http://www.mizzima.com/edop/commentary/1671-last-call-for-forests-in-northern-burma.html
by Phyusin Linn
Sunday, 08 February 2009 05:39
Forests in Northern Burma, some of the last frontiers of Asia's rain forests, are facing a chronic threat.
Logging is back in Kachin State under a new mask. Logging no longer will be the illegal business in one of the world's biggest green regions that houses most of the teaks left on earth. Logging this time has returned into the region with bigger ambition and the safer shield under the title of agro-forestry development projects.
For decades, deforestation in Kachin State was traditionally carried out by agricultural farming industry of the local people and Asia's one of the longest civil wars in the nation. High speed massive illegal logging was introduced to the region only by logging companies from neighbouring Yunnan Province only after China's economy started roaring in 1990s. And it remarkably escalated in 1998 when China banned logging in its nation after facing serious floods in their home land. Forests in northern Burma were dwindling quickly in early 2000 and Kachin State became a hottest target for all the international watchdogs. But, finally, loggers have found a new and safest way to continue their business with a higher speed.
Everything started in 2006 when the government began promoting a nation wide bio fuel campaign to grow a castor oil across the nation as a state crop. Although state sponsored project of growing castor oil plants only kept the people busy in other areas, but in Kachin State, it killed the forests that once survived from the hands of the loggers in early 2000. Companies cleaned the forests to grow the castor oil in a massive scale. As a result, logs and other forest products, as usual, were brought and sold to the Chinese logging companies.
Companies got enlightenment, copying the model of castor oil projects, to expand the logging business in the region on a massive scale. They said castor oil should not only be the state crop, there are several other important crops that the state should focus on in a large scale in the region. And the companies said they will dutifully serve those noble endeavours to develop the region.
Under the forest regulations issued in May, 2008, companies who want to run an agro-forestry project can rent the forest areas from the Ministry of Forests with a 30-year deed.
Companies borrowed the loans from the banks in Yunnan Province. Banks and logging people in Yunnan were enthusiastic to help their neighbouring friends' decision to develop the massive farming industries.
More tractors, dozers of cars and other machineries were ambitiously brought to the region. The roads between Kachin State and Yunnan were reconstructed again. Roads became even much better than the Yangon-Mandalay highway.
A Kachin local remarked, "the better road we have the more trees we lose".
And finally companies take their share dividing the forest areas in Kachin state. There are four major crops that the companies are growing in Northern Burma such as sugar cane, rubber, tapioca and castor oil. Each company takes an average of 200,000 acres of forest land in the region.
Needless to say, they all cut the trees, again, to clean the forests before they started growing the state crops. But this time the scale is larger and lethal to the trees left in the region. A forest official said that the major reason of deforestation in northern Myanmar is expanding the agricultural projects. He concluded that the best way to maintain the forests is to conserve the present forests rather than reforestation. Because to see the success of reforestation in the future is not so certain, he continued.
How good are the reforestation projects in Kachin State?
There are some reforestation projects in the region where forestry officials are trying to grow teak and other trees to re-green the land. But unfortunately the scale and the timing is no match to counter the loggers' projects.
Forests in northern Myanmar were registered by the British government as the Permanent Forests Estates (PFE) for the first time since 1895. But after independence, the first time the Burmese government registered one forest as PFE was only in 2005.
The speed of logging is far beyond the speed of reforestation.
Trucks loaded with Burmese logs are still passing the border to China.
Trees are dwindling in the region.
And the impact on environment has been escalated.
This is a call not only to the people in Burma but to everyone in Asia.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Last call for forests in Northern Burma -MIZZIMA
Bangladesh to build road, railway links with Myanmar
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-02/08/content_10781961.htm
www.chinaview.cn 2009-02-08 13:28:27 Print
DHAKA, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- Bangladesh's communications minister said the government will build connecting road and railway from the country's southeastern bordering part to Myanmar, leading English newspaper The Daily Star reported on Sunday.
