News & Articles on Burma
Friday, 10 December, 2010
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NLD Leadership 'Sclerotic': US Embassy
Burma 'building nuclear and missile sites'
China's dim view of Myanmar junta
Myanmar's Suu Kyi, US official discuss sanctions
Suu Kyi discusses sanctions with US official
Wikileaks: North Korea 'helps Burma with nuclear sites'
China tired of Burma’s ‘foot-dragging’
Senior US envoy meets with Myanmar's Suu Kyi
Burma ‘fourth biggest jail’ for journalists
Multi-ethnic Burma and the junta will collide
US ‘given uranium’ by Burmese civilian
Ceasefire armed groups "thank" Burma Army for bringing them back to reality
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NLD Leadership 'Sclerotic': US Embassy
By BA KAUNG Friday, December 10, 2010
Burma's main pro-democracy party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), is estranged from both the younger generation of political activists and ethnic minority groups and lacks public support despite the immense popularity of its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, according to a US diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks.
The scathing criticism of the party's senior leadership was directed at its failure to actively work with 88 Generation Students leaders in 2007, when Buddhist monks led anti-government protests.
“Repeated overtures from and 'summits' with the leaders of the 88 Generation in 2007 failed to result in any significant cooperation between the factions,” the cable said, adding that although Suu Kyi remained a popular and beloved figure among most Burmese, this status is not enjoyed by her party.
“Already frustrated with the sclerotic leadership of the elderly NLD 'Uncles,' the party lost even more credibility within the pro-democracy movement when its leaders refused to support the demonstrators last September, and even publicly criticized them,” wrote Leslie Hayden, the political and economic affairs chief of the US embassy in Rangoon, in her report in July 2008.
During the 2007 monk-led protests, the party leadership, which was then under the control of controversial NLD Chairman Aung Shwe, remained aloof from the protests. Aung Shwe and a few other top leaders were known for their extremely cautious approach towards the regime.
In contrast with the party's majority, which boycotted last month's election, these leaders reportedly wanted to participate in it.
Instead of reaching out to technically sophisticated bloggers and young, Internet-savvy activists, “the Uncles spend endless hours discussing their entitlements from the 1990 elections and abstract policy which they are in no position to enact,” the cable said.
“Additionally, most MPs-elect show little concern for the social and economic plight of most Burmese, and therefore, most Burmese regard them as irrelevant,” it said.
Party sources said that the release in late 2008 of Win Tin, a founding member of the NLD and an outspoken critic of the regime, reinvigorated the party. They also said that since the party decided in March of this year to boycott the election, the party's “Uncles” have stopped attending party meetings.
The party has been disbanded for its failure to register to participate in the election, and last month the Supreme Court rejected Suu Kyi's bid to restore the party's legal status.
Since her release from detention last month, Suu Kyi has been actively engaged in talks with different opposition groups, including with ethnic leaders.
But the US diplomatic cable noted that the party has repeatedly missed opportunities to reach out to the armed ethnic cease-fire groups and also continually feuded with ethnic leaders on the Committee to Represent the People's Parliament, an umbrella group of political and ethnic groups that won in the 1990 election.
“The party has consistently issued statements calling for a dialogue between the NLD and regime first, before the ethnic cease-fire groups are brought into the mix,” the cable noted.
The cable also recommended that the US should consider putting security guarantees on the table for the most senior generals and their families if it is serious about removing them from the scene. It also said the US should reach out to progressive military leaders in the regime directly, instead of relying on intermediaries who sometimes garble messages.
But Hayden rejected the idea that internal divisions might bring the regime down.
“Rumors of splits at the top of the regime are the result of uninformed analysis and wishful thinking of the exiles and outside observers. While the senior generals may disagree from time to time amongst themselves . . . they follow the orders of [Snr-Gen] Than Shwe. The senior generals are keenly aware that if they do not stand together, they will fall together.”
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20291
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Burma 'building nuclear and missile sites'
12/10/2010 - 7:35:33 AM
Witnesses in Burma have seen missile and nuclear sites being built in remote locations with support from North Korea, according to the latest US cables released by WikiLeaks.
A Burmese officer in an engineering unit claimed surface-to-air missiles and an underground facility were being built at a site 300 miles north west of Rangoon, the documents published by The Guardian said.
The cable read: “The North Koreans, aided by Burmese workers, are constructing a concrete-reinforced underground facility that is ”500ft from the top of the cave to the top of the hill above“.
An estimated 300 North Koreans were working at the site, the document said, although it was suggested this number was probably too high.
Other reports, dating over the past six years, suggest dockworkers and foreign businessmen had heard about nuclear sites.
One businessman told the US Embassy in Rangoon that he had heard rumours of a nuclear reactor being built.
The cables add to long-standing fears that the Burmese military junta is trying to build a nuclear facility.
http://www.eecho.ie/news/world/burma-building-nuclear-and-missile-sites-485118.html
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ASIA TIMES: Dec 11, 2010
China's dim view of Myanmar junta
By Simon Roughneen
BANGKOK - Newly released United States diplomatic cables show that in the months after the August-September 2007 "Saffron" revolution protests in Myanmar, China was concerned about the country's stability and preferred that the military regime enter into dialogue with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and ethnic minority groups.
"The Chinese ambassador no longer tried to defend the regime, and acknowledged that the generals had made a bad situation worse. The Chinese have used their access to the generals to push for change, without much observable result, but remain interested in working with us to promote change," according to an account of a January 17, 2008 meeting between US charge d'affairs Shari Villaraos and China's ambassador to Myanmar, Guan Mu.
"The Chinese are clearly fed-up with foot-dragging by Than Shwe regime," Villarosa's report of the meeting concluded.
A lower-level meeting in Beijing took place a week earlier, on January 10 2008, and involved Chinese Ministry for Foreign Affairs Asia Department Counselor Yang Jian and politiburo-linked China Institutes for Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) Asia scholars Zhai Kun and Zhang Xuegang, along with three American officials.
While China and Vietnam have underpinned strong one-party rule with fast economic growth and investor-friendly policies - though recently Western multinationals have started to chafe at Chinese conditions - in China's view Myanmar's military junta failed to legitimize itself domestically due to its incompetent management of the economy, according to the Chinese assessments outlined in the US cable.
Gambits mentioned in WikiLeaked-cables from the US Embassy in Yangon, such as the creation of a "bread and circuses" domestic football league and rumors that Senior General Than Shwe, the junta's strongman, mulled a potential US$1billion bid for a majority stake in the Manchester United football club - apparently at the behest of his grandson - will only add to the perception of a regime at odds with economic realities beyond the self-enrichment of a narrow cabal of cronies.
According to the American account of the January 2008 meeting in Beijing, Zhai said the Myanmar government exerts control over society only on the surface and the potential for "lots of trouble" persists. He said the regime's inept handling of the economy costs it legitimacy and even if Myanmar's generals and Suu Kyi undertook a healthy dialogue, economic problems could throw the country into turmoil. Foreign affairs official Yang added that China's main reason for opposing Western sanctions on the Myanmar junta is that these could contribute to civil unrest inside the country, according to the Chinese view.
Scholar Zhang said that the US should "play two hands" with Myanmar's junta, advising the Americans that "the United States has been sufficiently critical of the regime and now should send messages, via China if necessary, to reassure Burmese military leaders that their personal security would not be imperiled in a democratic transition". Similarly, ambassador Guan suggested that that if junta leaders could be assured that "they would not lose their lives" and could retain economic interests, they might be amenable to a gradual concession of power.
To be sure, a measure of skepticism is required in reading the dated cables, however, with the real possibility that the Chinese representatives were, to a point at least, telling the Americans what they thought they wanted to hear. The status quo in Myanmar means that China, along with India, Thailand and others, has a relatively unhindered run at investing in resource-rich Myanmar, as Western countries and companies are hindered by US, European Union and Australian sanctions.
Whether the Americans bought into what they were told, or whether the cables were incorporated into ensuing higher-level Sino-American discussions on Myanmar, is hard to say. However, since the inauguration of President Barack Obama in January 2009, Washington has made conciliatory gestures toward Myanmar's junta, including an offer to reassess sanctions in exchange for reforms - such as holding credible elections and the release of political prisoners - only to be rebuffed in turn.
Nuclear concerns
Zhang said that guaranteeing the safe future of the current military leadership is the key to "unlocking the deadlock", which in hindsight suggests that the drive to establish a United Nations-backed commission of Inquiry into whether war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in Myanmar, a motion backed by the US, might have impelled the junta to batten down the hatches - if, indeed, the generals had ever contemplated any opening to begin with.
According to other cables released overnight by WikiLeaks, the US has since 2004 been concerned about Myanmar-North Korea military cooperation, which more recently has featured allegations that Myanmar is seeking nuclear weapons. Those worries have been exacerbated by revelations by American scientist Siegfried Hecker, who in early November reported that he was shown around a modern, sophisticated uranium enrichment facility in Yongbyon, previously unknown to outsiders by all accounts. It was a revelation that hints the technology Pyongyang could transfer to Myanmar is significantly more advanced than hitherto thought.
China's views on a potentially nuclear-armed Myanmar are not known, nor mentioned in the leaked US cables. However, Beijing's apparent and somewhat surprising views on ethnic relations in Myanmar are closer to Suu Kyi than those of junta leader Than Shwe. Since her November 13 release from house arrest, de facto opposition leader Suu Kyi has called for "a peaceful revolution" in Myanmar and for a second Panglong conference to address relations between the military government and the country's restive ethnic minority groups. Myanmar's state-run media has since dismissed the call for a convention.
Myanmar's civil wars have lasted since the end of World War II, with the 1962 military coup justified by apparent threats to national unity posed by the demands by ethnic minorities for some form of federal Burmese state. The original 1947 Panglong conference, chaired by Suu Kyi's father, Aung San, sought to address concerns that the newly-independent Burma, as Myanmar was then officially-known, would be dominated by ethnic Burmans at the expense of the country's 135 ethnic minority groups.
Almost three years old, China's views on Myanmar as expressed in the US cable might be somewhat different now, given a number of developments in the interim. According to the cable “Counselor Yang stated that the Chinese accept the Burmese regime's so-called 'roadmap' to democracy as the best route to democracy and national reconciliation in Burma.”
The November 7 elections in Myanmar were won by the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) in a predictable landslide, amid allegations of rigged advance voting, ballot stuffing and intimidation of rivals. China welcomed the elections as the fifth in Than Shwe's seven-step roadmap to democracy. However, with clashes between the Myanmar military and ethnic militias almost a daily occurrence since the election, and the junta reinforcing troop numbers in Kachin and Shan State, both bordering China, the junta could be set on a military solution to its demands that the country's ethnic militias merge their forces with the army.
An intensification of fighting in ethnic minority areas could impinge on Chinese economic interests in its southern neighbor, which as US diplomatic cables reveal is seen by Washington as on the verge of becoming a Chinese vassal. China's real views on the situation in Myanmar may become clearer if and when Myanmar's junta attempts to defeat the ethnic armies once and for all and instability rises on its southern flank.
The formation of a new post-election government and regional assemblies is predicted to take shape in mid-February 2011. Myanmar's junta could then try to justify an attack on "insurgents" - as it recently-labeled the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), in contrast to the previous "ceasefire group" categorization - by saying that a civilian government and regional autonomy has been granted and therefore groups such as the KIO have no legitimate reason to exist.
Simon Roughneen is a foreign correspondent. His website is www.simonroughneen.com. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/LL11Ae01.html
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Myanmar's Suu Kyi, US official discuss sanctions
The Associated Press
Friday, December 10, 2010; 5:36 AM
YANGON, Myanmar -- A senior U.S. official discussed sanctions against Myanmar's military government in talks Friday with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the first by a Washington official since recent elections and the release of the Nobel laureate from house arrest.
Joseph Y. Yun, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said the meeting with Suu Kyi at her lakeside home was "very productive."
"I learned a lot and I'll get back to Washington now to digest the three days of meetings here," he told reporters. During his visit, Yun also met Foreign Minister Nyan Win and other government officials, members of several political parties and U.N. representatives.
The visit came after Nov. 7 elections that were widely criticized as a sham to cement military rule.
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Suu Kyi was released after the elections from seven years of detention. Her National League for Democracy party did not take part in the balloting, and was disbanded by the government as a result.
Suu Kyi told reporters that she and Yun "discussed a number of issues including sanctions," but did not elaborate.
Bilateral ties have been strained since Myanmar's military crushed pro-democracy protests in 1988. Since then, Washington has been Myanmar's strongest critic, applying political and economic sanctions against its junta for its poor human rights record and failure to make democratic reforms.
Last year President Barack Obama reversed the Bush administration's policy of isolation of Myanmar, saying it had been largely ineffective, in favor of a dialogue with the junta in hopes of coaxing democratic change.
The U.S. has said it will maintain sanctions until concrete progress is made on democratic reforms.
Suu Kyi has been a vocal support of sanctions as a way to pressure the junta to come to an accommodation with the pro-democracy movement.
But in late 2009, she wrote to junta chief Senior Gen. Than Shwe stating her willingness to cooperate in having international sanctions eased - an apparent shift that was seen as a gesture toward reconciliation. She has been noncommittal on sanctions since her release last month, saying she would back their removal if Myanmar's people want them lifted.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/10/AR2010121001311.html
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The Nation: 10 Dec. 2010, Friday
Suu Kyi discusses sanctions with US official
Rangoon - US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Yun on Friday discussed sanctions with recently released Burma's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
"We talked of many things," Suu Kyi said of the meeting at her lakeside Rangoon home, which served as the Nobel Peace Prize laureate's prison for most of the past two decades. "We also discussed about sanctions, but I cannot tell you in detail."
Executive members of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy opposition party also attended the meeting.
Suu Kyi, who was freed from her latest seven years of home detention on November 13, previously had stated that she was willing to review her support of Western economic sanctions on the country's military regime on the condition that only the ones that harm the public are lifted.
Yun, who arrived in Burma Tuesday, met with Burmese Foreign Minister Nyan Win, police chief Khin Yi and officials from the Science and Technology Ministry Thursday at the capital, Naypyitaw. //DPA
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/Suu-Kyi-discusses-sanctions-with-US-official-30144164.html
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10 December 2010 Last updated at 01:42 GMT
Wikileaks: North Korea 'helps Burma with nuclear sites'
Prime Minister Thein Sein Burma's military leaders have denied that the country is developing nuclear technology
Continue reading the main story
Burma may be building missile and nuclear sites in remote locations with support from North Korea, according to secret US cables released by Wikileaks.
The documents cite witnesses who say North Korean workers are helping Burma construct an underground bunker in a remote jungle.
The move underlines concern that the Burmese regime might be trying to build a nuclear weapon, despite denials.
