http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/2010/05/31/opinion/ASEANS-NEW-DILEMMA-Burmas-nuclear-ambitions-30130505.html
By Kavi Chongkittavorn
The Nation
Published on May 31, 2010
THE US ACTION was swift following confirmation of a North Korean ship with suspicious arms cargoes docking in Burma last month in violation of the UN Security Council Resolution 1874. A few days later, in the third week of April, the US State Department dispatched an urgent message to the Asean capitals recommending the scheduled Asean-US Economic Ministers' roadshow in Seattle and Washington DC, from May 3-5, proceed without the Burmese representation at "all levels." The drastic move surprised the Asean leaders.
The American ultimatum was not a bluff but a genuine show of frustration. This time Washington wanted to send a strong signal to Burma and the rest of Asean that unless something was done about Burma's compliance with the relevant UN resolutions on North Korean sanctions, there would be dire consequences. Political issues aside, Burma's nuclear ambition can further dampen Asean-US relations in the future. Already, there was the first casualty when the US downgraded the high-powered economic roadshow which was meticulously planned months ahead between the Office of US Trade Representatives and Asean economic ministers through the US-Asean Business Council.
Since nearly all Asean countries, except Singapore, decided to dispatch their trade or industry ministers to join the campaign, they agreed the roadshow should continue without the Burmese delegation as requested by the US. After some bargaining, the US softened its position agreeing to accept a representation at the charge d'affaires level from the Burmese Embassy in Washington DC. But Rangoon chose to opt out as it wanted diplomats directly dispatched from Rangoon. Without a consensus in Asean, a new name - absurd as it seemed - was in place, as the Southeast Asia Economic Community Road Show. It would be a one-time only designation.
When Kurt Campbell, Assistant State Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs returned to Burma for the second time recently, he was blunt telling the junta leaders to abide and fully comply with the UN Security Council Resolution 1874. That has been Washington's serious concern due to the growing link between North Korea and Burma and their existing transfer of nuclear-related technology. Last June, a North Korean ship, Kang Nam, was diverted from going to Burma after being trailed by the US navy.
Since 2000, Western intelligence sources have been gathering evidence of North Korea providing assistance to Burma to build a nuclear reactor that can produce graded plutonium used in assembling future weapons of mass destruction. Last year, reports were released using data collected from two defecting Burmese military officers, intercepted calls and messages as well as human intelligence along Thai-Burmese border, all finger-pointing to Burma's nuclear ambitions.
When they came out last fall, scepticism was high among military experts and strategists on the junta's nuclear intentions. Most said there was insufficient evidence. Some viewed them as attempts to further discredit the regime's international standing. As additional interviews were conducted, especially with a former major in the Burmese Army, Sai Thein Win, who was directly involved with the recent secret nuclear programme, it has become clearer that Burma is investigating nuclear technology. This week, a special report on a huge new body of information, with expert comment from a former official working for the International Atomic Energy Agency, will be released.
As such, it will have far-reaching implications on Asean and its members, who signed the 1995 Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (SEANWFZ) and Non-proliferation Treaty. Asean is currently working hard to persuade all major nuclear powers to sign the protocol to the SEANWFZ. The grouping has even delayed China's eagerness to accede to the protocol.
Further complicating the issue, Asean has not reached a consensus on how its members would move forward with a common approach on nuclear energy and security. In general, Asean backs nuclear disarmament, which the Philippines has played a leading role as chair of the just concluded Review Conference of State Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation on Nuclear Weapons. Asean also backs the ongoing efforts of US and Russia over non-proliferation.
One sticky problem is that Thailand, Brunei Darussalam, Burma, and Indonesia have yet to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. In the case of Indonesia, it is on the Annex 2 list of the treaty which, to enter into force, must be reatified by all 44 states on this list. At the upcoming Asean summit in Hanoi (October), Asean leaders will study a matrix of common positions that have been or could be taken up by Asean. It remains to be seen how Asean would approach some of the sensitive issues such as the South China Sea, climate change and issues related to nuclear technology.
At the recent Nuclear Summit in Washington DC, leaders from Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand were invited by US President Barack Obama to share their views on non-proliferation and peaceful use of nuclear energy. They supported the summit's plan of action to prevent nuclear terrorism. All these Asean members have long-term plans to build nuclear power plants for peaceful use as energy sources. Vietnam has long decided on building two, while Thailand is planning one in the next ten years. Indonesia has serious parliamentary support to explore a nuclear option. Even the Singapore Economic Strategies Committee has recommended nuclear energy should be considered as a possible long-term solution to the island's energy security. Obama will certainly raise the issue again when he visits Indonesia in the second week of this month.
What is most intriguing has been the lack of serious attention from the Thai security apparatus regarding the nuclearisation of Burma. Apart from the two informal meetings convened by the Defence Council at the end of last year, the topic has been discussed only among a handful of military intelligence officials who have worked closely with their Australian counterparts. The National Security Council still does not believe Burma has that kind of ambition, not to mention the overall nuclear capacity to embark on the controversial programme. Concerned officials argued that domestic problems still have precedence.
Monday, May 31, 2010
ASEAN'S NEW DILEMMA: Burma's nuclear ambitions
Armed ethnic groups put junta's election in doubt
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/politics/37986/armed-ethnic-groups-put-junta-election-in-doubt
Armed ethnic groups put junta's election in doubt
Plans by the military to hold elections and take control of border areas have been derailed
Published: 30/05/2010 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: Spectrum
The Burmese military's grand plan to hold an election later this year has been thrown into doubt as armed ethnic groups along the Thai border threaten to form an alliance and fight the junta's army, which is trying to take control of their areas.
DETERMINED: Brig Gen Hsar Gay, the KNU’s deputy minister for foreign affairs and a central committee member.
PHOTO: PORNPROM SARTTARBHAYA
If armed conflict breaks out in Burma, the alliance of ethnic groups, both ceasefire and non-ceasefire groups, would pose a significant threat to the Burmese military. The combines strength of the ethnic groups to fight the Burmese army would be about 65,000 soldiers if they joined together.
The Burmese military has been trying to bring the armed ethnic groups along Burma's borders under their control by forcing them to join the Border Guard Force (BGF), a body the junta is desperate to set up so it can gain control of the lucrative trade along the borders.
But the ethnic groups are not keen on the idea and fear losing their independence, along with the all the trade and business they do along the borders.
David Tharckabaw, vice-president and head of the Foreign Affairs Department for the Karen National Union (KNU), and Brig Gen Hsar Gay, the KNU's deputy minister for foreign affairs and a central committee member, recently spoke to Spectrum about the latest developments in Burma and their group, which was formed in 1949.
"If fighting erupts and all the opposition ethnic and ceasefire groups join together, we would control about 25% of the whole country. About 57% of the land in Burma is ethnic areas," said Brig Gen Hsar Gay.
"We could match the Burmese military. Of course, they have artillery - something we don't have - but we could match them by employing mobile warfare tactics. This includes the use of booby traps and claymore mines - we call it above the ground warfare behind the lines."
With the majority of the armed ethnic groups trained for guerrilla warfare, they would be a match for the much better equipped Burmese military, which is estimated to have a maximum of 180,000 men, including the army, navy and air force.
Claims by the Burmese that their armed forces number about 400,000 is an exaggeration designed to scare their enemy, the senior KNU officials say.
When the military regime started trying to form its border guard with the ethnic groups, it sent shock waves through the border areas, and groups that had fought with each other in the past started talking and formed and alliance.
"We get intelligence information about movements of the Burmese soldiers from our sources and also from the non-ceasefire armed groups allied with us. We share information," said Brig Gen Hsar Gay.
"As for ceasefire groups, we also share some intelligence about movements etc, but not with all those groups.
"There were several deadlines set by the military for the ethnic ceasefire groups to join the BGF, with the last one expiring on April 28.
"The Burmese, instead of giving a new deadline, asked the KIO [Kachin Independence Organistaton] and Wa [United Wa State Army] to submit a counter-proposal or suggestions about the BGF plan.
"The Burmese military are desperate to stage an election some time later this year to legitimise a civilian government, but the election, the constitution and the BGF have all been dismissed by many of the ethnic groups."
"Other ethnic groups in opposition think along the same lines as the KNU about the parliamentary elections. They want a nation-wide ceasefire and the release of all political prisoners first.
"They can't accept either the constitution which, first of all, is illegal, and secondly, has not enough provisions for the ethnic nationalities," said the KNU's David Tharckabaw.
"The KNU is completely against the election. We don't participate because firstly, we haven't had any national ceasefire agreement yet. Secondly, we want the right of association and lastly, we cannot accept the election under the present constitution.
"Actually, we are in the line with the National League for Democracy (NLD) which also refused to take part for other reasons. We think that there are not enough provisions for ethnic nationalities to set up a genuine federal union.
"If the Kachin, Wa, Karen and Karenni states don't give support, and with the NLD out, then the elections will be meaningless."
"The SPDC will try to save face and postpone it by making some excuse. However, if the elections are held - maybe in September or October - the opposition will continue its political struggle and there will also be military resistance," said Brig Gen Hsar Gay.
However, he offered an olive branch to the ruling Burmese State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).
"We are always looking for a peaceful resolution to the conflict from the very beginning," he said. "All the Burmese regimes in power always said that the KNU started the fighting. Actually, this is not true. It was started by General Ne Win in 1948 when he was Vice-Chief of Staff of the Burmese armed forces.
"An armed struggle is essentially self defence. But we always look for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
"To achieve that we met five times with various Burmese governments, but every time they didn't talk about the problems of the Karen or our grievances. They only wanted us to give up our arms and talk later. How can we do that? We would have no more bargaining chips."
If negotiations and talks fail and fighting does break out between the military and the ethnic groups, the biggest armed ethnic group, the KNU, is ready for full scale war.
"Our fighters have been using mobile warfare techniques for many years, making a lot of weapons to be used in ambushes like claymore mines, which is very important, one of our main weapons. Claymore mines and booby traps are weapons that we are using regularly, but the claymore is only one of our resources," said Brig Gen Hsar Gay.
"The mines have also been introduced to all opposition ethnic groups. The mine was extensively used by the Americans during the Vietnam war, but we modify it and we have the technology to produce it. Also, we use some Burmese and American claymore from old times.
"Claymore mines have steel balls inside that will disperse in one designated direction after it explodes. It is similar to a road-side bomb. This ambush weapon can be planted along the road or in places where we think the enemy will come. It is an ambush weapon, designed not to confront the person but ambush them while they are walking or travelling in a vehicle.
"We can use one at a time or three or four or up to 10 or 20, depending on how many enemy will come.
"It can be operated by one or two persons and it causes a lot of damage to the enemy. Three or four men can detonate 10 claymore at one time and wipe out an enemy company of 30-40 men in one second."
The KNU leaders say they don't want a war with the Burmese military, and would prefer talks and a meaningful dialogue.
"The peace talks must be meaningful. They must talk about our suffering, our grievances, why we go on resisting, why we don't want to come under their control, etc.
"They have to talk about that first. They might talk about their problems and their understanding. Maybe they are also suffering. Then it is a meaningful dialogue," said David Tharckabaw.
"We are not saying that everyone in the SPDC is bad. They are changing. Because of the elections there will be more changes. The majority of the SPDC - at least the lower ranking officers - also want democracy.
"They want to see a real democratic government in power. Now is the right time for a change of thinking by the SPDC.
"If we cannot settle the problem before the election, maybe we can do it peacefully after that. This is our hope. We are peaceful. We don't say the SPDC is peaceful, but we want to find a reasonable peaceful solution.
"We have been fighting different regimes for the past 61 years, making us the world's longest resistance movement.
"However, there are three equally important tasks that the KNU must follow: The armed struggle, the internal political front and the international diplomatic offensive. Only a political settlement will bring peace and stability to the region.
"Among the non-ceasefire armies, we are the largest military force outside the ceasefire groups followed by the Shan State Army-South [SSA-S]. We also control the second largest liberated territory after the SSA-S."
