ခန္႔ တက္ေရာက္ခဲ့သည့္ ဟံသာဝတီ မူးယစ္ ေဆးဝါးျပတုိက္တြင္ ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ေသာ သတင္းစာ ရွင္းလင္းပြဲ၌ ကုလသမဂၢ အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉးခ်ဳပ္ မစၥတာ ဘန္ကီမြန္း ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည့္ မိန္႔ခြန္းအျပည့္အစုံကုိ ျပန္ဆုိပါသည္ )
Unofficial translation
ေမာင္ေမာင္လွႀကိဳင္
၂၀၀၉ ၀၇ ၀၆
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
BURMA: UN Chief Speaks Out Against Lack of Human Rights
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Jul 8 (IPS) - Using the power of his office, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon achieved a rare diplomatic feat during his recent visit to military-ruled Burma. He broke a taboo by delivering a public speech about the lack of democracy and human rights in the country.
So far, the notoriously prickly regime, which controls the South-east Asian nation with an iron grip, has accepted Ban's verbal thrust without an outburst. But Burma watchers wonder how long that silence will last, given the regime is known to lash out at U.N. officials who have made public statements in the country about the debilitating effects of ignoring political and civil liberties.
"Neither peace nor development can thrive without democracy and respect for human rights," the world body's top diplomat said over the weekend to an audience of diplomats, U.N. officials and staff from aid agencies in Rangoon, the former capital. "Peace, development and human rights are closely inter-related."
"Myanmar's human rights record remains a matter of grave concern," Ban added, using the name of the country that the junta opts for, instead of Burma. "Myanmar's way forward must be rooted in respect for human rights."
Ban's speech, on the last of his two-day stay in Burma, also touched on the plight of Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy leader who has spent over 14 years either under house arrest or in Rangoon's Insein Prison. He called for the release of the Nobel Peace laureate and the over 2,100 political prisoners languishing in Burmese jails.
"Aung San Suu Kyi must be allowed to participate in the political process without further delay," Ban said after being denied a chance to meet the 64-year-old Suu Kyi, currently being held in the Insein Prison as part of a bizarre trial after a U.S. citizen showed up as an uninvited guest in her home in early May after he swam there across a lake.
Little wonder why Ban's critical comments - which shatter the illusion being created by the regime that it is on the right track as part of its "roadmap to democracy," including a planned general election in 2010 - is being welcomed in some quarters.
In the past, the junta has not been kind to the far less provocative and milder comments about the shortcomings of the regime's model for democracy and the humanitarian situation made by Ibrahim Gambari, the U.N. special envoy to Burma, and Charles Petrie, the former U.N. humanitarian coordinator in the country.
Gambari was given a dressing down by Information Minister Brig-Gen Kyaw Hsan in March last year for comments the Nigerian diplomat made about flaws in the "democratic" political process being pushed by the junta. Gambari said that the U.N. wanted this push, including the new constitution, to be inclusive, accommodating the opposition.
Petrie paid a different price for speaking his mind in a press release issued in October 2007. The junta refused to renew his visa, prompting an early departure from his post, after the head of the United Nations Development Programme deplored the "deteriorating humanitarian situation" in the country
The regime described that statement as "unprecedented" and "very negative."
But by going many steps further, Ban's speech is being described as "encouraging" by the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB), the democratically elected government forced into exile after the regime refused to recognised the results of the 1990 general elections.
"This is the first time that someone has been so openly critical about the reality in Burma," says Bo Hla Tint, the foreign minister of the NCGUB. "It was important for Mr. Ban to tell the regime how the U.N. sees the problem in Burma."
"The U.N. secretary-general's role is important to bring change in Burma," the minister in the exile government told IPS. "It has to be part of a long serious political process, and not just a one-time event."
The personal commitment shown by Ban to usher in an open and inclusive democratic culture in Burma is being well received by the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN), a 10-member regional bloc of which Burma is a member.
"The prime minister, as the chair of ASEAN, supports the U.N. secretary-general's trip to Myanmar and he wants to ensure that the U.N. keeps engaging the Myanmar government," said Panitan Wattanayagorn, the acting spokesman for the Thai government. "We will see from this point onwards what more can be done now that the U.N. secretary-general has delivered his message."
Such a regional response marks a departure from the harsh comments by Western governments that saw Ban's trip as a failure, achieving barely any concessions from the junta. A key to this dismissive stance was Ban being denied access to meet Suu Kyi.
"Although we know that expectations among some in the international community was very high and they wanted the secretary-general to meet Aung San Suu Kyi, it is not fair to say the mission was a failure because the meeting did not take place," added Panitan in an interview. "The issues are much more complex and beyond this single issue."
But for the current U.N. engagement to achieve political reform in Burma more is required, say human rights groups that have continued to expose the litany of abuse in a country that has been under the grip of successive military regimes since a 1962 coup.
"Setting the standards through a speech is the easiest thing to do; achieving the standards is the difficult part," says David Scott Mathieson, Burma consultant for Human Rights Watch, a New York-based global rights watchdog. "That is where the hard work and effort is going to be." "The average person in Burma will find Ban's speech patronising," Mathieson told IPS. "They expect more from the U.N." (END/2009)
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
North Korea and Burma – Sharing Nukes?
Alanna Shaikh - July 6, 2009 - 12:12pm
* Non-Proliferation
Well, this certainly scares me. North Korea and Burma are growing increasingly close. The two countries re-established diplomatic relations in 2007, and they’ve been growing closer ever since. According to the Bangkok Post, a high-level military delegation from North Korea was in Rangoon in November 2008, where they signed a memorandum of understanding on military cooperation. There are reports from the Democratic Voice of Burma news service that North Korean advisors are supporting construction of a network of underground tunnels throughout Burma. According to DVB, the tunnels are large enough to drive trucks through, constructed to withstand attacks, and intended to house munitions factories.
The fear is, of course, that North Korea is exporting weapons to Burma. Especially nuclear weapons. That is not an unfounded fear. According to the US Treasury, North Korea has already exported weaponry to several Middle Eastern and African states, including Syria, as well as Taiwan and Iran. And the missile tests that took place on the fourth remind us that North Korea remains committed to proving its military prowess to the world.
http://www.undispat ch.com/node/ 8547
Ban—Empty-handed But Wiser
The Irrawaddy - EDITORIAL:
Monday, July 6, 2009
Although he left Burma empty-handed without any visible sign of progress or concession from the Burmese junta, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s visit was by no means pointless.
Through his official visit to the military-ruled country he should have discovered a deeper understanding of how far the international community—under the name of the United Nations—can expect to go in its current mission to facilitate democratization in Burma through national reconciliation.
Ban's talks with the Naypyidaw regime—and primarily junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe—focused on three important issues: gaining the release of all political prisoners including democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi; resumption of dialogue between the military government and its opposition; and creating the conditions for credible elections.
The UN secretary-general’s hopes were quickly dashed. He was even refused a visit with detained opposition leader Suu Kyi.
However, in forcing Than Shwe to show his cards, Ban is left in no doubts as to what degree of flexibility the regime might be prepared to go to—none.
The UN chief had no qualms about publicly criticizing Burma’s military rulers before he left from the country. "I believe the government of Myanmar [Burma] has lost a unique opportunity to show its commitment to a new era of political openness," he said in an emotive speech at Rangoon’s Drug Elimination Museum to 500 state officials, diplomats, INGO staff and local pressmen.
Of course, no one expected much from the visit, and observers noted once again that the junta would manipulate it for propaganda purposes. But at least Ban should have earned the respect of the international community for confronting the junta and for speaking the truth.
Now the gloves are off and Ban can concentrate more forcefully on what he has called "a very tough mission."
At a pit stop in the Thai capital, Bangkok, Ban met with Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, and told reporters that to show his commitment to moving the Burma issue forward, his special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, will shortly convene the so-called Group of Friends on Myanmar, a gathering of countries supporting greater dialogue.
However, Ban must now know that words without teeth will not worry the Burmese generals.
Naypyidaw has proved to the world that no matter how many resolutions the UN passes—even dragging Burma before the 15-nation UN Security Council—the junta will not willingly release the 2,100 political prisoners in the country, least of all Suu Kyi.
We will all be closely watching the UN secretary-general’s next step.
Ban’s visit may not have achieved any visible outcome, but the people of Burma will remember what he promised: "I have come to show the unequivocal shared commitment of the United Nations to the people of Myanmar. I am here today to say: Myanmar – you are not alone."
BURMA-Despite Humiliation, Ban Irked the Generals
The Irrawaddy
By WAI MOE, Monday, July 6, 2009
Local reporters who covered the fruitless two-day visit to Burma by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon say that although he was humiliated by junta leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe, his candid message to the generals would have irked them.
Before leaving Burma empty-handed, Ban told INGO staffers and local reporters that the cost of delaying national reconciliation in Burma would be counted in wasted lives and lost opportunities.
“Nonetheless, the primary responsibility lies with the government to move the country towards its stated goals of national reconciliation and democracy,” Ban said. Failure to do so would prevent the Burmese people from realizing their full potential, such as their right to live in dignity, and to enjoy better standards of life in a broader freedom, he said.
Ban said he had called for the release of political prisoners, including pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, because Burmese stability, national reconciliation and democracy must be rooted in respect for human rights.
“When I met General Than Shwe yesterday [Friday] and today [Saturday], I asked to visit Ms Suu Kyi. I am deeply disappointed that he refused,” Ban said. “I believe the government of Myanmar [Burma] has lost a unique opportunity to show its commitment to a new era of political openness.
“Allowing a visit to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi would have been an important symbol of the government’s willingness to embark on the kind of meaningful engagement that will be essential if the elections in 2010 are to be seen as credible.”
Ban Ki- moon will brief the UN Security Council on his visit.
“I would like ask him to describe the situation exactly,” Win Tin, a prominent leader of the NLD told The Irrawaddy..
“The international community must know the real situation in the country,” he said.
Burma, like North Korea, should be subjected to an arms embargo as a means of pressure on the regime to change course, Win Tin said.
Ban should also talk with Russia and China, who customarily use their vetoes to stall UN Security Council action on Burma, he said—and urged action by the international community to pressure the regime to release political prisoners and agree to a national reconciliation process.
Commenting on Ban Ki-moon’s remarks after his Burma visit, Win Tin said he hoped the secretary-general’s words would be followed by real action. “I hope Mr Ban Ki-moon’s speech will not end just in Rangoon,” he said.
Burma’s state-run-newspaper s reported on the meetings between Ban and Than Shwe but did not publish Ban’s remark.
According to The New Light of Myanmar, Than Shwe told Ban that he would like to arrange a meeting with Suu Kyi but could not do so because she was on trial.
Than Shwe told Ban that Burma is focusing on two important tasks: holding elections in 2010 and forming the future government. There was no possibility now to pay attention to any personal cases, he told Ban.
Observers say that Than Shwe’s rejection of Ban’s request to meet Suu Kyi was a humiliation for the UN.
“There was never much chance that Mr Ban would succeed at gaining freedom for Mrs Suu Kyi or the other political prisoners,” Thailand’s Bangkok Post wrote in an editorial on Monday. “Nor was there a chance that the generals would heed the prestige of the UN and switch from brutal dictatorship to democracy.”
Debbie Stothard, coordinator of the Alternative Asean Network (Altsean), said the junta humiliated Ban because the Burmese generals assumed they would not be subject to any real pressure, sanctions and punishment for this behavior.
“I think if we want to stop the violation of human rights in Burma and war in Burma, it is time for the UNSC to take action on the junta,” she said. “At least the UNSC should have the commission inquire into war crimes and crimes against humanity that the State and Peace Development Council is afraid of.”
Monday, July 6, 2009
Victory over KNU, new order on Thai-Burma border
Mizzima News -
by Brian McCartan
Sunday, 05 July 2009 21:20
Mae Sot, Thailand (Mizzima) - The victory of the Burmese Army and its proxy, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), in attacks on bases of the Karen National Union (KNU) last month, puts the regime in firm control of a major portion of its border with Thailand for the first time in 60 years. Success brings with it a whole new order of forces along the border.
Burmese and DKBA forces took the border camps of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), the armed wing of the KNU, after a month-long battle in June. The fighting was relatively light with many of the 200 Burmese and DKBA casualties the result of landmines. Fighting, the threat of landmines and fear of being taken as porters by the attackers resulted in over 3,500 Karen villagers fleeing their homes to take refuge on the Thai side of the border.
The Burmese regime and the DKBA have big plans for the border now that it is under their control. The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) has long aimed to establish several economic zones along the stretch of the border from Myawaddy north to the confluence of the Salween and Moei Rivers. One of these special economic zones is slated for construction on the outskirts of Myawaddy and another to the east of the township capital of Hlaing Bwe.
Past Thai governments have given their verbal support for these plans, although little money has of yet been put into them. Now that the area is in firmer control and the threat from the KNLA reduced, the economic zone plans may be dusted off again. Burma hopes to entice Thai investment and develop an otherwise economically poor area, while Thailand sees the economic zones as a way of using cheap Burmese labour without having to deal with a large influx of migrant workers. At one point, the area around Hlaing Bwe was also seen as a potential repatriation point for Karen refugees in the Mae La refugee camp.
A component of the DKBA’s acceptance of the junta’s border guard programme is that the DKBA will be allowed to keep, and possibly even expand, its economic activities. Although details of the concessions are still unclear, notes from internal DKBA meetings in May and June seen by Mizzima, indicate that the DKBA is moving some of its tax gates and setting up new units as a part of a major expansion. Certain officers, including Colonel Maw Tho who is already heavily involved in legal and black market trade with Thailand from his base in Myawaddy, will be reassigned to specifically economic activities.
A greatly expanded DKBA taking control of a large portion of the border is likely to make Thai security officials nervous. Following the fall of the KNU headquarters at Manerplaw in January 1995, DKBA troops carried out a reign of terror along the border, burning refugee camps, kidnapping and sometimes killing Karen and Thai civilians, looting Thai shops along the border and even attacking Thai army and police forces. Although the attacks largely stopped in 1998, occasional incursions have taken place since.
This year DKBA incursions increased as it made itself felt along the border. In January 2009, DKBA troops burned down field huts, stole livestock and looted houses along the border in Umphang district of Tak province. During and immediately following the recent attacks on the KNLA’s 7th Brigade, Karen sources say DKBA troops crossed the border several times to demand rations for their troops and to eat and drink in local shops around Mae Salit.
An ambush on June 26 on the Moei River that killed five DKBA soldiers including Colonel San Pyone and wounded another 20 has many Karen worried about possible retaliatory attacks. San Pyone is widely believed to have been the leader and triggerman in the assassination of KNU General Secretary Mahn Sha La Phan on Valentine’s Day last year. The KNLA military officers claim it was not a revenge attack because they have no troops in the area. This leaves open the possibility of involvement of the KNU/KNLA Peace Council, another splinter Karen group, the SPDC or Thai security forces. Whoever carried out the attack, the incident shows that despite greater DKBA and government control, stability is far from assured.
The transformation of the DKBA into a border guard under the central command of the Burmese Army may bring some stability, even if it costs the regime a scapegoat for cross-border incursions. The SPDC has been careful in the past to blame all cross-border attacks on the DKBA and say that it has very little influence on the group’s actions. Recent fighting against the KNLA’s 7th Brigade was described in the state-run media as Karen-on-Karen fighting. With the DKBA’s transformation into a border guard force within the Burmese Army, this pretext will no longer be possible.
One area Thai security forces will be keen to keep a watch on is the effect greater territorial control and legitimization as a unit of the Burmese military will have on the DKBA’s drug trafficking activities. Karen military sources allege the DKBA operates several amphetamine, or yaba, laboratories in areas near the border. While DKBA production and trafficking activities are not at the same level as groups such as the United Wa State Army (UWSA) in Shan State, Thai narcotics officials and opposition sources say the DKBA moves both yaba and heroin through its border camps near Myawaddy and Three Pagodas Pass. The group’s transformation into a border guard unit would make the military regime directly complicit in any continued drug activities.
Recent media reports describing the KNU as all but finished following the loss of its border camps last month are rather premature. KNLA sources say that they intend to continue to operate as guerrilla units in north central Karen State. The loss of the central border region, however, will make it harder for the KNU to communicate and supply its units as well as arrange supplies for villagers and internally displaced villagers that it cares for. The KNLA still has the bulk of its forces in northern Karen State as wells as in parts of Pegu Division and Mon State as well as maintains forces in areas of southern Karen State and Tenasserim Division.
Within Karen State itself, firmer control by the DKBA and Burmese government means that many Karen who still sympathize with the aims of the KNU will now be forced to work with the new rulers. Human rights monitors in the area for several years have said the greater DKBA presence has made their work much more dangerous. DKBA threats of retribution have made many villagers afraid to speak out about abuses.
A KNU source says that greater DKBA control will have little effect on Karen representation in the 2010 elections. The DKBA is different from other ethnic insurgent groups in that it has no political wing. Minutes of a May 7 meeting of DKBA commanders indicate that the DKBA has been told they may participate in politics, but in order to do so, DKBA members, or any other Karen, must either form a new political party or contest the election as an individual. KNU source, however, say it is irrelevant since the SPDC has already decided who the winning candidates are.
The KNU’s position in central Karen State has certainly been greatly weakened by the loss of its border camps last month. Whether firmer government and DKBA control of the area will translate into greater peace and development for the local population is far from clear. Fighting with the KNU in this area may be almost over, but new border tensions may only be beginning.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
UN secretary general plans to meet Aung San Suu Kyi: Official
July 1st, 2009
YANGON - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is likely to meet Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi during his visit to the country later this week, an official said Wednesday.
“He (Ban Ki-moon) is supposed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi when he arrives here but we cannot definitely tell his schedule,” said an official who requested anonymity.
Ban is scheduled to visit Myanmar Friday and Saturday at the official invitation of the ruling junta.
He is expected to meet the country’s most powerful man, Senior General Than Shwe, head of the State Peace and Development Council, as Myanmar’s junta styles itself, officials said.
Besides Suu Kyi and Than Shwe, Ban also plans to meet with political parties and ethnic groups and travel to the Irrawaddy delta region that was devastated by Cyclone Nargis on May 2-3 last year, killing up to 150,000 people.
Ban last visited Myanmar in May 2008 to hasten international aid to the country, whose military rulers are notoriously paranoid about western interference in their internal affairs.
Ban’s talks with Myanmar’s senior leadership are expected to focus on a plea for the release of all political prisoners including Suu Kyi; resumption of dialogue between the government and opposition; and the need to create conditions conducive to credible elections planned in 2010.
“The secretary general believes that the sooner these issues are addressed, the earlier Myanmar will be able to move towards peace, democracy and prosperity. He looks forward to meeting all key stakeholders to discuss what further assistance the United Nations can offer to that end,” a UN statement said.
