The homepage of apple.com shows the obituary of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs (ABC …
• Article: President Obama, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Others React to Steve Jobs' Death
ABC News - 3 hours ago
Steve Jobs, the mastermind behind Apple's iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac and iTunes, has died, Apple said. Jobs was 56.
"We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today," read a statement by Apple's board of directors. "Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve. His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts."
The homepage of Apple's website this evening switched to a full-page image of Jobs with the text, "Steve Jobs 1955-2011."
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Clicking on the image revealed the additional text: "Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple."
Jobs co-founded Apple Computer in 1976 and, with his childhood friend Steve Wozniak, marketed what was considered the world's first personal computer, the Apple II.
Shortly after learning of Jobs' death, Wozniak told ABC News, "I'm shocked and disturbed."
Industry watchers called him a master innovator -- perhaps on a par with Thomas Edison -- changing the worlds of computing, recorded music and communications.
In 2004, he beat back an unusual form of pancreatic cancer, and in 2009 he was forced to get a liver transplant. After several years of failing health, Jobs announced on Aug. 24, 2011 that he was stepping down as Apple's chief executive.
"I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know," Jobs wrote in his letter of resignation. "Unfortunately, that day has come."
Click Here for Pictures: Steve Jobs Through the Years
One of the world's most famous CEOs, Jobs remained stubbornly private about his personal life, refusing interviews and shielding his wife and their children from public view.
"He's never been a media person," said industry analyst Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, after Jobs resigned. "He's granted interviews in the context of product launches, when it benefits Apple, but you never see him talk about himself."
The highlights of Jobs's career trajectory are well-known: a prodigy who dropped out of Reed College in Oregon and, at 21, started Apple with Wozniak in his parents' garage. He was a multimillionaire by 25, appeared on the cover of Time magazine at 26, and was ousted at Apple at age 30, in 1984.
In the years that followed, he went into other businesses, founding NeXT computers and, in 1986, buying the computer graphics arm of Lucasfilm, Ltd., which became Pixar Animation Studios.
He was described as an exacting and sometimes fearsome leader, ordering up and rejecting multiple versions of new products until the final version was just right. He said the design and aesthetics of a device were as important as the hardware and software inside.
Click Here for Pictures: Apple's Iconic Products
In 1996, Apple, which had struggled without Jobs, brought him back by buying NeXT. He became CEO in 1997 and put the company on a remarkable upward path.
By 2001 the commercial music industry was on its knees because digital recordings, copied and shared online for free, made it unnecessary for millions of people to buy compact discs.
Jobs took advantage with the iPod -- essentially a pocket-sized computer hard drive with elegantly simple controls and a set of white earbuds so that one could listen to the hours of music one saved on it. He set up the iTunes online music store, and persuaded major recording labels to sell songs for 99 cents each. No longer did people have to go out and buy a CD if they liked one song from it. They bought a digital file and stored it in their iPod.
In 2007, he transformed the cell phone. Apple's iPhone, with its iconic touch screen, was a handheld computer, music player, messaging device, digital wallet and -- almost incidentally -- cell phone. Major competitors, such as BlackBerry, Nokia and Motorola, struggled after it appeared.
By 2010, Apple's new iPad began to cannibalize its original business, the personal computer. The iPad was a sleek tablet computer with a touch screen and almost no physical buttons. It could be used for almost anything software designers could conceive, from watching movies to taking pictures to leafing through a virtual book.
Personal Life
Jobs kept a close cadre of friends, Bajarin said, including John Lasseter of Pixar and Larry Ellison of Oracle, but beyond that, shared very little of his personal life with anyone.
But that personal life -- he was given up at birth for adoption, had an illegitimate child, was romantically linked with movie stars -- was full of intrigue for his fan base and Apple consumers.
Jobs and his wife, Laurene Powell, were married in a small ceremony in Yosemite National Park in 1991, lived in Woodside, Calif., and had three children: Reed Paul, Erin Sienna and Eve.
He admitted that when he was 23, he had a child out of wedlock with his high school girlfriend, Chris Ann Brennan. Their daughter, Lisa Brennan Jobs, was born in 1978.
He had a biological sister, Mona Simpson, the author of such well-known books as "Anywhere But Here." But he did not meet Simpson until they were adults and he was seeking out his birth parents. Simpson later wrote a book based on their relationship. She called it "A Regular Guy."
Fortune magazine reported that Jobs denied paternity of Lisa for years, at one point swearing in a court document that he was infertile and could not have children. According to the report, Chris Ann Brennan collected welfare for a time to support the child until Jobs later acknowledged Lisa as his daughter.
There were other personal details that emerged over the years, as well.
At Reed, Jobs became romantically involved with the singer Joan Baez, according to Elizabeth Holmes, a friend and classmate. In "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs," Holmes tells biographer Alan Deutschman that Jobs broke up with his serious girlfriend to "begin an affair with the charismatic singer-activist." Holmes confirmed the details to ABC News.
Jobs' Health and Apple's Health
Enigmatic and charismatic, Jobs said little about himself. But then his body began to fail him.
In 2004, he was forced to say publicly he had a rare form of pancreatic cancer. In 2009, it was revealed that he had quietly gone to a Memphis hospital for a liver transplant.
He took three medical leaves from Apple. He did not share details.
In 2009, sources said, members of Apple's board of directors had to persuade him to disclose more about his health as "a fiduciary issue," interwoven with the health of the company.
He was listed in March as 109th on the Forbes list of the world's billionaires, with a net worth of about $8.3 billion. After selling Pixar animation studios to The Walt Disney Company in 2006, he became a Disney board member and the company's largest shareholder. Disney is the parent company of ABC News.
Analysts said Apple performed well during Jobs' absence, partly because he was available for big decisions and partly because his chief lieutenant, Tim Cook, was the hands-on manager even when Jobs was there.
The company has a history of bouncing back. In January 2009, after he announced his second medical leave, Apple stock dropped to $78.20 per share. But it quickly recovered and became one of the most successful stocks on Wall Street. On one day in the summer of 2011, with the stock hitting the $400 level, Apple briefly passed ExxonMobil as the world's most valuable company.
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Thursday, October 6, 2011
Steve Jobs, the mastermind behind Apple's iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac and iTunes, has died, Apple said. Jobs was 56.
Re:by PHONE HLAING [8888peoplepower] ေဒါ္ေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ဟာမာသာထရီဇာလုိ႔ျဖစ္သြားျပီ၊
Re: [8888peoplepower] ေဒါ္ေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ဟာမာသာထရီဇာလုိ႔ျဖစ္သြားျပီ၊
Saturday, October 1, 2011 9:08 AM
From: "phone hlaing"
ကိုယ့္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ကိုယုံတယ္ဆိုရင္ ကိုယ့္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေနာက္ကိုရဲရဲဝ့ံဝ့ံလိုက္ရပါမယ္။
သူ ့ေခါင္းေဆာင္မႈကိုမယုံရင္ ဦးေအာင္တင္ေျပာသလိုဘဲ ကုိယ့္ဘာသာကိုယ့္လမ္း
ကိုယ္ေလွ်ာက္ႀကပါ။
ဒီမိုကေရစီကိုယုံႀကတယ္ဆိုရင္ လြတ္လပ္စြာသေဘာထားကဲြလြဲခြင့္ရိွႀကပါတယ္။
လြတ္လပ္စြာေဝဖန္ပိုင္ခြင့္ရိွပါတယ္။ လြတ္လပ္စြာေဝဖန္ႀက သေဘာထားကဲြလဲြႀကပါ။
ဒါေပမဲ ့ရန္ေတာ့မျဖစ္ႀကပါနဲ ့ ဒါကသေဘာထားေသးတာဘဲျဖစ္ပါလိမ္ ့မယ္။
ဥပမာ- တရားရုံးမွာ ေရွ ့ေနေတြ နွစ္ဖက္အျပန္အလွန္တိုက္ႀကခိုက္ႀက ေျပာႀကဆို
ႀကတယ္။ ကိုယ့္အဆိုမွန္ေႀကာင္းတင္ျပႀက ေခ်ပႀကလုပ္ႀကတယ္။ အဲ တရားရုံး
ျပင္ပေရာက္ေတာ့ တေယာက္နဲ ့တေယာက္လက္ဆဲြနႈတ္ဆက္ႀကတယ္ အျပန္အလွန္
ခ်ီးက်ဴးႀကတယ္ ဒါေတြဟာ လူႀကီးလူေကာင္းေတြရဲ့အနွစ္သာရေတြပါဘဲ။