Wikileaks has so far released more than 1,100 of 251,000 diplomatic cables.
The reports, which stretch over the past six years, suggest dockworkers and foreign businessmen have seen evidence of alleged sites.
A cable dating from August 2004 spoke of a Burmese officer in an engineering unit who said surface-to-air missiles were being built at a site in a town called Minbu in west-central Myanmar.
"The North Koreans, aided by Burmese workers, are constructing a concrete-reinforced underground facility that is '500ft from the top of the cave to the top of the hill above'," reads the cable, published by the Guardian newspaper.
Some 300 North Koreans were working at the site, the authors said, although the cable suggested this number was improbably high.
'Jigsaw of information'
An expatriate businessman also told the US Embassy in Rangoon that he had heard rumours of a nuclear site being built.
According to another cable, the businessman told an embassy officer about rumours of a large barge unloading reinforced steel which looked as if it was for a project larger than a factory.
Analysts have previously raised concerns that Burma is co-operating with North Korea to develop nuclear technology, although Burma has denied the claim.
The BBC's diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says that for months there have been persistent reports in the press and specialised journals suggesting that Burma is building a nuclear facility with North Korean help.
Those reports are mainly derived from clues pieced together from defectors and satellite imagery, he adds.
There is nothing in the cables to confirm what Burma and North Korea may be up to, but they do provide a fascinating insight into the jigsaw of information on which western intelligence is based, our correspondent says.
Another cable released by the whistle-blowing site suggests that China, Burma's most powerful ally, is growing impatient with the country's leaders.
Two years ago, Chinese Ambassador Guan Mu told US diplomats that there was a risk of turmoil in Burma.
He suggested that the country's ruling generals would cede power if they were offered assurances that they would not "lose their lives" and if they could keep their economic interests.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11966136
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China tired of Burma’s ‘foot-dragging’
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Published: 10 December 2010
Than Shwe [R] during a September meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao [L] (Reuters)
China is fed up with the “foot-dragging” of the military junta in Burma on reform and fears the ruling generals can no longer protect its interests in the country, leaked US diplomatic cables show.
China is a key supplier of arms to its southern neighbour and a buyer of its natural resources. It has also been the junta’s main ally on the international stage, but the secret cables released by WikiLeaks tell a different tale.
“The Chinese clearly are fed up with the foot-dragging by the Than Shwe regime,” the top US diplomat in Rangoon, Shari Villarosa, wrote in a January 2008 memo summarising a meeting with the Chinese ambassador at the time.
“The Chinese can no longer rely on the generals to protect their interests here, and recognise the need to broker some solution that keeps the peace,” she wrote, following mass street rallies in 2007 that ended in bloody violence.
“The Chinese ambassador no longer tried to defend the regime, and acknowledged that the generals had made a bad situation worse,” she said.
The cable added that after Chinese efforts to push for reform had ended “without much observable result”, Beijing was willing to work with the United States to get the generals back to the negotiating table.
Another cable from January 2008 from the US embassy in Beijing quoted a Chinese foreign ministry official as saying China wanted to see the junta take “bold measures” to improve the livelihood of Burma’s people.
The cable quoted the same official as saying China wanted to see “national reconciliation through dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi and democracy supporters”.
The 65-year-old opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate, who spent 15 of the last 21 years under house arrest, was released last month, days after a rare election that was widely panned by foreign observers as a sham.
The junta’s political proxy claimed an overwhelming victory in the elections – Burma’s first in two decades – amid opposition complaints of cheating and voter intimidation. Suu Kyi’s party boycotted the polls.
Burma has been ruled by the military since 1962 and has refused to recognise the results of elections in 1990 that Suu Kyi’s party won by a landslide.
Villarosa said the Chinese envoy to Rangoon, Guan Mu, said the generals might be “more amenable to ceding power gradually” if they were “offered assurances that they would not lose their lives and could keep their economic interests”.
http://www.dvb.no/news/china-tired-of-burmas-foot-dragging/13334
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Senior US envoy meets with Myanmar's Suu Kyi
AFP
A senior US diplomat met with Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi during the first high-level visit by a Washington envoy since the dissident's release from house arrest last month. Skip related content
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Joseph Yun, the deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, made no comment to waiting media as he visited the Nobel Peace Prize winner at her crumbling lakeside mansion in Yangon on Friday.
Suu Kyi was freed by Myanmar's military rulers from her most recent stretch of detention on November 13, days after a rare election widely criticised by democracy activists and Western governments as anything but free and fair.
US President Barack Obama said Myanmar's "bankrupt regime" had stolen the vote, which handed an overwhelming majority to the military's political proxy and was marred by allegations of intimidation and vote rigging.
Obama's administration launched a dialogue with Myanmar's military rulers last year after concluding that Western attempts to isolate the regime had produced little success.
Yun arrived in the military-ruled country on Tuesday and has already met with representatives of 10 political parties that won seats in the November 7 election, as well as government officials.
The US envoy would urge the authorities to "improve their human rights record" and "release all political prisoners immediately and unconditionally", a US State Department spokesman said ahead of the talks.
"He will also review US government humanitarian assistance to the Burmese people," the official added, using Myanmar's former name.
Suu Kyi, who spent 15 of the last 21 years locked up, has welcomed this engagement but warned against "rose-coloured glasses", saying greater human rights and economic progress were still needed.
She told CNN in an interview last month that Washington must keep its "eyes open and alert and seeing what is really going on, and where engagement is leading to and what changes really need to be brought about".
Suu Kyi's party boycotted the November 7 vote because of rules that appeared to exclude the dissident from participating. It was subsequently disbanded by the junta.
The party won the previous election in 1990 but was never allowed to take power.
Yun's visit coincided with the release of leaked diplomatic cables highlighting Washington's fears, dating back to 2004, of a secret nuclear programme in Myanmar with the involvement of North Korea.
One cable from the US embassy in Yangon, dated August 2004 and released Thursday by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, quoted an unidentified witness who reported seeing 300 North Koreans working at a secret construction site.
"The North Koreans, aided by Burmese workers, are constructing a concrete-reinforced underground facility that is '500ft from the top of the cave to the top of the hill above'," according to the cable.
The military junta in Myanmar has dismissed reports of its nuclear intentions and brushed aside Western concerns about possible cooperation with North Korea.
But in July US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed worries about military ties between the two countries saying a ship from Pyongyang had recently delivered military equipment to Myanmar. http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20101210/twl-senior-us-envoy-meets-with-myanmar-s-2802f3e.html
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Burma ‘fourth biggest jail’ for journalists
By DVB
Published: 9 December 2010
Burma is the world’s fourth-highest jailer of media workers, according to figures released by a New York-based press safety watchdog.
Except for Eritrea, which is placed third with 17, Burma has one of the highest numbers of imprisoned journalists relative to its population. The Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) puts Burma’s figure at 13, while China and Iran each have 34.
The number of journalists imprisoned worldwide has risen by nine since last year and now stands at 145, a 14-year high, with 28 countries guilty of harsh treatment of media workers.
CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon called the increase a “shocking development… fuelled largely by a small handful of countries that systematically jail journalists –countries that are at war with information itself”.
The Thailand-based Burma Media Association (BMA) however puts the figure at 22, and among these are 17 DVB journalists. A father and son who were arrested in April after photographing the aftermath of the Rangoon bombings are the latest to have admitted to being DVB staff.
According to DVB Deputy Editor, Khin Maung Win, the son, 21-year-old Sithu Zeya, had been tortured into revealing that his father, Maung Maung Zeya, was also a reporter for the Oslo-based media organisation.
Khin Maung Win added that authorities had offered to free Maung Maung Zeya if he divulged the names of other undercover DVB reporters. The two are being held in Rangoon’s Insein prison while they await a verdict.
CPJ last year branded Burma as the ‘worst country to be a blogger’, while the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres ranked it 171 out of 175 countries in its latest Press Freedom Index.
http://www.dvb.no/news/burma-%E2%80%98fourth-biggest-jail%E2%80%99-for-journalists/13323
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Multi-ethnic Burma and the junta will collide
By MAUNG ZARNI
Published: 10 December 2010
No matter how carefully they tread on the issue of reviving the Union spirit among different ethnic communities, Aung San Suu Kyi and non-violent ethnic minority leaders – not to mention the armed ethnic resistance organisations – are heading for an inevitable collision course with Burma’s military junta. Here is why.
Their respective politics, as well as concerns and interests, are irreconcilable. For Suu Kyi and the multi-ethnic opposition, politics is a means towards peace, reconciliation, representative government and improved public well-being; for the ruling generals, however, it is an expression of entitlement to rule and a means of control, domination, and self-aggrandizement. The fact that Senior General Than Shwe even thought of buying out Manchester United football club while several million cyclone Nargis victims struggled for clean drinking water and dry shelter speaks volumes about the deeply callous nature of the generals that rule the country.
While the world knows plenty about Aung San Suu Kyi and what she represents, it knows almost nothing about the generals beyond their international pariah status.
As far as the generals are concerned, there is no need for reconciliation along ethnic or political lines with any person, organization or community. In short, they have done nothing wrong, for they perceive themselves as the country’s sole national guardian, untainted by partisan politics. They are committed to the abstract idea of a multi-ethnic nation and an absolutist notion of sovereignty. They love the country, but they can’t stand the people, especially the kind who refuse to go along with their design for the rest of the country.
The generals’ politics is all about resuming and completing the process of reconsolidation of the power of the ethnic Burmese majority, most specifically the soldiering class, over the rest of the ethnic minorities – a process only interrupted by the old kingdom’s 19th century defeat by Great Britain. Sixty years after independence the military has built its own version of local colonial rule wherein it serves as the constitutionally-mandated ruling class and the rest of the civilian society, both ethnic majority and minorities, as second class citizens.
In this new colonial rule, anything and anyone that doesn’t bend to the generals’ will is to be controlled, subjugated or crushed. Aung San Suu Kyi and 2,200-plus jailed multi-ethnic dissidents or politically defiant ethnic minority groups that are subject to rape, pillage, summary executions and other atrocities attest to this. And this time round the regime is likely to get really nasty, with disturbing signals of the brewing troubles ahead already emerging.
The world just witnessed 20,000 Burmese refugees fleeing the renewed, post-election fighting between the regime and a faction of Karen ethnic minority ceasefire groups into Thailand. Furthermore, the Burmese military has recently deployed massive numbers of combat-ready troops along vast stretches of the porous Thai-Burmese border and purchased and assembled 50 Russian-made Mi-24 gunship helicopters in preparation for “counterinsurgency” operations to subjugate the country’s minorities.
Burma has been engulfed in conflict, violent and non-violent, since 90 days after independence from Britain. Everyone is tired of war and conflict – that is, everyone except the top generals and those who profit from the continuation of war and conflict.
The military’s rose-tinted perception of itself as the ‘guardian of the nation’ is one thing, but the vested class and personal interests that have resulted from 50 years of successive military dictatorships are another. War may not be peace as Orwellian double-speak suggests, but it is highly profitable for the strong and the victorious.
Perpetuating domestic conflicts enables the regime to expand its military control over resource-rich and strategic minority regions which border Asia’s rising economies such as India, China and Thailand. The economically vibrant neighbours have signed multi-billion dollar commercial deals, including trans-border gas pipelines, two deep seaports, ‘development corridors’ and ‘special economic zones’, natural gas production, hydropower projects and mining, all over different minority lands along Burma’s national borders.
The regime’s opponents are incomparably weaker, outnumbered and outgunned. The regime discards such modern normative inconveniences as governmental accountability, citizens’ voice, and ecological and livelihood concerns, as it grabs natural resources and land from both ethnic majority and minority communities, while their Asian business partners look the other way. The troops are allowed to scavenge among local populations, confiscating anything of value with impunity from the top leadership. In fact, it is the senior and junior generals in Naypyidaw who push their regional, battalion and local commanders towards local economic self-sufficiency – at any cost to local communities and economies.
Ideologically, the war against minorities reinforces the Burmese military’s self-justificatory perception that its primacy and monopoly control over minority regions are necessary, lest these autonomy-seeking ethnic people break up the Union. However these days the Burmese public, weary of the governmental brutality and with greater exposure to global free media, is no longer susceptible to the regime’s ethno-nationalist propaganda. The glue that used to bind the Burmese majority with the militarist generals has come off.
Precisely because this ethno-nationalist bond has been irreparably broken down, Aung San Suu Kyi and minority leaders’ recent moves towards dialogue and reconciliation poses the greatest threat to the ruling junta. Only 20 years ago the regime, challenged by the majority Burmese public in Burma’s ‘people power’ uprising, opted for disparate ceasefire deals with nearly 20 armed minority organizations, not out of genuine desire for peace and reconciliation, but as a strategy to pre-empt the inter-ethnic solidarity between the Aung San Suu Kyi-led majority and rebellious minorities. Now that some of the most crucial ceasefires are likely to unravel, the highest strategic priority of the regime has become preventing inter-ethnic unity.
There is little wonder then that the generals’ greatest threat is Aung San Suu Kyi’s enduring popularity across ethnic lines and her politics of reconciliation. Her politics by no means induces the country’s balkanization as the generals and their supporters have implied. If anything, the military’s zero-sum politics will pave the way for national disintegration.
If one listens carefully to Burma’s disparate ethnic resistance groups, everyone is prepared to live within a single union. They are simply asking that fair political representation and ethnic equality be made central organizing principles of the Union – something the majority Burmese as represented by Aung San Suu Kyi and her opposition movement have endorsed.
Foreign governments and advocates generally view the military as the only cohesive national organization capable of keeping territorial Burma together, but they conveniently ignore the realities on the ground: Burma’s military has categorically failed at nation-building – its record of 50 years in power speaks for itself.
What the generals want and pursue is power and profit while their multi-ethnic opponents can only offer peace and reconciliation. Their respective missions are bound to collide, and it’s just a matter of time before the world witnesses a new round of confrontation, conflicts and crack down.
For the foreign governments and international organisations which fear Burma’s ethnic balkanization or political instability, the best way to prevent this eventuality is to start recognizing that the generals, this generation and the next, are not going to be the ones who will bring about lasting peace, reconciliation and stability. Instead of placing misguided confidence in gradual military-led transition, these external players should invest in long-term initiatives designed to help empower multi-ethnic dissidents and their organizations, as well as ordinary citizens and their communities in order that the people may succeed in their attempts at what Aung San Suu Kyi calls a ‘peaceful revolution’, a process of change that brings about meaningful, positive and radical changes in policy, leadership and institutions.
