Peaceful Burma (ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းျမန္မာ)平和なビルマ

Peaceful Burma (ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းျမန္မာ)平和なビルマ

TO PEOPLE OF JAPAN



JAPAN YOU ARE NOT ALONE



GANBARE JAPAN



WE ARE WITH YOU



ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေျပာတဲ့ညီညြတ္ေရး


“ညီၫြတ္ေရးဆုိတာ ဘာလဲ နားလည္ဖုိ႔လုိတယ္။ ဒီေတာ့ကာ ဒီအပုိဒ္ ဒီ၀ါက်မွာ ညီၫြတ္ေရးဆုိတဲ့အေၾကာင္းကုိ သ႐ုပ္ေဖာ္ျပ ထားတယ္။ တူညီေသာအက်ဳိး၊ တူညီေသာအလုပ္၊ တူညီေသာ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ရွိရမယ္။ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ညီၫြတ္ေရးဆုိတာ ဘာအတြက္ ညီၫြတ္ရမွာလဲ။ ဘယ္လုိရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္နဲ႔ ညီၫြတ္ရမွာလဲ။ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ဆုိတာ ရွိရမယ္။

“မတရားမႈတခုမွာ သင္ဟာ ၾကားေနတယ္ဆုိရင္… သင္ဟာ ဖိႏွိပ္သူဘက္က လုိက္ဖုိ႔ ေရြးခ်ယ္လုိက္တာနဲ႔ အတူတူဘဲ”

“If you are neutral in a situation of injustice, you have chosen to side with the oppressor.”
ေတာင္အာဖရိကက ႏိုဘယ္လ္ဆုရွင္ ဘုန္းေတာ္ၾကီး ဒက္စ္မြန္တူးတူး

THANK YOU MR. SECRETARY GENERAL

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."

QUOTES BY UN SECRETARY GENERAL

Without participation of Aung San Suu Kyi, without her being able to campaign freely, and without her NLD party [being able] to establish party offices all throughout the provinces, this [2010] election may not be regarded as credible and legitimate. ­
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

Where there's political will, there is a way

政治的な意思がある一方、方法がある
စစ္မွန္တဲ့ခိုင္မာတဲ့နိုင္ငံေရးခံယူခ်က္ရိွရင္ႀကိဳးစားမႈရိွရင္ နိုင္ငံေရးအေျဖ
ထြက္ရပ္လမ္းဟာေသခ်ာေပါက္ရိွတယ္
Burmese Translation-Phone Hlaing-fwubc

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

အသက္ရွင္ေနထိုင္နည္း

[Ye Yint Thet Zwe]


ဒါဟာ
အိပ္မက္တခုသာ ျဖစ္လိုက္ပါေတာ့
ညီမေလးေရ ၊

သက္တံ့ဆိုတာ
အျမင္အာရံုနဲ ့ခံစား
ဆြဲကိုင္ဆုပ္လို ့မရတဲ့ အရာမဟုတ္လား ။


ရပ္တန္ ့ေနတဲ့
မီးခိုးနဲ ့တိမ္ေတြကို ေတြ ့ဘူးရဲ ့လား
စိတ္ဆိုတာက
ေၾကကြဲမႈမွာအိပ္စက္
အိပ္မက္ရွည္ေတြနဲ ့ ခရီးဆက္ေနေလရဲ ့၊

သံသရာရွည္သေရြ ့ပါပဲ
က်ည္းေပါင္းတက္ ႏွလံုးသားမွာ
ခံစားခ်က္ေတြ မေပ်ာက္သမွ်
ဒဏ္ရာေတြက
လတ္ဆတ္လွပေနဦးမွာပဲ ယံုတယ္ ၊

အလံုးစံု လြတ္ေျမာက္လိုစိတ္က
၀ဠ္နာ ကံနာတခုလို
တေျမ့ေျမ့ေလာင္ကၽြမ္း
'အဆံုးစြန္ထိသာ
ေတြးႏိုင္ခဲ့ရင္
မဆံုးျဖတ္ခဲ့ပါဘူး၊

အခုေတာ့
ေနာက္ေက်ာကို ဓါးနဲ ့ ထိုးမယ့္
လူေတြၾကားမွာ
အတံု ့အလွည့္ဆိုတဲ့မာနကိုပယ္ထား
အမွန္တရားနဲ ့သာ
ငါ ရွင္သန္ေနခ်င္တယ္ ။
"အသက္ရွင္ေနထိုင္နည္း "

ဒါဟာ
အိပ္မက္တခုသာ ျဖစ္လိုက္ပါေတာ့
ညီမေလးေရ ၊

သက္တံ့ဆိုတာ
အျမင္အာရံုနဲ ့ခံစား
ဆြဲကိုင္ဆုပ္လို ့မရတဲ့ အရာမဟုတ္လား ။

ရပ္တန္ ့ေနတဲ့
မီးခိုးနဲ ့တိမ္ေတြကို ေတြ ့ဘူးရဲ ့လား
စိတ္ဆိုတာက
ေၾကကြဲမႈမွာအိပ္စက္
အိပ္မက္ရွည္ေတြနဲ ့ ခရီးဆက္ေနေလရဲ ့၊

သံသရာရွည္သေရြ ့ပါပဲ
က်ည္းေပါင္းတက္ ႏွလံုးသားမွာ
ခံစားခ်က္ေတြ မေပ်ာက္သမွ်
ဒဏ္ရာေတြက
လတ္ဆတ္လွပေနဦးမွာပဲ ယံုတယ္ ၊

အလံုးစံု လြတ္ေျမာက္လိုစိတ္က
၀ဠ္နာ ကံနာတခုလို
တေျမ့ေျမ့ေလာင္ကၽြမ္း
'အဆံုးစြန္ထိသာ
ေတြးႏိုင္ခဲ့ရင္
မဆံုးျဖတ္ခဲ့ပါဘူး၊

အခုေတာ့
ေနာက္ေက်ာကို ဓါးနဲ ့ ထိုးမယ့္
လူေတြၾကားမွာ
အတံု ့အလွည့္ဆိုတဲ့မာနကိုပယ္ထား
အမွန္တရားနဲ ့သာ
ငါ ရွင္သန္ေနခ်င္တယ္ ။
-
Posted By Ye Yint Thet Zwe to Ye Yint Thet Zwe at 10/28/2008 11:59:00 PM

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Japan Small Business Confidence Falls to a Decade Low (Update1)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=aDrlYJcXQD1U

By Toru Fujioka

Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Confidence among Japan's small and midsized companies dropped to a decade low as a faltering economy weighed on profits.

