swf?pbwurl=http://w140.photobucket.com/albums/r19/theonlinecitizen/Pictures Posted on TOC/Burma/Burma Nuclear Tunnels/173d9bce.pbw" height="360" width="480">
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Myanmar's Suu Kyi party needs new blood: analysts
Myanmar's Suu Kyi party needs new blood: analysts
by Rachel O'Brien – Sun Dec 20, 1:30 am ET
BANGKOK (AFP) – Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi faces an urgent challenge to shake up her party's ranks, analysts say, after a rare meeting with her colleagues exposed a weak and ageing leadership team.
Faced with national polls next year and their leader still in detention, members of the National League for Democracy (NLD) also need to resolve ideological differences within the party, they said.
The military junta, which has ruled Myanmar with an iron fist since 1962, allowed the democracy icon to leave her prison home Wednesday to pay respects to three ailing senior members of her political party, and she used the opportunity to ask their permission to ring in changes.
Party chairman Aung Shwe, 92, secretary Lwin, 85, and central executive committee (CEC) member Lun Tin, 89, approved Suu Kyi's unprecedented request to "reorganise" the CEC, Lwin said.
At 64, Suu Kyi is the youngest of the 11-member committee, while nine are in their 80s and 90s and most of them are said to be in bad health. Related article: China's vice president in Myanmar for talks
The old guard have disagreed with younger members over party policies, including whether or not to contest polls scheduled for 2010, with many of the new generation favouring a more pragmatic approach.
"It's a make or break point for the NLD," said a Bangkok-based European diplomat on condition of anonymity. "There are obviously many hardliners in the committee who are perhaps looking to the past more than the future."
The party is yet to decide if it will take part in the elections, which critics fear are a sham designed to legitimise the junta's grip on power.
But the diplomat said the latest development showed Suu Kyi "has given her signal that she wants them to reorganise and she wants the party to get ready".
"At the moment there's an amazing lack of vision and knowledge when it comes to the economic situation, the ethnic issue -- all the key Burma challenges," the diplomat said, using Myanmar's former name and referring to tensions with minority groups.
Suu Kyi has spent most of the last 20 years in detention and calls for changes have been coming ever since her first period of freedom 14 years ago, said Derek Tonkin, chairman of the UK-based Network Myanmar.
"Since then a lot of people say she ought to have applied herself to the reorganisation of the party more than political campaigns," he said.
But Win Min, an activist and scholar in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, said new membership had been stifled by fear of the authorities.
"It may be difficult to recruit new blood at the grassroots level because of the restrictions and intimidation by the military," he said.
In August, following a prison trial, Suu Kyi was ordered to spend another 18 months in detention.
The sentence sparked an international furore as it effectively keeps her off the stage for the 2010 elections, which will be Myanmar's first since 1990, when the junta refused to recognise the NLD's landslide win.
Following moves in recent months by the United States and European Union towards a policy of engagement with Myanmar, Suu Kyi has pursued greater dialogue with the government.
She has written twice to junta chief Than Shwe, once offering her help in getting sanctions lifted and later seeking a meeting with him, while she has been allowed three meetings with the government liaison officer since October.
But her plea for talks with the other CEC members, which would be necessary to implement changes to the party, has not yet been granted.
One member, 68-year-old Khin Maung Swe, told AFP a place would be kept for loyal senior colleagues.
"It is certain that we will reorganise the committee, but we cannot say the time-frame.. .. We cannot neglect our senior CEC members if they want to serve," he said.
Although the NLD's fate largely remains in the hands of the junta, the Bangkok-based diplomat said the party members are partly to blame for their "incapacity to rejuvenate themselves".
"If they don't get this right they will be remembered for being full of good intentions but all their sacrifices will be in vain, and I think Aung San Suu Kyi had grasped that," he said.
US Message to Burma: 'Engagement' Must Bring Results
US Message to Burma: 'Engagement' Must Bring Results
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By WAI MOE Tuesday, December 22, 2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Burmese junta could face tougher US financial sanctions if Washington's new policy of direct engagement with the regime fails to produce results.
That's the message contained in recent remarks by legislators in Washington and US diplomats in Asia. It was also highlighted in a report by an Associated Press correspondent, who said: “The Obama administration has already a powerful economic weapon if talks with Myanmar [Burma] fail to achieve democratic reform: pressuring banks to avoid doing business [with the Burmese regime.]”
The agency report said the US Congress had already approved powers enabling the Administration to act against banks doing business with Burma.
The Administration's new policy on Burma links sanctions with direct engagement. The Burmese regime has, in effect, been served notice that sanctions will continue as long as no progress is scored in the contacts now taking place between US and junta officials.
This “carrot and stick” policy is the subject of wide discussion among US diplomats in Southeast Asia. Some senior US diplomats in the region told The Irrawaddy recently that if the junta generals believe engagement with Washington is giving them legitimacy they are totally wrong.
One diplomat said if the engagement policy produces no results within one year, further US actions are possible.
Some critics of the new policy point out that a similar approach followed by the US toward North Korea for more than 15 years had failed to prevent Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
The US diplomat said, however: “The Burma issue is quite different from North Korea. All in Washington know the US cannot engage with the junta without result.”
The US announced the conclusion of its Burma policy review on September 28. On the following day, Kurt Campbell, US assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, met with a Burmese delegation led by U Thaung, a former Burmese ambassador to Washington who is currently the minister of national planning.
In early November, Campbell paid a landmark visit to Burma, where he met Burmese Prime Minister Gen Thein Sein and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as opposition and ethnic leaders.
While directly engaging with the junta, the US continues to monitor business contacts closely. On Dec. 16, the US Treasury Department announced it was fining the Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse AG US $536 million for working with countries on the US sanctions list, including Burma. The fine is the biggest in the history of the department’s office of foreign assets control.
“The great majority of the transactions involved Iran, although there were also transactions that appear to have violated US sanctions on Sudan, Libya, Burma, Cuba, and the former Liberian regime of Charles Taylor,” the US Treasury Department announced.
In September, the US-based watchdog Earthrights International accused two Singapore-based banks, the Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) and DBS Group (previously known as the Development Bank of Singapore) as “offshore repositories” for the Burmese junta’s revenues from the Yadana gas project. The junta has earned at least $5 billion so far from the project.
Burma observers suspect that the Burmese generals and their cronies have lodged many millions of dollars in financial institutions in Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Dubai.
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
Obama has powerful tool to pressure Myanmar
http://www.thedaily star.net/ newDesign/ latest_news. php?nid=21238
Obama has powerful tool to pressure Myanmar
FILE - In this Nov. 15, 2009 file photo, from left, Myanmar's Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and US President Barack Obama, prepare to take their seats for a multilateral meeting with ASEAN-10 members in SingapoAP, Washington
If talks with Myanmar over democratic reforms fail, the Obama administration could tie up large amounts of money that the country's ruling generals stash in international banks from the sale of natural gas.
So far the administration has been hesitant to go that route.
But pressuring banks to avoid doing business with Myanmar's leaders could be a powerful economic weapon — one that already is being used elsewhere. It's an approach, for example, that has been used to try to push North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions.
Congress already has provided the power for the administration to go after the banks and some rights groups want President Barack Obama to use it right away, or at least if direct talks fail.
US officials have just started face-to-face negotiations and want to give them more time to show results. Imposing the banking sanctions would be expensive and time-consuming, and Myanmar isn't a top priority on a crowded foreign policy agenda that includes Afghanistan and Iran.
Still, the administration has warned of tougher action if engagement breaks down with Myanmar, also known as Burma. And the mere threat could add force to the US negotiating position.
"We will reserve the option of tightening sanctions on the regime and its supporters to respond to events in Burma," Obama's top diplomat for East Asia, Kurt Campbell, told lawmakers in September.
Myanmar has one of the most repressive governments in the world and has been controlled by the military since 1962. For years, the United States has used punishing sanctions to try to force change on the country, with little success. Former President George W. Bush's administration favored shunning Myanmar, and Bush's wife, Laura, and many in Congress were strong advocates of the nascent democracy movement there.
Now, the Obama administration has reversed the isolation policy in favor of engagement, which it hopes will persuade the generals to grant greater freedoms to opposition parties and minorities and to free political prisoners.
Myanmar has since made a few symbolic gestures of good will, letting detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi meet with Campbell, for instance, and releasing some political prisoners. At the same time, it has continued to persecute ethnic minorities, journalists and student activists.
Obama himself spoke of a possibly stronger position on Myanmar in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. There will be engagement and diplomacy with Myanmar, he said, "but there must be consequences when those things fail."
Activists say financial measures that hinder Myanmar's ruling generals' ability to access the international banking system might do what broader economic sanctions have failed to do.
"What the Burmese government values is not its commerce with the outside world but the financial proceeds of that commerce," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "Once the Burmese government deposits the checks in its bank accounts, there's a lot the United States government can do to prevent that money from being used in the international banking system."
Treasury officials have targeted 40 people and 44 entities since the Myanmar junta killed and arrested protesters during demonstrations in 2007. Being added to the sanctions list prevents people from making transactions in the banking system of the United States.
But a 2008 law grants the Treasury Department authority to impose conditions on banking relationships, meaning sanctions could affect activities of international banks.
Myanmar has lucrative natural gas deals with its neighbors and with some European and US companies, with revenues going into foreign banks. Under its new authority, the US can let these banks know it has concerns about their association with Myanmar that could hurt these banks' ability to work with US financial institutions, said Jennifer Quigley, advocacy director for the US Campaign for Burma.
Supporters of the banking sanctions often raise North Korea, saying that the United States effectively froze the North out of the international banking system in 2005, hurting leader Kim Jong Il.
For the moment, the Obama administration is urging patience as it pursues talks.
Next year's elections in Myanmar will provide a good look at the junta's intentions. A big question will be whether high-level US-Myanmar talks lead to true participation by minorities and opposition groups or merely let the generals consolidate power.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
US Congressmen Urge Release of Activist
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By LALIT K JHA Saturday, December 19, 2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WASHINGTON — In a unprecedented move, 53 US congressmen have written a letter to Burmese junta leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe urging the release of Kyaw Zaw Lwin (aka Nyi Nyi Aung), a Burma-born US citizen who has been on a hunger strike in a Burmese prison since Dec. 4.
“We urge you in the strongest possible terms to immediately and unconditionally release Mr. Aung and allow him to return to the United States,” the congressmen said in a letter to Than Shwe. The letter was sent to the military strongman through the Burmese embassy in Washington.
“Based on information relayed by the US embassy in Rangoon, it appears that Mr. Aung’s detention and trial is inconsistent with both Burmese and international law,” said the congressmen led by Howard Berman, chairman of the powerful House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
The letter, dated Dec. 17, was signed by congressmen from both the Democratic and Republican parties.
Among the signatories to the letter are Congressman Frank Wolf, co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Right Commission; House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer; Assistant to the Speaker Chris Van Hollen; and Dan Rohrabacher, ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight.
Kyaw Zaw Lwin, a democracy activist, was arrested by the Burmese authorities on Sept. 3 at Rangoon's international airport. Washington-based Freedom Now said he was attempting to visit his mother, an imprisoned democracy activist who has cancer. He was accused of using a forged Burmese identity card and illegally importing currencies into the country, Freedom Now said in a statement.
Referring to the charges against Kyaw Zaw Lwin that have appeared in the state-run newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar, the congressmen said: “We can only conclude that the new charges are pretextual and are in fact a direct result of Mr. Aung’s longstanding non-violent activities in support of freedom and democracy in Burma.”
The congressmen also said that the Burmese authorities denied him consular access for 17 days, in violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which Burma is a party.
The letter also accused the government authorities of torturing Kyaw Zaw Lwin, saying he was deprived of food and sleep for more than a week, beaten and denied medical treatment. He was also denied his right under Burmese law to regular access to counsel and a public trial, the letter said.
State Department Deputy Spokesman Robert Wood said the US embassy in Rangoon has not been able to get consular access since Dec. 4, when Kyaw Zaw Lwin went on a hunger strike.
“On Friday, Dec. 11, we heard the distressing news that Mr. Aung’s trial was canceled due to unexplained 'health reasons,' and that the US embassy has been denied access to see him. As you know, Mr. Aung has been on a hunger strike to protest the conditions of political prisoners in Burma since Dec. 4, and there are reports that his health is seriously deteriorating,” the letter said.
“The detention of an American citizen under these circumstances has caused alarm among many members of the United States Congress, and raises serious doubts about your government’s willingness to improve relations with the United States,” the congressmen said.
The US lawmakers said they believe that the way to move forward was to release all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, and begin a process of genuine political reconciliation before next year’s election.