ကိုယ့္အျမင္ကိုတင္ျပပါ ၊ ကိုယ့္အျမင္ကိုေဝဖန္တာမခံနိုင္ဖူးဆိုရင္လဲ ဒီမိုကေရစီသမား
မဟုတ္ေသးဘူးလို ့ဆိုခ်င္တယ္။ ေဝဖန္တဲ့သူကလဲ ငါ ့စကားႏြားရေဝဖန္တာမ်ိဳးမဟုတ္ဘဲ
အခ်က္နဲ ့အလက္နဲ ့ပုဂိၢဳလ္ေရးမတိုက္ခိုက္ဘဲေဝဖန္ရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။တေယာက္နဲ ့တေယာက္
ရန္မျဖစ္ဘဲနဲ ့အျပဳသေဘာနဲ ့မ်ားမ်ားေဆြးေႏြးမ်ားမ်ားျငင္းခုံႀကပါ ဒါမွ ဦးေနွာက္ေတြ
ထက္လာႀကမွာပါ။ ျပီးေတာ့ေနာက္ဆုံးမွာအမ်ားသေဘာတူတဲ့ဆုံးျဖတ္ခ်က္တစ္ခု
က်လာမွာေပါ ့ win win situation(answer) လို ့ေခၚမလားဘဲ
Wishing you have peace of mind,
Phone Hlaing
PEACEFUL BURMA/
FWUBC-Federation of Workers' Union of the Burmese Citizens (in Japan)
Phone: 0(81)3-6904-2414
Mobile: 0(81)90-5318-5054
peacefulburma.blogspot.com
--- On Sat, 10/1/11, ziza war
From: ziza war
Subject: Re: [8888peoplepower] ေဒါ္ေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ဟာမာသာထရီဇာလုိ႔ျဖစ္သြားျပီ၊
To: 8888peoplepower@yahoogroups.com
Date: Saturday, October 1, 2011, 4:59 AM
လူေတြေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားကေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကုိထိရင္မခံႏိုင္ၾကဘူး၊အေမအေမဆုိျပီး၀ုိင္းအာၾက၀ုိင္းကာၾကတယ္၊က်ေနာ္ကလည္းခင္ဗ်ားတုိ႔လုိမခ်စ္တာမဟုတ္ဘူး၊ ခ်စ္လည္းခ်စ္ နားလည္းနားလည္ပါတယ္၊ ဒါေပမဲ့ႏိုင္ငံေရးမွာညီအစ္ကုိမရွိဘူး၊ အေဖအေမမရွိဘူး၊ ကုိယ္ယုံ
ၾကည္ခ်က္အေပၚကုိယ္ရပ္ၾကရတာျဖစ္တယ္၊ ေ၀ဖန္တုိင္းမုန္းလုိ႔မဟုတ္ဘူး-အနည္းဆုိေတာ့ ခ်င့္ခ်ိန္ဆင္ခ်င္ႏိုင္တဲ့အက်ဳိးတရားကုိေတာ့ရႏိုင္ပါတယ္၊
ငါတုိ႔မွအေမေတြမ်ားစြာရွိတယ္၊ ဆင္းရဲေနၾကတယ္ မြဲေနၾကတယ္ ငတ္ေနၾကတယ္ အေမတစ္ေယာက္ထဲကုိမဟုတ္ အေမအားလုံးကုိငါတုိ႔မွ်မွ်တတခ်စ္ၾကရမယ္
အခုလုပ္တဲ့လုပ္ေနတဲ့အာဏာရွင္နဲ႔ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္ျခင္းဆုိတာ အရင္ကတည္းကစမ္းျပီး လုပ္ရမဲ့ႏိုင္ငံေရးနည္းဗ်ဴဟာျဖစ္တယ္၊ ႏွစ္ေပါင္းႏွစ္ဆယ္ေက်ာ္ေႏွာင္းျပီးလုပ္မွာေတာ့ အေမေတြလည္းအုိျပီ အိမ္ေတြကလည္းျပိဳျပီးဆုိသလုိ တုိင္းျပည္တစ္ခုလုံးေျပာင္သလင္း ခါေအာင္ စစ္ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေတြကခုိးယူျပီးသြားျပီဆုိေတာ့ သူမကုိအသုံးခ်ျပီးထြက္ေပါက္ရွာတာပဲ
ဆုိတာသိပ္ကုိရွင္းတယ္၊ ဂႏၵီတုိက္ခဲ့တာကုိလုိနီအစုိးသာလွ်င္ျဖစ္တယ္။ ၊ အာဏာရွင္မဟုတ္ဘူး-စတာလင္မဟုတ္ဘူး-ဟစ္တလာမဟုတ္ဘူး-ကင္ဂ်ဳံအီးမဟုတ္ဘူး သန္းေရႊမဟုတ္ဘူး-ဂႏၵီသာဒီေန႔ရွိခဲ့ရင္အာဏာရွင္ကုိဒီလုိလုပ္လုိ႔မရဘူးဆုိတာ သူေျပာပါလိမ့္မယ္၊ သိန္းစိန္ေနာက္မွာသန္းေရႊတုိ႔အမာလုိင္းရွိေနတယ္ဆုိတာကုိလည္း ေမ့မေနၾကနဲ့ႏိုင္ငံေရးေမွ်ာ္ေတာ္ေယာင္မ်ားခင္ဗ်ား
2011/9/30 aungnaingwin
အန္ကယ္ဦးေအာင္မင္း အစပိုင္းမွာေရးထားတဲ့အေရးအသားက တရားသေဘာနဲ႕ ရွင္ၿပီး ေရးသားထားေတာ့ ဖတ္ရသူမ်ားအဖို႕ေတာ့ သေဘာေခြ႕စရာပါပဲခင္ဗ်ာ။ က်ေနာ့အေနနဲ႕ ငယ္ရြယ္တုန္းအခ်ိန္ေလးမွာ တရားသေဘာတရားမ်ားကိုေလ့လာထား မွ ယၡဳပစၥဳပၸန္ ႏွင့္ ေနာင္အနာဂတ္အခ်ိန္အခါမွာ တရားသေဘာေလးနဲ႕ရွင္ၿပီးအရာရာ ကို အေကာင္းဖက္က ေ၀ဖန္ပိုင္းျခားႏိုင္ေအာင္ ႀကိဳးစားဖို႕ ဗဟုသုတရလိုက္တဲ့အတြက္ေက်းဇူးအမ်ားႀကီးတင္ပါတယ္ခင္ဗ်ာ။
ေလးစားလ်က္
ANW
2011/9/30 PDP Office
ရဲရင့္ငယ္
၀မ္းေျမာက္ပါတယ္ ေဆာင္ရြက္လာခဲ့တာေကာ ဆက္လက္လုပ္ေနဆဲကာလမွာေရာ ေနာက္
အနာဂါတ္ ခရီးလမ္းအတြက္ေအာင္ျမင္နဳိင္ပါေစလုိ့လည္း ဆုေတာင္းေပးပါတယ္။ က်ိဳးစားမွဳက ေအာင္ျမင္ျခင္းရဲ့ လမ္းစ ပါ။ ျပင္းယိျပီး ဘာမွ မလုပ္ဘဲ ေနတာျခင္းထက္ ၀ိရိယ အားထုတ္ျပီး
က်ဳိးစားျခင္းကေတာ့ အတုိင္းနဲ့အလြန္ေပါ့- လုပ္ရပ္တုိင္း မေအာင္ျမင္တာကေတာ့ ပဋိဘာန္ လုိ့ေခၚတဲ့
ျဖတ္ထုိးဥာဏ္ေပါ့ သည္ျဖတ္ထုိးဥာဏ္ကေတာ့ ကံ စိတ္ ဥတု အဟာရ ဆုိေသာ အေၾကာင္းေလးပါး
မျပည့္စုံ ဘဲ ျဖစ္မလာပါဘူး ။ လူငယ္ေတြ အေတာ္မ်ားမ်ား ေျပာေနၾကတဲ့ မာန ေတြမွာ ဒါေတြကသိထား
ျပီးသားပါ ဆရာၾကီးမလုပ္ပါနဲ့ လုိဆုိတယ္။ မဟုတ္ရဘူး လူၾကီး လူငယ္ မည္သည့္ ပညာရွိ မ်ားသည္
ပင္လွ်င္။ ေနရာ ပေရာဂ သတိ ေတြေၾကာင့္ လမ္းမေရာက္ဘဲ။ လြဲေခ်ာ္သြားတတ္ၾကတယ္။ ထုိေၾကာင့္
ပညာရွိေလ သတိ လက္မလြတ္ဘုိ့လုိပါတယ္။ ဆုိခဲ့တဲ့ အေၾကာင္းတရား ေလးပါးတြင္ ကံ-ဆုိေသာ
ကမၼ-ကာမ အလုပ္တရားသည္ နယ္ေျမေဒသ ပေရာဂ ေၾကာင့္ လုပ္မွဳ အခက္အခဖဲ ျဖစ္တတ္၏
အလုပ္လုပ္တုိင္း မေအာင္ျမင္မွဳ ဘာေၾကာင့္ျဖစ္သလဲလုိ့ ရွာေဖြမွဳ မေတြ့ဘဲ အုိမင္းရင့္ေရာ္သူ ေတြအမ်ား
ၾကီးပါ။ တစ္ဘ၀စံ အာဏာရွင္ေတြ သတက္တာလုံး မေကာင္းမွဳ ဒုစရုိက္လုပ္ျပီး ေသသည္အထိ ခံစား
စံစားသြားရသူမ်ားလည္း မရည္မတြက္နဳိင္ပါ။ စိတ္သည္ ေတြးေတာမွဳ မ်ား၌ တရားဘုိ့ မွန္ကန္ေစဘုိ့ျဖစ္
သည္။ ဥတု ေခၚေသာ အခ်ိန္အခါ သည္ လည္းလုိအပ္သည္ ယခုလည္ ျမန္မာ့လြွတ္ေတာ္ၾကီး
အိပ္သြန္ဖါေမွာက္ တသက္လုံး ၀န္ထမ္းဘ၀ အာဏာရွင္ဘ၀ ေငြေၾကးျပည့္စုံျပီး ေထာင္ခ်ီေသာ
စစ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား တရား၀င္ ခုံေနရာ မွ မထဘဲ ရာဇ ပုလင္ဖင္ျမဲေနတဲ့အခ်ိန္။ တရုပ္ကအားေပး
ေအရွန္နဳိင္ငံကလည္းေထာက္ခံ(ကုိုယိ့တုိင္းျပည္ ကုိယ္က်ဳိးစီးပြါးအျမတ္ရဖုိ့အတြက္) ကမၻာ့စီးပြါးေရး“
က်ဆင္းေနေသာ အေနာက္ဥေရာပ အေမရိက နဳိင္ငံကလည္း တရုပ္ႏွင့္ေအရွ ၀င္ေနရာယူမည့္
ျမန္မာ သယံဇာတ ပစၥည္းကုိ ႏွဳိက္ယူလုိတာရယ္။ မိတ္ေဆြမ်ား စုိးရိမ္ေနတယ္ ေအရာ၀တီ၏
ေရွ့ေရးေတြကုိပါ ေတြးျပီး လုပ္လုိသူ လုပ္ ေတြးလုိသူေတြး ဆုံးျဖတ္ျခင္တုိင္း ဆုံးျဖတ္မဲ့ အေရးကုိ
ျပည္သူတဦး တုိင္းရင္းသား တခ်ဳိ့ လူမ်ဳိးစု အသုိင္းအ၀ုိင္း ေတြကပါ ကန့္ကြက္ျခင္း ေ၀ဖန္ျခင္းေတာ့
လုပ္သင့္တယ္လုိ့ထင္တယ္။ လူ့အခြင့္အေရးတရပ္အေနနဲ့ ျဖစ္နုိင္တာကုိ တင္ျပသူမ်ားဟာ
ဓမၼဓိ႒ာန္ က်က် အၾကဳိးႏွင့္ အေၾကာင္း ရွင္းလင္းျပသ ျပီးေ၀ဖန္ျခင္းကုိ ဒီမုိကေရစီေရး ရာစုႏွစ္
တ၀က္နီးပါး မျမင္ဘူး မေတြ့ဘူးတဲ့ ျမန္မာနုိင္ငံသားမ်ား ဆုိသူအဖုိ့ ေျပာခြင့္ ဆုိခြင့္ မရွိေပဘူးလားခင္ဗ်ား
အဟာရ ဆုိေသာ ေနာက္ဆုံးအခ်က္မွာ ပစၥယ ေခၚတဲ့ ရုပ္၀တၱဳပါ စိတ္ ေစတသိတ္ပုိင္းမွာ
လူသတၱ၀ါမ်ားအဖုိ့ ကံရွိလည္း ဥာဏ္မရွိက မျဖစ္နုိင္ ကံ ဥာဏ္ျ့ပည့္စုံ လည္း ၀တၱဳပစၥယ ေတြမရွိက
မည္သည္ အရာကုိမွ လုပ္လုိ့မရပါး ဥမမာ က်ဳပ္တုိ့ ျမန္မာနုိင္ငံကုိ ျပန္ၾကည့္က ေတြ့နဳိင္သည္
အေနာက္နဳိင္ငံ အီဂ်စ္။ ေယမင္။ လိဗ်ား-စသည္မ်ားတြင္ ျပည္သူ့ေတာ္လွန္ေရးကုိ အခ်ိန္တုိတုိႏွင့္ ရက္ပုိင္း လပုိင္းျပီးနဳိင္သည္။ အိမ္နီးျခင္းနဳိင္ငံျဖစ္တဲ့ ထုိင္းနဳိင္ငံတြင္လည္း လူထုနည္းႏွင့္လခ်ီျပီး
ဆႏၵျပ ျခင္းျဖင့္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္သူ အစုိးရအား ေမာင္းထုတ္နုိင္သည္ ကန့္ကြက္နဳိင္သည္။
ကြ်ႏု္ပ္တုိ့ နုိင္ငံကား စစ္အာဏာရွင္မ်ားဗုိလ္ေန၀င္းက အစ ဗုိလ္သန္းေရြွတုိ့သိျပီးသည့္
အတုိင္း ျပည္သူလူထုကုိ စားစရာမရွိ သုံးစရာေငြမရွိ ေနစရာေျမမရွိတဲ့ ဘ၀ ကုိ တြန္းေပးထားေပးခဲ့တယ္
ဆုိခဲ့ျပီးေသာ နုိင္ငံမ်ားလုိ လခ်ီျပီး ဆနၵျပနဳိင္ရန္ အရင္းအႏွီးအင္အားမရွိေအာင္ ဗုိလ္ေန၀င္းသိမ္းပုိက္
ခဲ့ခ်ိန္မွာ ပု`ဂၢလိက စီးပြါးေရး မရွိ စုေစာင္းထားေသာ ေရြွေငြမ်ားအားလည္း တရားမ၀င္ ဖ်က္ဆီးသိမ္းပုိက္ ခဲ့ျပီးျဖစ္၍ ယေန့ ျမန္မာနုိင္ငံသားမ်ား ခုိကုိးရာမဲ့ ထမီေရျပဳတ္မွ်ျဖင့္ အသက္ရွ၊င္ရ
လုပ္အားေပးနုိင္သည့္အရြယ္ သန္းႏွင့္ခ်ီေသာ လုပ္အားခြန္အားမ်ားသည္ ျပင္ပသုိ့ထြက္၍
သူတုိ့အားမ ေတာ္လွန္ မပုန္ကန္ နုိင္ေအာင္ ဖန္တည္းခဲ့ေပျပီး က်ဳပ္တုိ့အားလုံး ျပည္ပေရာက္ျပီး
လူမ်ဳိးစု မ်ား ျမန္မာ ဗမာမ်ား ေက်ာင္းသားေက်ာင္းသူ မ်ား အခုထိ တုိင္းျပည္တြင္းသုိ့ မျပန္နဳိင္ၾကပါ
ျပန္လုိသူမ်ား ျပန္က ျပန္နဳိင္သလုိ မျပန္ဘဲ မိမိ ဦးတည္ခ်က္ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ မေျပာက္ဘဲ
စစ္အာဏာရွင္စံနစ္ ျပဳတ္က်ေရး တပါတီအာဏာရွင္စံနစ္ မတည္ျမဲေရး ဒီမုိကေရစီ ျပန္လည္ထြန္းကား
ေရး။ အက်ဳိးအေၾကာင္း ခုိင္လုံစြာျဖင့္ လုပ္လုိသူ ဆႏၵရွိလုိသူမ်ား လုပ္ပုိင္ခြင့္ရွိသည္သာျဖစ္သည္။
ေသာင္းသိန္းခ်ီေသာ ျပည္သူမ်ား သန္းမ်ားစြာရွိေနေသာ ျပည္သူမ်ားသည္ ျဖဴစဥ္ေသာ ေရၾကည္မွ်သာ
ျဖစ္သည္ နဳိင္ငံေရးသမား အုပ္ခ်ုပ္ေရးသမား ေရေပၚဆီလူတန္းစားသည္သာ ဒႆန ကုိစီျဖင့္
ရုိးသားသူမ်ားအား အေနာက္လုိက္ရန္ စည္းရုံးနည္း ခ်ိန္းေျခာက္နည္း မုိက္ေၾကးခြဲနည္း ဇိကုတ္ျပီး
နတ္ျပည္တင္နည္း ငရဲျပည္သုိ့ ဆြဲခ်နည္း သုံးၾကသည္သာ ျဖစ္သည္။ ကြွ်ႏု္တုိ့သည္ မည္သည့္နည္း
သည္ မြန္ျမတ္သည္။ ေကာင္းသည္ ဆုိးသည္ ဆုံးျဖတ္နဳိင္ၾက၍ ေ၀ဖန္ပုိင္းျခားသင့္ပါေၾကာင္း။
အားလုံးကုိ ေလးစားလွ်က္။ ေက်းဇူးတင္ပါသည္။
ေအာင္မင္း (ျပည္ခ်စ္)
--- On Thu, 9/29/11, Yeyint Nge
From: Yeyint Nge
Subject: Re: [8888peoplepower] ေဒါ္ေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ဟာမာသာထရီဇာလုိ႔ျဖစ္သြားျပီ၊
To: "8888peoplepower@yahoogroups.com" <8888peoplepower@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Thursday, September 29, 2011, 8:20 PM
http://www.yeyintnge.com/2011/09/blog-post_9080.html
လက္ရွိနိုင္ငံ့အေရးရွင္းရွင္းေလးျဖစ္ေစခ်င္ပါသည္။
၁၉၈၈ေနာက္ပိုင္း၈၈၈၈ေက်ာင္းသားေတြရဲ႕လႈပ္ရွားမႈေတြကအရွိန္ျမင့္ေနဆဲကာလ၊၈၈၈၈အရွိန္ကရွိေနဆဲ။န၀တအစိုးရကို
ထိုစဥ္အခ်ိန္ကေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္အပါအ၀င္ရဲရင့္ငယ္တို႕အားလံုးမတရားတဲ့အမိန္႕အာဏာဟူသမွ်ေတာ္လွန္သည့္လမ္း
ေၾကာင္းေပၚေလ်ွာက္ခဲ့သည္။ဦးေစာေမာင္၊ဦးသန္းေရႊလက္ထက္ညဖက္လမ္းေပၚအရူးထြက္လွ်င္အရူးကိုေတာင္ပစ္သတ္သည့္
ကာလမွာဆန္႕က်င ္သည့္လမ္းသည္သာအေကာင္းဆံုးျဖစ္ခဲ့သည္။
အသက္၄၀ေက်ာ္အရြယ္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကလည္းလိုက္ေလ်ာညီေထြစြာဦးေဆာင္ေပးခဲ့၍လူထုေခါင္းေဆာင္အျဖစ္တ ညီတညာထဲအပ္နွင္းခဲ့ၾကတာပါ။အဲ့ဒီအခ်ိန္ကမတရားတဲ့အမိန္႕အာဏာဟူသမွ်ေတာ္လွန္သည့္လမ္းေၾကာင္းသည္မွားသည္ဟု
အခုေနအက်ိဳးအေၾကာင္းေထာက္ျပလွ်င္အဲ့ဒီမွားသည့္အထဲတြင္ရဲရင့္ငယ္တို႕လည္းပါပါသည္။မွားသည္ဟုေတာ့ဘယ္တုန္းကမွ
ရဲရင့္ငယ္မခံယူခဲ့ပါ။အဲဒီအခ်ိန္ကစစ္အစိုးရဆက္ဆံေရးကလူမဆန္စြာနိုင္ထက္စီးနင္းဆက္ဆံသည့္ကာလျဖစ္သည္။
ဒီလိုနဲ႕ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ေနအိမ္အက်ယ္ခ်ဴပ္က်သည္။အနွစ္၂၀ေက်ာ္နိုင္ငံေရးေရစံုေမ်ာေတာ့သည္။ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္း
စုၾကည္ ေနအိမ္အက်ယ္ခ်ဴပ္က်ခ်ိန္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ကိုအသာထားျပီး ယခု ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ဦးသိန္း
စိန္နဲ႕ေဆြးေႏြးသလို ကိုယ့္လမ္းကိုေဖါက္ျပီး ဦးသန္းေရႊကိုမည္သူေဆြးေႏြးနိုင္ခဲ့သလဲ။လူထုေခါင္းေဆာင္ျဖစ္ေအာင္မည္သူ
ၾကိဳးစားခဲ့သလဲ။ရဲရင့္ငယ္လည္းေဆြးေႏြးဖို႕ေနေနသာအျပင္မွာေတာင္မျမင္ဖူးပါ။ေကာင္းပါတယ္...ေနာက္ဘ၀ေရစက္ဆံု
ေနအံုးမယ္။
မိမိကိုယ္ကိုလူထုေခါင္းေဆာင္မလုပ္နိုင္လို႕လူထုေခါင္းေဆာင္ျပန္အလႊတ္ကို"ေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးေရး"ဆိုတဲ့ေဆာင္ပုဒ္နဲ႕ျပည္တြင္း
ျပည္ပ၀ိုင္းေအာ္ခဲ့ၾကတာမဟုတ္ လား။အခုေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးေနျပီေလ။သင့္ရဲ႕ၾကိဳးပမ္းမႈအရာထင္တာသင္ဂုဏ္ယူမယ္ဆိုဂုဏ္
ယူလို႕ေတာင္ရပါတယ္။
ဥပမာတခု...