Shoko Chukin Bank's index of sentiment fell to 37.6 points this month, the lowest level since October 1998, according to the monthly survey of 1,000 companies by the bank. A number below 50 means pessimists outnumber optimists.

The government last week said Japan has probably entered its first recession in six years after household spending fell and the jobless rate rose in August. Small businesses employ 70 percent of the nation's workforce, making their health critical for consumer spending.

``Small businesses are the ones who suffer most from this recession,'' said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute in Tokyo. ``It's hard to predict that consumer spending will pick up anytime soon.''



Sentiment is expected to deteriorate to 36.5 next month, the report said, which would be lowest reading since Shoko Chukin began the survey in February 1985.

The Nikkei 225 Stock Average's 27 percent drop this month hurt sentiment, said Masahiro Eguchi, senior manager of economic research at Shoko Chukin. The benchmark fell to a 26-year low earlier this week.

Shoko Chukin's sentiment index provides an indication of future economic growth, said Masaaki Kanno, chief economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Tokyo. A one-point move in the index translates into a 0.38 percentage point change in the annualized growth rate for gross domestic product, he estimates.

Should the Shoko Chukin index fall below 37, the economy will shrink at least 2 percent on an annualized basis, Kanno said. Japan's GDP contracted 3 percent in the second quarter. The index fell below 40 in Japan's two previous recessions.

``Nothing is good for small and midsized companies,'' Shoko Chukin's Eguchi said. ``The scary part is that this isn't the bottom yet.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Toru Fujioka in Tokyo at tfujioka1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 29, 2008 02:32 EDT

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Japan to take fresh crisis action-ECONOMY

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/26/AR2008102602600.html

By David Dolan
Reuters
Sunday, October 26, 2008; 11:43 PM



TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan pledged fresh measures on Monday to try to shield the world's second-biggest economy from the global financial crisis and said the Group of Seven would issue a joint statement on the yen.

A flurry of comments from top lawmakers came as investors dumped banking stocks on expectations they need fresh capital to offset losses in their stock portfolios.

The Nikkei average hit a 26-year low just before Prime Minister Taro Aso said the government will expand its bank bailout scheme and strengthen regulations on short-selling of stocks.

He said the Group of Seven rich nations would soon issue a joint statement. The finance minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, said the statement would be issued on Monday and say that the group will cooperate appropriately on foreign exchange markets.

Only the yen, which soared last week to multi-year highs against the dollar and the euro as investor unwound risk, would be mentioned in the G7 statement, Nakagawa said.

The comments came after the prime minister met with ruling party lawmakers to discuss the financial storm that has toppled banks world wide but which had appeared, until recently, to have largely skirted Japan.

Economics Minister Kaoru Yosano said the prime minister had ordered action in Japan to stabilize the stock market and strengthen the financial system.



The rapid decline in share prices, as well as disorderly currency moves, will hurt the Japanese economy, Nakagawa said earlier.

Underlining concerns about the banks, the economics minister on Sunday call for the country's bank bailout scheme to be increased several-fold to nearly $110 billon.

"The government will have to do something for banks," said Koichi Ogawa, chief portfolio manager at Daiwa SB Investments.

"The problem here is that the stock market has fallen, it has nothing to do with derivatives or anything like that. As stocks have dropped, banks are faced with rising paper losses."

Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei share average (.N225) briefly dropped as low as 7,603 on Monday, its lowest point since 1982.

The benchmark has lost almost a third of its value this month alone and about half so far this year, hurt in part by the yen's recent rise to its highest in nearly 13 years.

SHAREHOLDINGS

Although Japanese banks have so far avoided the credit losses that tore through Wall Street, investors now fear that lenders' extensive shareholdings and market expectations that the economy will slip into recession could unravel profits this year.

Traditionally, Japanese lenders are large stakeholders in their corporate clients as a means to cement business ties. The value of those stocks totaled more than $250 billion at the end of March, data from the Japan Bankers Association shows.

Fresh measures had been expected to slow the fall in share prices -- only days after announcing a plan to inject up to two trillion yen of public funds into banks.

That scheme should be increased to around 10 trillion yen ($106 billion) from 2 trillion yen, Yosano said on Sunday.

Aso is also planning to announce an economic stimulus package later this week to support the economy.

That package, Japan's second in just a few months, is expected to include a total of 5 trillion yen ($54 billion) in new spending, including 2 trillion yen in temporary income tax cuts.

CAPITAL RAISING

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Japan's top lender, is considering raising up 1 trillion yen ($10.8 billion) to shore up its capital, people familiar with the matter have said.

Mizuho Financial Group (8411.T), Japan's second-largest bank, and third-ranked Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (8316.T), are both looking to raise as much as 500 billion yen ($5.4 billion), newspapers reported on Monday.

All three lenders said in statements on Monday that they had made no decisions regarding their capital plans.

MUFG, which recently invested $9 billion in U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley (MS.N), has also this year paid $3.5 billion to take full control of California lender UnionBanCal Corp (UB.N) and spent about 150 billion yen to raise its stake in consumer finance affiliate Acom (8572.T).

Shares of Mitsubishi UFJ finished the morning down 11.1 percent at 607 yen. Mizuho dropped 8 percent and Sumitomo Mitsui fell 10.6 percent.

The Nikkei finished the morning up 0.4 percent, as buyers picked up technology shares such as Sony Corp., which tumbled last week.