Maung Zarni is research fellow on Burma at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
http://www.dvb.no/analysis/multi-ethnic-burma-and-the-junta-will-collide/13337
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US ‘given uranium’ by Burmese civilian
Exerpt from the leaked US cable documenting approach by Burmese civilian with uranium (Wikileaks)
By FRANCIS WADE
Published: 10 December 2010
US diplomats in Rangoon were approached in 2008 by a Burmese civilian offering to sell a sample of uranium, which was then sent to a US testing centre, leaked cables reveal.
It comes as part of a massive disclosure of US diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks that suggest the US was concerned about Burma’s potential to develop a nuclear weapon long before DVB unearthed evidence of a proliferation programme.
The unnamed person had contacted the US Defence Attaché Office (USDAO) in Rangoon eight days prior to the meeting, said the 23 September 2008 cable sent to Washington by US Chargé d’Affaires in Burma, Larry Dinger. No date of for the meeting is given, but the cable says that US officials interviewed the individual “at the U.S. Embassy Rangoon”.
It says that the “individual provided a small bottle half-filled with metallic powder and a photocopied certificate of testing from a Chinese university dated 1992 as verification of the radioactive nature of the powder”. He claimed the bottle contained Uranium-238, which is used in most modern nuclear weapons, as well as for nuclear energy.
The civilian reportedly told US diplomats that he could “provide up to 2000 kg of uranium-bearing rock” mined from a location in eastern Burma’s Karenni state. He claimed he had 50 kilograms of uranium-containing rock or ore stored in a protected barrel at an undisclosed Rangoon location. If the US declined the offer, then the individual would approach Thailand and China before moving on to other countries.
What happened next is unclear, but at the time the cable was sent, a sample bottle was “in transit” to a US testing site known as the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, Virginia. It was sent “by commercial air via Diplomatic Pouch”.
“The sample was wrapped in several layers and placed inside multiple containers, including glass, lead, and wooden boxes/crates”, the cable said, adding that the package was marked ‘Secret’.
As far as the USDAO knew, the Burmese junta was unaware that it had received the alleged uranium. “However, the possibility cannot be dismissed that rather than a sale for profit, the seller is attempting to assist in executing a government entrapment scheme,” it said.
Burmese analyst Aung Thu Nyein said that it is likely the individual had been paid by the US embassy to provide information about uranium deposits in Burma, in order that Washington could gauge the potential for the junta to develop a nuclear weapon.
Another cable sent on 30 January 2007 speaks of US suspicions about a shipment of 112 metric tonnes of uranium ore “shipped on January 25 from BURMA to China via Singapore”. It said that “security was tighter than usual, surveillance was heavier, and officials paid closer attention to the movement of the shipment and activity at the port”.
When approached by DVB, an official at the US embassy in Rangoon said that the US state department “does not comment on classified documents or allegedly classified documents that may have been leaked”.
http://www.dvb.no/news/us-%E2%80%98given-uranium%E2%80%99-by-burmese-civilian/13341
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Ceasefire armed groups "thank" Burma Army for bringing them back to reality
Friday, 10 December 2010 15:11 Hseng Khio Fah
Ceasefire armed groups that have refused to disarm to Burma's ruling military, during their recent informal meetings at Mongla, where the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA) Headquarters is located, said they should be grateful to the Burma Army because its pressure on the groups to transform themselves into Border Guard Forces (BGFs) and later to disarm had brought them back to the struggle for their rights as enshrined in the 1947 Panglong Agreement, according to sources from the Sino-Burma border said.
Former allies of the Burma's ruling military, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), NDAA better known as Mongla group and Shan State Army (SSA) North took opportunity from Mongla's Shan New Year celebrations (held from 30 November to 7 December) to discuss their future strategies, an informed source said.
The groups said without the Burma Army's BGF program, they would not have woken up from their "Rip Van Winkle" sleep to resume their fight because they had been too busy with their day to day affairs.
"The junta might achieve its goal well within another 20 years, had they left us alone as in the past," a source quoted a Wa officer as saying.
According to one discussant, the ruling military is putting pressure on them on three fronts, 1) Militarily, the Burma Army is laying them under siege in an attempt to wear them down "If there is a chance to gain a quick victory, like in Kokang, they'll even attack". 2) Economically, the Burma Army is cutting off their revenue "Now only the militias that are backed by the Burma Army can engage in the drug trade freely" and 3) Politically, Naypyitaw is trying to "paint us with drugs" to isolate the groups from the international community; it might even place the issue of the groups in the parliamentary agenda in an attempt to legally designating them as unlawful organizations.
In response, the alliance cannot shoot first which is an action that may offend China. What they could do, obviously, is on the political front, according to another discussant. The Shans, as former rulers of Shan State and being the majority, should assume a major role. "The first thing is for the SSA-North and the (non-ceasefire) SSA-South to reach an agreement," he said. "The rest of us can then follow suit."
Meanwhile, the Shan State Army (SSA) South of Lt-Gen Yawd Serk was also reportedly holding meetings with representatives from the Six-State Military Alliance formed since 2002. Members include SSA South, Karen National Union, Karenni National Progressive Party, Kachin Independence Army, China National Front and Arakan Liberation Party. http://www.shanland.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3359:ceasefire-armed-groups-qthankq-burma-army-for-bringing-them-back-to-reality-&catid=86:war&Itemid=284
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Friday, December 10, 2010
News & Articles on Burma-Friday, 10 December, 2010
China tired of Burma reform 'foot-dragging': cables
Published: 10/12/2010 at 12:01 PM
Online news: Asia
China is fed up with the "foot-dragging" of the military junta in Burma on reform and fears the ruling generals can no longer protect its interests in the country, leaked US diplomatic cables show.
Burma soldiers take part in a military parade in Naypyidaw. China is fed up with the "foot-dragging" of the military junta in Burma on reform and fears the ruling generals can no longer protect its interests in the country, leaked US diplomatic cables show.
China is a key supplier of arms to its southern neighbour and a buyer of its natural resources. It has also been the junta's main ally on the international stage, but the secret cables released by WikiLeaks tell a different tale.
"The Chinese clearly are fed up with the foot-dragging by the Than Shwe regime," the top US diplomat in Rangoon, Shari Villarosa, wrote in a January 2008 memo summarising a meeting with the Chinese ambassador at the time.
"The Chinese can no longer rely on the generals to protect their interests here, and recognise the need to broker some solution that keeps the peace," she wrote, following mass street rallies in 2007 that ended in bloody violence.
"The Chinese ambassador no longer tried to defend the regime, and acknowledged that the generals had made a bad situation worse," she said.
The cable added that after Chinese efforts to push for reform had ended "without much observable result", Beijing was willing to work with the United States to get the generals back to the negotiating table.
Another cable from January 2008 from the US embassy in Beijing quoted a Chinese foreign ministry official as saying China wanted to see the junta take "bold measures" to improve the livelihood of Burma's people.
The cable quoted the same official as saying China wanted to see "national reconciliation through dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi and democracy supporters".
The 65-year-old opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate, who spent 15 of the last 21 years under house arrest, was released last month, days after a rare election that was widely panned by foreign observers as a sham.
The junta's political proxy claimed an overwhelming victory in the elections -- Burma's first in two decades -- amid opposition complaints of cheating and voter intimidation. Suu Kyi's party boycotted the polls.
Burma has been ruled by the military since 1962 and has refused to recognise the results of elections in 1990 that Suu Kyi's party won by a landslide.
Villarosa said the Chinese envoy to Rangoon, Guan Mu, said the generals might be "more amenable to ceding power gradually" if they were "offered assurances that they would not lose their lives and could keep their economic interests".
House praises Chinese Nobel laureate
Agence France Presse: House praises Chinese Nobel laureate – Olivier Knox
Wed 8 Dec 2010
Filed under: International