လူတေယာက္အျခားလူတေယာက္နဲ႕အေျခအတင္စကားေျပာေနတယ္။အျခားလူအေနာက္မွာသူ႕တပည့္ေတြ၂၀ေလာက္
ရပ္ေနတယ္။ကိုယ္အေနာက္မွာ၂၀မဟုတ္ေတာင္၁၅ေယာက္ေလာက္ပါရင္ေလသံကိုတင္းတင္းေလးေျပာလို႕ရတာေပါ့။
ကိုယ္တေယာက္ထဲထီးထီးၾကီးဆိုေတာ့လည္းေလသံကိုတမ်ိဳး ေျပာင္းရတာေပါ့။ဒါေလာကရဲ႕နိယာမပဲ...
သင္အားမလိုအားမရျဖစ္ေနလား....
အဲ့ဒီ၁၅ေယာက္ထဲသင္ပါေအာင္ၾကိဳးစားပါ။
မပါခ်င္ဖူးလား။
သင္မပါလဲ၊အဲဒီတေယာက္ကဟို ၂၁ေယာက္ဖိသတ္လို႕ေသရင္သာေသသြားမယ္။သူေနာက္မပါတဲ့သင့္အေပၚဘယ္ေတာ့မွ
သစၥာေဖါက္မွာမဟုတ္ဖူး။ဘာလို႕လည္းဆိုေတာ့သူဟာ " အာဇာနည္ " မို႕လို႕ပါ ။ ။
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From: Kayinlay(dawnamyae)
To: "8888peoplepower@yahoogroups.com" <8888peoplepower@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2011 10:24:27 PM
Subject: Re: [8888peoplepower] ေဒါ္ေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ဟာမာသာထရီဇာလုိ႔ျဖစ္သြားျပီ၊
ကိုယ္တိုင္ ဘာမွမလုပ္ႏိုင္တဲ့ လူေတြဟာ ေဘးထိုင္ၿပီး ဘုေျပာေနၾကတာ မဆန္းပါဘူး။
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From: aungnaingwin
To: 8888peoplepower@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2011 7:14 PM
Subject: Re: [8888peoplepower] ေဒါ္ေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ဟာမာသာထရီဇာလုိ႔ျဖစ္သြားျပီ၊
ဦးေအာင္မင္း ေျပာသြားတဲ့ အေပၚက အခ်က္ေတြအားလံုး က က်ေနာ္ေလ့လာလို႕ ရသေလာက္ ေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားသိၿပီးသားျဖစ္ပါတယ္ခင္ဗ်ာ။ ဒါေပမယ့္လည္း ေက်းဇူးတင္ပါခင္ဗ်ာ။ ခုလုိ ေျပာၾကားသြားေပးတဲ့အတြက္လည္း က်ေနာ့္ထက္ ၀ါႏုတဲ့လူတစ္ေယာက္ရွိရင္ ေလ့လာလို႕ ရသြားႏိုင္တဲ့အတြက္ အက်ိဳးရွိႏိုင္ပါတယ္ခင္ဗ်ာ။ က်ေနာ္ကသိလြန္းေနတာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူးခင္ဗ်ာ။ က်ေနာ့ ထက္ငယ္တဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအေၾကာင္း မသိေသးတဲ့ ညီငယ္မ်ားလည္း သိသြားရင္လညး္ အက်ိဳးရွိပါတယ္လုိ႕ ဆိုလိုခ်င္တာပါခင္ဗ်ာ။ က်ေနာ္ေျပာခ်င္တာ က အနည္းငယ္လြဲေနတယ္ခင္ဗ်။ အခုေရးထားတဲ့ ေခါင္းစဥ္ ကိုထပ္ၿပီးေဆြးေႏြးလုိပါတယ္ ဦးဇီဇ၀ါ။ က်ေနာ္သိသေလာက္က ေတာ့ ေဒၚေအာက္ဆန္းစုၾကည္လုပ္ေနတာက (Non Violence) အၾကမး္မဖက္ အႏုနည္းနဲ႕ တြန္းလွန္ျခင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အၾကမ္းဖက္ ေတာ္လွန္မယ္ဆိုရင္ၾကားထဲက ျပည္သူေတြပဲနစ္နာမွာပါ။ အၾကမ္းဖက္ ေတာ္လွန္မယ္ပဲထားပါေတာ့။ ဘယ္သူကေခါင္းေဆာင္အျဖစ္စၿပီးလုပ္မလဲ။ ဘယ္မွလည္း လက္ႏွက္။ အေလာင္းမင္းတရားႀကီး ဦးေအာင္ေဇယ် လို ၀ါးရင္းတုတ္ နဲ႕ တက္ရိုက္ဖို႕ေတာ့ လုပ္လို႕မရပါဘူး။ ခုက်ေနာ္ သိသေလာက္ ျပည္ပေရာက္ လူေတြကလည္း ဖြဲ႕လုိက္ တဲ့ အဖြဲ႕ အစည္းေတြက မေရတြက္ႏိုင္ေအာင္ပဲ။ ဘာေတြ လုပ္ေနလည္း ဆိုေတာ့လည္း ဘာမွမရွိဘူး။ ေအာ္တာေတာ့ေအာ္ေနတာပဲ။ ေအာ္ရင္းေအာ္ရင္ ဗိုက္ေတြ ပူလာတာပဲ ေတြ႕ေနရတယ္။ အခုျဖစ္ေနတဲ့ပံုက ေဒၚေအာက္ဆန္းစုၾကည္လုပ္တာကို ထိုင္ၾကည့္ေနၾကတယ္။ ျဖစ္မလာေတာ့ဘူးဆိုမွ ပုတ္ခတ္ေျပာဆိုမယ္ဆိုတဲ့ အေပါက္မ်ိဳးျဖစ္ေနတယ္လုိ႕ထင္ပါတယ္ခင္ဗ်ာ။
ပထမ သူတို႕ မင္းကို လစ္လ်ဴရႈ႕တယ္၊
ၿပီးေတာ့ ေလွာင္ေျပာင္တယ္၊
ေနာက္ တိုက္ခိုက္ ၾကတယ္၊
ေနာက္ဆံုးေတာ့ မင္းအႏိုင္ရတယ္။
မဟတမ ဂႏၵီ
ေလးစားလ်က္
ANW
2011/9/29 PDP Office
ေမာင္ေအာင္နဳိင္၀င္း
အခုလုိ ရဲရဲေတာက္ ထင္ျမင္ခ်က္ႏွင့္ ေရးသား ေမးျမန္းခဲ့ျခင္းသည္ပင္ အေတြးအေခၚ ေလ့လာ
မွဳကုိ ေဖၚျပျခင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္ ဒိမုိကေရစီ နုိင္ငံတုိင္းမွာ လြတ္လပ္စြာ ေရးသားခြင့္ ေ၀ဖန္ခြင့္ ပြင့္ပြင့္လင္းလင္း အစုိးရအားျဖစ္ေစ အတုိက္အခံေတြကုိ ျဖစ္ေစ မည္သည့္ နုိင္ငံေရးသမားမ်ားကုိ
မိမိ၏ ေတြ့ျမင္ မိ ေလ့လာ မိသေလာက္ ေမးျမန္းနုိင္တယ္ စစ္ေဆးခြင့္ရွိပါတယ္။
သုိ့မွသာ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္သူျဖစ္ေစ အတုိက္အခံ နဳိင္ငံေရးသမားျဖစ္ေစ ကုိယ္လုပ္ျခင္တာ အရမ္းလုပ္လုိ့ မရၾကဘူး။ ဒီလုိနည္းသည္ပင္။ ဒိမုိကေရစိစံနစ္၏ တရားမွ်တေသာ ခ်ိန္ခြင္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာနုိင္ငံက စစ္အာဏာရွင္မ်ားက ၁၉၆၂-ခုႏွစမွ ဗုိလ္ေန၀င္းအာဏာသိမ္းသည့္အခ်ိန္္မွစ၍
ယေန့ထိ-၄၉-ႏွစ္ ရွိသည္တုိင္ နဳိင္ငံတြင္းမွ ဒီမုိကေရစီ မရွိ၍ အုပ္ခ်ုပ္သူ အစုိးရအား မည္သူကမွ
ေ၀ဖန္ျခင္း။ သတင္းဌာနမ်ားကလည္း သတင္းမ်ားတြင္ ေရးသားျခင္း ကန့္ကြက္ျခင္း မတရားသတင္း
မ်ားအား ေဖၚျပျခင္း မျပဳနဳိင္ခဲ့ပါ-ေ၀ဖန္ေရးသားကန့္ကြက္သူမ်ားကုိလည္း ႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ ခ်ဳပ္ေႏွာင္
ထားခဲ့သည္မွာ ယေန့အထိပါ။
အတုိက္အခံပါတီမ်ား နဳိင္ငံေရးပါတီမ်ားကုိ လည္း တရား၀င္ အသိအမွတ္ျပဳျခင္းမရွိခဲ့ပါ
၂၀၀၈-ခုႏွစ္ စစ္အာာဏာရွင္မ်ား၏ ပရိယာယ္-အတုိင္း အေရာင္ေျပာင္းထားေသာ နဳိင္ငံေရးပါတီအျဖစ္
ၾကံ့ခုိင္ဖြံျဖဳိးေရးပါတီ -ေဒသဆုိင္ရာ စစ္ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေဟာင္း မ်ားပါ၀င္ေသာ ျပည္နယ္အသီးသီးမွ နုိင္ငံေရး
ပါတီအား လုံး အိပ္၀င္သပိတ္၀င္ -စစ္သားစစ္စစ္ ၂၅-ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္း ႏွင့္ အသြင္ေျပာင္းထားေသာ
နဳိင္ငံေရးပါတီ၀င္တုိ့၌ စစ္ဗုိလ္အေဟာင္းမ်ား ရ၀-ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္း ပါ၀င္ေစျပီး- တကယ္အမွန္ အတုိက္အခံ
အစစ္ -၅-ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းမွ်သာ ပါ၀င္တဲ့ ဒီမုိကေရစီလုိ့ေခၚတဲ့ လြွတ္ေတာ္ အတုႏွင့္ အာဏာရွင္ပါလီမန္
ၾကီးအား -ျမန္မာနဳိင္ငံေရး ဒီမုိကေရစီေရး ျပည္တြင္းျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအတုကုိ -ကမၻာအား မ်က္လွည့္ျပပါဦး
မည္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ တူငယ္တုိ့သည္ ျမန္မာနဳိင္ငံတြင္း အနာဂါတ္ လူငယ္ျဖစ္၍ လြတ္လပ္ေသာ ေျပာဆုိခြင့္
ေရးသားခြင့္ နဳိင္ငံေရးလွဳပ္ရွားပုိင္ခြင့္ ရွိသင့္ျပီး အစုိးရအားျဖင္ေစ အတုိက္အခံအားျဖစ္ေစ ျပည္သူအားလုံး ေက်ာင္းသူ ေက်ာင္းသားအားလုံး က ယေန့မွစျပီး လွဳပ္ရွားနဳိင္ခြင့္ရွိသင့္ျပီျဖစ္သည္။
ႏွစ္ေပါင္း ၇ာစုႏွစ္ တ၀က္ ေက်ာ္ -ျပည္ပေရာက္ လူမ်ဳိးစုမ်ား ျမန္မာသမုိင္း၀င္ နုိင္ငံေရးသမား
မ်ား။ ဒီမုိကေရစီအားလုိလားေသာ ရွစ္ေလးလုံး ေက်ာင္းသားေက်ာင္းသူမ်ား သည္ ဘ၀တာ၀န္ေပးမွဳ
ေၾကာင့္ ျပည္ပ နဳိင္ငံအသီးသီးသုိ့ေရာက္ေနၾကသည္ျဖစ္သည္။ ျပည္တြင္းမွာရွိေသာ နုိင္ငံေရးသမားမ်ား
ရွစ္ေလးလုံးေက်ာင္းသား ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားလည္း မတရားသျဖင့္ စစ္အာဏာရွင္မ်ား ဖမ္းဆိးျခင္းခံထား
ၾကရေနသည္မွာ ယေန့တုိင္ျဖစ္သည္။ ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္သမီးေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္သည္လည္း ႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ
ထိမ္းသိမ္းခံခဲ့ရသည္။ ျပန္လြွတ္ျခင္းသာ ျပည္သူႏွင့္ကမၻာက ျမင္ခဲ့ရေပမဲ့ မလြွတ္ခင္ အခ်ိန္အတြင္း
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ နဳိင္ငံေရးမလွဳပ္ရွားေစရန္ အင္အာယ္ဒီ ပါတီကုိပါ တရားမ၀င္ပါတိ အျဖစ္
ေၾကျငာလုိက္ၾကပါသည္.။ ယခု လွဳပ္ရွားမွဳသည္လည္း စစ္အာဏာရွင္မ်ား လုပ္ခဲ့ေသာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ
သည္ တရားမွ်တမွဳ မရွိပါေၾကာင္း ျပည္သုူလူထုေကာ ကမၻ်ာနဳိင္ငံအသီးသီက ေလ့လာသူမ်ားပါ
ေျပာၾက ဆုိၾကပါသည္။ ၄င္းကိစၥအား ယခု လက္ရွိေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္အပါအ၀င္ နဳိင္ငံေရးသမား
မ်ား ကန့္ကြက္ခြင့္ မရွိခဲ့ပါ။ ဒီပဲရင္းအေရးအခင္း။ စက္တင္ဘာ သံဃာအေရးအခင္းမ်ားတြင္ ျပည္သူႏွင့္
ရဟန္းမ်ား မ်ားစြာ အသက္ခံရ ရွင္းလင္းခံရသည္ကုိလည္း ဒီမုိကေရစီ နုိင္ငံမ်ားတြင္ ျပဳနဳိင္ခြင့္ရွိေသာ
တရားရုံးေတာ္တြင္ တရားစြဲနဳိင္ခြင့္မရွိျခင္း။ အထူးသျဖင့္ လြွတ္ေတာ္သည္ လူမ်ဳိးစု လြွတ္ေတာ္ျပည္သူ့
လြတ္ေတာ္ ႏွစ္ရပ္လုံး၏ အဓိကလုပ္ေဆာင္ခ်က္သည္ ဥပေဒ ျပန္လည္ေရးဆြဲေရးျဖစ္သည္။
မတရားသျဖင့္ ေရးဆြဲခဲ့ေသာ ၂၀၀၈-ခုႏွစ္ ဖြဲ့စည္းပုံ အေျခခံဥ့ပေဒကုိ မည္သူတဦးတေယာက္မွ လက္
ျဖင့္ တုိ့ နဳိင္ေသာ အခြင့္အေရးမရွိျခင္းသည္ပင္လွ်င္ ဒီမုိကေရစီ လုိလားၾကေသာ အမတ္မ်ားမဟုတ္
ေၾကာင္းထင္ရွားနဳိင္သည္။ လြွတ္ေတာ္တြင္ အမတ္ေနရာတြင္လည္းမပါ၀င္။ တရား၀င္ဖြဲ့ခြင့္ရေသာ
နဳိင္ငံေရးပါတီ မဟုတ္ေသာ အင္အယ္ဒီပါတီ၏ ယေန့လွဳပ္ရွားေနမွဳသည္ မည္သည့္ အဓိပၸာယ္ ရွိသည္
ကုိ ေတြးနဳိင္ၾကသည္ ေတြးေခၚ မိသည့္အတုိင္းလည္း ေ၀ဖန္နဳိင္သည္ ေရွ့အလားလာ ျဖစ္နဳိင္မျဖစ္နဳိင္
ကုိလည္း ေ၀ဖန္နဳိင္သည္ ပုိးသာကုန္ ေမာင္ပုံေစာင္းမတတ္ဆုိသလုိ အာဏာရွင္တုိင္းျပည္၌ အတု
အေရာင္ျဖစ္ေနေသာ ဒီမုိကေရစီ အတုတြင္ ၀င္ေရာက္လွဳပ္ရွားသူမ်ားမွာ လုပ္ပုိင္ခြင့္ မရွိေၾကာင္းသိ
လွ်က္ႏွင့္ ေရာျပီး လူေတြမုိးခါးေရေသာက္သလုိ လုိက္ေရာေနၾကဦးမည္ဆုိရင္ေတာ့ အခ်ိန္ေတြ
မကုန္သင့္ဘဲ ကုန္လြန္ျပီး -စစ္အာဏာရွင္ လူလိမ္မ်ား ပုိမုိျပီး အသက္ရွည္ျခင္း။ ျဖစ္နဳိင္ေၾကာင္း
ဒီမုိကေရစီ သေဘာအရ ေ၀ဖန္ၾကေရးၾက ေနျခင္းသာျဖစ္သည္။
အြန္လုိင္းတြင္ ဂ၇ုမ်ားက လူငယ္ျဖစ္စ လူၾကီးမ်ားျဖစ္ေစ ဒီမုိကေရစီ အခြင့္အေရး
အားေပးလုိ၍ အနစ္နာခံ အပင္ပန္းခံ တာ၀န္ယူေနၾကသည္ကုိသာ တူသားမ်ား ညီငယ္မ်ား ဦးတုိ့
တေတြ အားလုံးက ေက်းဇူးတင္သင့္ပါတယ္။ ေက်းဇူးတင္ျခင္းႏွင့္အတူ အားလုံးသည္လည္း
ယဥ္ေက်းသိမ္ေမြ့စါြ မိမိတုိ့လြတ္လပ္မွဳကုိ က်င့္သုံးၾကဖုိ့သာ တုိက္တြန္းပါတယ္။