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Myanmar uses land cultivation, forced labor, beatings in 8 million acre jatropha drive

http://biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2008/05/02/myanmar-uses-land-cultivation-forced-labor-beatings-in-8-million-acre-jatropha-drive/

In Myanmar, “Biofuel by Decree: Unmasking Burma’s bio-energy fiasco,” was released by the Ethnic Community Development Forum, detailing the use of forced labor and land confiscation to plant 8 million acres with jatropha to provide a solution to Myanmar’s fuel crisis. The report, based on government documents, media reports, and 131 interviews conducted in Myanmar between November 2006 and April 2008. The report said that individuals “have been fined, beaten, and arrested for not participating.” The plan has been plagued with mismanagement by the army soldiers supervising the work. “The soldiers carry guns. They don’t know anything about agriculture,” said a farmer in the report.

The first national jatropha crops were ready for harvest this month, with up to 7 million acres planted by small farmers, after a national directive in 2006 that all farmers with more than 1 acre of land had to plant a minimum of 200 jatropha seeds to establish a hedge around their landholdings. The ruling junta developed the plan in light of soaring oil import costs, and the biggest anti-junta protests since the 1980s which erupted last year over cuts in diesel subsidies

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Myanmar to cultivate seven million acres of jatropha by summer ‘08

http://biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2007/08/28/myanmar-to-cultivate-seven-million-acres-of-jatropha-by-summer-08/



August 28, 2007
The Myanmar Department of Energy announced plans to cultivate seven million acres of jatropha by summer 2008. Yields from jatropha are roughly 350 gallons of biodiesel per acre, creating a potential supply of 2.4 billion gallons of biodiesel. Financing and logistics for the project were not announced, which would encompass more than 10,000 square miles in a country of 226,000 square miles.

Palm oil, the other leading biodiesel feedstock cultivated in Asia, has doubled in price in the past year, creating opportunities for alternative oil sources.

Read More...

Myanmar announces jatropha biodiesel JV with Japan Development Institute

http://news.balita.ph/2008/10/27/myanmar-plans-joint-venture-with-foreign-enterprise-for-bio-diesel/

October 27, 2008 1:08 pm by pna
YANGON, Oct. 27 — The Myanmar agricultural authorities will cooperate with some Japanese institutions to produce high-grade bio-diesel by forming a joint venture, the local weekly Flower News reported Monday.


Under Myanmar's Jatropha bio-energy program, a joint venture company, named Myanmar Bio Energy Company, will be formed between the Myanmar Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, and Japan Development Institute (JDI) and Japan Bio Energy Development Cooperation (JBEDC) for the move, the report said quoting agricultural experts involved in the project.

In the course of the formation of the joint venture, cultivation of Jatropha physic nut plants, establishment of trading center for such crops and raw edible oil factory and training of experts in the aspects will be carried out, the report said.

The bio-diesel produced from the joint venture will be supplied for domestic use as well as for export, the report added.

Myanmar has set a target to grow 3.23 million hectares of bio- diesel plants in 2008 in a bid to increase the bio-diesel output in the year to substitute diesel, the ministry's related enterprise said.


Output from Jatropha plantations is being projected as up to 20 million tons a year, the sources said.

The Jatropha nuts were being initially planted on 648,000 hectares mainly in three dry zones of Mandalay, Sagaing and Magway divisions.

According to the enterprise, Myanmar has about 6.41 million hectares of land suitable for growing Jetropha plants.

The Myanmar private sector is also participating in playing part in production of bio-diesel fuel, planning to build a first and largest private-run bio-diesel plant in the country this year, private industries sources said.

With a projected production of 80 tons of bio-diesel per day, the six-hectare bio-diesel plant in Yangon's Thardhukan Industrial Zone will be constructed by the Khaing Khaing Group Co. Ltd with an investment of 8 million U.S. dollars and foreign technical know-how will be introduced, local media also said.

Using domestic raw materials, the plant will generate 20,000 tons to 30,000 tons of bio-diesel per year on completion, it said.

Official statistics show that Myanmar yielded about 90 million gallons (405 million liters) of diesel a year while importing more than 200 million gallons (900 million liters) annually to meet its domestic demand.

Myanmar has eyed physic nut oil as fuel since late 2005, advocating the use of it as fuel in the country and urging the country's people to grow such nut plantations extensively.

The authorities also stressed the need for the country to use such biodiesel to avoid spending millions of foreign exchange on fuel, pointing out that the use of biodiesel as an alternative fuel for petrol, kerosene and diesel would also enable rural people to avoid searching fuelwood and help protect forests from depletion and conserve trees.

Cultivation of an acre (0.405 hectare) of land with 1,200 physic nut plants can produce up to 100 gallons (454.6 liters) of biodiesel, Myanmar experts said. (PNA/Xinhua)

ALM/LDV/ebp



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Myanmar’s post-cyclone recovery efforts focus of UN-backed expert meeting

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=28741&Cr=myanmar&Cr1=cyclone

28 October 2008 – Participants at a United Nations-backed meeting that wrapped up today in Bangkok have agreed that the need to “build back better” and a focus on disaster risk reduction should be key elements of the post-Cyclone Nargis recovery process in Myanmar.
Some 2.4 million people were affected by the cyclone, which battered the country in early May, leaving around 140,000 dead or missing and displacing 800,000 from their homes.

The two-day meeting in the Thai capital brought together Myanmar’s partners and disaster response experts, and drew from previous natural disasters such as the 2004 Asian tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake and Cyclone Sidr, which struck Bangladesh in 2007.

Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), which organized the meeting along with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), said that the experience of the Asia-Pacific region would undoubtedly contribute to the formulation of recovery strategies for Myanmar and other future natural disasters.


While an effective early warning mechanism is one critical part of any sound disaster management approach, she emphasized that early action was also needed to turn early warning into real disaster preparedness.

She added that the outcomes of the meeting would feed into the Post-Nargis Recovery and Preparedness Plan (PONREPP), the ongoing review conducted by the Tripartite Core Group (TCG) – consisting of the UN, ASEAN and the Government of Myanmar – as well as the ASEAN-UN Summit to be held in Thailand in mid-December.

Myanmar’s Deputy Minister U Kyaw Thu, who is also the Chairman of the TCG, said the meeting provided “an opportunity for those who are involved in the post-Nargis recovery efforts to learn from the experience, although painfully gained, of those who have been on a similar path in order to put together a comprehensive and effective early-, medium- and long-term strategy.”

