၁၉၈၈ခုနွစ္လူထုအုံႀကြမႈႀကီးျဖစ္ေပၚျပီးေနာက္ လူထု၏ဆႏၵကိုမလိုက္ေလ်ွာ၍မျဖစ္နိုင္
ေသာအေျခအေနသို ့ေရာက္ရိွခဲ့ျပီး၁၉၉၀ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြကို စစ္တပ္မွက်င္းပေပးခဲ့ရာအမ်ိဳးသားဒီမို
ကေရစီအဖဲြ ့ခ်ဳပ္ကအနိုင္ရရိွေလသည္။ သို ့ေသာ္အခုအခ်ိန္အထိအေကာင္အထည္ေပၚမလာေပ။
ထို ့ေနာက္ဖဲြ ့စည္းပုံအျခခံဥပေဒအသစ္ကို အခ်ိန္ဆဲြ၍တဖက္သတ္စိတ္ႀကိဳက္ေရးဆဲြလာျပီးေနာက္
စစ္တပ္မွမဲလိမ္အတည္ျပဳဳျပီး ထိုဖဲြ ့စည္းပုံအေျခခံဥပေဒအသစ္ေပၚအျခခံ၍ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြ
ကိုက်င္းပရန္စစ္တပ္မွ ျပင္ဆင္ေနေပသည္။
၁၉၉၀ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြျဖစ္ေပၚေစေသာအဓိကတြန္းအားတစ္ခုမွာဦးနု၏စင္္ျပိဳုင္အစိုးရပင္ျဖစ္သည္။
ထိုအခ်ိန္ကဦးနုုစင္ျျပိဳင္အစိုးရကိုဝိုင္းဝန္းေထာက္ခံခဲ့ႀကပါက ဦးနုေခါင္းေဆာင္ေသာအစိုးရက
ျပဳလုပ္ေပးမည့္ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြသည္တရားမ်ွတမည္ျဖစ္သလိုေရြးေကာက္ပဲြအနိုင္ရပါတီကိုလည္း
အမွန္တကယ္အာဏာလဲြေပးမည္ျဖစ္ေပသည္။
သို ့ရာတြင္ထို အခ်ိန္ကနိုင္ငံေရးေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား၏ေရွ ့ေရးကိုႀကိဳတင္ျမင္နိုင္သည့္
အရည္အခ်င္းအားနဲေသာေႀကာင့္စစ္တပ္ခင္းေသာလမ္းထဲသို ့ေလ်ွာက္လွမ္းခဲ့ရေပသည္။အခ်ိန္က
ကုစားေပးခဲ့ေသာေႀကာင့္အခုအခ်ိန္တြင္ေတာ့နိုင္ငံေရးအျမင္ျပတ္ျပတ္သားသားရိွေနျပီဟုယုံႀကည္
မိပါသည္။
၁၉၉၀ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြက်င္းပစဥ္ကစစ္တပ္သည္တိုင္းျပည္အေျခအေနကိုေကာင္းစြာမခ်ဳပ္
ကိုင္နိုင္ေသးေပ၊ ထို ့အတူ သူတို ့က တြက္ဆခဲ့သည္မွာအတိုက္အခံမ်ားမဲကဲြလ်ွင္သူတို ့ေထာက္ခံေသာ
တဆည အနိုင္ရလိမ့္မည္ဟုတြက္ဆထားခဲ့ေပသည္။ထိုအခ်ိန္ကတျပည္လုံးအတိုင္းအတာနွင့္ခ်ီ၍စည္း
ရုံးေရးဆင္းနိုင္ေသာအတိုက္အခံပါတီမ်ားမွာအမ်ိဳးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖဲြ ့ခ်ဳပ္(ဒီခ်ဳုပ္-NLD) ဒီမိုကေရစီနွုင့္ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအဖဲြခ်ဳပ္
(ဒီျငိမ္း-LDP) ၊ ဒီမိုကေရစီပါတီ နွင့္ လူ ့ေဘာင္သစ္ဒီမိုကရက္တစ္ပါတီ
တို ့ျဖစ္ခဲ့သည္။အဓိကမွာ ဒီခ်ဳပ္နွင့္ဒီျငိမ္းတို ့ျဖစ္ခဲ့ႀကသည္။ထိုစဥ္ကက်ၽြန္ေတာ္၏ဖခင္မွာ ဒီျငိမ္း၏
ဗဟိုအလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္တဦးျဖစ္ခဲ့ေလသည္။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ကဒီျငိမ္းဗဟို၏ ဗဟိုလူငယ္အဖဲြ ့ဝင္တဦးျဖစ္ခဲ့
ေလသည္။ ဖခင္ႀကီးအဆိုအရဒီျငိမ္းကိုပဲြလန္ ့တုံး
ျဖာခင္းသည္ဟုစြတ္စဲြထားေသာေႀကာင့္အခြင့္အေရးသမားမ်ားမဟုတ္ေႀကာင္းျပသည့္အေနနွုင့္ဒီျငိမ္း
ဗဟိုအလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္မ်ားေရြးေကာက္ပဲြမဝင္ႀကရန္ ဦးနုကေမတၱာရပ္ခံ၍ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အေဖအပါအဝင္
ဒီျငိမ္းဗဟိုအလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္မ်ားေရြးေကာက္ပဲြမဝင္ရန္ဆုံးျဖတ္ခဲ့သည္။ ဗိုလ္မႉးေအာင္၊
ဦးညြန္ ့ေအာင္ ၊သခင္ခင္ေအာင္နွင့္ဦးတင္ေမာင္ေအးတို ့ (၄)ဦးကိုသာအနာဂတ္ဒီမိုကေရစီအစိုးရအဖဲြ ့
ကိုထိန္းေႀကာင္းေပးနိုင္ရန္ခ်ြင္းခ်က္ျဖင့္ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြဝင္ေစရန္ဆုံးျဖတ္ခဲ့သည္။စစ္တပ္ကအဆိုုူပါေလးဦး
စလုံးကို စင္ျပိဳင္အစိုးရတြင္ပါဝင္ေသာေႀကာင့္အက်ယ္ခ်ဳုပ္ခ်ထားခဲ့သည္။
(မွတ္ခ်က္-ဦးေမာင္ေမာင္တာတဦးသာမိမိသေဘာျဖင့္ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြဝင္ခဲ့သည္)
ဒီခ်ဳပ္ကမတရားတဲ့အမိန္ ့ဟူသမ်ွ တာဝန္အရဖီဆန္ႀကဟုစည္းရုံးေရးဆင္းေနခ်ိန္တြင္ ဒီျငိမ္းက
ကလဲ့စားမေခ်ဘူးသင္ပုံးေခ်မည္ဟူေသာေဆာင္ပုဒ္ျဖင့္စည္းရုံးေရးဆင္းခဲ့သည္။ဦးနုကိုယ္တိုင္တျပည္လုံးသို ့လွည့္လည္၍
ျဗဟ္မစိုရ္ တရားေလးပါးကိုေဟာႀကားခဲ့သည္။စစ္တပ္၏ႀကမ္းႀကမ္းရမ္းရမ္းပစ္ခတ္မႈကို
ပူပူေႏြးေႏြးခံထားရေသာလူထုႀကီးကဒီခ်ဳုူပ္ကိုေထာက္ခံမႈပိုမိုအားေကာင္းလာျပီးဒီျငိမ္းကိုေရႊျပည္ေအး
တရားေဟာသူမ်ားအျဖစ္ပ်က္ရယ္ျပဳခဲ့ႀကေလသည္။ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အေဖကေျပာသည္မွာ“ဦးနုဟာ
ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြတခုကိုဘယ္လို အနိုင္ရေအာင္လုပ္ရမလဲဆိုတာသူေကာင္းေကာင္းသိတယ္”ဒါေပမဲ့အခု
လုပ္တဲ့အတိုင္းဆိုရင္လူထုကမေထာက္ခံနိုင္ဘူး ဒါေပမဲ့ အခုသူလုပ္ေနတာေတြဟာ အဓိပါၸယ္ရိွတယ္
တို ့ေခါင္းေဆာင္ကိုတို ့ယုံႀကည္တယ္ ဒါေႀကာင့္္သူ လုပ္တာကိုဒို ့တေတြေထာက္ခံႀကရမယ္ဟု
ေျပာႀကားခဲ့သည္။
အေျဖကေတာ့လူထုအႀကိဳက္ရဲရဲေတာက္ခဲ့ေသာ ဒီခ်ဳုူပ္ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြတြင္အနိုင္ရခဲ့သည္။
အကယ္၍ ဒီျငိမ္းကသာ ဒီခ်ဳပ္ကဲ့သို ့ရဲရဲေတာက္ခဲ့မည္ဆိုလ်ွင္ လူထုအေနနွင့္ဘယ္သူ ့ကိုမဲေပးရမွန္းမသိ
ဘဲ တဆည တက္သြားနုိင္ေပသည္။ မဲစာရင္းအရထိုအခ်ိန္ကတဆညသည္တျပည္လုံးရိွမဲဆႏၵနယ္တိုင္းတြင္နိုင္လ်ွင္နိုင္မနိုင္လ်ွင္ဒုတိယေနရာတြင္ရိွခဲ့သည္ကိုမေမ ့ ့့သင့္ေပ။တခ်ိန္ထဲမွာပင္ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေသာနည္းျဖင့္သြားမွသာ
နိုင္ငံေရးအေျဖကိုေတြ ့မည္ျဖစ္ေႀကာင္းဦးနုကလမ္းေႀကာင္းခ်ေပးခဲ့ျပီး ယေန ့ ဒီခ်ဳပ္အပါအဝင္နိုင္ငံေရး
အဖဲြ ့အစည္းအသီးသီးစဲြကိုင္ထားေသာမူပင္ျဖစ္ေပသည္။
တခ်ိန္ထဲမွာပင္ ဒီခ်ဳပ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္တခ်ိဳ ့၏ေျပာႀကားခ်က္မ်ားနွင့္ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြေႀကြးေႀကာ္သံမ်ားအရ
ဒီခ်ဳပ္သာအာဏာရျပီးအစိုးရဖဲြ ့ခဲ့လ်ွင္ ဒီခ်ဳပ္သည္မိမိတို ့အားႀကိဳးစင္တင္မည့္သူမ်ားအျဖစ္စစ္တပ္ေခါင္း
ေဆာင္မ်ားကရႈျမင္ခဲ့ႀကျပီးျဖစ္ေပသည္။စစ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားအေနျဖင့္မိမိတို ့က်ဴးလြန္ခဲ့ေသာရာဇဝတ္မႈ
မ်ားအတြက္ ဒီခ်ဳပ္က ကလဲစားမေခ်ဘာဘူးသင္ပုန္းေခ်ပါမည္ဟုေျပာဆိုခဲ့ေသာ္လည္းအယုံအႀကည္မရိွ
ျဖစ္ခဲ့ျပီးေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္ကိုလုပ္ႀကံသတ္ျဖတ္ဖို ့ႀကိဳးစားသည္အထိမိုက္တြင္းနက္ခဲ့ေလသည္။
(စာေရးသူ၏အျမင္ျဖစ္သည္)
(မွတ္ခ်က္-၁၉၉၀ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြသည္အမွန္တကယ္လြတ္လပ္ျပီးတရားမ်ွတခဲ့သည္)
၁၉၉၀ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြအျပီး စစ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားအေနျဖင့္ အခ်ိန္ဆဲြျခင္းနည္းကိုအသုံးခ်ျပီး
အာဏာကိုျမဲျမဲဆုတ္ကိုင္နုိင္ရန္ဟူေသာတခုတည္းေသာရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ျဖင့္နည္းလမ္းေပါင္းစုံသုံး၍ႀကိဳးပမ္း
ခဲ့ရာအခုအခ်ိန္တြင္အာဏာကိုျမဲျမဲဆုတ္ကိုင္ထားနုိင္ျပီဟုစစ္တပ္အေနျဖင့္အခိုင္အမာယုံႀကည္ေနသည္
ဟု စာေရးသူအေနျဖင့္ထင္ျမင္ယူဆပါသည္။စီးပြားေရးပိတ္ဆို ့မႈမ်ားမွာေအာင္ျမင္သင့္သေလာက္ေအာင္
ျမင္ခဲ့ေပသည္။ သို ့ေသာ္ က်ားကိုအေတာင္တပ္ေပးသလိုျဖစ္ခဲ့ရသည္မွာ တနသၤာရီတိုင္းနွင့္ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္မ်ားတြင္
သဘာဝဓါတ္ေငြ ့မ်ားထြက္ရိွလာျပီး စစ္အစိုးရကို သက္ဆိုးရွည္ေအာင္ပ့ံပိုးေပး
ခဲ့ေလသည္။ အကယ္၍ စစ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားသာလူထုအေပၚအမွန္တကယ္ေစတနာထားမည္ဆိုပါက
အဆိုပါသဘာဝဓါတ္ေငြ ့ေရာင္းရေငြမ်ားျဖင့္တိုင္းျပည္ဖြံ ့ျဖိဳးေရးအတြက္ေဆာင္ရြက္နိုင္မည္ျဖစ္ေသာ္
လည္း ယေန ့အထိလူထုႀကီးသည္ကုန္ေစ်းနႈန္းမ်ားနွင့္နဘန္းလုံးျပီးတေန ့တျခားဆင္းရဲတြင္းသို ့ပိုမို
နက္ရိႈင္းစြာက်ဆင္းေနဆဲျဖစ္ေပသည္။
စစ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားသည္စစ္သားမ်ားျဖစ္ႀကရာ ဘာဘဲလုပ္လုပ္စစ္ေရးအျမင္ျဖင့္ႀကည့္၍လုပ္
ေလ ့ရိွသည္မွာ ၂၀၀၇ သံဃာ့အေရးအခင္းနွင့္ ဆိ္ုင္ကလုံးနာဂစ္ တို ့ကိုႀကည့္ျခင္းအားျဖင့္သိရိွနိုင္ေလ
သည္။ ၂၀၀၇သံဃာအေရးအခင္းတြင္ ၈၈၈၈ အေရးေတာ္ပုံကဲ့သို ့အရိွန္ျမင့္မားလာမည္ကိုအျဖစ္မခံဘဲ
အလ်ွင္အျမန္အႀကမ္းဖက္နိွမ္နင္းခဲ့ေပသည္။ျပည္ပေရာက္နိုင္ငံေရးလုပ္ေဖာ္ကိုင္ဖက္မ်ားထဲတြင္
စစ္တပ္က သံဃာေတြကိုမသတ္ရဲဘာဘူးဟုေျပာသူမ်ားရိွသလို ဒီတခါေတာ့ပဲြျပီးျပီဟုေျပာသူမ်ားလဲရိွပါ
သည္။ထိုသူမ်ားကိုကၽြန္ေတာ္ကစစ္တပ္ကေသခ်ာေပါက္ပစ္မွာသတ္မွာမျပီးနိုင္ဘူးဟုေျပာခဲ့မိေသာ
ေႀကာင့္ထိုသူမ်ားနွင့္ကၽြန္ေတာ္ရန္ျဖစ္ခဲ့ရေသးသည္။၁၉၆၂ခုနွစ္မွယေန ့တိုင္အာဏာကိုဆုပ္ကိုင္ထား
ျပီးအာဏာ၏အရသာကိုသိေနေသာစစ္အာဏာရွင္မ်ားသည္ဘယ္လိုမွအာဏာကိုလြယ္လြယ္
နွင့္စြန္ ့လႊတ္လိမ့္မည္မဟုတ္ဟုကၽြန္ေတာ့္အေနျဖင့္အခိုင္အမာယုံႀကည္ထားသည္။