တူမ်ားေမးထားေသာ ေမးခြန္တြင္ ဗ်ဴဟာ ျဖင့္ ေဆာင္ရြက္နည္း သည္ ဒီမုိကေရစီကုိ
ၾကည့္သုံးသည့္ အစုိးရႏွင့္ တုိင္းျပည္ေတြမ်သာ ပြင့္လင္းစြာ ေဖၚျပနဳိင္ျပီး စစ္အာဏာရွင္စံနစ္ႏွင့္
တပါတီ တရားေသ ၀ါဒ ရွိေနေသာ တုိင္းျပည္မ်ားတြင္ အတုိက္အခံ နဳိင္ငံေရးပါတီမ်ား အစိုးရအား
ေတာ္လွန္ေနသူမ်ားအဖုိ့ ေဖၚျပခြင့္ေရးသားခြင့္ ရင္ဖြင့္နဳိင္ခြင့္ မရွိေၾကာင္း အနာဂါတ္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား
ျဖစ္လာမဲ့ တူသား မ်ားအေပၚ နားလည္ေပးၾကပါရန္ ေမတၱာရပ္ခံရပါတယ္။
တူေမာင္တုိ့အေပၚ ေမတၱာထားလွ်က္-
ေအာင္မင္း (ျပည္ခ်စ္)
--- On Thu, 9/29/11, aungnaingwin
From: aungnaingwin
Subject: Re: [8888peoplepower] ေဒါ္ေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ဟာမာသာထရီဇာလုိ႔ျဖစ္သြားျပီ၊
To: 8888peoplepower@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, September 29, 2011, 4:51 AM
ေတာ္ေတာ္ေလးေတာ္ ၾကတဲ့ လူႀကီးေတြပါပဲ။ က်ေနာ့္လို ႏိုင္ငံေရးကို ေလ့လာခ်င္လို႕ဤ Group ထဲကို၀င္လာတဲ့ လူငယ္တစ္ေယာက္အေနနဲ႕ ဘာလိုေျပာရမွန္းကို မသိေတာ့ ဘူး။ ေျပာသံေတြၾကားရတာေတာ့ ငါ( ဦးႀကီး) တို႕ တုိက္ခဲ့တယ္ ၊ ဘယ္လိုဗ်ဴဟာေတြရွိတယ္ဆိုတာကိုပဲ သိရတယ္။ ဘယ္လိုတိုက္ခဲ့တယ္။ ဘယ္ဗ်ဴဟာေတြလည္း ဆိုတာေတြကို ခင္းက်င္းျပေပးႏိုင္မယ္ဆိုရင္ ေလ့လာခ်င္ပါတယ္ခင္ဗ်ာ။ အန္တီ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ရဲ့ ဗ်ဴဟာေတြကေတာ့ မ်က္စိေရွ႕မွာ လုပ္ျပေနတာဆိုေတာ့ က်ေနာ့္ အေနနဲ႕ ေလ့လာလို႕ရႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ ဦးႀကီးတို႕ ရဲ့ ဗ်ဴဟာေတြက်ေတာ့ ႀကိတ္လုပ္ေနၾကေတာ့ ေလ့လာလို႕မရျဖစ္ေနတယ္။ အဲ့ဒီေတာ့ ေလ့လာလုိ႕ရေအာင္ ခ်ျပေပးမယ္ဆိုရင္ ဘာဟာေကာင္းမလဲဆိုတာ ၾကည့္လို႕ရတာေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ အဲ့ေတာ့လည္း ေကာင္းတဲ့ဘက္ကို လုိက္ၿပီးေလ့လာ လို႕ရသြားတာေပါ့။ အမ်ားလည္း သိသြားတာေပါ့လုိ႕ပဲ က်ေနာ္ေျပာခ်င္ပါ။ အမွားပါရင္ ဒီက ဦးႀကီးမ်ား အေနနဲ႕ ခြင့္လႊတ္ေပးေစခ်င္ပါတယ္။
ေလးစားလ်က္
ANW
2011/9/27 PDP Office
ဦးေအာင္တင္ေရ
ခင္ဗ်ားလည္း လူသားတေယာက္မုိ့ အားလုံး မမွန္နဳိ္င္ပါဘူး ။ ခင္ဗ်ားေရးတာေတြ
အေတာ္မ်ားမ်ား ေထာက္ခံမွဳ အသိအမွတ္ျပဳမိပါတယ္။. ဒီတခါေတာ့ ဒီမုိကေရစီ ဆုိတဲ့
လူ့အခြင့္အေရးကိုယ္ပါ ထိခုိက္လာျပီး ပုဂၢဳိလ္ေရး တဘက္သတ္ က်ဳပ္ေျပာတာမွန္တယ္
က်ဳပ္ထင္တဲ့ အတုိင္းျဖစ္ရာမယ္ ဆုိတာေတာ့ မွားပါတယ္ဗ်ား။
စိတ္မရွိပါနဲ့ -ဇီ ဇ၀ါ ဆုိသူ၏ တင္ျပခ်က္သည္ မွန္ပါသည္။ လူတေယာက္ျဖစ္ေစ
ပါတီအဖြဲ့အစည္း လူ့အသုိင္းအ၀ုိင္း တခုစီမွာျဖစ္။မတူတာေတြရွိၾကတာဓမၼတာပါဘဲ
အထူးသျဖင့္ နဳိင္ငံေရး၏ မဟာဗ်ဴဟာမွာ=တပါတီ၏အယူအဆ အေတြးအေခၚႏွင့္
တခ်ား နဳိင္ငံေရးပါတီတခုကုိ အတင္းအားဓမၼတူ ခုိင္းလုိ့မရပါဘူး။ အဲသလုိသာရၾက
စတမ္းဆုိလွ်င္ စစ္အုပ္စုႏွင့္ ၾကံ့ဖြတ္က လုပ္ခဲ့ေသာ လက္ရွိ သမၼတ သိန္းစိန္အစုိးရကုိ
အားလုံး ၀ုိင္း၀န္ေထာက္ခံၾက -ခင္ဗ်ားကုိးကြယ္တဲ့ ေဒၚစု ေျပာသည့္အတုိင္း ျမန္မာျပည္
ျပန္ၾက၍ တုိင္းျပည္ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး အားလုံးညီညြတ္ေရး ကုိ ၀ုိင္း၀န္းၾကေပါ့ ခင္ဗ်ားလည္း
က်ဳပ္တုိ့ထက္ ဦးျပီး ျပန္ေပါ့ဗ်ား။
ေဒၚစုသည္ ခင္ဗ်ားႏွင့္ အမ်ားသတ္မွတ္ထားေသာ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ျဖစ္ေပမဲ့ ျပည္သူတရပ္
လုံးေခါင္းေဆာင္မဟုတ္ပါ။ က်ဳပ္အရမ္းေျပာေနျခင္းမဟုတ္ပါ။ အေထာက္အထားအခုိ္င္အလုံ ေျပာေန
ျခင္းပါ။ ၁၉၉၀-ခုႏွစ္မွာ ေဒၚစု ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ၀င္ခြင့္မရေပမဲ့ ။ေဒၚစုသည္ အင္အယ္ဒီ အေထြေထြအတြင္း
ေရးမွဴး-အင္အယ္ဒီ ေခါင္းေဆာင္သာ ျဖစ္သည္။ ယခုလည္း ဒီမုိကေရစီ သေဘာအရ ျဖစ္ေစ လက္ရွိ
ျမန္မာနုိင္ငံအေျခအေနအရ ျဖစ္ေစ ေဒၚစု အားေထာက္ခံသူ ေတြ မည္မွ် ရွိေနၾကေစ။ နုိင္ငံေရးပါတီမ်ား
ေတာ္လွန္ေရးအဖြဲ့အစည္းမ်ား အားလုံး၏ ေခါင္းေဆာင္တေယာက္အျဖစ္ ေဒၚစုအား ေရြးေကာက္
တင္ေျမွာက္ထားေၾကာင္း အေထာက္အထားမ်ား ခင္ဗ်ားမွာ ရွိပါသလား။
သည္အတြက္ေၾကာင့္ ဆရာဦးေအာင္ဒင္ အဆုိအရ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြ ဝင္သူေကာ မဝင္သူေကာ၊ တုိင္းရင္းသား လက္နက္ကုိင္ေကာ၊ လက္နက္မကုိင္ေကာေတြမွာ မဟာဗ်ဴဟာအရ မတူတာ မေတြ႕မိပါဘူး။ ဆုိေသာ စကားကုိ ေတာ့ ျပန္လည္ ယုတ္သိမ္းသင့္ပါတယ္။ က်ေနာ္အေနနွင့္ အႏွစ္ငါးဆယ္ ျပည္ပသုိ့ေရာက္ေနျပီး စစ္အာဏာရွင္စံနစ္
အားတုိက္ခုိက္ ဆန့္က်င္လာသူ တဦးအေနနွင့္ အစမေကာင္းေသာ ဖြဲ့စည္းအုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ပုံ အေျခခံဥပေဒ
တရားမွ်တ မရွိျခင္း သိခဲ့ျခင္းေၾကာင့္ ၂၀၀၈-ခုႏွစ္ ဥပေဒမွ ေမြးဖါြးလာေသာ ဦးသိန္းစိန္၏ အေရခြန္လဲ
အစုိးရအားး သေဘာမတူပါ။ ၄င္းအစုိးရ အားေထာက္ခံေပးေနတဲ့ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ဆုိေသာ
အင္အယ္ဒီ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ တေယာက္၏ မဟာဗ်ဴဟာ ႏွင့္ က်ဳပ္တုိ့ မဟာဗ်ဴဟာလည္း မတူပါေၾကာင္း
သစၥာစကားအစစ္ႏွင့္ ေဖၚျပေပးပါေၾကာင္း။
ေအာင္မင္း (ျပည္ခ်စ္)
--- On Mon, 9/26/11, aung tin
From: aung tin
Subject: Re: [8888peoplepower] ေဒါ္ေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ဟာမာသာထရီဇာလုိ႔ျဖစ္သြားျပီ၊
To: 8888peoplepower@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, September 26, 2011, 8:00 PM
ခင္ဗ်ားေရးတာ စိတ္ဝင္စားစရာ ေကာင္းလာျပီ။ ကဲ ေျပာစမ္းပါအုန္းဗ်ာ။ ေဒၚစုႏွင့္ ခင္ဗ်ား ဘယ္ေနရာမွာ မဟာဗ်ဴဟာအရ မတူတာ ရွိေနပါသလဲ။
က်ေနာ္သိသေလာက္ေတာ့ ေဒၚစုေကာ၊ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြ ဝင္သူေကာ မဝင္သူေကာ၊ တုိင္းရင္းသား လက္နက္ကုိင္ေကာ၊ လက္နက္မကုိင္ေကာေတြမွာ မဟာဗ်ဴဟာအရ မတူတာ မေတြ႕မိပါဘူး။
Sincerely,
Aung Tin
--- On Mon, 9/26/11, ziza war
From: ziza war
Subject: Re: [8888peoplepower] ေဒါ္ေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ဟာမာသာထရီဇာလုိ႔ျဖစ္သြားျပီ၊
To: 8888peoplepower@yahoogroups.com
Received: Monday, September 26, 2011, 1:48 PM
ကုိေအာင္တင္ခင္ဗ်ား
အမွန္မတုိင္းေျပာၾကစတမ္းဆုိရင္ ဧရာ၀တီဆုိတာက်ေနာ္ႏိုင္ငံအားလုံးရဲ႔မဟာမိခင္ျဖစ္တယ္၊ေဒၚစုကုိ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔အားလုံးအေမလုိေခၚေနေပမဲ့သူမဟာျမန္မာျပည္သူေတြရဲ႔မဟာမိခင္မဟုတ္တာေသခ်ာပါတယ္၊
ႏိုင္ငံေရးမွာနည္းဗ်ဴဟာသာမတူရင္ခြဲလုပ္လုိ႔ရႏုိင္ေပမဲ့မဟာဗ်ဴဟာမတူပဲေနရင္အဓိပၸါယ္မဲ့တဲ့ႏိုင္ငံေရးျဖစ္
သြားပါလိမ့္မယ္၊ေဒၚစုဟာႏိုင္ငံတစ္ကာကလက္ခံထားတဲ့အမ်ဳိးသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ျဖစ္တာမုိ႔သူေျပာတာေတြ
သူလုပ္တာေတြအားလုံးတစ္ႏိုင္ငံလုံးအတုိင္းအတာနဲ႔သက္ေရာ က္မွဳရွိေနတာကုိပကတိအတုိင္းျမင္ရမွာေပါ့
ေဒၚစုလုပ္တာမွန္ရင္မွန္သလုိမွားရင္မွားသလုိက်ေနာ္ႏိုင္ငံသားညီအစ္ကုိေတြအားလုံးခံစားၾကရမွာျဖစ္တယ္
ဒီအတြက္က်ေနာ္တုိ႔သူကုိေ၀ဖန္ပုိင္ခြင့္ရွိသလုိေတာင္းဆုိပုိင္ခြင့္လည္းရွိတယ္၊နားေထာင္တာနားမေထာင္တာ
သူမရဲ႔အပုိင္းပဲ။ကုန္ကုန္ေျပာရမယ္ဆုိရင္ျပည္သူတစ္ေယာက္အေနနဲ႔သူလုပ္တာအက်ဳိးထက္အျပစ္ျဖစ္လာေတာ့မယ ္
ဆုိရင္က်ေနာ္တုိ႔က်မတုိ႔သူမကုိပါဆန္႔က်င္ပုိင္ခြင့္ရွိပါတယ္။ဒါကုိဒီေန႔မွႏိုင္င့ေရးေလာကထဲ၀င္လာတဲ့ သူငယ္နပ္စားေလးေတြေတာင္သိပါတယ္။ၾကည္ေ့နပါမၾကာခင္ဘာျဖစ္လာမလည္းဆုိတာ။
ကုိေအာင္တင္ေဒၚစုကုိကာကြယ္တာထက္စာရင္မဧရာ၀တီမဟာမိခင္အတြက္ကာကြယ္ဖုိ႔ကသာယေန႔
အခ်ိန္မွာအဓိကအလုိအပ္ဆုံးပါ
2011/9/26 aung tin
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က သူ႔ကုိသာ ထုိင္ျပီး အားကုိးဖုိ႔ တစ္ခါမွ ေျပာသံမၾကားဖူးပါဘူး။ သူႏုိင္သေလာက္ သူလုပ္ေနတာဘဲ။ သူ႔ကုိ မၿကုိက္ရင္ ကုိယ့္ဖါသာ ခဲြလုပ္ၾကပါ။ လုပ္တဲ့သူ မ်ားေလ ေကာင္းေလပါဘဲ။
Sincerely,
Aung Tin
--- On Mon, 9/26/11, ziza war
From: ziza war
Subject: [8888peoplepower] ေဒါ္ေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ဟာမာသာထရီဇာလုိ႔ျဖစ္သြားျပီ၊
To: 8888peoplepower@yahoogroups.com
Received: Monday, September 26, 2011, 12:54 AM
ေဒါ္ေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ဟာမာသာထရီဇာလုိ႔ျဖစ္သြားျပီ၊တရားေတြထုိင္တာေတြမ်ားလြန္းေတာ့
တစ္ရားေတြေပါက္ျပီးအရာရာတုိင္းကုိအေလွ်ာ့ေပးဆက္ဆံသြားမဲ့အေနအထားမွာရွိေနတယ္၊
ဒီတစ္ခါအလိမ္ခံရျပီဆုိရင္စစ္ဗုိလ္ေတြကုိသိပ္ေတာ္ျပီးေဒၚဆုိသိပ္ၿညံ့လုိ႔ခံရတယ္လုိ႔ငါတုိ႔မွာ
ေျပာဆုိပုိင့္ခြင့္ရွိကုိရွိရမယ္၊ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္လည္းျမန္မာ့ႏိုင္ငံေရးကေနခပ္ခြါ ခြါေနဖုိ႔ေျပာရေတာ့မယ္
လူထုလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအတြက္လူထုတုိက္ပြဲေဖၚေဆာင္သြားရမဲ့အခ်ိန္ေကာင္းျဖစ္တယ္၊
ဧရာ၀တီေတာ္လွန္ေရးျဖစ္လာဖုိ႔အတြက္ေတြ႔ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးေရးဟာအဟန္႔အတားျဖစ္လာႏိုင္တယ္
၂၀၁၁ႏွစ္ကုန္ျပီးမွႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားေတြလြတ္မလာဘူးဆုိရင္ ေဒါ္ေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္
လမ္းစဥ္ရွုံးနိမ့္သြားျပီလုိ႔ေျပာရေတာ့မယ္
ၾကိဳက္ရင္ၾကိဳက္၊မၾကိဳက္ရင္ေန၊အားမနားတမ္းေျပာရမဲ့အခ်ိန္ျဖစ္တယ္
ဧရာ၀တီဆုိတဲ့ငါ့တုိ႔အားလုံးရဲ႔အဟာမိခင္အတြက္အားလုံးတက္ညီလက္ညီထၾကြတုိက္ပြဲ၀င္ၾကရမဲ့အခ်ိန္ကုိေရာက္ေနျပီသူငယ္ခ်င္းတို႔ေရ
News & Articles on Burma-Tuesday, 04 October, 2011-uzl