ASEAN’s Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan agreed, expressing the hope that the information exchanged at the meeting will enhance the capacity of the region, as well as add to the lessons learned which can then be translated into practical action. “If we are not prepared, we will be in deeper trouble the next time around,” he warned.

The gathering is one of a series of regional expert group meetings to be convened by ESCAP on recovery and reconstruction issues in post-cyclone Myanmar, following on Ms. Heyzer’s visits to the country in May and June.

Ms. Heyzer indicated that ESCAP was committed to continue to host such dialogues, and that the next one would be held with donors so as to encourage increased assistance to fill critical funding gaps.

As of early October, nearly half of the $482 million appeal launched in July to aid Myanmar’s cyclone victims remained unfunded.

Myanmar cyclone victims needs sustained support, says UN-backed group

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DR THAUNG HTUN, BURMESE NATIONAL COALITION GOVERNMENT UNION: Thanks


http://kanaung.burmabloggers.net/?p=1167

SEN LAM: Dr Thaung Htun, the Opposition Coalition has proposed a new initiative. Can you tell us more about this?
DR THAUNG HTUN: The new initiative we propose is related to active involvement of region affairs and finding a solution for political crisis in Burma. ASEAN and other neighbouring countries like China and Japan, the tradition of their involvement and finding a solution in times of crisis, you know in that case, these regional players actively cooperate with UN and other Western counterparts by hosting conferences, you know, in their capitals like in Jakarta and Bangkok. We propose the same thing. We already have good start by the formation of UN friends of Burma group. That group’s meetings should be continuously organised in regional capitals with active involvement of regional players and they should discuss to set clear benchmarks and particular time frames to implement steps for a peaceful democratic transition in Burma.

SEN LAM: Dr Thaung Htun, you speak of regional players, what about countries like China, India and Thailand who all have trade deals with the Burmese generals and in one way or another support the Junta. Might they be a huge obstacle to your plans?

DR THAUNG HTUN: Of course. The trade and business relations as well as the diplomatic tradition provided by these players like China or India, the United Nations, it’s in contradiction with the statement made by the recently - made by Asia Europe meeting which agreed on the need to take for the military positive reforms for democratic transition. They should review their policy and look at long-term interests of the country because in a smooth transition - Burma is also for the best interests of the region. They should withdraw their protection, for example, at the Security Council. They should apply their economic leverage to post the regime to take positive steps.



SEN LAM: What do you think is the mood of the generals in Burma? Have you made any attempt to reopen dialogue with them?

DR THAUNG HTUN: We have been repeatedly calling for a dialogue. We are for a dialogue negotiation and compromise since 1988, but so far they have ignored our call for dialogue. So now they are having, you know, trying to, you know, organise a new election without any implementation of the 1990 election. What we are calling for is a kind of transition which can be played by all the stakeholders including the military. It is a win-win situation. We need to step up more pressure on the regime to go to the negotiation table.

SEN LAM: Well, Burma, of course, is under US and European economic sanctions over human rights and its failure to reform, do you think those sanctions have worked?

DR THAUNG HTUN: Sanctions worked to the extent that it is the expression of this approval of the behaviour of the regime. Of course, these sanctions were imposed because of their human rights violations committed by the regime and lack of progress and democratisation. But on the other hand, you know, there is the loophole because the Western democratic countries have imposed sanctions. Our neighbouring countries like India, China and ASEAN rushed to Burma to exploit natural resources so there should be more coordination between the Western players and our neighbouring countries because, you know, Burma should not be looking at only international affairs. We have already seen spill over effects from Burma to the region. So if the situation remains unchecked, it will become a sort of regional implication.

SEN LAM: OK, we’ll have to leave it there. Thank you very much for your time.

DR THAUNG HTUN: Thank you.

Posted in: Daily News.


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Will civil strife recur in Burma?

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Will-civil-strife-recur-in-by-Zin-Linn-081027-463.html

Bangkok, Thailand — Burma is on the brink of fresh civil strife as many of the young generation have voiced dissatisfaction with nonviolence. The most intolerant citizens have called for a U.S. military invasion or an armed struggle to overthrow the deep-rooted stratocracy in Burma, due to the junta’s insistence on building a military-privileged country.

In addition, many people have a negative attitude toward China for encouraging the junta’s brutal oppression of its own people.


Lieutenant-General Thiha Thura Tin Aung Myint Oo, first secretary of the State Peace and Development Council, has declared that the country will hold a general election in 2010, according to the junta’s mouthpiece newspaper, New Light of Myanmar. Tin Aung Myint Oo said the country had made noteworthy improvements in recent months due to the implementation of a seven-step roadmap to democracy. He made these statements Oct. 24 at a ceremony to mark the 63rd anniversary of the United Nations.

On the same day, the junta demonstrated its blood-and-iron policy. Six opposition leaders from Mandalay were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 11 to 13 years by a military court, on charges of threatening the nation’s “tranquility” and stirring up hatred. All six, including one woman, were executives of the National League for Democracy and were arrested in September last year in a nationwide crackdown on those who participated in the Saffron Revolution protests.


Tin Aung Myint Oo also said cooperation with the United Nations is the cornerstone of the nation's foreign policy. He said the country had consistently cooperated with the United Nations, citing as evidence the visits of several senior U.N. officials including that of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in May this year, following Cyclone Nargis.

However, the regime has turned a deaf ear to successive resolutions adopted by the U.N. General Assembly calling for a return to democracy in Burma through a tripartite dialogue between the junta led by Senior General Than Shwe, democratic forces led by Aung San Suu Kyi, and representatives of ethnic nationalities. It is clear that the junta has no plan to heed the U.N. call or to release political prisoners, a precondition to the tripartite dialogue.

Meanwhile, on Oct. 25, Asian and European leaders urged the ruling junta in Myanmar (Burma) to release detained politicians and lift restrictions on political parties. This call was made at the Asia-Europe Meeting in Beijing attended by leaders from more than 40 countries.

Asian and European leaders, in a joint statement following a two-day summit in Beijing, encouraged the junta to engage all stakeholders in an inclusive political process in order to achieve national reconciliation and economic and social development. They called for the lifting of restrictions placed on political parties and the early release of those under detention.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the Beijing statement showed progress on the issue. But military rulers have shown no interest in heeding international calls for political reforms and the protection of human rights. Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for 13 years. Various human rights groups and activist groups have been calling on foreign government leaders, and the public, to demand she be freed along with all political prisoners in Burma.