WASHINGTON — In a move sure to stoke China’s anger, US lawmakers voted overwhelming Wednesday to honor Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo and called on Beijing to free the jailed champion of democratic reforms.
The House of Representatives approved the symbolic message by a 402-1 margin, congratulating Liu and honoring his “promotion of democratic reform in China, and the courage with which he has borne repeated imprisonment.”
The measure also urged President Barack Obama — due to host his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, for a state visit next month — to keep pushing Beijing to free Liu from prison and release his wife Liu Xia from house arrest.
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in October to Liu, who was jailed in December 2009 for 11 years on subversion charges after co-authoring “Charter 08,” a manifesto calling for democratic reform in one-party China.
China has accused Norway, the Nobel committee’s home, of undermining relations and encouraging a “criminal.” China has also pressured nations not to attend the Nobel ceremony.
The US resolution also “calls on the government of China to cease censoring media and Internet reporting of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo and to cease its campaign of defamation against Liu Xiaobo.”
And it asserts that “in honoring Liu Xiaobo, it also honors all those who have promoted democratic reform in China, including all those who participated in the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstration for democratic reform.”
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Republican Representative Chris Smith, who crafted the resolution, were expected to attend the Nobel prize ceremony in Norway on Friday.
Pelosi, a frequent critic of China’s rights record, urged Liu’s “immediate and unconditional release” on Tuesday and said Washington must keep up pressure on Beijing over expanding political and religious freedoms.
“We have many issues where we have common ground or where should seek common ground. But all of that is better served by candor in our friendship and not ignoring sore spots,” she said in a speech in support of the resolution.
Other leading lawmakers fired harsh criticism at China on Tuesday, noting it was joining Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Myanmar’s military junta among countries that have blocked a Nobel peace prize winner from receiving their award in person.
“China should be ashamed and China should be embarrassed to be in the company of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Burma,” Republican Representative Frank Wolf said at a press conference with other lawmakers.
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the incoming Republican chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Beijing must listen to critics of its “warped political system” and demanded Liu and his wife be set free “at once.”
She noted that Nazi Germany blocked the 1935 laureate, Carl von Ossietzky, from attending his award ceremony, while Moscow barred Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov in 1975, and Myanmar’s military rulers stopped democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi from attending hers in 1991.
“Beijing now joins the ranks of the infamous Nazi regime and the repressive Burmese junta in locking up a Nobel Peace prize winner,” she said, demanding “rulers of Beijing, have you no shame?”
ဒါေတြသိျပီးျပီလား ? မသိေသးရင္ဖတ္ႀကည့္ပါ။-SENT BY -U T W
ဒါေတြသိျပီးျပီလား ? မသိေသးရင္ဖတ္ႀကည့္ပါ။
အရက္ျဖတ္ေဆးကို နားမလည္ဘဲ ေသာက္ၿပီး အရက္ေသာက္ပါက ၅ မိနစ္အတြင္း ေသႏိုင္
ေဆးလိပ္မီးခိုး ရႇဴ႐ႈိက္မိေသာေၾကာင့္ ႏႇစ္စဥ္ေသဆံုးသူ ေျခာက္သိန္းခန္႔ ရႇိသည္
သြားတုိက္ေဆးတြင္ ပါဝင္ေသာ ဓာတု ပစၥည္းေၾကာင့္ သေႏၶသား ဦးေႏွာက္ ထိခိုက္ႏုိင္
တစ္ခါသုံးပလတ္စတစ္အၾကည္ဘူးမ်ားကုိ အႀကိမ္ႀကိမ္ အသုံးမျပဳသင့္
မုန္လာဥနီသည္ အသက္ရွည္ျခင္း၏ လွ်ဳိ့ဝွက္ခ်က္ တစ္ခု ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သုေတသီမ်ား ေထာက္ခံေျပာၾကား
သစ္သီးေဖ်ာ္ရည္ ေသာက္ျခင္းျဖင့္ ေသြးတုိး ေရာဂါ ျဖစ္နုိင္ေျခ ေလ်ာ့နည္းေစ
အေမရိကန္တြင္ စက္ရုပ္လက္တံျဖင့္ ခံတြင္းကင္ဆာ ခြဲစိတ္ကုသမႈ ေအာင္ျမင္လ်က္ရွိ
ဦးေႏွာက္တစ္ျခမ္း ဖယ္ထုတ္လိုက္ရေသာ္လည္း အေမရိကန္ကေလးငယ္ အသက္ရွင္နိုင္ခဲ့
ဒါေတြသိျပီးျပီလား ? မသိေသးရင္ဖတ္ႀကည့္ပါ။
အရက္ျဖတ္ေဆးကို နားမလည္ဘဲ ေသာက္ၿပီး အရက္ေသာက္ပါက ၅ မိနစ္အတြင္း ေသႏိုင္
ျပင္ပေဆးဆိုင္မ်ားတြင္ အရက္ျဖတ္ေဆးကို နားမလည္ဘဲ ဝယ္ေသာက္ၿပီး အရက္ေသာက္ပါက ေဆးတြင္ပါဝင္ေသာ ပါရယ္ဒီဟုိက္ (Paraldehyde) ဓာတ္သည္ အရက္ႏွင့္မတည့္ေသာေၾကာင့္ ၅ မိနစ္အတြင္း ေသႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း ဦးေႏွာက္ႏွင့္စိတ္ပိုင္းဆိုင္ရာ ဆရာဝန္ေဒါက္တာေဇယ်ာမင္းက ေျပာသည္။ ခႏၶာကိုယ္အတြင္းသို႔ ပါရယ္ ဒီဟိုက္ဓာတ္မ်ားရွိေနခ်ိန္တြင္ အရက္ႏွင့္ထိေတြ႕ပါက ရင္တုန္လာကာ အသက္႐ွဴက်ပ္လာျခင္း၊ ေခါင္းမ်ားကြဲ ထြက္မတတ္ကိုက္ျခင္းႏွင့္ ေသြးေပါင္ အျပည့္ က်ျခင္းတို႔ျ့ဖစ္ကာ အခ်ိန္အနည္းငယ္အတြင္း ေသဆံုးမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။ ”တခ်ိဳ႕အိမ္ေထာင္သည္ေတြ ရွိတယ္။ ေယာက်္ားမသိေအာင္ အရက္ျဖတ္ေဆးကို ေဆးဆိုင္မွာ ေမးဝယ္ၿပီးေတာ့ အစားအေသာက္ထဲ ထည့္ေကြၽးတယ္။ ေယာက်္ားက မသိဘူး။ အရက္ေသာက္ခ်ိန္ ေရာက္ေတာ့ သြားေသာက္တယ္။ အရက္နဲ႔ေဆး ေတြ႕ေတာ့ ေသေရာ။ လမ္းေဘးမွာ ေသသြားတာေတြရွိတယ္” ဟု အထက္ပါ ဆရာဝန္က ဆိုသည္။ အရက္ကိုစြဲလမ္းစြာေသာက္ သူမ်ားအေနျဖင့္ အရက္ျဖတ္မည္ ဆိုပါက ကြၽမ္းက်င္ေသာဆရာဝန္ မ်ားႏွင့္ ျပကာ ကုသသင့္ေၾကာင္း၊ ယင္းအရက္ျဖတ္ေဆးမ်ားမွာ အသည္းေကာင္းမေကာင္း စစ္ေဆးၿပီး အသည္းေကာင္းမွသာ အတိုင္း အဆျဖင့္ ခံႏိုင္ရည္ရွိမရွိ ျဖည္းျဖည္းခ်င္းတိုက္ရေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။ ယင္းေဆးမ်ားသည္ အသည္းကို ထိခိုက္ႏိုင္သည့္အတြက္ ၾကာရွည္အရက္စြဲ ေသာက္ သူမ်ားမွာ အသည္းတြင္ထိခိုက္မႈတစ္ခုခု ျဖစ္ ေနၿပီး အရက္ျဖတ္ေဆးေသာက္လိုက္သည့္အခါ အသည္းမွာ ပိုမို ပ်က္စီးမည္ျဖစ္သည္။ ”ဆရာဝန္ေတြက အရက္ျဖတ္ ဖို႔လာျပတဲ့ လူနာဟာ ဘယ္အဆင့္ေရာက္ၿပီဆိုတာ သိတယ္။ ေဆးတိုက္ၿပီးတဲ့အခါ အရက္ကို ေသာက္ခိုင္းတယ္။ အသက္႐ွဴက်ပ္၊ ရင္တုန္၊ ေခါင္းကိုက္၊ မူးမိုက္လကၡ ဏာေတြျဖစ္လာတဲ့အခါ အရက္ကို ေသာက္ဦးမလားဆိုၿပီး ေမးတယ္။ လူနာက လက္မခံႏိုင္ေတာ့ဘူး ဆိုတဲ့အခ်ိန္မွာ ေျဖေဆးကို ထိုးေပးတယ္။ လူနာကအရက္ကို ေၾကာက္လာတယ္။ အဲဒီလိုနည္းနဲ႔ျဖတ္တာ။ အျပင္မွာဝယ္ေသာက္ရင္ ေျဖေဆးဘာမွန္းမသိတာ။ အသက္ဆံုး႐ႈံးတာေပါ့” ဟု ေဒါက္တာ ေဇယ်ာမင္းက ဆိုသည္။ ျပင္ပေဆးဆိုင္မွ အရက္ျဖတ္ ေဆးဝယ္ေသာက္ျခင္းသည္ အသည္းေကာင္းမေကာင္းကို မသိႏိုင္သည့္အျပင္ ေဆးတိုက္ရမည့္ အခ်ိန္၊ ပမာဏတို႔ကို မသိႏိုင္ေသာ ေၾကာင့္ ယင္းကဲ့သို႔ ဝယ္ေသာက္ ျခင္းသည္ အသက္ဆံုး႐ႈံးမႈသာ ျဖစ္ ႏိုင္ေသာေၾကာင့္ ဆရာဝန္ႏွင့္သာ ျပသ၍ အရက္ျဖတ္သင့္ေၾကာင္း ၄င္းက ထပ္ေလာင္းအႀကံျပဳ သည္။
မင္းထက္စံ
ေဆးလိပ္မီးခိုး ရႇဴ႐ႈိက္မိေသာေၾကာင့္ ႏႇစ္စဥ္ေသဆံုးသူ ေျခာက္သိန္းခန္႔ ရႇိသည္
ေဆးလိပ္ေသာက္သူမ်ားထံမႇ မီးခိုးေငြ႔ကို ႐ႇဴ႐ႈိက္မိေသာေၾကာင့္ ေသဆံုးရသူ အေရအတြက္မႇာ ကမၻာေပၚတြင္ တစ္ႏႇစ္လွ်င္ ေျခာက္သိန္းခန္႔ရႇိၿပီး ၎တို႔အနက္မႇ သံုးပံုတစ္ပံုခန္႔မႇာ ကေလးငယ္မ်ား
ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ကမၻာလံုးဆိုင္ရာ စစ္တမ္းတစ္ခုအား ၿဗိတိန္ႏုိင္ငံ၊ Lancet
ေဆးဂ်ာနယ္တြင္ ႏို၀င္ဘာလ ၂၆ ရက္ေန႔က ေဖာ္ျပခဲ့သည္။
ယင္းကဲ့သုိ႔ ေသဆံုးရျခင္းမႇာလည္း မိသားစုအတြင္းရႇိ ေဆးလိပ္ ေသာက္သူမ်ားထံမႇ အမ်ားဆံုး ႐ႇဴ႐ႈိက္မိၾကျခင္း ျဖစ္ၿပီး တန္ဖိုးႀကီးမားစြာ ေပးဆပ္ရျခင္း ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ယင္းဂ်ာနယ္တြင္
ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။
ကမၻာေပၚရႇိ ေဆးလိပ္မေသာက္သူမ်ားအနက္ ကေလးငယ္ ၄၀ ရာခိုင္ႏႈန္း၊ အမ်ဳိးသမီး ၃၅ ရာခိုင္ႏႈန္း၊ အမ်ဳိးသား ၃၃ ရာခိုင္ႏႈန္း တို႔သည္ ေဆးလိပ္ေသာက္သူမ်ားထံမႇ မီးခိုးေငြ႕မ်ားကို
႐ႇဴ႐ႈိက္ေနရေၾကာင္း ႏိုင္ငံေပါင္း ၁၉၂ ႏုိင္ငံမႇ ေကာက္ယူရႇိ သည့္ ေနာက္ဆံုး
အခ်က္အလက္မ်ား အရ သိရႇိရသည္။
၂၀၀၄ ခုႏႇစ္အတြင္း ေဆးလိပ္ေၾကာင့္ ေသဆံုးသူ ၅ ဒသမ ၇ သန္းခန္႔ ရႇိခဲ့ၿပီး ၅ ဒသမ ၁ သန္းမႇာ မိမိကိုယ္တုိင္ ေဆးလိပ္ေသာက္မႈေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။ သူတစ္ပါး ေဆးလိပ္ေငြ႕ကို
႐ႇဴ႐ႈိက္မိေသာေၾကာင့္ ေသဆံုးရသူမ်ားအနက္ ထက္၀က္နီးပါးမႇာ အမ်ဳိးသမီးမ်ား
ျဖစ္ၿပီး က်န္ အေရအတြက္မႇာ ကေလးငယ္မ်ားႏႇင့္ အမ်ဳိးသားမ်ား ထက္၀က္စီခန္႔
ရႇိေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။
ယင္းကဲ့သို႔ ေသဆံုးရာတြင္လည္း ၆၀ ရာခုိင္ႏႈန္းမႇာ ႏႇလံုးေရာဂါေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္ၿပီး က်န္ ၃၀ ရာခိုင္ႏႈန္းမႇာ အသက္႐ႇဴလမ္းေၾကာင္းဆိုင္ရာ ေရာဂါမ်ားေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္သည္။ ပန္းနာေရာဂါႏႇင့္
ကင္ဆာေရာဂါမ်ားသည္ လည္း ေသဆံုးရျခင္း အေၾကာင္းမ်ား တြင္ ပါ၀င္ေၾကာင္း
သိရသည္။
ေဆးလိပ္ေသာက္သူမ်ားထံမႇ မီးခိုးမ်ား ႐ႇဴ႐ႈိက္မိေသာေၾကာင့္ ေသဆံုးသူ ပမာဏသည္ ကမၻာေပၚတြင္ အေၾကာင္းအမ်ဳိးမ်ဳိးေၾကာင့္ ေသဆံုးသူ အေရအတြက္၏ တစ္ရာခိုင္ႏႈန္း
ပါ၀င္ေၾကာင္း Lancet ဂ်ာနယ္တြင္ ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။
ယခုလကုန္တြင္ အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု မိန္း ျပည္နယ္၌ ဥပေဒအသစ္တစ္ရပ္ ကို စတင္က်င့္သံုးမည္ျဖစ္သည္။
ထိုဥပေဒအသစ္အရ cell phone ထုတ္လုပ္သူမ်ားသည္ ၎တို႕ ထုတ္လုပ္ေသာ ဖုန္းမ်ား၌ ဦးေႏွာက္ကင္ဆာ ျဖစ္ေစႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း သတိေပးခ်က္ကို ထည့္သြင္းေပးရန္ ျဖစ္သည္။ တကယ္ေတာ့ cell phone ေတြက ကင္ဆာ ျဖစ္ႏိုင္လား မျဖစ္ႏိုင္လား ဆိုတာ ဘယ္သူမွ အတတ္ေျပာလို႕ မရေသးပါဘူး။ သိပၸံပညာရွင္ေတြထဲမွာ ေတာင္ ၀ိ၀ါဒ ကဲြေနၾကတဲ့ ကိစၥ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
Maine ျပည္နယ္ democratic party ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ Andrea Boland ကေျပာတာကေတာ့ "ဖုန္းေတြက ထုတ္လႊတ္တဲ့ ဓာတ္ေရာင္ျခည္ သည္ ကင္ဆာကို ျဖစ္ေစႏိုင္တဲ့ အႏၱာရယ္ ရိွတာက ေသခ်ာပါတယ္။ တိတိက်က် ေဖာ္ျပထားတဲ့ စာတမ္းေတြသာ မရိွတာပါ။ ျပည္နယ္မွာ ေနထိုင္ၾကတဲ့ လူတစ္သန္းေလာက္ဟာ ဒီအႏာၱရယ္ကို သိသင့္တယ္"လို႕ ေျပာပါတယ္။
ဖုန္းေတြက ထုတ္လႊတ္တဲ့ ဓာတ္ေရာင္ျခည္ဆိုတာက ဖုန္းေတြ အခ်င္းခ်င္း ဆက္သြယ္တဲ့အခါ ထုတ္လႊတ္တဲ့ electromagnetic radiation ကို ေျပာတာပါ။ အေမရိကန္မွာ ဖုန္းထုတ္လုပ္သူေတြဟာ မိမိတို႕ ထုတ္လုပ္တဲ့ ဖုန္းက radiation ဘယ္ေလာက္ထြက္တယ္ဆိုတာကို ဖုန္းေတြမွာ ေဖာ္ျပထားစရာမလိုပါဘူး။
အေမရိကန္ ဆက္သြယ္ေရး ေကာ္မရွင္က cell phone ေတြဟာ အႏာၱရယ္ မရိွပါဘူးလို႕ ေျပာေပမယ့္ လူအမ်ားစုကေတာ့ ဖုန္းနဲ႕ ထိေတြ႕ပါ မ်ားရင္ ဓာတ္ေရာင္ျခည္နည္းပါးေသာ္လည္း ဦးေႏွာက္ကင္ဆာ ျဖစ္ႏိုင္ေျခ ရိွလိမ့္မည္လို႕ ယံုၾကည္ၾကတယ္။
ဥပေဒသစ္အရ ဖုန္းထုတ္လုပ္သူတို႕သည္ ဖုန္းကိုယ္ထည္ႏွင့္ package တြင္ ဦးေႏွာက္ကင္ဆာ ျဖစ္ပြားႏိုင္ေျခရိွေၾကာင္းကို ထည့္သြင္းေဖာ္ျပရမည္ျဖစ္ျပီး ဖုန္းမေျပာသည့္အခ်ိန္မ်ားတြင္ ဖုန္းကို ကိုယ္ႏွင့္ ေ၀းရာတြင္ ထားရန္ႏွင့္ ကိုယ္၀န္ေဆာင္ႏွင့္ ကေလးမ်ားအနားတြင္ အသံုးမျပဳရန္ သတိေပးခ်က္မ်ား ထည့္သြင္းေပးထားရမည္ ျဖစ္သည္။