Communications Minister Syed Abul Hossain said this on Saturday in the country's southeast Cox's Bazar district after visiting the location of the proposed China-Myanmar-Bangladesh friendship road and railway at Myanmar border close to Myanmar's Ghum Dhum town.
Hossain told reporters there his government has sent proposals to Myanmar government to this effect and is awaiting a response to start planning and other physical mobilization.
The project to build the road and railway connecting Bangladesh's Ukhia to Myanmar's Ghum Dhum point was initiated some 10 years ago, the newspaper said.
The minister said the Bangladeshi government is looking forward to opening a new horizon in the area of trade, people to people connectivity and economic development of the southeastern region that will extend up to China after the construction of the road and railway.
The country's southeast region will become a new economic zone to benefit all three countries, Hossain said.
Editor: Du Guodong
First optical fibre link between India, Myanmar opened
http://www.ptinews.com/pti%5Cptisite.nsf/0/C47D35850D80B56D652575570044E807?OpenDocument
Pallab Bhattacharya
Mandalay (Myanmar), Feb 9 (PTI) India and Myanmar today operationalised their first optical fibre telephone link, a USD seven million state-of-the-art network that will bring the two countries closer and give a boost to bilateral economic cooperation.
Watched by Vice President Hamid Ansari, Myanmar's Communication Minister Brig Gen Thein Zaw made the first call to Indian Telecom Minister A Raja in New Delhi, applauding the quality of the project funded by India and executed by public sector Telecommunications Consultants India Limited (TCIL).
The high-speed broadband link for voice and data transmission connects Mandalay, Myanmar's second most important commercial hub after Yangon, and the border town of Moreh in Manipur.
The two towns are separated by a distance of 500 km.
TCIL Chairman-cum-Managing Director Rakesh K Upadhyay later told PTI that the call rates between India and Myanmar are bound to fall sharply with the installation of the optical fibre link between Mandalay and Moreh.
Myanmar announced it was planning to construct optical fibre network in the entire area along its border with India which could then have another direct link also with China, Laos and Thailand. PTI
Myanmar rebels refuse to join 2010 polls
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/news/article_1458185.php/Myanmar_rebels_refuse_to_join_2010_polls_
Asia-Pacific News
Feb 8, 2009, 2:36 GMT
Bangkok - The Shan State Army - an insurgent group in north-east Myanmar - has opposed the junta's planned general election in 2010, joining a growing number of ethnic minority groups determined to upset the polls, media reports and analysts said Sunday.
Shan State Army leader Colonel Yod Serk said the SSA was one of at least ten ethnic minority rebel groups that have come out against the 2010 general election, the Bangkok Post reported.
'The junta announced the upcoming election, but never let the opposing parties run in the race,' Yod Serk told the newspaper.
The rebel leader claimed even the United Wa State Army, a close ally of the Myanmar junta, was opposed to the upcoming election.
Growing opposition to the planned general election may force Myanmar's ruling junta to delay the polls, analysts said Sunday.
'Besides the SSA, the New Mon State Party and Kachin Independence Organization have also come out against the polls,' said Aung Din, executive director for the US Campaign for Burma.
Myanmar's military regime has fought more than a dozen ethnic minority-based insurgencies in its hinterlands for decades, although cease-fire agreements have been signed with most of them.
The ruling junta included representatives of the ethnic minorities, representing almost half the population, in its constitution-drafting process, which took 14 years, but ignored their demands to establish a federation in a post-election period that would have granted states such as the Karen, Kachin, Shan, Arakan and Chin a measure of autonomy.
Instead, under the new constitution, all rebels groups will be required to give up their arms and submit to the central government.
'This is their last chance,' Aung Din said. 'If they allow the election to be held there will not be another chance for them to claim autonomy.'
'Without satisfying the ethnic groups I don't think the junta will be able to hold the election,' he said.
Besides the ethnic minority groups, Myanmar's chief opposition party - the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by imprisoned Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi - has demanded amendments to the constitution before it considers contesting the 2010 polls.
The NLD won the 1990 polls by a landslide, but was denied power by the junta on the claim that a new constitution was needed before civilian rule was possible. NLD leader Suu Ski has spent 13 of the past 19 years under house arrest.