The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, said last week he would ask the military regime to implement four key measures before the 2010 elections, to pave the way for democracy. These include a revision of domestic laws to ensure compliance with international human rights standards, the gradual release of all prisoners of conscience, and human rights training for the military.

Burma’s ruling junta has been in the limelight again this year for its merciless handling of the Cyclone Nargis tragedy. The cyclone hit Burma on May 2-3, affecting some 2.4 million people in the Irrawaddy delta and in Rangoon district. Almost 140,000 people were killed or remain missing, according to the official figures.

Despite the natural disaster, believed the worst in the country's recent history, the regime insisted on holding a national referendum in May to approve a new Constitution designed to strengthen the military's leading role in politics, even under an elected government.

The referendum, held without international monitoring, was blamed for the junta's disinclination to let in emergency aid and relief workers during the first catastrophic weeks after the storm, which left some 2.3 million people in desperate need of supplies, water, shelter and medical relief.

A new report into the responses and impacts of Cyclone Nargis in Burma was released on Oct. 22 by the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma. The report found that losses incurred by the cyclone accounted for 21 percent of the country's GDP for the previous fiscal year.

Inflation is currently around 40 percent. The disaster also caused a loss of an estimated 197 million working days. Severe rice shortfalls are expected in 2009, as the affected regions provided much of the country's supply. This will also impact exports to neighboring countries. Forty-two percent of households in the affected regions lost all their food stocks and 45 percent had only enough to last up to seven days soon after the cyclone hit.

In the Irrawaddy and Rangoon districts, 75 percent of health facilities and 91 percent of public education facilities were destroyed. More than one-third of those in these areas have some form of lung or stomach ailment. Some 23 percent of households in cyclone-hit regions reported psychological problems. A disproportionately high female mortality rate means many infants cannot get proper care and feeding. Those surviving are highly susceptible to being forced into the sex trade due to employment pressures.

These indicators show that people have been suffering all kinds of social breakdown that may pave the way toward a rebellion. Besides, the Burmese people are upset with neighboring China, which protects the inhumane junta not only to exploit the natural resources in Burma but also to be in command of the geopolitical situation in Southeast Asia.

Living in poverty for over four decades, the majority of the Burmese people have a bitter hatred toward the military dictatorship and the military elite. They also have an anti-China outlook due to China’s use of its veto at the United Nations Security Council in favor of the rogue regime in Burma.


In brief, before these dissatisfactions and bitter hatred blow up, it is time for China, India and ASEAN to pressure the Burmese junta to comply with the United Nations’ consecutive decisions. The world body should encourage regional players, including Japan, to push for a meaningful dialogue between Aung San Suu Kyi and the incumbent military rulers as soon as possible.

--

(Zin Linn is a freelance Burmese journalist living in exile. He currently serves as information director of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma in Bangkok, Thailand. He is also vice-president of the Burma Media Association, which is affiliated with the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontiers. He can be contacted at uzinlinn@gmail.com. ©Copyright Zin Linn.)



Read More...

Burma boycott hurting most vulnerable: MSF

http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/programguide/stories/200810/s2404340.htm

Updated Wed Oct 29, 2008 11:15am AEDT

More Burma Stories:

Burma's opposition-in-exile call for democracy timeframe
Burma to release thousands of prisoners
Health agencies fear poison milk may enter Burma
The non-government aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres says global humanitarian attention is urgently required in Burma to address serious health problems such as malaria, AIDS and malnutrition.

Since the cyclone in May, foreign money and relief workers have gone to Burma to assist with the aid effort but there are still many parts of Burma which remain neglected.

Presenter: Christine Webster
Speaker: Doctor Frank Smithuis from Medecins Sans Frontieres Holland

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Conference on future prospects for civil society in Burma/Myanmar

http://www.welcomeurope.com/default.asp?id=1300&idnews=4998

NGOs, advocacy groups, international organisations and think
tanks from Burma/Myanmar and from Europe are meeting
today to discuss the present situation in the country and its
future outlook
The conference programme foresees a session on civil society
responses in the aftermath of cyclone Nargis in May, and
another session on civil society in the political process, in
particular its role, its space and possibilities for support.
The conference is jointly hosted and organised by the
European Commission and the NGOs ICCO (Interchurch
Organisation for Development Co-operation) , BCN (Burma
Centrum Nederlands), TNI (Transnational Institute) and the Euro-Burma Office, sharing the goal of a
better future for the country and its people.
Press room - European Commission

Read More...

DEMOCRACY-CARTOON-IRRAWADDY

http://www.irrawadd y.org/bur/ images/ca_ images/cartoon- 24-Oct-2008. gif

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ညီညြတ္မႈ ၿပိဳကြဲေလေသာအခါ-IRRAWADDY

http://www.irrawadd y.org/bur/ Articles2008/ October/07. html


ေက်ာ္စြာမိုး | ေအာက္တိုဘာ ၂၈၊ ၂၀၀၈

ယခု ျပႆနာက ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို ဖိႏွိပ္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေနသည့္ စစ္အစိုးရႏွင့္ အတိုက္အခံ အင္အားစုမ်ားအၾကား ေရွ႕မတိုး ေနာက္မဆုတ္သာ ျဖစ္ေနရသည့္ လိပ္ခဲတည္းလည္း အေျခအေနမွ်သာ မဟုတ္ေတာ့ပါ။

ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ စတင္တည္ေထာင္ခဲ့သည့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ၏ အဓိကအတိုက္အခံ ပါတီႀကီးအတြင္း၌လည္း အတြင္း ႀကိတ္ ျပႆနာမ်ား၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရး မေက်လည္မႈမ်ားႏွင့္ ႀကံဳေတြ႕ေနၿပီျဖစ္သည္။