San Francisco တြင္လည္း အလားတူ ဥပေဒမ်ိဳးကို ေနာက္ႏွစ္တြင္ စတင္က်င့္သံုးမည္ ျဖစ္သည္။
အေမရိကန္ရိွ ဖုန္းထုတ္လုပ္ေသာ company မ်ားမွ ေျပာၾကားတာကေတာ့ "ဖုန္းေတြဟာ က်န္းမာေရးကို မထိခိုက္ပါဘူး။ သုေတသနစာတမ္းေတြမွာလည္း ေဖာ္ျပထားတာမရိွဘူး။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ စိုးရိမ္စိတ္ကင္းကင္းနဲ႕ သံုးစဲြႏိုင္တယ္" ဟူ၍ ျဖစ္သည္။
စိုးရိမ္သူေတြရဲ႕ ေျပာၾကားခ်က္ကေတာ့ wireless phone ေတြ ကို လူအမ်ားစု စတင္အသံုးျပဳတာ ဆယ္စုႏွစ္ ၂ စု စာမွ်သာ ရိွေသးသည္။ ထို႕ေၾကာင့္ ဘယ္သူမွ် ႏွစ္ရွည္သုေတသန စာတမ္း မလုပ္ႏိုင္ေသးလို႕ ယတိျပတ္ေျပာလို႕ မရေၾကာင္း ျဖစ္သည္။
ဒီသတင္းကေတာ့ AP သတင္းက ေဖာ္ျပသြားတာပါ။ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အျမင္က ေတာ့ ဘယ္သူမွ တိတိက်က် မေျပာႏိုင္ခင္မွာ အယံုမလြယ္ဖို႕ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အထူးသျဖင့္ စားေသာက္ကုန္၊ လူသံုးကုန္ ႏွင့္ ေဆး၀ါး company ေတြဟာ ယံုၾကည္လို႕ မရပါဘူး။ သူတို႕က သူတို႕ ပစၥည္းေရာင္းရဖို႕ အတြက္ကို ပဲ ေစာင္းေပးျပီး သုေတသနျပဳၾကတာ။ ေငြေၾကးေထာက္ပံ့ရင္လည္း သူတို႕နဲ႕ ပလဲနံမ သင့္တဲ့ သုေတသီေတြကိုပဲ ေထာက္ပံ့တာ။ အဲဒီေတာ့ ရလာတဲ့ ရလဒ္ေတြကလည္း သူတို႕ လိုခ်င္တာေတြပဲ ျဖစ္တတ္တယ္။ ကမာၻေပၚမွာ ဘယ္ေဆးလိပ္ company ကမ်ား သူတို႕ ေဆးလိပ္ေသာက္ရင္ အသက္တိုမယ္လို႕ တရား၀င္သုေတသန ျပဳထားလို႕လဲ။ ဘာေရာဂါမွ မျဖစ္ဘူးဆိုျပီးပဲ ျငင္းတာ။ ေနာက္ဆံုး ဘယ္လိုမွ ျငင္းလို႕မရလို႕သာ ေဆးလိပ္ဘူးေတြမွာ warming message ေတြ ထည့္ေပးတာ။
အဲဒီေတာ့ ဖုန္းေတြကို အသံုးျပဳမယ္ဆိုရင္ တတ္ႏိုင္ပါက hand free နဲ႕ သံုးေစခ်င္တယ္။ bluetooth ကိုေျပာတာ မဟုတ္ဘူး။ ၾကိဳးနဲ႕ handfree ကိုေျပာတာ။ bluetooth ေလာက္ေတာ့ စတိုင္မမိဘူးေပါ့။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ဦးေႏွာက္ကင္ဆာ အျဖစ္ခံျပီးေတာ့ စတိုင္ထြားေလာက္ေအာင္ေတာ့ မမိုက္ေစခ်င္ဘူး။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ဆိုရင္ ဖုန္းကို ေခါင္းနားကို ကပ္ကိုု ကပ္လို႕ မရဘူး။ တစ္မိနစ္ ေက်ာ္လာရင္ေခါင္းကိုက္လို႕။ handfree ကို အျမဲတမ္းေဆာင္ထားရတယ္။ ကင္ဆာျဖစ္မွာ ေၾကာက္တာလဲ ပါတယ္။ ညအိပ္ရင္လည္း power off ျပီး လက္တစ္ကမ္းအကြာေလာက္မွာ ထားတာ ေကာင္းတယ္။ ေခါင္းအံုးေဘးမွာ မထားအိပ္သင့္ဘူး။ သူ႕ဆီက ဘာေရာင္ျခည္ေတြထြက္တာဆိုတာ ကိုယ္မွ ေသခ်ာမသိေသးတာ။ သတိထားတာပဲ အေကာင္းဆံုးျဖစ္မယ္ထင္ပါတယ္။
ေနာက္ဆံုးတစ္ခ်က္ေျပာခ်င္တာကေတာ
့ ဖုန္းကို ညအိပ္ေနတုန္း အားသြင္းမယ္ဆို ကိုယ္နဲ႕ ေ၀းရာမွာ ထားတာ ေဘးကင္းလိမ့္မယ္။ အခန္႕မသင့္လို႕ ထျပီး ေပါက္ကဲြရင္ လြတ္တာေပါ့။ :P :D အဲဒီအခ်က္ေတြကေတာ့ ဖုန္းနဲ႕ ပတ္သက္ျပီး ကၽြန္ေတာ္သိသေလာက္ ေဖာ္ျပထားတာပါ။ စာဖတ္သူအေနနဲ႕ အျခားအခ်က္ေတြကို သိလို႕ ရိွရင္လည္း comment မွာ ေဖာ္ျပေပးဖို႕ ေတာင္းဆိုလုိပါတယ္။
သြားတုိက္ေဆးတြင္ ပါဝင္ေသာ ဓာတု ပစၥည္းေၾကာင့္ သေႏၶသား ဦးေႏွာက္ ထိခိုက္ႏုိင္
အေမရိကန္ႏုိင္ငံ၊ ဖေလာ္ရီဒါ တကၠသိုလ္မွ ပေရာ္ဖက္ဆာ မာဂရက္ဂ်ိမ္းစ္က “ကၽြန္မတို႔က ဒီဓာတ္ပစၥည္းေၾကာင့္ ျပႆနာ ရွိႏုိင္ေၾကာင္း သိပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အဲဒီျပႆနာရဲ႕ အတိမ္အနက္က ဘယ္ေလာက္ရွိတယ္ဆိုတာ မခန္႔မွန္းႏိုင္ေသးဘူး”ဟု ရွင္းျပခဲ့
သြားတိုက္ေဆးတြင္ ပါဝင္ေသာ ဓာတုေဗဒ ပစၥည္းတစ္မ်ိဳးေၾကာင့္ ကိုယ္ဝန္ေဆာင္ သေႏၶသားမ်ားကို ထိခိုက္ႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း သုေတသီမ်ားက သတိေပး ေျပာၾကားလုိက္သည္။ Tridosanဟူေသာ ဓာတုပစၥည္းသည္ သြားတိုက္ေဆး၊ ကိုယ္တုိက္ဆပ္ျပာ စသည္တို႔တြင္ ထည့္သြင္းထားေလ့ရွိၿပီး ယင္းသည္ သေႏၶသားမ်ား၏ ဦးေႏွာက္ကို ထိခိုက္ေစႏုိင္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။ အေမရိကန္ႏုိင္ငံ၊ ဖေလာ္ရီဒါ တကၠသိုလ္မွ ပေရာ္ဖက္ဆာ မာဂရက္ဂ်ိမ္းစ္က “ကၽြန္မတို႔က ဒီဓာတ္ပစၥည္းေၾကာင့္ ျပႆနာ ရွိႏုိင္ေၾကာင္း သိပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အဲဒီျပႆနာရဲ႕ အတိမ္အနက္က ဘယ္ေလာက္ရွိတယ္ဆိုတာ မခန္႔မွန္းႏိုင္ေသးဘူး”ဟု ရွင္းျပခဲ့သည္။ Tridosanသည္ ဘက္တီးရီးယား ပိုးမႊားမ်ားကို ေသေစႏုိင္သည့္ အာနိသင္မ်ိဳး ရွိေနၿပီး ေဘးထြက္ဆိုးက်ိဳးအေနႏွင့္ သေႏၶသားေလာင္းမ်ား၏ ဦးေႏွာက္သို႔ ေထာက္ပံ့ပို႔လႊတ္သည့္ ေအာက္စီဂ်င္ကို ကန္႔သတ္ပစ္ႏုိင္သည္။ ထိုအေျခအေနသည္ သေႏၶသားက ကေလးငယ္အျဖစ္ ေမြးဖြားလာခ်ိန္တြင္ ဦးေႏွာက္ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးမႈ အားနည္းေသာ သက္ေရာက္မႈကို ျဖစ္ေပၚေစသည္။ အေမရိကန္ အစားအေသာက္ႏွင့္ ေဆး၀ါးလံုၿခံဳေရး ဌာနကမူ ယင္းဓာတ္ပစၥည္းကို ကန္႔သတ္ထားေသာ ပမာဏအတိုင္း သံုးစြဲျခင္းသည္ ဥပါဒ္မျဖစ္ႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း ေၾကညာခဲ့သည္။ သိုးမ်ားတြင္ စမ္းသပ္မႈအရ ေအာက္စီဂ်င္ ၾကြယ္၀ေသာ ေသြးဆဲလ္မ်ားကို ေသြးေၾကာမ်ားအတြင္း သယ္ယူေပးေနသည့္ Oestrogenဟိုမုန္းသည္ အႏၱရာယ္ကင္းေၾကာင္း သတ္မွတ္ထားသည့္ Tridosan ပမာဏအတိုင္း အသံုးျပဳပါက ေျပာင္းလဲမႈမရွိေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။ Oestrogenသည္ သေႏၶသားေလာင္းမ်ားတြင္ ေအာက္စီဂ်င္ ေပါၾကြယ္ေသာ ေသြးမ်ား၀င္ေရာက္ စီးဆင္းႏုိင္မႈကို ေထာက္ပံ့ေပးသည္။ သြားတိုက္ေဆးကဲ့သို႔ ပစၥည္းမ်ားတြင္ Tridosanကို ထည့္သြင္းအသံုးျပဳရမည့္ ပမာဏအား ကန္႔သတ္ထားေလ့ရွိၿပီး ဥေရာပ ေကာ္မရွင္က သက္ဆိုင္ရာ ကုန္စည္အမ်ိဳးအစား၏ (၀.၀၃)ရာခိုင္ႏႈန္းထက္ Tridosanကို ပိုမသံုးရန္ တားျမစ္ထားေၾကာင္း
သိရသည္။
Source: DailyMail
တစ္ခါသုံးပလတ္စတစ္အၾကည္ဘူးမ်ားကုိ အႀကိမ္ႀကိမ္ အသုံးမျပဳသင့္
“တစ္ခါသံုးဆိုေတာ့ တစ္ခါသံုးၿပီးလြင့္ပစ္ရမယ္။ ပုလင္းေတြထပ္ခါထပ္ခါ မသံုးရဘူး။ အဲဒီပုလင္းေတြမွာ ကင္ဆာင္ျဖစ္ေစတဲ့ ဓာတ္ေတြနဲ႕ သုံးထားတယ္။ ေနာက္ၿပီး ေနေရာင္ျခည္ေအာက္ ပူတဲ့ေနရာေတြမွာ မထားသင့္ဘူး။ အပူခ်ိန္ ၂၀၀ ဒီဂရီေက်ာ္ရင္ ကင္ဆာျဖစ္ေစတဲ့ ကာဆီႏုိဂ်င္ေတြ ထြက္လာတယ္”
ပိုလီအီဘလင္း တာရီသဲလိတ္ေခၚ PET ဓာတုပစၥည္းႏွင့္ ျပဳလုပ္ထားေသာ တစ္ခါသုံး ပလတ္စတစ္ အၾကည္ဘူးမ်ားတြင္ ကင္ဆာေရာဂါ ျဖစ္ေစေသာ ျဒပ္စင္ (DEHA) (Diethy-Hydroxy-Lamine) ပါဝင္ေသာေၾကာင့္ ထပ္ခါထပ္ခါ ျပန္လည္ အသံုးမျပဳသင့္ေၾကာင္း လုပ္ငန္းခြင္ က်န္းမာေရးဦးစီးဌာနမွ တာဝန္႐ွိပုဂၢဳိလ္တစ္ဦးက ေျပာသည္။ “တစ္ခါသံုးဆိုေတာ့ တစ္ခါသံုးၿပီးလြင့္ပစ္ရမယ္။ ပုလင္းေတြထပ္ခါထပ္ခါ မသံုးရဘူး။ အဲဒီပုလင္းေတြမွာ ကင္ဆာင္ျဖစ္ေစတဲ့ ဓာတ္ေတြနဲ႕ သုံးထားတယ္။ ေနာက္ၿပီး ေနေရာင္ျခည္ေအာက္ ပူတဲ့ေနရာေတြမွာ မထားသင့္ဘူး။ အပူခ်ိန္ ၂၀၀ ဒီဂရီေက်ာ္ရင္ ကင္ဆာျဖစ္ေစတဲ့ ကာဆီႏုိဂ်င္ေတြ ထြက္လာတယ္”ဟု အထက္ပါပုဂၢိဳလ္က ေျပာသည္။ ယခုလက္႐ွိတြင္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ၌ ယင္းပလတ္စတစ္ အၾကည္ဘူးမ်ားျဖင့္ ေရသိုေလွာင္ထားျခင္းမ်ားႏွင့္ သယ္ေဆာင္ရ လြယ္ကူေသာေၾကာင ့္ ေရေႏးြသယ္ယူျခင္းမ်ား စသည္တုိ႕ျဖင့္ အသုံးျပဳေနၾကသည္ကုိ ေတြ႕ရသည္။ အဆုိပါ ပလတ္စတစ္ဘူးမ်ားကို ထပ္ခါထပ္ခါ ေဆးေၾကာ၍ အသံုးျပဳေသာ္လည္း တစ္ခါသံုး ပလတ္စတစ္ဘူးမ်ား၏ အဝေပါက္မွတဆင့္ ပလတ္စတစ္ၿပဳိကြဲၿပီး ကင္ဆာေရာဂါျဖစ္ေစေသာ ကာဆီႏုိဂ်င္ဓာတ္မ်ား ေရအတြင္းသုိ႕ စိမ့္၀င္လာႏုိင္သည္။ ယင္း ပလတ္စတစ္ အၾကည္ဘူးမ်ားကုိ ျပဳလုပ္ရာတြင္ ကင္ဆာျဖစ္ေစေသာ ဓာတ္တစ္မ်ဳိး ပါဝင္ေသာ္လည္း ယင္းအဆိပ္သင့္၍ ကင္ဆာေရာဂါျဖစ္ပြားေသာ လူတစ္ဦးတစ္ေယာက္မွ် ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ မေတြ႕ရွိရေသးေၾကာင္း အထက္ပါပုဂၢိဳလ္က ေျပာသည္။ ယင္းပလတ္စတစ္ အၾကည္ဘူးမ်ားကုိ ကုမၸဏီမ်ားသည္ အေဟာင္းဆိုင္မ်ားမွ ျပန္လည္၀ယ္ယူၿပီး အေဟာင္းေစ်းကြက္တြင္ ပလတ္စတစ္ အၾကည္တစ္ဘူးလွ်င္ ၁၅ က်ပ္ေပါက္ေစ်း႐ွိသည္။
Credit: အိျဖဴမြန္ (7Day News Journal)
မုန္လာဥနီသည္ အသက္ရွည္ျခင္း၏ လွ်ဳိ့ဝွက္ခ်က္ တစ္ခု ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သုေတသီမ်ား ေထာက္ခံေျပာၾကား
ေဈးကြက္တင္ပို့ေတာ့မည့္ မုန္လာဥနီမ်ား © telegraph
မုန္ လာဥနီသည္ အသက္ရွည္ျခင္း၏ လ်ွိဳ့ဝွက္ခ်က္ တစ္ခုျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း အေမရိကန္ သုေတသီမ်ားက ေထာက္ခံေျပာဆိုလိုက္သည္။ အယ္ဖာကယ္ရိုတင္း ဓာတ္သည္ လူတစ္ဦးအား က်န္းမာသန္စြမ္းေအာင္ အေထာက္အပံ့ ျဖစ္ေစၿပီး
ယင္း ဓာတ္မွာ မုန္လာဥနီတြင္ ေပါၾကြယ္ဝစြာ ပါဝင္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။ DNA ပရိုတင္းႏွင့္ အဆီဓာတ္မ်ားကို ေအာက္စီဂ်င္ႏွင့္ ဆက္နြယ္ေသာ ထိခိုက္မႈမ်ား ျဖစ္ေပၚေစရာမွ ႏွလံုးေရာဂါႏွင့္ ကင္ဆာတို့ ျဖစ္ေပၚေစေသာ္လည္း အယ္ဖာကယ္ရိုတင္းက ယင္းကို ကာကြယ္ေပးနိုင္ေၾကာင္း သုေတသီမ်ားကဆိုသည္။
မုန္လာဥနီတြင္ အယ္ဖာကယ္ရိုတင္းအျပင္ ဘီတာကယ္ရိုတင္းႏွင့္ လိုင္ကိုပင္းတို့ပါ ပါဝင္ၿပီး ေရာဂါကာကြယ္ေဆးအျဖစ္ သတ္မွတ္နိုင္ေၾကာင္း အေမရိကန္ ေရာဂါကာကြယ္ေရးႏွင့္ ထိန္းခ်ုပ္ေရးဌာနမွ ေဒါက္တာခ်ိဳယန္လြီက ေျပာဆိုခဲ့သည္။ မုန္လာဥနီသည္ ကင္ဆာကို ကာကြယ္နိုင္သည့္ သဘာဝ ေဆးနည္းတစ္ခုျဖစ္သလို အျခားေသာ အသီးအရြက္မ်ားကို မ်ားမ်ားစားသံုးျခင္းသည္လည္း အယ္ဖာကယ္ရိုတင္းကို ေပါၾကြယ္စြာ ရရွိေစမည္ဟု ေဒါက္တာလြီက ရွင္းျပခဲ့သည္။
သု ေတသီမ်ားက အသီးအရြက္မ်ားသည္ လူသားမ်ားအတြက္ ေရာဂါကာကြယ္ရာတြင္ အေရးပါေသာ အခန္းက႑မွ ရပ္တည္ေနေၾကာင္း ေျပာဆိုခဲ့သည္။ အယ္ဖာကယ္ရိုတင္းဓာတ္သည္ အစိမ္းေရာင္၊ အနီေရာင္၊ အဝါေရာင္ရွိေသာ သစ္သီးသစ္ဥႏွင့္ ဟင္းသီးဟင္းရြက္မ်ားတြင္ ပါဝင္ေနေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။
သစ္သီးေဖ်ာ္ရည္ ေသာက္ျခင္းျဖင့္ ေသြးတုိး ေရာဂါ ျဖစ္နုိင္ေျခ ေလ်ာ့နည္းေစ
သစ္သီးေဖ်ာ္ရည္ ႀကိုက္ႏွစ္သက္သူတဦး © dailymail
သစ္ သီးေဖ်ာ္ရည္ ပံုမွန္ေသာက္သံုးျခင္းသည္ ေသြးတိုးမႈကို ထိန္းညႇိေပးနိုင္ေၾကာင္း သုေတသန ရလဒ္မ်ားက ညႊန္ျပလ်က္ရွိသည္။ တစ္ေန့လ်င္ သစ္သီးေဖ်ာ္ရည္ ႏွစ္ခြက္မ်ွ ပ်မ္းမ်ွေသာက္သံုး ေသာ သက္လတ္ပိုင္း အရြယ္မ်ားတြင္
ေသြး တိုးေရာဂါ၊ ၎ႏွင့္ဆက္စပ္ေနေသာ ႏွလံုးေရာဂါစသည္တို့ ျဖစ္ေပၚနိုင္ေျခ ေလ်ာ့နည္းက်ဆင္းသြားေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။
လိ ေမၼာ္ရည္ကဲ့သို့ သစ္သီးေဖ်ာ္ရည္မ်ားကို တစ္ ေန့လ်င္ လီတာဝက္မ်ွ ပံုမွန္ေသာက္သံုးျခင္းသည္ က်န္းမာေရးအတြက္ အေထာက္အကူ ျဖစ္ေစမည္ဟု ျပင္သစ္နိုင္ငံ အူဗာနီတကၠသိုလ္မွ သုေတသီမ်ားက ေထာက္ခံခဲ့သည္။ ေသြးတိုးျခင္းသည္ ႏွလံုးေရာဂါ ျဖစ္ ပြားေစသည့္ အဓိက အေၾကာင္းရင္း တစ္ခုျဖစ္ၿပီး ရုတ္တရက္ ႏွလံုးတိုက္ခိုက္မႈ ျဖစ္စဥ္အားလံုး၏ ၅၀ ရာခိုင္နႈန္းသည္ ေသြးတိုးျခင္းႏွင့္ ဆက္နြယ္ေနေၾကာင္း ကမ႓ာ့က်န္းမာေရး အဖြဲ့ႀကီးက ခန့္မွန္းထားသည္။
ေလး ပါတ္ၾကာ စမ္းသပ္မႈ ရလဒ္မ်ားက လိေမၼာ္ရည္ကဲ့သို့ သစ္သီးေဖ်ာ္ရည္မ်ား ပံုမွန္ေသာက္သံုးျခင္းသည္ လူတစ္ဦးတြင္ ေသြးတိုးနိုင္ေျခကို သိသိသာသာ ေလ်ာ့က်သြားေစနိုင္ေၾကာင္း ျပင္သစ္သိပၸံပညာရွင္မ်ားက ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။ သို့ေသာ္လည္း ယခင္က ေဆးပညာ သုေတသန စစ္တမ္းမ်ားကမူ ေသြးတိုးက်ေဆး ေသာက္သူမ်ားသည္ သစ္သီးေဖ်ာ္ရည္ ေသာက္သံုးမႈကို မည္သည့္အတိုင္းအတာထိ ခြင့္ျပုရန္ သင့္မသင့္ႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ဆရာဝန္ႏွင့္ ေဆြးေနြးတိုင္ပင္သင့္ေၾကာင္း အၾကံျပုထားဖူးသည္။
ပ ညာရွင္ အခ်ိဳ့တို့ကလည္း သစ္သီးေဖ်ာ္ရည္သည္ အခ်ိဳ့ေသာ ေဆးဝါးမ်ားကို အာနိသင္ ေလ်ာ့က်သြားေစနိုင္ေၾကာင္း ေျပာၾကား ထားခဲ့သည္။
အေမရိကန္တြင္ စက္ရုပ္လက္တံျဖင့္ ခံတြင္းကင္ဆာ ခြဲစိတ္ကုသမႈ ေအာင္ျမင္လ်က္ရွိ
အေမရိကန္တြင္ စက္ရုပ္လက္တံျဖင့္ ခံတြင္းကင္ဆာ ခြဲစိတ္ကုသမႈ လုပ္ငန္းခြင္ © unc
အ ေမရိကန္တြင္ စက္ရုပ္လက္တံျဖင့္ ခံတြင္းကင္ဆာ ခြဲစိတ္ကုသမႈသည္ ေအာင္ျမင္မႈမ်ား ရရွိခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။ ဒက္ထရြိဳက္ရွိ ဟင္နရီဖို့ ေဆးရံုႏွင့္ မစ္ခ်ီဂန္တကၠသိုလ္တို့တြင္ စမ္းသပ္မႈမ်ား ျပုလုပ္ခဲ့ၿပီးေနာက္
သ မားရိုးက် နည္းလမ္းမ်ားထက္ စက္ရုပ္လက္တံ သံုးစြဲျခင္းက ပိုမိုထိေရာက္ေအာင္ျမင္ေၾကာင္း ေတြ႕ရွိလာခဲ့သည္။