Welcoming the letter, Freedom Now President Jared Genser said he hopes this important intervention “will make clear to the Burmese junta that the United States will first look to the treatment of one of its own citizens in assessing the junta’s willingness to engage in dialogue.”
COMMENTS (0)
Please read our policy before you post comments. Click here
Name:
E-mail: (Your e-mail will not be published.)
Comment:
You have characters left.
Word Verification: Type the characters you see in the picture.
Thailand Hotels
Bangkok Hotels
China Hotels
India Hotels
More Articles in This Section
NLD Reforming Women's Groups
'Happy Birthday' in a Prison Cell
DKBA 'Involved in Human Trafficking'
Xi Tipped to Succeed Hu
Indian Diplomat to Succeed Gambari
US Tip Led to Seizure of Arms from North Korea
'Constructive Engagement' Policy Has Not Worked: US
Junta Accuses KNU of Bomb Blast
Than Shwe to Meet Chinese Vice President
Call to Reorganize NLD Garners Support, Questions
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Home |News |Regional |Business |Opinion |Multimedia |Special Feature |Interview |Magazine |Archives |Research
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved.
Burma: Where Impunity Reigns
Burma: Where Impunity Reigns
Friday, 18 December 2009
The world needs to be reminded, again and again, that the military regime in Burma (Myanmar) continues to perpetrate every conceivable human rights violation.
Below is an article published by the New York Times:
Any Burmese showing any dissent is brutally suppressed, as the world witnessed two years ago when peaceful Buddhist monks demonstrated. Many monks were killed or have disappeared; several hundred remain in prison.
Beyond that, more than 2,000 political activists are in Burmese prisons today, subjected to torture, denial of medical treatment and ludicrous sentences.
Student leader Bo Min Yu Ko is serving a 104-year prison term; Shan ethnic leader Hkun Htun Oo has been imprisoned for 93 years; democracy activist Min Ko Naing for 65 years. The most famous human rights activist, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been under house arrest for almost 14 years, and the term was extended for a further 18 months after a sham trial.
Many of these activists are in prisons thousands of miles from their families, and several are critically ill.
One category of victims of the military dictatorship that gets far less attention is Burma’s ethnic minorities.
In eastern Burma, the regime has been conducting a brutal military campaign against people of the Karen, Karenni and Shan groups. Since 1996, more than 3,300 villages have been destroyed and more than a million people internally displaced. A Karenni friend of mine has described it as “Pol Pot in slow motion.”
The catalogue of terror includes the widespread, systematic use of rape as a weapon, forced labor, the use of human minesweepers and the forcible conscription of child soldiers.
In northern and western Burma, the predominantly Christian Chin and Kachin peoples also face systematic religious persecution.
The Muslim Rohingyas, targeted for their faith and ethnicity, are denied citizenship, despite living in Burma for generations. Thousands have escaped to miserable conditions in Bangladesh.
I have travelled more than 30 times to Burma and its borderlands. I have met former child soldiers, women who have been gang-raped, and many people who have been forced to flee from their burned villages.
Earlier this year, I met a man who had lost both his legs following an attack on his village.
When the Burmese Army came, he fled, but after the troops had moved on, he returned to his smoldering village to see if he could salvage any remaining belongings. Where his house had stood, he found nothing except ashes — hidden in which was a landmine laid by the troops. He stepped on the mine, and lost both legs.
He was carried for an entire day for basic medical treatment and then, a few weeks later, he walked on crutches through the jungle for two days to escape. He fled to a camp for internally displaced people near the Thai border. Four months later, that camp was attacked and he had to flee again.
An eyewitness once told me that in a prison camp in Chin State, prisoners who tried to escape were repeatedly stabbed, forced into a tub of salt water, and then roasted over a fire. A woman in Karen State described to me how her husband was hung upside down from a tree, his eyes gouged out, and then drowned.
The United Nations has documented these atrocities. For years, General Assembly resolutions have condemned the abuses. Previous special rapporteurs have described the violations as “the result of policy at the highest level, entailing political and legal responsibility.” A recent General Assembly resolution urged the regime to “put an end to violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.”
The U.N. has placed Burma on a monitoring list for genocide, the Genocide Risk Indices lists Burma as one of the two top “red alert” countries for genocide, along with Sudan, while the Minority Rights Group ranks Burma as one of the top five countries where ethnic minorities are under threat. Freedom House describes Burma as “the worst of the worst.”
This year, the United States reviewed its Burma policy and adopted a new approach of engagement while maintaining existing sanctions.
While this is the right approach in principle, and one advocated by the democracy movement, the danger is that the message has been misinterpreted, both by the regime and countries in the region.
Even though President Obama and senior U.S. officials have consistently emphasized that sanctions will not be lifted until there is substantial and irreversible progress in Burma, including the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners and a meaningful dialogue between the regime, the democracy movement and the ethnic nationalities, the impression created in the region is that the U.S. is going soft.
This is unfortunate, as it has let Burma’s neighbors off the hook just when they were showing tentative signs of toughening up their approach. Trying to talk to the generals is right, but it needs to be accompanied by strong and unambiguous pressure.
In short, little action has been taken by the international community. Countries continue to sell the regime arms, impunity prevails.
The violations perpetrated by the regime amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Harvard Law School’s report, “Crimes in Burma,” commissioned by five of the world’s leading jurists, concludes that there is “a prima facie case of international criminal law violations occurring that demands U.N. Security Council action to establish a Commission of Inquiry to investigate these grave breaches.”
Last week marked the 61st anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If that is to mean anything in Burma, the time has come for the U.N. to impose a universal arms embargo on the regime, to invoke the much-flaunted “Responsibility to Protect” mechanism, and to investigate the regime’s crimes. The time to end the system of impunity in Burma is long overdue.
Benedict Rogers is East Asia Team Leader with the human rights organization Christian Solidarity Worldwide, and author of several books on Burma, including “Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma’s Tyrant.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Burma: Suu Kyi Allowed to Meet Ailing Party Elders
Burma: World’s Fifth Worst Jailer of Freelance Journalists
Burma: Suu Kyi Meets With Junta Officials
Burma: Academic urges Netherlands to Engage Burma
Burma: Dutch FM Speaks with Thant Myint-U
Read more...
European Parliament Adopts Resolution on Human Rights in Burma/Myanmar
Statement by the 6th Conference of the National Council of the Union of Burma (Myanmar)
Read more...
Webdesign by Zietuwel.nl
Japan, U.S. vow cash to gain climate deal
The Japan Times Printer Friendly Articles
Japan, U.S. vow cash to gain climate deal
America set to join $100 billion aid fund: Clinton
By ERIC JOHNSTON and SETSUKO KAMIYA
Staff writers
COPENHAGEN — In a last-minute attempt to achieve a breakthrough at the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen, Japan and the United States announced Wednesday and Thursday short- and long-term financial pledges for developing countries to mitigate the effects of climate change over the next three years and to adapt to the future effects of global warming by 2020.
The announcement of new aid packages came on the ninth and final day of formal negotiations on a deal for new emissions reduction targets for the post-2012 period, following the expiration of the first period of commitments under the Kyoto Protocol.
On Wednesday evening, Japan pledged ¥1.75 trillion ($15 billion) in public and private funding to help developing countries adjust to climate change between 2010-2012. The U.S. announced Thursday morning it would work to help provide developing countries with up to $100 billion annually through yet-to-be-determined financial mechanisms and incentives by 2020 for adaptation to future climate change.
"We're announcing this pledge in the hope that it will become a driving force for the negotiations to move forward and come to a meaningful agreement," Environment Minister Sakihito Ozawa said Wednesday, at Japan's first open press briefing of the COP15 conference.
Of the total, public finance comprises about ¥1.3 trillion ($11 billion) and the rest will be collected from the private sector by creating a new plan involving the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, said Vice Foreign Minister Tetsuro Fukuyama. Details of that plan were still being discussed and will require a change in the law, he added.
Ozawa's announcement now means short-term financing pledges for developing countries, which the United Nations said should be around $30 billion by 2012, have nearly been met. The European Union announced last week that about $10.8 billion in total would be available for the remaining period and the U.S. and other countries were expected to contribute as well.
But the long-term financing of the deal has been the more controversial issue. Economists and nongovernmental organizations have said that anywhere between $140 billion and $200 billion or more would be needed by 2020 to assist developing countries facing desertification, increased floods, crop failures and potential climate refugees displaced by severe weather patterns due to global warming.
"Today, I would like to announce that in the context of a strong accord, in which all major economies stand behind meaningful mitigation actions and provide full transparency as to their implementation, the U.S. is prepared to work with other countries toward a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said.
"We expect that this funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance," she said.
But while both Japan and the U.S. offered developing nations a carrot, the pledges also came with a big stick, as Ozawa and Clinton said developing nations must commit to legally binding emissions cuts.
"If those conditions are not met, we'll have to withdraw this pledge," Ozawa said.
In a warning directed toward China — which insists that its reduction target of 40 percent to 45 percent per unit of gross domestic product by 2020 compared with 2005 levels is a domestic, voluntary measure and should not be codified in an international treaty — both Ozawa and Clinton said there were conditions attached to their pledges, which included participation in a new deal, and emissions-reduction actions that were transparent.
"I've often quoted a Chinese proverb which says that when we are in a common boat, you have to cross the river peacefully together. Well, we are in a common boat," Clinton said.
"All of the major economies have an obligation to commit to a meaningful mitigation action and stand behind them in a transparent way."
It remained to be seen whether the new pledges by the U.S. and Japan would be the game-breaker negotiators had been looking for to move the negotiations forward.
Fundamental differences over the amount by which countries should reduce their emissions remain.
The Japan Times: Friday, Dec. 18, 2009
(C) All rights reserved
Go back to The Japan Times Online Close window
Irrawaddy: Call to reorganize NLD garners support, questions – Arkar Moe
Irrawaddy: Call to reorganize NLD garners support, questions – Arkar Moe
Thu 17 Dec 2009
Filed under: Inside Burma
NLD leaders embrace Aung San Suu Kyi’s call to reorganize Burma’s most prestigious opposition party, while raising questions about timing and and other matters.However, the party now faces difficult questions of how quickly and extensively the leadership structure can be reorganized, replacing long-serving leaders now in their 80s and 90s and how will such changes affect its decision on whether or not to take part in the 2010 national election?
Among the issues within the NLD have been differences of views between younger and more senior party members in terms of aggrersive promotion of the party’s interest throughout the country and its participation in the upcoming election. In recent years, the regime closed NLD offices throughout the country, threatening its survival as a viable opposition group, and arrested and jailed many party members.
On Wednesday, Suu Kyi called for a reorganization of the central executive committee (CEC) after meeting with three elderly and ailing senior leaders.
NLD spokesman Khin Maung Swe confirmed to The Irrawaddy on Thursday that most NLD offices outside of Rangoon are closed. “There are many difficulties in holding a nationwide meeting,” he said.
He said the central executive committe can be reorganized more effectively.
The NLD has not held a nationwide party gathering for at least a decade because of harassment by the authorities and other setbacks. Although younger party members recently called for party meetings across the country, the CEC did not authorize the move, sources said.
Political observers inside Burma have said the NLD must strengthen its presence in the countryside to maintain its popularity and influence, particular ahead of the 2010 general election.
Myat Hla,74, the NLD chairperson in Pegu and an elected representative of the people’s parliament, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday, “I welcome Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s calls. Most NLD CEC members are not functioning effectively now. If the NLD does not reorganize, it will lose its leadership role.”
Senior party leader Win Tin told The Irrawaddy, “I agree that the NLD needs to reorganize, but, it won’t be easy to carry out all in short time.”
Moe Zaw Oo, secretary 2 of the Foreign Affairs Department of the National League for Democracy—Liberated Area (NLD-LA), told The Irrawaddy on Thursday: “It’s high time to reform, and I welcome Suu Kyi‘s call. It’s natural that there are different views between older members and youths. But finally we must all be united in the best interests of the NLD.”
The NLD should hold a nationwide meeting, he said, but the military government would probably not allow it.
In November 2009, NLD members from Pegu and Mandalay divisions sent a joint letter calling for a national conference to debate the issue of the NLD’s role in next year’s election.
The letter also called for the resignation of two elderly NLD leaders.
Recently, members of the youth wing of the party voiced ideological differences publically, saying the main objective of forming the NLD in 1988 was to bring about democracy and positive change in the country. They said that instead the party had drifted into a “survival” mode.
Responding to the criticism, some members said the party reversed its so-called “survival” policy, noting that in 2008, it rejected the junta’s call to withdraw NLD statements that criticized the constitutional referendum.