News & Articles on Burma
Tuesday, 04 October, 2011
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Thai PM meets Myanmar president
In Myanmar, Seize the Moment
Burma's mooted reforms must be watched closely
The Myitsone Dam Decision in Burma
Burma Bamboozles China
What Made Burma Shelve the Chinese Megadam?
Suu Kyi: Tutu, Mandela 'inspire Burma's quest for peace'
Talking about the Weather? Thai PM Visits Burma Today
US Remains Tough on Burma Sanctions
Burma: Soldiers perish without cause in Kachin frontline
Burma: Kachin Conflict Escalates As Talk Of Change Grows
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Thai PM meets Myanmar president
Published on 5 October 2011 - 12:17pm
Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra met Myanmar's president on Wednesday during her first visit to the military-dominated country since she took office in August.
Yingluck was received by Thein Sein at his official residence in the capital Naypyidaw, according to a Myanmar government official who did not want to be named. It was unclear what was discussed.
She was not expected to meet pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi during her one-day visit, a second official said.
While Western nations have imposed sanctions on resource-rich Myanmar because of its poor human rights record, Asian neighbours such as Thailand, China and India have forged close economic ties, particularly in oil and gas.
In March, Myanmar's regime handed power to a new government whose ranks are filled with former generals, including Thein Sein, previously the junta prime minister.
Thein Sein has recently shown signs of reaching out to opponents including Suu Kyi, whom he met in August for the first time.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner was released from house arrest last November, shortly after an election marred by complaints of cheating and intimidation.
© ANP/AFP http://www.rnw.nl/english/bulletin/thai-pm-meets-myanmar-president
------------------------------
In Myanmar, Seize the Moment
By THANT MYINT-U
Published: October 4, 2011
MYANMAR, sandwiched between China and India, is at its most important political watershed since the establishment of army rule in 1962. Over the next few weeks, the Obama administration can make a big difference in determining whether historic reforms under way there will lead to Asia’s newest democratic transition. President Obama should publicly support the changes taking place, and back up those words with actions to end the country’s isolation, before hard-liners who oppose reform are able to push back.
Six months ago it was difficult to be optimistic. Elections had been held but they had been widely condemned as being far from free and fair. And although Myanmar’s aging autocrat, Gen. Than Shwe, retired, the constitutional leadership that replaced his junta included many of the same former generals. Few expected more than minor reforms.
But U Thein Sein, the new president and himself a former general, surprised everyone. In his inaugural address to Parliament, he spoke forcefully of combating poverty, fighting corruption, ending the country’s multiple armed conflicts, and working for political reconciliation. By June, state pensions for nearly a million people, most of them very poor, were increased by as much as a thousandfold, taxes were reduced, and trade cartels were dismantled. The government redrafted banking and foreign investment rules and began revising its foreign exchange rate policy — all of this in consultation with businessmen and academics. That alone was a huge step, because army rulers had long shunned any civilian advice.
Then, on July 19, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader who was released from house arrest last November, was invited to the annual Martyrs’ Day ceremony. The holiday memorializes the 1947 assassination of her father, who is considered the architect of the country’s independence. Thousands of her supporters were permitted to hold their first lawful march in years and several independent newspapers came to life. Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s name, which couldn’t be mentioned in print a year ago, began to appear regularly on the front pages.
By August, Parliament began debating sensitive issues, like the release of political prisoners, and passed laws legalizing microfinance for the rural poor and allowing independent trade unions. All Internet restrictions were soon lifted. On Aug. 18, at a meeting with dozens of independent civic groups, the president called for peace talks with the country’s ethnic-based rebels and invited exiles to return. The next day, he met for over two hours alone with Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi.
I saw her soon afterward for the first time in over 20 years. She told me that she believed the president was genuine in wanting change and that she hoped we were at the beginning of a new era in Myanmar’s politics.
This past week, we’ve seen previously unimaginable developments. On Friday, following increasing popular agitation, the president halted work on a $3.6 billion hydroelectric dam being built by China on the Irrawaddy River to send power to Chinese provinces next door. This was a victory for Myanmar’s nascent environmental movement and the area’s minority Kachin people. That the president would stop a Chinese-backed project of this magnitude was the clearest sign yet that the country was at a turning point. And many in Myanmar now hope that the government will soon release most or all political prisoners.
But monumental challenges remain — for example, even though the government agreed recently to a cease-fire with the country’s largest ethnic-based militia, deadly clashes continue with smaller militias fighting on behalf of minorities in the mountains to the north and east. It is hard to imagine a successful democratic transition while these longstanding and often brutal little wars continue.
Reformist voices are not the only ones in the new system, and a hard-line pushback is far from inconceivable. So the Obama administration needs to do three things, and do them quickly.
First is to unambiguously voice its support for the reforms under way, while at the same time being patient and refraining from demanding too much too fast. The alternative to what is happening is not a perfect revolution; the alternative is going back to square one.
Second, the administration needs to ensure that the reform efforts receive the technical advice and knowledge they desperately require. After decades of isolation, Myanmar suffers from a dearth of skilled people in every field, from banking to environmental regulation to public health. So the United States should lift all restrictions that limit the United Nations and international financial institutions like the World Bank from offering Myanmar their technical expertise. This is not about giving money, but providing the knowledge needed to conceive and carry out reforms in the best possible way.
Third is to move toward ending trade embargoes against Myanmar. As the country opens up, it should neither become dependent on outside aid, nor become an even more corrupt crony-controlled oligarchy. Responsible trade and investment can play key roles in creating jobs, helping to build a new middle class and hastening democratic change.
What we’re seeing today is Myanmar’s best chance in half a century for a better future. America needs to help end Myanmar’s isolation, urgently.