The new constitution of 2008 has been written in such a way as to cement the military's control over a post-election government.
Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962, when a coup led by General Ne Win ended the country's first post-independence elected government under Prime Minister U Nu.
Anxiety haunts a Burmese family left in official limbo
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090208x2.html
Living in fear: Hla Aye with his wife and daughter in their central Tokyo apartment where he constantly lives in fear of forcible deportation. JEFF KINGSTON
By JEFF KINGSTON
Special to The Japan Times
"All my Burmese friends are getting humanitarian visas, but not me," laments Hla Aye Maung, who has lived in Japan for the past 12 years.
Living in fear: Hla Aye with his wife and daughter in their central Tokyo apartment where he constantly lives in fear of forcible deportation. JEFF KINGSTON
At one time, Hla Aye, 40, worked on a cargo boat that plied the Pacific, but his life suddenly changed in 1996 when he jumped ship in Yokohama and came to Tokyo. In 2003, when he was out shopping, he was picked up by a police patrol and spent the next 18 months in detention after requesting asylum and receiving legal assistance in his bid for refugee status.
When he was released in 2005, Hla Aye was granted a provisional resident's visa that he still renews every three months — despite a series of legal setbacks. Among these, his request for asylum was denied by the Justice Ministry, so he filed suit in district court, but it ruled against him in 2007. His subsequent appeal to the high court was rejected in 2008, and since then he has been living on borrowed time.
Meanwhile, Hla Aye's debts have piled up due to his legal battles and an expensive hospitalization of his daughter, but he has not requested any assistance or relief. He has provided for his family, and they live in a well-kept apartment in Nishi-Nippori, Tokyo, where his daughter is in kindergarten. Another baby is on the way.
Understandably, Hla Aye constantly worries about the future, fearing he might be forcibly repatriated. He is active in the Arakan League for Democracy, regularly demonstrates outside the Burmese Embassy in Tokyo and is a high-profile opponent in Japan of the military junta.
His contention that if he returned to Burma he would face political persecution is certainly valid in a country where a widely despised government relies on fear and intimidation.
Ironically, when his case was being reviewed, he was told that his application was rejected because the U.S. State Department did not list the people of Arakan (officially known as Rakhine) as being targeted for political persecution.
However, having visited Sittwe, Hla Aye's home town and the capital of Arakan, at the end of 2007, I can report that signs of political oppression there are hard to miss. The Saffron Revolution actually started in Sittwe in August 2007 with a mass demonstration led by monks, their ranks swelled by tens of thousands of sympathizers. Then, following the brutal suppression of the monk-led demonstrations in the capital, Yangon, the military clamped down on monasteries known to have been involved.
Indeed, one monastery I visited in Yangon with strong links to Arakan was virtually occupied by the military, some of whom, despite their tattoos, I saw disguised as monks. In Sittwe, I visited ground zero of the local demonstrations, a cluster of ramshackle monasteries where the population of monks had dwindled as the military forced many to leave. In one of the temples, soldiers guarded the entrance with automatic rifles, scowling at visitors, and inside they had turned the main hall into a bivouac.
Meanwhile, at a distance, monks furtively whispered their complaints and voiced their anger at a government that has spread misery among the people.
Elsewhere in Sittwe, people were less circumspect, openly denouncing Senior Gen. Than Shwe's military junta, while several monks predicted their reincarnation as "shit-eating mangy dogs," and called on the United States to mount airstrikes targeting them.
The people of Arakan have a reputation as hotheads. Nowhere else on my travels in Burma did I encounter quite the same degree of edgy, outspoken anger — and the large military presence in this province indicates the government also knows what it is up against.
RELATED LINKS
Japan charts a new course on refugees
Burmese junta fuels influx It is thus bizarre to split hairs about who is subject to political persecution in Burma, since — quite simply — everyone is vulnerable to the abuse of power, and the rule of law is only a rumor. Persecution is so routine that it has become the norm. The courts recently handed down incredibly long prison sentences — think 65 years — to monks, comedians, singers, relief workers, intellectuals, journalists and others for engaging in peaceful protests or allegedly making the government look bad.