အဓိကအတိုက္အခံ ပါတီႀကီးျဖစ္ေသာ အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ (အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ) မွ လူငယ္အဖြဲ႔၀င္ ၁၀၉ ဦးတို႔ မၾကာေသးမီက ႏုတ္ထြက္စာ တင္ၾကသည္မွာ ပါတီစတင္တည္ေထာင္ခဲ့သည့္ ၁၉၈၈ ခုႏွစ္မွစ၍ ျပန္ၾကည့္လွ်င္ အေရး ပါသည့္ အျဖစ္အပ်က္ဟု ဆိုႏိုင္ပါသည္။

ဤျဖစ္ရပ္ေၾကာင့္ ပါတီတြင္း ဒီမိုကေရစီ က်င့္သံုးေနပံုကို ေမးခြန္းထုတ္ဖြယ္ ျဖစ္လာေစၿပီး အသက္အရြယ္ႀကီးျမင့္ေနၾကၿပီ ျဖစ္သည့္ ပါတီ၏ ေခါင္းေဆာင္သူမ်ားအတြက္ ပို၍ သိကၡာက်စရာ၊ အားေလ်ာ့စရာ ျဖစ္လာေစသည္။

လူငယ္အဖြဲ႔၀င္မ်ားက ပါတီ၏ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ခ်ရာ လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္မ်ားတြင္ သူတို႔အေနႏွင့္ ပါ၀င္ေဆာင္ရြက္ခြင့္ မရွိေၾကာင္း မေက်လည္ ေျပာဆိုသံမ်ားထြက္လာၿပီးေနာက္ ယခုကဲ့သို႔ အစုအၿပံဳလိုက္ ႏုတ္ထြက္စာတင္ၾကျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။

အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ ပါတီ ဥကၠ႒ ဦးေအာင္ေရႊက ပါတီေခါင္းေဆာင္မႈအတြက္ လူငယ္အႀကံေပး ၆ ဦးႏွင့္ လူငယ္လႈပ္ရွားမႈမ်ားကို ဦးေဆာင္ရန္ ေခါင္း ေဆာင္ ၁၀ ဦး တာ၀န္ေပး ခန္႔အပ္စာ ထြက္လာၿပီးေနာက္ ဤသို႔ ႏုတ္ထြက္မႈမ်ား ျဖစ္ေပၚလာရသည္။ လူငယ္မ်ားကမူ ပါတီေခါင္းေဆာင္ပိုင္းက သူတို႔ တင္ျပအဆိုျပဳသူမ်ားကိုလည္း လက္မခံ၊ အႀကံျပဳခ်က္မ်ားကိုလည္း နားမေထာင္ခဲ့ၾက ဟု ေျပာဆိုခဲ့သည္။

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ၏ ဒီမိုကေရစီ လႈပ္ရွားမႈကို ဦးေဆာင္ေနသည့္ ပါတီႀကီးအတြင္း အဖြဲ႔၀င္မ်ားအေပၚ ဒီမိုကေရစီက်င့္သံုးပံုႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ ဤသို႔ျဖစ္ပ်က္ရသည္က ဆန္းျပားအံ့ၾသဖြယ္ ျဖစ္သကဲ့သို႔ ရွက္ဖြယ္လည္း ျဖစ္သည္။

“က်ေနာ္တို႔ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းက ဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းပါ။ သည္ေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တို႔တေတြ ဒီမိုကေရစီအေျခခံကို ေလးစားလိုက္ နာဖို႔ လိုတယ္။ အကယ္၍ က်ေနာ္တို႔က ဒီမိုကေရစီ စည္းမ်ဥ္းေတြကို မေလးစားဘူး ဆိုရင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရး လုပ္ရတဲ့ လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ေတြမွာ အေတာ္ခက္လိမ့္မယ္” ဟု အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ ပါတီ၏ လူငယ္ဌာနမ်ားတြင္ လြန္ခဲ့သည့္ ႏွစ္ ၂၀ အတြင္း သစၥာရွိရွိလုပ္ကိုင္ခဲ့သူ ကိုခင္ထြန္းက ေျပာသည္။ ယခုေတာ့ သူလည္း ႏုတ္ထြက္ခဲ့သူမ်ားတြင္ တဦးအပါအ၀င္ ျဖစ္ေနၿပီ။

ကိုခင္ထြန္းသည္ ၁၉၈၈ ခုႏွစ္ ပါတီ တည္ေထာင္ခဲ့ခ်ိန္မွစ၍ စြဲစြဲၿမဲၿမဲ ပါ၀င္ေဆာင္ရြက္ခဲ့ေသာေၾကာင့္ ေထာင္က်ခဲ့ရသူ ျဖစ္သည္။ ေထာင္ထဲတြင္ သူ ႏွစ္အတန္ၾကာ ေနခဲ့ရပါသည္။ ကိုခင္ထြန္းကဲ့သို႔ပင္ ႏုတ္ထြက္ၾကသူ ၁၀၉ ဦးထဲတြင္ ယခင္ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားေဟာင္း အေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားလည္း ပါ၀င္ေနၾကသည္။


အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ ပါတီေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား အေနႏွင့္ ပါတီကိစၥ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္မ်ား ခ်မွတ္ရာတြင္ လူငယ္တို႔၏ အခန္းက႑ကို အသိ အမွတ္ျပဳသင့္သည္။ မူ၀ါဒမ်ား ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်မွတ္မည္ဆိုလ်င္လည္း သူတို႔၏ အျမင္မ်ားကို ေလးေလးစားစား ထည့္သြင္း စဥ္းစား သင့္ပါသည္။

“လူငယ္ေတြဆိုတာ အနာဂတ္ပါ။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြကို က်ေနာ္တိုက္တြန္းခ်င္တာက လူငယ္အဖြဲ႔၀င္ေတြရဲ႕ အျမင္ေတြကို နားေထာင္ေပးဖို႔ပါပဲ” ဟု ကိုခင္ထြန္းက ေျပာသည္။

