Peaceful Burma (ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းျမန္မာ)平和なビルマ

Peaceful Burma (ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းျမန္မာ)平和なビルマ

TO PEOPLE OF JAPAN



JAPAN YOU ARE NOT ALONE



GANBARE JAPAN



WE ARE WITH YOU



ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေျပာတဲ့ညီညြတ္ေရး


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

“မတရားမႈတခုမွာ သင္ဟာ ၾကားေနတယ္ဆုိရင္… သင္ဟာ ဖိႏွိပ္သူဘက္က လုိက္ဖုိ႔ ေရြးခ်ယ္လုိက္တာနဲ႔ အတူတူဘဲ”

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

THANK YOU MR. SECRETARY GENERAL

Ban’s visit may not have achieved any visible outcome, but the people of Burma will remember what he promised: "I have come to show the unequivocal shared commitment of the United Nations to the people of Myanmar. I am here today to say: Myanmar – you are not alone."

QUOTES BY UN SECRETARY GENERAL

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

Where there's political will, there is a way

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

Monday, November 17, 2008

ENVIRONMENT-BURMA: Conflict Threatens Karen Biodiversity

http://globalintel.net/wp/2008/11/17/environment-burma-conflict-threatens-karen-biodiversity/

Posted on 17 November 2008
Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS

Keya Acharya

BANGKOK, Nov 17 (IPS) - On top of 60 years of military occupation, the Karen people of Burma are now facing severe impairment of their environmental and cultural foundations, say activists.

Burma’s incredibly rich and highly endemic biodiversity has a recorded 11,800 plant species including a species-collection of 800 orchids, 100 bamboos, 1,000 birds and 145 globally threatened mammals.

A great part of this biodiversity is found in Karen State in southeast Myanmar bordering Thailand, now suffering heavily due to the ongoing conflict between the government’s State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and the Karen National Union (KNU).


The conflict has displaced over 500,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) within Karen State, mostly hiding in the forests.

Civilians have become the target of the Burmese military as the SPDC aims to weaken the KNU by cutting off provisions and support from local Karen. And, according to Paul Sein twa, director of the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN), there is a toll on the environment as well.

In the forests, IDP families sleep in makeshift shelters on open ground. Healthcare and education are non-existent and the majority is severely malnourished.

In the northern Karen district of Mu Traw alone, 200 villages have been burnt or destroyed since 1997 and farmlands mined, leaving around 37,000 villagers hiding as IDPs in the hills, says a KESAN report,’ Diversity Degraded’ written by ethnic Karen researchers.

Marty Bergoffen, an American environmental lawyer helping KESAN develop a forest policy, told a gathering of journalists convened by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Bangkok, last month, that there were over 100,000 refugees on the Thai border and ”literally millions of economic refugees in Thailand, Malaysia, India and elsewhere”.

KESAN is a Chiang-Mai, Thailand-based organisation of Karen activists working with indigenous Karen on both sides of the Burma-Thailand border.

Bergoffen says women are especially affected in the conflict, facing physical vulnerabilities and limited access to work because of border security issues.

”Thailand has no long-term refugee policy, so it’s hard for the Karen to plan any future”, he says.

Bergoffen terms the Karen’s local biodiversity as the ‘lynchpin’ of community-survival that the war is now threatening.

The military has mined the farmlands of those IDPs hiding in the hills, barring them from returning to cultivate crops.

The Karen had survived for centuries on a seven-year rotational cycle of cultivation that allowed fallow land to regenerate, but now with mined lands and military occupation, villagers make do with shrunken land space that is resulting in overexploitation of both biodiversity and land.

”In the past I didn’t cultivate on very sloped land or in old forest. But now I cannot survive if I don’t cultivate in the old forest. I know that these are not good places to use for cultivation but I have no choice”, says a Ta Paw Der a villager in the KESAN report.

Besides the SDPC, the KNU have also been involved in unsustainable exploitation of Karen’s biodiversity, selling off timber for arms as they retreat from increased military offensives.

Increased militarisation has already resulted in the loss of the severely endangered Sumatran Rhinoceros, says KESAN.

To add to the problem, indigenous knowledge, a tradition handed orally down the generations, is as threatened as local biodiversity, forests and traditional lifestyles disappear in the fighting.

Ta Paw Der village previously had over 150 kinds of edible forest products, including wild honey, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, gingers, tubers, roots, nuts and fruits, but it is now physically unsafe to collect such produce.

Another biodiversity survey of Karen’s arterial Salween River opposite Thailand’s Mae Hong Son province, undertaken by KESAN, has identified over 40 endangered plant and animal species which are being threatened by ongoing military action.

Over two dozen endemic and unknown species, including eight endemic fish species have also been identified by Dr. Chavalit Vidthayanon of WWF-Thailand.

KESAN’s report shows that the Salween River still contains amazing biodiversity, and deserves more attention from international scientists.

But a deal between Thailand and Burma for the first large-scale hydropower project on the Salween river could displace and negatively impact upon tens of thousands of poor and marginalized people from ethnic minorities in that country.

Five giant hydropower dams, of which the first is the Weigy has been planned on the Salween river by the Burmese, Thai and Chinese governments, adding to the threat from the cumulative impact of cascading dams.

KESAN activist, Ko Shwe says: ”The Karen people depend on a healthy Salween ecosystem, including fish, forest products, riverside gardens and transportation. The proposed dams will ruin the ecosystem and the free flowing river, kill the surrounding forests and destroy the lives of thousands of people.

Burma has several ongoing and proposed hydropower, gem-mining and natural gas projects countrywide with various nations, including China, Thailand, Korea and India.

In northern Shan district, a 600 Mw Chinese hydroelectric project will give Burma just 15 percent of the electricity generated and the rest will be sold to China at an undisclosed price.

According to EarthRights International, there are 69 Chinese trans-nationals involved in 90 completed, current and planned projects in hydropower,oil, natural gas and mining.

Ka Hsaw Wa, executive director of EarthRights International says on its website: ”We’ve repeatedly seen foreign companies coming into Burma with disregard for local people and the environment. Given what we know about development projects in Burma and the current situation, we’re concerned about this marked increase in the number of these projects.”

The New York-based Human Rights Watch group has called for countries to boycott Burmese gems, deals for which are going to support the military, while environmental activists say that indiscriminate mining for jade and rubies is destroying the ecology and ecosystems of northern Burma.

But despite such calls and a U.S. ban on the import of Burmese rubies and jade gem dealers say their lucrative trade has buyers from China, Russia, Thailand, India, EU and the Gulf countries.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

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