အ ထူးသျဖင့္ ခံတြင္းကင္ဆာ ေဝဒနာရွင္မ်ားကို ခြဲစိတ္ၿပီးေနာက္ ၎တို့အေနႏွင့္ အစာမစားနိုင္ျခင္း၊ စကားမေျပာနိုင္ျခင္းစသည့္ အေျခအေနမ်ားကို စက္ရုပ္လက္တံ နည္းပညာက ေလ်ာ့နည္းသြားေစေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။ ခံတြင္းကင္ဆာႏွင့္ ဆက္စပ္ေနသည့္ ဦးေခါင္း၊ လည္ပင္းစသည္တို့အတြင္းမွ အႀကိတ္မ်ားကို စက္ရုပ္လက္တံျဖင့္ ရွာေဖြခြဲစိတ္ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။
သ မားရိုးက် ခြဲစိတ္မႈႏွင့္ ေလဆာနည္းပညာတို့သည္ ေသြးအေျမာက္အျမား ဆံုးရွံဳးေစသလို အႀကိတ္အနီးရွိ တစ္သ်ႉးမ်ားကိုလည္း ပ်က္စီးေစသည္။ သို့ေသာ္လည္း ရွည္လ်ားေသးသြယ္သည့္ စက္ရုပ္လက္တံ အသံုးျပု ခြဲစိတ္မႈမွာမူ ေက်နပ္ဖြယ္ ရလဒ္မ်ား ျဖစ္ေပၚေစေၾကာင္း ဟင္နရီဖို့ ေဆးရံုမွ ေဒါက္တာ တာမာဂေရဟမ္ကဆိုသည္။
ကင္ ဆာႀကိတ္ကို 3D ျမင္ကြင္းႏွင့္ ေတြ႕ျမင္နိုင္ၿပီး မိမိတို့ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနသမ်ွကို ေသသပ္စြာ ေဆာင္ရြက္နိုင္ေၾကာင္း ေဒါက္တာဂေရဟမ္က ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။ မစ္ရွီဂန္တကၠသိုလ္ သုေတသီအဖြဲ့ကလည္း ၎တို့သည္ စက္လက္တံႏွင့္ ေလဆာေရာင္ျခည္ ကုထံုးၾကား အက်ိဳးအျပစ္ ကြာျခားမႈကို ဆက္လက္ေလ့လာေနေၾကာင္း ေျပာၾကားသြားသည္။
ဦးေႏွာက္တစ္ျခမ္း ဖယ္ထုတ္လိုက္ရေသာ္လည္း အေမရိကန္ကေလးငယ္ အသက္ရွင္နိုင္ခဲ့
ဦးေႏွာက္တစ္ျခမ္းကို ဖယ္ထုတ္လိုက္ရသည့္ ကေလးငယ္ © dailymail
အ ေမရိကန္မွ ကေလးငယ္ တစ္ဦးသည္ ေရာဂါေၾကာင့္ ဦးေႏွာက္တစ္ျခမ္းကို ဖယ္ထုတ္လိုက္ရေသာ္လည္း အသက္ရွင္ ရပ္တည္နိုင္ခဲ့သည္။ အသက္ ၂ ႏွစ္သာ ရွိေသးေသာ ကေလးမေလး ေကတီဗာတီခ်ီလာသည္ ထူးျခားေသာ
အာ ရံုေၾကာ အားနည္းမႈ အေျခအေနတစ္ခုေၾကာင့္ တစ္ေန့လ်င္ အႀကိမ္ ၅၀ မ်ွ သြက္ခ်ာပါဒ ေဝဒနာကို ခံစားခဲ့ရသည္။ သူမ၏ မိဘမ်ားျဖစ္သည့္ မာရီရယ္ဆီလာႏွင့္ ဘရိုင္ယန္တို့သည္ ၂၀၀၈ ခုႏွစ္၊ ဧၿပီလကတည္းက သမီးျဖစ္သူ၏ ပံုမွန္မဟုတ္ေသာ အေျခအေနကို သတိထားမိခဲ့ၿပီး စစ္ေဆးမႈမ်ား ျပုလုပ္ခဲ့ရာ အဆိုပါ အာရံုေၾကာ ေရာဂါကို သိရွိလာျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။
ေအာ္ ရီဂြန္ရွိ ပို့တလန္တြင္ ေနထိုင္ေသာ ကေလးမေလး၏ သြက္ခ်ာပါဒ ေဝဒနာမွာ အနၲရာယ္ ႀကီးမားေၾကာင္း ဆံုးျဖတ္ၿပီးေနာက္ ဆရာဝန္မ်ားက မိဘမ်ားႏွင့္ ခြဲစိတ္ေရးကိစၥကို တိုင္ပင္ခဲ့ၾကသည္။ နိုဝင္ဘာ ၂၂ ရက္ေန့က ကယ္လီဖိုးနီးယား ေဆးတကၠသိုလ္ ေဆးရံုမွ အာရံုေၾကာ အထူးကုမ်ားသည္ မိန္းကေလးအား ၈ နာရီၾကာ ခြဲစိတ္မႈ ျပုလုပ္ၿပီး ဦးေႏွာက္တဝက္ကို ဖယ္ထုတ္လိုက္ရသည္။ မူမွန္မဟုတ္ဘဲ ပ်က္စီးမႈမ်ား ျဖစ္ေပၚေနသည့္ ဦးေႏွာက္ျခမ္းကို ဖယ္လိုက္သည့္အတြက္ မိန္းကေလးသည္ အနာဂတ္တြင္ သာမန္လူတစ္ဦးကဲ့သို့ က်န္းမာေပ်ာ္ရႊင္စြာ ေနထိုင္သြားနိုင္မည္ဟု ဆရာဝန္မ်ားက ေမ်ွာ္လင့္ေနသည္။
ေက တီ၏ မိခင္ျဖစ္ေသာ မရီရယ္က သမီးငယ္သည္ မၾကာခဏ သြက္ခ်ာပါဒျဖစ္ၿပီး ေဝဒနာကို ဆိုးဆိုးရြားရြား ခံစားရေၾကာင္း၊ ဆရာဝန္မ်ားက ထိုအတိုင္းဆက္သြားလ်င္ အသက္အနၲရာယ္ စိုးရိမ္ရသည္ဟု ဆရာဝန္မ်ားက ေျပာၾကားခဲ့ေၾကာင္း ရွင္းျပခဲ့သည္။ ယခုအခါ ကေလးမေလး၏ အေျခအေန တိုးတက္ေကာင္းမြန္ေနၿပီး ခရစၥမတ္တြင္ အိမ္ျပန္နိုင္မည္ဟု ဆရာဝန္မ်ားက ေမ်ွာ္လင့္ေနၾကသည္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ အမ်ဳိးသမီးမ်ား အိတ္ခ်္အိုင္ဗြီပိုး ကူးစက္ခံရမႈ ပုံမွန္ျမင့္တက္ေန
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ အမ်ဳိးသမီးမ်ား အိတ္ခ်္အိုင္ဗြီပိုး ကူးစက္ခံရမႈမွာ ပုံမွန္ျမင့္တက္ေနေၾကာင္း ထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္မ်ားအရ သိရသည္။
ပုံမွန္ျမင့္တက္ေနသည္ဟု ဆိုရာ၌ ၁၉၉၄ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ အိတ္ခ်္အိုင္ဗြီ ပိုးကူးစက္ခံရသည့္ အမ်ဳိးသားရွစ္ဦးတြင္ အမ်ဳိးသမီးတစ္ဦး အခ်ဳိးႏႈန္း ရွိခဲ့ရာမွ ၂၀၀၈ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ အမ်ဳိးသား ၂ဒသမ ၄ဦးတြင္ အမ်ဳိးသမီး တစ္ဦး အခ်ဳိးႏႈန္းရွိလာျခင္းေၾကာင့္ အမ်ဳိးသမီးမ်ား၌ အိတ္ခ်္အိုင္ဗြီပိုးကူးစက္ ခံရမႈ ပုံမွန္ျမင့္တက္လာျခင္းကို ေဖာ္ျပေနျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ေကာက္ခံထားေသာ စာရင္းမ်ားအရ အိတ္ခ်္ အိုင္ဗြီပိုးကူးစက္ခံရသူမွာ ေက်းလက္ထက္ၿမိဳ႕ျပတြင္ ပိုမိုေတြ႕ရွိရေၾကာင္း၊ ကူးစက္ခံရမႈအမ်ားစုမွာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ အေရွ႕ဘက္ျခမ္းတြင္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ႏွင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေျမာက္ပိုင္းတြင္ မူးယစ္ေဆး၀ါး အေၾကာထဲထိုးသြင္းသူမ်ား၌ အိတ္ခ်္အိုင္ဗြီပိုးကူးစက္ခံရမႈ ပိုမိုေတြ႕ရွိရေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။
ထို႔ျပင္ ၂၀၀၉ ခုႏွစ္ အတြင္း အိတ္ခ်္အိုင္ဗြီပိုး ကူးစက္ခံရသူ ၂၃၈၀၀၀ ခန္႔ရွိသည္ဟု ယူဆရ ေၾကာင္း၊ ယင္းအနက္ ၇၄၀၀၀ ဦး မွာ အိတ္ခ်္အိုင္ဗြီပိုးျပန္႔ပြားမႈကို ဟန္႔တားေစသည့္ ART ေဆးကုထုံး လိုအပ္သူမ်ားျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ ၂၀၀၉ ခုႏွစ္ တြင္ ေအအိုင္ဒီအက္စ္ ေရာဂါႏွင့္ ဆက္စပ္နာမက်န္းမႈေၾကာင့္ ေသ ဆုံးသူမွာ ၁၇၀၀၀ ခန္႔ရွိႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း၊ ႏွစ္စဥ္ အိတ္ခ်္အိုင္ဗြီပိုး ကူးစက္ခံရသူသစ္မွာ ၁၀၀၀၀ အထက္တြင္ရွိေန ေၾကာင္း၊ ယင္းအတြက္ေၾကာင့္ ကူး စက္ႏိုင္ေျခ အလားအလာ အမ်ားဆုံး အေျခအေနတြင္ ရွိေနသည့္သူမ်ားအား ထိေရာက္သည့္ ကာကြယ္ေရး လုပ္ေဆာင္မႈမ်ားကို ဆက္လက္ ေဆာင္ရြက္ရန္ လိုအပ္ေနေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ပထမဆုံး ေအအိုင္ဒီအက္စ္ေရာဂါ ျဖစ္ပြားသူမွာ မူးယစ္ေဆး ေသြးေၾကာထဲ ထိုးသြင္းသူျဖစ္ကာ ၁၉၉၁ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ ေတြ႕ရွိခဲ့သည္။
အိတ္ခ်္အိုင္ဗြီပိုး ကူးစက္ခံရသူ အမ်ဳိးသား- အမ်ဳိးသမီး အေရအတြက္ျပ ဇယား
ခုႏွစ္
အမ်ဳိးသား
အမ်ဳိးသမီး
၂၀၀၄
၁၅၉၇၉၉
၈၉၄၈၇
၂၀၀၅
၁၄၉၀၇၁
၉၄၄၃
၂၀၀၆
၁၃၈၃၈၁
၈၈၅၆၄
၂၀၀၇
၁၂၇၉၃၆
၈၆၉၉၆
၂၀၀၈
၁၁၇၃၃၉
၈၅၆၅၇
ミャンマー：カレン民族同盟、旧本拠地を奪還
【バンコク西尾英之】ミャンマー東部カイン（カレン）州の少数民族カレン族武装組織「カレン民族同盟」（ＫＮＵ）は８日、政府軍が占拠するかつての本拠地マナプロウを攻撃し、ほぼ１６年ぶりに奪還した。戦闘で少なくとも政府軍兵士５人が死亡、ＫＮＵは政府軍陣地に残された大量の武器を入手した模様だ。タイ情報筋が毎日新聞に明らかにした。
ＫＮＵはマナプロウに司令部を置いていたが、９５年１月に政府軍の攻撃を受けて同地から撤退、その後急速に弱体化した。最近になり軍事政権寄りだった別の武装組織「民主カレン仏教徒軍」の一部が、政権が求める国境警備隊への編入に反発して政府軍への攻撃を開始。１１月以降タイ国境沿いの各地で戦闘が続いている。
News & Articles on Burma-Thursday, 09 December, 2010
News & Articles on Burma
Thursday, 09 December, 2010
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MP Kraisak Choonhavan's letter regarding Burmese refugees protection and assistance in Thailand
David Mathieson: ‘War crimes are happening’
Junta offers olive branch to Mongla
Shan party told to change conference venue
Sharp Rise in Jailed Journalists, Including Burma
Malaysia's Trade With Myanmar Totals RM27.6 Billion In Two Decades
The danger in lifting economic sanctions against Burma
Work on high-speed rail between China, Myanmar starts in 2 mths
Burma reopens Three Pagodas checkpoint after two-year closure
Thailand/ Myanmar: Where there are no drugs: TB-HIV dilemma for migrants
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MP Kraisak Choonhavan's letter :
Protection and assistance to Burmese refugees on Thai soil
ASEAN INTER-PARLIAMENTARY MYANMAR CAUCUS
Bangkok, 8 December 2010To,
Director of Border Affairs Department, Royal Thai Armed Forces Headquarters
Re: Protection and assistance to Burmese refugees on Thai soil
Since the election took place in Burma on 7 November 2010, there has been a great amount of instability and violence in the border areas between Burma and Thailand. Fighting between the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and ethnic non-state armed groups in Burma has assumed extraordinary proportions.
Several thousand refugees fled into Thailand as a result of the eruption of fighting on and after Election Day, while sporadic fighting since then has displaced communities along the border several times. Civilians in Burma are entitled to protection under international humanitarian law as long as the conflict continues. However, such reports indicate that this is currently not being respected by either party to the conflict.
As an elected Member of the Thai parliament, I am deeply concerned about the situation of these refugees on Thai soil. According to information received, the provision of humanitarian aid and the process of repatriation of recent refugees from Burma do not abide by international humanitarian and human rights standards. Several local and international organizations have criticized Thailand for not living up to our international obligations.
Although the Royal Thai Government has stated that there will be no enforced repatriation of refugees until the situation stabilizes, it has been reported that refugees in Mae Sot and Pop-Phra, Tak Province, have been pressured by representatives of the Royal Thai Army into returning to Burma and that they have been told that fighting has ended. In fact, the fighting is still ongoing and such returns are premature. As a result, people have had to flee repeatedly to safety, while some have gone into hiding in Thailand out of fear of being repatriated.
While Thailand is not a state party to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, Thailand has an obligation under customary international law of non-refoulement of persons to places where their life or freedom is at risk. International law also obliges Thailand to allow asylum seekers access to Thai territory to seek asylum.
I have followed the situation in Burma for many years. In my opinion, there will be no easy or immediate solution to the current conflict situation.
Under such circumstances, it is imperative that refugees from Burma be given temporary shelter on Thai soil until the fighting has really been brought to an end and they are convinced it is safe to return to Burma. This is also the only solution that will prevent Thailand from being criticized for failing to live up to international humanitarian and human rights principles.
I therefore call on the Department of Border Affairs to:
Urge local officials to stop pressuring refugees into returning home until and unless it has been confirmed by all fighting parties that the fighting has ended,
To establish a cooperative mechanism between government agencies, international and local organizations to assess the situation, develop contingency plans, provide humanitarian assistance to refugees and develop standard principles for repatriation and for assistance during and after repatriation.
These measures should be taken with a humanitarian commitment and in strict application of international humanitarian and human rights principles.
With my best wishes,
Kraisak Choonhavan
Deputy leader, Democrat Party
Member of Parliament
Chair of the Standing Committee on Political development, mass communication and people’s participation, House of Representatives