နာဂစ္မုန္တိုင္းတိုက္ျပီးေန ့စဥ္လူအေသအေပ်ာက္စာရင္းေႀကာက္ခမန္းလိလိတိုးေနစဥ္တြင္ပင္
ကယ္ဆယ္ေရးကိုေရွ့တန္းမတင္ဘဲမိမိတို ့စိတ္ႀကိဳက္ေရးဆဲြထားေသာဖဲြ ့စည္းပုံအေျခခံဥပေဒဆိုင္ရာ
လူထုဆႏၵခံယူပဲြကိုမျဖစ္ျဖစ္ေအာင္ျပဳလုပ္ျပီးမိမိတို ့စိတ္တိုင္းႀကအေျဖကိုထုတ္သြားသည္မွာလူတိုင္းအသိ
ျဖစ္ေပသည္။အေမရိကန္နွင့္ျပင္သစ္ေရတပ္သေဘၤာမ်ားမွဧရာဝတီတိုင္းအတြင္းဝင္ေရာက္အကူအညီေပး
ရန္ကမ္းလွမ္းျခင္းကိုပယ္ခ်ျခင္းမွာလည္းစစ္ေရးအျမင္အရျဖစ္ေပသည္။အေမရိကန္စစ္တပ္ကမ္းတက္မည္ကို
ေႀကာက္ေသာေႀကာင့္ဧရာဝတီတိုင္းအတြင္းစစ္တပ္အားလုံးကိုတပ္လွန္ ့ျပီးလက္နက္ႀကီးအကူအညီ
မ်ားေပးပို ့ခ်ထားခဲ့သည္မွာလည္းအမ်ားအသိျဖစ္ေပသည္။
၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြနွင့္ပတ္သက္၍ သေဘာထားသံုးမ်ိဳးရိွေႀကာင္းအႀကမ္းအားျဖင့္စဥ္းစား၍
ရပါသည္။
(၁)ကုလသမဂၢ အထူးကိုယ္စားလွယ္မစၥတာဂမ္ဘာရီ နွင့္ဂ်ပန္နိုင္ငံနိုင္ငံျခားေရးဝန္ႀကီးတို ့တိုက်ိဳ
တြင္ပူးတဲြေႀကျငာခ်က္ထုတ္ျပန္စဥ္ကျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရကို ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြကို ျဖစ္ေျမာက္ေအာင္
ဆက္လက္ျပဳလုပ္ပါဟုတိုက္တြန္းခ်က္ပါရိွခဲ့ရာ ယေန ့ဂ်ပန္နိုင္ငံရိွ ျျမန္မာ့အေရးပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္မႈ
ေကာ္မတီ(JAC) အပါအဝင္ျမန္မာ့နိုင္ငံေရးအဖဲြ ့အစည္းအသီးသီးမွ ဆန္ ့က်င္ဆႏၵျပပဲြမ်ား ဂ်ပန္နိုင္ငံ
ျခားေရးဝန္ႀကီးရုံးေရွ့နွင့္ ကုလသမဂၢရုံးေရွ ့မ်ားတြင္သြားေရာက္ဆန္ ့က်င္ဆႏၵထုတ္ေဖာ္မႈမ်ားကို
ေန ့စဥ္ရက္ဆက္ျပဳလုပ္လ်ွက္ရိွေပသည္။ ကုလသမဂၢ၏အျမင္မွာ၂၀၁၀ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြသည္ ျမန္မာ
ျပည္တြင္းနိုင္ငံေရးအႀကပ္အတည္း၏ထြက္ရပ္လမ္းျဖစ္သည္ဟုအျမင္ျဖစ္သည္။စစ္အစိုးရမေကာင္း
မွန္းကုလသမဂၢလည္းသိသည္၊သို ့ေသာ္ စီးပြားေရးုနိုင္ငံေရးပိတ္ဆို ့မႈမ်ားကို နအဖ ကမျဖံဳ ဒါေႀကာင့္
နအဖအႀကိဳက္ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြကိုေထာက္ခံျပီးလြတ္လပ္ေသာေရြးေကာက္ပဲြျဖစ္ေအာင္ႀကိဳးစားသြားမည္
ဟူေသာအျမင္ျဖစ္သည္။ ထိုႀကားထဲတြင္ဒီခ်ဳပ္အပါအဝင္ ၁၉၉၀ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြအနိုင္ရပါတီမ်ား တိုင္းရင္း
သားအဖဲြ ့အစည္းမ်ားနွင့္စစ္တပ္အႀကားသုံးပြင့္ဆိုင္ေဆြးေႏြးပဲြ ကိုက်င္းပနိုင္ေအာင္
တိုက္တြန္းသြားရန္ျဖစ္သည္။
(၂) ေနာက္ထပ္အျမင္တခုမွယေန ့ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို ့အပါအဝင္ျပည္ပေရာက္နိုင္ငံေရးသမားမ်ား၏
အျမင္ျဖစ္သည္။ အဆိုပါအျမင္မွာ လက္ရိွ နအဖကဆဲြကိုင္ထားေသာဖဲြ ့စည္းပုံအေျခခံဥပေဒအရ
ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြျပဳလုပ္ျပီးအနိုင္ရခဲ့သည့္တိုင္ေအာင္ျဖစ္ေပၚလာမည့္လႊတ္ေတာ္နွုင့္အစိုးရသည္ စစ္တပ္
အလိုႀက ရုပ္ေသးရုပ္အစိုးရနွင့္လႊတ္ေတာ္သာလ်ွင္ျဖစ္လာမည္ျဖစ္သည္။စစ္တပ္အေနနွင့္အဆိုပါ
ဖဲြ ့စည္းပုံအရ နိုင္ငံ့အာဏာကိုတရားဝင္အခ်ိန္မေရြးသိမ္းယူပိုင္ခြင့္ရရိွသြားမည္ျဖစ္ျပီး စစ္တပ္က
အာဏာကိုရာသက္ပန္ခ်ဳပ္ကိုင္သြားမည္ျဖစ္သည္။
၁၉၉၀ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြရလာဒ္အရ ဒီခ်ဳပ္ကိုအာဏာလဲႊအပ္ရမည္ျဖစ္သည္။ဒီခ်ဳပ္က လႊတ္ေတာ္
ေခၚ အစိုးရဖဲြ ့ျပီးတိုင္းရင္းသားျပည္သူလူထုႀကီးတရပ္လုံးအတြက္တကယ္အက်ိဳးရိွမည့္ဖဲြ ့စည္းပုံကိုေရးဆဲြ
ျပီး ပါတီစုံဒီမိုကေရစီနိုင္ငံေတာ္ကိုဆက္လက္အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ရန္ျဖစ္သည္။သို ့ေသာ္ ၁၉၉၀ေရြး
ေကာက္ပဲြရလာဒ္ကိုအေကာင္အထည္မေဖာ္ေပးသည္မွာရွင္းရွင္းေလးျဖစ္သည္။ အာဏာကိုလက္မလႊတ္ခ်င္၍ျဖစ္သည္။
နိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားအားလုံးလႊတ္ေပးျပီး သုံးပြင့္ဆိုင္ေဆြးေႏြးပဲြျပဳလုပ္ေပးးျပီး အဆိုပါေဆြး
ေႏြးပဲြရလာဒ္ေပၚမူတည္၍ ေရွ ့ဘာဆက္လုပ္မည္ဆိုသည္ကိုစဥ္းစားသြားရန္ျဖစ္သည္။နိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္း
သားမ်ားကိုထိန္းသိမ္းထားျပီး ဒီခ်ဳပ္အပါအဝင္တိုင္းရင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားဒီမိုကေရစီအင္အားစုမ်ားနွင့္
မေဆြးေႏြးဘဲနွင့္ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေေကာက္ပဲြကိုစဥ္းစားစရာမလိုဟုျဖစ္သည္။
ထို ့ျပင္ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္သည္သာလ်ွင္တိုင္းရင္းသားမ်ား
နွင့္လူထုႀကီးတရပ္လုံး၏ယုံႀကည္ေလးစားမႈကိုရရိွေသာအမ်ိဳးသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ျဖစ္ျပီးေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္း
စုႀကည္မပါဝင္ေသာနိုင္ငံေရးေဆြးေႏြးပဲြမ်ားမွေပၚထြက္လာမည့္ရလာဒ္မ်ားသည္အမ်ိဳးသားျပန္လည္
ရင္ႀကားေစ ့ေရးုကို အမွန္တကယ္ေဖာ္ေဆာင္နိုင္မည္ဟုအယုံအႀကည္မရိွေခ်။
(၃) ေနာက္ထပ္သေဘာထားတခုမွာစစ္တပ္၏သေဘာထားျဖစ္သည္။လက္ရိွမိမိတို ့စိတ္တိုင္းႀကေရးဆဲြ
အတည္ျပဳထားေသာဖဲြ ့စည္းပုံကိုအေျခခံ၍ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြျပဳလုပ္ျပီးအာဏာကို စစ္တပ္မွဆက္
လက္ႀကိဳးကိုင္သြားရန္ ရုရွားနွင့္ခပ္ဆင္ဆင္ တရုတ္နွင့္ခပ္ဆင္ဆင္ ျမန္မာ့နည္းျမန္မာ့ဟန္စစ္အာဏာရွင္
ေအာ္တိုခေရစီစနစ္ျဖင့္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေသာနိုင္ငံေတာ္ကိုထူေထာင္ရန္ဟူေသာရည္မွန္းခ်က္ျဖစ္သည္။
၁၉၉၀ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြကိုနမူနာယူ၍ ေနာက္ထပ္၁၉၉၀ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြမ်ိဳးထပ္မံမျဖစ္ေစရန္ စစ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္
မ်ားအေနျဖင့္သံဓိဌာန္ခ်ထားသည္ဟုယူဆရေပသည္။
အျမင္(၁)နွင့္ (၂) မွာ စဥ္းစားသူ၏ရႈေထာင့္အရ တူသလိုလို မတူသလိုလိုရိွသည္။
လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္အစီအစဥ္ေရွ ့ေနာက္လဲြေနျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။အဆိုပါလုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ေရွ ့ေနာက္လဲြေနျခင္းမွာ
အဆိုပါရႈေထာင့္နွစ္ခု၏အႀကီးမားဆုံးကြာျခားခ်က္ျဖစ္ျပီးရလာဒ္မွာလည္းအျဖဴနွင့္အမဲ ဆိုသလို
ကဲြျပားျခားနားစြာေပၚထြက္လာမည္ျဖစ္သည္ဟုရႈျမင္သည္။
ေအာ္တိုခေရစီတြင္တိူင္းျပည္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္သူမ်ားကအကၽြင္းမဲ့အာဏာကိုဆုပ္ကို္င္ထား၍ တိုင္းျပည္၏တိုး
တက္မႈ ဆုတ္ရုတ္မႈမွာထိုေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားေပၚတြင္သာတည္သည္။အမွန္တကယ္လြတ္လပ္ေသာအတိုက္
အခံမရိွ၍အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္သူလူတန္းစား၏အမွားမ်ားကိုေထာက္ျပလ်ွင္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္သူတို ့ကအမွားကိုဝန္မခံဘဲ
ေထာက္ျပသူမ်ားကိုသာအေရးယူျခင္းကို ရုရွားနွင့္တရုတ္နိုင္ငံတို ့တြင္အထင္အရွားေတြ ့ျမင္ေနရသည္။
ရုရွားနွင့္တရုတ္နိုင္ငံမ်ားတြင္စီးပြားေရးတိုးတက္မႈကိုသိသာထင္ရွားစြာေတြ ့ျမင္ေနရေသာ္လည္း
ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံတြင္စီးပြားေရးတိုးတက္မႈကိုေရးေရးမွ်မျမင္ရေပ။ ယခုအခါကမၻာ့စီးပြားပ်က္ကပ္ေႀကာင့္
ေအာ္တိုခေရစီစနစ္ျဖင့္ေအာင္ျမင္သေရာင္ရိွေနေသာရုရွားနွင့္တရုတ္နိုင္ငံတို ့၏စီးပြားေရးအေျခအေန
မွာလည္းကမၻာလုံးဆိုင္ရာစီးပြားေရးကြန္ယက္၏ေနာက္ဆက္တဲြအျဖစ္အေျခအေနဆိုးရြားလာေန
ေႀကာင္းေတြ ့ရိွရေလသည္။
ထုိ ့ေႀကာင့္ျမန္မာစစ္အာဏာရွင္မ်ားရည္မွန္းေသာရည္မွန္းခ်က္ပန္းတိုင္မွာ ၄င္းတို ့ကိုယ္တိုင္က ရိုးသားမႈမရိွေသာေႀကာင့္
တိုင္းျပည္အက်ိဳးထက္ကိုယ္က်ိဳးစီးပြားကိုသာဦးထိပ္ထားလွ်က္ရိွေသာေႀကာင့္
ယုံႀကည္လက္ခံနိုင္စရာမရိွဟုယူဆသည္။
ေလးစားစြာျဖင့္-
ဘုန္းလိႈင္
F W U B C
၁၉၊ေဖေဖာ္ဝါရီ၊၂၀၀၉
Thursday, February 19, 2009
၁၉၉၀ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြနဲ ့ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြ
US Sanctions Taking Toll on Burmese Gems Industry
http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=15150
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By WAI MOE Thursday, February 19, 2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mogok, the historic center of Burma’s gems industry, is struggling to cope with the effects of US sanctions targeting the country’s military rulers and their cronies, according to industry insiders.