The NLD wrote to the Election Commission on Nov. 16 saying that under the election law it had the authority to reorganize its party.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
က်န္စစ္သား … ငါ့ကို ခိုးၿပီ
၁။
ေန ့ေတြ ညေတြ
ေနေတြ လေတြ
တေရြ ့ေရြ ့တိုက္စား
လိႈက္စားလာတဲ့ ေ၀ဒနာမွာ
ဘာကို ယံုလို ့
ဘာေတြ ပံုအပ္ရမွာတဲ့လဲ ။
၂။
ဘယ္လိုေခတ္ဆိုးႀကီးပါလိမ့္
ေဟာဒီ အေမွာင္ထုထဲမွာပဲ
အေၾကာက္တရားနဲ ့ေခ်ာက္ခ်ားေနၾကေတာ့မွာလား
အေၾကာက္တရားနဲ ့ ေဖာက္ျပားသြားေတာ့မွာလား ။
ဇာတ္တူသားစားတဲ ့ လူတန္းစားတရပ္
အျမစ္ျဖတ္ဖို ့လိုၿပီ ။
မာယာမ်ားတဲ့ ကစားပြဲထဲ
ကံစမ္းမဲမ်ား ပါေလမလား
အေရာင္ေျပာင္းလြယ္တဲ့
ဦးေဆြးဆံေျမ ့ အမႈထမ္းလိုသူမ်ားရဲ ့
အလိုရမၼက္ဟာ
ၿပိဳကြဲပ်က္စီးျခင္းနဲ ့ အဆံုးသတ္ရလိမ့္မယ္ ။
၃။
ကံကိုယံုၿပီး ဆူးပံုမနင္းနဲ ့
ဆူးစူးတာပဲ ခံရမယ္ ။
အသက္ကို ဉာဏ္ေစာင့္တယ္
ေအာင္ပြဲနဲ ့အနာဂတ္ကို အမွန္တရားေစာင့္တယ္
အဲဒီၾကားက မင္းေစာလူးရဲ ့
က်န္စစ္သား ငါ ့ကို ခိုးၿပီ ဆိုစကား
မင္းတို ့ႏႈတ္ဖ်ားက ထြက္က်လာရင္
မင္းတို ့ထိုက္နဲ ့ မင္းတို ့ကံ
ေခြးေသ ၀က္ေသ က်န္ခဲ့ေပေတာ့
အဖန္ဖန္အခါခါ ကၽြန္ျပဳ ခံၾကေပေတာ့ ။
၄။
အယုတ္ အလတ္ အျမတ္ မေရြး
သမိုင္းေပးတာ၀န္အေရးကို
ကိုယ့္အေရးလိုေတြး
ႏွစ္ေထာင့္ရွစ္ ဖြဲ ့စည္းပံုအေျခခံဥပေဒကို
ဖ်က္သိမ္းေပး
ႏွစ္ေထာင့္တဆယ္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို
ဖ်က္သိမ္းေပး
ဇ်က္သိမ္းေပး ဖ်က္သိမ္းေပး အရာမ်ားစြာ
ေရႊဂံုတိုင္ ေၾကညာစာတမ္းသာ
တတိုင္းျပည္လံုးရဲ ့ အသက္ျဖစ္တယ္။
ရဲရင့္သက္ဇြဲ
၂၀၀၉ ဒီဇင္ဘာ ၁၄
Myanmar lets dissident meet with her party
Myanmar lets dissident meet with her party
Move comes as Obama seeks to engage junta
By Mark McDonald, New York Times News | December 17, 2009
HONG KONG - The military junta in Myanmar allowed the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to meet with senior members of her party yesterday, the latest in a recent series of signals that suggest the junta might be responding to diplomatic overtures from the West.
A Western diplomat in the main city of Yangon, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Suu Kyi was permitted to leave her home under military guard to meet with three elderly leaders of her National League for Democracy. She has been under house arrest for 14 of the past 20 years.
The meeting took place at a state guest house in Yangon, the former Rangoon. She had not been permitted to confer with her party colleagues in nearly a year.
Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace laureate, had requested the meeting in a letter to the leader of the junta, Senior General Than Shwe. She also requested a meeting with the general himself.
Despite her continuing detention, Suu Kyi has been able to meet in recent months with a number of visiting diplomats, including a high-level delegation from the United States that was led by Kurt M. Campbell, an assistant secretary of state, and his deputy, Scot Marciel.
Earlier this year, the Obama administration undertook a review of American policy toward Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, and decided to seek a new approach, including direct talks with the junta.
But Campbell said a wide array of sanctions against Myanmar would not be immediately relaxed, and improved bilateral relations depended on the regime making “real progress on democracy and human rights,’’ a demand reiterated by President Obama at a regional summit meeting last month in Singapore.
While in Singapore, Obama sat in a meeting near the prime minister of Myanmar, General Thein Sein - the first time an American president had met with a member of the junta.
Suu Kyi met for 45 minutes yesterday with the National League for Democracy chairman, Aung Shwe, 92; the party secretary, U Lwin, 87; and another senior official, Lun Tin.
The elderly leaders of the party are known collectively in diplomatic circles in Yangon as “the uncles.’’
Their meeting, which U Lwin discussed with reporters afterward, took place less than a week before the highest court in Myanmar is scheduled to begin considering an appeal of the 18-month extension of Suu Kyi’s house arrest.
That extension, which was handed down in August, came after an American man swam to her lakeside home in May, evaded military guards and briefly stayed there - a breach of the terms of her detention.
One of her lawyers, Kyi Win, said this month that the hearing would likely be a procedural affair. But a successful appeal and a lifting of her detention could allow Suu Kyi to play a role in national elections that the junta has vowed to hold next year.
Analysts and diplomats say the country’s new Constitution virtually ensures the continuing dominance of the military in the political life of the country, despite the election. Suu Kyi would likely be barred from running for office because her husband, who died in 1999, was a foreigner.
Her party won a landslide victory in national elections in 1990, and she was elected prime minister. The results of the election were annulled by the junta, which has continued to rule ever since.
© Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Friday, December 11, 2009
Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC) Press Release, 29 October 2009, Rising Instability in Eastern Burma
PRESS RELEASE, 29 OCTOBER 2009
RISING INSTABILITY IN EASTERN BURMA
Bangkok - During this sixtieth anniversary year of the Geneva Conventions, Israel’s military assault on Gaza
and Sri Lanka’s refusal to distinguish between Tamil combatants and civilians have been high profile
challenges to the relevance of international humanitarian law. Out of the media spotlight, the Burmese Army
similarly persists in breaking the rules of war by indiscriminately attacking civilians and causing massive
displacement. Indeed, aid agencies report that threats to human security in eastern Burma are increasing.
“After 25 years of responding to the consequences of conflict in eastern Burma, it is tragic to see the causes
remain unaddressed and the situation is likely to further deteriorate during the next twelve months. A recent
influx of refugees into Thailand and monitoring reports from internally displaced communities indicate that
violence and abuse in eastern Burma are increasing”, said Jack Dunford, Executive Director of the Thailand
Burma Border Consortium (TBBC).
TBBC is an alliance of twelve aid agencies from ten countries working to provide food, shelter, non-food
items and capacity building support to Burmese refugees and displaced persons. The humanitarian agency
has just released findings from field surveys about conflict and displacement conducted with over 3,100
households during the past 5 years in rural areas of eastern Burma.
The main threats to human security in eastern Burma are related to militarisation. Military patrols and
landmines are the most significant and fastest growing threat to civilian safety and security, while forced
labour and restrictions on movement are the most pervasive threats to livelihoods. Trend analysis suggests
that the threats to both security and livelihoods have increased during the past five years.
Over 3,500 villages and hiding sites in eastern Burma have been destroyed or forcibly relocated since 1996,
including 120 communities between August 2008 and July 2009. The scale of displaced villages is
comparable to the situation in Darfur and has been recognised as the strongest single indicator of crimes
against humanity in eastern Burma. At least 75,000 people were forced to leave their homes during this past
year, and more than half a million people remain internally displaced.
The highest rates of recent displacement were reported in northern Karen areas and southern Shan State.
Almost 60,000 Karen villagers are hiding in the mountains of Kyaukgyi, Thandaung and Papun Townships,
and a third of these civilians fled from artillery attacks or the threat of Burmese Army patrols during the past
year. Similarly, nearly 20,000 civilians from 30 Shan villages were forcibly relocated by the Burmese Army in
retaliation for Shan State Army-South (SSA-S) operations in Laikha, Mong Kung and Keh Si Townships.
Thailand’s National Security Council recently acknowledged it was preparing for another mass influx of
refugees due to conflict in Burma’s border areas leading up to the proposed elections in 2010. Conflict has
already intensified in Karen State with over 4,000 Karen refugees fleeing into Thailand during June. The
increased instability is related to demands that ethnic ceasefire groups transform into Border Guard Forces
under Burmese Army command. Such pressure has already resulted in the resumption of hostilities in the
Kokang region which caused 37,000 civilians to flee into China.
“The breakdown of 20 year old ceasefire agreements reflects how the Burmese junta’s ‘road map to
democracy’ offers no political settlement for the ethnic minority groups. Whether next year’s elections
provide a small window of opportunity or merely entrench military rule, there is an urgent need to address
ethnic grievances in order to promote national reconciliation and solutions for displaced persons”, said Mr
Dunford.
ENDS
Enquiries (in Thailand) : Sally Thompson (+66) 022385027, or (+66) 0898508457
“Protracted Displacement and Militarisation in Eastern Burma” is available from
www.tbbc.org/resources/resources.htm
http://www.tbbc.org/announcements/2009-10-29-media-release.pdf
Hatoyama Cabinet E-mail Magazine No. 10 (December 11, 2009)
===================================================================
Hatoyama Cabinet E-mail Magazine No. 10 (December 11, 2009)
===================================================================
Yukio Hatoyama's "Yu-Ai"
-- Message from the Prime Minister (Provisional Translation)
"Emergency Economic Countermeasures for Future Growth and Security"
I am sure that many of you in Japan have been turning a skeptical
eye toward news reports that claim, "Economic recovery is underway,"
saying to yourselves, "Really? It does not feel that way."
The government feels exactly the same way. To be sure, the numbers
appear to show that the worst of the economic downturn is behind us,
but that is only because of the external demand generated by
economic growth in China and other Asian nations. In fact, the
nominal growth rate, which better reflects our sense of reality,
has been negative for some time; there is far too much supply
chasing too little demand.
In addition to this deflationary -- albeit mild -- environment, the
yen's recent rise in the currency markets is also worrisome. This
is why the government has put together the Emergency Economic
Countermeasures for Future Growth and Security as the first
economic package of the new regime.
First and foremost, we need to reinforce employment countermeasures.
At the top of the list comes easing conditions for the employment
adjustment subsidies. Under the employment adjustment subsidies
system, the government provides a firm with subsidies to make up
for the deficiency in wages when it only has enough work, for
example, for three days a week instead of the normal five for its
employees. The firm will thus be able to keep them on the payroll
and will not have to conduct lay offs. We have decided to ease
requirements so that a firm operating at a loss will be able to
receive the subsidies regardless of the size of the firm if its
production volume is down 10 percent or more from the year before
the previous year.
Next, we will strengthen support for students graduating next
spring who have not yet been able to line up a job. We will deploy
job-search advisors in universities and colleges, and increase the
number of high school and college graduate vocational supporters.
We will also identify firms that are eager to take on new hires,
support internships in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs),
and request business associations to increase job offers.
We will do our utmost to secure financing, including offering more
flexible repayment extensions, so that SMEs in severe business
conditions can tide over the year's end safely. We will remodel the
emergency credit guarantee system as a counter-recessionary
emergency credit guarantee system, making it more accessible so
that SMEs in all industrial sectors in principle can use it.
Moreover, we will raise the guarantee limit by six trillion yen and
extend the deadline to March 2011. Safety-net lending will also be
expanded by four trillion yen and its deadline similarly extended.
We will also seek to simultaneously achieve global-warming
countermeasures and economic recovery. First, as the three pillars
of eco-consumption, the home appliances eco-point system will be
extended until the end of December 2010 with improvements that lead
to increased use of LED light bulbs; the eco-car subsidy will also
be extended to the end of September 2010; and an eco-point system
for housing shall be newly created, giving eco-points for
eco-housing construction and retrofitting.
With this new set of countermeasures, in addition to emergency
responses, we take laying the foundations of a growth strategy into
account for the middle and long term. For example, in the
environmental field, we will encourage the regeneration of Japanese
forests and forestry, and aggressively promote green innovation --
the accelerated development of revolutionary environmental/energy
technology such as the development of materials indispensible to
the realization of a low-carbon society.