Thant Myint-U, a historian and former United Nations official, is the author of “Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/05/opinion/myanmar-needs-us-support-for-reform.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
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Burma's mooted reforms must be watched closely
Lindsay Murdoch
October 5, 2011
Opinion
It is unrealistic to expect Burma to emerge suddenly from four decades of isolation and misrule to become a modern, competitive and democratic Asian nation. The corrupt generals still in charge of the impoverished nation have too much blood on their hands to give up their authority entirely.
But there are indications they intend to allow at least some change, stirring excitement among Burmese analysts and foreign diplomats. Even if that happens, the outside world should not rush to bring the errant nation back into the fold, past sins forgiven.
In the late '50s and early '60s the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma was one of south-east Asia's most important commercial and cultural hubs. People from around the region, including Bangkok, would travel to Rangoon, the nation's bustling riverside capital, to shop or dine in fine restaurants.
But in 1962 Ne Win, a highly superstitious nationalist general, seized power in a coup and introduced what he called the ''Burmese way to socialism'', which was based in part on extreme elements of Marxism.
His policies were disastrous for most Burmese, cutting them off from the world, wiping out their savings, plunging them into poverty and triggering a number of ethnic conflicts in border areas.
Corrupt and brutal military generals ruled the country for the following four decades, ignoring the results of elections in 1990 and brutally suppressing uprisings.
But six months ago the generals took off their uniforms, donned civilian clothes and proclaimed a new era of reform under the guise of a civilian government. The outside world remained sceptical because in the past the generals had made promises to appease the United Nations and its Western member nations, only to renege later.
They worried the generals were again faking reform to tighten their stranglehold with the help of Western aid and trade. But, in a flurry of recent activity, pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent 15 of the past 21 years under house arrest, has met the country's President, Thein Sein, one of the more moderate former generals, three times.
Bans on websites have been eased. Promises have been made to release prisoners. New labour laws have been drafted.
And in the most notable development, the government on Friday called a halt to work on a $US3.6 billion dam and hydroelectric plant on the Irrawaddy River that was being built in co-operation with China.
Ms Suu Kyi had been among a large number of critics of the project, including environmental and human rights groups. The generals had never before bowed to public pressure. The decision was even more significant because it upset Burma's powerful neighbour, China.
The next test will be whether the government releases all 2000 political prisoners being held in the country's jails, including supporters of Ms Suu Kyi. Western nations, including Australia, have told the generals the release of prisoners, many of whom have been tortured, would be seen internationally as an important step in any reform process.
Analysts warn much of what the government has promised so far lacks legal backing and could be quickly reversed. There are hardliners in government with vested interests to protect who are waiting for the first opportunity to sabotage the reforms, government insiders have publicly said.
Progress should be judged on what is happening across the entire country of 50 million people, not just in the new capital, Naypyidaw. Since the November election fighting has increased in ethnic minority areas, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes.
Hundreds of prisoners taken from prisons and labour camps are being forced to work as porters in an army offensive against Karen rebels in the east of the country. Human rights groups say the Burmese Army is still committing human rights abuses on a ''massive scale'' in clashes with rebel groups. Fighting has recently spread to some border areas where it had not occurred for 20 years.
The upsurge in violence comes amid $US20 billion of investments in infrastructure projects such as dams and pipelines over the past year alone, much of it from resource-hungry China.
Mr Thein Sein has been lobbying for the end of US and European economic sanctions, promoting the vision of Burma becoming an important regional trade and industrial hub.
He also wants Burma to be given the nod to chair the 10-member Association of South-East Asian Nations in 2014, a role it has previously been denied.
What has become clear is that Mr Thein Sein believes accommodating Ms Suu Kyi in the decision-making will help achieve these goals, no matter how despised she is by some government hardliners. His relationship with her will be critical to Burma's future.
For decades the generals refused to speak to Ms Suu Kyi, the daughter of Burma's independence hero General Aung San, whose National League for Democracy party won 80 per cent of parliamentary seats in the 1990 elections.
But Ms Suu Kyi's views will be pivotal to how the international community reacts to developments in Burma in the coming weeks and months.
ASEAN nations should not endorse Burma's bid to chair their organisation until all political prisoners are released and there is a solid timetable for genuine human rights reforms.
Any easing of international economic sanctions should be tied to specific benchmarks, including guarantees for the future of 140,000 Burmese languishing in camps in Thailand, too afraid to return home.
Ms Suu Kyi believes there is an opportunity for change in the country while remaining cautiously optimistic it will occur.
''This is the kind of thing I could never have done [previously], so we are making progress, but we need more,'' she said in a recent video-link to a conference in New York. http://www.nationaltimes.com.au/opinion/politics/burmas-mooted-reforms-must-be-watched-closely-20111004-1l767.html
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The Myitsone Dam Decision in Burma
Posted: 10/4/11 03:18 PM ET
David Scott Mathieson
Burma Researcher, Human Rights Watch
Burmese President Thein Sein burnished his perception as a reformist last week by suspending one of the country's largest -- and potentially most destructive -- foreign investment projects. The Myitsone hydro-electric dam, the largest of seven dams to be constructed by the Beijing-controlled China Power Investment Corporation, would have flooded an area of more than 700 square kilometers, and displaced tens of thousands of villagers in northern Kachin State, close to the state capital of Myitkina. Several thousand have already been displaced by the first dam, built to provide the electricity for the larger ones in the series.
The dam project, affecting the Irrawaddy River, Burma's largest, was fast becoming one of the country's most contentious national issues. Its suspension goes against decades of state-directed resource grabs for Burma's neighbors and energy companies: logging, fisheries, oil and gas, and mining concessions sold off to China, Thailand, India, and other Asian and Western corporations.
The past few weeks did see some uncharacteristically open debate on the dam project in Burma, including public dissension from senior ministers. While some in Burma's parliament called for the project to be reviewed, the Electric Power Minister U Zaw Win, prior to the president's announcement, insisted: "we will not back down just because environmental groups are against it ... we will not back down now in fact we are to go ahead." Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi joined prominent artists and writers at an art exhibition about the Irrawaddy River, and the regulated Burmese media debated it. There has not been open discussion and high-level disagreement, at least not publicly, on an issue like this in Burma for a long time.
It's less clear that the suspension represents Thein Sein's newfound support for the environment or a more open society. Kachin environmental groups and community leaders in the dam areas and others have done exemplary work in documenting the project and its effects on Kachin State, which has encouraged more overt community activism in recent years. A recently leaked 900-page environmental impact survey on the dam project, produced by Burmese and Chinese government experts, was damning in saying the project was ill-advised. And it didn't help matters that the Myitsone dam site is situated just 100 kilometers from a major earthquake fault line.
The breakdown of the 17-year ceasefire with the Kachin Independence Organization in June was another headache for the government. The dam project had become a flashpoint for the renewal of armed conflict between the Burmese army and ethnic Kachin rebels that has so far displaced more than 30,000 civilians.
Many important questions remain: Is the Myitsone project on its way to being cancelled or is the government just waiting for the outrage to die down? Will the local community have a role in future discussions about the project, such as whether the mega damn at Myitsone will be reworked into a number of smaller dams? Did the Chinese agree to the suspension, and was it a temporary trade-off because China wants to ensure the strategically more important oil and gas pipelines? The answers to these questions are not just crucial for environmental protection and foreign investment in Burma, but for whether the Burmese government's claims of being more open and accountable are for real.
Meanwhile, there are more than enough energy projects in Burma that have potentially disastrous community and environmental and human rights impacts: the hydro dams on the Salween River, including the pipelines, massive Chinese agri-business ventures in the north that involve land-grabbing and semi-feudal working conditions, the Dawei (Tavoy) port project and industrial park in southern Burma, and the Kaladan River and road project being pursued by Indian firms in western Burma. Add to this the widespread practice of the Burmese military to seize land for their own business interests, or to hand over to military connected companies, and there are more than enough abusive practices that adversely affect both ethnic minorities in conflict areas and the general population. These and many more environmental and human rights abuses have been well documented by community groups for several years.
Overall, people in Burma should be heartened by the suspension of the dam project. It is tempting to believe it signals a significant shift in the autocratic, plunder-and-profit mentality of the Burmese authorities. But it is doubtful. If it does lead to more open community discussion of development projects, and more regulation and oversight, it is a good thing, but don't expect the government's rapacious commercial practices to reform in a major way anytime soon. If the Myitsone decision is to have far-reaching consequences for sustainable development in Burma, it is up to Burma's leaders to ensure that their decisions about business are about people too.
David Scott Mathieson is a Senior Researcher in the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-scott-mathieson/the-myitsone-dam-decision_b_992964.html
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The Diplomat
Burma Bamboozles China
By Luke Hunt
October 5, 2011
Burma is becoming ever more baffling. Its decision to bite the usually friendly hand of Beijing by ditching plans to construct a massive dam flies in the face of everything the ruling elite had stood for in recent decades.
The Sunday Bangkok Post best summed up the prevailing mood at the weekend, writing: ‘It’s hard to tell what exactly is happening with our neighbours at the moment – and academics, journalists and professional Burma watchers seem just as bamboozled as the rest of us. Are we seeing real change under the newly “elected” civilian government, or is it the old wolf slipping seamlessly into sheep’s clothing?’
To be fair to Burma’s leadership, President Thein Sein has pushed his country in directions few would have thought possible prior to last November’s poll, which was widely condemned as a sham in the West.
Rapprochement with pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi appears to be going well since she was released from prison almost a year ago. Naypyidaw has also promised the UN General Assembly it will release more political prisoners. The United States, Britain, Australia, the European Union, the United Nations and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have all indicated they will engage the civilian government in an attempt to win real reforms. Burma for its part desperately wants to hold the ASEAN chair in 2014.
Now, Thein Sein has gone much further, saying construction of a controversial hydroelectric dam has been suspended because it’s not wanted by the people. The Chinese, who were building the $3.6 billion Myitsone Dam, are upset, and Beijing has urged Burma to reconsider.
Disputes between the pair are rare. But this time, one Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman went so far as to say that relevant countries must ‘guarantee the lawful and legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies.’
Opposition to damming the Irrawaddy River in the country’s northeast had been low key, not unusual in Burma. It was to be built by China Power Investment Corp. which would sell on the bulk of the electricity produced back home, where the motherland is still undergoing rapid industrialization.
Thousands of villagers were to be displaced in an area that’s prone to earthquakes and routine clashes between the Burmese military and Kachin rebels.
An area the size of Singapore was to be submerged. Small street protests and a letter from Suu Kyi urging the dam’s construction be suspended had been sent out, but no one really believed Thien Sein would act.
His decision is tantalizing to observers, and has had some speculating that the winds of change might really be blowing through Burma.
If Thein Sein’s announcement marks a genuine shift in policy, including toward China, then the country really could be on the right path. But it’s still very early days. Few observers would be surprised if, as The Sunday Bangkok Post noted, the recent reforms prove to be little more than a proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. http://the-diplomat.com/asean-beat/2011/10/05/burma-bamboozles-china/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+the-diplomat+%28The+Diplomat+RSS%29
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JAKARTA GLOBE
What Made Burma Shelve the Chinese Megadam? Hint: It Wasn’t Public Opinion
Bertil Lintner | October 05, 2011
At a time when Asian countries are increasingly worried about China’s growing assertiveness, Burma’s rejection of a huge Chinese hydroelectric dam project has raised new questions: Is this a rare victory for civil society in a repressive country? Or does it indicate an internal dispute over the country’s dependence on China?
Regardless of the answers to these questions, the public dispute over a close ally’s project marks a new stage in the Burma-China relationship.
On Sept. 30, Burma’s new president, Thein Sein, sent a statement to the country’s Parliament announcing that a joint venture with China to build a megadam in Burma’s far north had been suspended because “it was contrary to the will of the people.” The $3.6 billion Myitsone Dam would have been world’s 15th tallest and submerged 766 square kilometers of forestland, an area bigger than Singapore.
It’s unclear if Chinese counterparts were consulted before the decision was made public. Burma has depended on its powerful northern neighbor for trade, political support and arms since the West shunned the Burmese regime following massacres of pro-democracy demonstrators in 1988.
Public opinion may have played its part. Under the 2006 deal, 90 percent of power generated from Myitsone would have gone to China. Anger over environmental destruction galvanized people against the regime in a way the country had not seen for years. The dam was a dagger in the heart of the Kachins, the area’s predominant ethnic minority. Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi threw her support behind the anti-dam movement. Many made their voices heard over Facebook — a new tool for anti-regime activists.
People inside Burma can’t protest openly, but “Save the Irrawaddy” meetings have been held in Rangoon. Burmese exiles have staged anti-Chinese demonstrations outside Burmese and Chinese embassies abroad. Anti-Chinese sentiment is growing in Burma, especially in northern Kachin state, where Chinese influence is the strongest. According to reports, many Chinese nationals working there have fled to their home country following the outbreak of hostilities between the Kachin Independence Army and government forces.
Despite all that, however, the Burmese regime has never cared enough about public opinion to let it impact something as monumental as this. More likely, dissatisfaction within the armed forces over China’s growing influence in the country was the real reason for suspending the dam project.
The relationship between Burma and its northern neighbor has historically been strained. After Gen. Ne Win staged a coup in 1962 against a Burmese government that had long maintained a cordial relationship with Beijing, the Chinese prepared for all-out support of the insurgent Communist Party of Burma. Anti-Chinese riots in Rangoon in 1967 — orchestrated, ironically, by domestic military authorities to deflect public anger over a deteriorating economy — provided an excuse for the Chinese to intervene. On New Year’s Day 1968, armed CPB units entered northeastern Burma from China’s Yunnan province. In the next decade, China poured more aid into the CPB effort than any other communist movement outside of Indochina.
Mao’s death in 1976,however, and the subsequent return to power of pragmatist Deng Xiaoping marked the beginning of the end to massive Chinese aid for the CPB. Supporting revolutionary movements in the region was no longer in Beijing’s interest. Still, China coveted Burma’s forests, rich mineral and natural gas deposits and hydroelectric potential.
After the bloody 1988 suppression of a pro-democracy movement in Burma, Sino-Burmese relations grew by leaps and bounds. By 1991, apart from supplying Burma with vast quantities of military hardware, the Chinese had sent experts to assist in a series of infrastructure projects.