Chair of the Thai national caucus, ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus
Tel: +662-617 2004 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting +662-617 2004 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Fax: +662-617 2003
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David Mathieson: ‘War crimes are happening’
By FRANCIS WADE
Published: 9 December 2010
Refugees continue to move back and forth across Burma’s border with Thailand as fighting in Karen state shows no sign of abating. Thai authorities have been criticised for treating those who fled like ‘ping pong balls’, refusing them sanctuary and forcing their return. But although it’s a complex situation, says Burma researcher at Human Rights Watch, David Mathieson, the refugees must be given a safe haven.
Are there any signs that fighting will end soon?
No. All the signs from the past six weeks show that fighting’s either going to continue the way it has, which is sporadic outbreaks in more areas for a couple of hundred kilometres south of Mae Sot, or it will intensify. I don’t think there are any indications that it will peter out now, and that’s something that all the NGOs and communities on the ground, but also the Thai officials, have been saying in the past couple of weeks.
Is the Burmese junta looking to eliminate these groups once and for all?
Their plan seems to be to either rout the breakaway faction of the DKBA – Na Kham Mwe’s group – and the KNU/KNLA Peace Council, or take advantage of the situation and try and rout elements of the Karen National Liberation Army that operate in the area. Or maybe the whole thing is an elaborate scheme to negotiate a better deal for the Border Guard Force: how much of what we see that looks like conflict in Burma is actually the many sides manoeuvring to get better economic deals out of things? But whether it’s politics or economics, the civilians get caught in the middle and they’re the ones who have to suffer.
Is it a warning of wider conflict in the border regions?
I wouldn’t drag it out. It seems like there are a lot of people who are egging on a broadening of the conflict, but all of these conflicts have very local and specific factors and conditions behind them. Of course they are united in a national sense by the fact that it’s all happening in Burma and that the military government is the one main impediment to seeking a deal, but I would be very careful about saying that what’s happening in Karen state is going to kickstart a broader conflict throughout the country.
There’s a very good indication of why the situation in Kachin state, for example, is much more different: in Karen state they’ve got the Thais to deal with, and it’s very different because Thailand’s a lot more tolerant of the refugees, whereas China doesn’t want any refugees – it just wants to do business and keep all the troubles in Burma within its borders. I don’t therefore think that the Wa and the Kachin will start fighting – if they do then that’s going to be completely up to local dynamics.
Has Thailand’s response to the refugees been adequate?
In terms of letting them come across and providing sanctuary for them, Thailand gets a very high grade – it’s done very well over the past five weeks. Where they’ve spoiled this is in sending people back too early, so what’s happened is you’ve got this case of people crossing the border several times: they come across, and they’re allowed to come across, but the Thais prematurely say that it’s safe to go back, and whether it’s a couple of hours, days or weeks, the fighting starts again and they’re forced to come back.
Why is Thailand keen to send them back early?
I really don’t know; all evidence points to the fact that the fighting will continue and that the situation is not safe. Just because you can’t hear artillery fire doesn’t mean that the situation’s safe, and I think partly it is just wishful thinking; that Thai authorities wish it could go back to normal. In a situation like this, the last group of people you should trust are the Burmese military: if they tell you the fighting’s stopped, you’d be crazy to believe them.
Is there pressure from the Burmese junta on Thailand?
If there is any pressure it would be to try to normalise the situation by sending the refugees back. I hazard a guess that there are a couple of reasons for that: one is in terms of public relations, that the Burmese don’t want the world to be focused on the fact that there’s fighting after the elections and after Aung San Suu Kyi’s release. Second, and a more local and brutally practical reason, is that civilians in a lot of these areas provide a human shield around Burmese army troops, so if they come back to a village where the army’s set up, their opponents will be less likely to attack built-up areas. They need the people there as a resource, to carry their supplies and walk through landmines. All the things that countries have denied are happening in Burma, and who refused to support a Commission of Inquiry, well, here you go. If you went and asked one of these refugees what they are afraid of, they may not tell you that they’re suffering war crimes or crimes against humanity, but that’s exactly what it is.
Is there any international protocol that makes it illegal to send refugees back early?
Even though Thailand’s not a party to the 1961 Refugee Convention, or the 1967 optional protocol, they are bound by customary international law which says that sending people back when they’ll still face persecution or fighting in that area, is defined as refoulement, or forced return. What needs to happen is that the UNHCR has to ascertain whether cases in the past month have amounted to refoulement. I think it’s pretty clear that there have been cases that probably would.
But what’s happening is that the Thai authorities are not using violence or over-intimidation. In some cases it’s inaccurate information – if they have an assurance from the other side that there’s no fighting, then they’ll tell the village head to take the people back. It’s also got to be said that it’s a complex situation: there are people who are in the middle of the harvest season, so they want to go back and forth to check their land, and if it’s quiet for a couple of days, then they may begin harvesting.
http://www.dvb.no/interview/david-mathieson-war-crimes-are-happening/13316
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Junta offers olive branch to Mongla
Wednesday, 08 December 2010 17:49 Hseng Khio Fah
Burma Army Staff Officer Grade 1 of the Triangle Region Command recently told National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA) aka Mongla group that the two should not stay aloof from each other, instead they should do better to restore their friendly relations, according to informed sources from the Sino-Burma border.
“It was told by the new G1 Col Khin Maung Htwe when he met Sai Soe Win, NDAA’s liaison officer in Kengtung at the end of last month,” a source said.
“Sai Soe Win, in response said that he agreed with the Colonel but it would be better if the junta authorities lift the closure of the Taping checkpoint and allow goods from both sides to pass through.”
Colonel Khin Maung Htwe said the order to close Taping checkpoint on the Lwe came from the top as Chinese goods coming through Mongla side were considered illegal since the junta’s immigration and customs officials were no longer in Mongla, which is located opposite China’s Daluo.
The Burma Army’s Triangle Region Command (TRC) has ordered its units guarding Taping checkpoint, the crossing of the Lwe, which marks the natural boundary between Burma Army and NDAA-controlled areas, stopped the passage of goods coming from Mongla and Tachilek-Kengtung since 23 November.
Following the closure of the checkpoint, prices of commodities especially those from Thailand have increased. Colonel Khin Maung Htwe however did not give any reason for banning the Thai products even though they had gone through legal procedures at Tachilek.
“Mongla said it has yet to face any adverse impact from the closure,” a source close to the group said. “But it will be different in the long term.”
A border watcher commented that the situation is similar to anti-Rangoon Mong Tai Army (MTA) of Khun Sa before its surrender in 1996. One of the factors that had forced the MTA to disintegrate was the border closure by Thailand.
“Because of the closure, prices of goods doubled while the revenue dropped,” he said. “It broke the back of the MTA in the end.” http://shanland.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3355:junta-offers-olive-branch-to-mongla&catid=85:politics&Itemid=266
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Shan party told to change conference venue
Thursday, 09 December 2010 17:14 Hseng Khio Fah
The Shan Nationalities Democratic Party (SNDP), second winning party in Shan State, better known as the White Tiger party, was told by Union Election Commission (UEC) to move its conference venue to a more centrally located area, according to party members.
Earlier, the party had planned to rent the meeting hall at Shan Literature and Cultural Association building in Taunggyi, capital of Shan State.
But the Union Election Commission reportedly told that the conference should be held in a location more easily reachable for members from Kachin State, Sagaing and Mandalay divisions.
“We then chose to hold the meeting in Pyin Oo Lwin (42 miles east of Mandalay) because it located at the center with the Shan State in the east, Kachin State in the north and Sagaing in the west,” explained an executive member.