The first day of Ban’s visit will coincide with the resumption of the trial of Suu Kyi on charges of violating her house arrest, by allowing a US citizen to swim to her lakeside residence in Yangon.
Suu Kyi’s trial, being held at a special court set up in Yangon’s Insein Prison, is scheduled to resume Friday with testimony from defence witness Khin Moe Moe, an attorney.
The trial began May 11. While the prosecution was allowed to present 14 witnesses in the first week, the defence was initially allowed only one. Later, Khin Moe Moe was permitted to testify.
Critics say the military junta is using the case as a pretext to keep the 1991 Nobel peace laureate in jail during a politically sensitive period, leading up to next year’s general election.
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won the 1990 general election by a landslide but has been blocked from power by Myanmar’s junta for the past 19 years.
The new trial of Suu Kyi, whose most recent six-year house arrest sentence expired May 27, has sparked a chorus of protests from world leaders and statements of concern from its regional allies in the Association of South-East Asian Nations.
ASEAN – toothless but with a “sharp tongue”?
http://theonlinecitizen.com/2009/07/asean-toothless-but-with-a-sharp-tongue/
Wednesday, 1 July 2009, 4:47 pm | 190 views
ASEAN ministers are expected to endorse the setting up of an ASEAN Human Rights Commission in July when they meet for the 42nd ASEAN Ministerial Meeting. Civil society groups in the region, however, have expressed concerns that the commission would be all form and no substance, without any power to intervene if a member country violated these rights.
Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr George Yeo, was reported by the local media in July 2008 as having said:
“Whether or not the human rights body we establish will have teeth I don’t know. But it will certainly have a tongue, and I hope it will have a sharp tongue.” (MFA)
The following is a report, headlined “Toothless rights body would hurt ASEAN group”, from the Philippine Daily Inquirer:
Leila Salaverria
BANGKOK—As the target date for launching the ASEAN human rights body (AHRB) nears, civil society groups have warned depriving it of watchdog powers would erode the credibility of the regional organization.
The warning came amid concerns over Burma’s (Myanmar’s) renewed crackdown on democracy fighter Aung San Suu Kyi and Thailand’s refusal to accept thousands of Burmese refugees fleeing from military rule.
About 200 civil society groups and individuals have endorsed a letter urging the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to give the AHRB the power to investigate complaints of abuses, conduct country visits and review the human rights situation in the region.
The letter, addressed to a panel drafting the AHRB’s terms of reference (TOR), also calls for the appointment of independent experts to the body.
The terms of reference, which detail the AHRB’s powers and duties, are expected to be adopted in July at the 42nd ASEAN Ministerial Meeting. The AHRB itself is to be formally launched in October.
The draft TOR has not been made public but journalists who have seen it say that while it focuses on promoting human rights, it gives no power to the AHRB to investigate and prosecute.
The TOR is expected to maintain ASEAN’s adherence to its noninterference policy, which some members have invoked to ward off criticisms of their rights records.
The civil society groups warned that a human rights body with no protection powers or independent experts would not fulfill its pledge to respect fundamental freedoms, protect human rights, and promote social justice.
“This would reflect badly on ASEAN as being unable to live up to the spirit of its own Charter and further dent the credibility of ASEAN in the eyes of the international community for setting up a substandard regional human rights mechanism as compared to those in the African, Inter-American and European systems,” the June 22 letter said.
The letter was cosigned by the Solidarity for Asian People’s Advocacy Task Force on ASEAN and Human Rights and the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (Forum-Asia).
Indonesia’s example
Forum-Asia underscored the importance of having competent experts in the AHRB, saying they could make the body relevant to beleaguered peoples.
They could also help the AHRB initiate actions to reduce human rights problems even with a limited mandate, Forum-Asia’s Yuyun Wahyuningrum, program manager for East Asia, told the Inquirer.
Wahyuningrum said it was vital that the people manning the AHRB would not be afraid to contradict the government line, if necessary.
She said this was the case with Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission which, although created by then President Suharto, did not become a government mouthpiece but criticized abuses and tried to curb them.
First time
Former ASEAN Secretary General Rodolfo Severino of the Philippines said the establishment of the body was a step forward.
“For the first time, ASEAN will have a body concerned with human rights. This is an advance. It certainly will not have powers of ’enforcement’ in an association of sovereign states, but it can bring opinion to bear on egregious violations of human rights,” Severino said in an email interview.
He pointed out there was no transnational human rights body anywhere with the power to punish or protect.
Dr. Termsak Chalermpalanupap, ASEAN’s director of Political and Security Directorate, said in an article the AHRB mandate includes protection and promotion of human rights but would focus on protection first.
He said its functions could evolve over time and the body “is merely the new beginning.”
No biting
Responding to claims that the AHRB would be toothless, Chalermpalanupap said the body was not intended to have teeth or to function as an independent watchdog.
“The AHRB shall operate through consultation and consensus, with firm respect for sovereign equality of all Member States. Good points can be made and constructive actions can be agreed upon in friendly discussion and persuasion. No ‘biting’ is ever required,” Chalermpalanupap said.
As for concerns that the noninterference principle would hamper AHRB’s functions, he said the ASEAN charter also speaks of collective responsibility in enhancing peace, security and prosperity in the region, and of enhanced consultation on common concerns.
Wahyuningrum said noninterference could not be invoked when it came to crimes against humanity, genocide and humanitarian cases.
She said ASEAN members were signatories to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in signing such conventions, they gave up part of their sovereignty.
(This article was written under the 2009 Southeast Asian Press Alliance fellowship)
—–
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
ミサイル開発装置不正輸出、あて先はミャンマー軍傘下の組織
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/feature/20080115-899562/news/20090630-OYT1T00623.htm
北朝鮮系貿易商社が長距離弾道ミサイル開発に必要な磁気測定装置をミャンマーに輸出しようとした外為法違反事件で、装置はミャンマー陸軍傘下の組織「防衛産業理事会（ＤＤＩ）」に届けられようとしていたことが３０日、神奈川県警の調べで分かった。捜査関係者が明らかにした。
北朝鮮の指示を受けた貿易商社社長らが不正輸出を図ったとみられており、県警は、ミャンマー軍事政権にミサイル技術を拡散させようとしていた裏付けとみて捜査している。
捜査関係者によると、北朝鮮系貿易商社「東興貿易」（東京都新宿区）が２００８年９月、磁気測定装置をミャンマー第２工業省に輸出しようとした際、防衛産業理事会の通称名「ＤＤＩ」のマークが箱に付いていた。
また、東興貿易が今年１月にマレーシア経由で輸出しようとした装置の箱にも「ＤＤＩ」のマークがあった。
ミャンマーは、１９８８年に成立した軍事政権が軍の強化を進めており、現在の兵力は社会主義時代の約３倍にあたる約５０万人。武器の調達は、小銃などの基本装備を中国、戦闘機を中国とロシア、軍事用ＩＴ機器をシンガポールから輸入しているとみられている。
一方、ミサイルについては、ミサイル関連技術輸出規制（ＭＴＣＲ）で国際的に技術の輸出が禁止されている。このため、ミャンマー軍事政権がＭＴＣＲに加盟していない北朝鮮から入手を図った可能性が高いとみられている。
（2009年6月30日16時03分 読売新聞）
3 HELD OVER EXPORT BID OF DPRK MISSILE KNOW HOW TO MYANMAR
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20090630TDY01304.htm
The Yomiuri Shimbun
YOKOHAMA--Kanagawa prefectural police arrested three people Monday over an attempt to illegally export to Myanmar a magnetic measuring device believed necessary for developing long-range ballistic missile systems on instructions from North Korea, the police said.
Arrested on suspicion of violating the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Law were Lee Kyoung Ho, 41, of Itabashi Ward, Tokyo, president of trading firm Toko Boeki; Miaki Katsuki, 75, of Setagaya Ward, president of a manufacturing firm; and Yasuhiko Muto, 57, of Nerima Ward, president of an export agency.
The police initially thought the company was trying to export the device to North Korea itself via Myanmar, but they then found out the content of the order from a North Korea-aligned Hong Kong-based firm.
As the police now suspect the firm has exported other missile development-related equipment to Myanmar, they believe North Korea was attempting to promote the transfer of missile technologies, such as its Taepodong system, to Myanmar.
The Yomiuri Shimbun
YOKOHAMA--Kanagawa prefectural police arrested three people Monday over an attempt to illegally export to Myanmar a magnetic measuring device believed necessary for developing long-range ballistic missile systems on instructions from North Korea, the police said.
Arrested on suspicion of violating the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Law were Lee Kyoung Ho, 41, of Itabashi Ward, Tokyo, president of trading firm Toko Boeki; Miaki Katsuki, 75, of Setagaya Ward, president of a manufacturing firm; and Yasuhiko Muto, 57, of Nerima Ward, president of an export agency.
The police initially thought the company was trying to export the device to North Korea itself via Myanmar, but they then found out the content of the order from a North Korea-aligned Hong Kong-based firm.
As the police now suspect the firm has exported other missile development-related equipment to Myanmar, they believe North Korea was attempting to promote the transfer of missile technologies, such as its Taepodong system, to Myanmar.
According to the police, the three conspired to export the magnetic measuring device to Myanmar via Malaysia around January 2009 at a price of about 7 million yen without seeking approval from the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry.
Export of the device is restricted under the so-called Catch-all Control that prohibits exports of products that could be used for weapons of mass destruction.
Previously, around September 2008, the company had also tried to export the same instrument to Myanmar's Second Industry Ministry. Both attempts to export the device were aborted immediately before shipment when METI notified the company that it had failed to submit an export application.
According to investigation sources, the prefectural police have analyzed material they seized during a search of Toko Boeki in February this year.
The illegal export attempts to Myanmar were based on an order by the Beijing office of New East International Trading Ltd. based in Hong Kong around spring 2008. The firm is believed to be under the direct control of the Second Economic Committee of Pyongyang's Workers' Party of Korea. The committee is responsible for the party's military procurement.
The company's Pyongyang office has been included in a METI-announced blacklist of companies believed to have been involved in the development of weapons of mass destruction.
Diplomatic ties between Myanmar and North Korea were severed after a 1983 terrorist attack by North Korean agents in Yangon, but the two countries resumed ties in 2007. In 2004 a high-ranking U.S. government official revealed that North Korea had proposed the sale of missiles to Myanmar.
(Jun. 30, 2009)
How high carbohydrate foods can raise risk for heart problems
Tel Aviv, 29 June —
Doctors have known for decades that too much
carbohydrate-laden foods like white bread and corn
flakes can be detrimental to cardiac health. In a
landmark study, new research from Tel Aviv
University now shows exactly how these high
carb foods increase the risk for heart problems.
“Looking inside” the arteries of students eating
a variety of foods, Dr. Michael Shechter of Tel
Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine and
the Heart Institute of Sheba Medical Center —
with collaboration of the Endocrinology Institute
— visualized exactly what happens inside the body
when the wrong foods for a healthy heart are eaten.
He found that foods with a high glycemic index
distended brachial arteries for several hours.
Elasticity of arteries anywhere in the body can
be a measure of heart health. But when
aggravated over time, a sudden expansion of the
artery wall can cause a number of negative health
effects, including reduced elasticity, which can cause
heart disease or sudden death.—Internet
高炭水化物食品をどのようにすることができます
心の問題の危険性を高める
テルアビブ、 6月29日-
医師の知っている
数十年が過ぎる
炭水化物を多く含んだ食品
白パンやトウモロコシのような
フレーク支障が出ることができます
心臓の健康に。一で
画期的な研究では、新しい
テルアビブから研究
大学の今を示して
まさにこのような高
炭水化物食品の増加
心臓病の危険性。
"探し"を内部に
学生の食事の動脈
食品、博士は様々な
マイケルShechter電話
Aviv大学のサックラー
医学部と
ハート研究所
シバ医療センター-
とのコラボレーション
内分泌研究所
-正確に可視化が
体の内部に発生する
食品の場合、間違った
健康な心臓を食べている。
彼が見つかりましたが、食品と
高血糖インデックス
膨張した上腕動脈
数時間。
動脈の弾力性
体内のどこにでもすることができます
心の尺度になる
健康。しかし、
時間以上の悪化を
の急拡大
動脈壁を引き起こす可能性があります
負の数の健康
などの効果、縮小
弾力性を引き起こす可能性があります
心臓病や突然の
死。
Supreme Court (Yangon) pronounced the order to confirm Yangon Division Court’s order dated 9 June and dismiss the Criminal Revision Case. (DAW SU)
THE NEW LIGHT OF MYANMAR Tuesday, 30 June, 2009
YANGON, 29 June—Final statements of both sides
were heard at Supreme Court (Yangon) on 24 June for
Criminal Revision Case No 333 (b)/2009 filed by
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Daw Khin Khin Win and Ma
Win Ma Ma in dissatisfaction with Yangon Division
Court’s order of confirming Yangon North District
Court’s order of refusing nomination of defence
witnesses U Win Tin and U Tin Oo in Yangon North
District Court’s Criminal Case No 47/2009 against
US citizen Mr John William Yettaw, Daw Aung San
Suu Kyi, Daw Khin Khin Win and Ma Win Ma Ma.
Supreme Court (Yangon) pronounced the
judgment on the Criminal Revision Case at 10 am
today.
In the judgment, Supreme Court (Yangon) said
that the lawsuit against applicant No (1) Daw Aung
San Suu Kyi was filed under Section (22) of the Law
to Safeguard the State Against the Dangers of Those
Desiring to Cause Subversive Acts; that the Section is
to take action if a person against whom action is taken
opposes, breaches or fails to abide by the restriction
order (or) prohibition order; that Daw Aung San Suu
Kyi just needs to argue, providing an evidence that
she did not oppose or breach the restriction order (or)
prohibition order in the trial filed by the initial court;
that the lawyer of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in the case
said that the witnesses they nominated were important
for the judgment, U Tin Oo, for instance, was
nominated as he was assumed to be a witness capable
of giving profound statements that action should not
be taken under the Law to Safeguard the State Against
the Dangers of Those Desiring to Cause Subversive
Acts; that according to the provision of Section (7) of
that Law, the provision is that the cabinet is authorized
to pass an order, as may be necessary, restricting any
fundamental right, not the provision that action is
Supreme Court (Yangon) dismisses criminal revision case for
refusing nomination of two defence witnesses in trial against
US citizen Mr John William Yettaw, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,
Daw Khin Khin Win and Ma Win Ma Ma
taken in accordance with the judiciary or judicial trend;
that therefore, it is to be assumed that there is no need
to take into consideration the statements of the lawyer
of the applicants; that the lawyer of the applicants also
demanded that U Win Tin and U Tin Oo should be
examined as defence witnesses regarding political
character of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi; that the
explanation of the provision of Section 55 of the
Evidence Law says that the term “character” stipulated
in Sections 52, 53, 54 and 55 comprises both reputation
and disposition; that according to the explanation,
there is no provision in the Evidence Law that says
there is the right to nominate a witness regarding
political character; that in view of the statements given
by the witnesses in the case of the initial court, there is
not any argument regarding character or political
character of applicant Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the
accused of the initial court; that therefore the character
of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi does not attract any argument
in the initial case; that according to the documents of
the file of the initial court, applicant Daw Aung San
Suu Kyi, the accused of the initial court, was examined
as the accused, not as a witness in the court; that so it
can be deduced that the application for examining U
Win Tin and U Tin Oo as defence witnesses for
character of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is particularly
intended to disrupt and delay the case; that the district
court refused to summon and examine U Win Tin and
U Tin Oo as defence witnesses in accordance with the
provision of Section 257 (1) of Code of Criminal
Procedure; that the lawyer of the applicants publicly
admitted that the judge of the district court pronounced
an order according to Section 257 (1) of Code of
Criminal Procedure; that Yangon Division Court
reviewed that it dismissed the revision case as it is
designed to delay the trial as evidenced by the
documents of the initial court, although the initial
court’s order does not enumerate, in accordance with
Section 257 (1) of Code of Criminal Procedure, the
reason of why the nomination of three defence
witnesses was refused; that however, it cannot be said
that the review of the division court is wrong; that the
lawyer of the applicants submitted that the division
court pronounced an order “it is right according to
Paragraph 1115 of Manual to Courts” and it did so
without any authority bestowed on it; that it is
required to find out whether his statement is right
or not; that with daily records, stating in brief the
reason of refusing the nomination, the district court
pronounced the order to refuse the nomination of
defence witnesses, according to Paragraphs 1115
and 1116 of Manual to Court, and the court
procedure, so it is not wrong; that it is virtually
illogical to say that the division court’s confirmation
of the district court’s daily records, referring to
Paragraph 1115 of Manual to Courts, is beyond its
authority; that therefore, it is assumed that the
criminal revision case to summon and examine U
Win Tin and U Tin Oo as defence witnesses is
intended to hinder and delay the trial because they
just wanted to submit a subject that does not need
any argument in the case; that the district court’s
order to refuse to summon and examine U Win Tin
and U Tin Oo as defence witnesses, and the division
court’s confirmation of the district court’s order
are in accordance with the law; and that therefore
making a deduction that the Supreme Court does
not need to intervene in the case with the authority
to revise the orders of the district and division
courts, it pronounced the order to confirm Yangon
Division Court’s order dated 9 June and dismiss
the Criminal Revision Case.—MNA
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Israel launches world’s first hybrid solar power station
Photo takenon 24 June,2009 showsthe solarreceiver ofthe world’sfirst hybrid
solar thermalgas turbinepower stationat KibbutzSamar insouthernIsrael.
XINHUA
KIBBUTZ SAMAR, 25 June — AORA,
A leading Israeli solar energy technology company,launched Wednesday world’s first hybrid
solar thermal power station at KibbutzSamar in southern Israel.
This marked the first time that concentratingsolar power (CSP) stations can provide
environmentally-friendly power 24hours a day, according to AORA’s CEO,
Haim Fried. AORA’s “Power Flower” station, named due to its unique yellow tulip design, consists of a field of 30 tracking mirrors (heliostats) situated on half an acre of land.
Each of the station’s 30 heliostats tracks the sun and reflects its rays towards the top
of a 30 meter-high tower housing a special solar receiver along with a 100 kilowatt gas
turbine. The patented receiver uses the solar energy to heat air to a temperature of 1,000
degrees Celsius and directs this energy into the turbine, which converts the thermal energy
into electric power that will be fed directly into the national grid.
Xinhua
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Trial-YANGON, 26 June
YANGON, 26 June—Judges sat for Criminal Cases Nos 47/2009, 48/
2009, and 49/2009 filed against US citizen Mr John William Yettaw, Daw Aung
San Suu Kyi, Daw Khin Khin Win and Ma Win Ma Ma at Yangon North District
Court this morning.