More recently, China has provided Burma with low-interest loans, and Chinese investment in the sanctions-hit economy is substantial. This is particularly true of the energy sector. For example, an agreement on a gas pipeline from the Bay of Bengal will be supplemented with an oil pipeline designed to allow Chinese ships carrying Middle Eastern oil to skirt the congested and pirate-ridden Malacca Strait.
This heavy dependence has led to consternation among many Burmese military leaders. They have not forgotten yesterday’s battles against the China-backed CPB, nor their comrades who were killed by Chinese arms. Aung Lynn Htut, a former intelligence officer who sought political asylum in the United States in 2005, drew on such memories in a September commentary for The Irrawaddy, a Burmese exile newsmagazine run out of Thailand.
China has called for “talks” after Thein Sein’s proclamation, but skeptics point out that a 2009 internal report by the China Power Investment Corporation, the company behind the dam, had already called for the project to be scrapped, saying its size was unnecessary. China still has contracts to build six other megadams in Burma.
That Thein Sein dared to make his such a public pronouncement reveals a wrinkle in Sino-Burmese relations, and it signals a possible return for Burma to its former policy of strict neutrality and non-alignment.
Some academic observers assert that Beijing’s influence has been exaggerated. China, according to author Andrew Selth, “has not been as successful in winning Burma’s confidence as often is reported.” The source of Burma’s arms supply offers evidence: Although China has provided Burma with up to $1.6 billion worth of military hardware since 1989, the regime has recently turned to Russia, Ukraine and North Korea.
Instead of democratizing the country, Burma’s new government seems to have chosen to play “the China card,” an attempt to win the support of the West. An unsigned opinion piece in The Bangkok Post, written by a Burmese government official, reportedly approved at the highest level in Naypyidaw, lays out its position: “We do not want our country to become a satellite state of the Chinese government. However, Western countries should not force us into a corner where we have no option but to increasingly rely on China.”
In this context, “force” means insistence on genuine democratic reforms. From the Burmese regime’s point of view, improved relations with the West could be accomplished simply by playing up the Chinese threat, with the hope of diminishing Western criticism of the regime.
But the regime has time and again stressed that how the country is governed is an internal matter. The West must decide if it will play along.
YaleGlobal
Bertil Lintner is a Swedish journalist based in Thailand and the author of “Blood Brothers: The Criminal Underworld of Asia.” http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/what-made-burma-shelve-the-chinese-megadam-hint-it-wasnt-public-opinion/469582
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Suu Kyi: Tutu, Mandela 'inspire Burma's quest for peace'
KATHARINE CHILD JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - Oct 05 2011 07:45
Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi says the people of Burma seeking peace and reconciliation have been inspired by SA's great men: Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu.
It didn't matter that Nobel Laureate and Burma pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi was speaking from Burma in a prerecorded video; when she finished addressing the auditorium at the University of Johannesburg on Tuesday night, the audience rose to their feet and applauded her.
"The peoples of Burma want peace, they want freedom, they want security, they want reconciliation. All these you have taught us we can achieve through courage and endeavour. We look up to your great men -- Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu".
Suu Kyi's message was broadcast at a university graduation ceremony when she awarded an honorary doctorate on Tuesday night. The university said they chose to honour her because of her "revolutionary journey to bring democratic change to Myanmar, formally known as Burma".
Suu Kyi was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her activism in peacefully protesting against the military junta that has led Burma with an iron first since the sixties. When Suu Kyi returned from living overseas to Burma in 1988 to see her ill mother, she started to lead pro-democracy protests against the military government.
Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, won elections two years later but the military remained in control. Suu Kyi was kept under house arrest where she has spent 15 of the past 22 years.
She was released in November last year but told a group of activists and academics via a live-video link-up at UJ on Monday night that 1 300 political prisoners remain behind bars.
She said that she believed the widely published figure of about 2 000 Burmese political prisoners was not accurate and that she had heard the revised figure was lower. She said she hoped some prisoners would be released in the coming weeks but would have to wait and see.
"But even if there is one single political prisoner in the country, it is too many" she said. "One of the most important [pieces of] evidence of genuine democracy is that there should no political prisoners."
No Democracy, No Freedom. No Human Rights
Suu Kyi's first cousin, Dr Sein Win, flew from the United States to accept the honorary degree on her behalf. It is believed that Suu Kyi does not leave Burma for fear she will not be allowed back into the country. http://mg.co.za/article/2011-10-05-suu-kyi-tutu-mandela-inspire-burmas-quest-for-peace/
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Talking about the Weather? Thai PM Visits Burma Today
By SIMON ROUGHNEEN Wednesday, October 5, 2011
BANGKOK — Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra visits Burma today and meet the country's first civilian head of government in five decades, but passes up the chance to meet possibly Asia's best-known female political figure, Aung San Suu Kyi.
The Thai PM is scheduled to meet the Burmese president, former general and junta prime minister Thein Sein, on her first official visit to Thailand's energy-rich neighbor and major trading partner. She is accompanied by Deputy Prime Minister Yongyuth Wichaidit and Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul.
“The first reason for the trip is to introduce herself as the prime minister of Thailand,” said Thai government spokesperson Titima Chaiseng.
Trade, investment and business links are high on the agenda, said Titima. Among the subjects to be discussed is the multibillion-dollar Dawei/Tavoy “megaport” and highway project being developed by Italian-Thai Development Co., which will create a Chinese-style special economic zone on Burma's southeastern coast.
The Karen National Liberation Army, an ethnic armed group active in the area, says that it is preventing work from continuing on the project until the Burmese government conducts consultations with local residents and carries out an environmental impact assessment.
Thailand is Burma’s second largest foreign investor behind China, according to figures released by Burma’s Ministry of National Planning and Development in 2010.
According to the Thai PM's office, Yingluck will spend approximately twelve hours in Burma's capital Naypidaw, departing Bangkok at 1 pm on Wednesday and returning to Thailand “around midnight.”
Spokesperson Titima would not say whether the political situation in Burma will be discussed, but mentioned that “Thailand appreciated the democratic development in Myanmar [Burma].”
Speaking by telephone from Rangoon, Ohn Myint, a spokesperson for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), told The Irrawaddy that “if the Thai prime minister wants to know the real situation in Burma, she needs to meet with the opposition, she needs to meet with the ethnic groups, and she should talk to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.”
Despite recent pledges on reform, including a surprise decision to suspend the Chinese-funded Myitsone dam in Kachin State, fighting in ethnic minority areas of Burma continues, and there are almost 2,000 political prisoners in jail.
Kraisak Choonhavan, a former MP from Thailand's opposition Democrat Party and a vocal critic of Burma's military rulers, said, “I do not think the current Thai government cares or even knows about human rights violations in the ethnic areas of Burma.”
“I fear the trip will be all about re-establishing the scandalous style of Thaksin's relations with the regime,” said Kraisak, referring to allegations that former Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra—Yingluck's brother—forged inappropriate commercial links with the Burmese military rulers.
Nicholas Farrelly, a Southeast Asia-focused academic at Australian National University, said the Thai delegation is unlikely to raise political or human rights issues with the Burmese government.
“They understand that every country in Southeast Asia has its own problems on that score,” he said.
With Thailand's government pledging a renewed “war on drugs,” the growing narcotics trade along the porous Thail-Burmese border will also be up for discussion, but the prime minister's spokesperson could not say whether other important bilateral issues—such as the closure of the “Friendship Bridge” linking Mae Sot in Thailand with the Burmese town of Myawaddy, or the future of around 140,000 Burmese refugees in camps along the border—will be on the agenda. She did say, however, that refurbishment of the Mae Sot-Myawaddy bridge will be mentioned, hinting that the bridge could be re-opened soon.
Closure of the border has not only hurt trade between the two countries, but also worsened the plight of the two to three million Burmese migrant workers in Thailand. Routinely subjected to trafficking and extortion and now forced to enter Thailand through unofficial channels, migrants are more vulnerable than ever to abuse, say experts.
Andy Hall, a migrant worker rights expert at Mahidol University in Bangkok, said that both sides “need to work together to solve the serious and pressing problems both countries are facing managing migration and combating trafficking.”
Hall told The Irrawaddy that it would be beneficial if the Thai PM suggested that the Burmese authorities open more migrant verification centers in Thailand to facilitate the hundreds of thousands of Burmese migrants who have yet to register themselves legally in Thailand, a process that first requires the prior acquisition of official Burmese papers.
It is unclear whether such specifics will be discussed today, however, or whether the finer points will await meetings between the relevant ministers from both countries.
However, according to spokesperson Titima, a highlight of the visit will be the Thai government's presentation of meteorological instruments worth 40 million baht (US $1.3 million) to its Burmese counterpart.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22196
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US Remains Tough on Burma Sanctions
By LALIT K JHA Wednesday, October 5, 2011
WASHINGTON—Although encouraged by the recent steps taken by the new Burmese government, the United States on Tuesday said that Burma needs to do more before the Obama administration can consider lifting economic sanctions.
“We are encouraged by some of the progress that we’ve seen in Burma, but we think that more needs to be done,” a US State Department spokesperson, Victoria Nuland, told reporters at her daily news conference.
The US government is continuing that dialogue with the Burmese government, she said referring to the two recent rounds of talks with the visiting Burmese foreign minister in New York and Washington.
During those meeting, the Burmese officials reportedly urged the State Department to lift US sanctions.
Meanwhile, speaking on the Senate floor, a prominent US senator noted recent developments in Burma, and said he hoped that a time would come when sanctions would not be needed against Burma.
“I am hopeful that the time will soon come when sanctions against the Burmese government will no longer be needed—that like South Africa in the early 1990s, the people of Burma will be able to free themselves from their own government,” Senator Mitch McConnell said.
Referring to a recent letter written by the Burmese Deputy Chief of Mission in Washington, who sought political asylum, McConnell said the letter to the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, indicated that the Burmese junta appears to maintain an iron grip on its people, and continues to carry out a foreign policy that is inimical to US interests.
“The United States must continue to deny this regime the legitimacy it craves by continuing sanctions, and these sanctions must remain in place until true democratic reform comes to the people of Burma,” he said.
Speaking on the Senate floor a week after the Senate passed a bill to extend sanctions against Burma by another year, McConnell said this overwhelming bipartisan support for sanctioning the junta reflects the clear view of the US Senate that the purportedly “new” Burmese regime that took office earlier this year so far appears little different from the “old” regime.
“The casual observer could be excused for thinking that things have changed dramatically for the better in Burma over the past year,” he said. “After all, elections were held last fall, a new regime took office earlier this year, and Aung San Suu Kyi was freed. However, as our experience with Burma has taught us, things there usually require a closer look.”
The “new regime,” he said, appears to be essentially the junta with only the thinnest democratic veneer. The Burmese Constitution, which places great power in the hands of the military, cannot be amended without the blessing of the armed forces. Furthermore, those in Parliament are limited in how they can criticize the regime.
“The only legitimately good news was Suu Kyi’s release,” McConnell said. “Yet the extent of her freedom to travel remains an open question. Moreover, despite her release, nearly 2,000 other political prisoners remain behind bars in Burma. They are no better off than before. Neither are the hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced persons who are without a home due to the repressive policies of the junta.” http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22194
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Burma: Soldiers perish without cause in Kachin frontline
By Zin Linn Oct 05, 2011 11:57PM UTC
Political analysts and observers have been deeply concerned about widespread war in Kachin State. People are disappointing with the Thein Sein government for breaking every promise with the ethnic ceasefire groups.
KIA officials repeatedly said the civil war will spread across Kachin and Shan states if the government starts a war with the KIO. The latest series of armed clashes in Kachin state have prompted observers to think that intentional warfare in the border regions may not be avoidable.
The government’s wrong step of handling the Kachin topic seems to be pushing the nation into an abysmal gorge of tragedies. New military offensives of Burma Army on the Kachin, Karen and Shan armed groups will steer the nation into a ruthless poverty trap.
The National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Aung San Suu Kyi released a statement dated June 20 calling for both the government and the KIO to stop heavy fighting immediately in order to protect people’s lives and properties. It also called for peaceful talks between stakeholders to settle the decade-long political crisis of the country.
An open letter dated July-28 released by Burma’s pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, remarkably called for a cessation of hostilities between the Burmese government led by President Thein Sein, and ethnic armed groups, including the KIO, Karen National Union (KNU), New Mon State Party (NMSP) and the Shan State Army (SSA).
However, the government turns a deaf ear to public calling for peace-talks with Kachin ethnic group.
Although government troops have suffered heavy casualties, the decision-makers are still dragging their feet to stop the useless confrontation. They have no sympathy for their fallen soldiers.
Ongoing civil war in Kachin State has been intensifying in various fronts. On Tuesday, Burma armed forces expended their offensive in central Kachin State. The fighting took place around Ja Ing Yang Village, near Sinbo, in central Kachin State.
The People’s Army soldiers under the KIA’s 3rd Brigade in eastern Kachin, geared up for self-protective warfare. During fighting against the People’s Army under the KIA, several government soldiers died in action, referring local residents Kachin News Group said Wednesday.
As the momentum increases in the civil war in Burma’s northern Kachin State, about 40 Burma Army’s soldiers were killed in a single day, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) source in the war zone confirmed on Tuesday.
According to one KIA officer in the frontline, there were no KIA casualties in Tuesday-battle.
Skirmishing between government troops and Kachin people’s armed forces has been taking place daily in different areas in the Shadan Pa Valley, close to Ja Ing Yang, according to local inhabitants.
As said by KIA officials in Laiza, since the last week of September, hundreds of government troops have arrived in those areas likely to launch a new offensive against the KIA headquarters at Laiza.
The KIA strongholds at Laiza – Alen Bum, Laisin Bum, Hpalap Bum and Mai Ja Yang – in eastern Kachin State is in conjunction with the Chinese border. It is situated approximately 25 miles west of the current battle-sites.
The Burma Army is heightening its offensives against the KIA strongholds, since Shadan Pa and Ja Ing Yang are situated at strategic positions, KIA officials said. The fighting continues in the two areas, natives in the war zone said. There are casualties in daily basic.
The President of Burma should take into consideration that all the fallen soldiers – Burmese or Kachin – are citizens of this nation as well as manpower resources of the underdeveloped country. If the new president and the government truly want to reconstruct the country into a democratic and developed society, all the wars with respective ethnic rebels including KIO/KIA must be immediately stopped.
