Please read the difference between U Aye Tha Aung and ENC. The question is
who are the representatives for non-Burman ethinics ?
CRPP or ENC or what ?
ENC wants ethnic groups to contest 2010 elections
by Mungpi
Friday, 02 October 2009 23:31
New Delhi (Mizzima) - A group of Burma’s ethnic political organizations in exile – the Ethnic Nationalities Council (ENC) - has urged US Senator James Webb not to condemn the junta’s 2010 election before it takes place but to call for more inclusiveness and for it to be free and fair.
In a letter to Sen. Webb, a strong advocate of engagement with the Burmese regime, two days before he hosted a Congressional hearing on Burma, the ENC urged the Virginian Senator that the US can best help by “Not condemning the 2010 elections before they are held.”
“But instead call for a more inclusive election process that will be free and fair. Electoral assistance can be offered either directly or indirectly through neighbouring countries,” said the letter dated September 28, 2009.
The le tter, a copy of which is in Mizzima’s possession, was sent to Senator Webb in appreciation for his interest in the Burma issue and as an explanation on the nature of the complex problems of Burma’s diverse ethnic minorities.
Webb on Wednesday hosted a Congressional hearing on Burma where four experts gave their testimony on what should be the policy of the US towards Burma and the potential role that the US can play in bringing change in the military-ruled Southeast Asian nation.
The letter signed by Saw David Thaw, General Secretary of the ENC, states that ‘in principle’ ethnic nationalities in Burma cannot accept the junta’s 2008 constitution and does not believe that the 2010 elections will lead to democracy.
But the ENC argues that since the ethnics are left with little or no choice, they will have to participate in the elections, because “If there are no opposition parties, the military’s candidates will win by default. The military (and the majority ethnic ‘Burman’) candidates will then become the “elected representatives” of the seven ethnic states.”
Besides, the ENC said, if the ethnic armed ceasefire groups refuse to participate, they will be forced to revert to armed struggle, which will then cause further complications.
Burma under the current administration has seven states, which are home to seven major ethnic groups, and seven divisions, which have no particular attachment to any et hnic groups but are mostly known as habitats of the majority Burmans.
In view of the ENC’s policy of ethnic groups having a voice in Burma’s national politics, participating in governance and development of their homelands, the letter urged Senator Webb not to condemn the 2010 elections until it takes place but to urge the Burmese junta to make it more inclusive and free and fair.
The letter also states that the US can best help the people of Burma by providing assistance in civic education on elections and helping civil organizations that are educating potential political candidates on how to run for office and on democratic governance. And also to support groups that are educating the people about their rights and preparing local organizations on how to monitor the forthcoming elections.
The letter, which for the first time reveals ENC’s policy, states that ENC’s short-term policy is to support eligible ethnic groups in running for office in the 2010 elections.
It also said the ENC’s long-term policy is to develop a robust civil society that will be capable of holding an elected government accountable to the people.
“While the Burmese military will remain in control after the 2010 elections, it is our hope that representatives elected by the people will be able to help hold the military accountable to their own constitution,” said the letter.
“It is also our hope that the new government will be=2 0more open to negotiating a political solution with the ethnic groups that are still engaged in armed struggle,” added the letter.
In contrast to the ENC’s policy, the Committee Representing Peoples’ Parliament (CRPP), a group formed with 1990 election winning parties, said unless the regime amends the 2008 constitution, the elections would be meaningless and the CRPP would not contest.
Aye Thar Aung, Secretary of the CRPP, told Mizzima on Friday, “Without amending the 2008 constitution, the ethnics can do nothing even if they participate and are elected. They would just end up as puppets of the junta.”
He said the CRPP as well as Aung San Suu Kyi’s party – the National League for Democracy – have both demanded that the junta release political prisoners, amend the 2008 constitution, and recognize the 1990 election results.
“Unless these demands are met, we the CRPP and the ALD, will not participate in the elections,” Aye Thar Aung, who is also secretary for the Arakan League for Democracy, said.