Sunday, May 30, 2010
ေမ(၃၀)ဒီပဲယင္း ႏိူင္ငံေတာ္ လုပ္ႀကံမႈႀကီး (၇)ႏွစ္ျပည့္ ၀မ္းနည္းျခင္း အထိမ္းအမွတ္ အခမ္းအနား(တိုက်ိဳ)။
၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္ ေမလ(၃၀)ရက္။
ေမ(၃၀)ဒီပဲယင္း ႏိူင္ငံေတာ္ လုပ္ႀကံမႈႀကီး (၇)ႏွစ္ျပည့္ ၀မ္းနည္းျခင္း အထိမ္းအမွတ္ႏွင့္ ဘာသာေပါင္းစုံ ဆုေတာင္းပြဲ အခမ္းအနားကို တိုက်ိဳၿမိဳ ့ ရွီနာဂါ၀ါ အရပ္ရွိ ျမန္မာစစ္အခြန္ရုံး(သံရုံး)ေရွ ့တြင္ ေန ့လည္ ၃း၀၀ နာရီမွ ၄း၄၀ရီ အထိ ဂ်ပန္ႏိူင္ငံေရာက္ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီ အင္အားစုမ်ားတို႕မွ ပူးေပါင္း က်င္းပျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ပါသည္။
အခမ္းအနားမွဴးအျဖစ္ အမ်ိဳးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္(လြတ္ေျမာက္နယ္ေျမ) ဂ်ပန္႒ာနခြဲ႕ အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမွဴး ဦးေဇာ္မင္းထြန္း မွ တာ၀န္ယူေဆာင္ရြက္ၿပီး ဒီပဲယင္းလုပ္ႀကံမႈႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ ရွင္းလင္းေျပာၾကားရာမွာ လူထုေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ သူရဦးတင္ဦးတို႔၏ ျမန္မာျပည္ အထက္ပိုင္း စည္းရုံးေရးခရီးစဥ္တေလွ်ာက္တြင္ လူထုေထာက္ခံအားေပးမႈ အထူးရရွိခဲ့သည့္အတြက္ နအဖ စစ္အုပ္စုမွ အလြန္စိုးရိမ္လာသည္အတြက္ ဒီပဲယင္းၿမိဳ႕နယ္ က်ည္ရြာအနီးတြင္ စနစ္တက် ခ်ဳံခိုတိုက္ခိုက္သည့္ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ လုပ္ႀကံမႈႀကီးကို က်ဳးလြန္ခဲ့ၾကပါသည္။
လူထုေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ သူရဦးတင္ဦးတို႔၏ အသက္ကို ကာကြယ္ရင္း အသက္ေပး စြန္႔လႈခဲ့ၾကသည့္ သူမ်ားအတြက္ ၀မ္းနည္းျခင္းအထိမ္းအမွတ္အျဖစ္ ဘာသာေပါင္းစုံ ဆုေတာင္းပြဲ အစီအစဥ္ က်င္းပျပဳလုပ္ရျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ေျပာၾကားသြားပါသည္။ တက္ေရာက္လာၾကသည့္ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းအသီးသီးမွ တာ၀န္ရွိသူမ်ား ေျပာၾကားသြာရာမွာ ေမ(၃၀)ဒီပဲယင္း လုပ္ႀကံမႈတြင္ ပါ၀င္ခဲ့ၾကသည့္ သူမ်ားကိုလည္း ယေန႔အထိ တစုံတရာ အေရးယူ ေျဖရွင္းေျပးသည္ကိုလည္း မေတြ႔ရသည့္အတြက္ အေရးယူ ေျဖရွင္းေပးရန္တိုက္တြန္း ေတာင္းဆိုသြားခဲ့ၾကပါသည္။
ဆုေတာင္းပြဲ အစီအစဥ္မွာ ဗုဒၶဘာသာ ဆရာေတာ္ ဦးဓမၼေဇာတိ မွလည္ေကာင္း၊ ခရစ္ယာန္ဘာသာဆရာ ဆရာက်ဲဆန္းကုန္း ႏွင့္ အစၥလာမ္ဘာသာ၀င္ ဦးသက္လင္းတို႔မွ မိမိတို႔ ဘာသာအလိုက္ ဆုေတာင္း ေမတၱာပို႔သေပးခဲ့ၾကၿပီးသည္ေနာက္ လြတ္သူ ့ပန္းေခြခ်ျခင္း အစီအစဥ္ျပဳလုပ္ကာ အခမ္းအနားကို ၿပီးဆုံးခဲ့ပါသည္။
ယေန ့အခမ္းအနားတြင္ ဂ်ပန္ႏိူင္ငံေရာက္ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီ တက္ၾကြစြာ လႈပ္ရွားခဲ့ၾကသည့္ ျမန္မာႏိူင္ငံသားမ်ား စုစုေပါင္း (၅၀၀) ခန္႔ တက္ေရာက္ပူးေပါင္း ပါ၀င္ခဲ့ၾကပါသည္။
သတင္းမွတ္တမ္း။ Mai Kyaw Oo
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Message from the Prime Minister-"Security of Japan and East Asia"
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Hatoyama Cabinet E-mail Magazine No. 32 (May 28, 2010)
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Yukio Hatoyama's "Yu-Ai"
-- Message from the Prime Minister (provisional translation of the
Japanese version, which is delivered on Thursdays)
"Security of Japan and East Asia"
Regarding the sinking of the ROK Naval patrol vessel "Cheonan,"
I express my heartfelt condolences and sympathies to the 46 victims
of the incident, the members of their bereaved families, and the
people of the Republic of Korea (ROK). On May 20, as a result of
the joint investigation with experts from the United States, United
Kingdom, Sweden, and Australia, the ROK government announced that
it had concluded that the incident had been caused by a torpedo
fired by North Korea.
On May 24, President Lee Myung-bak of the ROK gave an extremely
passionate and powerful speech toward the people of the ROK saying,
"I will continue to take stern measures to hold the North
accountable," and announced the ROK's intent to refer this matter
to the United Nations (UN) Security Council, among other measures.
I immediately spoke with President Lee by telephone, expressing my
respect for the resolute and calm manner in which the ROK
government has responded to the incident. I also reaffirmed Japan's
position to strongly support the ROK.
In the afternoon of May 24, I convened a Security Council meeting.
North Korea's action cannot be condoned by any means, and Japan
strongly condemns it together with the international community. As
a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, Japan firmly
supports the ROK, and will strengthen coordination with the
international community, especially with the ROK and the United
States, both bilaterally and trilaterally, including response by
the UN Security Council. We will urgently consider anew our own
measures against North Korea and make the utmost effort for the
early enactment of the bill to establish a special measures law for
cargo inspections. Moreover, given this unpredictable situation, we
will enhance intelligence gathering and take all possible measures
to secure the safety and sense of security of the people of Japan.
This weekend, on Jeju Island in the ROK, a Japan-China-ROK
Trilateral Summit Meeting will be held. I would like to strongly
emphasize the need for Japan, China, and the ROK to coordinate and
cooperate even more closely for the peace and stability of East
Asia.
The government will make concerted efforts to further consolidate
the security of Japan and East Asia.
Friday, May 28, 2010
UN experts say NKorea is exporting nuke technology
By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press Writer – Fri May 28, 2:38 am ET
UNITED NATIONS – North Korea is exporting nuclear and ballistic missile technology and using multiple intermediaries, shell companies and overseas criminal networks to circumvent U.N. sanctions, U.N. experts said in a report obtained by The Associated Press.
The seven-member panel monitoring the implementation of sanctions against North Korea said its research indicates that Pyongyang is involved in banned nuclear and ballistic activities in Iran, Syria and Myanmar. It called for further study of these suspected activities and urged all countries to try to prevent them.
The 47-page report, obtained late Thursday by AP, and a lengthy annex document sanctions violations reported by U.N. member states, including four cases involving arms exports and two seizures of luxury goods by Italy — two yachts and high-end recording and video equipment. The report also details the broad range of techniques that North Korea is using to try to evade sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council after its two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.
Council diplomats discussed the report by the experts from Britain, Japan, the United States, France, South Korea, Russia and China at a closed-door meeting on Thursday.
Its release happened to coincide with heightened tensions between North Korea and South Korea over the March sinking of a South Korean navy ship which killed 46 sailors. The council is waiting for South Korea to decide what action it wants the U.N.'s most powerful body to take in response to the sinking, which a multinational investigation determined was caused by a North Korean torpedo.
The panel of experts said there is general agreement that the U.N. embargoes on nuclear and ballistic missile related items and technology, on arms exports and imports except light weapons, and on luxury goods, are having an impact.
But it said the list of eight entities and five individuals currently subject to an asset freeze and travel ban seriously understates those known to be engaged in banned activities and called for additional names to be added. It noted that North Korea moved quickly to have other companies take over activities of the eight banned entities.
The experts said an analysis of the four North Korean attempts to illegally export arms revealed that Pyongyang used "a number of masking techniques" to avoid sanctions. They include providing false descriptions and mislabeling of the contents of shipping containers, falsifying the manifest and information about the origin and destination of the goods, "and use of multiple layers of intermediaries, shell companies, and financial institutions," the panel said.
It noted that a chartered jet intercepted in Thailand in December carrying 35 tons of conventional weapons including surface-to-air missiles from North Korea was owned by a company in the United Arab Emirates, registered in Georgia, leased to a shell company registered in New Zealand and then chartered to another shell company registered in Hong Kong — which may have been an attempt to mask its destination.
North Korea is also concealing arms exports by shipping components in kits for assembly overseas, the experts said.
As one example, the panel said it learned after North Korean military equipment was seized at Durban harbor in South Africa that scores of technicians from the North had gone to the Republic of Congo, where the equipment was to have been assembled.
The experts called for "extra vigilance" at the first overseas port handling North Korean cargo and close monitoring of airplanes flying from the North, saying Pyongyang is believed to use air cargo "to handle high valued and sensitive arms exports."
While North Korea maintains a wide network of trade offices which do legitimate business as well as most of the country's illicit trade and covert acquisitions, the panel said Pyongyang "has also established links with overseas criminal networks to carry out these activities, including the transportation and distribution of illicit and smuggled cargoes."
This may also include goods related to weapons of mass destruction and arms, it added.
Under council resolutions, all countries are required to submit reports on what they are doing to implement sanctions but as of April 30 the panel said it had still not heard from 112 of the 192 U.N. member states — including 51 in Africa, 28 in Asia, and 25 in Latin America and the Caribbean.
While no country reported on nuclear or ballistic missile-related imports or exports from North Korea since the second sanctions resolution was adopted last June, the panel said it reviewed several U.S. and French government assessments, reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency, research papers and media reports indicating Pyongyang's continuing involvement in such activities.
These reports indicate North Korea "has continued to provide missiles, components, and technology to certain countries including Iran and Syria ... (and) has provided assistance for a nuclear program in Syria, including the design and construction of a thermal reactor at Dair Alzour," the panel said.
Syria denied the allegations in a letter to the IAEA, but the U.N. nuclear agency is still trying to obtain reports on the site and its activities, the panel said.
The experts said they are also looking into "suspicious activity in Myanmar," including activities of Namchongang Trading, one of the companies subject to U.N. sanctions, and reports that Japan in June 2009 arrested three individuals for attempting to illegally export a magnetometer — which measures magnetic fields — to Myanmar via Malaysia allegedly under the direction of a company known to be associated with illicit procurement for North Korea's nuclear and military programs. The company was not identified.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
The 20th Anniversary of 1990 Election Commemoration
The 20th Anniversary of 1990 Election Commemoration
Special Formal Message
Date: 24-05-10
(1) On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of 1990 election, we would like to send
good wishes to the people of Burma for the sake of both their physical and mental
health and wealth to free from all calamities and dangers.
(2) As the representatives of the people parliament, we left for Thai-Burma border
and overseas for the implementation of duties, given mandate by the people via
election and we tried our best as possible as we could, by joining hands with the
ethnic forces and democracy forces, by all ways and means in the previous twenty
years.
(3) We are sorry for the lack of fulfillment of people wishes, revealed by the 1990
election until twenty years and we also apologize people for our unsatisfactory
performances, given mandate by our people.
(4) However, we never forget the democracy duties, given mandate by the people
via 1990 election. Until we achieve the genuine democracy with equal rights and
self-determination of the ethnic nationalities, we would continue to endeavour utmost
people wishes keeping always at top of our head.
(5) Today, Burmese politic is forwarding to the turning point alternatively and so
uncertain future and challenges are opportune. This is the time of military regime,
striving systematically to resurrect their life by one-sided drawn 2008 spurious
constitution and sham 2010 election for their eternal governance of military
dictatorship.
(6) We decisively oppose and eradicate the spurious 2008 constitution and sham
2010 election and its results of SPDC military dictatorship by all possible ways and
means.
(7) We attentively honour and recommend the decision of no-party registration and
no-competition in the 2010 election as well and we believe that Burmese political
problems would be only solved by mean of attitudes arising from Shwegonetine
declarations.
(8) Today, at current period, to achieve the same vision upon anti-military
dictatorship is very much important. We should value the stand and prize of today
political parties by accepting or not accepting the 2008 constitution which would
resurrect the vicious life circle of military dictatorship. At that moment, we clearly
regard that there are two types of political parties, one is supporting for long-live
military dictatorship and second one is bluntly and totally against and eradicating the
military dictatorship.
(9) We firmly adopt that 1990 election result is still legal up to now. These 1990
election results would not be nullified by only describing in the unfair election laws of
military regime.
(10) MPU has more responsibilities for the maintenance and defense of 1990
election result and continuing to raise the winning 1990 election flag till 1990 election
result is recognized by anyway and implemented.
(11) In this current occasion, we urge specially to the international governments not
to recognize the 2010 election results that may exist the long-term military
dictatorship.