It was as if the judges were vying with each other to impress their masters with the excessiveness of their zealotry, an incarceration madness that will cut lives short and ensure they end behind bars.
It can therefore only be hoped that Japan will grant Hla Aye, and others like him, a humanitarian visa and spare him deportation to a country that so recently gunned down and tortured monks who were peacefully demonstrating — and executed a Japanese news photographer for just doing his job.
Burmese junta fuels influx
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090208x3.html
By JEFF KINGSTON
Special to The Japan Times
In 2008 there was a sharp spike in the number of people seeking asylum in Japan, and although only 6 percent of those processed were recognized by the government as refugees, they totalled 57 compared with 41 the year before.
Speaking out: A protester outside the Burmese embassy in Tokyo
Eri Ishikawa of the Japan Association for Refugees (JAR) attributes the rise — which included many applicants from Burma (which the military junta calls Myanmar) — to growing sympathy here following the brutal suppression of the Saffron Revolution in 2007 and the military junta's woeful response to the humanitarian disaster caused by Cyclone Nargis in May 2008.
Many Burmese in Japan now also report that, sensing a more welcoming environment, they have filed applications for the first time, or reapplied.
The Justice Ministry reports that 1,599 asylum seekers applied for refugee status in 2008, up from 954 in 2006. Of last year's applications, 918 were processed, resulting in 57 people being granted refugee status under the terms of the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.
To date, since Japan signed the convention in 1981, it has accepted a total of 508 so-called convention refugees from all over the world. In comparison, since 2006 the United States has accepted 15,000 Burmese alone from refugee camps in Thailand under the "third-country resettlement program" — and in the 2007 financial year its overall refugee target was 70,000.
In Japan, about half the asylum seekers in 2008 were from Burma, and 38 of those received refugee visas. In addition, 360 asylum seekers, most from Burma, were granted humanitarian visas — up from 80 in 2007. However, humanitarian visas do not confer refugee status, and so recipients don't qualify for the same benefits and security of status as holders of refugee visas.
But for the Japanese government, humanitarian visas are attractive because its obligations are not as burdensome as for convention refugees. For example, recipients only get limited social welfare assistance. Japan also has the right to revoke such visas at its discretion.
In contrast, convention refugees have access to the full gamut of social-welfare programs, and get assimilation help such as language classes from the state-funded Refugee Assistance Headquarters.
Nonetheless, through refugee and humanitarian visas, the Japanese government in 2008 boosted its "protection rate" (providing some legal status and security to asylum seekers) to about 45 percent of applicants (417 out of 918) — sharply up on previous years, when it languished in single digits, at around 6 percent to 8 percent.
This shift is expected to attract a further increase in applications, as asylum seekers — not only from Asia — will believe their odds have improved in a country long virtually closed to refugees.
However, while Japan maintains its strict terms for granting convention refugee status, its upturn in granting humanitarian visas primarily aims to address the needs of asylum seekers with roots in Japan — including many who have married here and are raising families. It is hoped that this, too, will demonstrate to the international community that Japan is not turning its back on such problems.
According to Yuki Akimoto, an attorney who serves as director of BurmaInfo, an NGO that disseminates information about Burma and lobbies Japanese politicians and officials, Japan has long been torn in its approach to the country. Tokyo, she says, basically favors cozying up to Burma's military junta, but also reluctantly supports international sanctions aimed at pressuring the junta to improve human rights, release political prisoners and engage in political reform.
However, since 2007's point-blank shooting by a Burmese soldier of a Japanese news cameraman, Kenji Nagai, while he was working for APF covering a demonstration led by unarmed monks in the capital Yangon, Tokyo has taken a tougher stand toward the junta.
Torchbearer: Eri Ishikawa, a founder of the Japan Association for Refugees
Now, following the junta's crackdown on all dissent, Japanese authorities are taking a more sympathetic view of the plight of Burmese exiles here and their claims of facing political persecution if they are deported back home.