We will swiftly move forward with the formation of the
supplementary budget so that we will be able to implement these
measures quickly. In addition, the entire government will be
devoted to the formation of the budget for the next fiscal year and
tax reforms. In our determination not to allow a double dip to
occur, we will devote ourselves to managing the Japanese economy so
that the lives of the people of Japan are put first and foremost,
by maintaining the economy and employment and, at the same time,
laying the foundations of our future growth strategy.
General Editor : Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama
Chief Editor : Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yorihisa Matsuno
Publication : Cabinet Public Relations Office
1-6-1 Nagata-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-8968, Japan
Thursday, December 10, 2009
လူမုံလာဥ၊ လူၾကက္ဥနဲ႔ လူလက္ဖက္ေျခာက္
မွတ္ခ်က္။ ။
ညီမေလးဟခ်ိမိစုကပို ့ေပးလိုက္လို ့တင္လိုက္ပါတယ္။
လူမုံလာဥ၊ လူၾကက္ဥနဲ႔ လူလက္ဖက္ေျခာက္
ဒီေလာကဓံပုံျပင္စာတမ္းေလးနဲ႔ပဲ ဒီေနရမွာ ႏႈတ္ဆက္ခဲ႔ပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ အေျခအေနေပးလုိ႔၊ ဘေလာ႔လည္းဖြင္႔ရလုိ႔ အခြင္႔ၾကဳံရင္ေတာ႔ ေရးရအုန္းမွာေပါ႔ေလ။ လူတုိင္းဟာ ဘ၀ရဲ႕ ေလာကဓံနဲ႔ မကင္းနိဳင္ပါဘူးေနာ္.။ အဲဒီေတာ႔ ဒီေလာကဓံ ပုံျပင္ေလးကုိ ဖတ္ျပီး...စာဖတ္သူ သူငယ္ခ်င္းးမ်ား ဘ၀ရဲ႕ ေလာကဓံအေထြေထြကုိ အျပံဳမပ်က္ ရင္ဆုိင္ ေက်ာ္လြားနိဳင္ၾကပါေစလုိ႔ ဆုမြန္ေကာင္းေတာင္းရင္း
လူမုံလာဥ၊ လူၾကက္ဥနဲ႔ လူလက္ဖက္ေျခာက္
တစ္ခါက ဤေလာကရဲ႕ တစ္ေနရာမွာ သားအဖႏွစ္ေယာက္ ရွိေလသတဲ႔။
တစ္ေန႔မွာ သမီးလုပ္တဲ႔သူက ဖေအကုိ တုိင္တည္တယ္။ သူ႔ဘ၀မွာ အဆင္မေျပတာေတြက မ်ားေနတယ္ေပါ႔။ ဘာလုပ္လုပ္ အဆင္မေျပတာေတြခ်ည္းမုိ႔ အားကပ်က္ေနျပီး အရာရာကုိ လက္ေလွ်ာ႔လုိက္ခ်င္စိတ္က ေပါက္ေနျပီ ေဖေဖရယ္။ တုိက္ရခုိက္ရတာ၊ ရုန္းရကန္ရတာလည္း သမီးမွာ ေမာလွပါျပီ။ ပန္းလွပါျပီရွင္။ ျပႆနာတစ္ခု ေျပလည္သြားလုိ႔မွ မနားရေသးဘူး၊ ေနာက္ထပ္ ျပႆနာတစ္ခုက ထပ္တက္လာနဲ႔၊ ဘ၀ဆုိတာ ဒုကၡတြင္းၾကီးထဲ ေစာက္ထုိးဆင္းေနရသလုိပါပဲ ေဖေဖရယ္။ သမီးေတာ႔ စိတ္ညစ္တယ္။ လူေတာင္ဆက္မလုပ္ခ်င္ေတာ႔ဘူး ဘာညာစသျဖင္႔ ဖေအကုိ တုိင္တည္ရင္း ညည္းရွာတယ္။
ဖေအလုပ္တဲ႔သူက စားဖုိမွဴးၾကီးပါ။
သမီးကလည္း အဲသလုိ ညည္းညဴတုိင္တည္လာေရာ ဖေအက ဘာမေျပာညာမေျပာနဲ႔ သမီးကုိ လက္ဆြဲျပီး မီးဖုိေခ်ာင္းထဲ ေခၚသြားတယ္တဲ႔။ ျပီးေတာ႔ အုိးသုံးလုံးထဲကုိ ေရေတြျဖည့္ျပီး မီးျပင္းျပင္းနဲ႔ ဖုိသုံးဖုိေပၚမွာ တည္လုိက္တယ္။ မၾကာပါဘူး၊ မီးေတြကျပင္းေတာ႔ သုံးအုိးစလုံးထဲက ေရေတြ ပြက္ပြက္ဆူလာေတာ႔တာေပါ႔။
ေရေႏြးလည္းဆူေရာ ဖေအလုပ္တဲ႔သူက တစ္အုိးထဲကုိ မုံလာဥေတြထည့္၊ ေနာက္တစ္အုိးထဲကုိ ၾကက္ဥေတြထည့္၊ ေနာက္တစ္အုိးထဲကုိက်ေတာ႔ လက္ဖက္ေျခာက္ေတြ ထည့္လုိက္ပါတယ္။
ျပီးေတာ႔ အုိးေတြကုိ သည္အတုိင္း ဆက္တည္ထားလုိက္တယ္။ စကားေတာ႔ တစ္လုံးမွာမေျပာဘူး။
သမီးလုပ္တဲ႔သူက ေဖေဖ႔ႏွယ္ ဘာေတြမ်ားလုပ္ေနျပန္တာလဲလုိ႔ေတြးရင္း စိတ္ကတယ္မရွည္ခ်င္ဘူး။ ဒါေပမယ္႔ ဘာကုိမဆုိအေၾကာင္းမဲ႔ မလုပ္တတ္တဲ႔ ဖေအ႔အေၾကာင္းကုိ သိထားေတာ႔ အံကေလးတင္းရင္း စိတ္မရွည္စြာနဲ႔ပဲ ေစာင္႔ေနရပါေတာ႔တယ္။
ဆယ္မိနစ္ေလာက္ၾကာေတာ႔ ဖေအလုပ္တဲ႔သူက မီးသုံးဖုိစလုံးကုိ သတ္လုိက္ျကီး ပထမအုိးထဲက မုံလာဥေတြကုိဆယ္၊ ပန္းကန္တစ္ခ်ပ္ထဲထည့္တယ္၊ ေနာက္တစ္အုိးထဲက ၾကက္ဥေတြကုိလည္း ဆယ္ျပီး တစ္ျခားပန္းကန္တစ္လုံးထဲထည့္တယ္။ ေနာက္ဆုံးအုိးထဲက လက္ဖက္ရည္ၾကမ္းေတြကုိလည္း ပန္းကန္တစ္လုံးထဲထည့္တယ္။ ျပီးေတာ႔မွ သမီးဘက္ လွည့္တဲ႔ျပီး ေမးလုိက္တယ္။
“ကဲ…သမီးေလးေရ၊ ဒါေတြက ဘာေတြလဲ…”
“မုံလာဥျပဳတ္ရယ္၊ ၾကက္ဥျပဳတ္ရယ္၊ ေရေႏြးၾကမ္းရယ္ပါ ေဖေဖ”
သမီးက အဲလုိေျဖလုိက္ေတာ႔ ဖေအက သမီးကုိ သူ႔နားလာခုိင္းျပီး မုံလာဥေတြကုိ စမ္းခုိင္းတယ္၊ သမီးက ဖေအခုိင္းတဲ႔အတုိင္း မုံလာဥျပဳတ္ေတြကုိ ဇြန္းနဲ႔ ထုိးၾကည့္လုိက္ျပီးတဲ႔ေနာက္ “ေဖေဖ႔ မုံလာဥေတြကလည္း ေပ်ာ႔ျပဲေနျပီ…”လုိ႔ေျပာလုိက္ပါတယ္။
ဖေအက သမီးစကားကုိ အမႈမထားဘဲ ၾကက္ဥျပဳတ္တစ္လုံးကုိ ယူျပီး သမီးကုိ ခြဲခုိင္းျပန္တယ္၊ အေပၚက အကာကုိခြါလုိက္တဲ႔အခါမွာေတာ႔ ေကာင္းေကာင္းၾကီးက်က္ေနျပီးျဖစ္တဲ႔ ၾကက္ဥျပဳတ္ေပါ႔။
ေနာက္ဆုံးမွာေတာ႔ ေရေႏြးၾကမ္းကုိ ျမည္းၾကည့္ဖုိ႔ ဖေအက ခုိင္းလုိက္ျပန္တယ္။ သမီးလုပ္တဲ႔သူက ျပံဳးလုိက္ရင္းကေန ဖေအခုိင္းတဲ႔အတုိင္း အေငြ႕တေထာင္းေထာင္းထေနတဲ႔ ေရေႏြးၾကမ္းပူပူကုိ တဖူးဖူးမႈတ္လုိ႔ ျမည္းလုိက္ရပါတယ္။ အင္မတန္ေမႊးပ်ံ႕ျပီး အရသာရွိတဲ႔ လက္ဖက္ရည္ၾကမ္းျဖစ္ေနတာကုိလည္း သတိထားလုိက္မိတယ္။
“ေဖေဖ ဘာကုိ ေျပာခ်င္တာလဲဟင္….”