A gem trader in Mogok told The Irrawaddy that at least 50 mine sites in the area have decreased production and several have closed completely since the US Congress approved a law restricting gem imports from Burma last July.
“Work at many gem sites has slowed down because it is becoming more difficult to export the gems now that they are on the sanctions list,” the trader said.
He added that many investors are reluctant to spend money to fuel earthmovers and other heavy equipment because they are no longer sure they will be able to sell the gems they find.
Although the sanctions are intended to block imports into the United States, other markets are also becoming less receptive to Burmese gems. According to traders, Thailand’s cross-border imports of precious stones from Burma have declined in recent months, and many Thai traders are now offering lower prices for the gems they buy.
Chinese traders have also become relatively scarce in Mogok.
“Even Chinese gem traders are not coming to Burma like they used to,” said one Burmese journalist who closely follows developments in the gems industry. “I think if the Chinese don’t come, there won’t be any gem auctions.”
Although the Burmese junta has continued to hold gem auctions in Rangoon, buying by international jewelers has dropped by at least 50 percent, according to jewelers in the city, who say that market prices across the country have also fallen by half.
Official statistics show that Burma exported US $647.53 million worth of gems in the fiscal year 2007-08. However, Burma’s gems production decreased from 7.178 million carats in the 2nd quarter of 2007 to 6.491 million carats in the 2nd quarter of 2008, according to The Economist Intelligence Unit.
In Burma, the gems industry is owned by the state, but since the 1990s, the government has allowed private investment through join-venture enterprises. But licenses are only granted to cronies of the ruling generals, including Tay Za, who runs Htoo Trading Co, and Ne Win Tun, of Ruby Dragon Jade & Gems Co Ltd.
In May 2008, former US President George W Bush issued an executive order putting three Burmese state enterprises—the Myanmar Gem Enterprise, Myanmar Timber Enterprise and Myanmar Pearl Enterprise—on a sanctions list.
Two months later, the US Congress approved the Tom Lantos Block Burmese JADE (Junta’s Anti-Democratic Efforts) Act, which renewed a 2007 act restricting the import of gems from Burma and tightening sanctions on mining projects.
The law said that over 90 percent of the world’s ruby supply originates in Burma, but only 3 percent of the rubies entering the US are designated as being of Burmese origin.
According to Human Rights Watch, gems mined in Burma are first exported to countries such as Thailand or India to be cut and polished, and then exported to other countries around the world.
Prime markets for jewelry made with Burmese rubies are in the US, Europe and Japan. The highest quality and most expensive stones are exported to Switzerland for onward sale to other markets, the group said.
Burma's 2010 election: New election, old promises
http://english.dvb.no/news.php?id=2228
Naing Ko Ko
Feb 19, 2009 (DVB)–An election in Burma is supposedly going to be held in 2010 by the elite generals. Within the half century from 1960 to 2010, it will be the second election held by the military.
Elections in Burma are precisely identical to scarce goods, with neither availability nor choice for the public. Since Burma became an independent state, it has had only three “democratic general elections" that were held in 1952, 1956 and 1960 respectively, all under the administration of the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League which ruled Burma for 10 years.
Within the 28 years from 1960 to 1988, unsurprisingly, there were no democratic general elections held by the Revolutionary Council or the Burma Socialist Programme Party that was formed after the first military coup. However, the BSPP ran a "synthetic election" as a totalitarian and bureaucratic mechanism in 1974. As the BSPP was a military-based-party, the election was absolutely managed by the party bosses and generals. The voters did not have any choice and were ordered to vote for both the single party system and "pioneer dictators".
Although millions of people demanded democracy during the four-eights uprising, the military seized state power again on 18 September 1988 and branded itself the State Law and Order Restoration Council. The junta held its first ever multiparty democratic general election on 27 May 1990 and reappointed an election commission and promulgated a multiparty democracy election law that were both formulated by the BSPP regime during the “summer of democracy” in September 1988.
There were more than two thousand candidates from 93 political parties who stood in the 1990 election full of dreams and promise. Although the election campaigns of the 93 political parties were heavily controlled by the junta, the National League for Democracy won 392 out of 485 seats. The Shan Nationalities League for Democracy won 23 seats and the BSPP’s new incarnation, the National Unity Party, won just 10 seats. Here, most Burma watchers claimed that it was a free and fair election although there was no freedom of expression and no free international monitoring system.
According to Huntington's third wave democratisation thesis of 1993 and many other political theorists, elections are a major tool for the democratisation process. In 1990, the 38-million-strong population of Burma overwhelmingly honoured the legitimacy and authority of the election to bring about the rule of law and to manage the state mechanism. But the military generals have neither transferred state political power to the election winning parties nor convened a people's parliament.
Consequently, the elected MPs of all election winning parties have not convened a parliament themselves, though they have the moral and political responsibility to carry out the people's legitimate decision as reflected in the election result. While the winners of the 1990 election claim that they have political legitimacy, the military junta argues that it has de jure legitimacy. Consequently, the military has not honored the election result, while the 1990 MPs-elect have not formed a democratic government themselves in the sovereign mainland of Burma. Thus, Burma has become a paradox of bulletocracy and representative democracy.
In addition, the MPs of 1990 election have been applying elite-driven transition models, including policies of national reconciliation and UN-brokered dialogue with the generals, while the generals have repeatedly and officially rejected their demands. Yet again, the situation since the 1990 election has remained absolutely stagnant and the opportunity for a civilian-initiated transitional process has not yet been consolidated.
There is no comprehensive winning strategy or policy platform on how to apply a regime change model for Burma after the election, either from within the military junta or from the leaders of political parties or MPs who are regularly asking international agencies such as the United Nations, the European Union and ASEAN to intervene in the power games in Burma.
During the last 20 years, all stakeholders, the military junta and all political parties have released occasional statements calling for dialogue with the elite military generals or for parliament to be convened. But there has not been a paradigm shift regarding regime transition or a power reconfiguration resulting from the 1990 election. It has not brought about either a break-even point or a balance of power between the competing claims about democracy in Burma.
On the other hand, the generals have also applied their own non-democratic transition plans such as the National Convention, national reconciliation and the Seven-Point Road Map towards "disciplined democracy". The junta has given many promises that these plans are leading towards a democratic Burma, but there have been no tangible results yet. The people of Burma have suffered from the broken promises from the both the junta and the election winners of 1990.
Now, once more, the junta has repeatedly promised another election will be held in 2010. As the time draws nearer, there will be many political parties that aim to participate in the junta’s planned election. On the exile front, the political legitimacy of the 1990 MPs will shrink and there will be a dilemma of how to claim political legitimacy after the new 2010 election. Some demographic figures have estimated that there is a population of 56 million in Burma at the moment; there are millions of young voters who have never voted in any elections.
Will this 2010 election override the results of the 1990 election? Will the 2010 election be postponed, or will the junta transfer political power to the 1900 election winners or share power with them? Will the MPs elected in 1990 withdraw from being MPs or will they go back to Burma to join the armed resistance? Will they maintain the status quo and ask the UN to fight for them to get political power?
Essentially, the people of Burma have been waiting for the fulfillment of the promises from the 1990 election winners and still millions of members of the new generations are driven to neighboring counties to meet their basic needs.
Naing Ko Ko is a postgraduate scholarship student in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He is a former political prisoner.
SSA: Blame junta for druglord on the loose
by admin — last modified 2009-02-19 07:50
Naw Kham, former pro-junta militia leader who again made headlines by shooting at a Chinese cargo ship on the Mekong yesterday, remains free because of the ruling military junta’s support for him, according to the anti Rangoon Shan State Army (SSA) South.
Naw Kham
By SHAN
19 February 2009
Thai-Burma Relations
“Otherwise, how can he move freely in the area?” ask Lt-Col Gawnzeun, Commander of the Kengtung Force. “He’s been surrounded on all sides by Burma, Lao and Thai forces.”
His boss Col Yawdserk, leader of the SSA, agreed. “When our troops were there, the Burma Army kept chasing us without let-up,” he said. “But it doesn’t seem to care much about Naw Kham’s presence in the area.”
Not quite, said a Thai security source. Following the meeting between Burmese and Lao authorities on 7 February, reportedly through Chinese pressure, the two had resolved to cooperate on the apprehension of Naw Kham, the new “Lord of the Golden Triangle,” dead or alive, according to him.
The Burma Army unit stationed in Mongphong, opposite Lao’s Muong Mom, almost immediately gave chase following the shootings in the river where 1 Chinese was killed and 3 others wounded, according to Thai media reports.
“That could be a simulation,” said Gawnzeun. “He can’t get away if you really want to catch him. I’d certainly wish to give it a try, as he’s been taxing traders using our name.”
Naw Kham had also shot up a Chinese patrol boat on 25 February last year wounding 3 Chinese officers.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
www.shanland. org
Mongla runs dry
by admin — last modified 2009-02-19 07:46
Business in Mongla, the headquarters of Sai Leun-led ceasefire group, opposite China’s Daluo, has gone slack since early January after Chinese authorities ordered indefinite closure of the border checkpoint, according to travelers returning from eastern Shan State.
By SHAN
19 February 2009
South of Mongla at Wan Hsio, where several casinos are located, there are few big spenders from China and many have been forced to close shop.
At Mongla itself, many restaurants and hotels are suffering from loss of custom. “At the hotel where I stay, there were only two other guests,” said a visitor from Thailand who requested anonymity. “I also visited a few discotheques and pubs in the evening but found only a handful of clients.”
As the checkpoint on the Lam was closed to outsiders (natives are given only one-day passes), many have resorted to crossing the border illegally from other points. “That involves some risks too,” said a local, “because there are Chinese patrols and if you are caught, you’ll be fined Yuan 1,000-1,500 ($151.5-227) . That’s a huge sum for farmers like us.”