(12) In conclusion, we send this special formal message, describing that inside and
outside Burmese democracy forces and ethnic forces join hands by hands unitedly,
would make great effort persistently to implement the wishes, revealed by 1990.
Standing Committee
MPU, Burma
To contact: U Maung Maung Aye ( 61 431 482 326 )
Daw San San ( 66 848 217 486 )
US Sanctions on Burma Extended
US Sanctions on Burma Extended
By Nehginpao Kipgen
Epoch Times Staff
Created: May 17, 2010 Last Updated: May 18, 2010
The U.S. foreign policy toward the State Peace and Development Council of Burma is closely watched by both the Burmese people and the international community, in case any positive developments might emerge.
Despite the U.S. government’s ongoing high-level engagement, President Barack Obama, on May 14, extended the national emergency with its accompanying sanctions in executive order beyond the original expiration date of May 20, 2010.
In a message sent to the U.S. congress, Obama said, “These actions and policies are hostile to U.S. interests and pose a continuing unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
The initial declaration was a consequence of actions and policies of the Burmese junta, including repression of the democratic opposition.
The order, first declared on May 20, 1997, has been modified and extended with additional steps in executive order 13310 of July 28, 2003, executive order 13448 of October 18, 2007, and executive order 13464 of April 30, 2008.
The sanctions prohibit American firms from investing in Burma and ban Burma’s exports to the United States. It also targets individuals associated with the military junta.
A two-day visit to Nay Pyi Taw and Rangoon from May 9 to 10 by Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, was an indication of the Obama administration’s continued efforts to create a political environment where the military rulers and the opposition groups can participate.
Not only the Burmese people themselves are frustrated with the continued political imbroglio, but we could also sense the disappointment of the U.S. government. At the end of his two-day visit to the country, Campbell said, “The key objective of my trip to Burma was to underscore the purposes and principles of our engagement, and to lay out the reasons for our profound disappointment in what we have witnessed to date.”
Given the intransigent nature of the junta, it is highly unlikely that the military leaders will be deterred by words of disappointment and pressure. The U.S. sanctions are no match for the generals to swap with the absolute powers and privileges they currently enjoy.
The U.S. sanctions are ineffective largely because of the investments and economic cooperation from countries such as China, India, and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
It is vital to build a coordinated international approach. It is recommended that the Obama administration consider the model of the North Korean six-party talk. The six-party negotiations should involve the United States, the European Union, ASEAN, China, India, and Burma.
The White House is not likely to succeed in Burma by acting alone. The military junta will heed pressures: (1) if the United States unilaterally decides to use military force if negotiations fail; (2) if the United States can convince the U.N. Security Council members to intervene by passing a binding resolution under chapter VII of the U.N. Charter; (3) if the Burmese military generals can be tried at the International Criminal Court.
However, the chances of success for any of these options are very slim, at least in the foreseeable future.
Though any concrete positive outcome is yet to be seen, the U.S. policy of engagement is welcome. The policy is largely supported by the peoples of Burma—both the military junta and the democratic opposition representing different ethnic nationalities.
Faced with criticism and pressure for years, the military junta is planning to hold the upcoming general election in an attempt to garner legitimacy, if not endorsement, from the international community.
With a lesson learned in the 1990 general election, the military is prepared not to make history repeat itself. To ensure that its power remains intact, the junta drafted a constitution that has reserved 25 percent of the parliament seats for the military.
The junta passed election laws that effectively bar Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, and therefore, resulted in the dissolution of a number of political parties, including the National League for Democracy and the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, which respectively won the first and second largest seats in the 1990 general election.
As these democratic parties will no longer contest in the upcoming election, the military junta is equally pleased and nervous as well. The absence of these parties mean that the election is a win-win plan for the military.
If the United States, together with its international partners such as the European Union, decides not to recognize the election results if held under the existing restrictive laws, the military will lack the international legitimacy it yearns for.
It is encouraging that the U.S. engagement is focused on the diverse ethnic nationalities, and not only the junta. It must be noted that the decades-old problems of Burma are ethno-political in nature, and therefore, without addressing ethnic minority problems, the problems will not be solved.
Nehginpao Kipgen is a researcher on the rise of political conflicts in modern Burma (1947-2004) and general secretary of the U.S.-based Kuki International Forum (www.kukiforum.com).
Monday, May 17, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010-ဂ်ပန္နိုင္ငံရိွ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး လႈပ္ရွားေသာအဖဲြ ့အစည္းမ်ားအၾကား ထိေရာက္စြာပူးေပါင္းဆာင္ရြက္ႏိူင္သြားရန္ ညိုႏိႈင္းစည္းေ၀း။
ယေန ့(၁၆-၀၅-၂၀၁၀)ေန ့တြင္ ဂ်ပန္နိုင္ငံတိုက်ိဳျမိဳ ့ရိွ ညီညြတ္ေသာ တိုင္းရင္းသားမ်ားအဖဲြ ့အစည္း(AUN-Japan)ရုံးခန္းတြင္ ဂ်ပန္နိုင္ငံရိွ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီေရးကို ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနေသာအဖဲြ ့အစည္းမ်ားအႀကား ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္ရန္ အထူးအစည္းအေဝး တစ္ခုကို က်င္းပခဲ့ရာ ေအာက္ပါ အခမ္းအနား(၂)ခုကို အားလုံးလက္တဲြ က်င္းပသြားရန္ သေဘာတူ ဆုံးျဖတ္ခဲ့ပါသည္။
(၁) (၇)နွစ္ေျမာက္ ဒီပဲယင္းနွစ္ပတ္လည္အခမ္းအနား။
(၂)၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြနွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ ဂ်ပန္ေရာက္ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံသားမ်ား၏ ဆႏၵေဖာ္ထုတ္ပဲြ။
(၁) (၇)နွစ္ေျမာက္ ဒီပဲယင္းနွစ္ပတ္လည္ အခမ္းအနားကို လာမည့္(၃၀-၀၅-၂၀၁၀)ေန ့တြင္ ဂ်ပန္နိုင္ငံ တိုက်ိဳျမိဳ ့ရိွ နအဖ အခြန္ရုံးေရွ ့တြင္ ညေန(၃)နာရီမွ (၅)နာရီ အထိအဖဲြ ့အစည္းအားလုံးပူးေပါင္း ေဆာင္ရြက္က်င္းပသြားရန္ သေဘာတူညီခဲ့ျပီး အမ်ိဳးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖဲြ ့ခ်ဳပ္လြတ္ေျမာက္နယ္ေျမ(ဂ်ပန္ဌာနခဲြ) NLD-LA-JAPAN မွအခမ္းအနားမႉးတာဝန္ကို တာဝန္ယူရန္အမ်ား သေဘာတူ ဆုံးျဖတ္ခဲ့သည္။
(၂) ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြ နွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ ဂ်ပန္ေရာက္ ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံသားမ်ား၏ ဆႏၵေဖာ္ထုတ္ပဲြ အဆိုပါ အခမ္းအနားကို BURMA PARTNERSHIP ၏ GLOBAL CAMPAIGN အေနျဖင့္ ဂ်ပန္နိုင္ငံရိွ ျမန္မာ့နိုင္ငံေရးအဖဲြ ့အစည္းအားလုံး ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္ျခင္း ျဖစ္ျပီး ၊ ယခင္ကတည္းက ဂ်ပန္နိုင္ငံတြင္ ျပဳလုပ္သြားရန္ ဂ်ပန္နိုင္ငံရိွ နိုင္ငံေရး အဖဲြ ့အစည္းမ်ားက စီစဥ္ေနခဲ့ေသာ အစီအစဥ္ျဖစ္သည္။ အခမ္းအနားကို
အိခဲဘုခုရို ု ရိွ ခင္းခိုးပလာဇာ(7-F)တြင္ လာမည့္(၁၃-၀၆-၂၀၁၀)ေန ့၌ မြန္းလဲြ (၁) နာရီမွ (၅)နာရီအထိ ျပဳလုပ္မည္ျဖစ္ျပီး အခမ္းအနားမႉးတာဝန္ကို ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္မႈေကာ္မတီ(JAC) မွတာဝန္ယူရန္ အမ်ားသေဘာတူ ဆုံးျဖတ္ခဲ့ႀကသည္။
သတင္းမွတ္တမ္း။ ကိုဘုန္းလိႈင္
မွတ္တမ္းဓါတ္ပုံ။ Lian Khan Sum(CNC-Japan)
Friday, May 14, 2010
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ မစၥတာကမ့္ပ္ဘဲလ္တို႔ ေတြ႕ဆံု -VOA
10 May 2010
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ အေမရိကန္ လက္ေထာက္ ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး မစၥတာ ကာ့တ္ကမ့္ပ္ဘဲလ္(ယာ) တို႔ ေတြ႕ဆုံေနစဥ္။
ေမ ၁၀၊ ၂၀၁၀။ (ဓာတ္ပုံ-ေအပီ)
အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမုိကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ အပါအ၀င္ ျမန္မာျပည္သူေတြကို ဆက္ၿပီး ေထာက္ခံသြားမယ္လို႔ မစၥတာ ကာ့တ္ ကမ့္ပ္ဘဲလ္ (Mr. Kurt Campbell) က သူ႔ရဲ႕ ခရီးစဥ္ အဆုံးမသတ္ခင္ ရန္ကုန္မွာ ေၾကညာခ်က္ထုတ္ျပန္ ေျပာၾကားလိုက္ပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံကို တရက္ၾကာ သြားၿပီး အစုိးရ တာ၀န္ရွိသူေတြ၊ NLD ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြ အျပင္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ၀င္ၾကဖုိ႔ ျပင္ဆင္ေနၾကတဲ့ အဖြဲ႕ေတြနဲ႔ ေတြ႕ဆုံခဲ့တဲ့ ခရီးစဥ္ အေၾကာင္းနဲ႔ ရန္ကုန္မွာ ထုတ္ျပန္ခဲ့တဲ့ ခရီးစဥ္ဆုိင္ရာ ေၾကညာခ်က္ အေၾကာင္းေတြကို ဦးေရာ္နီညိမ္းက စုစည္းတင္ျပေပးထားပါတယ္။
ဒီႏွစ္ကုန္ေလာက္မွာ ျပဳလုပ္မယ္လုိ႔ ယူဆရတဲ့ ႏွစ္ေပါင္း ၂၀ အတြင္း ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံရဲ႕ ပထမဆုံးေသာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကိစၥကုိ အဓိကထားၿပီး ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္နဲ႔ အေမရိကန္ လက္ေထာက္ ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး ကာ့တ္ ကမ့္ပ္ဘဲလ္တုိ႔ ဒီေန႔ ေတြ႕ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
မတ္လ ၈ ရက္ေန႔က ထုတ္ျပန္ခဲ့တဲ့ စစ္အစိုးရရဲ႕ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဥပေဒအရ တရား၀င္ မွတ္ပုံတင္ျခင္း မျပဳလုပ္ဖို႔ ဆုံးျဖတ္ခဲ့တဲ့ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမုိကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ရဲ႕ ႏုိင္ငံေရး လုပ္ငန္းေတြကုိ ရပ္ဆုိင္းမယ္လို႔ ေၾကညာၿပီး ရက္အနည္းငယ္ အၾကာမွာပဲ အခုလို ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံကို ေရာက္ရွိလာတဲ့ မစၥတာ ကမ့္ပ္ဘဲလ္နဲ႔ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္တုိ႔ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ အေမရိကန္သံ႐ုံးက ထုတ္ျပန္လုိက္တဲ့ မစၥတာ ကမ့္ပ္ဘဲလ္ ကုိယ္တိုင္ ဖတ္ျပသြားတဲ့ ေၾကညာခ်က္ထဲမွာ စစ္အစုိးရ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြ၊ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ အပါအ၀င္ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမုိကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြ၊ တျခား ႏုိင္ငံေရး အဖြဲ႕အစည္းနဲ႔ တိုင္းရင္းသား အဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြရဲ႕ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြ၊ သံတမန္ေတြ၊ NGO ေတြနဲ႔ သူ႕ရဲ႕ ေတြ႕ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့မႈေတြကုိ မစၥတာ ကမ့္ပ္ဘဲလ္က အေသးစိတ္ ထုတ္ေဖာ္ ေျပာၾကားျခင္း မရွိေပမဲ့ ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီးေတာ့ အခုလို ေျပာဆုိသြားခဲ့ပါတယ္။
“ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြနဲ႔ ေဆြးေႏြးမႈ အမ်ဳိးမ်ဳိးေတြ အတြင္း က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ဘက္က ကမ္းလွမ္းခဲ့တာ တခုကေတာ့ စစ္အစုိးရ အေနနဲ႔ ျမန္မာ့ႏုိင္ငံေရးမွာ အဘက္ဘက္က အေရးပါသူေတြ အားလုံး ပါ၀င္ခြင့္ ျပဳထားတဲ့ ဂုဏ္သိကၡာရွိရွိ ေတြ႕ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးမႈေတြ လုပ္သြားဖုိ႔ပါပဲ။ ဒီႏွစ္ထဲလုပ္မယ့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲေတြကုိ ကံမေကာင္း အေၾကာင္းမလွစြာနဲ႔ဘဲ စစ္အစိုးရကေတာ့ အေရးပါသူေတြနဲ႔ ေဆြးေႏြးတုိင္ပင္ျခင္း မရွိဘဲ တဖက္သတ္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ဖို႔ ေရြးခ်ယ္သြားခဲ့ပါၿပီ။
“မသြယ္မ၀ုိက္ဘဲ ေျပာရမယ္ဆုိရင္ အဲဒီေရြးေကာက္ပြဲေတြဟာ ႏုိင္ငံတကာရဲ႕ တရား၀င္ အသိအမွတ္ျပဳမႈ ရမွာ မဟုတ္ဘူးလုိ႔ ယုံၾကည္စရာ အေၾကာင္းအခ်က္ေတြ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ေတြ႕ျမင္ထားခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲေတြ မလုပ္ခင္ က်န္ေနေသးတဲ့ အခ်ိန္မွာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ အားလုံး ပါ၀င္ႏုိင္တဲ့ လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ကုိ ခ်မွတ္တဲ့ လုပ္ရပ္ေတြ ခ်က္ခ်င္းလုပ္ပါလို႔ စစ္အစိုးရကို က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ တုိက္တြန္းပါတယ္။”
ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံက ႏုိင္ငံေရးပါတီေတြဟာ တခ်ဳိ႕က ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ၀င္ဖို႔၊ တခ်ဳိ႕က ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ မ၀င္ဖုိ႔ အခက္အခဲေတြ အမ်ဳိးမ်ဳိးၾကားက ဆုံးျဖတ္ခ်က္ ခ်ခဲ့ၾကတာကုိ အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စုက နားလည္ၿပီး သူတုိ႔ရဲ႕ ဆုံးျဖတ္ခ်က္ေတြကို ေလးစားပါတယ္လို႔ မစၥတာ ကမ့္ပ္ဘဲလ္က ေျပာဆုိခဲ့ပါတယ္။
အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမုိကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္နဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး သူေျပာတာကေတာ့…
“ျမန္မာျပည္သူလူထုေတြရဲ႕ ဘ၀ကို ျမႇင့္တင္ေပးဖို႔ ႏွစ္ေပါင္း ၂၀ ေက်ာ္ ႐ုန္းကန္ လႈပ္ရွားခဲ့တဲ့ ႏုိင္ငံေရးပါတီ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမုိကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ရဲ႕ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြ၊ က်ေနာ္နဲ႔ အခ်ိန္ၾကာၾကာ ေတြ႕ဆုံ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ရတဲ့ ဒီေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြကို က်ေနာ္ ဒီအခ်ိန္မွာ ခ်ီးက်ဴး ဂုဏ္ျပဳပါရေစ။ စစ္အစိုးရရဲ႕ အျပစ္ အနာအဆာေတြနဲ႔ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရး စည္းမ်ဥ္း စည္းကမ္းေတြထဲမွာ တရား၀င္ ၀င္ေရာက္ပါ၀င္ လုပ္ေဆာင္မယ့္ အစိတ္အပုိင္းတခု ျဖစ္ေရး ပယ္ခ်ခံရေပမဲ့လည္း ဒီ NLD ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြဟာ ျမန္မာျပည္သူ လူထုအတြက္ လူထုကို ကုိယ္စားျပဳၿပီး ဆက္လက္လုပ္ကိုင္ ေဆာင္ရြက္သြားၾကဖို႔ အခုိင္အမာ ဆုံးျဖတ္ထားၾကသူေတြပါ။
“NLD ဟာ အနာဂတ္မွာ ဘယ္လိုပုံစံမ်ဳိးနဲ႔ပဲ ရပ္တည္သြားသည္ ျဖစ္ေစ၊ NLD အပါအ၀င္ ျမန္မာျပည္သူလူထုကို ေထာက္ခံသူေတြရဲ႕ ေနာက္မွာ အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စုက ဆက္ၿပီး ရပ္တည္သြားမွာပါ။”
ဒါ့အျပင္ မစၥတာ ကမ့္ပ္ဘဲလ္က ျမန္မာ့ဒီမုိကေရစီ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္နဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔လည္း သူ႔ရဲ႕ ႐ႈျမင္သုံးသပ္ခ်က္ကုိ ေၾကညာခ်က္ရဲ႕ နိဂုံးပိုင္းမွာ အခုလို ဖတ္ၾကားသြားပါတယ္။
“ေနာက္ဆုံးအေနနဲ႔ ေျပာခ်င္တာကေတာ့ အဆက္မျပတ္ ဂုဏ္သိကၡာမဲ့တဲ့ လုပ္ရပ္ေတြနဲ႔ သူ႔ကို ဖမ္းဆီး ထိန္းသိမ္းထားသူေတြ အေပၚမွာ စိတ္ရွည္သည္းခံၿပီး ေမတၱာတရား ထားေနတာကို ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က ျပသေနတယ္ ဆုိတာပါ။ ပုိၿပီး သာယာ၀ေျပာတဲ့ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံရဲ႕ အနာဂတ္အတြက္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းစြာ ေျဖရွင္းမႈတရပ္ ရွာေဖြေရး အတူတကြ အလုပ္လုပ္သြားၾကဖို႔ မေရမတြက္ႏုိင္တဲ့ အႀကိမ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ သူ႔ရဲ႕ ေမတၱာရပ္ခံမႈေတြကို အေလးဂ႐ုမျပဳတဲ့ ျမန္မာစစ္ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးေတြရဲ႕ လုပ္ရပ္ကေတာ့ အင္မတန္ ၀မ္းနည္းစရာ ေကာင္းလွပါတယ္။”
မစၥတာ ကာ့တ္ ကမ့္ပ္ဘဲလ္က အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု အေနနဲ႔ ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရ အေပၚ ပိတ္ဆုိ႔ ဒဏ္ခတ္ထားမႈကို ႐ုပ္သိမ္းမွာ မဟုတ္သလုိ တဘက္မွာလည္း စိတ္ပ်က္စရာေကာင္းတဲ့ အေျခအေနေတြကို ေတြ႕ႀကဳံေနရေပမဲ့လည္း ျမန္မာစစ္အစုိးရနဲ႔ ဆက္ၿပီးေတာ့ ထိေတြ႕ ဆက္ဆံသြားမယ့္ မူ၀ါဒကို က်င့္သုံးသြားမယ္၊ ေလာေလာဆယ္မွာလည္း အႀကိမ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ ျမန္မာစစ္အစုိးရ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြနဲ႔ အေမရိကန္ အစုိးရ အဆင့္ျမင့္ ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေတြရဲ႕ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲေတြ ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ၿပီး ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ ေျပာၾကားသြားခဲ့ပါတယ္။
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
BURMA - Democracy and ethnic rights activists welcome economic sanctions on military regime
BURMA - Democracy and ethnic rights activists welcome economic sanctions on military regime
The Ten Alliances of Burma's democracy and ethnic rights movement expressed support for the European Union's renewal of its Common Position on Burma for another year, which also extended economic sanctions on the military regime. "With their planned sham elections, the regime is hoping that the EU and other countries will fall for the thinly veiled attempt to legitimize continued military rule.
By maintaining sanctions, the EU is sending a strong signal that the regime must change course for these elections to have any legitimacy whatsoever," said U Maung Maung, General Secretary of the National Council of the Union of Burma.
In reference to Burma's planned elections for later this year, the EU Council expressed "serious concerns" that new election laws "do not provide for free and fair elections," and called on the military regime to take further steps.
The EU statement adopted in Luxembourg on 26 April also called for the release of political prisoners, an end to human rights violations, and political dialogue between all stakeholders. These points reaffirm the key benchmarks long advocated by the Ten Alliances of Burma's movement for democracy and ethnic rights.
The alliances insist that the regime must meet these benchmarks to ensure truly democratic progress in Burma, and that without them elections will not be a step towards genuine democracy. They include:
1. The unconditional release of all political prisoners, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi;
2. Cessation of hostilities against ethnic groups and pro-democracy forces; and,
3. Inclusive dialogue with key stakeholders from democracy groups and ethnic nationalities, including a review of the 2008 Constitution.
"Burma is becoming increasingly unstable under the military regime. Tensions in northeastern Burma are rising as the junta continues to press armed ethnic groups into joining their Border Guard Force.
The National League for Democracy and other opposition groups will also come under increased pressure from the junta after the political party registration deadline. The EU and international community must increase pressure on the junta to stop these hostilities immediately," said Mai Phone Kyaw, General Secretary of the National Democratic Front.
"In terms of the upcoming EU delegation to Burma, we ask EU Envoy Fassino to reiterate the EU's support of these minimum benchmarks, and focus his efforts on facilitating dialogue between all stakeholders before the elections," said U Moe Zaw Oo, Joint General Secretary of the National League for Democracy - Liberated Area (NLD-LA), in reference to the "exploratory mission" mentioned in the EU's statement yesterday.
The Ten Alliances also emphasized that any delegation to Burma should insist on meeting with representatives of opposition groups, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the NLD, and ethnic leaders
Friday, April 30, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
EU sanctions on Burma extended
http://www.dvb.no/news/eu-sanctions-on-burma-extended/8756
EU sanctions on Burma extended
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Activists have long called for tougher EU sanctions on Burma (Reuters)
By FRANCIS WADE
Published: 27 April 2010
The European Union announced yesterday that it had extended its sanctions on Burma following the ruling junta’s refusal to meet demands for democratic reform.
The sanctions have been extended for one year, according to a statement released following a Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Luxembourg that has been hailed by pro-democracy groups.
“The Council deems it necessary to extend the restrictive measures provided for in the current EU Decision by another year. The Council underlines its readiness to revise, amend or reinforce the measures it has already adopted in light of developments on the ground,” it said, adding that it would “respond positively to genuine progress in Burma/Myanmar”.
The exact criteria for “genuine progress” has not been clarified, although EU ministers have repeatedly call for elections this year to be free and fair, and to be accompanied by the release of Burma’s 2,100-plus political prisoners.
Rights groups have however criticized apparently “soft” EU sanctions on Burma that have failed to stop French oil giant Total from operating Burma’s lucrative Yadana gas pipeline. EarthRights International (ERI) believe that Total, along with its partner in the project, US-based Chevron, have netted the junta around $US7.2 billion.
In May last year the French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner told parliament that ramping up sanctions on Burma risked hurting Total and in turn gas supplies to Burmese people.
Continued foreign investment in Burma, notably from China, has dampened the impact of sanctions, with the US and EU unable to rein in Burma’s regional neighbours whose ongoing trade has provided a crutch for the regime in the face of Western isolation.
Burma Campaign UK said yesterday however that relaxing sanctions would “give a green light to the generals to increase human rights abuses, help finance increased abuses, and give up potential leverage against the regime”.
“The problem with EU sanctions is that most are not effectively targeted, have not been used as part of coordinated diplomatic efforts, and those sanctions which could be effective are being broken, as there is no monitoring or implementation.”
It added that the EU statement made no mention of any attempts by EU ministers to correct this.
Tags: eu, sanctions, total
Author: FRANCIS WADE Category: Economics, News
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Nuclear Free Burma ေဖၚေဆာင္ေရး Signature Campaign လႈပ္ရွားမူကို ကုလသမဂၢ အေထြေထြအတြင္းေရးမ်ဴးခ်ဳပ္ထံေပးပို ့ရန္ျပင္ဆင္။
သတင္းမွတ္တမ္း ။ PNS-Japan
၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္ ဧၿပီလ (၂၆)ရက္။
ႏ်ဴကလီးယားကင္းစင္ေသာ ျမန္မာႏိူင္ငံ Nuclear Free Burma ေဖၚေဆာင္ေရး Signature Campaign လႈပ္ရွားမူ ကို ၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္ ေဖေဖၚ၀ါရီလမွစတင္၍ FTUB ဂ်ပန္ ေကာ္မတီမွ ဦးစီးေကာက္ခံလာခဲ့ရာ ဧၿပီလ ၂၆ ရက္ေန ့တြင္ ေကာက္ခံထားသည့္ လက္မွတ္မ်ားကို စုစီးၿပီး FTUB နာယက Dr.မင္းညို ထံ လႊဲအပ္သည့္ အစီအစဥ္ကို ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ပါသည္။
FTUB(Japan) ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ ေဒၚခင္ေဆြေအးမွ Signature Campaign လႈပ္ရွားမူႏွင့္ပတ္သက္၍ ရွင္းျပရာမွာ ျမန္မာႏိူင္ငံသည္ သဘာ၀သယံဇာတ အရင္းအျမစ္မ်ား ပိုင္ဆိုင္သည့္ ႏိူင္ငံမ်ားအနက္ နံပါတ္(၉)အဆင့္တြင္ ရွိၿပီး Hydro power ေရအားလွ်ပ္စစ္ျဖင့္ စီမ္းအင္မဂၢါ၀ပ္ အေျမာက္အမ်ားထုတ္လုပ္ႏိူင္ေသာ ႏိူင္ငံျဖစ္သည္။ ႏွစ္စဥ္ ေရအား လွ်ပ္စစ္စြမ္းအင္ ႏွင့္ သဘာ၀ဓါတ္ေငြ ့မ်ားမွ ေရာင္းခ်ရေငြသည္လည္း ျမန္မာႏိူင္ငံ၏ ႏွစ္စဥ္ ၀င္ေငြ၏ ၅၀% ေက်ာ္ရရွိလ်က္ရွိသည္။
ထိုေၾကာင့္ နအဖ မွ စြမ္းအင္လုံေလာက္မႈ မရွိဟုေသာ အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္ျဖင့္ ႏ်ဴကလီးယား စြမ္းအင္ကို ထုတ္လုပ္ရန္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းမႈမွာ လကၡံ ယုံၾကည္ႏိူင္ဘြယ္ရာ မရွိသည့္အျပင္ ႏ်ဴကလီယား စြမ္းအင္မွတဆင့္ ႏ်ဴကလီယား လက္နက္ပိုင္ဆိုင္ေသာ ႏိူင္ငံျဖစ္ရန္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနျခင္း၊ စစ္အာဏာရွင္စနစ္ သက္ဆိုးရွည္ေစရန္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနသည့္အတြက္ အခုလို Signature Campaign လႈပ္ရွားမူကို လုပ္ေဆာင္ရေၾကာင္း ရွင္းလင္းေျပာၾကားသြားပါသည္။ ဂ်ပန္ႏိူင္ငံတြင္ Sign Campaign ျပဳလုပ္ရျခင္း ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္မွာ အႏ်ဴျမဴ၏ ဆိုးက်ိဳးကို ဂ်ပန္လူမ်ိဳးတို ့ ကိုယ္တိုင္ ခံစားခဲ့ၾကရၿပီး ကမာၻတစ္၀န္း ႏ်ဴကလီးယား လက္နက္ေလ်ာ့ခ်ရန္ ႏ်ဴကလီယားအဆိပ္ အေတာက္ ကင္းရွင္းရန္ ႀကိဳးစားေနေသာ ႏိူင္ငံျဖစ္သည့္အတြက္ ဂ်ပန္ႏိူင္ငံတြင္ လႈပ္ရွားမႈကို စတင္ျပဳလုပ္ရျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။
ႏိူင္ငံေတာ္ဘတ္ဂ်က္ ေဒၚလာသန္းေပါင္းေထာင္ခ်ီ အကုန္က်ခံေနျခင္းသည္ ႏ်ဴကလီးယားစြမ္းအင္မွ ရရွိလာမည့္ အက်ိဳးကို ျပည္သူမ်ား စံစားႏိူင္မည္မဟုတ္၊ ႏ်ဴကလီးယားႏွင့္ပတ္သက္သည့္ ေခတ္မွီနည္းစနစ္ျဖစ္ ထိမ္းသိမ္း ေဆာက္ေရွာက္မႈ ၊ ေဘ းထြက္စြန္ ့ပစ္ ပစၥည္းမ်ားေၾကာင့္ ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ ျဖစ္ေပၚလာမည့္ အႏၱရာယ္ အလြန္စိုးရိမ္ရေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ ႏ်ဴကလီယား စြမ္းအင္ကို ကန္ ့ကြက္ေနသည္မဟုတ္ နအဖမွ ႏ်ဴကလီယား လက္နက္ပိုင္ဆိုင္ရန္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းေနျခင္းကို ကန္ ့ကြက္ရေၾကာင္းကို FWUBC ဒု ဥကၠ႒ ကိုဘုန္းလိႈင္မွ ေထာက္ျပ ေျပာဆိုသြားပါသည္။
ဂ်ပန္ႏိူင္ငံေရာက္ ျမန္မာႏိူင္ငံသားမ်ား၊ ဂ်ပန္ျပည္သူမ်ား ႏွင့္ ဂ်ပန္အလုပ္သမားသမဂၢမ်ားထံမွ စုစုေပါင္းလက္မွတ္ (တစ္ေသါင္း)ေက်ာ္ ေကာက္ခံရရွိထားေၾကာင္း သိရွိရပါသည္။ လာမည့္ ၂၉ ရက္ေန ့ဂ်ပန္အလုပ္သမားေန ့(ေမေဒး)ေန ့ ေနာက္ဆုံးထား ေကာက္ခံသြားမည္ျဖစ္ၿပီး ေကာက္ခံရရွိထားသည့္ လက္မွတ္မ်ားကို ကုလသမဂၢ အေထြေထြအတြင္းေရးမ်ဴးခ်ဳပ္ႏွင့္ လုံၿခဳံေရးေကာင္စီ ႏိူင္ငံမ်ားသို ့ ေပးပို ့သြားမည္ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ ဂ်ပန္အစိုးရကို တိုက္တြန္း တင္ျပသြားႏိူင္ရန္အတြက္ FTUB ဗဟိုႏွင့္ ေဆြးေႏြးတိုင္ပင္ၿပီး ဂ်ပန္ေရာက္ အင္အားစုမ်ားႏွင့္ ပူးေပါင္းပါ၀င္ၿပီး ပိုမိုက်ယ္ျပန္ ့သည့္ လႈပ္ရွားမူကို ဆက္လက္ေဖၚေဆာင္ သြားမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရပါသည္။
သတင္းမွတ္တမ္း ။ PNS-Japan
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
GLOBAL CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE 2010 MILITARY ELECTIONS IN BURMA
GLOBAL CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE 2010 MILITARY ELECTIONS IN BURMA
APPEAL
To the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hon. Franco Frattini
To the Chairs of the Foreign Affairs Committees of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and Senate
To the EU Special Envoy for Burma, Hon. Piero Fassino
I strongly condemn the Burmese military junta, the sham Constitution and the unacceptable election laws which prevent the Burmese heroine, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the other over 2,100 political prisoners to stand in and cast their ballot at the upcoming elections, while the political parties – in order to continue to exist – must expel Aung San Suu Kyi and the other political prisoners and swear to protect and respect the “sham Constitution”.
These laws are the tragic confirmation of the total non-credibility of the elections and reveal the absolute lack of will, by the junta, to undertake a fast and effective transition to democracy.
These laws follow the imposition of a sham Constitution that will perpetuate the power of the military junta and which prevents freedom of political and trade union organisation, provides for the possibility of continuing to exploit forced labour and the continued violation of the fundamental human rights and guarantees the impunity of the members of the military who are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Alongside the Burmese FTUB trade union and democratic organisations, I denounce these elections as a further attempt by the military junta to keep a firm hold on power, albeit in civilian clothing, in an authoritarian and repressive manner, while the rule of law will remain a fiction used by those governments that are set on continuing to deplete the country of its natural, social and human resources.
I denounce the dramatic increase in repression of the people’s fundamental human rights, in murders, rapes, arbitrary arrest, forced labour, the use of child soldiers, and the tremendous worsening of the living and working conditions of people that has sparked large-scale strikes in the industrial areas of Rangoon, forcing thousands of workers to risk their freedom.
I support the requests of the clandestine trade union movement and all of the Burmese democratic organisations calling on the international community to subject the recognition of the upcoming elections to the following conditions:
1. the immediate and unconditional release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all the other political prisoners, and the protection of their right to take part and stand in the elections;
2. the ceasing of all attacks against the ethnic communities and democratic activists;
3. the immediate launching of a genuine and inclusive dialogue between the junta, the democratic organisations and ethnic nationalities, including a reform of the Constitution.
I call on:
• the Italian Government, Parliament and the EU Special Envoy for Burma to support the three conditions detailed above and to subject the recognition of the elections to their application, launching urgent consultations with the Burmese trade unions and democratic organisations;
• the Italian Government to commit itself to ensuring that the EU decides to further strengthen the targeted economic sanctions by including the financial and insurance sectors as well, with the prohibition to make new investments and implementing certain and effective control procedures. The sanctions should be applied flexibly, according to the positive or negative developments in the political process;
• the EU to promote these legitimate requests in its negotiations with the other Asian countries;
• the EU to actively call on the UN Security Council to approve a total arms embargo on Burma;
• the EU to support the recommendations by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Burma to set up a UN Commission of Inquiry on the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the junta.
Italy must no longer remain silent.
PRESS RELEASE-BONANNI: first signatory of the CISL Appeal for Burma
PRESS RELEASE
BONANNI: first signatory of the CISL Appeal for Burma
Appeal for a commitment against the upcoming sham elections in Burma, which are set to perpetuate the military dictatorship in civilian clothing, the violation of human rights, forced labour and the prohibition against political and trade union freedom, ensuring the impunity of the military junta for its crimes against humanity.
The CISL launches an urgent appeal to the Italian Government and to the European Union to respond to the call made by the Burmese trade unions and democratic organisations to the international community for subjecting the recognition of the upcoming elections to the following conditions:
1. the immediate and unconditional release of Aung San Suu Kyi and of all the other political prisoners, and the protection of their right to take part and stand in the elections;
2. the ceasing of all attacks against the ethnic communities and democratic activists;
3. the immediate launching of a genuine and inclusive dialogue between the junta, the democratic organisations and the ethnic nationalities, including the reform of the Constitution.
Through this appeal, CISL strongly condemns the Burmese military junta and the unacceptable election laws recently introduced, which prevent the country’s heroine, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the other over 2,100 political prisoners to stand in and cast their ballot at the upcoming elections. These laws are the tragic confirmation of the total non-credibility of the elections and reveal the absolute lack of will by the junta to undertake a fast and effective transition to democracy.
CISL invites you to sign this appeal calling on:
• the Italian Government, Parliament and the EU Special Envoy for Burma to support the three conditions detailed above and subject the recognition of the elections to their implementation, launching urgent consultations with the Burmese trade unions and democratic organisations;
• the Italian Government to commit itself to ensuring that the EU decides to further strengthen the targeted economic sanctions by including the financial and insurance sectors as well, with the prohibition to make new investments and implementing certain and effective monitoring procedures. The sanctions should be applied flexibly, according to the positive or negative developments in the political process;
• the EU to promote these legitimate requests in its negotiations particularly with the Asian countries;
• the EU to actively call on the UN Security Council to approve a total arms embargo on Burma;
• the EU to support the recommendation by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Burma to set up a UN Commission of Inquiry on the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the junta.
Italy must no longer remain silent.
Sign our appeal online at the CISL website www.cisl.it or at www.birmaniademocratica.org.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
NLD Says 'No' to Election
NLD Says 'No' to Election
By TaunggyNLD Says 'No' to Election
By Taunggyi Time သတင္း
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By THE IRRAWADDY Monday, March 29, 2010
Burma's main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), on Monday decided against registering for the general election this year, a party spokesman told The Irrawaddy.
“Without any objections, all the party leaders reached a consensus not to register the party and join the election because the junta's election laws are unjust,” said senior party official Khin Maung Swe who attended the meeting at the party's Rangoon headquarters. “We also agreed to call for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all other political prisoners.”
Members of the detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy gather at Rangoon's headquarters before its central committee meeting on March 29. (Photo: AP)
Party officials said that the lawyer of detained leader Suu Kyi read out a message from Suu Kyi to the party leaders at the meeting and said that “Daw Suu could not accept the party registering under the unjust laws, but she said that neither she nor anyone else owns the party. Therefore, the party members have to make the decision by themselves democratically.”
The party's 92-year-old party chairman, Aung Shwe, who recently voiced support for the party registering and taking part in the election, did not join in the meeting, but instead sent a letter stating that he would follow Suu Kyi's decision, according to the party spokesman.
Nearly 160 party representatives from across the country gathered at the party's headquarters to take part in the meeting. The discussion mainly heard the views of the party's central committee members. Reportedly, only one of them voiced the opinion that a political party “cannot be involved in politics without existing.”
“U Tin Wai from Kachin State expressed his opinion on party registration, but accepted the majority decision,” said Ohn Kyaing, a party official. The election laws prohibit parties from having members who are currently in detention, so a decision to register would have forced Suu Kyi out of the party.
About 50 party members wearing white T-shirts bearing a slogan saying “No” gathered in front of the party compound. Female party members were also reportedly holding a large green gourd presented to them by Suu Kyi last Tuesday through her lawyer. The word “No” is said to have been written on the gourd.
Although security was heightened with four riot police trucks deployed near the party headquarters, there were no reports of harassment of NLD leaders by the authorities.
Before the meeting, several township representatives and party youth leaders declared that they will stand by Suu Kyi's stance against registration, claiming that they can still struggle for democratic rights without a political party.