Ishikawa, who helped establish JAR in 1999, says, "It is important that Japan can be relied on to do its part and truly help those who really need help." She is encouraged that even though helping refugees doesn't draw any votes, more politicians are becoming interested and understand the value of assisting asylum seekers.
BurmaInfo's Akimoto also believes that sympathy for the people of Burma has increased precisely because of the junta's unbridled brutality toward them and its failure to help them raise their standard of living.
JAR is chronically underfunded, and in the current downturn is trying to cope with falling contributions from some large donors just as ever more asylum seekers are in need of assistance, ranging from legal advice to accommodation and basic household necessities.
However, a visit to its offices reveals a conference room stacked high with donated items, including a few men's suits hanging in the corner. JAR's remit evidently extends well beyond advocacy and counseling, since the suits are to help asylum seekers blend in by not looking like stereotypical namin (literally, "those with problems," but also the term for refugees), and so avoid harassment and arrest.
The government, too, is running out of money allocated for the support of asylum seekers due to a near-doubling in their numbers over the past year. Since asylum seekers are not allowed to work while their applications are assessed — a process that takes two years on average — they depend entirely on assistance.
Currently, a family of four is eligible for about ¥135,000 in living expenses per month (¥1,500 per adult and ¥750 per child per day), plus a monthly maximum of ¥60,000 in housing support. In principle, such support is limited to four months, but since such people lack medical insurance and are not permitted to work, that period is insufficient and is often extended.
The unexpected problem is that the number of people receiving assistance from the Refugee Assistance Headquarters jumped from 95 a month in 2007 to more than 180 by the end of 2008.
In the 2008/09 financial year, the total budget for such assistance was ¥78 million. As that budget was exhausted by the end of 2008, though, the government was left scrambling to secure supplementary funds to carry the program through until the end of March, when the fiscal year ends.
RELATED LINKS
Japan charts a new course on refugees
Anxiety haunts a Burmese family left in official limbo Ishikawa expects the number of applicants to continue rising, citing the ongoing problems in Burma, the war in Sri Lanka and growing numbers fleeing violence in war-torn regions in Africa.
In Ishikawa's view, the current official limit of four months' support is unrealistic, and should be extended to two years — or as long as it takes for the government to review the asylum application. Alternatively, the government could allow asylum seekers to work while their applications are processed. Certainly, from interviewing numerous asylum seekers, it's clear that the limited government support forces many to work illegally, which makes them vulnerable to unscrupulous employers and also deportation.
Now, as Japan prepares for a new influx of asylum seekers, and is launching a pilot program for the resettlement of refugees, advocates believe there is a pressing need to have an open discourse about its policies — and to improve conditions for those seeking, or already granted, protection.
Maintained in China-Burma's foul regime depends on Beijing.
http://www.slate.com/id/2175047
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Oct. 1, 2007, at 1:26 PM ET
SINGLE PAGEYahoo! Buzz FacebookMySpace Mixx Digg Reddit del.icio.us Furl Ma.gnolia SphereStumbleUponCLOSEJoining the young and passionate demonstrators outside the office of a certain Washington military attaché last week (and there was I, having thought that my "demo" days were over) helped me to settle one trivial question. The crowd was united in chanting "Free, Free, Free Burma." This may seem like a detail, but I think it's right to object to the grotesque renaming of Myanmar and Yangon, and I am glad that the Washington Post, at least, continues to say Burma and Rangoon. (You can tell a lot from this sort of emphasis. Lanka is the Sinhala word for Ceylon, and Sri means "holy," so the name Sri Lanka expresses the concept that the island is both Sinhala and Buddhist, an idea that is alienating to many Tamils on the island. As a result, some Tamils still call it Ceylon or demonstrate their own nationalism by calling it Eelam. Lives are lost on the proposition.)