လက္ဖက္ရည္ၾကမ္းကုိ အရသာခံရင္ သမီး မေအာင္႔နိဳင္ေတာ႔ဘဲ ေမးလုိက္မိပါေတာ႔တယ္။
ဖေအက ရွင္းျပတယ္။
“မုံလာဥရယ္၊ ၾကက္ဥရယ္၊ လက္ဖက္ေျခာက္ရယ္ဆုိတဲ႔ မတူတဲ႔ အရာသုံးမ်ိဳးဟာ တူညီတဲ႔ ဒုကၡျဖစ္တဲ႔ ေရေႏြးပူပူထဲမွာ တစ္ျပိဳင္းတည္း၊ တစ္ညီတည္း ထည့္အျပဳတ္ခံခဲ႔ရတာခ်င္းအတူတူ တုံ႕ျပန္ပုံခ်င္းက်ေတာ႔ မတူဘူးေလ သမီးရဲ႕။
“မုံလာဥဟာ ေရေႏြးပူထဲ မေရာက္ခင္တုန္းကေတာ႔ သန္သန္မာမာ၊ ေတာင္႔ေတာင္႔တင္းတင္းၾကီးရယ္၊ အဲ…ဒါေပမယ္႔ ေရေႏြးနဲ႔လည္း အျပဳတ္ခံလုိက္ရေရာ တစ္ခါတည္းကုိ ေပ်ာ႔ဖတ္ျပီး ခ်ိနဲ႔သြားေတာ႔တာပဲ…”
“ၾကက္ဥကက်ေတာ႔ ေရေႏြးထဲမေရာက္ခ်င္က အထိမခံဘူး။ ထိလုိက္တာနဲ႔ ဖတ္ခနဲကြဲမွာ အေသအခ်ာေနာ္။ အေပၚခြံပါးပါးေလးက အထဲက အရည္ၾကည္ေပ်ာ႔ဖတ္ဖတ္ေလးေတြကုိ ကာရံထားရတဲ႔ အေနအထားေပါ႔။ ဒါေပမယ္႔ ေရေႏြးဆူဆူထဲမွာလည္း ၾကာၾကာေလး ေနလုိက္ရေရာ အဲသည္ေပ်ာ႔အိအိအတြင္းသားေတြအားလုံး မာကုန္တာပဲ မဟုတ္လား သမီးရဲ႕…”
“ေအး…လက္ဖက္ေျခာက္ကေတာ႔ တစ္ဘာသာပဲ။ ေရေႏြးပြက္ပြက္ထဲလည္း ေရာက္သြားေရာ အဲသည္ပြက္ပြက္ဆူေနတဲ႔ ေရကုိပါ လက္ဖက္ရည္အျဖစ္ ေျပာင္းလဲ ပစ္လုိက္တယ္…”
“ကဲ..အေဖ့ သမီးကေရာ ဘာလဲ၊ မုံလာဥလား၊ ၾကက္ဥလား၊ လက္ဖက္ေျခာက္လား၊ ေလာကဓံဆုိတာေတာ႔ လူတုိင္းရင္ဆုိင္ၾကရတာပဲ သမီး။ အဲသည္ ေလာကဓံနဲ႔ နဖူးေတြ႕၊ ဒူးေတြ႕ ရင္ဆုိင္ရတဲ႔အခါမွာ သမီးက ဘယ္လုိတုံ႕ျပန္လုိက္ခ်င္သလဲ။ မုံလာဥလုိ တုံ႔ျပန္မလား၊ ၾကက္ဥလုိ တုံ႕ျပန္မလား၊ လက္ဖက္ေျခာက္လုိ တုံ႕ျပန္မလား သမီးဘာသာစဥ္းစား ေပေတာ႔ကြယ္…”
ပုံျပင္ေလးကေတာ႔ ဒါပါပဲ။
စာဖတ္သူ သူငယ္ခ်င္းကေရာ ဘယ္လုိပါလဲ။
အျပင္ပန္းအျမင္မွာေတာ႔ မုံလာဥလုိ မာမာေက်ာေက်ာ ေတာင္႔ေတာင္႔ တင္းတင္းၾကီးနဲ႔၊ ေလာကဓံနဲ႔ တကယ္တမ္းရင္ဆုိင္ရတဲ႔ အခါက်ရင္ေတာ႔ ေပ်ာ႔ေခြႏြမ္းရိျပီး အားကုန္သြားမယ္႔ လူစားမ်ိဳးပါလား။
ဒါမွမဟုတ္ ၾကက္ဥလုိ လူစားလား၊ အစတုန္းကေတာ႔ ထိလြယ္ ရွလြယ္တယ္၊ စိတ္ကလည္း ေပ်ာ႔တယ္၊ ဒါေပမယ္႔ ေသျခင္းတရားလုိ၊ ရွင္ကြဲ ကြဲတာလုိ၊ စီးပြားေရးစသည္ ခၽြတ္ျခံဳက်တာလုိ ၾကမၼာဆုိးတစ္ခုခုကုိ အျပင္းအထန္ ခံစားရျပီးတဲ႔ ေနာက္မွာေတာ႔ နင္လားဟဲ႔….ေလာကလဓံဆုိတဲ႔ စိတ္ဓာတ္၊ ထီမထင္တဲ႔ စိတ္ဓာတ္နဲ႔ မာေက်ာေက်ာ၊ ေတာင္႔တင္းတင္းၾကီး ျဖစ္သြားမယ္႔ လူစားမ်ိဳးလား၊ မျပဳတ္ခင္ ၾကက္ဥနဲ႔ ျပဳတ္ျပီးသား ၾကက္ဥလုိပဲ၊ အျပင္ပန္းအျမင္မွာ သိပ္မကြာလွေပမယ္႔ အတြင္းမွာ ခါးသီးမာေက်ာေနတဲ႔ ႏွလုံးသားနဲ႔ လူစားမ်ိဳး ျဖစ္ေနမွာလား။
ဒါမွမဟုတ္ စာဖတ္သူ သူငယ္ခ်င္းဟာ လက္ဖက္ေျခာက္လုိ လူမ်ိဳးလား။ ေရပူကုိေပမယ္႔ အသြင္ေျပာင္းေပးနိဳင္တာမ်ိဳးေလ၊ လက္ဖက္ေျခာက္ဆုိတာက ေရေႏြးဆူေလေလ၊ ပြတ္ေလေလ လက္ဖက္ရည္ အရသာေကာင္းေလေလေပါ႔။ လက္ဖက္ေျခာက္လို လူဆုိတာကလည္း ဒုကၡသုကၡေတြ အရွိန္တက္ေလေလ အရည္အခ်င္းေတြ ပုိရွိလာေလျဖစ္ျပီး ကုိယ္႔ပတ္၀န္းက်င္အတြက္ ပုိေကာင္းတဲ႔အေျခေနကုိ ဖန္းတီးေပးနိဳင္သူ ျဖစ္ေနပါလိမ္႔မယ္။
ကဲ….ဒီစာဖတ္သူ သူငယ္ခ်င္း ေလာကဓံကုိ ဘယ္လုိရင္ဆုိင္မယ္ စိတ္ကူးပါသလဲ။
ကုိယ္႔ဘာသာ ဆင္ျခင္ပုိင္းျဖတ္လုိက္ၾကရုံပါပဲ။
Best Regards
ေက်ာ္သူ..(သရုပ္ေဆာင္)ရဲ႕ခုတ္မယ္၊ထစ္မယ္၊ပါးပါးလွီးမယ္။
မွတ္ခ်က္။ ။
ညီမေလးဟခ်ိမိဆုကထပ္ဆင့္ပို ့ေပးလိုက္လို ့တင္လိုက္ပါတယ္
ေက်ာ္သူ..(သရုပ္ေဆာင္)ရဲ႕ခုတ္မယ္၊ထစ္မယ္၊ပါးပါးလွီးမယ္။
ဗုဒၶဘာသာ ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးမ်ားသည္ ရတနာသံုးပါးကို ၾကည္ညိဳေလးစား ဦးခိုက္ၾကေသာ္လည္း ကံႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ ယံုၾကည္မႈ အားနည္းမႈမ်ားကို ေတြ႕ရသည္။ ဗုဒၶျမတ္စြာ ဘုရားရွင္သည္ ေကာင္းတာလုပ္ ေကာင္းက်ိဳးေပးမည္၊ မေကာင္းတာလုပ္ မေကာင္းမႈမ်ား အက်ိဳးရမည္ဟူ၍ ေဟာၾကားခဲ့ေတာ္မူသည္။ မိမိ၏ ကံသာလွ်င္ မိမိ၏ ကိုယ္ပိုင္ပစၥည္း၊ ကိုယ္ပိုင္ဥစၥာမ်ားျဖစ္သည္။ ေကာင္းက်ိဳး၊ ဆိုးက်ိဳး တို႕သည္ ကံတရားေပၚ၌သာ တည္ေလသည္ဟူ၍ ျမတ္စြာဘုရားရွင္၏ ေဒသနာေတာ္မ်ားရွိခဲ့သည္။
သို႕ေသာ္ . . . . .''ဟာ ... မင္းတို႕က တတ္လည္း တတ္ႏိုင္ရဲ႕သားနဲ႕၊ ပိုက္ဆံလည္း ရွိသားနဲ႕ ဘာလုိ႕ ဒီနာေရး ကူညီမႈ အသင္းကိုမွ သြားၿပီး အကူအညီ ေတာင္းရတာလဲ'' ဘာျဖစ္လို႕ ကိုယ္ပိုင္ အေခါင္း (Coffin) နဲ႕ မီး မသၿဂိဳလ္တာလဲ''စသည္ ... စသည္ စကားသံမ်ား၊ တီးတိုး သံမ်ားသည္ ကြၽန္ေတာ့္ အေဒၚဝမ္းကြဲေတာ္ သူ၏ နာေရးကိစၥတြင္ အေဒၚ၏ သားျဖစ္သူ၊ ကြၽန္ေတာ္၏ ညီဝမ္းကြဲအား သူတို႕၏ ပတ္ဝန္းက်င္ အသိုင္းအဝိုင္း တစ္ခ်ိဳ႕မွ ေျပာၾကားလိုက္ေသာ စကားရပ္မ်ားပင္ ျဖစ္ေတာ့သည္။ ကြၽန္ေတာ္၏ ညီဝမ္းကြဲမွ ကြၽန္ေတာ့္အား ျပန္လည္၍ ပူေဆြးေသာက အပူမီးမ်ားထဲမွ အားယူကာ တီးတိုး ျပန္လည္ ေျပာျပ၍ ကြၽန္ေတာ္ သိလိုက္ရျခင္းပင္။
ဤတြင္ ကြၽန္ေတာ့္တြင္ ရွင္းျပရန္ တာဝန္ရွိလာသည္။ ကြၽန္ေတာ့္ ကိုယ္ပိုင္ဉာဏ္၊ ကိုယ္ပိုင္ အသိႏွင့္ ရွင္းျပသည္ထက္ ကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႕၏ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ႀကီးျဖစ္ေသာ၊ ကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႕ ၾကည္ညိဳ ေလးစားေသာ မႏၲေလးၿမိဳ႕၊ ျဗဟၼစုိရ္ေက်ာင္းတိုက္ ဆရာေတာ္ႀကီး မဟာဓမၼကထိက ဗဟုဇန ဟိတဓရ ဘဒၵႏၲတိကၡ ေဟာၾကားခဲ့ေသာ ယႆ သတို႕သား တရားေတာ္ထဲမွ လူမ်ား အယူသီး ပံုမ်ား၊ အစြဲႀကီးပံုမ်ား၊ တလြဲ ဆံပင္ ေကာင္းမႈမ်ားကို ထုတ္ႏႈတ္ ရွင္းျပ ပါမည္။
ဆရာေတာ္ႀကီးသည္ ဤယႆ သတို႕သား အရဟတၱဖိုလ္တည္ခန္း တရားေတာ္ကို အမ်ိဳး၊ ဘာသာ ၊ သာသနာ အတြက္ ေဟာၾကား ျခင္းပင္ျဖစ္သည္။ ဗုဒၶဘာသာ ျမန္မာ လူမ်ိဳးမ်ားသည္ ရတနာ သံုးပါးကို ၾကည္ညိဳ ေလးစား ဦးခိုက္ၾကေသာ္လည္း ကံႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ ယံုၾကည္မႈ အားနည္း မႈမ်ားကို ေတြ႕ရသည္။ ဗုဒၶျမတ္စြာ ဘုရားရွင္သည္ ေကာင္းတာလုပ္ ေကာင္းက်ိဳး ေပးမည္၊ မေကာင္းတာ လုပ္ မေကာင္းမႈမ်ား အက်ိဳး ရမည္ ဟူ၍ ေဟာၾကား ခဲ့ေတာ္မူသည္။ မိမိ၏ ကံသာလွ်င္ မိမိ၏ ကိုယ္ပိုင္ ပစၥည္း၊ ကိုယ္ပိုင္ ဥစၥာမ်ားျဖစ္သည္။ ေကာင္းက်ိဳး၊ ဆိုးက်ိဳး တို႕သည္ ကံတရား ေပၚ၌သာ တည္ ေလသည္ ဟူ၍ ျမတ္စြာ ဘုရားရွင္၏ ေဒသနာ ေတာ္မ်ားရွိခဲ့သည္။
သို႕ေသာ္ လူအမ်ားစုသည္ နာေရး ကိစၥမ်ားတြင္ အယူသီး ၾကသည္။ နာေရး ကိစၥေၾကာင့္ စီးပြား ပ်က္တယ္၊ လူေသ တတ္တယ္၊ ထိခိုက္ နစ္နာမယ္၊ ပ်က္စီး ဆံုး႐ႈံး တတ္တယ္၊ နိမိတ္ မေကာင္းမႈေတြ ျဖစ္ေစတယ္ ... စသည္ ... စသည္ျဖင့္ ဘိုးေဘး ဘီဘင္ လက္ထက္ကတည္းက အယူ သီးမႈမ်ား၊ အ႐ိုး စြဲမႈမ်ား၊ အမွား စြဲမ်ား ရွင္သန္လာခဲ့သည္။
ယေန႕ေခတ္ လူ ေတာ္ေတာ္ မ်ားမ်ားသည္ အဆင္း၊ အနံ႕၊ အသံ၊ အရသာ၊ အေတြ႕အထိ ဟူေသာ အာ႐ံု ငါးပါးထဲတြင္ နစ္မြန္း ေနၾကကာ မိမိကိုယ္ကို မိမိတို႕ သုဘ (သို႕မဟုတ္) မဂၤလာဟု ထင္ေန ၾကသည္။ ျမင္ေနၾကသည္။ အမွန္ စစ္စစ္ ရွင္သူ၊ ေသသူတို႕ အားလံုးသည္ အသုဘ (သို႕မဟုတ္) အ မဂၤလာမ်ားသာ ျဖစ္ေတာ့သည္။ အဘယ္ေၾကာင့္ဆိုေသာ္ မိမိတို႕အားလံုး ေရမခ်ိဳးဘဲႏွင့္ ရက္ေပါင္း (ႏွစ္ဆယ္) ခန္႕ ေနၾကည့္ေသာ္ မိမိတို႕ ခႏၶာမွ အပုပ္နံ႕မ်ား တေထာင္းေထာင္း ထြက္ေနေတာ့မည္။ ႐ုပ္တရား၊ နာမ္တရား အားလံုးသည္ အသုဘ ခ်ည္းပင္ ျဖစ္ေတာ့သည္။ မည္သည့္အရာမွ တည္ျမဲမႈကို မေဆာင္ႏိုင္ေခ်။
ျမတ္စြာဘုရားရွင္သည္ လူမ်ား ၉၆ ပါးေသာ ေရာဂါ ျဖစ္ပြားရျခင္းႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ ေရွးယခင္ကာလ ကမၻာဦးစ ကာလတြင္ လိုခ်င ္တပ္မက္မႈေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္ေပၚေသာေရာဂါ၊ ဆာေလာင္မြတ္သိပ္ျခင္းေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္ေပၚေသာ ေရာဂါ၊ အိုမင္းရင့္ေရာ္မႈ ေရာဂါ ဟူ၍ သံုးမ်ိဳး သာရွိခဲ့သည္ဟူ၍ ေဟာၾကား ခဲ့သည္။ ဤတြင္မွ တိရစၧာန္မ်ားကို သတ္ျဖတ္စားေသာက္ျခင္းမွ အစျပဳ၍ ေရာဂါ ၉၆ ပါးတို႕သည္ လူတို႕တြင္ ျဖစ္ေပၚလာရေတာ့သည္။