Border checkpoint in Mongla Former casino now hotel
The reasons for the closure, as explained by both friendly officials and locals, were as follows:
Frequent seizures of drugs along the route
The Chinese attempt to connect with Thailand through Mongla-Kengtung- Maesai highway being thwarted by Mongla leaders’ lack of cooperation
Burmese customs’ request for a 30% share in the cross border revenue was turned down by the Mongla authorities thereby incurring the wrath of the Burmese authorities who had notified their counterparts in China to close the border checkpoint
Rumors that Mongla will be taken over by the Burma Army in 2010 had thrown so much panic among the populace that some of those who have prospered are moving out to China and other places
The fear was intensified by the military build-up by both the Burma Army and the National Democratic Alliance Army-Eastern Shan State (NDAA-ESS) along the Lwe that roughly serves as a boundary between the two sides. “On 7 February, our troops were digging trenches near Taping on the Lwe,” said an NDAA-ESS officer. “The Burma Army unit nearby saw what we were doing and protested. We had a heated argument, but we refused to give in, because if it was okay for them to reinforce themselves, why should it be wrong for us to do the same thing.”
The same officer nevertheless was frank in admitting that the group’s non-compliance to the junta’s demand to disarm depended much on the United Wa State Army (UWSA) its stronger ally next door. “Without the Wa, it’ll be difficult for us to go against the Burma Army’s continued pressure.”
The group, officially known as Shan State Special Region #4, has 3 brigades: Central, 369th (mostly Shan) and 911st (mostly Akha). Estimated strength is 4,500.
Thai travelers who were there last week said they saw a lot of trucks with NW (Northern Wa) number plates, but very few armed Wa fighters in Mongla. “Of course, Wa troops, if they are in Mongla territory, will be stationed well outside the town, not inside,” said one.
Another traveler who met a visitor from Panghsang said he saw the Wa army selecting and clearing sites along the way. “I heard that they have been marked as temporary holding centers for refugees if war breaks out.”
Both the UWSA and the NDAA-ESS are under heavy pressure to “exchange arms for peace,” an official term for surrender. However the Shan State Army (SSA) North, their remain ally in the west, appears to have been given better treatment by the junta who told them the question whether to surrender or become part of Burma’s armed forces would be put on a back burner until the new government emerges.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
www.shanland. org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clinton offers words of reassurance while in Japan
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke at a joint press conference with Japan's foreign minister, Hirofumi Nakasone, on Tuesday. (Tomohiro Osumi/Pool, via Reuters)
By Mark Landler and Martin Fackler Published: February 18, 2009
TOKYO: In words and gestures, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton offered reassurance to Japan on Tuesday, calling its alliance with the United States a "cornerstone" of American foreign policy and meeting with families of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea.
Clinton then departed on Wednesday for Jakarta, Indonesia, the second stop on a four-country tour that includes stops in South Korea and China. As with the stopover in Japan, the visit to Indonesia is steeped in symbolism: it is the first Muslim country she will visit and the start of what she said would be a "concerted effort" by the Obama administration to bring a new message to the Islamic world.
Clinton may also lay the groundwork for a visit by President Barack Obama, who lived in Jakarta as a boy. She has told colleagues that she is fascinated by Indonesia's ability to achieve political stability after its economic crisis in the late 1990s, and that she wonders if it holds any lessons for Pakistan.
While in Japan, Clinton carried an invitation from Obama to Prime Minister Taro Aso to meet him in Washington next Tuesday. Aso will be the first foreign leader received at the White House.
Saber-rattling by North Korea has already cast a shadow over Clinton's first trip as secretary of state, forcing her to confront an issue that evokes a complex range of feelings among the North's neighbors.
Today in Asia & Pacific
Security crackdown over vast areas in and around TibetPakistani journalist is killed covering rallyU.S. general sees long term for Afghan buildupIn Japan, where animosity toward North Korea runs deep because of the plight of the abductees, Clinton said she met with the families "to express my personal sympathy and our concern for what happened."
During the meeting, several family members said, Clinton pledged her support for resolving questions about the abductees — the fate of many of whom remains unknown even after three decades. But she stopped short of promising concrete steps to press North Korea on the issue.
The relatives said that Clinton spent most of the 30-minute meeting listening to their accounts. Sakie Yokota, whose daughter, Megumi, was kidnapped from Japan in 1977 at age 13, said she gave Clinton a copy of her book about her daughter and an extra copy for Obama.
"She is also a mother, and she said that any mother would fight to the end if such a thing happened to her," Yokota said.
But when she asked Clinton to punish North Korea by restoring it to Washington's list of state sponsors of terrorism — it was removed by the Bush administration last year — Clinton was noncommittal, saying only that she "would think about it," Yokota said.
The relatives said it was noteworthy that Clinton had met them, saying it sent a signal to North Korea not to ignore the issue. But they also showed disappointment in her offer to normalize relations with North Korea if it abandoned its nuclear program.
Shigeo Izuka, whose sister was kidnapped in 1978, said he implored Clinton "not to become friendly with North Korea because of a nuclear agreement." He said she listened to him "with intense concern in her eyes, but I felt in my heart that this issue will be all too easily forgotten."
North Korea has admitted to abducting Yokota's daughter and Izuka's sister and says that both later died in North Korea. The families reject the North's account, saying they want a full investigation.
Clinton said Washington would not relent in its pressure on North Korea to get it to give up its nuclear weapons program in a way that is verifiable. "We are watching very closely," she said.
But she repeated Obama's pledge to "reach out a hand to those with which we have differences." And she committed to continuing the multiparty talks with the North Korean government that also involve China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.
Clinton's busy day also included afternoon tea with Empress Michiko at the imperial residence and a town hall meeting at Tokyo University.
Fielding a question from a student about American economic sanctions against Myanmar, formerly Burma, Clinton acknowledged that the policy had not brought any significant changes to the country, which is ruled by a military junta. She said the Obama administration was reviewing its options, although she did not give details.
Clinton had dinner with Prime Minister Aso, followed by a meeting with his political nemesis, Ichiro Ozawa, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan.
After the meeting, Ozawa said that he told Clinton that he valued the alliance with the United States, but that he emphasized that he wanted the relationship to be on a more equal footing, criticizing the current government for following Washington too slavishly.
Terms of Use
Can Hillary Help Liberate Burma?
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/02/18/can-hillary-help-liberate-burma.aspx
Hillary Clinton has indicated that the United States is considering a major shift in its policy toward Burma, most notably by lifting the economic sanctions that have restricted trade and investment in one of the world's most brutalizing regimes. While maintaining that the Obama administration is still considering its options, Clinton asserted that "the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn't influenced the Burmese junta." She added that engagement--the approach undertaken by Burma's neighboring countries--also failed to convince the authoritarian leaders to change their course.
Why hasn't America's approach made a difference? Well, other powerful actors--namely China and India--have stepped into the void, fostering lucrative partnerships with the regime. The military rulers have exploited the country's vast natural resources--not only its infamous gemstones, but also timber, metals, and natural gas. Moreover, the regime has continued to receive mixed messages from the international community: While the U.S. and E.U. have loudly condemned the regime, the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has supported "constructive engagement" that has ensured that the regime has never been diplomatically isolated. Altogether, the Burmese junta neither needs nor wants to seek out America's approval.
It's encouraging to hear Clinton's admission that both sanctions and engagement have failed to bring any reform to Burma in the past 20 years. So what can be done instead, and how can the U.S. adopt a leadership role? Michael Green and Derek Mitchell have laid out some provocative alternatives in Foreign Affairs, suggesting that the U.S. go through China and India--Burma's "greatest enablers"--and make Burma more of a priority in diplomatic talks: "In discussions with Beijing, Washington could make China's Burma policy another test of its readiness to be a ‘responsible stakeholder,' much as it has already done in regard to Darfur," the authors write.
Clinton has already given strong signals that the U.S. will be more actively involved in Southeast Asia than under the Bush administration-not only by visiting Jakarta on her first overseas trip, but also by agreeing to attend a ministerial summit that Condi Rice "tended to skip" and to sign an ASEAN treaty of "amity and cooperation" that Bush refused to agree to. Meanwhile, the reasons for prioritizing Burma are becoming all the more urgent. As Green and Mitchell point out, the country is more than a political and humanitarian disaster--it's fast becoming a serious international security threat. Given such threats, the U.S. shouldn't hesitate in taking a leadership role in addressing the Burma crisis--not by going it alone, Rambo-style, but by diplomatically engaging and pressuring those most likely to influence the regime.
--Suzy Khimm
Posted: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 4:15 PM with 1 comment(s)
Comments
You must be logged-in to comment.
Not a subscriber? Click here to get a digital or print and digital subscription to The New Republic!
blackton said:
Please, China sure as hell is not going to crack down on the oligarchy there, there is way too much money there. The leaders have even decamped from the ancient Capital and built a potemkin one in the interior. I do favor economic engagement though, since everyone else is looting the country, we might as well be in on it. Cynicism aside, engagement can mitigate some of the horrendous human rights abuses there, at this point at least being inside the room can make them lose some face, screaming at them from half way around the world lets them turn their backs on us.
Clinton must press China on rights
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0219/p09s02-coop.html
A stable, open China is in America's best interests.
By William F. Schulz, Sarah Dreier and Winny Chen
from the February 19, 2009 edition
E-mail a friend Print this Letter to the Editor Republish ShareThisE-mail newsletters RSS
Washington - When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton touches down in Beijing this week she will face an authoritarian Chinese government wringing their hands over a remarkably brazen online petition for human rights and an end to autocratic rule that is circulating among its citizens.
This petition, Charter 08, is not what China's rulers expect to talk about with Secretary Clinton on her first trip abroad for the new Obama administration. She should insist that they do.
The reason: Charter 08 is the longest sustained human rights campaign in China since the Tiananmen Square massacre 20 years ago this June and continues to spread throughout China despite the government's best attempts.
It was released by Chinese intellectuals, lawyers, and dissidents on the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Dec. 10 and has since been signed by over 8,000 ordinary Chinese citizens, who are bravely displaying their names, addresses, and occupations online for all to see, including China's fearsome secret police.
Clinton should capitalize on the momentum created by the charter to promote a responsible human rights agenda. To be sure, much has changed in China since Tiananmen Square.
But, despite progress in realizing social and economic rights and some increases in individual freedoms, China today remains responsible for profound violations of its people's civil and political rights, from restrictions on free expression and religious freedom to detention without trial, torture, excessive use of the death penalty, involuntary resettlement, and forced abortions. In its foreign policy, China often backs repressive regimes around the world, including Sudan and Myanmar (Burma), and waters down international sanctions against them.
America and China's interrelated responsibilities to address climate change are expected to dominate Clinton's conversations with the Chinese. Cutting greenhouse-gas emissions is critical to our bilateral relations and to the health and prosperity of the planet. But China is unlikely to meet its environmental obligations without the accountability provided by democracy and human rights.
In addition to the Tiananmen anniversary, 2009 is also a year of multiple significant political anniversaries as well as the year for China's evaluation under the UN Universal Periodic Review. In fact, the Human Rights Council and several UN member states have called on China to extend to its citizens – especially ethnic minorities, journalists, and human rights defenders – full access to human rights.
In anticipation, the Chinese government has already intensified security. Strong crackdowns against protesters in Tibet have been under way since January. Authors of Charter 08 have been harassed and detained. Beijing police barred organizers of the "20 Year Anniversary of China/Avant-Garde Exhibition" from hosting events, and other Tiananmen-related crackdowns are likely to continue in the coming months as the government attempts to avoid Tiananmen-related "embarrassment."
The Obama administration should not allow these anniversaries – and the human rights values they represent – to go forgotten. Not only does the United States have a moral obligation to confront human rights issues in China, but it is in the best strategic interests of the US to do so. Given the high degree of interdependence between the US and Chinese economies and China's growing military reach, American interests are best served by a stable China with a robust commitment to the rule of law. Those conditions are undermined by a failure to respect human rights.
Recalling her groundbreaking pronouncement as first lady at the 1995 Beijing Women's Conference that "Women's rights are human rights," Clinton should take similar advantage of this week's discussions to persuade China that it will not be able to address these pressing issues successfully if it ignores human rights. The secretary must stress that greater democracy and human rights will be integral to China if it is to be the highly respected global leader it aspires to be.
No one is better placed than Clinton with her international reputation for hard-headedness and high ideals to help China make the connection between greater freedom and respect for the rule of law and more effective government and less civil unrest. Her message should be straightforward: It's a new day in America and can be a new day in US-China relations, but bilateral relations will never be fully harmonious without real progress on human rights.
• William F. Schulz, a senior fellow in human rights policy at the Center for American Progress, is former executive director of Amnesty International USA. Sarah Dreier and Winny Chen are researchers at the center.
Hundreds return to home-BURMA AND THAILAND BORDER
No.18-02/2009
18 February 2009
By Hseng Khio Fah
The 7 February Mae Joe student’s rape and murder has led to a mass departure of Shan migrant workers from different locations of Chiangmai province to their hometowns and villages.
Since then, many Shan migrant workers have been under difficulties to stay in Thailand due to fear of the continuing arrest, abuses by the host community physically or verbally and being jobless, according to workers.
From 9 February, hundreds of Shan migrant workers are returning to their homeland. Some of them were deported by the police.
Most are people from Langkhurh, Mawkmai, Mong Nai, Laikha, Mongkeung, Mongpan and Namzang, southern Shan State.
And now, at least 40 to 50 people are reported to be arriving in the border town, Nawng-ook (Arunothai), Chiangdao district, Chiangmai province, 100 km northwest of the provincial seat every day, according to border sources.