In the process, Supreme Court (Yangon), in relation to its Criminal
Revision Case No 333 (B)/2009, summoned Criminal Case No 47/2009 of
Yangon North District Court. So, Yangon North District Court was in no position
to continue Criminal Case No 47/2009.
Therefore, Yangon North District Court, in order to question defence
witness Daw Khin Moe Moe, put off Criminal Case No 47/2009 to 3 July
together with Criminal Cases Nos 48/2009 and 49/2009.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Michael Jackson, the 'King of Pop,' dies at age 50
အသားအေရာင္နဲ ့လူမ်ိဳးခဲြျခားမႈကို သူ ့နည္းသူ ့ဟန္နဲ ့အသက္ဆုံးတိုင္ တိုက္ပဲြဝင္သြားတဲ့ ေပါ့ဘုရင္ကိုဦးညႊတ္ဂုဏ္ျပဳပါတယ္။
I solute you and god bless you.
ုဘုန္းလိႈင္-FWUBC
Autopsy set after Michael Jackson's sudden death
Remembering the 'King of Pop'
Slideshow:Michael Jackson dies at 50 Play Video Video:Jermaine Jackson: Want privacy in 'tough time' AP Play Video Video:Sights and Sounds: Remembering the 'King of Pop' AP AP – FILE - In this Aug. 29, 1993 file photo, pop singer Michael Jackson performs during his 'Dangerous' concert … By LYNN ELBER, Associated Press Writer Lynn Elber, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 7 mins ago
LOS ANGELES – Michael Jackson, defined in equal parts as the world's greatest entertainer and perhaps its most enigmatic figure, was about to attempt one of the greatest comebacks of all time. Then his life was cut shockingly — and so far, mysteriously — short.
The 50-year-old musical superstar died Thursday, just as he was preparing for what would be a series of 50 concerts starting July 13 at London's famed 02 arena. Jackson had been spending hours and hours toiling with a team of dancers for a performance he and his fans hoped would restore his tarnished legacy to its proper place in pop.
An autopsy was planned for Friday, though results were not likely to be final until toxicology tests could be completed, a process that could take several days and sometimes weeks. However, if a cause can be determined by the autopsy, they will announce the results, said Los Angeles County Coroner Investigator Jerry McKibben.
Police said they were investigating, standard procedure in high-profile cases.
Jackson died at UCLA Medical Center after being stricken at his rented home in the posh Los Angeles neighborhood of Holmby Hills. Paramedics tried to resuscitate him at his home for nearly three-quarters of an hour, then rushed him to the hospital, where doctors continued to work on him.
"It is believed he suffered cardiac arrest in his home. However, the cause of his death is unknown until results of the autopsy are known," his brother Jermaine said.
Cardiac arrest is an abnormal heart rhythm that stops the heart from pumping blood to the body. It can occur after a heart attack or be caused by other heart problems.
Jackson's death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s, when he was popular music's premier all-around performer, a uniter of black and white music who shattered the race barrier on MTV, dominated the charts and dazzled even more on stage.
His 1982 album "Thriller" — which included the blockbuster hits "Beat It," "Billie Jean" and "Thriller" — is the best-selling album of all time, with an estimated 50 million copies sold worldwide.
As word of his death spread, MTV switched its programming to play videos from Jackson's heyday. Radio stations began playing marathons of his hits. Hundreds of people gathered outside the hospital. In New York's Times Square, a low groan went up in the crowd when a screen flashed that Jackson had died, and people began relaying the news to friends by cell phone.
"No joke. King of Pop is no more. Wow," Michael Harris, 36, of New York City, read from a text message a friend had sent him. "It's like when Kennedy was assassinated. I will always remember being in Times Square when Michael Jackson died."
The public first knew him as a boy in the late 1960s, when he was the precocious, spinning lead singer of the Jackson 5, the singing group he formed with his four older brothers out of Gary, Ind. Among their No. 1 hits were "I Want You Back," "ABC" and "I'll Be There."
He was perhaps the most exciting performer of his generation, known for his backward-gliding moonwalk, his feverish, crotch-grabbing dance moves and his high-pitched singing, punctuated with squeals and titters. His single sequined glove, tight, military-style jacket and aviator sunglasses were trademarks, as was his ever-changing, surgically altered appearance.
"For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don't have the words," said Quincy Jones, who produced "Thriller." "He was the consummate entertainer and his contributions and legacy will be felt upon the world forever. I've lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him."
Jackson ranked alongside Elvis Presley and the Beatles as the biggest pop sensations of all time. He united two of music's biggest names when he was briefly married to Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie. Jackson's sudden death immediately evoked comparisons to that of Presley himself, who died at age 42 in 1977.
"I am so very sad and confused with every emotion possible," Lisa Marie Presley said in a statement. "I am heartbroken for his children who I know were everything to him and for his family. This is such a massive loss on so many levels, words fail me."
As years went by, Jackson became an increasingly freakish figure — a middle-aged man-child weirdly out of touch with grown-up life. His skin became lighter, his nose narrower, and he spoke in a breathy, girlish voice. He often wore a germ mask while traveling, kept a pet chimpanzee named Bubbles as one of his closest companions and surrounded himself with children at his Neverland ranch, a storybook playland filled with toys, rides and animals. The tabloids dubbed him "Wacko Jacko."
"It seemed to me that his internal essence was at war with the norms of the world. It's as if he was trying to defy gravity," said Michael Levine, a Hollywood publicist who represented Jackson in the early 1990s. He called Jackson a "disciple of P.T. Barnum" and said the star appeared fragile at the time but was "much more cunning and shrewd about the industry than anyone knew."
Jackson caused a furor in 2002 when he playfully dangled his infant son, Prince Michael II, over a hotel balcony in Berlin while a throng of fans watched from below.
In 2005, he was cleared of charges that he molested a 13-year-old cancer survivor at Neverland in 2003. He had been accused of plying the boy with alcohol and groping him, and of engaging in strange and inappropriate behavior with other children.
The case followed years of rumors about Jackson and young boys. In a TV documentary, he acknowledged sharing his bed with children, a practice he described as sweet and not at all sexual.
Despite the acquittal, the lurid allegations that came out in court took a fearsome toll on his career and image, and he fell into serious financial trouble.
Michael Joseph Jackson was born Aug. 29, 1958, in Gary. He was 4 years old when he began singing with his brothers — Marlon, Jermaine, Jackie and Tito — in the Jackson 5. After his early success with bubblegum soul, he struck out on his own, generating innovative, explosive, unstoppable music.
The album "Thriller" alone mixed the dark, serpentine bass and drums and synthesizer approach of "Billie Jean," the grinding Eddie Van Halen guitar solo on "Beat It," and the hiccups and falsettos on "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'."
The peak may have come in 1983, when Motown celebrated its 25th anniversary with an all-star televised concert and Jackson moonwalked off with the show, joining his brothers for a medley of old hits and then leaving them behind with a pointing, crouching, high-kicking, splay-footed, crotch-grabbing run through "Billie Jean."
The audience stood and roared. Jackson raised his fist.
During production of a 1984 Pepsi commercial, Jackson's scalp sustains burns when an explosion sets his hair on fire.
He had strong follow-up albums with 1987's "Bad" and 1991's "Dangerous," but his career began to collapse in 1993 after he was accused of molesting a boy who often stayed at his home. The singer denied any wrongdoing, reached a settlement with the boy's family, reported to be $20 million, and criminal charges were never filed.
Jackson's expressed anger over the allegations on the 1995 album "HIStory," which sold more than 2.4 million copies, but by then, the popularity of Jackson's music was clearly waning even as public fascination with his increasingly erratic behavior was growing.
Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley in 1994, and they divorced in 1996. Later that year, Jackson married Deborah Rowe, a former nurse for his dermatologist. They had two children together: Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., known as Prince Michael, now 12; and Paris Michael Katherine Jackson, 11. Rowe filed for divorce in 1999.
Jackson also had a third child, Prince Michael II. Now 7, Jackson said the boy nicknamed Blanket as a baby was his biological child born from a surrogate mother.
Billboard magazine editorial director Bill Werde said Jackson's star power was unmatched. "The world just lost the biggest pop star in history, no matter how you cut it," Werde said. "He's literally the king of pop."
Jackson's 13 No. 1 one hits on the Billboard charts put him behind only Presley, the Beatles and Mariah Carey, Werde said.
"He was on the eve of potentially redeeming his career a little bit," he said. "People might have started to think of him again in a different light."
__
AP Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch and AP writers Derrik J. Lang, Solvej Schou, Anthony McCartney and Thomas Watkins in Los Angeles; and Virginia Byrne, Hillel Italie, Nekesa Mumbi Moody and Jocelyn Noveck in New York contributed to this report.
KNU Headquarters Overrun: Now What?
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=16188
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By SAW YAN NAING Thursday, June 25, 2009
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After a long offensive, the Burmese army and its ceasefire militia, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), has overrun the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) Brigade 7 headquarters.
The question now is: What’s next?
Karen sources and analysts said the fighting will continue as the joint Burmese army and DKBA troops focus their attacks toward the KNLA Brigade 6 area.
Analysts said powerful business interests are supporting the offensive.
Enlarge Image
(Graphic:
The Irrawaddy)
The Burmese regime’s goal is to control all of central Karen State, where the Karen National Union’s KNLA Brigade 7 and 6 are now located, in order to dominate the business and border trade activity with Thailand, said one DKBA businessman who asked for anonymity.
Once dominated, many industries, companies and infrastructure will be improved and supported by the Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, said the businessman.
Important activities will include logging and mining natural resources, including zinc, he said.
He said the Burmese authorities and DKBA troops will construct roads to connect between army headquarters in Myaing Gyi Ngu and border areas.
Once the clashes end, the relationship between the DKBA and local Thai authorities and businessmen in Mae Sot will expand when compared to the past, businessmen said.
During the recent fighting, a KNU leader said two DKBA leaders were spotted in a car traveling with Thai police near the border where Karen refugees have sought shelter in Tha Song Yang District in Tak Province.
Analysts also said the situation will be more dangerous for the KNU and Burmese opposition groups in exile when the border area is controlled by DKBA troops.
Maj Hla Ngwe, the joint secretary (1) of the KNU, said the loss of KNLA Brigade 7 headquarters could affect the work of Burmese opposition organizations based in Mae Sot.
“The opposition movement will be limited. They might not launch campaigns as they did before,” said Hla Ngwe.
Border sources also say more assassinations could be expected in the border area, where many Burmese and ethnic opposition groups are based.
In February 2008, the KNU’s late general secretary, Mahn Sha, was gun down by two DKBA members at his home near the center of Mae Sot. Many sources claimed the assassination also involved Thai border police.
Border sources said that DKBA members will have easy access to Mae Sot once the relationship between the DKBA and Thai border authorities is established.
A sign of the evolving transition in the power center, said the businessman, is that DKBA soldiers are now receiving medical care in Mae Sot. What’s happening is “very obvious,” he said.
The DKBA plans to expand its troops from 6,000 to 9,000 in preparation for its transformation to become a border guard force under the Burmese army. The DKBA split from it mother organization, the KNU, and signed a ceasefire agreement with the Burmese regime in 1995.
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
Sunday, June 21, 2009
JAMよりスタディーツアーのご案内JAM 2nd meeting briefing schedule and Study Tours
ホーム メータオ・クリニックとメータオ・クリニック支援の会 活動・レポート・PR情報 ご支援いただける方々へ お問い合わせ FAQ リンク Reporting activities to support the clinic and clinic METAO METAO Home PR people you support and information contact us FAQ links
You are here: ホーム You are here: Home
おしらせ News
第2回JAMスタディツアー日程および事前説明説明会 JAM 2nd meeting briefing schedule and Study Tours
日時 ：09年7月18日（土）～7月23日（木） 5泊6日 Date: 1909 July 18 (Sat.) - Thursday, July 23 5 nights 6 days
参加費：99,800円 Fee: 99,800 yen
定員 ：10名 Capacity: 10 persons
〆切 ：6月27日（土） Deadline: Saturday, June 27
日程・内容 Content Schedule
詳細およびお申し込みは以下をご参照ください。 For more information and application please see below.
第2回JAMスタディツアー参加者募集要項 Second Call for Participants JAM Study Tours
第2回JAMスタディツアー事前説明会要項 JAM 2nd Study Tour Pre-Application Meeting
スタディツアー参加申込書 The Study Tour Registration
保護者同意書 Written parental consent
特徴1. 10万円でおつりが来る安さ！ Features 1.10 yen for something cheap! でご提案します。 Offers.
10万円以下（99,800円）タイへのNGOツアーとしては、最安値です。 10 million yen (99,800 yen) to Thailand as a tour NGO is low. （JAM調べ） 学生の皆さんにも参加しやすい価格に挑戦しました！ (JAM police) tried to price and easy to join the students!
特徴2. 一粒で何度もおいしい！ Features 2. With a grain of good times! 多様性に触れるツアーのご提案です。 Tour is offering a touch of diversity.
今回の訪問地メソト（Mae Sot）では、国境地帯の性格上、タイ文化にもミャンマーの文化にも触れられます。 Visit the Mae Sot (Mae Sot), the nature of the border, you are exposed to a culture of Myanmar and Thai culture. また、キリスト教、仏教、イスラム教などの宗教施設もある、多様性に富んだ街です。 Also, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and other religious facilities, a city rich in diversity.
また、あのノーベル平和賞候補者、ドクター・シンシアとの座談会も緊急決定！ The Nobel Peace Prize candidate, so I decided the urgent discussion with Dr. Cynthia!
※過去のスタディーツアーに関しては活動・レポートよりご覧いただけます。 ※ Study Tour in the past about our activities from the report.
更新情報 Updates
2009/06/16 2008年度、JAM総会での発表資料および活動報告掲載(資料追加) 2009/06/16 fiscal 2008, JAM on the report and presentation to the annual meeting (additional materials)
2009/06/16 前川看護師沖縄公演「国際協力に関心を」、資料掲載 2009/06/16 concert master Okinawa Nursing MAEKAWA "an interest in international cooperation", on the article
2009/06/08 新たにメータオクリニックへ医師を派遣（現地ブログ開設） 2009/06/08 METAOKURINIKKU dispatching doctors to the new (opened in blog)
2009/05/27 過去の会報を掲載 2009/05/27 newsletter published in the past
セミナー・講演情報 Conference Information Seminar
JAMメンバーによる講演の予定です。 Presentation by members of the JAM will.
2009/06/25 OurPlanet-TVのラジオ番組「東京ラブレター」 2009/06/25 OurPlanet-TV radio, "Tokyo Love Letter"
2009/09/06 日本ビルマ救援センター（大阪） 2009/09/06 Burmese Relief Center-Japan (Osaka)
2009/06/14 学びフォーラム（京都） 横川 裕美子先生（京都橘大学看護学部）が、滋賀・京都地区の高校生を対象にした「学びフォーラム」でJAMの活動を紹介してくださいました。 2009/06/14 Learning Forum (Kyoto) Dr. Yokogawa Yumiko (Kyoto Tachibana University Faculty of Nursing), a district high school students in Kyoto, Shiga "learning forum" to introduce Mr. JAM activities. 横川先生、ありがとうございました！ Yokogawa teacher, thank you!
2009/04/16 鎌倉大船ロータリークラブ Rotary Club Oohune Kamakura 2009/04/16
2009/03/08 第24回日本国際保健医療学会東日本地方会 2009/03/08 The 24th East Regional Meeting of Japan Society for International Health
2008/10/07 ピースロード鎌倉 Kamakura 2008/10/07 piece Rhodes
2008/08/22 アジア保健教育機構 Health Education Organization Asia 2008/08/22
講演のご要望・過去の講演資料請求などございましたら、 お問い合わせページよりご連絡ください。 Request Information Feel free speech and the speech of the last request, please contact us from contact page.
新型インフルエンザ緊急レポート Pandemic flu emergency report
新型インフルエンザ確認に伴い、JAMでも対応を開始しております。 With the new flu, JAM has started to respond. 随時レポートしてまいりますので、日々のサイトのご確認をお願いいたします。 We have reports from time to time, we thank you for your site.
レポート第一弾 （20090501) Series of reports (20090501)
©2009 NGO メータオ・クリニック支援の会 © 2009 NGO Committee in support METAO Clinic
当サイトへのリンクの際には、必ず事前にご連絡をお願いいたします。 The link to this site, thank you to us in advance.
ご意見・お問い合わせは「お問い合わせ」よりお願いいたします。 Contact us in "contact us" thank you.
当会は、特定の政治・宗教とは一切関係ありません。当会, religion and politics is not related to any particular.
Original Japanese text:
第2回JAMスタディツアー参加者募集要項
Contribute a better translation
JAMよりスタディーツアーのご案内(7月）Sunday, 21 June, 2009 20:17
From: "ml@japanmaetao.org"
ＪＡＭよりスタディーツアーのご案内 (20090621)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ご支援いただき誠にありがとうございます。
ＪＡＭスタディツアー参加者募集のお知らせです。
「国境の町で、文化や宗教の多様性に触れる旅」
■ 日 時：2009年7月18日（土）～7月23日（木） 5泊6日
■ 参加費： 合計 99,800円
■ 対 象：JAM 賛助会員
■ 定 員：15名
■ 申込方法：JAMのホームページTOPにリンクされております参加申込書に
必要事項をご記入いただき、support@japanmaetao.org へ添付してください。
■ 申込締切：2009年6月27日（土）※ 夏期繁忙期間のため、
※航空券の残りが少なくなっているため、参加希望の方は早めのお申込を
お願いいたします。
■ 事前説明会について 本ツアー参加者を対象に、7月4日（土）に
事前説明会を予定しています。
※詳細はHPをご覧下さい。
■ 申込・問い合わせ先： support@japanmaetao.org （担当 岡谷）
■以前開催したスタディツアーの内容がJAMのホームページに掲載されています。
「活動・レポート」→「スタディツアー体験レポート」とお進みになり、ご覧ください。
ご質問等ございましたら、support@japanmaetao.org までお願いいたします。
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発行：メータオ・クリニック支援の会
WEBサイト：http://www.japanmaetao.org/
MAIL：support@japanmaetao.org
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本メールの無断転載を禁止します。
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Female senators back Suu Kyi-USA
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking+News/SE+Asia/Story/STIStory_392955.html
June 20, 2009
WASHINGTON - THE 17 women serving in the US Senate made a joint appeal on Friday for the release of Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi as she spent her 64th birthday in prison.
The 17 of the 50 US senators who are female issued a joint statement voicing solidarity with the Nobel Peace laureate.
'The military junta has tried for years to stifle the will of the people and silence the voice of Suu Kyi through a brutal campaign of violence and oppression,' they said.