The meeting will be held for 5 days from 11 to 15 December. The first two days 11-12 December will be CEC meeting and the rest will be meeting with members from all over the country.
Party members told SHAN earlier that the party is considering drafting a human resources bill to bring before the first legislature in 22 years and it will further propose ethnic nationalities’ cultural and literary activities to be allowed conduct freely.
Dr. Sai Kyaw Ohn, Chairman of Namkham township party branch and representative-elect said their members in Namkham will promote capacity of the younger generation. It is therefore planning to form “New Generation Association” that will be responsible for conducting awareness trainings for local youth.
“Youth have become more and more addicted to drugs because our education is poor and there are few jobs for them even though many of them have graduated. Apart from that, our people’s political awareness is low therefore they are still afraid to air their grievances,” Dr. Sai Kyaw Ohn said.
Besides forming the association for the youth, it is also planning to form women affairs, farmer affairs and development affairs organizations as well, he added.
Meanwhile, the Shan State that has been divided into three administrative parts: Northern, Southern and Eastern will be combined together as one under the new government, according to an informed source from Naypyitaw.
The SNDP contested in Shan, Kachin, Sagaing and Mandalay and won 57 seats. 7 of the 15 founding members were among those elected. http://shanland.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3357:shan-party-told-to-change-conference-venue&catid=85:politics&Itemid=266
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Sharp Rise in Jailed Journalists, Including Burma
By ANITA SNOW / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Thursday, December 9, 2010
NEW YORK — China's crackdown on ethnic reporters and Iran's sustained suppression of critics has helped push the number of journalists jailed worldwide to 145—the highest level in 14 years, the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Wednesday.
The New York-based press advocacy group said in a report released on Wednesday that with 34 imprisoned journalists each, China and Iran together account for nearly half of the reporters, editors and photojournalists imprisoned worldwide.
The committee said that 17 journalists are jailed in Eritrea, 13 in Burma, and six in Uzbekistan.
Nine fewer journalists were behind bars globally than at the end of 2009, the report said.
Of those imprisoned globally, at least 64 are freelance journalists, it added.
"The increase in the number of journalists jailed around the world is a shocking development," said committee Executive Director Joel Simon. "It is fueled largely by a small handful of countries that systematically jail journalists."
The imprisoned journalists are most commonly held on anti-government charges, or no charge at all, the committee said. It said China and Iran both rely heavily on vague anti-government charges.
Iran's imprisonment of journalists has extended far beyond last year's post-election crackdown, with at least four detained in the past two months, the committee said.
In China, it said, the increase is largely due to the jailing of Uighur and Tibetan journalists for covering the off-limits topics of ethnic issues and violent regional unrest.http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20278
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December 09, 2010 16:45 PM
Parliament: Malaysia's Trade With Myanmar Totals RM27.6 Billion In Two Decades
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 9 (Bernama) -- The total trade between Malaysia and Myanmar from 1990 to 2009 was RM27.6 billion, Dewan Rakyat was told on Thursday.
Malaysia's exports totalled RM22.6 billion while imports about RM5 billion, said Deputy International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Jacob Dungau Sagan during question time.
M. Manogaran (DAP-Teluk Intan) had asked about the value of trade between Malaysia and Myanmar from 1990 to 2009 as well as the items exported and imported.
Jacob said although Myanmar was rich in natural resources, its trade with Malaysia was limited.
"The highest amount of trade recorded was in 2008, which was RM1.63 bilion.
"Malaysian exports to Myanmar in 2009 was RM744 million while imports from Myanmar was RM507 million," he said.
Among items exported by Malaysia to Myanmar were palm oil, chemical materials and products, petroleum, processed food and machine parts.
Five major imports from Myanmar were natural rubber, vegetables and roots, seafood, timber and processed food.
-- BERNAMA http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsbusiness.php?id=548796
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Washington Post
The danger in lifting economic sanctions against Burma
Letter to Editor
Wednesday, December 8, 2010; 6:52 PM
Burmese dictator Gen. Than Shwe has been tempting foreign investors for almost 20 years with hints that he wants to open the economy in Burma, also known as Myanmar, along the Chinese model. But contrary to Stanley A. Weiss's suggestion ["Ending our isolation in Asia," op-ed, Dec. 3], there is no evidence that the general means it. In fact, the Burmese government continues to stifle genuinely private enterprise as thoroughly as it crushes political dissent.
Authoritarian leaders in countries such as Vietnam and China at least see some connection between their own interests and the well-being of their people, and so have promoted economic development. In contrast, the economic strategy of Burma's leaders has long consisted of selling natural resources to foreign partners and stashing the proceeds, which are hidden from the state budget, in foreign banks. The Burmese government invests virtually nothing in health, education or infrastructure. It is massively corrupt, does not respect property rights and denies economic opportunity to all but cronies of the generals in power.
Lifting banking sanctions against Burma would not benefit ordinary Burmese, but the government would find it even easier to hide its wealth in hard currency overseas. If the United States lifted investment sanctions, the only U.S. companies likely to risk betting on Burma would be in the oil and gas industry. Such companies might thrive in Burma, but they employ few people, transfer little intellectual capital and would do about as much to promote democracy as they have in Sudan and Saudi Arabia.
If Mr. Weiss knows of firms in other industries eager to test the Burmese government's promises, their shareholders should be grateful that sanctions are preventing them from making a costly mistake.
Tom Malinowski, Washington
The writer is Washington director of Human Rights Watch. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/08/AR2010120805826.html
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Work on high-speed rail between China, Myanmar starts in 2 mths
By Cai Muyuan (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-12-09 18:01
Myanmar Embassy counselor Hlaing Myint Oo confirmed that the construction of a high-speed rail connecting Yunnan's capital Kunming city and Myanmar's largest city will begin in two months, 21st Century Business Herald reported Thursday.
"China will provide the construction with technology and financing. The Chinese side will decide which enterprise will participate in the construction", Warawudh told the newspaper
Xu Ningning, deputy secretary-general of the China-ASEAN Business Council, told the newspaper that marine transportation is currently dominating the trade between China and ASEAN. "With the trading between the two sides growing, the transportation will be diversified", Xu told the newspaper. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2010-12/09/content_11679289.htm
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Burma reopens Three Pagodas checkpoint after two-year closure
* Published: 9/12/2010 at 12:00 AM
* Newspaper section: News
Burma has reopened the Three Pagodas Pass border checkpoint, connecting Kanchanaburi and Burma's Phya Thonzu town, after a two-year closure.
Burma cited security reasons when it closed the frontier at Three Pagodas Pass, but it had decided to reopen it after a lull in recent fighting in the area.
Deputy Commerce Minister Alongkorn Ponlaboot said yesterday the reopening of the checkpoint followed a meeting of the joint border committee of the two countries in April at which Thailand proposed to Burma the reopening, and Burma finally agreed.
He said Thailand also proposed that Burma upgrade Sing Khon temporary checkpoint in Muang district of Prachuap Khiri Khan and Huay Ton Noon checkpoint in Khun Yuam district of Mae Hong Son as permanent border checkpoints.
Burma said the reopening results from an end to the fighting between the Burmese army and the Democratic Buddhist Karen Army in the area.
Meanwhile, Thai authorities yesterday deported about 500 Burmese to their hometown opposite Phop Phra district of Tak.
The would-be migrants flocked to Thai soil last week after fighting between Burmese soldiers and Karen troops. http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/politics/210371/burma-reopens-three-pagodas-checkpoint-after-two-year-closure
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Thailand/ Myanmar: Where there are no drugs: TB-HIV dilemma for migrants
Source: Citizen News Service
Date: 09 Dec 2010
Constanze Ruprecht – CNS
In late October 2010, a large group of people living in and around Mae Sot, Tak province were closing in on a terrible 'milestone' of sorts: all of them – over 60 migrant children, women and men – were living with HIV and taking antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, which they needed to stay alive. Some were also co-infected with tuberculosis (TB), the most frequent opportunistic infection (OI) experienced by people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV).
Each group member's daily regimen of drugs – a one-year 'buffer' provided by an international non-governmental organization (INGO) pulling its operations out of the country – was about to run out, with no new supplier in sight.
"We have been unable to secure a sustainable source of ARVs for our patients," explains a staff of the Mae Tao Clinic, a clinic providing health care services to migrants and displaced people near the Thai-Burma border. "If they stop taking their medication, we face a crisis."
DRUG RESISTANCE
Adherence to a prescribed ARV drug regimen is essential; people living with HIV and/or TB who stop taking medication for whatever reason, and even only for a few days, can develop a resistance. Drug-resistance is dangerous, because it is irreversible and the new strains of the disease can be passed on to others.
Multi-drug- and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (or, respectively, MDR and XDR TB) is an even greater potential threat than HIV drug resistance in terms of impact, because unlike HIV – a blood-borne disease –, TB is transmitted from person to person through the air. A rampant increase in drug resistance can thus indeed fuel a public health crisis.
The Mae Tao Clinic representative said that "from a public health perspective TB is more difficult to handle, mainly because of time-related compliance issues. People with TB have to take medication daily for six months. If they interrupt this treatment, which happens frequently with migrants who are on the move and may stop taking drugs when they feel better, then drug resistance can occur."
Another often under-estimated problem accompanying drug resistance is the subsequent need for different drugs to replace the first regimen. These second- or third-line drugs are much more expensive and difficult to procure – here in Thailand, for example, the main first-line ARV combination therapy (for example GPO-VIR S30) is locally produced and distributed, bringing down the cost; but second- or third-line drugs must be imported, tend to be much more expensive than first-line medicine and may require special handling, like refrigeration, which complicates delivery in unstable settings.
MIGRANTS MARGINALISED
Thais living with HIV have the right to, and usually receive, free ARVs through the National Access to Antiretroviral Program for People living with HIV/AIDS, or NAPHA. People without a Thai ID can buy ARVs for a minimum of 1,350 baht per month, although NAPHA set up a provisional extension programme to cover vulnerable populations who do not have access via regular channels like Thai social welfare card holders.
Access is inevitably restricted for individuals or families already subject to the most dire of circumstances: many migrants and displaced people along the Thai-Burma border live a day-to-day existence that may include a lack of food security and reliable shelter. This can, and does frequently lead to greater vulnerability to infection and illness. An HIV positive migrant in poor health is thus more likely to contract opportunistic infections (OI) like TB, or Hepatitis C, another highly problematic OI.
A representative of a community-based organization in northern Thailand shared that "along the Thai-Burma border abutting Shan State, in Chiang Mai province, we support 125 members of the Shan community living with HIV, of whom 50 currently receive free ARVs. Unfortunately, beginning in December 2010, any new patients will have to pay for treatment – so this will affect any of the 75 not yet on ARVs who might need them in the future." There are about one or two new cases every month, and some of them also have TB.
She added that they "…have a limited budget aimed at helping with general hospital costs for community members, but we've been using it to cover ARV-related costs for our PLHIV."
Given the existing obstacles to accessing adequate and appropriate treatment, it is not surprising that migrants may start with the TB six-month short course, but then, despite doctor's instructions, stop taking the drugs once they feel better. Many migrants are by nature already mobile, which further complicates consistent compliance and follow up by medical staff.
It is this population – in addition to other key populations like sex workers, injecting drug users and prisoners – that should be the main beneficiary of effective prevention efforts and increased access to a regular supply of drugs.
In a country that currently receives generous funding from the Global Fun to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM), how is it possible we cannot manage to take care of our most vulnerable fellow humans?
SERVICES AND GAPS
A representative of the Thai Northern Network of People Living with HIV stated that "local hospitals do provide ARVs to migrants and displaced people as part of NAPHA's extension programme, but they are bound by a quota system which always favours Thai citizens over unregistered migrants."
He admitted that "sometimes Thais who fear being stigmatized and discriminated against by colleagues will request treatment under the extension programme instead of the regular system, because this way they can remain anonymous."
Mae Tao Clinic already offers a number of relevant services for PLHIV, including voluntary counseling and testing (VCT), home-based care and peer educators. Relatively simple preventive approaches can also be applied in the context of TB-related services, such as face-masks and better ventilation in places where people go to get tested.
"A more systematic, consistent integration of HIV and TB programmes is key," claimed another Mae Tao Clinic staff; he went on to say that "since it was at this point beyond the clinic's capacity to offer TB treatment, it was essential to have one group or entity able to take full responsibility for managing a comprehensive TB programme and willing to deal with problems such as non-compliance or adherence due to mobility."
There is an international NGO currently providing TB services in Mae Sot, serving part of the area previously covered by the INGO that pulled out last year. Yet the new organisation has limited reach and cannot accept patients outside of its focal communities, including those likely to move across the border. These unfortunate ones have to look elsewhere, and more often than not, they end up at Mae Tao Clinic.
Regarding the 'stranded' HIV-positive people, clinic staff approached the closest hospitals for help, and only Propha agreed to treat 20 people under its NAPHA extension scheme. Mae Sot, Mae Sariang and Mae Ramat hospitals were not accepting any new patients.
"We are now waiting to hear whether the Regional NAPHA Extension Unit in Pitsanuloke can help coordinate the provision of ARVs directly to Mae Tao," said the first Mae Tao Clinic staff. "This is easier and more cost-effective than transporting a large group of patients back and forth each month."
WHAT NOW?
It seems that drug resistance is here to stay – at least for now – and so the best response would include not only addressing the most immediate needs to mitigate impact, but also introducing some longer-term measures.
In addition to the interventions mentioned above, anti-stigma and -discrimination campaigns targeting Thai society would help PLHIV at all levels access existing ARV providers without fear of being socially outcast.
The representative of the Northern Network of People Living with HIV wondered whether "everything could be related to national security issues and that maybe there is no real will to find a sustainable solution to these urgent cross-border issues."
Also, "there seems to be little real interest among TB service providers to collaborate more with the HIV/AIDS sector," an independent consultant supporting HIV/AIDS-related work at national and local levels in Thailand noted. "Because TB has for so long been considered 'solved' as a public health issue here, they do not have a sense of urgency…"
Well, it can't get any more urgent for those people living with HIV/AIDS and TB here, and now - and who may soon become drug resistant due to apathy and ineffective programme design and interventions. Acknowledging and fully understanding the reality of this is the first step, acting decisively and comprehensively, the second. Here, and now.
Constanze Ruprecht - CNS
(The author has worked in international development cooperation since 2000. Focusing on a broad range of areas including public health, gender, advocacy and communications, politics and the environment, she supports people and programmes in Asia, Africa and Europe. She is a Key Correspondent (KC) and writes for Citizen News Service (CNS). Website: www.citizen-news.org ) http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/MUMA-8BY9NY?OpenDocument
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