Those returning are mostly from Sankamphaeng, Hangdong and Mae Joe districts.
On the other hand, they need to pay large amount of money to pass the border gate BP1, opposite Nawng-ook.
Most of them fled across the border through the jungle, while others crossed with border guides. Those who contacted guides to lead to their native homes have to pay 3,600 Baht for a single person, said a taxi driver from Nawng-ook.
Many express worry about their jobs when they return to Burma. However, some are planning to plant poppy fields or join the resistance, said the driver.
“We have no choice. We just have to plant opium to live, if not we will be jobless,” the driver quoted a passenger saying.
Other reasons cited for their decision to return include the upturn of the exchange rates. They used to get Kyat 35 to the baht before, but now it is Kyat 27 to the baht. “It places us in difficulty,” one worker who is planning to return said, “because these days jobs are scarce, with or without the Mae Joe incident.”
There are estimated about 80,000 migrants in Chiangmai or one-sixth of the total population here, according to Migrant Assistance Program (MAP) foundation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For further information, please contact S.H.A.N. at:
Shan Herald Agency for News
P.O. Box 15
Nonghoi P.O
Chiangmai 50007
Thailand
e-mail:
Ph: 66-81-5312837
Website:
www.shanland. org (English)
www.mongloi. org (Shan)
www.mongloi. org/burmese (Burmese)
S.H.A.N. is an independent Shan media group. It is not affiliated to any political or armed organization.
News related to Shan & Burma, including other interested news items are collected and posted from time to time for your information. Those interested are requested to write to "Shan Herald Agency for News"
Does US Plan Greater Engagement with Burmese Regime?
http://www.irrawaddy.org/print_article.php?art_id=15135
COMMENTARY
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By AUNG ZAW Wednesday, February 18, 2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the new administration in Washington is reviewing its policy on Burma, prompting pundits to wonder whether that means more US engagement with the military government.
“We're looking at what steps could influence the current Burmese government, and we're looking at ways we could help the Burmese people,” Clinton said in Japan, the first stage of her Asia tour.
Clinton, on her first foreign tour since taking over at the State Department, also said the new US administration hopes it can build a Burma policy that is "more effective" at promoting reform and encouraging political and economic freedom.
It is too early to say whether the US will depart from its tough sanctions-backed policy.
Some critics are saying that the US will soon engage the repressive regime in Burma. Time will tell, but what is needed now is the formulation of a comprehensive Burma policy involving the input of partners and key players in the region.
Greater engagement by the US with Asean nations and Burma’s powerful neighbors, China and India, could help in the construction of a new Burma policy to encourage change in Burma. But, after 20 years spent covering Burma, I hold my breath.
US policy under the Bush administration was seen as strong and outspoken, although its critics say it was based on a go-it-alone policy that shunned cooperation.
The policy failed to get much support when the US pushed it at the UN or at the regional level, and it suffered because of Bush’s disastrous policy in the Middle East.
With the arrival of a new administration, it is hoped that President Barack Obama and a State Department led by Clinton will receive more support from Burma’s neighbors in influencing the regime to undertake genuine political and economic reforms.
Under Bush’s forceful Burma policy and the Tom Lantos Block Burmese JADE (Junta’s Anti-Democratic Efforts) Act 2008, the US imposed direct sanctions on military leaders in Burma and their business cronies. In addition, the act commissioned a “US Special Representative and Policy Coordinator” for Burma to work with Burma’s neighbors and develop a more proactive approach.
If US policy towards Burma is more proactive and not short-sighted, it will definitely receive support in the region. In this case, the US doesn’t need to stick to a sanctions policy alone; it could also, without compromising its objective, find a way to open a dialogue with the regime in order to achieve its aim of a free, peaceful and prosperous Burma.
Although some US actions and policies have been criticized as symbolic gestures or “megaphone diplomacy,” Washington’s stand on human rights and democratization have been highly recognized in Burma and beyond.
When the oppressed Burmese need outside help and moral support to challenge the regime, they look not towards China, India, Thailand or Asean, nor even to the UN and some Western governments, but to Washington.
With or without US support, however, the Burmese people will continue to fight and challenge the regime and its repression. The plight of more than 2,000 political prisoners demands their continued engagement for justice.
The trouble is that, in dealing with the regime, the West is at times no different from Burma’s opportunistic neighbors. They are sometimes confused and misinformed.
In January, two ministers from Scandinavian countries visited Burma.
Denmark’s Minister of Development Cooperation, Ulla Tørnæs, and Norway’s Minister of Development and Environment, Erik Solheim, were the highest ranking European officials to visit the military-ruled country in more than two decades.
Denmark has contributed US $11.4 million and Norway $7.7 million to the Cyclone Nargis relief fund through the Tripartite Core Group (TCG), made up of representatives of the UN, Asean and the Burmese regime.
Ulla Tørnæs told the Danish newspaper Politiken at the conclusion of the visit: “It is quite clear to me that Burma is one of the world's poorest countries, and that neither can we nor should we neglect it. We must make an effort, although we know it will happen step by step.”
In an earlier message, Tørnæs said economic sanctions on Burma and a tourism boycott were counterproductive and suggested the country would benefit from more tourists and trade with the world.
Such a bold statement should be welcomed. However, the Danish minister should also realize that many of Burma’s problems are man-made and lie in the hands of generals who should be held accountable. Burma urgently needs a political solution and the two issues cannot be dealt with separately.
Apart from sanctions-bashing, Tørnæs doesn’t come up with a comprehensive, broader Burma policy and it is doubtful whether her argument will be bought by many inside and outside Burma—let alone by US Secretary of State Clinton.
Tørnæs is no Clinton, whose formulation of US policy on Burma commands serious attention. The policy should invite many different opinions, but it should not be forgotten that divisions between Western governments over Burma only create a greater opportunity for the generals to prolong their iron rule.
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
Clinton Arrives In Jakarta; Criticizes Myanmar's Military Junta
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7014127715
February 18, 2009 10:38 a.m. EST
Kris Alingod - AHN Contributor
Jakarta, Indonesia (AHN) - On the second stop of her maiden overseas trip as the top U.S. diplomat, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Indonesia on Wednesday and criticized the military dictatorship of Myanmar, also known as Burma.
"We are going to work closely and we are going to consult with Indonesia," Clinton is quoted by the Jakarta Post as saying after meeting with Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda. "Imposing sanction has not influenced the junta ... reaching out and trying to engage has not influenced them either."
Burma has been governed by a military junta since 1962. Its current government is headed by of Senior General Than Shwe. Its most well-known pro-Democracy activist is Aung San Suu Kyi, head of the National League for Democracy, which has been a government-in-exile since winning a majority of votes in the 1990 national elections.
Last August, Burmese activists celebrated the 20th anniversary of the 8888 uprising with a meeting with then-President George W. Bush. The 888 uprising was a massive demonstration that resulted in the deaths of thousands of pro-Democracy activists, university students, government workers and Buddhist monks who were protesting against Burma's repressive regime.
Clinton left Washington, D.C. on Sunday for Tokyo, where she stayed for three days before flying to Jakarta. She proceeds to Korea on Thursday. Her fourth and last stop will be in Beijing.
She is the first secretary of State since the Kennedy administration to visit Asia on a maiden trip. Her visit to Beijing will be held a few weeks after the 30th anniversary of the establishment of U.S. diplomatic relations with China on Jan. 1.
Clinton is expected to speak with leaders about North Korea's denuclearization. China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States are part of negotiations, called six-party talks, with North Korea about disarmament.
Copyright © 2003 - 2009 AHN - All rights reserved.
Redistribution, republication. syndication, rewriting or broadcast is prohibited without the prior written consent of AHN.
License AHN news for your website, business, digital signage network or publication.
ထုိင္းနယ္စပ္ ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းေတြႏုိင္ငံျခားပုိ႔မည့္ ပြဲစားေျခခ်င္းလိမ္
(ေခတ္ျပိဳင္ဂ်ာနယ္မွကူးယူေဖၚျပပါသည္)
ရဲရင့္ျမင့္ေမာင္ / ၁၈ ေဖေဖာ္ဝါရီ ၂၀၀၉
တတိယႏိုင္ငံ ထြက္ခြာခြင့္ရေရးအတြက္ ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းမ်ားသို႔ ဝင္ေရာက္လာသည့္ လူသစ္မ်ားကို အခေၾကးေငြယူၿပီး ႏိုင္ငံျခားထြက္ခြာခြင့္ရရန္ စီစဥ္ေပးသူမ်ားထဲတြင္ ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းမွ တာဝန္ရွိသူအခ်ဳိ႕ႏွင့္ ဝန္ထမ္းအခ်ဳိ႕ ပါဝင္ပတ္သက္မႈ ရွိသျဖင့္ မၾကာခင္ ကရင္ဒုကၡသည္ေကာ္မတီ KRC မွ ဝန္ထမ္းမ်ားလိုက္နာရန္ စည္းမ်ဥ္းစည္းကမ္းခ်က္မ်ား ထုတ္ၿပီး အေရးယူမႈမ်ား ျပဳလုပ္သြားမည္ဟု မယ္လဒုကၡသည္စခန္းမွ တာဝန္ရွိသူတဦးက ေခတ္ၿပိဳင္သို႔ေျပာသည္။မယ္လဒုကၡသည္စခန္း၏ ဒု-ဥကၠ႒ “ေစာထြန္းထြန္း” ဒီျပႆနာေတြကိုကိုင္တြယ္ဖို႔ ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့အပတ္က KRC အစည္းအေဝးမွာ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၿပီး ဝန္ထမ္းေတြလိုက္နာဖို႔ စည္းမ်ဥ္းစည္းကမ္းေတြကို ထုတ္ျပန္ၿပီး စည္းကမ္းမလိုက္နာတဲ့သူေတြကို အေရးယူသြားမွာ ျဖစ္တယ္။ အဓိက အလြဲသံုးစားမႈနဲ႔ လာဘ္စားမႈ တိုက္ဖ်က္ေရးအတြက္ပဲ ျဖစ္တယ္။ ျပႆနာ အမ်ားဆံုးရွိတာက ႏို႔ဖိုး၊ အံုးဖ်န္နဲ႔ မယ္လစခန္းပဲဲျဖစ္တယ္" ဟုေျပာသည္။လက္ရွိ မယ္လစခန္းတြင္ တရားဝင္ဒုကၡသည္ (၂၈,၇၀၀) ခန္႔ရွိၿပီး စာရင္းမဝင္ေသးသည့္ လူသစ္ဦးေရမွာ (၂၁,၁၁၈) ဦး ရွိသည္။ ၂၀၀၆-၂၀၀၇ ခုႏွစ္အတြင္း အသစ္ဝင္ေရာက္လာသူ (၁၃,၀၀၀) ထဲမွ (၈,၀၀၀) ခန္႔ကိုသာ ရိကၡာေပးႏိုင္မည့္ အေနအထား ရွိသည့္အတြက္ ဒုကၡသည္ တာဝန္ရွိသူမ်ားမွ စခန္းအတြင္း ကြင္းဆင္း၍ ရိကၡာေပးရန္ သင့္မသင့္စီိစစ္သြားမည္ ျဖစ္သည္ဟု ေစာထြန္းထြန္းက ဆက္ေျပာသည္။တတိယႏုိင္ငံ ထြက္ခြင့္ရေရးႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ၿပီး အဂတိလုိက္စားမႈ အမ်ားဆံုးစခန္း (၃) ခုတြင္ ျပည္တြင္းမွ ေငြေၾကးတတ္ႏိုင္သူမ်ားေၾကာင့္ စခန္းတြင္း အက်င့္ပ်က္ျခစားမႈမ်ား တေန႔ထက္ တေန႔ ပိုမိုဆိုးဝါးလာၿပီး အဂတိလိုက္စားမႈႏွင့္ ျပႆနာ႐ႈပ္ေထြးမႈမ်ား ျဖစ္ေပၚလ်က္ရွိေနသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ ထိေရာက္သည့္ အေရးယူမႈမ်ား လံုးဝမရွိေသးေၾကာင္း၊ ျပည္တြင္းမွလူမ်ား အိုးအိမ္ျခံေျမ ေရာင္းၿပီး ေငြထုပ္ပိုက္ကာ ပြဲစားမ်ားအစီအစဥ္ျဖင့္ တတိယႏိုင္ငံ ထြက္ခြာခြင့္ရ ေရး ႀကိဳးပမ္းၾကရာမွ ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းသမိုင္းတြင္ မျဖစ္ေပၚဖူးသည့္ အ႐ႈပ္အရွင္းမ်ား ျဖစ္ခဲ့ရ သည္ဟု ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းတခုမွ ဘာသာေရးဆရာတဦးကေျပာသည္။ဒုကၡသည္စခန္း ဝင္ရန္အတြက္ မယ္လႏွင့္ အံုးဖ်န္ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းမ်ားတြင္ လူတဦးလွ်င္ အနည္းဆံုး ဘတ္ (၁၀,၀၀၀) ေပးရသည္ဟု စုံစမ္းသိရသည္။ ေငြေပးၿပီးစာရင္းမဝင္သူ တဦးက "က်ေနာ္တို႔အဖြဲ႔ တေယာက္တေသာင္းေပးတာ စာရင္းဝင္တဲ့လူ ရွိသလို၊ စာရင္းမဝင္ဘဲ ေငြကုန္ၿပီး ဖြတ္မရ ဓားမဆံုးျဖစ္သူေတြ အမ်ားႀကီးပဲဲ။ (၁၀,၀၀၀) ဆိုတာက စာရင္းဝင္ဖို႔ပဲဲ။ စာရင္းဝင္ၿပီး ရိကၡာစေကး ရရွိဖို႔က်ေတာ့ (၂၀,၀၀၀) ကေန (၃၀,၀၀၀) အထိ ေပးရတာေတြရွိတယ္။ ကိုယ္ကလည္း ခိုးေၾကာင္ခိုးဝွက္လုပ္ထားေတာ့ ဘယ္သူ႔ကိုတိုင္လို႔ တိုင္ရမွန္းေတာင္ မသိဘူး" ဟုေခတ္ၿပိဳင္သို႔ေျပာသည္။အထူးသျဖင့္ တတိယႏုိင္ငံ ထြက္ခြင့္ရေရးႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ၿပီး အဂတိလုိက္စားမႈ အမ်ားဆုံးစခန္းမ်ားမွာ အံုးဖ်န္ႏွင့္ မယ္လစခန္းမ်ားျဖစ္သည္။ မၾကာမီ အေမရိကန္သို႔ ထြက္ခြာေတာ့မည့္ အံုးဖ်န္စခန္းတြင္ လူစားထိုး ဒုကၡသည္စာရင္းဝင္ထားသူတဦးက "ႏိုင္ငံျခားထြက္တဲ့အဆင့္ထိ ေရာက္ဖို႔ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ အနည္းဆံုး ဘတ္ေငြ (၅၀,၀၀၀) ေလာက္ရွိမယ္ဆိုရင္ လုပ္ေပးတဲ့ပြဲစားေတြ စခန္းထဲမွာ အရန္သင့္ရွိတယ္။ ေငြရွိဖို႔ပဲဲ လိုတယ္" ဟုေျပာသည္။လူစားထုိးျခင္း ဆိုသည္မွာ ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းတြင္ ႏွစ္ရွည္ေနထိုင္သူအခ်ဳိ႕မွာ တတိယႏိုင္ငံသို႔ ထြက္ခြာလိုျခင္း မရွိသည့္အတြက္ ရပ္ကြက္မႉးမ်ားႏွင့္ ပြဲစားမ်ားကေငြေပးၿပီး ဒုကၡသည္အမည္ ေပါက္စာရင္းကို ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွလာေရာက္သည့္ ေငြရွင္မ်ားႏွင့္ ေနရာအစားထိုးေပးျခင္းျဖစ္ သည္။ တနည္းဆုိရလ်င္ ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းတြင္ အေစာပုိင္းထဲက ေရာက္ေနသည့္ ကရင္ဒုကၡ သည္ အစစ္တဦး၏ စခန္းတြင္းေနသည့္ သက္တမ္းကာလကုိ အေရာင္းအ၀ယ္လုပ္သည့္ သေဘာ ျဖစ္သည္။ႏွစ္ရွည္ဒုကၡသည္တဦးျဖစ္သူ ေစာတေကာ္က "ငါတို႔မိသားစု (၃) ဦး နာမည္ေရာင္းဖို႔ ရပ္ကြက္လူႀကီးက ဘတ္ (၁၅,၀၀၀) ေပးတယ္။ လူႀကီးေျပာတာက ေငြလည္းရမယ္၊ စခန္းကထြက္စရာမလိုဘူး၊ အရင္လို ရိကၡာလည္း ဆက္ရမယ္ဆိုလို႔ ေရာင္းလိုက္တာ။ ရပ္ကြက္လူႀကီး ကတိတည္တယ္၊ အားလံုးအဆင္ေျပတယ္။ ကိုယ္ကေတာ့ နာမည္အသစ္နဲ႔ ေနရတာေတာ့ ရွိတယ္" ဟုေျပာသည္။ထိုင္းနယ္စပ္ ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းမွတဆင့္ အေမရိကန္သို႔ ထြက္ခြာခြင့္ရရန္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းေနၾကသူမ်ား ထဲတြင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ အႏွ႔ံအျပားမွလာေရာက္သူမ်ားသာမက စင္ကာပူ၊ မေလးရွား၊ ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံ တို႔တြင္ အလုပ္လုပ္ေနသည့္ ျမန္မာတိုင္းရင္းသား အခ်ဳိ႕လည္း ပါဝင္ေနၿပီး ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကူး ပတ္စ္ပို႔ကိုင္ေဆာင္ေနသူမ်ားပါ စခန္းအတြင္းမွာ ဝင္ေရာက္လႈပ္ရွားလ်က္ရွိသည္ဟု ေခတ္ၿပိဳင္မွ စုံစမ္းသိရသည္။ကုလသမဂၢ ဒုကၡသည္မ်ားဆိုင္ရာ မဟာမင္းႀကီး႐ံုးႏွင့္ ထိုင္းအာဏာပိုင္မ်ား၏ အစီအစဥ္ျဖင့္ ျမန္မာဒုကၡသည္မ်ားကို တတိယႏိုင္ငံသို႔ ထြက္ခြာႏိုင္ေရးအတြက္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေနရာေဒသ အသီးသီးမွ လူမ်ားသည္ ေငြထုပ္ပိုက္ကာ တတိယႏိုင္ငံ ထြက္ခြာခြင့္ရေရးအတြက္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းၾက ရာမွ စခန္းတာဝန္ရွိသူမ်ားႏွင့္ ဝန္ထမ္းမ်ားၾကားတြင္ အဂတိလိုက္စားမႈမ်ား တိုးပြားလာျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။
Burmese Junta Sees Satellite TV as Threat
http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=15138
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By WAI MOE Wednesday, February 18, 2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Burmese junta believes information technology, particularly satellite TV, is a decadent threat that undermines nationalism and has warned the people to avoid satellite TV programs.
On Tuesday, the junta-controlled newspapers, The New Light of Myanmar, Myanma Alin and The Mirror, published a commentary blasting satellite TV.
“In reality, satellite [TV] programmes are particularly designed to wield influence, making use of media and arts,” the newspapers said.
“Today, certain countries are brazenly interfering in the internal affairs of their targeted countries by inciting political problems, instigating mass demonstrations, and demoralizing the characters [sic] and undermining the nationalistic sense of the people through decadent programmes.”
The article was titled “We should not continue to allow decadent satellite programmes,” in the English-language daily The New Light of Myanmar, and “Don’t Continuously Water a Poison Plant!” in the Burmese-language newspapers, Myanma Alin and The Mirror.
The article said that watching satellite TV in Burma “should have been remedied” because “many of those channels [on satellite TV] can demoralize the people, hurt national spirit and patriotic spirit [sic], and arouse emotional feelings.”
TV programs received through a satellite receiver include news stories that “are against the government policy as well as the sense that may hurt national culture, customs, traditions and character of the people [sic],” the article claimed.
If the government disregards and ignores the problem, the nation and the people will face evil consequences, the article said.
The article claimed that the Chinese government prohibits Chinese citizens from watching satellite TV programs and many countries prohibit and control such broadcasts to protect their national interests.
Soon after the crackdowns on mass demonstrations led by Buddhist monks in September 2007, the junta attempted to control citizens’ watching satellite TV, in particular the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma(DVB) as well as the international channels for Al Jazzera, CNN and BBC.
In early 2008, the junta ordered a missive hike in the annual satellite TV license fee. At the time, the license fee was increased 166-fold.
As alternatives to the Burmese government’s propaganda TV channels, MRTV and Myawaddy, many people in urban and rural areas watch DVB which broadcasts in the Burmese language and provides Burma related news, according to viewer surveys.
DVB, run by Burmese exiles, is a “multimedia organization promoting press freedom, democracy and human rights,” according to world-newspapers.com.
In recent years, Burmese authorities have tried to counter satellite TV, particularly DVB, by permitting the pay TV, government-controlled channels MRTV 4 and MRTV 5. Both channels are managed by the Ministry of Information. Audiences can access international news broadcasts, music and movie channels. News from international broadcasts is censored.
Most teashops in urban areas have satellite TV receivers and people who cannot afford to buy a receiver watch satellite TV programs at teashops. Journalists in Rangoon say teashops with satellite TV get more customers.
To reach a larger audience via satellite TV, the Washington-based Voice of America (VOA) Burmese Service reportedly has plans to expand its programs from radio broadcasts to satellite TV in the Burmese language.
Fw: [BRCJ]国内避難民への支援のお願い
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ビルマ市民フォーラム メールマガジン 2009/2/18
People's Forum on Burma
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
日本ビルマ救援センター（ＢＲＣＪ）からのお知らせを転送させていただき
ます。
ビルマ難民への支援のお願いです。
皆さまのご理解とご協力をどうぞよろしくお願いいたします。
（重複の際は何卒ご容赦ください。）
ＰＦＢ事務局
http://www1.jca.apc.org/pfb/
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
皆さま、
日頃より日本ビルマ救援センター（BRCJ)の活動にご理解とご協力を賜り
ありがとうございます。
BRCJはタイ・ビルマ国境のビルマ難民、移民支援の活動を行う際に、
現地の支援機関やNGOと連携を取っています。
この度、現地の支援団体Pa-O National Develop Organization
より、支援依頼をいただきました。
皆さまには、ビルマ難民の状況をご理解いただき、ご協力いただき
ますようお願い申し上げます。
***********************************************
【緊急のお願い】
国内避難民(IDP)の人びとへの支援のお願い
―ビルマ パオー民族13家族へのトイレ設置―
昨晩、タイ・メーホンソン地区でビルマからの難民の支援活動を
行っている団体Pa-O National Develop Organization
より、緊急支援の要請がありました。
ビルマ軍と少数民族の対立が激化し、ビルマ軍から強制労働を課せられ、
村で生活することが出来なくなったとして、新たに13家族52名が
難民キャンプへ逃れてきたそうです。
Pa-O National Develop Organizationでは、この新しい13家族のために、
竹やわらで住居をつくり生活できるよう支援してきましたが、トイレの
設置はまだ出来ておらず、現在まで不衛生な状況が続いています。
現地はこれから乾季に入りますが、下痢や赤痢といった病気の蔓延が
大変心配です。一刻も早くトイレを設置し、衛生面を整える必要があります。
皆さまのご理解とご支援を、心よりお願いいたします。
★トイレ設置に必要な経費 ： ３４，７９５バーツ（約９０，０００円）
*****************************************************
◆支援金送金先
１）郵便振替：００９３０－０－１４６９２６ ＢＲＣ－Ｊ
２）りそな銀行 金剛支店（普通）６５５３９２８ 日本ビルマ救援センター
※ご住所とお名前をお知らせ下さい。領収書を送付させていただきます。
*****************************************************
＜子どもたちへの支援をお願いします！＞
上記の他、Pa-O National Develop Organizationでは、現在以下の
プロジェクトについても支援金を必要としています。
●子どもたちのへ～暖かい服支援プロジェクト
運営する６つの学校の生徒1,085名への冬服の支援
＊冬服１着110バーツ（約280円）×1,085名
●キャンプで暮らすパオー民族の子どもたちへの教育支援
パオー民族の文化、言語、伝統を教える授業運営のための支援
●移住労働者の子どもたちへの支援
寄宿舎への衛生品の支援（固形石けん、粉せっけん、シャンプー、洗剤など）
食料支援（米、ひよこ豆、缶詰、塩、野菜、油など）
＊一日の食費12バーツ（約31円）
皆さまのご協力をどうぞ宜しくお願い申し上げます。
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
◇■日本ビルマ救援センター（ＢＲＣＪ）事務局■◇
￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
E-Mail:brcj@syd.odn.ne.jp
URL:http://www.burmainfo.org/brcj
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
-- Burmese Relief Center-Japan
【再送】 第55回ビルマ市民フォーラム例会のご案内：外国人労働者は今・・在日ビルマ人・外国人労働者のおかれている状況について
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ビルマ市民フォーラム メールマガジン 2009/2/18
People's Forum on Burma
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
日時が迫りましたので、今週土曜21日に実施いたします、ＰＦＢ例会の
案内を再送させていただきます。
また、緊急報告として、昨年12月、ビルマやバングラデシュからボートで
脱出しタイやマレーシアを目指した1,000人以上ものロヒンギャ民族
「ボート・ピープル」をタイ軍が保護せず、海に送り帰していた問題に
ついても、後半の渡辺の話の中で、ご報告いたします。
事前申し込みは不要です。ぜひお越しください。
ＰＦＢ事務局
http://www1.jca.apc.org/pfb/
【転送・転載大歓迎】
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
■第55回ビルマ市民フォーラム例会のご案内
<2月21日（土） 18時～/ 東京・池袋>
￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
外国人労働者は今・・・
在日ビルマ人・外国人労働者のおかれている状況について
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
◆日時＝2009年2月21日（土）午後6時～午後8時30分
＊午後5時45分開場
◆会場＝ 池袋・ECOとしま（豊島区立生活産業プラザ）
８階 多目的ホール
*所在： 豊島区東池袋1-20-15、Tel 03-5992-7011
*交通： 池袋駅東口徒歩5分
地図：http://www.city.toshima.lg.jp/shisetsu/shisetsu_community/005133.html
◆資料代＝ 200円（会員）・500円（非会員）
◆定 員＝ 80名 （事前申込み不要／先着順）
￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
次回、ＰＦＢ例会では、以下、２つをテーマに実施いたします。
参加申込は不要です。ぜひお越しください。
①「在日ビルマ人や外国人労働者のおかれている状況について」
…ティンウィンさん（在日ビルマ市民労働組合会長／PFB運営委員）
昨今の経済危機により、日本人のみならず多くの在日ビルマ人や在日
外国人も厳しい状況におかれています。昨年末には日本人の雇用など
に関する報道が大きくなされましたが、その影で、多くの在日外国人
労働者もまた、日本人よりもさらに厳しい状況におかれています。
こうした状況や在日外国人労働者の思いを多くの方に知っていただくため、
ビルマ人の労働組合の会長として日々様々な相談や対応に追われている
在日ビルマ難民ティンウィンさんに、ビルマ人のみならず、群馬県を
中心にした外国人労働者の状況について、お話ししていただきます。
②「在日ビルマ難民のおかれている現状と展望（仮題）」
…渡辺 彰悟 （弁護士／ビルマ弁護団事務局長／PFB事務局長）
2008年のビルマ人難民認定申請者の状況について報告します。
また、日本政府は昨年、紛争や弾圧を逃れて他国に避難している難民を
受け入れる「第三国定住プログラム」の開始を正式に決定し、2010年
にはタイの難民キャンプで暮らすビルマ難民30人程を日本に受け入れ
るわけですが、そういった新しい動きも含め、日本の難民認定制度に
おける今後の課題や展望をお話いたします。
＊緊急報告＊
昨年12月、ビルマやバングラデシュからボートで
脱出し、タイやマレーシアを目指した1,000人以上ものロヒンギャ民族
「ボート・ピープル」をタイ軍が保護せず、海に送り帰していた問題に
ついても、後半の渡辺の話の中で、ご報告いたします。
---------------------------------------------
★PFBでは、日本人と在日ビルマ人を対象に、時々のビルマ情勢や
在日ビルマ難民の抱える問題などをテーマに、隔月で例会を実施して
おります。会員・非会員を問わず、どたなでもご参加いただけます。
初めての方でもぜひお気軽にご参加ください。
以上
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
◇ ビルマ市民フォーラム事務局 ◇
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
〒160-0004
東京都新宿区四谷一丁目18番地6 四谷1丁目ウエストビル4階
いずみ橋法律事務所内
電話０３－５３１２－４８１７（直）／ FAX:０３―５３１２－４５４３
E-mail： pfb@xsj.biglobe.ne.jp
ホームページ： http://www1.jca.apc.org/pfb/index.htm
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Clinton says U.S. will try to repair image in Muslim world
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20090217/BREAKING/90217104/-1/RSS01?source=rss_breaking
Washington Post
TOKYO — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said today that the Obama administration will make "a concerted effort" to restore the image of the United States in the Islamic world and will seek to "enlist the help of Muslims around the world against the extremists."