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Related in Slate
Michael Weiss rounded up recent blog chatter about the protests in Burma. With at least 10,000 monks protesting, Michelle Tsai wondered just how many resided in the country. Ian Bremmer cautioned that Burma could be the next Iran. Jai Singh explained why the people of Burma shouldn't hold out hope for U.S. intervention. James Gibney blamed the Bush administration's lack of progress against Chinese human rights abuses on the war on terror.Some people write to me to say that I must be mistaken about religion, because the opposition to the gruesome dictatorship in Burma is led by Buddhist monks. This seems to be wrong twice because a) the photographs of the demonstrations also show large crowds of Burmese wearing ordinary civilian garb; and b) the dictatorship is itself Buddhist and has expended huge sums on building temples to witness to the fact. It's fine by me if monks join the opposition, but Buddhism has a lot to answer for in, say, Sri Lanka and Cambodia, and if its fatalistic adherents want to claim credit in one case, they have also to accept responsibility in the others.
In any case, one is not hoping for a future Buddhist republic in Burma but for a country that is emancipated from totalitarianism in all its forms. This has been an unusually long struggle. According to Emma Larkin's book Finding George Orwell in Burma, the Burmese have a national joke to the effect that Orwell wrote a trilogy about the country: Burmese Days, followed by Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. There were some persuasive stories last week to the effect that in certain towns the army was not prepared to fire on the crowds (the conventional definition of a revolutionary situation), so it might be permissible to hope that this time the Burmese people will have a chance to throw off the especially foul despotism that has enchained them almost from the moment that the post-colonial era began.
Share this article on DiggBuzz up!Share this article on BuzzI thought President Bush was quite correct in listing his least favorite regimes during his address to the United Nations last week and in trying to ramp up the international pressure on the goons in Rangoon. The governments that he singled out were the uniquely repellent ones that consider the citizen to be the property of the state and the uniquely boring ones that have remained in power until their citizens are positively screaming for release. I do not need to specify these senescent gangster systems individually, except that they all have one thing in common. They are all defended, from Cuba to Zimbabwe, by the Chinese vote at the United Nations.
Those who care or purport to care about human rights must start to discuss this problem in plain words. Is there an initiative to save the un-massacred remains of the people of Darfur? It will be met by a Chinese veto. Does anyone care about Robert Mugabe treating his desperate population as if it belonged to him personally? China is always ready to help him out. Are the North Koreans starved and isolated so that a demented playboy can posture with nuclear weapons? Beijing will give the demented playboy a guarantee. How long can Southeast Asia bear the shame and misery of the Burmese junta? As long as the embrace of China persists. The identity of Tibet is being obliterated by the deliberate importation of Chinese settlers. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a man who claims even to know and determine the sex lives of his serfs (by the way, the very essence of totalitarianism), is armed and financed by China. It was this way when President Bill Clinton wanted the United Nations to take on Slobodan Milosevic and was stymied (by China, among others), and it was this way when President Bush asked the United Nations to live up to its resolutions on Saddam Hussein. And now I hear human rights activists bleating about Burma and our inaction and simultaneously complaining about the only time that any U.S. president had the nerve to break the hold of China (and Russia, and sometimes France) on the possibility of any international rescue.
China also maintains territorial claims against India and Vietnam (and, of course, Taiwan) and is building a vast army, as well as a huge oceangoing navy, to back up these ambitions. It seems an eon ago, because it was before Sept. 11, 2001, but we should not forget what happened when an American aircraft was involved in a midair collision over Hainan island in the early days of this administration. The Chinese acted as if the accident was deliberate, impounded the plane and the crew for several days, and mounted mass demonstrations of hysterical chauvinism. Events in the Middle East have since obscured this menacing picture, but actually it is in that region that China's cynical statecraft is most obviously on display. If Beijing had had its way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power. Iran is being supplied with Chinese Silkworm missiles. Most horribly of all, China buys most of the oil of Sudan and in return provides the weaponry—and the diplomatic cover at the United Nations—for the cleansing of Darfur. ("Blood for oil" would be a good description of this bargain, though I have not seen the expression employed very often.)
Meanwhile, everybody is getting ready for the lovely time they will have at the Beijing Olympics. If there could be a single demand that would fuse almost all the human rights demands of the contemporary world into one, it would be the call to boycott or cancel this disgusting celebration.