ျမတ္စြာဘုရားသည္ လူမသာကို အိမ္ထဲသို႕၊ ရပ္ကြက္ထဲသို႕ သြင္းရာ၌ 'ခိုက္သည္' ဟူ၍ မေဟာၾကားခဲ့ပါ။ အမွန္စင္စစ္ တိရစၧာန္မသာ (ဥပမာ - ၾကက္၊ ဝက္၊ ပုရစ္...) ကို ဝမ္းဗိုက္အတြင္းသို႕ သြင္းမွသာ ခိုက္မည္ျဖစ္သည္။ ဒူလာ အေညာင္းေရာဂါသည္ သည္ ၾကက္သားစားၾကည့္၊ ေသြးတိုးေရာဂါရွိလွ်င္ ဝက္သာ စားၾကည့္၊ ပုရစ္စား ၾကည့္လွ်င္ ေသသည္ အထိ ခိုက္မည္ ျဖစ္သည္။ ဦးေႏွာက္ေသြးေၾကာ ျပတ္၍ ေသသည္ အထိ ခိုက္မည္ျဖစ္သည္။ ဤတြင္ ျမတ္စြာဘုရား၏ အယူႏွင့္ လူအေတာ္ မ်ားမ်ား၏ အယူတို႕သည္ ဆန္႕က်င္ဘက္ ျဖစ္ေနေတာ့သည္။
ဆံုးပါးသြားတဲ့ လူမသာကို အိမ္ထဲ မသြင္းေကာင္းဘူး၊ အိမ္ေရွ႕က မျဖတ္ရဘူး၊ အိမ္ေပါက္ဝက မထုတ္ရဘူး ဟူ၍ အယူသီးမႈမ်ားႏွင့္ ႐ႈပ္ေထြး ေနေတာ့သည္။ ရြာ အျပင္ဘက္တြင္ ေသလွ်င္ ရြာထဲ မသြင္းရဘူး၊ အရပ္ အျပင္ဘက္တြင္ ေသလွ်င္ အရပ္ ထဲ မသြင္း ေကာင္းဘူး။ သြင္းလွ်င္ ရြာ နာတယ္၊ အရပ္ နာတယ္၊ အိမ္သူ အိမ္သားေတြ ခိုက္တယ္ ဟူ၍ မည္သည့္ က်မ္းဂန္တြင္မွ မပါရွိပါ။ သို႕ေသာ္ အားလံုး အားလံုး နီးပါး အယူသီးမႈက စိုးမိုး လႊမ္းျခံဳမႈကို ခံေနရသည္။
ဤသို႕ဆိုလွ်င္ မနက္တိုင္း မနက္တိုင္း အိမ္ရွင္မမ်ား ေစ်းမွ အျပန္ကို ၾကည့္လိုက္ ေစခ်င္သည္။ ျခင္းေတာင္းေလးႏွင့္ ေစ်းဝယ္ ၿပီး ျပန္လာ သည့္အခါတြင္ ေျခေထာက္ေလး ႏွစ္ေခ်ာင္းကို ေစ်းျခင္းေတာင္း အတြင္းမွ အေပၚေပၚေအာင္ ဟင္းသီးဟင္းရြက္မ်ားကို ေအာက္မွ ခုကာ ျပန္လာပံုကို ေတြ႕ၾကရမည္ျဖစ္သည္။ ဤ ေျခေထာက္ကား ၾကက္၊ ဝက္ စသည့္ တိရစၧာန္၏ ေျခေထာက္ပင္။ ဤသို႕ေသာ ၾကက္၊ ဝက္၊ ဆိတ္၊ ငါး စသည့္ တိရစၧာန္ မသာေပါင္းစံုတို႕ကို မိမိတို႕အိမ္တြင္းသို႕ ဂုဏ္ယူဝင့္ႂကြားစြာ သြင္းၾကသည္။ အဆံုးစြန္ဆံုး ေႁမြ မသာ လည္းသြင္း၊ ပုရစ ္မသာ လည္းသြင္း၊ ဖား မသာလည္း သြင္းၾကေတာ့သည္။
'လူမသာေတာ့ မသြင္းဘူးတဲ့' လူေသလွ်င္ အိမ္ ေနာက္ေဘး သယ္သြား၊ ၿပီးရင္ တံစက္ၿမိတ္ ေရ လက္ျပန္ ေရႏွင့္ ေရခ်ိဳးေပး၊ ဆပ္ျပာတိုက္၊ ေရသုတ္၊ အဝတ္အစား ဝတ္ေပး၊ သနပ္ခါး လိမ္း၊ ဆံပင္ ထံုးေပး၊ ႏႈတ္ခမ္းနီ၊ ပါးနီ ဆိုးေပး၊ ႏွင္းဆီပန္း ပန္ေပးႏွင့္ စသည့္ျဖင့္ ေသသြားမွ ၾကင္နာျပ၊ ဂ႐ုစိုက္ျပ ေနၾက ေတာ့သည္။ အေလာင္း လွေအာင္ လုပ္တာတဲ့၊ ျပံဳးျပံဳးေလး ေသမွ အေလာင္းလွတာတဲ့။ ေနာက္မွ ေခါင္း ကဆံပင္ကို ျဖတ္ၿပီး ေျခေထာက္ ႏွစ္ေခ်ာင္းကို တုပ္ေတာ့သည္။ ဘာျဖစ္လို႕လဲ ေမး ၾကည့္ေတာ့သူ႕ကို အိမ္မွာ ႏွစ္ညေတာင္ သိပ္ထားရဦးမွာတဲ့။ ေသတာေတာင္ အခ်ဳပ္အေႏွာင္ ခံရတဲ့ ဘဝ၊ အမွန္စင္စစ္ တရားေလး ေတြ႕ၿပီး ျပံဳးျပံဳးေလးေသမွ အေလာင္းလွမည္ျဖစ္သည္။
ယခုမူ ေစ်းမွ သယ္လာေသာ တိရစၧာန္ မသာမ်ားကို အိမ္ထဲသြင္း၊ မီးဖိုေခ်ာင္ထဲ သယ္၊ ေရေဆး၊ ဓားေသြး၊ ခုတ္ထစ္ ပိုင္းျဖတ္၍ ခ်က္ျပဳတ္၊ စားပြဲေပၚ တင္ကာ မိသားစု ဝိုင္းဖြဲ႕ၿပီး စားေသာက္ၾကသည္ မဟုတ္ပါလား၊ အ႐ိုးကိုပင္ ႏူးေနေအာင္လုပ္ၿပီး စားၾကသည္။ ပါးစက္ထဲ ညက္ညက္ ေၾကေအာင္ဝါး၊ မ်ိဳခ်၊ ဝမ္းဗိုက္ထဲသို႕ ေရာက္သြားေတာ့သည္။ ဤေနရာတြင္ လူ႕ဝမ္းဗိုက္သည္ တိရစၧာန္တို႕၏ သခ်ႋဳင္းပင္၊ လူ႕ပါးစပ္သည္ တိရစၧာန္တို႕၏ မီးသၿဂႋဳလ္စက္ပင္ျဖစ္ေတာ့သည္။ တိရစၧာန္မသာက်ေတာ့ ဝမ္းဗိုက္ထဲသို႕ ထည့္ၿပီး လူမသာ က်ေတာ့ အိမ္ထဲသို႕ပင္ အသြင္းမခံမႈတို႔သည္ အဆိုးဝါးဆံုးေသာ အယူသီးမႈ။ မိစၧာဒိ႒ိ အယူဝါဒမွ ဆင္းသက္လာမႈပင္ ျဖစ္ေတာ့သည္။
တစ္ဖန္ လူေသ ပါးစပ္ထဲသို႕ ေငြတစ္မတ္ ထည့္ျခင္းသည္ ''ကူးတို႕ခ'' ဟု ဆိုၾကျပန္သည္။ လူေသ အသက္မရွိေသာ ခႏၶာသည္ ေငြတစ္မတ္ႏွင့္ မည္သည့္ ကားကို စီး၍ ရမည္နည္း။ အခ်ိဳ႕ေသာ သူတို႔က ပါးစပ္ထဲမွ ေငြတစ္မတ္ကို ႏွိဳက္ယူ ျပန္သည္။ Lucky ေကာင္းတယ္တဲ့၊ ေငြပြားတယ္တဲ့၊ ေနာက္ နာေရး ေမာ္ေတာ္ယာဥ္လည္း ေရာက္ေရာ ေျခက မထုတ္ရဘူး၊ ေခါင္းက မထုတ္ရဘူး၊ တံခါးေဘာင္နဲ႕ မထိရဘူး၊ အိမ္နံရံနဲ႕ မထိရဘူး၊ ေလွကားက မဆင္းရဘူးႏွင့္ ''ဘူး'' မ်ား ပဲ့တင္ ထပ္လွ်င္ပင္၊ ေနာက္ေၾကးစည္ထု၊ ကနဖ်င္း ဖ်က္ျခင္းမ်ား ျပဳလုပ္ေတာ့သည္။
ေရအိုးခြဲ လိုက္ျခင္းသည္ ေသသူအား အိမ္သို႕ ျပန္မလာ ႏိုင္ေအာင္ အိုးစား ခြဲျခင္းဟု ဆိုေသာ္လည္း ေမာ္ေတာ္ယာဥ္ေပၚသို႕ တင္ေသာအခါ ေခၚမသြားရဘူး၊ ပစ္သြား ၿပီလား ဟူ၍ ငိုၾက ယိုၾက ႏွင့္ပင္၊ အယူအစြဲ၊ အယူသီးမႈတို႕ႏွင့္ ဆန္႕က်င္ဘက္ လုပ္ရပ္မ်ားပင္၊ သုႆာန္တြင္ ေဝငွသည့္ ယပ္ေတာင္၊ လက္ကမ္းစာေစာင္မွ အစ အကုန္ယူၾကသည္။ ေသသူ၏ ပုဆိုး၊ လံုခ်ည္၊ အက်ႌ၊ ခုတင္၊ ျခင္ေထာင္၊ ေမြ႕ရာမ်ားကို ဘုန္းႀကီးေက်ာင္းသို႕ ပို႕ျခင္းသည္ အိမ္မွာ ခိုက္မွာ စုိး၍ ျဖစ္သည္ဟု ယူဆၾကသည္။ ကန္႔လန္႔ကာ (ခန္းဆီး)ခ်ဳပ္၍ ဦး/ေဒၚ... ဘယ္သူ၏ ေကာင္းမႈဟု စာတမ္းထိုးကာ ဘုန္းႀကီးေက်ာင္း မ်က္ႏွာစာေအာက္မွာ ကုသုိလ္ရေအာင္ဆြဲေပး၊ ခ်ိတ္ေပးရန္ ေတာင္းဆို ေလွ်ာက္ထားၾကသည္။
အိမ္တြင္ ခိုက္မွာ စိုး၍ ဟု ဆိုၾကသည္။ ဤသို႕ဆိုလွ်င္ ဘုန္ႀကီးေက်ာင္းမ်ား၊ ဘုန္းႀကီးမ်ား က်ေတာ့ ခိုက္ခ်င္ ခိုက္ပါ ေစဟူေသာ သေဘာမ်ား လားဟု စဥ္းစားမိျပန္သည္။ ဤကဲ့သို႕ ခိုက္မွာကို ေၾကာက္ၾကလွ်င္ ေသဆံုးသြားသူ၏ လက္စြပ္၊ လက္ေကာက္၊ ဆြဲႀကိဳး စသည္တို႕ ဘယ္မ်ား ေရာက္ကုန္ၿပီလဲ၊ ဘုန္းႀကီးေက်ာင္းသို႔ ခိုက္မွာစိုးလို႕ဟူ၍ ေပးပို႕လွဴဒါန္းျခင္းကို မျမင္မိေခ်။
ရပ္ကြက္ထဲတြင္ ဆံုးပါးသြားပါက နာေရးေမာ္ေတာ္ယာဥ္ကို 'ဒီဘက္က မထြက္ရဘူး၊ ဟိုဘက္က ထြက္' ဆိုတဲ့ စကားမ်ိဳး ရပ္ကြက္တိုင္း လိုလိုတြင္ အစဥ္ၾကားရျမဲ၊ အဘယ္ေၾကာင့္ဆို ဒီဘက္အျခမ္းက ေသသူေတြ မ်ားေနလို႕ဗ်ာ၊ ကဲ .. အဲဒါဆိုရင္ေတာ့ ဒီတစ္ခါ ဟိုဘက္က လူေတြ ေသေစလိုတဲ့ သေဘာလားဗ်ာ၊ အကယ္၍ မ်ား ဒီဘက္ကလည္း အထြက္မခံ၊ ဟိုဘက္ကလည္း အထြက္ မခံခဲ့လွ်င္ မည္ကဲ့သို႕ သၿဂႋဳလ္မည္နည္ ဟု စဥ္းစားေစခ်င္သည္။
ဤသို႕ေသာ အစြဲအလမ္း၊ အယူသီးမႈတို႕ေၾကာင့္ ေရွးယခင္ကတည္းက ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးမ်ားတြင္ 'နာေရး ကူညီမႈအသင္း' ဟူ၍ မရွိခဲ့ျခင္းပင္။ အမွန္မွာ စ်ာပန ျပခ်သည့္ အလုပ္သည္ အမွန္တကယ္ ျမင့္ျမတ္ေသာ အလုပ္ပင္ ျဖစ္သည္။ အနိမ့္က်ဆံုးေသာ ကုသုိလ္အလုပ္သည္ ျမင့္ျမတ္ေသာ ျဖဴစင္ေသာ စိတ္ဓါတ္ရွိသူတို႕၏ အလုပ္ပင္ ျဖစ္ေတာ့သည္။ ဆင္းရဲ ဒုကၡေရာက္ေနသူတို႕အား သနားညႇာတာ ႐ိုင္းပင္းကူညီ သူတို႕ပင္ ျဖစ္ေတာ့သည္။ သူတစ္ပါး၏ ဒုကၡကို ကယ္တင္သူတို႕ အလုပ္သည္ နာေရးကူညီမႈ အသင္း၏ လုပ္ရပ္ပင္ ျဖစ္ေတာ့သည္။
ဤသည္ကို ဂုဏ္မရွိေသာ အလုပ္၊ ခိုက္သည့္အလုပ္... ဟူ၍ အယူသီး ၾကသည္။ သုဘရာဇာဟူ၍ ေခၚၾကသည္။ ေမးခ်င္၊ ေခၚခ်င္၊ ေဆးေဖာ္ ေၾကာဖက္ပင္ မလုပ္ခ်င္ၾကေပ။ ဤသည္မွာ တရားသေဘာႏွင့္ ေဝးစြာ အယူ သီးၾကျခင္းပင္ ျဖစ္ေတာ့သည္။ ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးမ်ားသည္ လူအေယာက္ ၁ဝဝ တြင္ ၉ဝ ခန္႕ရွိသည္။ ဥပမာ - အေလာင္း တစ္ေလာင္းအတြက္ ကုန္က်စရိတ္မွာ ငါးေထာင္က်ပ္ ကုန္က်မည္ဆိုလွ်င္ အေလာင္း ၂ဝ တြက္ ေငြတစ္သိန္း ကုန္မည္။ တစ္ႏွင္လွ်င္ ၃၆၅ သိန္း ကုန္ရမည္ ျဖစ္သည္။ ဤသို႕ တစ္ႏွစ္လွ်င္ အနည္းဆံုး ၃၆၅ သိန္းဝင္မည့္ ကုမၸဏီမ်ား၊ ဖက္စပ္ လုပ္ငန္းမ်ား မရွိႏိုင္၊ မည္သည့္ ကုမၸဏီလုပ္ငန္းမွ ဤသို႕ မျမတ္ႏိုင္။