Clinton, who tomorrow will travel to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, told students at Tokyo University that "this is one of the central security challenges we face — as to how to better communicate in a way that gets through the rhetoric and through the demagogy and is heard by people who can make judgments about what we stand for and who we truly are."
Clinton's remarks came in response to a question about terrorism causing people in the United States to have anti-Muslim "prejudice," a term she rejected forcefully. "I am a Christian," she said. "Through the centuries we have had many people who have done terrible things in the name of Christianity. They have perverted the religion."
Clinton's visit to Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, appears to be part of the administration's effort to reach out to Muslims during this week-long trip to Asia. President Obama spent part of his childhood in Jakarta and expectations are high in Indonesia that he will visit later this year.
The town hall gathering came at the end of a busy first day of diplomacy for Clinton, who crisscrossed Japan's capital in an effort to mix diplomacy and personal outreach to the Japanese people.
Clinton visited a shrine early in the morning, then signed an agreement moving 8,000 troops from Japan to Guam; she had tea with Empress Michiko in the Imperial residence and took questions from students for an hour before having dinner with Prime Minister Taro Aso. She then followed that with a meeting with Aso's political nemesis, Ichiro Ozawa, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan.
She extended an invitation to Aso to meet next week with Obama, a coup for an embattled politician whose approval ratings sank this week to the single digits. But during the news conference announcing the invitation, Aso's finance minister — and an Aso confidante — resigned over reports that he appeared drunk at a major economic meeting last weekend.
Clinton also held a private 20-minute meeting with two families of Japanese citizens who were abducted by North Korean agents decades ago, an emotional subject in Japan. The Bush administration last year removed North Korea from the list of the state sponsors of terrorism, despite protests from the Japanese government, in a bid to win Pyongyang's cooperation in the impasse over its nuclear program.
At the town hall meeting, Clinton also said that the administration was reviewing policy on Myanmar, suggesting it was considering a major shift that would ease some of the strict economic sanctions the United States has imposed on the junta that has long kept under house arrest Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Prize-winning democracy activist.
US looks for better way to sway Myanmar: Clinton
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/090217/usa/us_diplomacy_myanmar_politics_1
TOKYO (AFP) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday US President Barack Obama's administration is looking for a better way to bring change to military-ruled Myanmar and help the country's people.
"We are conducting a review of our policy," Clinton told a Tokyo University student from Myanmar who asked whether there was an alternative to sanctions in order to promote economic and political freedom in the country.
"We are looking at what steps we could take that might influence the current Burmese government and we are also looking for ways that we could more effectively help the Burmese people," she said.
Clinton, speaking at a town-hall type meeting with students at Tokyo university, used the term Burma, the country's name before the military junta changed it to Myanmar.
Recalling a speech she gave to the Asia Society in New York last week, Clinton said: "We want to see a time when the citizens of Burma and the Nobel prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi live freely in their own country."
Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy party, has spent most of the past 19 years under house arrest by the junta that has ruled the country since 1962.
"I've spoken with many people already who are strong supporters of the Burmese people who have said 'let's look to see if there's a better way', so we are doing that," the chief US diplomat said.
"And I hope we will be able to arrive at a policy that can be more effective."
A day after Obama took office a senior official in Yangon said Myanmar hoped that the new president would change Washington's tough policy towards its military regime and end the "misunderstandings" of the past.
Former US President George W. Bush's administration strengthened decade-old sanctions against Myanmar while his wife Laura was an outspoken critic of the country's ruling junta.
Nakagawa resigns after G7 disgrace
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nb20090218a1.html
Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009
Yosano appointed as triple-hitter to fill finance, economic posts
By TAKAHIRO FUKADA
Staff writer
Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa abruptly resigned Tuesday evening amid rapidly growing calls to quit over his sloppy and allegedly drunken appearance at a Group of Seven press briefing in Rome on Saturday.
Prime Minister Taro Aso accepted Nakagawa's resignation letter immediately and said he would appoint economic and fiscal policy minister Kaoru Yosano, 70, to succeed Nakagawa in both posts, giving him a total of three portfolios and leaving the fate of Japan's deteriorating economy and finances to one man.
"It's very regrettable," Aso said of Nakagawa, one of his closest political allies.
Earlier the day, the finance minister, who was also in charge of the financial services portfolio, said he would resign after the fiscal 2009 budget and related bills cleared the Lower House. But that timetable threatened to delay the critical legislation as calls grew louder from both sides of the Diet for him to quit over the debacle. The voices included those of New Komeito, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's junior partner in the coalition government.
Nakagawa told reporters that he changed his mind after the opposition parties began boycotting Diet sessions over the issue.
"Once this budget (and) budget-related bills clear the Lower House, I am thinking of immediately submitting my resignation letter," Nakagawa, 55, said at a hastily called news conference held in the ministry in Tokyo. "I deeply apologize for immensely having troubled the prime minister, the people and other related parties due to my carelessness of health management."
At the Rome G7 news conference, Nakagawa slurred his speech, at times appeared half asleep and had trouble answering questions from reporters. His behavior sparked speculation that he may have been drunk, as it has long been rumored he is a heavy drinker.
Nakagawa, however, denied this and claimed he had taken too much cold medicine.
Even though Nakagawa said he would step down, calls from the opposition camp and even within the ruling bloc had mounted for him to do so immediately, not after the budget bills are passed.
The opposition parties had planned to grill Nakagawa in the Diet and submit a nonbinding censure motion to the Upper House, which they control.
Although nonbinding, a similar resolution in 1998 prompted Fukushiro Nukaga to step down as Defense Agency chief.
Susumu Yanase, Diet affairs chief of the DPJ's Upper House caucus, told reporters after the censure motion was submitted that Nakagawa should resign as soon as possible.
"It goes without saying that the global economy is in an emergency state and that the G-7 meeting in Rome was extremely important financially," Yanase said.
But after Nakagawa's "disgraceful behavior at a news conference, in which Japan was supposed to send the world a message, it is natural to decide that the nation cannot wait for the finance minister" to resign, he said.
During Tuesday's news conference, Nakagawa said a medical examination conducted the same day diagnosed he was suffering from back pain, a cold and exhaustion.
Although Nakagawa said he does not require emergency medical treatment, he said he may admit himself into a hospital later Tuesday.
"It is not that I need an operation or have a condition that is rapidly worsening," Nakagawa said. "Being hospitalized would instead help me maintain my physical strength so I can concentrate on this job."
Nakagawa had stressed that he would remain at his post until the budget and its related bills clear the Lower House.
"I am determined to make full efforts in my duties in the remaining days," Nakagawa said earlier Tuesday. "I will strive to help achieve an economic recovery as soon as possible."
Nakagawa's resignation came only a day after the Cabinet Office said the economy plummeted at an annualized pace of 12.7 percent in the three months through December, its worst fall in 35 years.
It also came amid plummeting public support for Aso — below 10 percent in one survey published Sunday — and in an economy that is sinking deeper into recession ahead of an election that must be held no later than October.
Nakagawa's resignation followed that of Nariaki Nakayama, who exited as transport minister in September following a series of verbal gaffes after only five days in office.
Clinton has busy day, meeting PM, Ozawa, empress, abductees' kin, students and visiting Meiji Shrine
Tuesday 17th February, 08:38 PM JST
TOKYO —
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in Japan on her first overseas trip as the chief U.S. diplomat, assured Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone Tuesday of Japan’s importance in the Asian region and confirmed bilateral solidarity in pressing for North Korea’s denuclearization.
At the end of a busy day, officials announced that Prime Minister Taro Aso and U.S. President Barack Obama will meet in Washington on Feb 24 for Obama’s first talks with a foreign leader at the White House since taking office, the nations’ foreign ministers agreed Tuesday in a move to further demonstrate the U.S. emphasis on their alliance.
‘‘The fact that the Japanese premier is the first to be invited (to the White House) reflects the importance placed on Japan-U.S. relations,’’ Nakasone said in a joint press conference after the talks.
‘‘I firmly believe this will be the perfect opportunity to show everyone that the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 economies are working together to tackle the various difficult global issues including the economic situation,’’ he added.
Clinton also agreed with Nakasone to reinforce cooperation on the global front on such issues as terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, energy and climate change, nonproliferation, antipiracy, and the Middle East peace process.
‘‘The alliance between the United States and Japan is a cornerstone of our foreign policy,’’ Clinton said, describing the ties as being ‘‘strong’’ and ‘‘vibrant’’ in an attempt to allay anxieties in Japan that Obama may favor China instead.
‘‘Working together to deal with the multitude of issues that affect not only Asia but the entire world is a high priority of the Obama administration,’’ she said.
The two ministers shared expectations for China to play a ‘‘constructive role’’ in the international arena, while Clinton warned North Korea that a possible missile launch that Pyongyang has been hinting at would be ‘‘very unhelpful’’ to efforts to move the denuclearization process forward.
Clinton’s weeklong visit to Asia, which will also take her to Indonesia, South Korea and China, comes amid recent bellicose rhetoric from North Korea and signs that it is preparing to test-fire a long-range missile. Pyongyang suggested Monday it would go ahead with the rocket launch for what it claims to be ‘‘space development.’’
‘‘We must advance our efforts to secure a complete and verifiable denuclearization of North Korea,’’ Clinton said, referring to a consensus with Nakasone to press ahead with the six-party talks and to strengthen collaboration to that end together with South Korea.
In response to Nakasone’s request for understanding of Japan’s position on resolving the North’s abductions of Japanese citizens, Clinton agreed that the issue remains part of the six-party talks and should be part of the ‘‘comprehensive engagement’’ with North Korea.
‘‘I am not worried that the United States will make significant changes to its North Korea policy in the near future,’’ Nakasone said, dismissing concerns that the Obama administration may put aside the issue in negotiations with Pyongyang as his predecessor President George W Bush did.
To show that Washington will not neglect the abduction issue, a highly sensitive subject in Japan, Clinton met with some family members of the missing Japanese later Tuesday and told them she believes the issue should also be a priority for the U.S. government.