The party decision would appear to ensure that the NLD will cease to exist as a legal entity as of the May 7 deadline for party registration, according to the election law.
Many observers are currently speculating what will become of the party after it ceases to be a valid political entity, and what kind of action the regime will take against the NLD's leadership and its party members.
A political analyst in Rangoon, said that what the NLD does after May 7 would depend on the wit and wisdom of the party leaders at the local level.
Reuters correspondent Martin Perry said, “The boycott, however, could backfire and marginalize the NLD, possibly leading to its dissolution. Its credibility as a pro-democracy force will be questioned now it has spurned the chance to be part of a political transition that the junta itself says will be lengthy and challenging.”
Perry said that the decision of the NLD “came as a disappointment to the international community, which has long painted Suu Kyi and the NLD as the people's choice and the best hope for a democratic Myanmar [Burma].”
In Suu Kyi's statement, she said that the party will not come to an end, and she also relayed a message to the Burmese people saying that she will continue her efforts for democracy.
Last week, Suu Kyi reportedly told her lawyers that if the imprisoned former student leader Min Ko Naing could fight for democracy in Burma without a political “signpost,” she could do the same.
Charismatic Min Ko Naing and several student activists of the 88 Generation Students group were arrested in 2007 and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.
The election laws bar more than 2,000 political prisoners from taking part in the election which junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe described as “the very beginning of the process of fostering democracy” in his speech on Armed Forces Day in Naypyidaw on Saturday.
No date has been announced for the upcoming election, which critics have called a sham designed to keep the military in power through the facade of an elected government.
The NLD won a landslide victory in Burma's last election in 1990, but the results were never honored by the regime. Party leader Suu Kyi is currently serving an 18-month term of house arrest. With her sentence due to expire in November, Suu Kyi would not be released before the polls expected in October.
http://www.irrawadd y.org/highlight. php?art_id= 18143&page=2i Time သတင္း
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By THE IRRAWADDY Monday, March 29, 2010
Burma's main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), on Monday decided against registering for the general election this year, a party spokesman told The Irrawaddy.
“Without any objections, all the party leaders reached a consensus not to register the party and join the election because the junta's election laws are unjust,” said senior party official Khin Maung Swe who attended the meeting at the party's Rangoon headquarters. “We also agreed to call for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all other political prisoners.”
Members of the detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy gather at Rangoon's headquarters before its central committee meeting on March 29. (Photo: AP)
Party officials said that the lawyer of detained leader Suu Kyi read out a message from Suu Kyi to the party leaders at the meeting and said that “Daw Suu could not accept the party registering under the unjust laws, but she said that neither she nor anyone else owns the party. Therefore, the party members have to make the decision by themselves democratically.”
The party's 92-year-old party chairman, Aung Shwe, who recently voiced support for the party registering and taking part in the election, did not join in the meeting, but instead sent a letter stating that he would follow Suu Kyi's decision, according to the party spokesman.
Nearly 160 party representatives from across the country gathered at the party's headquarters to take part in the meeting. The discussion mainly heard the views of the party's central committee members. Reportedly, only one of them voiced the opinion that a political party “cannot be involved in politics without existing.”
“U Tin Wai from Kachin State expressed his opinion on party registration, but accepted the majority decision,” said Ohn Kyaing, a party official. The election laws prohibit parties from having members who are currently in detention, so a decision to register would have forced Suu Kyi out of the party.
About 50 party members wearing white T-shirts bearing a slogan saying “No” gathered in front of the party compound. Female party members were also reportedly holding a large green gourd presented to them by Suu Kyi last Tuesday through her lawyer. The word “No” is said to have been written on the gourd.
Although security was heightened with four riot police trucks deployed near the party headquarters, there were no reports of harassment of NLD leaders by the authorities.
Before the meeting, several township representatives and party youth leaders declared that they will stand by Suu Kyi's stance against registration, claiming that they can still struggle for democratic rights without a political party.
The party decision would appear to ensure that the NLD will cease to exist as a legal entity as of the May 7 deadline for party registration, according to the election law.
Many observers are currently speculating what will become of the party after it ceases to be a valid political entity, and what kind of action the regime will take against the NLD's leadership and its party members.
A political analyst in Rangoon, said that what the NLD does after May 7 would depend on the wit and wisdom of the party leaders at the local level.
Reuters correspondent Martin Perry said, “The boycott, however, could backfire and marginalize the NLD, possibly leading to its dissolution. Its credibility as a pro-democracy force will be questioned now it has spurned the chance to be part of a political transition that the junta itself says will be lengthy and challenging.”
Perry said that the decision of the NLD “came as a disappointment to the international community, which has long painted Suu Kyi and the NLD as the people's choice and the best hope for a democratic Myanmar [Burma].”
In Suu Kyi's statement, she said that the party will not come to an end, and she also relayed a message to the Burmese people saying that she will continue her efforts for democracy.
Last week, Suu Kyi reportedly told her lawyers that if the imprisoned former student leader Min Ko Naing could fight for democracy in Burma without a political “signpost,” she could do the same.
Charismatic Min Ko Naing and several student activists of the 88 Generation Students group were arrested in 2007 and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.
The election laws bar more than 2,000 political prisoners from taking part in the election which junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe described as “the very beginning of the process of fostering democracy” in his speech on Armed Forces Day in Naypyidaw on Saturday.
No date has been announced for the upcoming election, which critics have called a sham designed to keep the military in power through the facade of an elected government.
The NLD won a landslide victory in Burma's last election in 1990, but the results were never honored by the regime. Party leader Suu Kyi is currently serving an 18-month term of house arrest. With her sentence due to expire in November, Suu Kyi would not be released before the polls expected in October.
http://www.irrawadd y.org/highlight. php?art_id= 18143&page=2
Friday, March 12, 2010
ビルマ・アウンサンスーチー氏 ,総選挙に向け、解放しない軍政の思惑
ビルマ・アウンサンスーチー氏
総選挙に向け、解放しない軍政の思惑
自宅軟禁が続いているビルマ（ミャンマー）の民主化運動指導者アウンサンスーチー氏が、自らの拘束を不当として上告していた件で、ビルマ最高裁は二月二六日、スーチー氏側の訴えを棄却した。スーチー氏は昨年、突然訪れた米国人を自宅に入れたことが国家防御法違反とされ、禁固三年の有罪判決を宣告されていた。
最高裁の判決後、欧米諸国の政府を中心に棄却を遺憾とする談話が一通り発表されたが、棄却に驚いた声はなかった。そもそもビルマに司法の独立はなく、軍政の目的は、もっともらしい理由をつけてアウンサンスーチー氏の拘束を続けることが明らかだからだ。背景には、軍政が今年、新憲法に基づいた総選挙を実施しようとしていることがある。
国際社会の関心は総選挙が自由・公正に行なわれるかに集まりがちだが、軍政は選挙を自由・公正に行なおうとは端から考えていない。民主化改革の一環として総選挙を行なうというのはプロパガンダで、実際には軍政、特に事実上の独裁者であるタンシュエ上級大将が身体的・経済的に安全に現政権から身を引くための出口戦略という性質の方が強い。これは、選挙の根拠となる新憲法が軍政により一方的に起案されたことからも明白だ。新憲法では、議会議席の二五％を軍関係者が占めることや、アウンサンスーチー氏や現在政治囚として収容されている民主化活動家が政府に入れないことが定められるなど、様々な規定で軍支配の継続を保障しており、現軍政関係者の訴追免除規定まである。また一方で軍政は、国営・国有企業の売却を進めるなど民営化に向けた動きを活発化させている。
一九九〇年に自由・公正に行なった総選挙では、アウンサンスーチー氏率いる国民民主連盟（NLD）が大勝利を収め、軍政は大敗した。以来二〇年間、軍政は「非合法な政府」であることを理由に、国際社会からの経済制裁を受け続けてきた。また、二〇〇七年九月に起こったデモが、僧侶たちを中心に一〇万人規模まで膨れあがったことからもわかる通り、国内の軍政への不満は非常に大きい。総選挙を自由・公正に行なうことは、軍政にとってリスクが大きすぎるのである。選挙を「無事に」運営し、信頼できる勢力に議席の多数を占めさせることに、軍政は日々力を注いでいる。欧米や国連が、拘束力を持たない声明等で「選挙を自由・公正に行なえ」と言ったところで、軍政には届かない。
軍政がアウンサンスーチー氏を拘束しておきたい理由は、二つある。第一に、アウンサンスーチー氏が現在もビルマ国民に人気が高く、彼女が自由に政治活動を行なえる状態では、総選挙を軍政にとって有利に運ぶ妨げとなる。第二に軍政にとって「アウンサンスーチー解放」という交渉カードの重要性だ。氏の解放は、経済制裁の解除や欧米政府との関係改善に直接つながっている。昨年八月、米国政府内で経済制裁解除を推進していることで知られるウェッブ米上院議員がビルマを訪問した際には、欧米の要人とはめったに会おうとしないタンシュエ上級大将が自ら応対し、いつもは米国について否定的な論調の国営紙も、訪問を「米国との関係改善に向けた第一歩」と評価した。軍政がどんなに制裁解除とそれに伴う投資増や開発援助等の再開を望んでいるかは、明らかであろう。ここぞというタイミングでアウンサンスーチー氏を解放し、最大限の利益を導くためにも、スーチー氏の拘束を続けておく必要があるのだ。国際社会が「スーチー氏の参加なしでは選挙の信頼性が失われる」といくら言っても効果はない。
自由・公正であるか否かを問わず、選挙を通じて新政権が生まれてしまえば国際社会もその状態を受け入れるだろうという軍政の判断を国際社会が拒むこと。また、「（スーチー氏が参加せず）選挙の信頼性が欠ける」と軍政にとってどのような悪い結果につながるのかを国際社会が軍政に明確に示さない限り、軍政は行動パターンを変えないだろう。
秋元由紀・ビルマ情報ネットワーク
http://www.kinyobi.co.jp/backnum/antenna/antenna_kiji.php?no=1029
http://www.burmainfo.org/
Thursday, March 11, 2010
US won't accept legitimacy of Myanmar's elections
Washington - The United States will not recognize the outcome of Myanmar's elections scheduled for later this year because of new laws that ban political prisoners and the country's leading democratic activist from participating, the US State Department said Wednesday. The military junta that runs Myanmar, published a law on Wednesday that stated 2,000 imprisoned dissidents cannot participate, effectively sidelining jailed activist Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the National League for Democracy.
"We made clear that, given the tenor of the election laws that they have put forward, there's no hope that this election will be credible," State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said, adding the laws make the election a "mockery of the democratic process."
The regime has yet to announce a date for the election, the last of which took place 20 years ago before the military junta seized power and began rounding up democratic activists. Suu Kyi has been in prison or under house arrest for years.
The United States has applied sanctions to Myanmar to keep pressure on the regime for democratic reforms, and the Obama administration had reached out to Myanmar hoping to encourage change. But those efforts do not appear to be working.
"Our engagement with Burma will have to continue until we can make clear that the results thus far are not what we had expected and that they are going to have to do better," Crowley said.
Copyright DPA
Read more: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/313477,us-wont-accept-legitimacy-of-myanmars-elections.html#ixzz0hsW9mRk4
Myanmar: Secretary-General voices concern at new electoral laws
New electoral laws unveiled by authorities in Myanmar do not meet United Nations expectations of what is required for an inclusive political process in the Asian country, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned today.
Thursday, March 11, 2010By UN News
Aung San Suu Kyi
New electoral laws unveiled by authorities in Myanmar do not meet United Nations expectations of what is required for an inclusive political process in the Asian country, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned today.
The UN is carefully studying the laws as they are being published by the Government in preparation for planned national elections later this year, Mr. Ban said in a statement issued by his spokesperson.
According to media reports, the new laws relate to the registration of political parties and prohibit anyone with a criminal conviction from being a member of an official party.
"The indications available so far suggest that they do not measure up to our expectations of what is needed for an inclusive political process," Mr. Ban said.
"The Secretary-General reiterates his call for the Myanmar authorities to ensure such an inclusive political process leading to fair, transparent and credible elections in which all citizens of Myanmar, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, can freely participate."
Ms. Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD), a prominent opposition leader, has been under house arrest for much of the past two decades. In August last year she was sentenced to an additional 18 months of detention after being convicted of violating State security laws.
Last month Mr. Ban expressed disappointment that Ms. Suu Kyi"s appeal against her house arrest was rejected and reiterated his call for her release.
Myanmar is slated to later this year conduct its first elections in over 20 years as part of a Government-designed timetable towards greater democratization.
Source: UN News
Monday, March 8, 2010
Myanmar enacts election laws, paving way for polls
http://www.thestate.com/2010/03/08/1191661/myanmar-enacts-election-laws-but.html
The Associated Press
tool goes here YANGON, Myanmar -- Myanmar announced the enactment of long awaited laws on Monday that set the stage for the country's first election in 20 years to be held sometime this year.