“And without the junta fulfilling these demands, I would like to urge ethnic groups and others not to participate in the elections,” he added.
The CRPP, formed in September 1998, is an alliance of ethnic political parties that won elections in 1990, which the junta refused to honour. Its members include the NLD, ALD, Shan National League for Democracy (SNLD), Mon National Democratic Front (M NDF) and Zomi National Congress (ZNC).
Burma’s military rulers, as the fifth step of its seven-step roadmap to democracy, said it will hold general elections in 2010, that will elect a semi-civilian government based on the 2008 constitution, which according to the junta was approved by over 90 per cent of voters in May last year.
Critics said the junta’s roadmap is to buy-time and to cement the role of military in Burma’s future politics.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
ENC wants ethnic groups to contest 2010 elections
ပတၱနိကၠဳဇၨနကံေဆာင္သပိတ္ အထေျမာက္ဟု သံဃာ့တပ္ေပါင္းစုအဖြဲ႔မွ မိန္႔ၾကား
http://www.khitpyaing.org/news/Oct09/030909b.php
NEJ / ၃ ေအာက္တိုဘာ ၂၀၀၉
ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ ဗဟန္းၿမိဳ႕နယ္ရွိ ေက်ာင္းတိုက္တခုမွ သိမ္တသိမ္တြင္ သံဃာအပါး (၂၀) ခန္႔နွင့္ ပတၱနိကၠဳဇၨန ကမၼ၀ါစာရြတ္ဖတ္ကာ သပိတ္ေမွာက္ကံေဆာင္ လုိက္ၾကေၾကာင္း ျပည္တြင္းမွ သံဃာေတာ္တပါးကို ကိုးကားၿပီး ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံလုံးဆိုင္ရာ သံဃာ့တပ္ေပါင္းစုအဖြဲ႔မွ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးရာတာ၀န္ခံ အရွင္ဣႆရိယက မိန္႔ၾကားသည္။
“အခုသပိတ္က တတိယအႀကိမ္ သပိတ္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ တကယ္သပိတ္ရဲ႕ ေအာင္ျမင္ျခင္းကေတာ့ ၁၉၉၀ သပိတ္နဲ႔ ၂၀၀၇ သပိတ္ေတြကတည္းက ဒါတကယ့္ကို ေအာင္ျမင္ၿပီးသားပါ။ အဲဒီသပိတ္က အခုထက္ထိ ျပန္ၿပီးေတာ့ လွန္ရျခင္းလည္း မရိွေသးပါဘူး။ ပထမနဲ႔ ဒုတိယအႀကိမ္ေတြမွာ ေမွာက္ထားတဲ့သပိတ္ကို ျပန္ၿပီးေတာ့ ခိုင္ၿမဲသြားေစဖို႔၊ အားလုံးကလည္း ဒီသပိတ္မလွန္ရေသးဘူးဆိုတာ သိသြားေစဖို႔၊ ဆက္ၿပီးေအာင္ေအာင္ျမင္ျမင္ ျပဳလုပ္ႏိုင္ဖို႔ကို ဦးဇင္းတို႔က ထပ္ၿပီးေတာ့ လုပ္တာပါ” ဟု အရွင္ဣႆရိယက မိန္႔သည္။
ျပည္တြင္း၌ လွ်ိဳ႕၀ွက္ၿပီး ေနရာေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ား၌လည္း သပိတ္ေမွာက္လိုက္သည္ဟု ျပည္တြင္းမွ သံဃာေတာ္မ်ားက သတင္းပါးေၾကာင္း၊ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ၊ သီရိလကၤာ၊ အိႏၵိယ ႏိုင္ငံေတြက သံဃာေတာ္မ်ားကလည္း အားလုံးစုေပါင္းၿပီး သပိတ္ေမွာက္ ကံေဆာင္လိုက္သည့္အတြက္ေၾကာင့္ ယေန႔တြင္ ပတၱနိကၠဳဇၨနကံေဆာင္သပိတ္ အထေျမာက္ေအာင္ျမင္သြားသည္ဟု ၎က ဆက္လက္မိန္႔ၾကားသည္။
ထို႔ျပင္ ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္ၿမိဳ႕၌လည္း သံဃာေတာ္မ်ားက သပိတ္ေမွာက္ ကံေဆာင္လိုက္ၾကေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။
Can U.S. talk tame Burma's military leaders?