အမွန္တကယ္တြင္ အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ ပါတီက အလားတူျပႆနာမ်ဳိး ႀကံဳေတြ႔လာခဲ့ရသည္မွာ ၂၀၀၀ ျပည့္ႏွစ္ အေစာပိုင္း ကာလမ်ား ကတည္းက ျဖစ္သည္။ အထူးသျဖင့္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ထိန္းသိမ္းခ်ဳပ္ေႏွာင္ခံထားရသည့္ အခ်ိန္မ်ဳိးတြင္ ႀကံဳေတြ႔ရေလ့ရွိသည္။ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္သည္ ပါတီသက္တမ္း ၁၉ ႏွစ္တာကာလ အတြင္း ၁၃ ႏွစ္ေက်ာ္ အခ်ဳပ္ အေႏွာင္တြင္း ေနထိုင္ခဲ့ရသျဖင့္ ပါတီအေရးကို ကိုယ္ထိလက္ေရာက္ ေဆာင္ရြက္ႏိုင္ခြင့္ မရွိျဖစ္ေနရသည္။

လက္ရွိ အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ ပါတီေခါင္းေဆာင္ပိုင္းက သူတို႔ကိုယ္သူတို႔ ပါတီကို မပ်က္စီးရေလေအာင္ ထိန္းသိမ္း ေစာင့္ေရွာက္ ေပးသူမ်ားဟု ခံယူထားၾကေသာ္လည္း ဒီမိုကေရစီအေရးအတြက္ ေရွ႕ဆက္ခ်ီတက္ႏိုင္ရန္ အေတြးအျမင္ႏွင့္ မဟာဗ်ဴဟာ မ်ား ခ်မွတ္ ႀကံဆျခင္းကိုမူ ထိုးထြင္းမလုပ္လိုၾကေပ။

လက္ရွိ ပါတီေခါင္းေဆာင္ပိုင္းအေနႏွင့္ ယေန႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီ အေရးေတာ္ပံုကို ဦးေဆာင္ဦးရြက္ျပဳႏိုင္စြမ္း ရွိ - မရွိႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ အႀကိမ္ႀကိမ္ ေမးခြန္းထုတ္ခံခဲ့ရဖူးသလို စိန္ေခၚမႈမ်ားလည္း အႀကိမ္ႀကိမ္ႀကံဳေတြ႔ခဲ့ရဖူးသည္။ လူထု အစိတ္ အပိုင္းတခ်ဳိ႕၊ ဒီမိုကေရစီအေရး ထဲထဲ၀င္၀င္ လႈပ္ရွားေနၾကသူမ်ား၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမားမ်ားကလည္း အန္အယ္လ္ဒီႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ စိတ္ပ်က္ေနခဲ့ၾကသည္။

သူတို႔အျမင္တြင္ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္သည္ အလိုအေလွ်ာက္ပဲ့ထိန္းျဖင့္ ေရလႊာေၾကာတြင္ ဦးတည္ရာမဲ့ ေမ်ာ ေနသည္ဟု ျမင္ၾကသည္။ သည္အတိုင္းသြားေနပါက တခ်ိန္ ပါတီတခုလံုး၏တန္ဖိုးႏွင့္ အေရးပါမႈကိုပါ စြန္႔လႊတ္လိုက္ရ ေတာ့မည့္ အႏၱရာယ္ရွိေနသည္ဟု ျမင္ၾကသည္။

လြန္ခဲ့သည့္ႏွစ္ကလည္း ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ကိုယ္ႏိႈက္က ပါတီဦးေဆာင္မႈႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ဖူးသည္။ ေဒၚစုက ပါတီ ထိပ္ပိုင္းေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားႏွင့္ ေတြ႔ဆံုခြင့္ရသည့္အခ်ိန္တြင္ သူ႔ကို ေစာင့္မေနဘဲ ပါတီ၏ ဦးေဆာင္မႈျဖင့္ ျပတ္ျပတ္ သားသား ေရွ႕ဆက္သြားရန္ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ဖူးသည္။ ပါတီအေနျဖင့္ တခါတရံတြန္းထိုးလႈပ္ရွားရန္လိုသလို တခါတရံ စည္း႐ံုးသိမ္း သြင္းရန္လည္း လိုသည္ဟု ေျပာခဲ့သည္။ တခါတရံ သူက ဦးေဆာင္မည္ျဖစ္ေသာ္လည္း၊ တခါတရံ သူကိုယ္တိုင္က အျခား သူမ်ား ဦးေဆာင္မႈကို လိုက္ရလိမ့္မည္ဟု ေဒၚစုက ေျပာခဲ့သည္။

လက္ေတြ႔တြင္ ဤျပႆနာက မ်ဳိးဆက္ခ်င္း ကြာဟမႈေၾကာင့္ ပို၍ႀကီးသြားပံု ရသည္။ ပါတီဥကၠ႒ျဖစ္သူ ဦးေအာင္ေရႊႏွင့္ ဦးလြင္တို႔က အသက္ ၈၀ ေႏွာင္းပိုင္း၊ ၉၀ ထဲ ၀င္ေနၾကၿပီ။ တခ်ဳိ႕ေသာ လႈပ္ရွားသူမ်ားကလည္း စစ္တပ္ တပ္မႉးမ်ားအျဖစ္ တာ၀န္ထမ္းဖူးခဲ့ၾကသည့္ သူတို႔၏ ေနာက္ခံသမိုင္းေၾကာင္း၊ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေန၀င္းဦးေဆာင္သည့္ အာဏာရွင္ စနစ္တြင္ ထိပ္တန္းတာ၀န္မ်ား ယူခဲ့ဖူးၾကသည့္ အေနအထားတို႔ေၾကာင့္ ယံုၾကည္မႈမရႏိုင္သည့္ အေနအထား ျဖစ္ေနၾကရသည္။

ႁခြင္းခ်က္တခုကမူ အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ ပါတီ၏ ဒုတိယ ဥကၠ႒ ဦးတင္ဦးကို လူအမ်ားက ႏွစ္လို ေထာက္ခံေနၾကျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။ ဦးတင္ဦးသည္ ဦးေန၀င္းအစိုးရ လက္ထက္တြင္ ကာကြယ္ေရး ဦးစီးခ်ဳပ္အျဖစ္ တာ၀န္ထမ္းခဲ့ဖူးေသာ္လည္း လူအမ်ားက ေလးစားၾကည္ညိဳၾကသည္။ သို႔ရာတြင္ အသက္ ၈၀ ထဲသို႔ ၀င္လာၿပီျဖစ္ေသာ ဦးတင္ဦးလည္း အိမ္အက်ယ္ခ်ဳပ္ က်ခံေနရ သည္။ ယခုအခါ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ကိုယ္ႏိႈက္သည္ပင္ အသက္ ၆၃ ႏွစ္ ရွိလာခဲ့ၿပီ ျဖစ္သည္။