If President Thein Sein has genuine inspiration of poverty alleviation, he must stop all forms of civil conflict that make the country underprivileged in the region. Most analysts agree that allowing civil war and saying poverty alleviation looks like an impractical guiding principle.
So, it is really important for the president to end the civil war, especially war against Kachin. By doing so, president has to show the country is on the right reform path and can gain trust domestically and internationally. http://asiancorrespondent.com/66572/burma-soldiers-perish-without-cause-in-kachin-frontline/
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Burma: Kachin Conflict Escalates As Talk Of Change Grows
Wed, 2011-10-05 00:27 — editor
London, 05 October, (Asiantribune.com):
Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) is deeply concerned by reports of a deteriorating humanitarian situation in Kachin State, Burma. Information received by CSW from Kachin sources indicate an escalation in the Burma Army’s offensive against Kachin civilians, at a time when the regime in Burma is talking about peace and national reconciliation. Over 20,000 Kachin civilians have been displaced as a result.
In the past two months, the Burma Army has repeatedly attacked Kachin villages. Civilians have been taken for forced labor, raped, tortured and killed. At the same time, Burma’s new President, Thein Sein, has met democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, called for peace talks with ethnic nationalities, and responded to popular opinion by suspending plans for a major dam project at Myitsone, Kachin State, and worth over £2 billion.
On 20 August, Burma Army soldiers stationed in Je-U village, Man Si Township fired mortars at Nam Gau village. The village school teacher’s house was hit by a mortar shell, while the teacher, Mai Awng, was tutoring students inside. A six year-old child, Hpaula Htu, was killed and four people injured, including the teacher, her seven year-old daughter and two children, aged seven and six.
On 16 September, soldiers from Light Infantry Unit 387 arrested 12 Kachin villagers aged between 14 and 70, from Namhpathka village, Momauk Township, ten miles from a hydropower project at Taping. The villagers, accused of supporting the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), were tied with ropes, detained at the army base and severely tortured, before being released on 19 September.
On 21 September, Mr Tam Gam and his wife Roi Lam Ja Ngai, both aged 24, were seriously injured by landmines on a Roman Catholic prayer mountain near Jahtuzup, Phakant Township, while they were gathering bamboo. Rou Lam Ja Ngai’s right leg was blown off below the knees and her left leg was seriously injured. Her husband was injured in his face and chin.
These reports have been confirmed by the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), along with reports of increasing battles between soldiers of the Burma Army and the KIA. In June, the regime launched a new offensive against the Kachin, ending a 17-year ceasefire. According to the Kachin Relief Action Network for IDPs and Refugees (RANIR), at least 21,298 villagers have been displaced by the new conflict.
On 26 September, the Chairman of the KIO’s Central Committee, Lanyaw Zawng Hra, wrote to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, calling for international help to end the conflict in Burma. “The civil war …, which is based on ethnic conflict, directly affects the regional development and stability of the neighbouring countries as well. Therefore KIO is humbly calling for all stakeholders and international communities, such as United Nations, ASEAN, and our bordering countries, to help us find a solution towards ending our civil war and finally achieving national reconciliation.”
CSW’s East Asia Team Leader, Benedict Rogers, said: “The escalation in attacks in Kachin State is in marked contrast to the regime’s rhetoric about peace, and the signs of change that may be seen in other aspects of Burmese politics. We warmly welcome the talks between the regime and Aung San Suu Kyi, President Thein Sein’s recent decision to abandon the Myitsone dam in the face of public opinion, his offer of peace talks with the ethnic nationalities and the prospect of a general amnesty for political prisoners. We encourage President Thein Sein to continue on this path and, if there is substantial change, the international community must be prepared to respond positively and proportionately. However, if the regime is genuine, it much match rhetoric with action, end the horrific human rights violations in the ethnic areas and declare a nationwide ceasefire. We urge the military to stop its attacks on Kachin civilians, end its campaign of terror in all ethnic states, and engage in a meaningful dialogue with the ethnic nationalities to bring an end to decades of war and suffering in Burma. We also call on the international community to provide urgently needed humanitarian assistance to the tens of thousands of Kachin displaced along Burma’s border with China. There is much talk now about an opportunity for change in Burma. It is time to seize that opportunity, and turn it into an opportunity for peace, reconciliation and rebuilding.”
- Asian Tribune - http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2011/10/04/burma-kachin-conflict-escalates-talk-change-grows
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Burma Delivers Its First Rebuff to China ---China angry over Burma's decision to suspend work on £2.3bn dam
-Burma Delivers Its First Rebuff to China --
-China angry over Burma's decision to suspend work on £2.3bn dam
Burma Delivers Its First Rebuff to China
Shelving of gigantic Chinese hydroelectric dam could be a signal to the West
Bertil Lintner
YaleGlobal, 3 October 2011
Blocking the dam: Burmese protesters in Thailand oppose China’s Irrawaddy dam project (top); Burmese president U Thein Sein (r) receiving Xu Caihou, Vice Chairman of China's Central Military Commission
CHIANG MAI: At a time when Asian countries are increasingly worried about China’s growing assertiveness, Burma’s rejection of a huge Chinese hydroelectric dam project has raised new questions: Is this a rare victory for civil society in a repressive country? Or does it indicate an internal dispute over the country’s dependence on China? Regardless of the answers to these questions, the public difference over a close ally’s project marks a new stage in the Burma-China relationship.
On September 30, Burma’s new president, Thein Sein, sent a statement to the country’s parliament announcing that a joint venture with China to build a mega-dam in the far north of the country had been suspended because “it was contrary to the will of the people.” The US$3.6 billion The Myitsone Dam would have been world’s 15th tallest and submerged 766 square kilometers of forestland, an area bigger than Singapore.
It’s unclear if Chinese counterparts were consulted before the decision was made public. Burma has depended on its powerful northern neighbor for trade, political support and arms deliveries since the West shunned the Burmese regime following massacres of pro-democracy demonstrators in 1988.
Public opinion may have played its part. Under the 2006 deal, 90 percent of power generated from Myitsone would have gone to China. Anger over environmental destruction galvanized people against the regime in a way that the country had not seen for years. The dam was a dagger in the heart of the Kachins, the predominant ethnic minority in the area. Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi threw her support behind the anti-dam movement. Many made their voices heard over Facebook – a new tool for anti-regime activists.
Burma depends on China for trade,
political support and arms deliveries – but the president said no
to the Myitsone Dam.
People inside Burma can’t protest openly, but "Save the Irrawaddy" meetings have been held in Rangoon. Burmese exiles have staged anti-Chinese demonstrations outside Burmese and Chinese embassies abroad. Anti-Chinese sentiment is growing in Burma, especially in the north where Chinese influence is the strongest. According to reports from Kachin State, many Chinese nationals working in the state, including traders, have fled to China following the outbreak of hostilities between the Kachin Independence Army and government forces.
But public opinion has never been a strong factor when it comes to influencing the Burmese regime. The regime doesn’t want to risk another outbreak of anti-government protests similar to the 2007 monks’ movement and invite international condemnation with more US and EU sanctions.
Dissatisfaction within the armed forces over China's growing influence in Burma is a more likely reason for the move to suspend the dam project.
Burma has historically had a strained relationship with its northern neighbor. From the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 until 1962, Beijing maintained a cordial relationship with the non-aligned democratic government of Prime Minister U Nu. Burma was the first country outside the communist bloc to recognize the new regime in Beijing. After General Ne Win staged a coup d’etat in 1962, the Chinese, long wary of the ambitious, sometimes unpredictable general, prepared for all-out support for the insurgent Communist Party of Burma (CPB).
Anti-Chinese riots in Rangoon in 1967 – orchestrated by military authorities to deflect public anger over a deteriorating economy – provided an excuse for Chinese to intervene. On New Year’s Day 1968, armed CPB units entered northeastern Burma from China’s Yunnan Province. Over the next decade, China poured more aid into the CPB effort than any other communist movement outside of Indochina.
Dissatisfaction within the armed forces over China's influence in Burma is a more likely reason to suspend the dam.
A clandestine radio station, the People’s Voice of Burma, began transmitting from the Yunnan side of the frontier in 1971. Thousands of Chinese streamed across the border, providing additional support to the CPB.
Mao’s death in 1976, and the subsequent return to power of pragmatist Deng Xiaoping, marked the beginning of the end of massive Chinese aid to the CPB. Supporting revolutionary movements in the region was no longer in Beijing's interest. Still, China coveted Burma’s forests, rich deposits of minerals and natural gas, and hydroelectric power potential.
Ending Chinese support to the CPB ushered in a more cordial era in Sino-Burmese relations, the relations growing by leaps and bound after the 1988 bloody suppression of pro-democracy movement in Burma. Apart from supplying Burma with vast quantities of military hardware, by 1991, Chinese experts assisted in a series of infrastructure projects. Chinese military advisers soon arrived, the first foreign military personnel stationed in Burma since the 1950s. Cross-border trade between China and Burma boomed.
More recently, China has provided Burma with low-interest loans, and Chinese investment in the sanctions-hit economy is substantial, particularly true of the energy sector. For example, an agreement on a gas pipeline from the Bay of Bengal will be supplemented with an oil pipeline designed to allow Chinese ships carrying Middle Eastern oil to skirt the congested Malacca Strait.
The heavy dependence on China has led to consternation among many Burmese military leaders. Those leaders do not forget that they once fought against the China-backed CPB, that their comrades were killed by Chinese arms. Aung Lynn Htut, a former intelligence officer who sought US political asylum in 2005, drew on those memories in a September commentary for The Irrawaddy, a website run by Burmese exiles.
China has called for “talks” after President Thein Sein’s statement, but skeptics point out that a 2009 internal report by the China Power Investment Corporation, the company behind the dam, said that the size was unnecessary and called for the project to be scrapped. And China still has contracts to build six other mega-dams on the Irrawaddy and source rivers. That Thein Sein dared to make his public statement reveals a wrinkle in Sino-Burmese relations – and how Burma may try to balance foreign relations, perhaps returning to its former policy of strict neutrality and non-alignment.
Burma may try to balance foreign relations, perhaps returning to its former policy of strict neutrality and non-alignment.
Some academic observers assert that Beijing’s influence over the Burmese government is exaggerated. China, the argument goes, “has not been as successful in winning Burma’s confidence as often is reported,” as suggested by Andrew Selth, author and strategic studies researcher. The source of Burma’s arms suppliers offers evidence: Although China provided Burma with up to US$1.6 billion worth of military hardware since 1989, the regime has recently turned to Russia, the Ukraine and North Korea to diversify its arms-procurement program.
Instead of democratizing the country, Burma’s new government seems to have chosen to play “the China card,” an attempt to win support of the West. An unsigned opinion piece in The Bangkok Post, written by a Burmese government official, reportedly approved at the highest level in Naypyidaw, lays out its position: “We do not want our country to become a satellite state of the Chinese government. However, Western countries should not force us into a corner where we have no option but to increasingly rely on China.”
In this context, “force” means insistence on genuine democratic reforms. From the regime’s point of view, improved relations with the West could be accomplished simply by playing up the Chinese threat, with the hope of diminishing Western criticism of the regime.
But the regime has time and again stressed that how the country is governed is an internal matter. The West must decide if it will play along.
Bertil Lintner is a Swedish journalist based in Thailand and the author of several works on Asia, including “Blood Brothers: The Criminal Underworld of Asia” and “Great Leader, Dear Leader: Demystifying North Korea under the Kim Clan.” He can be reached at lintner@asiapacificms.com
Rights:Copyright © 2011 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization
China angry over Burma's decision to suspend work on £2.3bn dam
Beijing threatens legal action as Burma halts dam because it is 'against the will of the people'
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Jonathan Watts
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 October 2011 19.46 BST
Article history
Technicians inspect the hydropower plant at the Three Gorges project in China. Beijing is angry that Burma has cancelled a similar project. Photograph: Du Huaju/AP
Burma's decision to suspend the country's biggest hydroelectric project has shocked and enraged China, the government's most influential backer on the international stage.
Senior officials in Beijing have castigated their south-east Asian ally and threatened legal action. It emerged that they were not consulted before President Thein Sien of Burma announced last Friday a halt to building the $3.6bn (£2.3bn) hydropower dam on the Irawaddy – known as the Myitsone project – because it was "against the will of the people".
China is the impoverished nation's second-largest trading partner and biggest foreign investor. Such public displays of discord are unusual. Its reaction contrasted sharply with the response of the US government, which praised Burma's "significant and positive step" towards listening to public concerns and promoting national reconciliation.
This may be because Beijing has more at stake. China Power Investment is the primary funder of the project. Its manager, Lu Qizhou, told domestic media that he was astonished by the announcement.
"I hear about this through media reports. I was very shocked. Before this, Burma did not communicate with us about plans for a suspension," he said, in a warning that a halt to construction would precipitate legal action.
Lu said the project had received the necessary approval in both countries. He described the sudden suspension as "incomprehensible" and the cost for both countries as "immeasurable".
He said the loss was not just about the direct investment, but it was also a missed opportunity to generate electric power and there was damage to the country's reputation because of a breach of contract. In total, he calculated that the cascade of hydropower projects – of which Myitsone is just one – would have earned the Burmese government $54bn in tax revenues, shared profits and free electricity.
Lu downplayed the human and environmental impact of the dam, saying the Myitsone reservoir would necessitate the relocation of only 2,146 people in five villages. He said the Chinese company had provided them with two-storey houses, 21in colour televisions and a 100,000 kyat living allowance.
At the weekend, Hong Lei, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, called on Burma to hold consultations over the dam and noted that both countries agreed to move ahead with the project after a thorough assessment of the impact.
Opponents of the dam accuse China of being disingenuous. The Burma Rivers Network, which represents communities affected by the hydropower project, said Beijing had negotiated its investments with the military government without considering the will of the people.
"The villagers at the dam site, numerous political and community organisations, international human rights organisations have attempted to contact China Power Investment and discuss the concerns about the impacts and process of the project. Even though CPI never responded to all these attempts at dialogue, they cannot claim to be unaware of the feeling about this project by the people of Burma," the group said.
Far from benefiting Burma through flood control, the group argue that the dam would put the demands of power generation for China before the needs of local people.
"Chinese engineers running the dams will decide how much water to release downstream according to orders from Beijing ... As seen with the Mekong, this can cause unexpected and devastating water surges and shortages," it said.
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