State radio and television said the new laws would be published in state newspapers beginning Tuesday; it gave no details about them. The laws will set out the mechanisms and rules for the election and campaigning, and the conditions under which parties may participate.
Myanmar's military government announced in early 2008 that the election would take place in 2010, but has not yet set any date for it. A 1990 election was won by the National League for Democracy party of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, but the military refused to hand over power.
The party of Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest until November, has not yet committed itself to taking part in the polls because it claims the new constitution of 2008 is unfair. It has clauses that would ensure that the military retains a controlling say in government and bars Suu Kyi from holding office.
The party has said the election laws will help it determine whether it will participate.
A spokesman for the National League for Democracy said Monday that he could not yet comment on the laws.
"We don't know what's in the laws. I can at least say that if elections are held this year, it won't be fair because political parties are not given enough time," said Nyan Win.
"Political parties need sufficient time for registration and for campaigning. Now that the laws have been enacted, it is more urgent for the party leaders to have a meeting as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has requested in her letter in November," Nyan Win said, referring to a letter from Suu Kyi to junta chief senior Gen. Than Shwe.
Suu Kyi has consistently called for a dialogue between the government and the opposition but has received no commitment from the military regime.
The brief announcement on state television said the five laws cover an Election Commission; the polls for the Pyithu Hluttaw, or House of Representatives; the polls for the Amyotha Hluttaw, or House of Nationalities, the other house of parliament; the polls for Region and State parliaments; and the Political Parties Registration Law.
The national and regional legislatures will all include military personnel nominated by their commander in chief.
The 440-member House of Representatives will have 330 elected civilians and 110 military representatives; while the 224-member House of Nationalities will seat 168 elected candidates and 56 nominated by the military chief.
Suu Kyi has been detained for 14 of the past 20 years. The Supreme Court last month dismissed her latest appeal for freedom. She was convicted last August of violating the terms of her previous detention by briefly sheltering an American who swam uninvited to her lakeside home, and sentenced to a term of house arrest to end this November.
The sentence was seen as a ploy to effectively keep Suu Kyi locked up during any election campaign.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed disappointment that Suu Kyi's appeal was rejected.
"The secretary-general reiterates his call for the release of all political prisoners and their free participation in the political process," U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said at U.N. headquarters in New York after the court ruling.
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Sunday, March 7, 2010
ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဝင္ေရး မဝင္ေရး၊ အထ အထုိင္
http://www.irrawaddy.org/bur/index.php/articles/2-articles/2712-2010-03-04-07-42-11
ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဝင္ေရး မဝင္ေရး၊ အထ အထုိင္
Thursday, 04 March 2010 14:40 ခက္ထန္
ယခုႏွစ္တြင္ ျဖစ္ေပၚလာမည္ဟု ဆုိသည့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ အတြက္ အနည္းဆံုး ရွိသင့္ ရွိသင့္ထိုက္ေသာ ျပင္ဆင္ခြင့္ ျပဳရမည့္ အခ်ိန္မွာ အနည္း ငယ္သာ က်န္ေတာ့သည္။ ထိုအခ်က္ကပင္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ၏ ျဖစ္လာလတၱံ႔ေသာ သရုပ္သကန္ကို ေဖာ္ျပေနသေယာင္ ရွိသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ ဤအေျခအေနမွာပင္ ကြဲျပားျခားနားေသာ အထိုင္ေပၚမွေန၍ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲသို႔ ဝင္ေရး၊ မဝင္ေရး ဘက္ႏွစ္ဘက္မွာလည္း အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္ ကိုယ္စီျဖင့္ ျပင္ဆင္ေနၾကသည္။ အျပန္အလွန္ ေဝဖန္ ေစာေၾကာေနၾကသည္။ မည္သို႔ေသာ အေျခခံ ကြဲျပားခ်က္ေပၚမွ ျပင္ဆင္ၾကသနည္းဟု သံုးသပ္ၾကည့္ရန္ ရွိသည္။
ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ၊ ခ်င္းမုိင္ၿမိဳ႕တြင္ ယခင္တပတ္က ၇ ႀကိမ္ေျမာက္ ျမန္မာ သတင္းသမဂၢ ညီလာခံ က်င္းပရာ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဝင္ေရး မဝင္ေရးႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္သည့္ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲ တခု ပါဝင္ခဲ့ျပီး အၾကိတ္ အနယ္ ရွိခဲ့သည္။ ဝင္ေရး ဘက္တြင္ မၾကာေသးမီက ေပၚေပါက္ လာသည့္ ဒီမိုရက္တစ္ ပါတီမွ ဦးသုေဝႏွင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရွိ NGO တခုမွ ေဒါက္တာ ခင္ေဇာ္ဝင္းတို႔က ရပ္တည္ ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ ၾကၿပီး မဝင္ေရး ဘက္တြင္ ျပည္ပ အေျခစုိက္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ အမ်ိဳးသား ေကာင္စီ (NCUB) မွ ဦးေမာင္ေမာင္က ေျပာဆိုသည္။ ယင္းသို႔ ဝင္ေရး မဝင္ေရး ဘက္ ႏွစ္ဘက္ အျပင္ နယ္ပယ္ မ်ိဳးစံုမွ လာေသာ ပရိသတ္မ်ား၏ ေမးခြန္းမ်ား၊ ေဝဖန္မႈမ်ား၊ စကားစစ္ထိုး မႈမ်ားသည္ အနည္းႏွင့္ အမ်ားဆိုသလို ျမန္မာ့ႏိုင္ငံေရး ဝန္းက်င္၏ စရိုက္ လကၡဏာကို ေရာင္ျပန္ဟပ္ ေဖာ္ျပေန သေယာင္ ရွိသည္။
ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဝင္ေရး၊ အထ
ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဝင္ေရးဆိုရာ၌ ျပည္တြင္းႏိုင္ငံေရးအင္အားစုတခ်ိဳ႕၏ ေျခလွမ္းကို ဆိုလိုပါသည္။ အစဥ္အလာ ရွိခဲ့သည့္ ဝါရင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမား တခ်ိဳ႕၊ ယင္းတို႔၏ ပါတီမ်ား၊ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ထြက္ေပါက္ဟု သေဘာထား ေပၚလြင္စြာ ေဖာ္ျပလာေသာ ျပည္တြင္း မီဒီယာမ်ားဟု ထည့္သြင္း ေရတြက္ႏိုင္သည္။ သူတို႔အဖို႔ ကာလရွည္ၾကာစြာ မလူးမလြန္႔သာသည့္ အေနအထားမွ ေရြ႕လ်ား လိုလာေသာ သေဘာကို ထင္ဟပ္သည္။ လႈပ္ရွားစရာ 'ခြင္' မရွိသည့္ အခ်ိန္တြင္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ေကာက္ရိုးတမွ်င္ အျဖစ္ ယူဆလာသည္။ လႊတ္ေတာ္တြင္ အလုိအေလ်ာက္ ေနရာရမည့္ တပ္မေတာ္သား ကုိယ္စားလွယ္ ၂၅ ရာခိုင္ႏႈန္း ဟူေသာ ျပဌာန္းခ်က္ျဖင့္ ခ်ည္တုပ္ထားသည့္တိုင္ လတ္တေလာတြင္ ေဘာင္အတြင္းမွ လႈပ္ၾကည့္ၾကမည့္၊ လႊတ္ေတာ္ကိုလည္း 'စင္' တခု အျဖစ္ ျမင္ေယာင္ၾကည့္ေနၾကသည့္ သေဘာကို ေတြ႔ရသည္။
ဝင္ေရးဘက္မွ ရပ္တည္ ေျပာဆိုရန္ ညီလာခံ တက္ေရာက္လာသည့္ွ ဦးသုေဝႏွင့္ ေဒါက္တာခင္ေဇာ္ဝင္းတို႔က အထက္ပါ အတိုင္းပင္ ရည္ညႊန္း ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ၾကသည္။ စစ္တပ္သည္ ၂၀၀၈ ဖဲြ႔စည္းအုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ပုံ အေျခခံ ဥပေဒကို အကာအကြယ္ယူ၍ တပ္ဆုတ္သည္ဟု ဦးသုေဝက ယူဆသလို၊ ႏုိင္ငံေရးသမားမ်ား မလႈပ္ဘဲေနၾကလွ်င္ ျမန္မာျပည္ အေျခအေန ပိုဆိုးသြားမည္ ဟုလည္း ေဒါက္တာခင္ေဇာ္ဝင္းက ေထာက္ျပသည္။ သူတို႔က ေရြ႕လ်ားမရသည့္ အေနအထားတြင္ စစ္အစုိးရ ဖြင့္ေပးလာသည့္ ကန္႔သတ္ခ်က္ လမ္းေၾကာင္းအတြင္းမွ ေမွ်ာလိုက္ၾကည့္ၾကမည္ဟု သေဘာရသည္။
ဤ ဝင္ေရးဘက္ကို သံုးသပ္ၾကည့္လွ်င္ အေလွ်ာ့အတင္းႏွင့္ ကစားေနရသည့္ အျဖစ္ကို ျမင္ရသည္။ ရသည့္ ေအာက္ေျခကို တဆင့္ တိုးၾကည့္မည္၊ 'ထ' ၾကည့္မည္။ သူတို႔အတြက္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ႏွင့္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ေရာက္မွ မီးစင္ၾကည့္ကေရးသည္ ဒုတိယ အစီအစဥ္ ျဖစ္ေနသည္။ ေအာက္မွ အထက္သို႔ ေမွ်ာ္ၾကည့္သည့္ စနစ္ဟု ျမင္ရသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ ထိုင္ေနအေကာင္းသား ထသြားမွ က်ိဳးမွန္းသိ ျဖစ္မည္လား၊ လႈပ္ၾကည့္မွ ျမဳပ္မည္လား ဆိုသည္က ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ရန္သာ ရွိသည္။
ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ မဝင္ေရး၊ အထိုင္
မဝင္ေရး အထိုင္တြင္ ျပည္ပေရာက္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အင္အားစုမ်ား၊ တိုင္းရင္းသား အင္အားစုမ်ား၊ ျပည္ပ မီဒီယာတခ်ိဳ႕တို႔ ပါဝင္သည္။ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမုိကေရစီ အဖဲြ႔ခ်ဳပ္ကမူ ဝင္ေရး မဝင္ေရးကို ေရႊဂံုတုိင္ေၾကညာခ်က္ျဖင့္ စည္းသတ္ထားသည္။ လိုက္ေလ်ာလွ်င္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဝင္မည္၊ မလိုက္ေလ်ာလွ်င္ မဝင္ဟု လမ္းေၾကာင္းေပးထားျပီး ျဖစ္သည္။ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ မဝင္ေရး ရပ္တည္သူမ်ား အေနျဖင့္ ၉၀ ျပည့္ႏွစ္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲရလဒ္ကို ဆုပ္ကိုင္သည္။ ၂၀၀၈ အေျခခံဥပေဒ ျပင္ဆင္ေရးကို ေတာင္းဆိုသူက ေတာင္းဆုိသည္။ ေရႊဂံုတိုင္ ေၾကညာစာတမ္းကို ေထာက္ခံေဆာ္ၾသသူက ေဆာ္ၾသသည္။ ၉၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ရလဒ္မွ အစခ်ီ၍ စစ္အာဏာပိုင္မ်ား၏ ကတိကဝတ္၊ လုပ္ထံုး လုပ္နည္းမ်ားကို လံုးဝမယံုၾကည္ဟု ျငင္းဆိုသည္။ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို လက္မခံေၾကာင္း၊ စစ္အစုိးရက ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ဆက္လုပ္လွ်င္ တုိက္ပြဲ ဆက္ဝင္မည္ဟု ဦးေမာင္ေမာင္က ဦးသုေဝ၊ ေဒါက္တာခင္ေဇာ္ဝင္းတို႔ ေရွ႕ေမွာက္မွာပင္ ေျပာခဲ့သည္။
မဝင္ေရးဘက္မွ သံုးသပ္ရမည္ဆိုလွ်င္ ေလွ်ာ့ရန္လည္း မရွိသလို၊ အေခ်ာ့လည္း မခံဟူေသာ ခံယူခ်က္ကို ထင္ဟပ္ျပသည္။ ဝင္ေရး 'အထ' အဖြဲ႔ႏွင့္ မတူဘဲ အထက္ပိုင္း ေပၚလစီျဖစ္ေသာ ၂၀၀၈ အေျခခံဥပေဒပိုင္းမွ စတင္ ကိုင္တြယ္ ျပင္ဆင္လိုျပီး က်န္ကိစၥက ဒုတိယ အစီအစဥ္ျဖစ္သည္။ အထက္မွ ေအာက္သို႔ တဆင့္ခ်င္း သြားရန္ စဥ္းစားသည့္ စနစ္ ျဖစ္သည္။ ကမာၻ႔မိသားစု အဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ားကုိ ဆြယ္တရားေဟာမည္ျဖစ္သည္။ အထိုင္အေနႏွင့္ 'ယိုင္' ဖို႔ မရွိဟု သံုးသပ္ရသည္။
အဓိကအားျဖင့္ ႏွစ္ဘက္စလံုး၏ ဦးတည္ရာ လမ္းေၾကာင္းတုိ႔မွာ ရသေလာက္ စၿပီး ေပၚလစီကို တက္ျပင္ေရး၊ ေပၚလစီ အေပၚပိုင္း ျပင္ျပီးမွ အေသးစိတ္ ဆက္သြားေရး ဟူ၍ ေျပာင္းျပန္ ျဖစ္ေနၾကသည္။ အတြင္းက 'ေဘာင္'ကို ကန္႔သတ္ခ်က္ အေနႏွင့္ လက္ခံျပီး ကစားသည္၊ အျပင္က 'ေဘာင္'ကို ဖ်က္သိမ္းပစ္ေရး အရင္ ေတာင္းဆိုသည္။ တနည္းအားျဖင့္ ဝင္ေရး အပိုင္းက အေပ်ာ့ထည္ သံုးျပီး မဝင္ေရးက အမာထည္ကို ကိုင္စြဲသည္။
တဖက္တြင္ စစ္အစုိးရက ေတြ႔ဆံု ေဆြးေႏြးေရးကို မသိက်ိဳးကြ်ံ ျပဳလ်က္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ အပါအဝင္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားမ်ားကို ဆက္လက္ ထိန္းသိမ္းထားျခင္းျဖင့္ ျပည္တြင္း အတိုက္အခံ အင္အားစုကို ခ်ည့္နဲ႔ေအာင္ လုပ္ထားဆဲ ျဖစ္သည္။ ခါးပိုက္ေဆာင္ျဖစ္ေသာ ျပည္ေထာင္စု ၾကံ့ခိုင္ေရးႏွင့္ ဖြံ႕ျဖိဳးေရး အသင္း ေျခလွမ္း သြက္လာျခင္း၊ စစ္ဝတ္စံု ခြ်တ္ရန္ ျပင္ဆင္ျခင္း၊ ပုဂၢလိကပိုင္ ေခါင္းစဥ္ေအာက္မွ စီးပြားေရး လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားကို လႊဲေျပာင္းယူလာျခင္း စသည့္ မူမမွန္ေသာ ေျခလွမ္းမ်ားကို ေတြ႔ေနရသည္။
အာဏာပုိင္တုိ႔က ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲအတြက္ လံုေလာက္သည့္ ျပင္ဆင္ခြင့္ မေပးေသးျခင္း၊ ပြင့္လင္းျမင္သာမႈ မရွိျခင္းတို႔မွာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို လက္ခံလိုသူ၊ ဝင္လိုသူမ်ားအတြက္ပင္ ထိခိုက္ေစေသာ အခ်က္မ်ားျဖစ္သည္။ ယင္းအခ်က္သည္ပင္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ဆန္႔က်င္သူမ်ား အဖို႔ ခိုင္မာေသာ အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္လည္း ျဖစ္လာေစသည္။ ဝင္ခ်င္သူမ်ားအဖို႔ ေသခ်င္သည့္က်ား ေတာေျပာင္း ျဖစ္မည္ေလာ၊ အစဥ္တစိုက္ ဆန္႔က်င္သူမ်ားအဖို႔ေရာ မည္မွ် အထိုင္ ေညာင္းဦးမည္လဲ ဆိုသည္မွာ မၾကာမီ ထြက္ရွိလာမည္ဟုေမွ်ာ္လင့္ရေသာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဥပေဒအျပင္ ေရွ႕တလွမ္းတိုးသြားမည့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ရလဒ္အေပၚ မူတည္ေပသည္။ ။
ITUC Burma Conference 2010 in Tokyo held on 11-12 Feb.