Can U.S. talk tame Burma's military leaders?
UPI ASIA.COM
By Zin Linn
Column: Burma Question
Published: October 02, 2009
Bangkok, Thailand — The United States has announced it will hold direct talks with Burma’s military junta, hoping that talks will succeed where years of sanctions have failed in achieving democratic reforms. Speaking to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington on Wednesday, Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, said, “Through a direct dialogue, we will be able to test the intentions of the Burmese leadership.”
Burma’s military regime announced two weeks ago that – as a peaceful, modern and disciplined democratic nation – it had terminated the prison terms of 7,114 prisoners due to their good conduct and discipline and in consideration of their families. The prisoners were released from their respective jails on Sept. 17 to enable them to serve the interests of the state after realizing the government’s compassion and goodwill.
And yet, on Friday a Burmese court denied the appeal of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi to overturn her recent sentencing to another 18 months of house arrest.
The prisoner release is another of the regime’s twist-and-turn policies ahead of next year’s elections. It seemed timed to reduce international pressure on the junta ahead of the start of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
“Every one of those prisoners is a human being, and it is unacceptable that the junta uses them as bargaining chips to deceive the international community,” said David Scott Mathieson, a Thailand-based researcher for Human Rights Watch.
Bo Kyi, an executive of the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners Burma, also believes the releases were intended to relieve international pressure. “If the military authorities were honest enough and really want national reconciliation, they ought to release all political prisoners including key figures, such as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Khun Tun Oo and all student leaders,” he said.
It was no coincidence that the announcement of the prisoner releases came on the eve of the blood-spattered anniversary of the junta’s military coup on Sept. 18, 1988. It was also the second anniversary of the Saffron Revolution in which scores of Buddhist monks were killed and hundreds jailed.
The regime hoped the release of prisoners would decrease anti-junta demonstrations on the anniversary.
Two years ago the leadership of Burma's brave monks encouraged a nationwide revolution against the military command. Hundreds of thousands of monks and citizens launched more than 150 demonstrations throughout the nation. On Sept. 26 the military began its ruthless crackdown on monks and protesters, arresting thousands and killing dozens.
The junta’s announcement said the prisoners were being released on humanitarian grounds so they could participate in multiparty elections next year. But out of the 7,114 released inmates, only 128 are political prisoners.
According to the AAPPB, more than 2,000 political prisoners remain in jail, including at least 124 activists who are in poor health. The association said the majority of the released inmates were criminals.
So far more than 40 members of the National League for Democracy have been released, according to a spokesman for the group. Three of them were elected members of Parliament in 1990 – the country’s last election, the results of which were ignored by the junta.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the release of a batch of political prisoners in Myanmar, but urged the junta to free those still being held, including democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi. The U.N. chief has repeatedly pressed for the release of the opposition leaders and other political prisoners.
The prisoner releases came just days before the junta’s Prime Minister Gen Thein Sein attended the U.N. General Assembly for the first time in 14 years. Many political observers believe the release was intended to ward off criticism at the General Assembly and show the international community that the military regime is cooperating with the United Nations.
On Sept. 23 the secretary-general' s statement to the media on the High-Level Meeting of the Group of Friends on Myanmar came out.
In the statement, Ban Ki-moon emphasized: “As I said today in my address to the General Assembly, we will work hard for democracy, national reconciliation and human rights in Myanmar. The release of some political prisoners last week is a step in the right direction, but it falls short of our expectations. All political prisoners must be released – including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.”
Yet the amnesty for political prisoners is not enough and unbelievably late. Less than 2 percent of those released were political prisoners, while 98 percent were criminals and former military intelligence personnel. No prominent political prisoner has been freed.