'Yet Aung San Suu Kyi remains a beacon of hope for a future of democracy, the rule of law and human rights,' they said.
The Women's Caucus of the US Senate is headed by Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat representing California, and Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican from Texas.
Activists around the world rallied on Friday for the release of Ms Suu Kyi, who has spent 13 of the past 19 years under house arrest.
The democracy icon is now on trial at Yangon's notorious Insein Prison over a bizarre incident in which an American man swam to her home. -- AFP
In Myanmar, Two Hidden Worlds Amid privations, its regime prospers by trading with China and India
Saturday, June 20, 2009
By WALL SREET JOURNAL REPORTERS
This grandiose new city has four-lane highways that are largely empty, a gems museum with sapphires and a zoo with air-conditioned Arctic habitats for penguins. Government officials reside in high-security compounds that can’t be visited by foreigners.
A five-hour drive to the south, residents in Yangon get by with hours at a time of no electricity. Their once-grand city is filled with collapsing Victorian mansions and abandoned colonial administrative buildings. Roads are often impassable during monsoon rains, and most cars date to the 1980s or early 1990s. Some taxis are so worn out that they have holes in the floorboards that allow passengers to see the road rushing by underneath.
The divide between Myanmar’s shining new capital, home to much of its military elite, and its commercial capital underscores the failure of a decade of U.S. and European sanctions, efforts to break the country’s military regime by cutting it off from doing business with much of the Western world. Instead, the country’s leaders and top businessmen have survived and even thrived by replacing Western buyers with Asian ones. Trade with China has more than doubled over the past five years, and sales of natural gas and other resources to Thailand, India and other Asian powers are also growing quickly. In the process, the regime has only tightened its grip.
All that is leading dissidents, human rights advocates and congressional leaders to an increasingly widespread conclusion: It’s time for a new approach. Many believe it will require a far greater effort by Western governments to engage directly with the secretive regime. It will also require exerting more pressure on Asian trading partners, including China and Singapore, to pressure the junta to curb human rights abuses and make other changes. Many advocates are calling for more radical approaches, including offering to dismantle some of the sanctions —albeit with threats of more serious actions, such as arms embargoes or criminal tribunals like ones in Rwanda or Sudan, if the regime doesn’t reform.
Others go so far as to propose that the West should accept a diminished role for Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s leading opposition figure. The Nobel laureate is arguably the world’s most revered prisoner of conscience since Nelson Mandela, but she has drawn criticism for her inflexibility in dealing with the regime. It’s unclear when, or if, she’ll be able to lead the opposition again. The 64-year-old is on trial for letting an American well-wisher visit her home this May in violation of a longstanding house arrest, and faces up to five more years in jail.
In February, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged that past strategies including sanctions weren’t working, and promised the U.S. would conduct a thorough review—still incomplete—of its policies towards Myanmar. Top officials in the Obama administration are also hoping to significantly increase humanitarian aid, according to people familiar with the matter, which many Myanmar experts hope will be a step towards rebuilding a civil society that could mature into a new opposition movement to supplement or replace Ms. Suu Kyi.
Once dismissed as a backwater, Myanmar has seen its profile rise dramatically in recent years because of its position between China and India, the world’s two biggest emerging superpowers. Both are jockeying for Myanmar’s natural gas, copper and other resources, and Myanmar offers China a potential alternate overland route for oil and gas, bypassing the crowded Strait of Malacca near Singapore that handles much of East Asia’s supply today.
Trade with China jumped to more than $2.6 billion in 2008 from about $630 million in 2001, according to Chinese government data. Analysts say the official numbers vastly understate the full extent of China’s investments in Myanmar. In downtown Yangon, its commercial capital, trucks laden with massive logs or other goods—sometimes with Chinese characters painted on the side of the vehicles—are a common sight.
Monywa, once a relatively minor village in central Myanmar, has emerged as a major trading center for beans and other legumes, commodities in heavy demand across Asia, especially India. Myanmar is now the world’s second biggest exporter of the crops after Canada, and Monywa has reaped the rewards. It has quadrupled in size to 400,000 people over the past two decades. The number of traders has grown to roughly 1,000 from 200 in the 1990s and multistory homes with Greek columns are commonplace, as are imported SUVs, which can cost $100,000 in Myanmar.
In places like Monywa, “it’s easy to make money,” says one local trader in his 20s.
Some analysts and U.S. congressional leaders fear Myanmar could become a nuclear threat. Russia has acknowledged signing an agreement with Myanmar in 2007 to help build a nuclear reactor and a center for nuclear research there, reportedly for medical research purposes, but Russian officials have said no concrete projects ever materialized. Others point to growing ties between Myanmar and North Korea.
Any new diplomatic initiative from the U.S. would require finding a way to deal with one of the world’s most reclusive regimes. Top officials—including the country’s senior-most general, a psychological warfare expert in his 70s named Than Shwe—are ensconced in Naypyitaw. Members of the inner circle rarely meet with Western ambassadors, who remain in Yangon.
Attempts to reach the regime for this article were unsuccessful. The generals typically make their views known through state-run newspapers. In recent weeks they have blasted foreign countries for interfering in Myanmar’s internal affairs and defended the imprisonment of Ms. Suu Kyi as necessary for public security.
The government usually prohibits foreign journalists from entering. Authorized guests, including aid workers, often must get permission to travel outside Yangon. Residents can be imprisoned if caught aiding international journalists.
In the 1800s, British soldiers conquered what used to be known as Burma. It became the world’s biggest rice exporter and a major source of timber. In the late 1940s, nationalists led by Ms. Suu Kyi’s father, Aung San, secured independence. Aung San was assassinated and in 1962 the military took over for good, implementing a series of disastrous socialist policies that sent the economy into a tailspin.
Anger boiled over in 1988 student protests, in which more than 3,000 were killed, and the government agreed to hold national elections. When Ms. Suu Kyi’s party won, the military ignored the result.
The U.S. banned new American investments in Myanmar in 1997, and in 2003 it outlawed imports of Myanmar goods and restricted American banks from doing business there. The Bush administration added additional targeted sanctions against members of the regime.
The practical effect of the sanctions, though, has been to push the regime deeper into the arms of China and other Asian powers, while leaving much of the rest of society to suffer the consequences. Per capita gross domestic product is about $1,200, only slightly higher than Rwanda, and far below Singapore’s $52,000 and $47,000 in the U.S.
In Yangon, U.S. trade restrictions ripped apart the garment industry earlier this decade, throwing as many as 80,000 young women out of work, according to economists. Trucks filled with soldiers are seen often, as are signs with pro-government messages such as one that exhorts residents to “Crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy.”
In Yangon’s central business district there are offices or billboards for many of Asia’s biggest brand names, including Mitsubishi and Canon, but almost no sign of Western companies. Thai oil and gas producer PTT Exploration & Production PCL has Myanmar investments that provide about one-third of Thailand’s natural gas needs, worth $2 billion or more in recent years. Cnooc Ltd. is exploring for oil and a number of Chinese resources and engineering firms are involved in hydropower and mining ventures.
Much of the money flows directly to the regime and its allies. According to the U.S. government, the military owns a majority stake in virtually all enterprises responsible for extracting natural resources. The government is now sitting on more than $3 billion in foreign exchange reserves, compared to just $30 million in 1988. Wealthier residents, including businessmen linked by U.S. intelligence reports to the military, have access to art galleries, pricey French restaurants and shopping trips to Singapore.
Adding to the frustration is evidence that Ms. Suu Kyi’s opposition is in tatters. Leaders of Ms. Suu Kyi’s political party, the National League for Democracy, are in their 70s and 80s, and the junta has imprisoned most of the younger blood, exiles and human rights groups say, with more than 2,000 political prisoners now under lock and key. The government has also pressured monasteries to purge monks involved in 2007 street protests, and it routinely blocks blogs and Web sites, such as youtube, that it deems to be subversive.
“Almost no one is willing to join the (opposition) party for fear of being arrested,” said one resident. Party leaders meet regularly at their headquarters, a modest house surrounded by shops on a busy street in central Yangon; it’s widely assumed the building and its occupants are monitored by the government.
Another resident said she started attending meetings at NLD headquarters when Ms. Suu Kyi’s trial began, but stopped because she felt they were going nowhere. “They were old, they were like aunties and uncles,” said the young woman, who thought the meetings felt “like a reunion” for old dissidents. Without Ms. Suu Kyi, “there is no one,” she said.
Even some dissidents who support sanctions say additional tactics are needed, including more direct engagement with the regime. Others believe the sanctions would be more effective if fine-tuned to focus only on the junta members themselves, or backed up with more potent punishments, including arms embargoes or criminal tribunals.
More than 50 U.S. congressmen signed a letter in recent weeks calling for a U.N. Security Council inquiry into alleged crimes against humanity in Myanmar, similar to what occurred in Rwanda, Bosnia and Sudan. The United Nations’ former special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, has issued similar calls in the past six weeks, as has a team of leading jurists in conjunction with Harvard Law School.
Those efforts may well be blocked at the U.N. by nations that have defended Myanmar in the past, notably China and Russia. But backers say the U.S. hasn’t been willing to press hard enough to get Asian nations to get tough on Myanmar.
Another option gaining popularity in Washington: significantly boosting humanitarian aid, partly to build stronger groups to counter the military.
One group is Myanmar Egress, a local think tank set up in 2006 by young intellectuals with the goal of trying to end the stalemate between the government and Ms. Suu Kyi’s backers. Egress has produced studies for the government outlining its vision for reform. In one, co-founder and former Yale student Nay Win Maung suggested that Ms. Suu Kyi propose to contest only 50% of the seats in an election planned by the regime in 2010. In return for effectively conceding the vote, the government would end her house arrest and release political prisoners.
Mr. Maung’s approach has angered some Myanmar exiles, who are suspicious of engaging with the state and distrust Mr. Maung, whose parents were in the military and taught at Myanmar’s version of West Point. His approach, though, has made him a useful mediator between foreign aid groups like Oxfam and the generals, local aid workers say. The U.K.’s Department for International Development, for example, is funding an Egress project to train Myanmar citizens in managing aid projects.
The junta could block or limit aid if it suspects it’s being used to undermine the regime, as it did temporarily last year after Cyclone Nargis, which killed 135,000 people or more. Currently, development aid to Myanmar totals less than $3 per person, compared with about $50 in Sudan.
Whatever happens, “if people want to punish the regime, they need to find ways to do it that don’t punish the people,” says Andrew Kirkwood, Myanmar country director for Save the Children, the aid organization.
Mr. Pinheiro, the former U.N. special rapporteur, who is pressing for an inquiry into human rights violations, says, with a new administration in Washington and interest rising in Myanmar, “I think there is a space here to have something new, something more flexible” that ultimately will bring some results.
Jeg's Comment on PHOTOS: What you are to view is what the military does not want the west to see as according to Than Shwe regime the dictatorship has made many improvements to the country... can you pick any improvements in your sights? if you do please share.
Burmese army drives ethnic rebels from last stronghold
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/burmese-army-drives-ethnic-rebels-from-last-stronghold-1708992.html
Thousands of refugees flee to Thailand as Karen fighters resort to guerrilla war
By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent
Friday, 19 June 2009
An ethnic rebel army that has been fighting for greater autonomy from Burma for more than 60 years has been driven from its stronghold after weeks of fighting against government troops, raising the prospect of a fresh flood of refugees into Thailand.
More than 4,000 civilians have fled into neighbouring Thailand this month following attacks by Burmese troops against the Karen National Union (KNU). Yesterday, the rebels revealed that having given up several camps, they had now been forced from their main base.
"Our troops are planning to move behind enemy lines to pursue guerrilla warfare," the KNU's vice-president, David Tharckabaw, told the Associated Press. "If it is necessary, any camp can be abandoned."
The struggle by the Karen, squeezed into ever smaller patches of jungle in the east of Burma, represents an ultimately futile battle against the odds. It is one of the world's longest-running conflicts.
With almost all other ethnic rebel groups having now agreed peace deals with the Burmese junta, the KNU has been struggling to survive against a determined effort by the government to crush the last of the rebels.
About 100,000 Karen refugees have taken shelter in Thai camps over the past two decades after fleeing the government's counter-insurgency operations. Aid groups suggest that another half-million Karen are displaced inside eastern Burma.
Human rights groups and the UN have long accused the Burmese government of torturing, killing and raping Karen civilians while trying to stamp out the insurgency, though the military regime denies the allegations.
Last week, the EU condemned the fighting, saying that it "noted with serious concern the mounting offensive of the Burmese army and its allies against the Karen... which has resulted in large numbers of civilians fleeing from the conflict area.
"The EU calls for an immediate ceasefire and requests the authorities and military operators to ensure the protection of civilians at all times."
During the Second World War, British forces recruited ethnic Karen to help drive the Japanese from Burma, with an undertaking that at the conclusion of the war, they would win their independence.
With victory secured, however, that pledge was forgotten and independent Burma's first leader, General Aung San, the father of the imprisoned pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, was also opposed to Karen autonomy.
The stepping up of the junta's operation against the Karen, who are seeking a federal state rather than independence, comes as preparations are made to mark Aung San Suu Kyi's 64th birthday today.
The opposition leader is to spend her birthday at the notorious Insein jail in Rangoon, where she is being held after an American man swam to her house, uninvited. She has been accused of violating the conditions of her house arrest after she let the man stay at her home for two nights.
Ms Suu Kyi has spent 13 of the past 19 years in detention since the junta refused to recognise the victory of her party, the National League for Democracy, in a 1990 election.
In Rangoon, members of her party were planning a celebration at their headquarters where they intended to give breakfast to Buddhist monks. "We have to hold the birthday party without the host again. We would be very happy if she could be released, we are hoping and praying for this," said a senior party member, Lei Lei.
A website set up to gather birthday wishes for Aung San Suu Kyi, "64 for Suu," has collected more than 10,000 names, including those of Gordon Brown, David Beckham, George Clooney and Julia Roberts.
Undercover report from inside Burma-19-JUNE-2009
Protests and vigils are being held around the world on to mark the birthday of the detained Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
In Burma her supporters say they want to protest but face severe punishment and even threats of death from the army.
Foreign reporters are not allowed inside Burma - but the BBC's Nick Springate travelled there and compiled this report.