Burma, Your Chance to Make a Difference
http://west-wight-sangha.blogspot.com/2009/02/burma-your-chance-to-make-difference.html
Friday, 6 February 2009
A United Nations envoy has just returned from Burma and has yet again failed to secure the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s 2,130 other political prisoners. UN envoys have now made 38 visits to Burma and have consistently failed to achieve any progress towards democracy and human rights.
Stronger action is needed. These prisoners have done nothing wrong. They have been imprisoned for calling for freedom and human rights. The United Nations Security Council must bring in a binding resolution to ensure that Burma’s political prisoners are released. We need your help to make this happen.
TAKE ACTION - IF YOU LIVE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
Take 2 minutes now and write to your MP and urge them to support Aung San Suu Kyi by signing Early Day Motion 343* (Early Day Motions are similar to a parliamentary petitions – read more below**).
EDM 343 calls for all the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all Burma’s 2,130 political prisoners. The EDM demands that the British government uses its position on the UN Security Council to get the Security Council to take action.
We’ve made it really easy for you. Just go to this page and click “Take Action, Click Here”. Then all you do is put in your details (so we can find your MP for you) and personalise the message we’ve drafted for you. We take care of the rest!: http://voiceyourviews.net/eactivist/vyv.v?v=2121:999:15574
TAKE ACTION - IF YOU LIVE OUTSIDE THE UK
Take 2 minutes now and email UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon and the UN Security Council from this website and urge him to make it his top priority to secure the release of all Burma’s political prisoners:
http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/un_action.html
An update from inside Burma
This week Burma’s imprisoned democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was allowed out of her house arrest for a few short minutes to meet with the UN Envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, and the Central Executive Committee of her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD).
Suu Kyi called on the UN to prioritise the release of all 2,100 political prisoners in Burma.
She once more bravely stated that she is willing to talk to the Burmese regime at any time, but the regime is refusing to come to the negotiating table.
Aung San Suu Kyi is only kept safe because of her high international profile. You, as one of her supporters are helping to keep her safe.
at 20:07
Labels: Aung San Suu Kyi, Buddhist, Burma, Gordon Brown, Petition
Opposition Leader in Myanmar Expresses Frustration With U.N.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/world/asia/03myanmar.html?ref=world
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: February 3, 2009
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader who is under house arrest, expressed frustration to a United Nations envoy on Monday over the organization’s failure to persuade Myanmar’s hard-line military leaders to give up their monopoly on power, her political party said.
Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent more than 13 of the past 19 years under house arrest, was briefly allowed out on Monday for a rare meeting with the United Nations envoy, Ibrahim Gambari. Nyan Win, a spokesman for Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, said that during the meeting she told Mr. Gambari that “she was ready and willing to meet anyone” to achieve political reform, but “could not accept having meetings without achieving any outcome.”
The party contends that Mr. Gambari’s seven visits since 2007 have produced no tangible progress toward democracy, saying that the United Nations has not been able to persuade the junta to release political prisoners or to hold talks with the democratic opposition. The party won an election in 1990, but was not allowed to take office.
Last August, Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi snubbed Mr. Gambari by declining to keep an appointment with him and refusing to open the gates of her house in Yangon to his representatives. The gesture was surprising, because the house arrest keeps her in extreme isolation; Mr. Gambari is one of the rare outsiders, other than her lawyer and doctor, allowed to see her.
Myanmar’s military junta, which has ruled the country since 1962, when it was known as Burma, tolerates no dissent and crushed pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks in September 2007. Human rights groups say it holds more than 2,100 political prisoners, a large increase from the nearly 1,200 political prisoners who were being held before the demonstrations.
Mr. Gambari, who arrived Saturday for a four-day visit, has told diplomats that his objectives are to urge the junta to free political prisoners, discuss the country’s ailing economy and revive a dialogue with Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi.
More Articles in World » A version of this article appeared in print on February 3, 2009, on page A9 of the New York edition.
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