According to diplomats in Rangoon, there are signs that more political prisoners may be released, but it will be done in a way to support the junta’s fraudulent 2010 elections.
During the second meeting of the Group of Friends on Myanmar at the level of Foreign Ministers, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also called on the Burmese government to begin talks with the opposition and ethnic minorities about real democratic change in the nation.
“We believe that sanctions remain important as part of our policy but by themselves they have not produced the results that had been hoped for,” Clinton told reporters at the United Nations in New York. “Engagement versus sanctions is a false choice in our opinion, going forward we will be employing both of those tools.”
According to the NCGUB, the sanctions reinforce the legitimacy and possibility of meaningful dialogue in Burma. The goal of sanctions is not severe economic destabilization aimed at toppling the regime. They serve as a pressure mechanism to persuade the regime to recognize the crisis in the country and the need for a peaceful resolution of the crisis. They serve as part of the overall international strategy to facilitate a tripartite dialogue in Burma.
Senior General Than Shwe, who has been using so many immoral plans to clear out the NLD and its charismatic leader from Burma’s political arena, has stubbornly turned a deaf ear to calls to free Aung San Suu Kyi. He has turned down a tripartite dialogue for genuine reconciliation. If he does not release all political prisoners, including Suu Kyi, the majority of the population will not regard the coming poll as free and fair.
Clinton indicated there would be no softening of U.S. demands toward Burma and repeated calls for the military leaders to release opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.
"We want credible democratic reform, a government that responds to the needs of the Burmese people, immediate, unconditional release of political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi," she said.
Clinton added, “The junta must also engage in a serious dialogue with the opposition and minority ethnic groups.”
The military regime in Burma has declared plans to hold the country's first election in two decades next year as part of its seven-step roadmap, which is actually designed as a sham to entrench the military's hold on power. People around the world who are interested in Burma are keenly watching the United States’ diplomatic shift toward the military-ruled country.
According to Clinton, the United States will engage directly with the Burmese authorities in order to help achieve democratic reform. But the junta will not easily yield to demands to release its political opponents.
Can Clinton tame the uncivilized military tyrant of Burma? The top U.S. diplomat should have a well-planned strategy to deal effectively with the self-serving generals if she hopes to attain political reform in exchange for reduced sanctions.
http://upiasia. com/Politics/ 2009/10/02/ can_us_talk_ tame_burmas_ military_ leaders/9338/
Suu Kyi in Burma government talks
Saturday, 3 October 2009 11:48 UK
Suu Kyi in Burma government talks
Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has met a member of the country's ruling military government for the first time since early 2008.
Ms Suu Kyi, who is under renewed house arrest in Rangoon, met labour minister Aung Kyi, her lawyer said.
The meeting came one day after a court rejected her appeal against her 18 month sentence.
There was no official word on what they discussed, but Ms Suu Kyi has offered to help negotiate an end to sanctions.
Aung Kyi has met Ms Suu Kyi on six previous occasions, the last time in January 2008.
"The meeting lasted about 50 minutes, but I don't know what was discussed," a home ministry official told Reuters news agency.
Negotiations hope
Nyan Win, her lawyer and an official from her opposition party, the National League for Democracy, said: "I don't know what they discussed, but I believe it could be related to the letter sent last week to the senior general [Than Shwe].
Ms Suu Kyi recently made a formal offer to the military rulers to help negotiate an end to international sanctions.
Reports suggest she has softened her views on sanctions in recent times, concluding that they are adversely affecting the lives of ordinary Burmese.
Earlier in the week a senior US official confirmed he had met a Burmese government minister in New York - the first such contact in more than 10 years.
That came after the US announced a new policy on Burma, which consists of a mix of sanctions and dialogue.
Aung San Suu Kyi's party won Burma's last elections in 1990 but was never allowed to take power.
Observers believe Burma's military authorities want to keep the pro-democracy leader in detention until after polls scheduled for next year. http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/asia- pacific/8288379. stm
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