Friday, June 19, 2009
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္(၆၄)ေျမာက္ေမြးေန ့အထိန္းအမွတ္ စာစု
၁၈-၀၆-၂၀၀၉
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္(၆၄)ေျမာက္ေမြးေန ့အထိန္းအမွတ္ စာစု
အရင္ဆုံးသတင္းေပးခ်င္တာက ဂီရင္းလို ့ေခၚတဲ့ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီေရးကို
ေထာက္ခံအားေပးေနတဲ့ ဂ်ပန္လႊတ္ေတာ္အမတ္မ်ားအဖဲြ ့က ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္ကို
Democracy and Peace Award ဆုကို နက္ျဖန္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္ေမြးေန ့မွာခ်ီး
ျမင့္မွာျဖစ္ျပီး ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္ရဲ့ကိုယ္စား အမ်ိဳးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖဲြ ့ခ်ဳပ္ဒုတိယ
ဥကၠဌ ဦးတင္ဦးရဲ့ သားလဲျဖစ္ အမ်ိဳးုသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖဲြ ့ခ်ဳပ္လြတ္ေျမာက္နယ္ေျမ
ဂ်ပန္ရဲ့ ဥကၠဌလည္းျဖစ္တဲ့ ကိုသန္ ့စင္ဦးကလက္ခံရယူမွာျဖစ္ေႀကာင္းသတင္းပါးလို
ပါတယ္။
ေနာက္တခုက ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္အသက္(၆၄) နွစ္ျပည့္အထိန္းအမွတ္ ဆန္လႉပဲြ
ကိုလဲ ဂ်ပန္ေရာက္ ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံသားမ်ားစုေပါင္းျပီး ထိုင္ျမန္မာနယ္စပ္ မဲေဆာက္ဧရိယာ
မွာျပဳလုပ္ေနပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာက်ပ္ေငြသိန္း(၁၁၀) ဖိုးေလာက္အလႉခံရရိွပါတယ္။
အမ်ွေပးေဝပါတယ္။
သာဓုေခၚႀကပါခင္ဗ်ား
အခုက်ႊန္ေတာ္တင္ျပခ်င္တာက - တရားကိုျမင္မွ ဘုရားကိုျမင္မယ္
ဆိုတဲ့ဆိုရိုးစကားဗုဒၶဘာသာမွာရိွပါတယ္။ အခုလဲေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကညရဲ့နိုင္ငံ
ေရးအျမင္ကိုသိမွ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္ကိုသိမွာျဖစ္လို ့ ၈၈- အေရးအခင္း
ေနာက္ပိုင္း လူငယ္မ်ိဳးဆက္သစ္ေတြကို ရည္ရြယ္ျပီး ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္ရဲ့
အေတြးအေခၚေတြထဲက စာပိုဒ္(၃) ပိုဒ္ကို ေခါင္းစဥ္ခဲြျပီးမွတ္မွတ္ရရတင္ျပခ်င္ပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာလူထုနဲ ့ဒီမိုကေရစီ
ဒီမိုကေရစီနိုင္ငံမ်ားမွ နိုင္ငံသူနိုင္ငံသားမ်ားရရိွေသာ အခြင့္အေရးမ်ားခံစားပိုင္ခြင့္မ်ားကို
ျမန္မာျပည္သားတို ့မခံစားထိုက္ဟူေသာ စကားသည္ ေစာ္ကားရာေရာက္ပါသည္။
တခ်ိန္တည္းတြင္ ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံအစိုးရကမူ ဒီမိုကေရစီနိုင္ငံအစိုးရမ်ားထက္ ပိုမို၍ အခြင့္အေရးမ်ား
ခံစားပိုင္ခြင့္ရိွသည္ဟု ယူဆထားျခင္းမွာ ယုတၱိတန္ပါသလားဟု ေမးစရာျဖစ္ပါသည္။
ဥပေဒ
ဥပေဒဟူသည္ တရားမွ်တမႈနွင့္ ထပ္တူထပ္မွ်ျဖစ္ျပီး တရားမွ်တမႈရိွျခင္းေႀကာင့္ ျပည္သူ
ျပည္သားမ်ား ေႀကေႀကနပ္နပ္နွင့္ ျငိမ္သက္ေနႀကေသာ ျငိမ္ဝပ္ပိျပားမႈမ်ိဳးသာလွ်င္ မြန္ျမတ္ပါသည္။
ဥပေဒကို အစိုးရ၏ ဖိနိွပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခ်ယ္ေသာကရိယာအျဖစ္ အသုံးျပဳျခင္းသည္ အာဏာ
ရွင္စနစ္၏ အမ်ားသိႀကန္အင္လကၡဏာတရပ္ပင္ျဖစ္သည္။
ဒီမိုကေရစီတိုက္ပဲြ
သစ္ပင္၏အရိပ္သည္ေအးျမ၏
ထို ့ထက္ မိဘ၏အရိပ္သည္ပိုေအးျမ၏
ထို ့ထက္ ဆရာသမား၏အရိပ္သည္ပိုမိုေအးျမ၏
ထို ့ထက္ မင္း ၏အရိပ္သည္ ပိုမို၍ေအးျမ၏
သို ့ေသာ္ အေအးျမဆုံးမွာ ဗုဒၶရွင္ေတာ္ျမတ္၏ အရိပ္ျဖစ္၏
ထို ့ေႀကာင့္ ျပည္သူလူထုကို ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးနွင့္ လုံျခံဳေရးဟူသည့္
ေအးျမေသာအရိပ္အာဝါသေပးနိုင္ရန္အတြက္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္သူတို ့သည္ ဗုဒၶ၏အဆုံးအမ
ႀသဝါဒမ်ားကို လိုက္နာရမည္ျဖစ္သည္။ ယင္းႀသဝါဒမ်ားထဲတြင္ သစၥာရိွျခင္း ၊
ဂရုဏာထားျခင္း နွင့္ တရားဓမၼေစာင့္စည္းျခင္း တို ့သည္အဓိကျဖစ္သည္။
ဤသို ့ေသာအရည္အခ်င္းမ်ားေပၚတြင္ အေျချပဳေသာ အစိုးရကိုရရန္ရည္ရြယ္၍
ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံသားတို ့က ဒီမိုကေရစီတိုက္ပဲြဝင္ေနႀကျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။
အထက္ပါ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီတိုက္ပဲြေအာင္ျမင္ဖို ့ဗုဒၶဘာသာဝင္တေယာက္အေနနဲ ့
ကၽြန္ေတာ့္ရဲ့အျမင္ကိုတင္ျပခ်င္ပါတယ္။
ဒီမိုကေရစီတိုက္ပဲြေအာင္ျမင္ဖို ့
၁။ကိုယ့္အားကိုယ္ကိုးရမယ္(ကယ္တင္ရွင္ေတြကိုေစာင့္မေနႀကပါနဲ ့ ဗုဒၶ ကေဟာထားတယ္ ကိုယ့္အား
ကိုယ္ကိုးပါတဲ့-ဟုတ္ပါတယ္ကိုယ့္ကိုယ္ကိုကိုယ္ ကိုယ့္နိုင္ငံကိုကိုယ္ကယ္တင္ႀကရမွာပါ။ ဘယ္သူ ့ကိုမွ
ဘယ္နိုင္ငံကိုမွ လာကယ္တင္လိမ့္မယ္ဆိုျပီးေမွ်ာ္ေနလို ့မရပါဘူး ဘယ္နိုင္ငံမဆို ကိုယ့္အက်ိဳးစီးပြား
အတြက္အရင္ႀကည့္ျပီးမွလုပ္ႀကတာပါ
၂။စည္းလုံးညီညြတ္ရမယ္(ဦးတည္ခ်က္ကို့အဓိကထားျပီးတေယာက္နဲ ့တေယာက္သေဘာထားႀကီးျပီး
စိတ္ရွည္သည္းခံဖို ့လိုပါတယ္၊ တေယာက္အားနွင့္ယူေသာ္မရ အမ်ားအားနွင့္ယူေသာ္ရ၏တဲ့။)
ျပီးေတာ့ကိုယ္က်င့္တရားေပၚမွာအေျခခံတဲ့
(က) ျပင္းျပတဲ့ဆႏၵ
(ခ) ျပင္းျပတဲ့ဝီရိယ
(ဂ) စဲြျမဲတဲ့စိတ္ဓါတ္(
ဃ)စူးစမ္းေလ့လာမႈ တို ့ရိွရပါမယ္။
(ကိုယ့္က်င့္တရားမေကာင္းတဲ့လူေတြမ်ားေနရင္ဒီမိုကေရစီနိုင္ငံထူေထာင္လဲနိုင္ငံေကာင္းလာမွာမဟုတ္
ပါဘူး ျပီးေတာ့ ဗုဒၶကေဟာထားပါတယ္ တရားကိုေစာင့္ေရွာက္ေသာသူကို တရားကျပန္ေစာင့္ေရွာက္၏တဲ့
စစ္အာဏာရွင္ေတြ ကိုယ္က်င့္တရားပ်က္ျပားတာကေတာ့ေျပာစရာကိုမလိုေတာ့ပါဘူး ျပည္သူေတြေရာ
ဘယ္ေလာက္ကိုယ္က်င့္တရားေစာင့္ႀကသလဲဆိုတာကိုယ့္ဘာသာကိုယ္ေမးခြန္းထုတ္ဖို ့လိုပါတယ္။
အဲ့ဒီမွာေျပာခ်င္တာက ၆၂ ခုနွစ္စစ္တပ္ကအာဏာသိမ္းျပီး ဗိုလ္ေနဝင္းက အူမေတာင့္မွသီလေစာင့္
နိင္မယ္ ဆိုတဲ့စကားနဲ ့ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံသားအမ်ားစုကို ကိုယ္က်င့္တရားပ်က္ေအာင္လုပ္ခဲ့တယ္ အခု
ဗုဒၶရဲ့အဆုံးအမအရ ဘယ္သူတရားပ်က္ပ်က္ကိုယ္မပ်က္နဲ ့ဆိုတဲ့ အဆုံးအမအတိုင္း ကၽြန္ေတာ္
တို ့တေတြ ကိုယ့္ရဲ့ကိုယ္က်င့္တရားကို ကိုယ့္ဘာသာထိန္းျပီး ျပဳျပင္ဖို ့အခ်ိန္တန္ေနျပီ ေနာက္ေတာင္
က်ေနပါျပီ)
ေနာက္ဆုံးအေရးအႀကီးဆုံးအခ်က္ကေတာ့ သတိတရား ပါဘဲ
တခြန္းထဲနဲ ့မွန္ေသာစကားကိုေျပာေသာေႀကာင့္ ဗုဒၶ ဟုေခၚ၏(အဲ့ဒါ ဗုဒၶ ရဲ့ဂုဏ္ပုဒ္ေတြထဲကတခုပါ)
အဲ့ဒီ ဗုဒၶရွင္ေတာ္ျမတ္က သတိလက္မလြတ္နဲ ့လို ့အႀကိမ္ေပါင္းရာေက်ာ္ေျပာသြားပါတယ္ ခႏၶာဝန္
ခ်ခါနီးေနာက္ဆုံးအခ်ိန္မွာလဲေနာက္ဆုံးေဟာသြားတာက သတိမလြတ္ေစႀကနဲ ့ေဟ့လို ့မွာသြားရွာပါ
တယ္။ သတိတရားအေရးအႀကီးဆုံးပါ သတိတလုံးလြတ္ျပီဆိုရင္ အေပၚကေျပာထားတာေတြ ကိုယ္
က်င့္တရားေတြအကုန္ကုန္ပါျပီ။
ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံသားအားလုံးကိုယ္စိတ္နွစ္ျဖာက်န္းမာခ်မ္းသာႀကပါေစ။
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္ကိုယ္စိတ္နွစ္ျဖာက်န္းမာခ်မ္းသာပါေစ။
ေလးစားစြာျဖင့္-
(ဘုန္းလိႈင္)
Thursday, June 18, 2009
UN chief urges Myanmar to release Suu Kyi
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h43HOb8ShnMZ8ZmOo-tu8gTFawyQ
Jun 16, 2009
TOKYO (AFP) — UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged Myanmar on Tuesday to free all political prisoners, including detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, days ahead of a visit to the military-ruled country.
Ban is due to arrive in Myanmar on Friday for rare talks with the military junta, but Aung San Suu Kyi's party says he must also meet her if he hopes to make real progress toward democratic reforms.
"They should release all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi," said Ban, who was in Japan en route to Myanmar where the Nobel Peace laureate has been detained for 13 of the past 19 years.
"They (the junta) should immediately resume dialogue between the government and opposition leaders," he added after talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone.
His diplomatically risky two-day trip starts on the day a Myanmar court is due to resume its trial of the 64-year-old on charges of violating her house arrest after an American man swam to her lakeside home.
"We welcome Mr Ban Ki-moon's visit," Nyan Win, the spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) and a member of her legal team, told AFP.
He said the visit would focus on three issues: "to release all political prisoners, to start dialogue, and also to ensure free and fair elections in 2010.
"Regarding these three things, he needs to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi."
A UN statement said Ban looked forward to meeting "all key stakeholders," but did not specify whether he would meet the woman he described in May as an "indispensable patron for reconsidering the dialogue in Myanmar."
Aung San Suu Kyi is currently being held at Insein prison in Yangon where her internationally condemned trial is taking place alongside that of American John Yettaw. She faces up to five years in jail if convicted.
Her NLD won a landslide victory in Myanmar's last election in 1990, but it was never recognised by the military and she has spent most of the intervening years in detention.
Ban decided to go ahead with his mission after being briefed Sunday by his special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, who paid a short preparatory visit to the country last week.
Gambari met twice with Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win in the generals' remote administrative capital Naypyidaw before holding talks with Singapore's ambassador and UN staff in Yangon, but did not meet with Aung San Suu Kyi.
The UN statement said Ban would highlight a resumption of dialogue between the government and opposition as a necessary part of reconciliation.
He would also focus on "the need to create conditions conducive to credible elections," as well as on the release of political prisoners, it added.
The junta has vowed to hold elections in 2010, but critics say they are a sham designed to entrench its hold on power and that Aung San Suu Kyi's trial is intended to keep her behind bars during the polls.
Diplomats at the United Nations said Ban had faced a dilemma in responding to the invitation from Myanmar's rulers.
Refusing to visit would be seen as not fulfilling his role as UN secretary general, but to accept and return empty-handed would be seen as a slap in the face, said a diplomat on condition of anonymity.
Other diplomats said Ban faced conflicting pressures.
Veto-wielding China, a traditional ally of Myanmar, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Myanmar is a member, were pushing Ban to go without setting conditions, they said.
But Western nations were pressing him to secure at least some concessions from the military regime.
Ban's last Myanmar trip was in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in May last year, when he visited devastated regions and pressured the junta into allowing foreign aid workers into the hardest-hit areas.
He was the first UN chief in 44 years to visit Myanmar but was effectively barred from bringing up issues of political reform.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Reasons why Thailand can't push Burma too far
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2009/06/11/politics/politics_30104843.php
By Supalak Ganjanakhundee
The Nation
Published on June 11, 2009
There are at least four reasons why Thailand is not able to push Burma's political development toward democracy and national reconciliation, as well as to free opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
First, the current government led by the Democrat Party has no record of civilian supremacy, not to mention democracy and reconciliation. The Thai government is not comfortable commenting on any military run government since it obtained help from military top brass to form its own coalition. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva knows very well how much he owes the commanders.
People in this country love to call on the military to intervene whenever they have problems with civilian government. The latest military coup d'etat happened only three years ago.
The Thai military junta dissolved at the end of 2007. Nobody in this country could say the military has no influence in politics, notably over this current government.
So-called national reconciliation is a political term this government might not be able to spell out. As long as it cannot reconcile the red- and yellow-shirted movements, it's better to have no comment about the even worse national division in Burma.
Disunity in that country is deeper than in Thailand, absolutely. It is not just a matter of political difference, but also a problem of race.
Second, Thai elites - notably those in power - have no clear vision about future opposition and dissident groups. They have no more faith in the opposition's fighting against the Burmese junta.
It seems the Thai elite jump to the conclusion the opposition, and even the rebellious ethnic minorities Thailand uses as a buffer, have a very slim chance of defeating the Tatmadaw [Burmese military].
Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya has talked to ethnic minorities along the Thai border several times over past months since he took the position, to convince them to turn themselves into the junta's fold.
The move is most helpful for the junta but weakens the dissidents.
Very few Thais connect strongly with Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy. Some female members of the ruling Democrat Party and SEA Write-award winning author Jiranan Pitpreecha met Suu Kyi more than a decade ago.
Thammasat University conferred an honorary doctorate degree on her when she turned 60, but such a link is very slim. No strong pressure group could force the Thai government to help her.
Third, the Thai economy relies too much on resources from Burma. The government, every government, would never dare challenge the junta. Making Burma angry might cause trouble in business.
Thailand could not join any economic sanctions to pressure the junta since they would pose a direct challenge to its own economy. The jewellery industry, for example, suffered from the US's Tom Lantos Block Burmese Jade Act of 2008, since it stifled imports from any country of gems and jewellery containing Burmese raw material.
Rubies and other Burmese gemstones account for about 20 per cent of raw materials for the Thai jewellery industry.
Exports of gems and jewellery to the US dropped sharply in the last quarter of 2008 when the Act was enforced in October. Exports to the US contracted 35.19 per cent between October and December last year, according to Ministry of Commerce data.
Besides gemstones, Thailand is buying via pipeline more than a billion cubic feet of gas a day from Burma's Yadana and Yedagun gas fields, accounting for some 20 per cent of total consumption in this country.
Fourth, Thailand has the burden of proximity as it shares more than 2,200 kilometres of border with Burma.
The borders shelter problems ranging from smuggling and trafficking to political conflict. The junta knows how to use border issues to mount pressure on Bangkok.
Burma's military offensive against the Karen National Union over past weeks caused at least 3,000 people to flee to Thailand, home already to 111,000 displaced persons from Burma.
The operation coincided with the Thai Asean Chairman's statement on Aung San Suu Kyi.
As long as this country fails to overcome these obstacles, it will find it very difficult in lending a hand to save Aung San Suu Kyi.
Burma gas sales surge but little cash leaks out
By Amy Kazmin in Rangoon
Published: May 11 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 11 2009 03:00
Strong exports of natural gas have swollen Burma's foreign exchange reserves
to a record high but have not been used by the military regime to boost
health or education spending for the impoverished population, the
International Monetary Fund says in a report.
In its annual evaluation of Burma's economy, the IMF says the global
economic slowdown and the devastating May 2008 cyclone, which killed 140,000
people, have taken their toll. Gross domestic product growth slowed to about
4.5 per cent last year, from 5.5 per cent a year earlier.
Spending on extravagant showcase projects - such as the new political
capital, Naypitaw - is being financed by printing money, fuelling inflation
of about 30 per cent. Social spending, meanwhile, remains the lowest in
Asia, according to the IMF.
The report, which has not been publicly released but was obtained by the
Financial Times, says Burma's prospects "look bleak" if it fails to sweep
away socialist legacies - including the multiple exchange rate system and
stifling economic controls - or improve the deteriorating business climate.
How Burma's rulers use the revenue from natural gas exports to Thailand,
through pipelines operated by Total and Petronas, is also under scrutiny.
Gas revenues are added to the budget at the 30-year-old official exchange
rate of Kt6 to the dollar. The black market rate is about Kt1,000.
As a result the gas money has had "a small fiscal impact", accounting for
less than 1 per cent of budget revenue in 2007-08, instead of 57 per cent if
valued at market rates. The IMF has urged the regime to report gas sector
revenues at the market exchange rate to stabilise state finances.
The downbeat assessment comes as independent agricultural experts warn of
rising distress among Burmese farmers after a steep fall in prices at
harvest.
Analysts fear there will be a significant drop in rice planting in the
monsoon season, which begins soon, as heavily indebted farmers try to reduce
costs.
"The rural economy here is on the verge of some type of collapse," said one
Rangoon-based expert. "Rice farming is not profitable."
Analysing Burma's economic performance is challenging because of the paucity
of accurate and timely data. Many western policymakers still see Burma as
largely cut off from the global economy, especially after the US and EU
tightened sanctions following a harsh military crackdown on mass protests in
September 2007.
The IMF says the impact of western sanctions has been "moderated by strong
regional trade links", although the region's woes are hitting Burma's
natural gas, other commodity exports and remittance flows from millions of
Burmese working abroad.
"A lot of people thought that, since they have no banking system, they would
escape the impact of the crisis," said one diplomat. "But it's such a simple
economy, so dependent on commodity prices."
Burmese authorities have acknowledged the slowdown, though they still see
growth as a robust 10 per cent. Exchange reserves stand at $3.6bn (€2.7bn,
£2.4bn).
The IMF says growth will be about 4 per cent - "insufficient to reduce
poverty" without major reforms.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/795043a4-3dc2-11de-a85e-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
==============================
HIV/AIDS | New York Times Examines HIV/AIDS Treatment Access in Myanmar
[April 1, 2009]
The New York Times on Wednesday examined antiretroviral treatment access in
Myanmar, which ranks among the lowest countries worldwide in international
assistance per capita. Medecins Sans Frontieres runs 23 clinics in the
country, and the clinics serve as the primary source of antiretrovirals for
HIV-positive people in Myanmar, according to the Times. According to MSF,
240,000 people are living with HIV in Myanmar, and 76,000 are in urgent need
of antiretroviral access. In addition, about 25,000 HIV-positive people die
annually in the country.
MSF clinics have provided 11,000 HIV-positive people with drug access, but
the group has said that it cannot increase its budget in Myanmar without
taking funding away from projects elsewhere. MSF last year announced that it
had stopped accepting new patients to continue providing treatment to
current clients. This year, the group has accepted about 3,000 new patients.
"When we stopped last July, it was devastating for the staff," Joe
Belliveau, MSF operations manager, said, adding, "They couldn't even treat
the ones dying on their doorsteps."
The Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria this year has
applied for government permits to bring antiretrovirals into Myanmar, and
the Times reports that the number of HIV-positive people with treatment
access likely will increase. Currently, fewer than 20% of HIV-positive
people in need of drugs receive them -- either from international groups or
in small amounts from the government -- according to an MSF report released
in November 2008 (Mydans, New York Times, 4/1).
Online A New York Times photography slideshow is available online.
http://www.globalhealthreporting.org/article.asp?DR_ID=57803
==============================
Tuberculosis | Myanmar To Take Nationwide Census on TB Patients, Health
Ministry Says
[April 7, 2009]
Myanmar plans to take a nationwide census on the number of people with
tuberculosis beginning this month, officials from the Ministry of Health
said Sunday, Xinhuanet reports. According to Xinhuanet, Myanmar is one of
the 22 countries with the highest TB burdens worldwide.