ႏုတ္ထြက္စာတင္ခဲ့ၾကသည့္ လူငယ္မ်ားမွာ ပါတီအနာဂတ္အတြက္ အမွန္တကယ္ အေရးပါသူမ်ား ျဖစ္ၾကသည္။ ယခုလို အစုလိုက္အၿပံဳလိုက္ ႏုတ္ထြက္ျခင္းကို လ်စ္လ်ဴရႈမေနသင့္သလို၊ ေလွ်ာ့တြက္၍ မျဖစ္ႏိုင္ပါ။

ယခုအခ်ိန္သည္ အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ ပါတီ ေခါင္းေဆာင္မႈအတြက္ ေသေရးရွင္ေရး အခ်ိန္ျဖစ္ေနေပၿပီ။ အတိုက္အခံပါတီ၏ အိမ္ကိုယ္ႏိႈက္က ၿပိဳလုတည္းတည္း အေျခအေနတြင္ စစ္အစိုးရ၏ အာဏာရွင္လုပ္ရပ္မ်ားကိုသာ ထိုင္ေ၀ဖန္ေန၍ အက်ဳိးမရွိႏိုင္ပါ။

အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္အတြင္း ညီညြတ္ေရးရရွိရန္ အေရးႀကီးသကဲ့သို႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီ လႈပ္ရွားမႈႀကီး အတြင္း၌လည္း ညီညြတ္ေရးက အေရးႀကီးလွသည္။ သို႔မွသာ ႏိုင္ငံ အနာဂတ္လွပႏိုင္မည္ ျဖစ္သည္။

ယခုအခ်ိန္သည္ ဒီမိုကေရစီ အင္အားစုမ်ားအဖို႔ ရွင္းလင္း၊ ျပတ္သားသည့္ မူ၀ါဒ ရည္မွန္းခ်က္မ်ားေအာက္တြင္ စုစည္း ညီညြတ္ရေတာ့မည့္ အခ်ိန္ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ ဤအေျခအေနမ်ဳိးတြင္ အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ ပါတီက မိမိပါတီအတြင္း ကြဲျပားေနမႈ၊ မယံု သကၤာ သံသယလႊမ္းမိုးေနမႈမ်ားကို အလ်င္အျမန္ျပင္ဆင္ၿပီး ဦးေဆာင္သက္ေသျပရေတာ့မည့္ အခ်ိန္ျဖစ္ပါသည္။


ေက်ာ္စြာမိုးေရးသားသည့္ A House Divided ကို ဆီေလ်ာ္ေအာင္ ျပန္ဆိုေဖာ္ျပပါသည္။



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A House Divided -IRRAWADDY

http://www.irrawadd y.org/opinion_ story.php? art_id=14467

By KYAW ZWA MOE


Now the issue isn’t just about Burma’s oppressive military regime. Or, the stand off between the junta and the opposition. It’s now about the internal politics of the country’s most popular opposition party founded by Aung San Suu Kyi.

The resignation of 109 youth members of the main opposition National League for Democracy is one of the most significant events since the formation of the party in 1988.

It throws into question the democratic workings of the party itself and further weakens the image of the party’s aging leadership.

The resignation came after younger members’ publicly voiced complaints that they aren’t allowed to participate in decision-making. The move followed a statement by NLD chairman Aung Shwe naming six new youth advisers and ten others to lead youth activities without accepting nominations or suggestions from youth members.


It’s awkward and embarrassing to see the leading pro-democracy group facing problems of democratic principles within its own membership.

“Our organization is a democratic one,” said Khin Htun, who has loyally worked for the NLD youth wing during the past two decades but was among those who resigned. “We must respect the basis of democracy. If we don’t respect the rules of democracy, it will be very difficult to work out the process of democratic reform in Burma.”

Khin Htun has spent years in jail as a result of his dedication to the NLD since its formation in 1988. Like him, many of the 109 members who resigned are former political prisoners.

NLD leaders should allow youth members to play a role in decision-making and genuinely consider their views when deciding on policy issues.

“Youth is our future,” said Khin Htun. “I want to urge our leaders to include the viewpoint of the youth members.”

In fact, the NLD has faced this issue since the early 2000s, especially during times when Suu Kyi has been detained—she has been under house arrest for 13 of the past 19 years.

The current top NLD leaders generally regard themselves as caretakers of the party rather than innovative visionaries crafting a philosophy and strategy that will move the entire pro-democracy movement forward.

The current NLD leadership has been repeatedly challenged and questioned regarding its capability to lead the pro-democracy movement. Segments of the general public and groups within the core circle of activists and politicians have been disappointed that the NLD seems to be floating along aimlessly on automatic pilot and is in danger of becoming irrelevant.

Last year, Suu Kyi herself talked about party leadership. When she was allowed to meet with her party’s senior members, she counseled them to move forward without her. She said the party sometimes needs “to push and pull.” Sometimes she would lead and sometimes she would follow others’ leadership in the party, she said.

In fact, this issue seems to be exacerbated by a generation gap. Party chairman Aung Shwe and U Lwin are respectively in their early 90s and late 80s. Some activists don’t fully trust them because of their backgrounds as former army commanders who held high-ranking positions under Ne Win’s authoritarian government.

A popular exception is Tin Oo, the NLD’s vice-chairman who is currently under house arrest. In his early 80s, he’s gained great respect from the public even though he served as commander-in- chief under New Win’s government.

The youth members who resigned represent a critical core of the party—indeed its very future. A mass resignation is a significant signal that shouldn’t be ignored or discounted.

This is a critical moment for the NLD leadership. It makes little sense to criticize the authoritarian military regime when the opposition party’s own house is in danger of collapse.

Unity within the NLD and unity within the entire pro-democracy movement is critical to the country’s future.

It’s time for the country’s pro-democracy groups to unite under simple, clear policy goals. The NLD can show the way by quickly repairing the distrust and division within its own party.

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