သို႕ေသာ္ ကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႕သည္ ဤသို႕ ေျမျမႇဳပ္ခ၊ မီးသၿဂႋဳလ္ခ မ်ားယူ၍ ဘဝကို ရပ္တည္ၾကေသာ သူမ်ားမဟုတ္၊ မိမိ ဝမ္း တစ္ဝမ္း မိမ ိရွာေဖ ြစားေသာက္ရင္းႏွင့္ ေစတနာ့ ဝန္ထမ္း အခမဲ့ ကုသိုလ္ ယူေန ၾကသူမ်ားပင္ ျဖစ္သည္။ ကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႕၏ နာေရးကူညီမႈအသင္းႀကီးသည္ လူမ်ိဳး၊ ဘာသာမေရြး၊ ဆင္းရဲ-ခ်မ္းသာမေရြး ခုႏွစ္ရက္ သားသမီးတို႕၏ နာေရး ကိစၥ အဝဝကို အခမဲ့ ကုသုိလ္ျဖစ္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေပးေနေသာ အသင္းအဖြဲ႕ပင္ ျဖစ္သည္။ ဤကဲ့သို႕ အခမဲ့ သယ္ယူပို႕ေဆာင္ေပးျခင္း၊ အခမဲ့ ကုသိုလ္ယူျခင္း၊ အခမဲ့ နာေရးကူညီျခင္း လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားတြင္ အယူသီးမႈမ်ား၊ အစြဲ မွားမႈမ်ား၊ မိစၧာဒိ႒ိ အယူဝါဒမ်ားသည္ အတားအဆီး၊ အေႏွာင့္အယွက္၊ အဟန္႕အတားမ်ား ပင္ ျဖစ္ေတာ့သည္။
ထို႕ေၾကာင့္ 'လူ႔ဘံုံု ထုထံုံုးစံ၊ ကဲ့ရဲ႕ဒဏ္ျဖင့္၊ ရန္မာန္ ပိတ္သည္း၊ ခရီးခဲ၌၊ စိတ္ဇြဲြဲ သန္သန္၊ ေနာက္ မျပန္ဘဲ၊ ရဲမာန္ ရဲေဆး၊ ရဲ စိတ္ ေမြးလ်က္၊ ရဲေသြး နီနီီ၊ စီရရီျဖင့္ ဦးတည္မပ်က္၊ ေရွ႕ွသိုို႔ဆက္ေလာ'့ ဟူေသာ မဟာဂႏၶာ႐ံု ဆရာေတာ္ဘုရားႀကီး (အမရပူရ)၏ ၾသဝါဒ ဆံုးမစာအရ ကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႕သည္ ကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႕၏ အေႏွာင့္အယွက္၊ အတား အဆီးမ်ားျဖစ္ေသာ အယူသီးမႈ၊ အစြဲအလန္း၊ မိစၧာဒိ႒ိ အယူဝါဒမ်ားကို ျဖဴစင္ သန္႕ရွင္း ထက္ျမတ္ေသာ တရား ဓမၼတည္းဟူသည့္ ဓားျဖင့္ ခုတ္ တန္ခုန္၊ လွီး တန္လွီး၊ ျဖတ္ တန္ျဖတ္၍ ခုႏွစ္ရက္သားသမီးတို႔၏ နာေရး (လူမႈေရး) တို႔ကို ႐ိုးေျမက်သည္ အထိ ရဲစိတ္၊ ရဲမာန္ေမြးကာ ပန္းတိုင္ ေရာက္သည္ အထိ ေရွ႕ဆက္ ေလွ်ာက္လွမ္းေတာ့မည္ဟု သံဓိ႒ာန္ ခ်မွတ္လိုက္သည္။
(ခုတ္မယ္၊ ထစ္မယ္၊ ပါးပါးလွီးမယ္။)
အားလံုးကို ေလးစားဦးၫြတ္လ်က္
ေက်ာ္သူ ( Actor )
--
Min Thura Aung
**သူမ်ားအမွားကိုေ၀ဖန္ရတာသိပ္လြယ္ပါတယ္**
******ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ကိုယ္တိုင္ကိုယ့္အမွားေတြကိုမညွာတမ္းေ၀ဖန္ၿပီးအေကာင္းဆံုးႀကိဳးစားၾကပါစို႔******
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
「世界人権デー」アクション ご参加ください！(12/10 15時～ 国連大学前）
みなさま、
今年も「世界人権デー」（12月10日）に、在日ビルマ人のみなさんらと
共に、”人権”と“自由”を求めるアピール行動を行います。
平日の昼間ですが、ご都合のつく方はぜひご参加ください。
なお、団体での参加を希望される場合は、9日（水）17時までに、PFB事務局
までメールかお電話でご一報いただければ幸いです。
＊昨年の人権デーの様子はこちらからご覧いただけます。
http://pfbkatsudo.blogspot.com/2008/12/60-350.html
ビルマ市民フォーラム（PFB)
事務局 宮澤
電話：03-5312-4817
メール：pfb@izumibashi-law.net
http://www1.jca.apc.org/pfb/
転送・転載歓迎
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
『世界人権デー』アクション参加のお願い 12月10日（木）15時～
----------------------------------------------------
世界中のすべての人々に“人権”と“自由”を！
--Human Rights and Freedom for All --
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
想像してみてください。
世界の人々の、かけがえのない人権の『いま』
1948年の12月10日、パリで、「すべての人は、生れながら
にして自由であり、かつ、尊厳と権利とについて平等である」
で始まる「世界人権宣言」が採択されました。
この日を記念して、12月10日は世界人権デー( Human Rights Day) です。
しかし、今、世界では、かけがえのない人権と自由が
すべての人に保障されているでしょうか?
私たちはこの世界人権デーにあたり、
深刻な人権侵害が続くビルマ（ミャンマー）など
日本で暮らすアジア地域の友人たち、国内のNGOの方々とともに、
アジア地域、そして世界中の人権の回復を求めるアピールを行いたいと思います。
人権と自由の回復を求めていているのは世界の人々も同じです。
世界人権デーにあたって、同じ民主主義、人権、自由を求める世界の
人々と連帯し、共に声をあげたいと思います。
ぜひみなさま、ご参加ください！
-----------------------------------------
●日時： ２００９年１２月１０日 (木）１５時～１７時
（内容：参加団体によるスピーチ、平和への祈りをこめた放鳥など。）
●場所：国連大学前
所在地：東京都渋谷区神宮前5-53-70
地図： http://www.unu.edu/hq/Japanese/access/index.html
●呼びかけ団体
在日ビルマ人共同行動実行委員会(JAC)
ビルマ市民フォーラム http://www1.jca.apc.org/pfb/
（特活）ヒューマンライツ・ナウ http://hrn.or.jp/
（社）アムネスティ・インターナショナル日本 http://www.amnesty.or.jp/
●問合せ先：在日ビルマ人共同実行委員会（ＪＡＣ）
★問合先 090-4964-9718(日本語可)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Friday, December 4, 2009
Asean breaks bread with rebellious Myanmar
Asean breaks bread with rebellious Myanmar
2009 December 4
tags: 2010 Election, Asean, Burma, Human Rights, Junta, Myanmar, world focus on Burmaby peacerunningIT is hard to find anything redeeming about the Myanmar junta after decades of repression and misrule.
The generals of Naypyidaw, which the North Koreans helped build, only have those peers left in the world whose villainy is measured not just in prison camps but by their disdain for the mass suffering of innocents — as was shown when cyclone Nargis struck the Irrawaddy Delta in May last year and killed far upwards of 100,000 people.
Yet the international climate is thawing for this regime. The United States is switching from a policy of isolation and opprobrium to one of direct engagement plus sanctions, and Europe looks likely to follow suit.
In the dilemma of its rogue member, Asean has honed a sophisticated realpolitik worthy of Kissinger.
Here is what Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told the BBC at the start of the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference meeting on Nov 13 regarding Asean’s soft approach:
“You can inflict personal indignities on a leader, but is that the way to change and influence a country’s policies?
“They are in it for regime survival and for personal survival. Unless those concerns can somehow be managed in a transition forward, they are not going to be persuaded by sweet talk.” Lee and his fellow pragmatists have won the day, with their prize being President Barack Obama’s presence at the first-ever US-Asean summit during the Apec weekend in Singapore after George W. Bush had declined to do so in 2007.
No American president had come so close to a Myanmar prime minister in more than 40 years.
Bush’s painting of countries in black and white following the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks had risked tarring the 10-member association with the same brush as applied to Myanmar. His secretary of state Condoleezza Rice had made a point of not turning up for two of the four annual Asean Regional Forums during her time in office.
Apart from wanting a diametrical change from the Bush era, the Obama administration also saw Chinese pieces advancing on the Southeast Asia chessboard and moved to reconnect with a region that had mostly been well disposed to Uncle Sam.
With or without the geopolitics, the US shift is welcomed by Myanmar’s widespread and far-reaching dissident community.
“The new US policy of high-level engagement while maintaining sanctions is in line with our movement’s position,” said Khin Ohmar of the Network for Democracy and Development, based in Mae Sot on the Thai side of the border with Myanmar.
“But when it comes to implementation, that’s where it’s still too early to say.”