According to the health ministry, about 130,000 TB patients were treated
successfully in 2008. The country reported an 87% TB case detection rate and
an 85% treatment success rate in 2008, the ministry said. The country spent
about $440,000 in fiscal year 2007-2008 to treat TB patients. According to
Xinhuanet, Myanmar is increasing efforts to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria
to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. There are about
100,000 new TB cases annually in the country, Xinhuanet reports (Xinhuanet,
4/5).
http://www.globalhealthreporting.org/article.asp?DR_ID=57895
=============================
Nargis highlights extreme needs in rest of Myanmar
01 May 2009 18:06:00 GMT
Written by: A Myanmar writer
Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or
for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.
When Cyclone Nargis slammed into Myanmar last year it triggered a
humanitarian effort on a scale never before seen in the impoverished nation.
Attention from the media, donors and relief agencies prompted the brutal
regime to open its doors to foreign aid in the disaster zone.
In stark contrast, aid workers say the rest of Myanmar continues its
downward spiral with chronic food insecurity and health crises going largely
unchecked, resulting in tens of thousands of preventable deaths every year.
Figures from the United Nations show 10 percent of the population fall below
the poverty line, meaning 70 percent of their income is spent on food.
"That's 5 million people who are extremely vulnerable in terms of food
security and that's a lot in a country that's food surplus," said Chris
Kaye, country director of the United Nations' World Food Programme.
WFP says it's working to prevent a hunger crisis in northern Rakhine State,
where successive poor harvests, rising food prices as well as political
issues concerning the statelessness of the Muslim Rohingya minority have
contributed to a dire situation.
Other critical areas where WFP is providing food include Chin - the poorest
state in the country - where rat infestations have destroyed large parts of
last year's harvest, and former poppy farming areas in Shan state, where
villagers are facing a challenging transition from lucrative, easy to grow
poppy crops to subsistence farming.
HEALTH
In 2007, the government spent only $0.70 per person on healthcare, according
to medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF).
Myanmar has one of the highest rates of tuberculosis (TB) in the world with
tens of thousands falling victim to the illness each year. In addition, a
multi-drug resistant strain of TB is also spreading, for which there is
currently no treatment in Myanmar.
Malaria remains the number one killer, and although the treatment is
available, it costs between $3 and $4 - still expensive in a country where
many people earn less than $2 a day.
Worse, a new strain of malaria that is resistant to artemisinin - the latest
and most effective drug to treat the disease - has been found in western
Cambodia, and there are fears that migrant Myanmar workers in the
Thai-Cambodia border area may bring it into the country.
HIV/AIDS also kills thousands a year due to lack of affordable drugs, aid
workers say. Myanmar has about 240,000 people living with HIV. And only a
fifth of the 75,000 or so needing anti-retroviral treatment (ART) receive
it.
But Frank Smithuis, MSF Holland's head of mission, says it's unfair to blame
the Myanmar government for the lack of ART.
"Of course it would be good if the Myanmar government spent more on ART," he
added. "But if you look at other countries in the area, take Laos and
Cambodia, national governments do not pay for ART, it's donors that actually
pay."
Andrew Kirkwood, country director for Save The Children UK in Myanmar,
agrees.
"One third of all children under five are malnourished, and about 100,000
kids under five die every year mostly of malaria, diarrhoea and pneumonia,
three diseases that we know how to treat exactly for pennies," he said.
"It's obscene that the international community isn't trying to do more about
that."
TO FUND OR NOT TO FUND?
Aid to Myanmar is a controversial issue and like everything else about the
country, politicised.
Donors have a range of concerns, from whether their aid actually reaches
those who need it most to the junta's well-documented human rights abuses,
not to mention the debate over whether areas such as healthcare and food
security are the government's responsibility.
Overseas development aid in Myanmar has always been low. According to U.N.
figures from 2005, Myanmar received less than $3 per person in aid while
other developing countries in the region such as Laos and Cambodia received
over $50 and $37 respectively.
But Save The Children UK, which has 1,500 staff in the country, says the
last year's cyclone relief efforts should show it is possible to provide
effective humanitarian aid.
"Hopefully, if there's a silver lining in the Nargis experience, it has
demonstrated to the international community just what can be done inside the
country with assistance," Kirkwood said.
Reuters AlertNet is not responsible for the content of external websites.
http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/58220/2009/04/1-180659-1.htm
==========================
Goh’s Comments Significant
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=15920
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By WAI MOE Wednesday, June 10, 2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Former Singaporean Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong told junta leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe that Suu Kyi’s trial had “an international dimension to the matter, which Myanmar [Burma] should not ignore.”
According to Channel News Asia, Goh’s comments came during a meeting with Than Shwe in Naypyidaw on Tuesday, adding to the diplomatic pressure on the Burmese junta over pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial.
Goh Chok Tong had a frank discussion with Snr-Gen Than Shwe at their meeting in the capital Naypyidaw. (Source: Straits Times)
Win Tin, one of the leaders of Burma’s main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), said he welcomed the Senior Minister of Singapore’s comments on Burma’s political crisis.
“I want to say that Mr Goh Chok Tong’s trip is a good diplomatic approach. I appreciate his trip and his comments on Burmese politics,” he told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday.
He said Goh’s trip is significant because Singapore is the country that has attempted to drag the isolated Burmese regime into the international community through its “constructive engagement policy.”
Singapore is also one of biggest investors in Burma and supported Burma’s membership with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in 1997.
Win Tin said he hopes Goh noted the wrongdoings of the junta in Burma and suggested ways to alleviate the suffering in the country.
Commenting on the potential for an all-inclusive process in Burmese politics, Win Tin said he believes that the term “all-inclusive” should mean not only in respect of elections, but also an all-inclusive process in all political issues in Burma.
He also said that elections are important in the democratization process, but that the regime must review the constitution alongside opposition parties.
According to Channel News Asia, the Burmese leadership responded to Goh’s comments by noting that “the opposition [in Burma] needs to recognize that the military plays a pivotal role in the reconciliation process.”
Win Tin told The Irrawaddy that the junta’s comments were untrue, as the NLD has always stated that it recognizes the military’s role.
Goh, one of Asia’s most prominent statesmen and currently Senior Member of the Singaporean government, is in Burma at the invite of Burmese Prime Minister Gen Thein Sein who visited the city-state in March 2009.
However, Burma analysts said Goh would use Singapore’s strong position in Asean to push concerns about the political situation in Burma.
Larry Jagan, a British journalist in Bangkok who specializes in Burmese issues, told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday that although Goh visited Burma as the Singaporean Senior Minister, he could informally act as an envoy on behalf of Asean to tell Than Shwe face-to-face what Asean members think about the criminal trial of Suu Kyi and the Burmese political situation.
“Goh Chok Tong is a senior politician within Asean. He is someone that Than Shwe has high regard for. So, he has the kind of stature that is needed as someone who can go to talk with Than Shwe frankly,” Jagan said.
“What he told Than Shwe is more his personal view than Asean’s view,” he added. “But his concerns [about the trial and the political crisis in Burma] are shared by most Asean leaders.”
Singapore is one of the Burmese regime’s most important diplomatic relatives and trading partners. Burma experts suspect millions of dollars of the generals’ and their cronies’ money are in Singaporean banks.
The Burmese junta, who is under sanctions from the United States and the European Union, has attempted to trade with the world through Singapore, experts say.
The former British island colony also serves as a hospice and retreat for Burma’s ruling generals, including Than Shwe, the late Gen Soe Win and the late Lt-Gen Maung Bo.
Military affairs also play a role in the two countries’ relationship. Burmese military experts have claimed that the Burmese junta has bought warfare material from the Singaporean government in the past.
Analysts have said Goh’s trip is quite significant as a diplomatic approach, because he was able to meet with Than Shwe who earlier this year rebuffed Ibrahim Gambari, the UN special envoy to Burma.
Debbie Stothard of Alternative Asean Network on Burma said Asean leaders are now showing their concerns over the ongoing political process in the country.
“But just one trip is nothing as far as diplomatic efforts for change in Burma are concerned,” she said, adding, “Asean should push continuously. Burma issues are now a problem for Asean.”
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
Thursday, June 11, 2009
North Korea Helps Burma’s Junta Dig In Against Perceived Threats
http://thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/north-korea-helps-burmas-junta-dig-in-against-perceived-threats/311318
June 10, 2009
Bertil Lintner
North Korea Helps Burma’s Junta Dig In Against Perceived Threats
Missiles and missile and nuclear technology, counterfeiting money and cigarette smuggling, front companies and restaurants in foreign countries, labor exports to the Middle East — North Korea has been very innovative when it comes to raising badly needed foreign exchange for the regime in Pyongyang. But there is a less known trade in services that the North Koreans have offered to their foreign clients: expertise in tunneling.
Photos obtained by this correspondent between 2003 and 2006 show that while the rest of the world is speculating about the outcome of long-awaited elections in Burma, the ruling military junta has been busy digging in for the long haul — literally. North Korean technicians have helped them construct underground facilities where they can survive any threats from their own people as well as the outside world. It is not known if the tunnels are linked to Burma’s reported efforts to develop nuclear technology — in which the North Koreans allegedly are active as well.
The photographs show that an extensive network of underground installations was built near Burma’s new, fortified capital Naypyidaw. In November 2005, the military moved its administration from the old capital Rangoon to an entirely new site that was carved out of the wilderness 460 kilometers north of Rangoon.
Meaning the “Abode of Kings,” Naypyidaw is meant to symbolize the power of the military and its desire to build a new state based on the tradition of Burma’s precolonial warrior kings. But underground facilities were apparently deemed necessary to secure the military’s grip on power. Additional tunnels and underground meeting halls have been built near Taunggyi, the capital of Burma’s northeastern Shan state and the home of several of the country’s decades-long insurgencies. Some of the pictures, taken in June 2006, show a group of technicians in civilian dress walking out of a government guesthouse in the Naypyidaw area. Asian diplomats have identified those technicians, with features distinct from the Burmese workers around them, as North Koreans.
This is quite a turnaround as Burma severed relations with Pyongyang in 1983 after North Korean agents planted a bomb at Rangoon’s Martyrs Mausoleum, killing 18 visiting South Korean officials, including the deputy prime minister and three other government ministers.
Secret talks between Burmese and North Korean diplomats began in Bangkok in the early 1990s.The two sides had discovered that despite the hostile act in the previous decade they had a lot in common. Both had come under unprecedented international condemnation, especially by the United States, because of their blatant disregard for the most basic human rights and Pyongyang for its nuclear weapons program. Burma also needed more military hardware to suppress an increasingly rebellious urban population as well as ethnic rebels in the frontier areas. North Korea needed food, rubber and other essentials — and was willing to accept barter deals, which suited the cash-strapped Burmese generals. “They have both drawn their wagons in a circle ready to defend themselves,” a Bangkok-based Western diplomat said. “Burma’s generals admire the North Koreans for standing up to the United States and wish they could do the same.”
After an exchange of secret visits, North Korean armaments began to arrive in Burma. Reports of this were met with skepticism, especially because of the 1983 Rangoon bombings. But when North Korean-made field artillery pieces were seen in Burma in the early 2000s, it became clear that North Korea had found a new ally — several years before diplomatic relations between the two countries were restored in April 2007.
“While based on a 1950s Russian design, these weapons [the field guns] were battle-tested and reliable,” Australian Burma scholar Andrew Selth stated in a 2004 working paper for the Australian National University. “They significantly increased Burma’s long-range artillery capabilities, which were then very weak.” Since then, Burma has also taken delivery of North Korean truck-mounted, multiple rocket launchers and possibly also surface-to-air missiles for its Chinese-supplied naval vessels.
Then came the tunneling experts. Most of Pyongyang’s own defense industries, including its chemical and biological-weapons programs, and many other military as well as government installations are underground. This includes known factories at Ganggye and Sakchu, where thousands of technicians and workers labor in a maze of tunnels dug under mountains.
The export of such know-how to Burma was first documented in June 2006, when intelligence agencies intercepted a message from Naypyidaw confirming the arrival of a group of North Korean tunneling experts at the site. Today, three years later, the dates on the photos published today confirm the accuracy of this report.
By now, the tunnels and underground installations should be completed, as would those near Taunggyi. This well-hidden complex ensures there is no danger of irate civilians storming government buildings, as they did during the massive pro-democracy uprising in August-September 1988. Sources say that the internationally isolated military junta may also consider these deep bunkers as their last repair in case of airstrikes of the kind that the Taliban in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq endured.
It is not clear how much, or what, Burma has paid for the assistance provided by the North Korean experts, but it could be food — or gold, which is found in riverbeds in northern Burma. Or some other mineral. Burma, of course, is not the only foreign tunneling venture by North Korea.
In southern Lebanon following the 2006 war, Israel’s Defense Forces and the United Nations found several of the underground complexes, which by then had been abandoned by Hezbollah militants. By coincidence or not, these tunnels and underground rooms — some big enough for meetings to be held there — are strikingly similar to those the South Koreans have unearthed under the Demilitarized Zone that separates South from North Korea.
Under small, manhole cover-sized entrances hidden under grass and bushes were steel-lined shafts with ladders leading down to big rooms with electricity, ventilation, bathrooms with showers and drainage systems. Some of the tunnels are 40 meters deep and located only 100 meters from the Israeli border. North Korea’s possible involvement in digging these tunnels is, however, difficult to ascertain.
Beirut sources suggest that it is likely that Hezbollah has used North Korean designs and blueprints given to them by their Syrian or Iranian allies — both of whom are close to the North Koreans. Either way, North Korean expertise in tunneling has become a valuable commodity for export. And Pyongyang is flexible about the method of payment as long as it helps the international pariah regime.
Bertil Lintner is a Swedish journalist based in Thailand and the author of “Great Leader, Dear Leader: Demystifying North Korea under the Kim Clan.”
YaleGlobal
Myanmar: Suu Kyi says trial 'political'
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090611/wl_asia_afp/myanmarpoliticssuukyi_20090611081723;_ylc=X3oDMTB0ZzI2ODJyBF9TAzIxNTExMDUEZW1haWxJZAMxMjQ0NzA5MTk1
Thu Jun 11, 4:17 am ET
YANGON (AFP) – Myanmar pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi believes the junta's charges against her are "politically motivated", her lawyer has said, as he lodged an appeal over a witness ban at her trial.
The opposition leader met with her legal team in prison on Wednesday to discuss her defence against charges that she broke the rules of her house arrest when an American man swam to her lakeside property in May.
"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said yesterday when we met that the trial is politically motivated," Nyan Win, one of her three lawyers and the spokesman for her National League for Democracy (NLD), told AFP.
The 63-year-old Nobel laureate faces five years in jail if convicted, which would keep her locked up far beyond national polls scheduled to be held next year.
Critics have dismissed the planned elections as a sham designed to entrench the military's hold on power as Aung San Suu Kyi is barred from standing.
Her legal team submitted a high court application on Thursday seeking an appeal to allow two banned defence witnesses to be heard at her trial.
"The high court will hold a hearing for admission on the coming 17th (June)," Nyan Win said, adding that if the court decided to admit the complaint, it would then schedule a further date for a formal appeal hearing.
A lower court on Tuesday overturned a ban on her having a second defence witness to testify -- one legal expert has already given evidence -- but a ban on two other witnesses was upheld.
The two barred witnesses are Win Tin, a dissident journalist who was Myanmar's longest serving prisoner until his release in September, and Tin Oo, the detained deputy leader of the NLD.
Aung San Suu Kyi is dissatisfied that her lakeside home is still guarded by authorities despite her house arrest's having officially ended in May, Nyan Win said.
The democracy leader is currently held in Yangon's notorious Insein prison and said friends had been denied access to her residence, despite the fact that police told her in May that her house arrest was over.
"She is not very satisfied," said Nyan Win.
"She said that her house arrest ended on May 26, but her friends are not allowed to go into her house for cleaning. Security staff said they are still waiting for permission from their superiors," he told AFP.
Aung San Suu Kyi has spent 13 of the last 19 years in detention since Myanmar's military junta refused to recognise the NLD's landslide victory in the country's last elections, in 1990.
She has spent most of that time in virtual isolation at her house, where the regime has allowed her to receive visits from only a handful of people, including her doctors and lawyers.
The trial, which has drawn a storm of international protest, is due to resume for a procedural hearing on Friday.
Data shows Japan's economy shrank less than thought in Q1
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/435264/1/.html
Posted: 11 June 2009 1625 hrs
TOKYO: Japan's economy shrank less than initially thought in the first quarter, data has shown, as hopes grew of a recovery from its worst recession since World War II.
The world's second biggest economy contracted 14.2 per cent in the first three months of 2009, according to revised government figures, an improvement on the 15.2 per cent shrinkage reported last month.
Improved sentiment for a rebound in the economy was reflected in the stock market, where shares broke the 10,000 point barrier for the first time in eight months.
"Optimism about a recovery is increasing," said Ryuta Otsuka, strategist at Toyo Securities. "Risk money which had fled to bond markets is beginning to return to stocks and commodity markets."
The new data also said the Asian powerhouse shrank by 3.8 per cent in the January-March period against the previous quarter, less than the initial estimate of a 4.0 per cent fall.
However, the annualised 14.2 per cent drop was still Japan's worst on record.
Tokyo voiced optimism at the performance in the Nikkei, which touched 10,022.23 in the morning, breaking the psychologically important 10,000 mark for the first time since October 8.
"The cabinet of Prime Minister Taro Aso has implemented a number of economic stimulus packages, which are kicking in throughout the nation," Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura told a news conference.
Japan, Asia's number one economy, entered recession in the second quarter of 2008 as demand slowed sharply for its autos and big-ticket export items, and the downturn has since become Japan's worst since World War II.
Recent economic data, including gains in industrial output, have brought rays of hope of a budding recovery.
But they have been tempered by rising unemployment and a drop in wholesale prices that threatens deflation. Wholesale prices fell 5.4 per cent year on year last month, their sharpest drop in 22 years.
Shinko Research Institute economist Norio Miyagawa shrugged off the revised economic data and said: "Japan remains in a weak growth trend."
He also said consumption would likely stay lacklustre while still piled-up inventories could weigh on industrial production.
On a more hopeful note, he said that "on-quarter figures in the April-June period may turn to positive as strong demand from China and other countries could help push up" Japanese exports.
Daisuke Uno, chief market strategist of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., was sceptical about the stock market's recent optimistic sentiment.
"The real economy is not improving, with capital only flowing into speculative markets," he said. "Demand needs to improve first... Optimism and pessimism will likely come in turns for a while."
- AFP/so
Obama nominee indicates possible change on Myanmar
http://www.reflector.com/news/nation/obama-nominee-indicates-possible-change-on-myanmar-655486.html
The Associated Press
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's choice as top U.S. diplomat for East Asia said Wednesday the United States is interested in easing its long-standing policy of isolation against military-run Myanmar.
Kurt Campbell, however, told U.S. lawmakers at his Senate confirmation hearing that Myanmar's heavy-handed treatment of detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi hinders any U.S. effort to change course and engage the ruling junta in Myanmar, also called Burma.