The families expressed their hopes and expectations for the role of the new U.S. administration in resolving the abduction issue after the meeting, with Shigeru Yokota, the 76-year-old father of abductee Megumi Yokota, saying, ‘‘The secretary of state stressed that she has not forgotten about the abduction issue.’’
Clinton said she will study how the United States can ‘‘pressure’’ the North to return the abductees while also mentioning the importance of ‘‘discussion,’’ according to Iizuka.
During the 30-minute meeting, Shigeru and Sakie Yokota, 73, the mother of Megumi—who was taken to North Korea from Niigata in 1977 when she was 13—and Shigeo Iizuka, brother of abductee Yaeko Taguchi, showed pictures of their abducted family members and handed Clinton a letter from the families and a support group.
In the letter, the families and supporters said, ‘‘International pressure against the North, particularly from the United States, is indispensable to any resolution of the issue.’’
Although the families believe rescuing the Japanese abductees is primarily the task of the Japanese government, they consider U.S. support as essential and said re-listing North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism would be especially meaningful.
‘‘We told (Clinton) we were deeply disappointed by the previous U.S. administration’s premature delisting of North Korea from the State Department terrorism list,’’ said Iizuka.
Clinton had earlier expressed sympathy for the abductees and their relatives and said she would meet with the families as a wife, mother, daughter and sibling.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura welcomed Clinton’s approach as ‘‘a step forward compared to the Bush administration’’ and said he is hopeful the matter will move forward.
On the bilateral security alliance, Clinton and Nakasone signed a new accord on the sharing of costs for relocating 8,000 U.S. Marines and their families from Okinawa to Guam. It commits both sides to realizing an earlier agreed-on road map by 2014, aimed at reducing burdens on base-hosting communities while maintaining deterrence.
On antiterrorism cooperation, Clinton commended Japan for its contributions so far in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and promised high-level participation from the United States at a donor conference on Pakistan expected to be held in Japan next month.
In talks with Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada, Clinton expressed appreciation for the Self-Defense Forces’ support for U.S.-led missions in Iraq, around Afghanistan, and antipiracy operations off Somalia.
Meanwhile, she also said she hopes to encourage ‘‘more engagement’’ by Japan in peacekeeping operations within the limitations of the pacifist Constitution, Defense Ministry officials said.
In joint efforts to address the global financial crisis, Clinton said at the news conference the two nations are aware of their responsibilities to lead a ‘‘coordinated global response’’ and Nakasone added that both sides will also work on reviving their respective economies.
The two allies hope to coordinate measures at the Aso-Obama talks next week ahead of the financial summit to be held in London on April 2.
But while the United States hopes Japan will play a larger role in rebuilding the world economy, it comes at a time when Japan is facing its worst economic crisis since the end of World War II, with the economy contracting in the fourth quarter of 2008 at the fastest pace in about 35 years.
Nakasone also reiterated Japan’s disappointment at the ‘‘Buy American’’ provision in the U.S. economic stimulus package, Japanese Foreign Ministry officials said.
Clinton started the day with a visit to Tokyo’s Meiji Jingu shrine to ‘‘show respect for the history and culture of Japan,’’ she said to reporters at the shrine.
Her agenda in Tokyo also included talks with Democratic Party of Japan leader Ichiro Ozawa in an unusual meeting between a top U.S. diplomat and the head of Japan’s main opposition party. The meeting took place amid the looming possibility that the DPJ could oust the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito party from power following a general election to be held this year, with public support for Prime Minister Taro Aso plunging.
According to DPJ officials, Clinton requested earlier this month that a meeting with Ozawa be included as part of her first overseas trip since assuming the post of secretary of state.opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa of the Democratic Party of Japan, whose camp could oust the ruling coalition from power in a general election this year.
It is rare for a U.S. secretary of state to meet a Japanese opposition leader on an official visit, a move observers say may stoke anxiety in the already fragile Aso administration which is suffering falling support rates.
Clinton also met Empress Michiko at the Imperial Palace on Tuesday, rekindling their friendship after several years, the Imperial Household Agency said. Clinton had said she would like to see the empress again during her visit to Japan, according to the agency.
They had previously met in 1994 when Emperor Akihito and the empress visited the United States while Bill Clinton was president, and again in 1996 when the Clintons visited Japan.
The empress met Clinton at the entrance and the two women embraced. They then entered a palace building hand in hand and chatted for about an hour.
Apart from the official talks, Clinton, the first U.S. secretary of state to make Japan the destination of her overseas debut, also took part in a dialogue meeting with students at the University of Tokyo.
Get your new Email address!
Grab the Email name you've always wanted before someone else does!
http://mail. promotions. yahoo.com/ newdomains/ aa/
NLD senior warned possible crackdown
http://burmadd.blogspot.com/
BDD
Source close to the NLD quoted saying NLD seniors are concerned over SPDC might arrest efficient NLD seniors and key organizers before 2010. However, NLD has prepared for the 2010 election with different strategies that pushing the growing number of political campaigns before 2010.
After NLD's unofficial reform, NLD locals are pleased and having directions. In this case, SPDC local authorities questioned and disturbed the NLD locals throughout the country, sources said. NLD seniors have calculated cost and effectiveness for their political actions.
Interestingly, many NLD core organizers went missing during the party's occasional events at the party headquarters and other local levels. "NLD might not put all eggs in the same basket like 1989-90. We need second and third line leaders who would be able to lead the movement unless we would be getting arrested." Senior cautioned. During 2007 crackdown, 88 generation lost its core leaders as well as second line leaders and NLD learned from the lesson .
"NLD has recruited unidentified sources along with the NLD members for the worst. They are no longer sitting duck anymore. NLD needs a new blood and new leadership, we don't know how many of our colleagues would end up in the prison?" said NLD senior.
NLD has more focused on grassroots movement than HQs political events within past few months. NLD seniors are aware that SPDC's 2010 strategy that might go into the grassroots and other political veterans' eagerness of having political parties. NLD's also aware the possible postponement of 2010 election because disagreements within SPDC and final decision maker general Than Shwe's future. "2010 election is not only for the NLD's major challenge but SPDC as well." said NLD senior.
Photo: NLD spokesperson debriefed the media last month
Clinton Signals Possible Shift in U.S. Policy on Burma
http://burmadd.blogspot.com/
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
JAKARTA, Feb. 18 -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said
Wednesday that economic sanctions imposed by the United States and
other Western governments had failed to pressure the repressive
Burmese government, signaling a potentially major shift in U.S. policy.
Clinton, at a news conference here, did not deny that easing
sanctions was one of the ideas under consideration by the Obama
administration as part of a major review. "We are looking at possible
ideas that can be presented," she told reporters and said that she
had discussed the issue with Indonesia officials here.
"Clearly the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn't
influenced the Burmese junta," she said, adding that the route taken
by Burma's neighbors of "reaching out and trying to engage them has
not influenced them either."
Burma, also known as Myanmar, is regarded as one of the world's most
oppressive nations. The National League for Democracy, the party of
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, won a landslide
electoral victory in 1990, which the military leadership refused to
accept. She has been held in confinement repeatedly since then.
Any move by the Obama administration to scale back sanctions on Burma
could face strong opposition in Congress, where lawmakers have
imposed a series of increasingly tougher restrictions on the
Southeast Asian nation. The Bush administration also invested
significant diplomatic capital into moving Burma for the first time
onto the agenda of the United Nations Security Council, although
proposed resolutions criticizing the junta's behavior have been
vetoed by Russia and China.
Vice President Biden last year was the key mover in the Senate of the
Block Burmese JADE act, which renewed restrictions on the import of
Burmese gems and tightened sanctions on mining projects there. The
act also imposed new financial sanctions and travel restrictions on
the junta's leaders and their associates and created a post for a
high-level envoy and policy coordinator for Burma.
But some humanitarian organizations have begun to question the
sanctions policies. In an influential report issued in October, the
Brussels-based International Crisis Group argued that humanitarian
aid should begin to flow into the country and bans on Burmese
garments, agriculture and fishery products and restrictions on
tourism should be lifted.
"It is a mistake in the Myanmar context to use aid as a bargaining
chip, to be given only in return for political change," the report
said. "Twenty years of aid restrictions -- which see Myanmar
receiving twenty times less assistance per capita than other
least-developed countries -- have weakened, not strengthened, the
forces for change."
While Clinton has been careful not to tip her hand on the direction
of the policy review, she has used strikingly mild language about the
Burmese government, describing "the unfortunate path" taken by Burma,
leaving it "impervious to influence from anyone."
Posted by BURMA DEMOCRACY & DEVELOPMENT at 2/19/2009 07:56:00 AM
Links to this post
U.S. taking fresh look at Myanmar policy: Clinton
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE51G2VW20090217
TOKYO (Reuters) - The United States is taking a fresh look at its policy toward Myanmar to seek ways to sway the country's military junta, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday.
Washington has gradually tightened sanctions on the generals who have ruled the former Burma for more than four decades to try to force them into political rapprochement with Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy.
The opposition won a 1990 election landslide only to be denied power and its leader, Suu Kyi, has been in prison or under house arrest for more than half of the last two decades.
Speaking at a town hall meeting at Japan's elite Tokyo University, Clinton responded to a question from a Burmese student about whether there were alternatives to the U.S. sanctions policy and its effects on ordinary people in Myanmar.
"Because we are concerned about the Burmese people, we are conducting a review of our policy," Clinton replied.
"We are looking at what steps we could take that might influence the current Burmese government and we are also looking for ways that we could more effectively help the Burmese people," she added.
"So we are taking seriously your challenge -- what is it that we can do that might work better?" she told the student. "So we are doing that and I am hoping we will be able to arrive at a policy that can be more effective."
(Editing by Alex Richardson)
UK tour operators selling holidays to blacklisted Burma resorts
http://news.carrentals.co.uk/uk-tour-operators-selling-holidays-to-blacklisted-burma-resorts-3425131.html
Thursday 19th of February 2009
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ... Posted on: February 17th, 2009 by Martin Fellowes
More than a dozen Britain-based tour operators are in breach of a European Union blacklist, by selling holiday packages at resorts in Burma that are owned by individuals linked to the country’s repressive military regime.
It is estimated that tourism is earns the generals who run the country approximately £180 million annually, and that a large percentage of that amount derives from the UK.
Many leading resorts in Burma are owned by the state, which leases the properties to investors. It has been alleged that numerous resorts caused the forced displacement of entire villages, with residents receiving negligible or no compensation – and that they were built using slave labour.
UK tour operators that were contacted by The Observer, including Bamboo Travel and Undiscovered Destinations, indicated that they were not aware that the resorts they sold were on a blacklist. Many said they felt it important for outsiders to visit the troubled country.
Tricia Barnett, who is the director of Tourism Concern, says in a report on the Burmese travel industry due to be published this week: “It is the responsibility of tour operators to ensure that they … do not provide financial benefits to the military dictatorship. Given the lack of transparency in Burma and the overlap between state- and private-owned enterprises, the best way to do this is to stop trading with Burma.”
Thanks to www.guardian.co.uk for the above quotes, for more information on this article please visit their website.
www.tourismconcern.org.uk
Rohingya Issue Expected to be Raised during Asean Summit
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=15129
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By THE IRRAWADDY Tuesday, February 17, 2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Asean Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan has confirmed that the plight of the Rohingya boatpeople will be discussed in bilateral, informal meetings at the summit of the 10-nation group next week.
The former Thai foreign minister told the Bangkok English-language daily The Nation: “The Rohingyas may not be included in the formal agenda but we have to discuss this either during the bilateral meetings or in the informal meetings.”
Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said last week after a meeting with Thailand’s current Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya that their two countries had agreed to use the Asean forum to discuss the Rohingya issue.
He said Thailand had accepted an Indonesian proposal to tackle the Rohingya problem through the Bali Process, a ministerial forum that aims to develop measures to help combat human trafficking and other related transnational crimes in the Asia-Pacific region.
“We are going to renew the Bali process,” Kasit said. “We should pick up from where we left off and tackle this problem in a very coordinated manner. We hope to find the best possible solution to address the problem.”
Surin told The Nation that Asean couldn’t avoid discussing human rights issues “but not in the context of condemning any country.”
Surin said: “Human rights is a challenging issue. We can’t avoid discussion on this.” He drew attention to Asean’s adoption of a human rights charter at its summit in Singapore last December.
Asean leaders are to meet at the Thai resort of Cha Am from February 27 until March 1.
At the time of the Burmese junta’s crackdown on monk-led demonstrations in September 2007, Asean broke with its customary reticence about the commenting on the affairs of its members and expressed “revulsion” at the bloodshed.
In an official statement, nine of the bloc’s 10 foreign ministers said they were “appalled to receive reports of automatic weapons being used” on crowds, causing hundreds of casualties.
Thailand’s Army Commander-in-Chief Gen Anupong Paochinda began a two-day official visit to Burma on Tuesday, saying he wasn’t certain whether it would be appropriate to discuss the Rohingya issue with Burmese leaders.
Gen Anupong and his delegation were welcomed to Naypyidaw by the junta No. 2, Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye. He is also scheduled to call on junta leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe.
Posts