Except for the civil-society bleeding hearts who treat Aung San Suu Kyi like a fetish object and the junta like anthrax, the Asean strategy of “constructive engagement” had always been accepted as the only way to go.
Local pressure groups like the Asean Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus do not dispute the usefulness of breaking bread with the military leaders but complain about how little has been gained. Western pro-Myanmar non-governmental organisations have found it easy to accuse Singapore, Thailand and others of “profiteering” — seeking payback from dealing with the regime not in Myanmar’s democratisation but in profit for their investors and businesses.
(The Thais can plead for extenuation. They shelter some four million Myanmar economic migrants and about 150,000 refugees.)
There is concern that the US game plan could provoke a rush to at least partial normalisation by countries that had previously kept Myanmar at arm’s length.
“The problem is that some countries are interpreting this in their own way. It’s meant to be a carrot-and-stick approach, but they are dropping the stick and offering only the carrot,” Khin said in a telephone interview.
The carrot is being dangled because of a single, all-encompassing prospect: the junta has announced that elections will be held next year, which, if even half-way decent, could herald forgiveness for past sins.
Despite her scepticism, Khin saw it as the only hope. “It’s just their own ploy to legitimise military power. If you look at the constitution, you will see how military power and privilege will be institutionalised.
“But for us, an election is something that has to happen in Burma. The last one in 1990 was never honoured.”
For those who have tired of inflexibility against such a mulishly totalitarian state, a Parliament with a portion of seats reserved for the brass hats may be no bad thing. It has happened before in the rites of passage to democracy of nations like Thailand and Indonesia.
Khin said: “For the election to be credible and for it to resolve the crisis in the country, there are key benchmarks which must be met.
“That includes the release of Suu Kyi and political prisoners, stopping hostilities against ethnic minorities, creating the right atmosphere for every stakeholder to participate in the political process.”
A test of the junta’s pluralist stripes will be how it responds to Suu Kyi’s plaintive request to Senior Gen Than Shwe to be allowed to meet her party colleagues in the National League for Democracy, and to act as go-between in talks to lift sanctions.
“No, we haven’t heard anything yet,” Khin said. “This can be an indicator of a genuine openness by the regime. They can start by accommodating that little thing. But right now, there is no response.”
US officials have stressed the conditional aspects of their new stance. Whether or not the corner has been turned on Myanmar, its emigres have the patience of saints praying for lost causes.
Khin, then a protest organiser, fled the country during the crackdown following student demonstrations in 1988.
She does relief work for the sizable population of displaced Myanmar in the border areas.
Fearful of reprisal, she is rarely in touch with friends and family in Myanmar. Khin no longer misses home; she does not expect to return in the foreseeable future.
kamrul@nst.com.my
Fw: [BurmaInfo] 今週のビルマのニュース（0945号）ビルマ、核廃絶決議で棄権 ノーベル経済学者スティグリッツ氏がビルマへ ミンコーナイン氏ら政治囚が診療を受けられず
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ビルマ市民フォーラム メールマガジン 2009/12/4
People's Forum on Burma
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ビルマ情報ネットワーク（BurmaInfo）からのメール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/
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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
2009年12月4日【0945号】
========================================
【国連総会での核廃絶決議、ビルマは棄権】
・日本などが提出していた核兵器廃絶決議が2日、国連総会の
本会議で採択された（国連加盟国192か国のうち171か国が賛成）。
インドと北朝鮮の2か国が反対し、ビルマや中国、フランス、
パキスタンなど8か国が棄権した。同様の決議採択は16年連続だが、
法的拘束力はない（2日日経）。ビルマは先月、国連総会第1委員会で
採択された際にも棄権した。
【ガンバリ国連総長特別顧問、ダルフール担当に】
・国連事務総長は2日、ビルマ問題を担当するガンバリ事務総長
特別顧問を、来月1日付でダルフール地方に展開する国連・
アフリカ連合の合同平和維持部隊（UNAMID）特別代表に任命した。
今後、後任のビルマ担当者が選ばれる（3日読売ほか）。これまでに
複数の国連特使が40回ビルマを訪れてきたが、民主化や人権状況の
改善にはつながっていない。民主化支援団体等は「国連事務総長は
特使外交に見切りをつけ、自らが軍政に働きかけるべき」と述べる。
【英議会議員、人道に対する罪の調査を要請】
・英国の超党派のビルマ民主化議連（APPGビルマ）は26日、ビルマの
紛争地域で起きている人道に対する罪についての調査委員会の設立を
国連に働きかけることを政府に求める早朝動議を提出した（26日英国
ビルマ・キャンペーン）。タイ・ビルマ国境支援協会（TBBC）によれば、
ビルマ東部では1996年以来、3500以上の村や集落が軍政により破壊
された。同地域では、この1年間だけでも7万5,000人が家を追われ、
50万人以上が今も国内避難民となっている。TBBCはこの状況を、
ダルフールの状況にも匹敵すると述べている（10月29日TBBC）。
【ノーベル賞経済学者のスティグリッツ氏がビルマへ】
・ノーベル経済学賞受賞者で元世銀主席エコノミストのジョセフ・
スティグリッツ氏が14日からビルマを訪れることが明らかになった。
農村経済の発展や貧困削減のために取るべき経済政策について講演し、
農業相や国家開発相と会談する。ビルマ中央部の乾燥地帯の視察も行う
可能性がある（30 日IPS）。
【環境問題について話した教師が国外追放される】
・最大都市ラングーンのアメリカン・センター職員で英語教師の
米国人が28日、国外退去させられた。詳細は不明だが、マンダレー
の米国領事館で環境問題についての講演を行った帰りに拘束され、
空港に連行されたとのこと（3日イラワディ）。
【ミンコーナイン氏ら政治囚が診療を受けられず】
・アムネスティ・インターナショナルによれば、2007年8～9月のデモ
行進を率いた僧侶のガンビラ師 （禁固刑63年で服役中）や、民主化
団体「88世代学生グループ」指導者の一人ミンコーナイン氏（同、65年）
ら3人の政治囚の健康状態が悪く、緊急に治療が必要
（3日アムネスティ緊急行動要請）。
【ビルマへの政府開発援助（ODA）約束状況など】
今週の発表はなし
【政治囚の数（12月2日現在）2,173人】
・政治囚支援協会（AAPP）によれば、12月2日現在の政治囚の数は2,173人。
10月には41人が逮捕され、そのうち3人が解放された。
2009年8～9月のデモ以来、1,156人が逮捕され現在も収容中。
【イベント情報】
・在日ビルマ人共同行動実行委員会ほか
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、11月30~4日15～16時）
・世界人権デー アクション：世界中のすべての人々に
“人権”と“自由”を！呼びかけ団体：在日ビルマ人のみなさん、
（社）アムネスティ・インターナショナル日本、ヒューマンライツ・ナウ、
ビルマ市民フォーラム（国連大学前、 10日15～17時）
・在日ビルマ難民たすけあいの会ワークショップ
第二回「在日ビルマ難民の労働と家族」
（南大塚地域文化創造館第一会議室、13日14時～）
★要申込
【もっと詳しい情報は】
「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
2009年12月4日【0945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
====================================
Twitter（ツイッター）による情報発信を始めました！
Twitterで"BurmaInfoJapan"をフォローしてください。RTも大歓迎です。
http://twitter.com/BurmaInfoJapan
Thursday, December 3, 2009
A Burma Policy for India
DECEMBER 1, 2009, 1:01 P.M. ET
A Burma Policy for India
Prime Minister Singh can support democracy and engage the regime, too.
By BENEDICT ROGERS
Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh had a largely successful summit with President Barack Obama last week. There is, however, one issue which remains cause for concern: India's Burma policy.
India has a particular historical responsibility for Burma, in part because in colonial times the two countries were ruled by the British as one. Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained leader of Burma's opposition party, went to school in New Delhi, for instance, where she became childhood friends with Jawaharlal Nehru's grandchildren. Past Indian governments have honored this link: During the 1998 prodemocracy protests, Rajiv Gandhi's government expressed support for Ms. Suu Kyi.
India's policy has shifted in recent years, thanks to concerns about the need to counterbalance China's influence and a wish to increase trade. In 2004, Burma agreed to sell India some 80% of the power generated from a dam in Sagaing Division in return for Indian construction assistance. India also sought a military alliance with the regime, including an agreement to provide arms and military training to the Burmese army, in the hopes of getting help in crushing insurgents in northeastern India.
On balance the expected benefits have not materialized. In 2006, the Burmese regime awarded China a huge natural gas contract, even though India had offered a higher bid and Burma's generals had earlier promised the deal to India. Meanwhile, Burma's assistance in fighting Indian insurgents has been minimal, and the arms India sold have instead been used to suppress Burma's own people. The energy projects resulted in land confiscation, the displacement of thousands of people, and accompanying human-rights violations including rape, torture and forced labor.
India is mistaken if it believes it can really compete with China's influence in Burma. China's annual bilateral trade with Burma is already one-and-a-half times India's, and Beijing has become one of the regime's closest friends. It is very likely that as Burma's regime starts to engage with the U.S. and continues to depend on China for protection, India will find itself squeezed out.
India has also remained silent on Burma's human-rights violations in a bid to curry favor with the regime. India joined Belarus, China, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Zimbabwe last month in voting against a resolution on Burma's human-rights abuses at the United Nations General Assembly.
It is not too late for India to revise its position and develop its own distinctive Burma policy supportive of democracy. Mr. Singh and his government could raise concerns more robustly with the regime; support Burma resolutions at the U.N.; seek regular meetings with Ms. Suu Kyi; and press the regime to review the new constitution and engage in meaningful dialogue with all political parties ahead of next year's elections. On the military front, an immediate and complete end to the provision of arms and military training to Burma's regime would be welcome. India might also be consider permitting international humanitarian aid cross-border to victims of famine and severe poverty in western Burma, and funding Burma's civil-society groups.
A senior official in India's Ministry of External Affairs told me recently that "our hearts are still with the democracy movement in Burma, but our heads are with the generals." India needs to combine head and heart and realize that in the long-run it is in its own national interest to promote democracy in Burma.
Mr. Rogers, East Asia team leader at Christian Solidarity Worldwide in London, is author of "Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma's Tyrant," forthcoming from Silkworm Books.
------------ --------- --------- --------- -
Benedict Rogers
East Asia Team Leader
Christian Solidarity Worldwide UK
PO Box 99
New Malden
Surrey KT3 3YF
www.csw.org. uk
www.changeforburma. org
Direct dial: (+44) (0)208-329-0041
General line: (+44) (0)845 456 5464
Fax: (+44) (0) 208-942-8802
Christian Solidarity Worldwide is a human rights organisation which specialises in religious freedom, works on behalf of those persecuted for their Christian beliefs and promotes religious liberty for all.
Confidentiality: The information contained in this email and any attachments are confidential. It is intended for the named recipient(s) only. If you are not the named recipient please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person other than the intended recipient.
Virus Checking: Whilst all reasonable steps have been taken to ensure that this communication is free from viruses, Christian Solidarity Worldwide accepts no liability in respect of any loss, cost, damage or expenses suffered as a result of accessing this message or any of its attachments.
__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4652 (20091201) __________
The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.
http://www.eset. com
Situation in Eastern Burma 'comparable to Darfur
Situation in Eastern Burma 'comparable to Darfur
'A new report shows that conditions in Eastern Burma are now comparable to the war-torn Darfur in Sudan. As a result of the systematic violations of human rights by Military Junta, there are already tens of thousands new refugees during last years.
Wednesday, 02 December 2009, by HRH Oslo, based on www.burma.no, www.uriks.no
A new report from the Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), one of the Church NCA main partners in Burma, shows that the inhumane conditions in large parts of eastern Burma has gone from bad to worse during last years.
Last years, 120 villages have been destroyed, and at least 75,000 people became refugees and more than half a million were internally displaced in eastern Burma in the past year, following increased militarisation, which strongly indicates crime against humanity comparable to the situation in Darfur.
According to the report, since 1996, over 3,500 villages, including 120 communities between August 2008 and July 2009, in Eastern Burma have been destroyed and forcibly relocated.
Food insecurity, landmines, forced labour and very limited access to life-supporting health and sanitation facilities characterize the conditions for the civilian population.
- The number of human rights violations as well as the increasing number of the displaced people is a scary prospect. The only way to realize our hope to resolve the catastrofic refugee situation in Bruma means is to introduce fundamental polotical, economic and social changes. The international community must strengthen its pressure on the military junta and its supporters," says Secretary General of Norwegian Church Aid, Atle Sommerfeldt.
HRH Oslo, based on www.burma.no, www.uriks.no
http://humanrightshouse.org/Articles/12655.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