"As a general practice, we're prepared to reach out, not just in Burma but in other situations as well," Campbell said.
But, he said, the junta's trial this week of Suu Kyi on charges that could put her in prison for five years is "deeply, deeply concerning, and it makes it very difficult to move forward."
Expectations are that the 63-year-old Nobel laureate will be found guilty by a court known for handing out harsh sentences for political dissidents.
The outcome of Suu Kyi's trial, Campbell said, will be a major consideration as the Obama administration reviews U.S. policy on Myanmar.
The United States has traditionally relied heavily on tough sanctions meant to force the generals to respect human rights and release thousands of imprisoned political activists. Those sanctions are widely supported among both senior Democratic and Republican lawmakers.
Campbell emphasized that greater engagement with Myanmar would not mean the removal of sanctions.
But his comments indicate that the State Department is considering seriously a change in policy.
While Campbell has not yet been confirmed as assistant secretary of state for East Asia, he is close to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who he said views Myanmar as a priority. Campbell said he has had intense talks with Clinton about how best to bring change to Myanmar, which has been ruled by military juntas since 1962.
Clinton, on a trip through Asia in February, addressed the administration's dilemma with Myanmar. Neither tough U.S. sanctions nor engagement by neighbors, she said, have persuaded the junta to embrace democracy or release Suu Kyi. Clinton said the U.S. planned to work closely with the region on ideas on "how best to bring about positive change in Burma."
Campbell told lawmakers that previous U.S. policy on Myanmar clearly had "not borne fruit."
"In the past, there has been a determination that, 'Not much can be done; let's live with our sanctions,'" Campbell said. "I think there's a very high-level degree of interest in seeing what's possible going forward, and a deep sense of disappointment in the recent steps that the junta has taken toward Aung San Suu Kyi."
Jeremy Woodrum, co-founder of the U.S. Campaign for Burma, said regional talks similar to the six-nation North Korean nuclear disarmament negotiations could be used with Myanmar.
If the generals were to make substantial changes, Woodrum said, then pressure could be lifted. But he said sanctions have been important tools in confronting the junta.
Campbell's comments came in response to repeated questions from the Senate Foreign Relations Asia subcommittee's Democratic chairman, Sen. Jim Webb, who suggested that "affirmative engagement" would bring the most change toMyanmar.
It has been 19 years since Suu Kyi's party won a landslide victory at the ballot box but was prevented from taking office. She has been detained without trial for more than 13 of the past 19 years, including the last six.
Suu Kyi is charged with violating terms of her house arrest because an uninvited American man swam secretly to her closely guarded lakeside home last month and stayed two days.
The trial has drawn outrage internationally and from Suu Kyi's Myanmar supporters, who say the junta is using the bizarre case of the American swimmer as an excuse to keep Suu Kyi detained through next year's scheduled elections.
___
June 10, 2009 - 6:19 p.m. EDT
Copyright 2009, The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thai army reinforces Burma border
http://www.abitsu.org/?p=4976
June 11, 2009
By Jonathan Head, BBC News: Thailand has sent heavily-armed troops to reinforce positions along the Burma border after an influx of ethnic Karen refugees fleeing an army offensive.
More than 4,000 people have fled Burma for Thailand in the largest influx of refugees in the area for a decade.
Karen rebels have been fighting for an independent state for 60 years, in the world’s longest-running civil war.
Over the last three years the Burmese military has driven the rebels back to a few small bases along the border.
The long war along Burma’s forested eastern border has caused immense human suffering, with an estimated 500,000 ethnic Karen forced from their homes.
Most of those who fled into Thailand over the past week had already been displaced, and were living at a camp inside Burma when it was repeatedly shelled by Burmese army mortars.
Squalid camps
Fighters from the Karen National Union (KNU) say they are holding their ground - but they are heavily outnumbered by the joint forces of the Burmese army and a Karen splinter group which is allied to the government.
The KNU has steadily retreated over the decades, from its position of greatest strength right after Burma’s independence in 1948 when it came close to capturing Rangoon, to its situation today, with just a few bases along the border.
Its strength has been sapped recently by a string of defections, and by the assassination of its most charismatic leader in Thailand last year.
The Thai government has tried to start a dialogue between the two sides this year, so far with little success.
The 4,000 new arrivals will join around 100,000 other Karen who have sought shelter in Thailand.
Most are confined to squalid camps, which the Thai authorities do not allow them to leave. Some have lived in these camps for more than a decade.
Topics: Daily News |
【再送】第57回PFB例会のご案内『アウンサンスーチー不当起訴のゆくえと背景（仮題）』スピーカー：根本敬・秋元由紀
みなさま、
開催日が近くなりましたので、再度、ご案内させていただきます。
ぜひお越しください。
ビルマ市民フォーラム
事務局 宮澤
【転送・転載歓迎】
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
第57回 ビルマ市民フォーラム例会のご案内
<6月13日（土） 18時～/ 東京・池袋>
￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
『アウンサンスーチー不当起訴のゆくえと背景 （仮題）』
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
◆日時＝2009年6月13日（土） 午後6時～午後8時30分
＊午後5時45分開場
◆会場＝ 池袋・ECOとしま（豊島区立生活産業プラザ）
８階 多目的ホール
*所在： 豊島区東池袋1-20-15、Tel 03-5992-7011
*交通： 池袋駅東口徒歩5分
地図：http://www.city.toshima.lg.jp/shisetsu/shisetsu_community/005133.html
◆資料代＝ 200円（会員）・500円（非会員）
◆定 員＝ 80名 （事前申込み不要／先着順）
---------------------------------------------
先月5月14日、ビルマ軍政は湖を泳ぎ渡り突然スーチーさん宅を訪れた
米国人男性をスーチーさんが自宅に入れたことが自宅軟禁の規則に反するとして
国家防御法を適用し、スーチーさんを起訴しました。
国民民主連盟（ＮＬＤ）を率い、母国の自由と民主化を求めて闘いつづける
アウンサンスーチーさん。
1991年にはノーベル平和賞も受賞しています。しかしながら、この間軍政は
過去19年間のうち13年以上もの間、スーチーさんを自宅軟禁下においてきました。
2003年5月から今日までつづく三度目の自宅軟禁の期限は今年5月末で
きれることになっており、今回の事件はビルマの人々はもちろんのこと、
国際社会が同氏の解放を待ち望んでいた矢先の出来事でした。
今、世界中がスーチーさんの裁判のゆくえに注目しています。
今、ビルマはどうなっているのだろうか？
アウンサンスーチーさんとは、どんな人物なのだろうか？
国際社会は何をすべきか？
次回例会では、お2人のビルマ専門家から、この事件の経緯と
日本政府を含む国際社会の動きなど最新のビルマ情勢をお話
いただきます。
また、アウンサンスーチーさんの思想・行動・おかれている状況に
ついても改めて振り返りたいと思います。
初めての方も、ぜひご参加ください。
---------------------------------------------
【プログラム】
---------------------------------------------
17:45～開場
18:00～19:00（60分）
「事件の経緯と国際社会の反応について（仮題）」
・・・・秋元 由紀（ビルマ情報ネットワーク ディレクター、米国弁護士）
19:00～19:10（10分）
休憩
19:10～20:10（60分）
「アウンサンスーチー その思想と行動を振り返る（仮題）」
・・・・根本 敬（上智大学教授、ビルマ市民フォーラム運営委員）
20:10～20:20
PFB事務局からのお知らせ他
＊在日ビルマ人のみなさんも参加されますので、ビルマ語逐次通訳が
入ります。ご了承ください。
---------------------------------------------
【スピーカー プロフィール】
---------------------------------------------
●秋元 由紀 （あきもと ゆき）
ビルマ情報ネットワークのディレクターとしてビルマ民主化問題に関する情報提供、
調査、提言を行う。2008年夏には参議院ODA調査派遣団のビルマ難民キャンプ視察な
どに同行した。特定非営利活動法人メコン・ウォッチでもビルマへの開発援助につい
て調査や政策提言を継続中。著書にPost-Nargis Analysis: The Other Side of the
Story (Burma Medical Association et al., 2008)、Opportunities and Pitfalls:
Preparing for Burma’s Economic Transitions (Open Society Institute, 2006)、
「ビルマ（ミャンマー）の開発と人権・環境問題」（季刊「公共研究」第2巻第1号、
2005年）。米国弁護士。
ビルマ情報ネットワーク http://www.burmainfo.org/
きょうのビルマのニュース http://d.hatena.ne.jp/burmainfo/
●根本 敬 （ねもと けい）
1957年生まれ。上智大学外国語学部教授。専門はビルマ近現
代史研究。著書に『アウンサン：封印された独立ビルマの夢』（1996年、岩波書
店）、『ビルマ軍事政権とアウンサンスーチー』（田辺寿夫と共著、2003年、角川新
書）、「（第6章）アウンサンスーチー：真理の追究」（共著『現代世界の女性リー
ダーたち』所収、2008年、ミネルヴァ書房）ほか、論文多数。ＮＨＫはじめテレビ・
ラジオのニュース解説（ビルマ関係）も随時担当。
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
★PFBでは、日本人と在日ビルマ人を対象に、時々のビルマ情勢や
在日ビルマ難民の抱える問題などをテーマに、隔月で例会を実施して
おります。会員・非会員を問わず、どなたでもご参加いただけます。
初めての方でもぜひお気軽にご参加ください。
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
◇ ビルマ市民フォーラム事務局 ◇
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
〒160-0004
東京都新宿区四谷一丁目18番地6 四谷1丁目ウエストビル4階
いずみ橋法律事務所内
電話03-5312-4817（直）／ FAX 03-5312-4543
E-mail： pfb@izumibashi-law.net
ホームページ： http://www1.jca.apc.org/pfb/index.htm
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Karen Pushed Over Thai Border by Burmese Troops
Nearly 4,000 ethnic Karen are said to have abandoned a camp and villages in eastern Burma to seek refuge in Thailand following attacks on Karen guerrillas by government troops.
Burmese troops were shelling and attempting to advance on five encampments of Karen insurgents as villagers continued to flee in one of the largest movements of refugees across the border in a decade, Karen spokesman David Thaw said.
Thai troops have been deployed along the frontier to keep fighting from spilling over.
June 09, 2009
The ethnic group’s Karen National Union has been fighting for more than 60 years for greater autonomy from Burma’s junta, but its strength has dwindled over the past decade due to army offensives and divisions within its ranks.
Human rights groups and the United Nations have accused Burma’s government of torture, killings and rape of Karen civilians in their attempts to stamp out the insurgency. But this appears to have had no effect and the military regime has denied the charges.
“Once again, the international community is looking the other way while my people are attacked and forced to run for their lives,” Zoya Phan, a Karen with the Burma Campaign UK, said in a statement. “Why hasn’t a single government called for an end to these attacks?”
Some 100,000 mostly ethnic Karen refugees already shelter in camps in Thailand after fleeing counterinsurgency operations, while aid agencies say nearly half a million others are internally displaced inside eastern Burma.
Thaw said a camp in Burma that sheltered internal refugees had been abandoned, and that the government and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army were trying to overrun five Karen positions nearby.
The Democratic Karen Buddhist Army split from the predominantly Christian Karen National Union in 1995.
About 25 opposing troops have been killed or wounded since the fighting began over the weekend, the spokesman said. He said he had no information about Karen casualties.
Thailand doesn’t allow the refugees to enter established camps in the country, so they are relying on Buddhist monasteries near the border, Thaw said. AP
Monday, June 8, 2009
スー・チーさん裁判、最終弁論が再延期に
http://jp.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idJPJAPAN-38428020090607
スー・チーさん裁判、最終弁論が再延期に
2009年 06月 7日 09:10 JST 記事を印刷する | ブックマーク| 1ページに表示[-] 文字サイズ [+]
1 of 1[Full Size]ワールド
イランと北朝鮮には「強い姿勢」が必要＝オバマ米大統領
メキシコの保育施設で火災、乳幼児38人が死亡・23人が入院
仏機墜落、現場海域から遺体・機体残骸を回収＝ブラジル当局
英内閣改造、ダーリング財務相は留任＝政府声明 ［ヤンゴン ５日 ロイター］ ミャンマーの裁判所は５日、予定していた同国最大野党の国民民主連盟（ＮＬＤ）を率いる民主化運動指導者、アウン・サン・スー・チーさん（６３）の最終弁論を来週末に延期することを決めた。
スー・チーさんは、自宅軟禁中に許可なく米国人男性と面会したとして、国家防御法違反の罪に問われている。最終弁論の日程延期はこれが３度目。
スー・チーさんの顧問弁護士はロイターに対し、５日に予定されていた最終弁論が１２日に延期になったと説明し、「（延期の）理由は明かされていない」と述べた。
ＮＬＤは先にスー・チーさんの健康状態に「重大な懸念」を表明していたが、弁護士はスー・チーさんは元気そうだと説明している。
Fw: [burmainfo] 【続報】スーチーさんの64歳の誕生日に64語のメッセージを送ろう！
Fw: [burmainfo] 【続報】スーチーさんの64歳の誕生日に64語のメッセージを送ろう！Friday, 5 June, 2009 21:18
From: "PFB"
ビルマ市民フォーラム メールマガジン 2009/6/5
People's Forum on Burma
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
以下、ビルマ市民フォーラム、ビルマ情報ネットワーク、ヒューマン・ライツ・ウォッチか
らのご案内です。
是非、皆さんからも、スーチーさんとビルマの人々へ、応援と連帯のメッセージを
送ってください！（メッセージは日本語でもＯＫです）
そして、お友達やお知り合いの方々にも、どんどんこのキャンペーンのことを
紹介してください。スーチーさんの釈放を求めて、一緒に声をあげましょう。
ＰＦＢ事務局 宮澤
http://www1.jca.apc.org/pfb/
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
アウンサンスーチーさんの釈放を求める国際キャンペーン
６４歳の誕生日に６４語のメッセージを送ろう！
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆
日本語でも送れる環境が整いました。皆さんも、送ってみませんか？
～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆～☆
ビルマ（ミャンマー）の民主化リーダーで、ノーベル平和賞受賞者の
アウンサンスーチーさんは、過去19年のうち13年以上もの間を
自宅軟禁下におかれてきました。その拘束期限がやっと切れた今、
不当な起訴によりさらに拘束期間が延期されようとしています。
こうした中、先日お知らせしましたが、スーチーさんの釈放を求め、
応援のメッセージを送ろうという「６４語キャンペーン」が行われています。
「６４語キャンペーン」サイト
http://www.64forsuu.org
「６４語キャンペーン」は、スーチーさんの64歳の誕生日（6月19日）
に合わせ、動画や画像、文、Twitterなどを使ってスーチーさんを
応援する「６４語のメッセージ」を送ろうという企画です。
既にイギリスのブラウン首相、ブラッド・ピット、デイビッド・ベッカム、
ボノ、スカーレット・ヨハンソン、マドンナなど、世界の政治、音楽、
文化、社会などあらゆる領域で活躍する人びとから映像やメッセージ
が続々と寄せられています。
みなさんも是非、メッセージ（映像、画像、文章）を送ってみませんか？
送られたメッセージはキャンペーンサイトに掲載され、誰でも見ることができます。
メッセージの送り方（日本語） はこちら：
http://64forsuu.blogspot.com/2009/06/instructions-for-website-in-japanese.ht
ml
送り方について不明点などがありましたら、
ビルマ情報ネットワークの＜問合せフォーム＞を使ってご連絡ください。
＜問合せフォーム＞はこちら：
http://www.burmainfo.org/about/contact.php
========================================
早速、日本からもメッセージが集まり始めています！
キャンペーンサイトにも掲載されています。
「６４語キャンペーン」 日本からのメッセージ紹介
http://www.burmainfo.org/article/article.php?mode=1&articleid=485
========================================
中川 雅治（参議員議員）
http://www.64forsuu.org/word.php?wid=7194
「アウンサンスーチーさん、並びにビルマで拘束されて
いる全ての政治犯の釈放を求めます。
ビルマの民主化を求める声は今や全世界に広がっています。」
那谷屋 正義（参議院議員）
http://www.64forsuu.org/word.php?wid=7200
『「アウンサンスーチーさんに自由を！」と皆さんの大きな声を
ビルマに届けましょう。今求められている真の世界平和は、
武力によって獲得するものではなく、人間の尊厳を重んじ合うことからスタートしま
す。
皆さんの１人ひとりの力で、アウンサンスーチーさんを自由の
身にすることができる時、その時、真の世界平和への大きな一歩がふみ出せることに
なるでしょう。
「アウンサンスーチーさんの自由」＝「世界平和への大きなステップ」』
ビルマ情報ネットワーク
「日本からもFree Burma！」（映像）
http://www.64forsuu.org/word.php?wid=6844
========================================
Myanmar democracy movement appears to be weakening
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-myanmar7-2009jun07,0,4110571.story
A mishmash of disparate anti-government groups has not been able to persuade foreign powers to push for Aung San Suu Kyi's freedom.
By Charles McDermid
June 7, 2009
Reporting from Bangkok, Thailand -- Even as the trial of activist Aung San Suu Kyi approaches a predictable conclusion in a tumbledown prison courtroom in Yangon, the verdict may already be in for Myanmar's pro-democracy movement.
The opposition, already reeling before Suu Kyi's arrest, increasingly appears powerless, divided and incapable of mustering the international intervention needed to topple the country's long-ruling military government. As one opposition leader put it, the prevailing sentiment within the opposition is "outrage and utter hopelessness."
A mishmash of acronyms, ethnic divisions and agendas, seven alliances of about 100 anti-government groups operate inside and outside Myanmar. Galvanized by recent events, the disparate groups have led a chorus of derision for the arrest and trial of Suu Kyi.
International outrage has followed, with President Obama calling the drama a "show trial." But there have been no changes in the government's stance that Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, violated the terms of her house arrest by allowing an uninvited American to spend two nights at her highly guarded compound. She faces three to five years in jail.
Hard-core activists are not impressed by the international response.
"We are very thankful the international community is on our side. But this is only lip service," Khin Maung Swe, an executive committee member of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, said by phone from Yangon.
Western threats of crippling economic sanctions have yet to materialize, and the government's closest allies, China, Russia and India, have remained silent.
Sources in Myanmar, also known as Burma, have confirmed that officials from China, Myanmar's biggest supplier of consumer goods and the main investor in the resource-rich country's energy and mineral sectors, have visited in recent days to meet with the ruling generals and hold unofficial talks with opposition leaders.
Political scientist and author Aung Naing Oo was once foreign secretary of the All Burma Students' Democratic Front, an armed group involved in the violent 1988 protests that catapulted Suu Kyi to prominence. More recently, Aung Naing Oo, who studied at Harvard and now lives in exile in Thailand, has advocated dialogue between the regime and the opposition.