(Tentative)
Statement by the International Trade Union Confederation Conference “Building
Solidarity with Burmese workers, Tokyo”,11-12 February 2010
The 5th international trade union conference on Burma hosted in Tokyo by the
JTUC-RENGO was held in order to prepare for the ITUC’s upcoming Congress in
Vancouver in June 2010, where the future strategy of the international trade union
movement with regards to Burma will be decided.
The Conference was a working session on all the strategic options available to the
international trade union movement ahead of the announced elections in Burma in
2010. The possibility that certain governments may shift their policy towards Burma in
the wake of the elections and the international trade union movement’s policy response
were discussed. In the absence of constitutional change and dialogue, the Conference
affirmed that the elections could not be considered legitimate, It expressed its firm
opposition to the 2008 constitution adopted by the regime, and called for meaningful
dialogue before elections are held.
The Conference reaffirmed the conclusions and the solidarity expressed in 2007 during
the 4th Burma Conference held in Kathmandu and called for a strengthening of the
commitment undertaken in 2007 for the restoration of democracy and to combat the use
of forced labour in Burma. The Conference welcomed the efforts undertaken by
affiliates in the region and globally to raise awareness with their governments about
workers’ rights and democratization in Burma.
Forced labour is still prevalent in Burma despite the ILO Commission of Inquiry in
1998 and people reporting cases of forced labour continue to be persecuted. Even after
the conclusion of the Supplementary Understanding in 2007, giving immunity to
victims and complainants, people have been arrested and too many remain in prison.
The Conference expressed outrage at the continued reprisals against complainants and
against the fact that the present number of detainees were as high as 23.
The Conference welcomed the holding of the first congress of the FTUB in March 2009
and the subsequent affiliation of the Burmese trade union to the ITUC and the
ITUC-AP in 2009. The Conference expressed the urgent need to address more
aggressively the situation with regards to freedom of association in Burma. The
Conference stressed that while it was important to maintain the pressure on the issue
of forced labour it should be considered, how the issue of freedom of association could be
given greater attention, especially within the framework of the ILO. It therefore
proposed tabling a complaint leading to the establishment of an ILO Commission of
Inquiry on freedom of association in Burma.
The discussion happened against the backdrop of an increasing number of strikes in
Burma by discontented workers and growing divisions within the military. In the course
of the Conference, the FTUB received information about a strike by 12000 workers
inside Burma.
The overall strategy within the ILO was discussed in depth, both with regards to forced
labour and freedom of association. The Conference reaffirmed its strong support for the
decisions of the ILO Governing Body and the Conclusions of the 2006 ILC Selection
Committee to pursue a referral to the International Court of Justice.
The strategy with regards to investment in Burma was the subject of serious
discussions. The Conference reaffirmed the commitment towards divestment and to
maintain pressure on all companies operating in Burma as their operations directly or
indirectly serve to prop the illegitimate regime. It was proposed that the different
database and information sources on pension funds and companies investing and/or
operating in Burma be better coordinated to bring more aggressively targeted pressure
to bear.
The Conference concluded that there was a need to aggressively follow-up on the call by
the ILO to Governments, Workers and Employers to take all “appropriate measures to
ensure that the said member cannot take advantage of such relations to perpetuate or
extend the system of forced or compulsory labour referred to by the Commission of
Inquiry… and report back in due course and at appropriate intervals to the Governing
Body” within the framework of its Resolution adopted in 2000.
The Conference reiterated the resolve of the international trade union movement to
support the struggles of our Sisters and Brothers in Burma and their capacity through
the FTUB to carry out their just fight for democracy and workers’ rights. The
Conference agreed a plan of action to strengthen the capacity of the FTUB by providing
support for a reinforcement of its structures. It finally committed to mobilizing support
amongst ITUC affiliates for the funding of an expansion of FTUB’s activities and
training programs.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Fw: [BurmaInfo] 今週のビルマのニュース（1008号）スーチー氏の上告、棄却 ビルマ軍がカレン避難民の学校を攻撃 昨年の日本の難民認定数 ほかTuesday, 2 March, 2010, 12:44 PM
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ビルマ市民フォーラム メールマガジン 2010/3/2
People's Forum on Burma
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ビルマ情報ネットワーク（BurmaInfo）からのメール(2/26付）を転送させていただき
ます。
（重複の際は何卒ご容赦ください。）
ＰＦＢ事務局 宮澤
http://www1.jca.apc.org/pfb/
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ビルマ情報ネットワークの「今週のビルマのニュース」をお送りします。
「今週のビルマのニュース」バックナンバー
http://www.burmainfo.org/news/this_week.php?mode=3
「きょうのビルマのニュース」もご利用ください。
http://www.burmainfo.org/news/today.php?mode=2
ビルマ情報ネットワーク （http://www.burmainfo.org）
秋元由紀
========================================
今週のビルマのニュース Eメール版
2010年2月26日【1008号】
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【アウンサンスーチー氏の上告、棄却される】
・ビルマ最高裁は26日、民主化運動指導者アウンサンスーチー氏が
国家防御法違反罪で有罪判決を受けた件に関し、氏の上告を棄却
した（「背景」参照）。氏は、判決の見直しを求める予定（26日共同ほか）。
【背景】アウンサンスーチー氏は現在、自宅軟禁されている。
昨年8月に禁固3年の有罪判決を宣告された直後、次の減刑措置を
受けた。刑期（3年）の半分を免除、残り半分を執行猶予とする。
執行猶予期間（1年半）は自宅に居住し、規則を守り品行方正なら
期間満了時に刑を免除する。
・アウンサンスーチー氏が率いる国民民主連盟（NLD）のスポークス
マンは「判決により、（軍政が予定している）総選挙が自由・公正と
はとても言えないものになることが示された。党首が拘束された状態
では、NLDは総選挙について引き続き苦しい立場に立たされる」と
述べた（26日イラワディ）。
【国連特別報告者、ビルマ訪問を終える】
・国連人権理事会でビルマを担当するキンタナ特別報告者が
15日から19日までビルマを訪れた。滞在中、キンタナ氏はニャンウィン外相ら
軍政高官と会談したほか、複数の刑務所で政治囚と面会し、自宅軟禁
解除直後のティンウー国民民主連盟（NLD）副議長とも会談した。
アウンサンスーチー氏との面会も希望したが認められず、「非常に残念」
だと述べた（19日AFPほか）。
【ビルマ軍がカレン避難民の学校を攻撃、少年が死亡】
・カレン州内からの情報によれば、同州北部パプン地区で19日朝、
ビルマ軍が国内避難民の集落にある学校を砲撃した。15歳の少年が
重傷を負い、診療所に運ばれたが死亡、ほかに子ども数人がけがをした。
カレン人権グループ（KHRG）は、最近現地周辺でカレン民族解放軍
（KNLA）が活動していなかったことから、ビルマ軍の攻撃は民間人の
住む集落を故意に狙ったものだと分析している。この事態を受け
英国ビルマ・キャンペーンは、ビルマ東部で起きている「人道に
対する罪」を調査する委員会の設置が必要だと改めて呼びかけた
（24日KHRGほか）。
【在日ビルマ人の難民認定者数、前年より減少】
・法務省は、2009年の難民認定申請者数は1388人（うちビルマ人568人）、
難民認定者数は30人（同18人）だったと発表した。難民として認められな
かったが人道配慮で在留が許可されたのは501人で、難民認定者と
合わせた実質的な庇護数は531人（うちビルマ人478人）だった。
前年に比べ、ビルマ人の難民認定者数は20人減少した（26日法務省）。
【ビルマへの政府開発援助（ODA）約束状況など】
新たな発表はなし
【注目レポート】
・カレン女性機構（KWO）
「ビルマ東部紛争地域のカレン民族女性村長たち」
（25日発表、英語）
http://www.karenwomen.org
ビルマ国軍に殺害される可能性が男性よりも低いという理由で
村長にされたカレン民族女性が直面する殺人、レイプ、拷問等の
人権侵害に関する報告書。KWOは国連安保理に対し、ビルマで
の人道に対する罪についての調査委員会の設置を求める。
【イベント情報】
・在日ビルマ人共同行動実行委員会
国連事務総長に対しスーチーさんを含むすべての政治囚の
釈放と対話の促進を軍政に働きかけるよう要請するアピール行動
（国連大学前、22～26日15～16時）
・ビルマの歴史学習会
講師：根本敬（上智大学教授、PFB運営委員）
主催：ビルマの歴史を学ぶ会
（東京都千代田区ふれあい会館、28日13時半～）
・ロヒンギャ民族集団訴訟（難民不認定処分取消等請求）
最終口頭弁論
（東京地裁、3月17日10時半～）
【もっと詳しい情報は】
☆Twitter公式アカウントはこちらです
http://twitter.com/BurmaInfoJapan
「きょうのビルマのニュース」
http://www.burmainfo.org/news/today.php?mode=2
ビルマ情報ネットワーク
http://www.burmainfo.org/
【お問い合わせ】
ビルマ情報ネットワーク 秋元由紀
====================================
今週のビルマのニュース Eメール版
2010年2月26日【1008号】
作成： ビルマ情報ネットワーク
協力： ビルマ市民フォーラム
====================================
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