"Throwing sanctions from 10,000 miles away" won't change the xenophobic mind-set of the regime, he said.
He blames both the opposition and the regime for stubbornness and inaction, what he calls "old general syndrome."
"I'll give you an example: A 16-year-old fights his whole life for what he thinks is right. Now he's a general, he's 70, that's all he knows. These old politicians won't change their minds for the country even if they know this is the right way," Aung Naing Oo said.
With Suu Kyi again detained and many other leaders jailed, the National League for Democracy is facing a crisis of leadership and morale. Moral authority, according to Aung Naing Oo and others, is not enough to carry the day.
"Moral authority has kept the movement alive, given it a lifeline," he said. But "you need to bring pragmatism into the game. As Bill Clinton said, politics is rhetoric and reality. How to combine the two in Burma, I don't know."
Meanwhile, sources in Myanmar say the streets of Yangon, the former capital, are cloaked in a renewed reign of fear, rage and helplessness.
"In every neighborhood of Yangon, there is always one former political prisoner or a family whose son or husband is in jail for political reasons. People are too afraid and too poor to take risks," former prisoner Swe Win said. "Only if someone or some group can successfully initiate a movement so big and so strong for the ordinary people to participate will protests erupt."
As the trial of Suu Kyi resumes, and the reeling opposition scrambles to rally universal support, the people of Myanmar are left with little more than a day-to-day existence and wishful thinking.
"Hope is something that keeps Burmese going," Aung Naing Oo said. "When you are Burmese, you have to have hope; otherwise, you have nothing."
McDermid is a special correspondent.
Suu Kyi party warned over trial criticism: Myanmar state media
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/asia/other/2009/06/07/211220/Suu-Kyi.htm
YANGON -- Myanmar authorities have summoned members of Aung San Suu Kyi's pro-democracy party to rebuke them for a statement critical of her trial, state media reported Saturday. Four senior members of the National League for Democracy (NLD) met officials for 30 minutes late Friday after comments by the party's youth wing were leaked to the Web site of a prominent blogger, the New Light of Myanmar said.
“Though NLD has rights for freedom of speech, the announcement has harmed peace and stability and prevalence of law and order in the country and disturbed the trial proceedings of a court,” the paper reported in English.
“That can mislead the people into misunderstanding the government, incite activities that may harm the public respect for the government, and cause unrest,” it said.
Aung San Suu Kyi faces up to five years in jail on charges of breaching the conditions of her house arrest after a bizarre incident in which an American man, John Yettaw, swam to her lakeside home in May.
The NLD's youth members had circulated an internal document criticizing the trial for being held mostly behind closed doors and highlighting international condemnation of the proceedings.
But the comments ended up on the “Niknayman” Web site, which is blocked in Myanmar as it is run by a well-known activist, and the New Light said the publication constituted a breach of the country's publishing laws.
“Stating of such incorrect and biased words in advance while the case is still in progress amounts to turning a blind eye to the truth and disturbing the court,” the paper said.
It said the statement had falsely accused authorities of not allowing public reporting of the trial.
Local journalists and two Chinese reporters so far have been allowed in court along with diplomats to cover two of the 10 days of hearings being held inside Yangon's Insein prison.
The newspaper report said that the case was an “internal issue.”
The four NLD members ordered to meet officials Friday were Than Tun, Nyunt Wai, Hla Pe and Soe Myint. They signed a document to acknowledge a formal warning by the authorities.
Security in Yangon has been tightened since Aung San Suu Kyi was taken to Insein prison from her crumbling lakeside house last month.
On Friday her lawyers presented appeal documents to a city divisional court, asking the court to overturn a ban on three of four witnesses whom the 63-year-old opposition leader called to give evidence at her trial.
A judge said a decision on the appeal would be given on Tuesday, June 9, three days before Aung San Suu Kyi's prison trial reconvenes after a week-long adjournment.
U.S. President Barack Obama has described the court proceedings as a “show trial” while Myanmar's usually reticent Asian neighbors have expressed strong concerns.
Japan's deputy minister for foreign affairs, Kenichiro Sasae, urged Myanmar's junta to listen to international concerns during his trip on Thursday and Friday to the capital Naypyidaw, the Japanese ministry said. The Myanmar side replied that the government could not interfere in the trial, it added.
Sasae also said Tokyo hopes Myanmar will go ahead with establishing a democracy in line with international expectations, the ministry statement said.
Myanmar has been ruled by the military since 1962. Aung San Suu Kyi's party won 1990 polls but was never allowed to take office. She has been imprisoned for 13 of the past 19 years.
Elections are planned for next year but critics say they are designed only to entrench the military's power.
Aid groups: 3,000 villagers flee Myanmar shelling
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5imu9nHyhkDCtBlz5oOh6EcNtf68gD98LQP9O0
By MICHAEL CASEY
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — More than 3,000 ethnic Karen villagers have fled into Thailand as Myanmar troops shelled near a camp where they were sheltering, one of the largest movements of refugees across the border in a decade, aid groups said Sunday.
The Thailand-based Free Burma Rangers said that refugees began streaming out of the Ler Per Her camp in eastern Karen state on Friday and that Myanmar forces started launching mortar attacks Saturday morning during fighting with Karen guerrillas. Myanmar is also known as Burma.
The aid group, which conducts missions across the border inside Myanmar, reported the Karen National Union fighters were engaged in a fierce fire fight continuing Sunday with Myanmar forces near the camp, which lies in one of few last rebel redoubts along the border.
Thai Army Lt. Gen. Tanongsak Apirakyotin, who oversees the border region, acknowledged that fighting was ongoing and that since Wednesday refugees began coming across the Thai border. But he put the numbers of refugees at around 1,200.
The KNU has been fighting for half a century for greater autonomy from Myanmar's central government, but its strength has dwindled over the past decade due to army offensives and divisions within its ranks. Some 100,000 mostly ethnic Karen refugees already shelter in camps in Thailand after fleeing counterinsurgency operations and many more are believed displaced inside military-run Myanmar.
In a statement, the Free Burma Rangers called the shelling "a serious attack on defenseless people who fled just to get to the camp and now have had to flee over the border." It said as many as 4,000 refugees had fled to Thailand and that the Ler Per Her camp was mostly abandoned by Sunday.
The Karen Human Rights Group, a Thai-based humanitarian group sympathetic to the KNU, put the number of refugees at 3,000 but their count was only through Saturday. Still, the group said this was "the largest exodus from Karen State on a single occasion" since the government launched a major offensive against the KNU in 1997.
The refugees were taking shelter about 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Mae Sot, a border town which is 240 miles (380 kilometers) northwest of the Thai capital, Bangkok.
A Myanmar government spokesman did not respond to requests for comment on the reports of fighting.
On Saturday, the rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide and pro-democracy groups including the U.S. Campaign for Burma called on the United Nations to intervene to prevent a humanitarian crisis along the border.
The groups urged the U.N. Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Myanmar's military regime and establish a commission of inquiry into crimes against humanity.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္အမႈတြင္ သက္ေသ ၃ ဦးအတြက္ တရား႐ံုးက ေလွ်ာက္လဲခြင့္ ျပန္ေပး
ဗုဒၶဟူးေန႔၊ ဇြန္လ 03 2009 18:29 - ျမန္မာစံေတာ္ခ်ိန္
နယူးေဒလီ (မဇၥ်ိမ)။ ။ ေဒၚစုအမႈအတြက္ သက္ေသ ၃ ဦးအား ခ႐ိုင္တရား႐ံုးက ပယ္ခ်ခံရသည္ကို သူမ၏ ေရွ႕ေနမ်ားက ျပန္လည္သံုးသပ္ေပးရန္ တိုင္းတရား႐ံုးသို႔ ေလွ်ာက္ထားခဲ့ရာ ႏွစ္ဖက္ေလွ်ာက္လဲရန္အတြက္ ယေန႔ လက္ခံလိုက္ၿပီျဖစ္သည္။
ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္လ ၂၇ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ အင္းစိန္ေထာင္တြင္း တရား႐ံုးသို႔ ေဒၚစုအတြက္ သက္ေသမ်ားအျဖစ္ ဦးၾကည္ဝင္း၊ ဦးဝင္းတင္၊ ဦးတင္ဦးႏွင့္ ေဒၚခင္မို႔မို႔တို႔ကုိ အမည္စာရင္း တင္သြင္းခဲ့ရာ ဦးၾကည္ဝင္းမွအပ က်န္ ၃ ဦးအား ပယ္ခ်ခဲ့သည္ကို ရန္ကုန္တုိင္းတရား႐ံုးသို႔ ေလွ်ာက္ထားရာ ယခုလုိ အမိန္႔ခ်လိုက္ျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။
''ဒီေန႔ ၃ နာရီမွာ က်ေနာ္တို႔တင္တဲ့ ျပင္ဆင္မႈ လက္ခံေရးအတြက္ က်ေနာ္ ေလွ်ာက္လဲခ်က္ ေပးပါတယ္။ ေလွ်ာက္လဲခ်က္ ေပးၿပီးၿပီးခ်င္းပဲ တရား႐ံုးက လက္ခံတယ္လို႔ အမိန္႔ခ်တယ္'' ဟု ေဒၚစု၏ ေရွ႕ေန ဦးဉာဏ္ဝင္းက မဇၥ်ိမကို ေျပာသည္။
ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရဘက္ႏွင့္ ေဒၚစုဘက္မွ ေရွ႕ေနမ်ား ေလွ်ာက္လဲၾကရန္ ယခုလ ၅ ရက္ေန႔ ညေန ၃ နာရီသို႔ တရား႐ံုးက ခ်ိန္းဆိုလုိက္သည္။
အင္းစိန္ေထာင္တြင္း ေျမာက္ပိုင္းခ႐ိုင္ တရား႐ံုးက ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၊ လုပ္ေဖာ္ကိုင္ဘက္ ႏွစ္ဦးႏွင့္ ေနအိမ္အတြင္း တိတ္တဆိတ္ ဝင္ေရာက္ခဲ့သူ မစၥတာ ယက္ေတာတို႔အေပၚ စဲြဆိုထားသည့္ အမႈကို အၿပီးသတ္ ေလွ်ာက္လဲရန္အတြက္ ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္လ ၂၈ ရက္ေန႔က ယခုလ ၁ ရက္ေန႔သို႔ ခ်ိန္းဆိုခဲ့သည္။
သို႔ေသာ္ ေနာက္တရက္ျဖစ္သည့္ ၂၉ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ယခုလ ၅ ရက္ေန႔သို႔ ေရႊ႔ဆုိင္းလိုက္ေၾကာင္း တရား႐ံုးက ေရွ႕ေနမ်ားသို႔ စာေရးသား အေၾကာင္းၾကားခဲ့သည္။
''အင္းစိန္မွာ ၅ ရက္ေန႔မနက္ အၿပီးသတ္ ေလွ်ာက္လဲခ်က္ဆိုတာ ရွိတယ္။ အဲဒါက အလိုလို ေရြ႔သြားတယ္။ တိုင္းတရား႐ုံးက ဒီအမႈတဲြကို မနက္ျဖန္မွာ အင္းစိန္ခ႐ိုင္႐ံုးဆီက ေတာင္းလိမ့္မယ္။ အမႈတြဲေတာင္းတယ္ ဆိုတာနဲ႔ မူလ႐ုံးက လုပ္လက္စ အလုပ္ေတြကို ရပ္ထားရတယ္။ ဒါက ဥပေဒ က်င့္ထံုးပါ'' ဟု ဦးဉာဏ္ဝင္းက ေျပာသည္။
သူက ဆက္ၿပီး ''အၿပီးသတ္ ေလွ်ာက္လဲမွာက အင္းစိန္က တရား႐ုံး။ အခုဟာက တိုင္းမွာ Re-visional cause တခုပဲ။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ တရားခံဘက္က ျပတဲ့သက္ေသ ၃ ေယာက္ကို တရား႐ုံးက ပယ္တာ ဥပေဒနည္းလမ္း မက်ဘူး၊ ဥပေဒနည္းလမ္းက်ေအာင္ က်ေနာ္တို႔ကိုလည္း စစ္ေဆးခြင့္ ေပးထိုက္တယ္ ဆိုတာကို က်ေနာ္တို႔ ေလွ်ာက္လဲမွာ ျဖစ္တယ္'' ဟု ေျပာသည္။
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၏ ေရွ႕ေန ေနာက္တဦးျဖစ္သည့္ ဦးၾကည္ဝင္းကလည္း တရား႐ံုးသည္ မိမိတို႔၏ သက္ေသမ်ားအား ဥပေဒျပ႒ာန္းခ်က္အရ ပယ္ခ်ႏုိင္သည့္ အခြင့္အေရးရွိေသာ္လည္း အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္ ခုိင္လံုျခင္း မရွိဘဲ ျငင္းပယ္ပါက မွားယြင္းေၾကာင္း ေျပာသည္။
သူက ''တရား႐ုံးမွာ က်င့္ထံုးပုဒ္မ ၂၅၇ ျပ႒ာန္းခ်က္အရ ပယ္ႏိုင္တဲ့ အခြင့္အေရးရွိတယ္၊ အာဏာရွိတယ္။ သို႔ေသာ္ ဘယ္လိုအခါမ်ဳိးမွာ ပယ္ရမလဲဆိုေတာ့ တရားစီရင္ေရးကို အေႏွာက္အယွက္ျဖစ္ေအာင္၊ ၾကန္႔ၾကာေအာင္၊ တရားစီရင္ေရး မမွန္မကန္ျဖစ္ေအာင္ လုပ္မွသာ ပယ္ရမွာ ျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒီလို အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္ ခုိင္ခိုင္လံုလုံ မရွိဘဲနဲ႔ အခုလို ျငင္းပယ္တာ မွားတယ္ေပါ့ဗ်ာ'' ဟု ေျပာဆုိလိုက္သည္။
The president makes a major address in Cairo to call for a "new beginning" with Muslims.
Text of Obama's speech in Cairo - Yahoo! News
Text of Obama's speech in Cairo
By The Associated Press The Associated Press
16 mins ago
Text of President Barack Obama's speech at Cairo University, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions.
___
I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo, and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning, and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt's advancement. Together, you represent the harmony between tradition and progress. I am grateful for your hospitality, and the hospitality of the people of Egypt. I am also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: assalaamu alaykum.
We meet at a time of tension between the United States and Muslims around the world - tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.
Violent extremists have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims. The attacks of September 11th, 2001 and the continued efforts of these extremists to engage in violence against civilians has led some in my country to view Islam as inevitably hostile not only to America and Western countries, but also to human rights. This has bred more fear and mistrust.
So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, and who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. This cycle of suspicion and discord must end.
I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles - principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
I do so recognizing that change cannot happen overnight. No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust, nor can I answer in the time that I have all the complex questions that brought us to this point. But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often are said only behind closed doors. There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground. As the Holy Quran tells us, Be conscious of God and speak always the truth. That is what I will try to do - to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.
Part of this conviction is rooted in my own experience. I am a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith.
As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam - at places like Al-Azhar University - that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.
I know, too, that Islam has always been a part of America's story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President John Adams wrote, The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims. And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, served in government, stood for civil rights, started businesses, taught at our Universities, excelled in our sports arenas, won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch. And when the first Muslim-American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Quran that one of our Founding Fathers - Thomas Jefferson - kept in his personal library.
So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn't. And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.
But that same principle must apply to Muslim perceptions of America. Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire. The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known. We were born out of revolution against an empire. We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal, and we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words - within our borders, and around the world. We are shaped by every culture, drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus unum: Out of many, one.
Much has been made of the fact that an African-American with the name Barack Hussein Obama could be elected President. But my personal story is not so unique. The dream of opportunity for all people has not come true for everyone in America, but its promise exists for all who come to our shores - that includes nearly seven million American Muslims in our country today who enjoy incomes and education that are higher than average.
Moreover, freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one's religion. That is why there is a mosque in every state of our union, and over 1,200 mosques within our borders. That is why the U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it.
So let there be no doubt: Islam is a part of America. And I believe that America holds within her the truth that regardless of race, religion, or station in life, all of us share common aspirations - to live in peace and security; to get an education and to work with dignity; to love our families, our communities, and our God. These things we share. This is the hope of all humanity.
Of course, recognizing our common humanity is only the beginning of our task. Words alone cannot meet the needs of our people. These needs will be met only if we act boldly in the years ahead; and if we understand that the challenges we face are shared, and our failure to meet them will hurt us all.
For we have learned from recent experience that when a financial system weakens in one country, prosperity is hurt everywhere. When a new flu infects one human being, all are at risk. When one nation pursues a nuclear weapon, the risk of nuclear attack rises for all nations. When violent extremists operate in one stretch of mountains, people are endangered across an ocean. And when innocents in Bosnia and Darfur are slaughtered, that is a stain on our collective conscience. That is what it means to share this world in the 21st century. That is the responsibility we have to one another as human beings.
This is a difficult responsibility to embrace. For human history has often been a record of nations and tribes subjugating one another to serve their own interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners of it. Our problems must be dealt with through partnership; progress must be shared.
That does not mean we should ignore sources of tension. Indeed, it suggests the opposite: we must face these tensions squarely. And so in that spirit, let me speak as clearly and plainly as I can about some specific issues that I believe we must finally confront together.
The first issue that we have to confront is violent extremism in all of its forms.
In Ankara, I made clear that America is not - and never will be - at war with Islam. We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security. Because we reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject: the killing of innocent men, women, and children. And it is my first duty as President to protect the American people.
The situation in Afghanistan demonstrates America's goals, and our need to work together. Over seven years ago, the United States pursued al Qaida and the Taliban with broad international support. We did not go by choice, we went because of necessity. I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: al Qaida killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet Al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.
Make no mistake: we do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our young men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue this conflict. We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case.
That's why we're partnering with a coalition of forty-six countries. And despite the costs involved, America's commitment will not weaken. Indeed, none of us should tolerate these extremists. They have killed in many countries. They have killed people of different faiths - more than any other, they have killed Muslims. Their actions are irreconcilable with the rights of human beings, the progress of nations, and with Islam. The Holy Quran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind. The enduring faith of over a billion people is so much bigger than the narrow hatred of a few. Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism - it is an important part of promoting peace.
We also know that military power alone is not going to solve the problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is why we plan to invest $1.5 billion each year over the next five years to partner with Pakistanis to build schools and hospitals, roads and businesses, and hundreds of millions to help those who have been displaced. And that is why we are providing more than $2.8 billion to help Afghans develop their economy and deliver services that people depend upon.
Let me also address the issue of Iraq. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world. Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possibl