http://www.unpo.org/article/11341
Burma: Genocide against Ethnic Minorities
Several academics and think tanks have pointed out that the Burmese Junta meets most of the criteria for crimes against humanity or genocide in its treatment of ethnic minorities. However there a few options for the international community to prevent further escalation, the most promising might be the investigation of the International Criminal Court.
Below is an article published by the Democratic Voice of Burma:
Readers of this website should need no convincing of the seriousness of ongoing human rights violations against minority ethnic groups in Burma. Medicins Sans Frontieres has described Burma’s ethnic Rohingya minority has one of the world populations “most in danger of extinction” and leading scholars, including William Schabas, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, have suggested that the Muslim group may be victims of crimes against humanity, a sentiment that has been echoed by multiple other bodies.
Numerous human rights and legal advocacy groups have similarly said that Burma’s other ethnic minorities – the Chin, Kachin, Karen, Karenni, Mon, and Shan – are also seriously threatened by the ruling junta, which has held power in various forms since 1962.
In the past decade and a half, there has been significant progress in our understanding of genocide and how to prevent it, mainly as the result of our failures to do so. One of the most crucial lessons learned from this bitter experience is that, from the standpoint of saving human lives, the question of whether or not a situation meets the legal definition of genocide is beside the point. And the point, for those in the field of genocide prevention today, is not how to stop genocide once it has begun, but rather how to prevent it from happening in the first place.
To that end, the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, based in New York, operates a genocide prevention program targeting the women and men in government who shape and implement the policies that determine whether or not a society will tip over the edge into mass slaughter. Key to the program is the forging of a community of policymakers to support one another in their everyday work. Given that some of those who take part come from countries that are at risk of genocide, or perhaps even in the midst of one, we do not take a position on whether or not the situation in any particular country constitutes genocide. To do so would defeat our purpose, since the countries that are most at risk of genocide are the very ones we most hope to attract.
This is important because, up until now, there has been no community of prevention between the level of grassroots activism and the officialdom of national governments and the UN. And research has shown that the more connected a country is to the rest of the world – especially economically and politically – the less likely it is that conflict there will escalate into genocide. Some of the other risk factors for genocide, according to US political scientist Barbara Harff, include a prior history of genocide, ethnic and religious divisions within society, exclusionary ideology, and autocratic rule.
Burma has all these in spades. Other researchers may look to different indicators, but the pattern is unmistakable. Most genocide scholars and human rights groups agree there has already been one genocide in Burma since 1962 – that of the Rohingya – and there is ample evidence to suggest that government killings of other ethnic groups constitute at least crimes against humanity, if not full-blown genocide.
US political scientist Ted Robert Gurr recently published a brief paper titled ‘Options for the Prevention and Mitigation of Genocide: Strategies and Examples for Policy-Makers’. His analysis and recommendations are grounded in the most recent experience of the international community as well as the most up-to-date scholarship. Other, more comprehensive attempts to address the issue have come from Minority Rights Group International, which focuses on UN policy; the Genocide Prevention Task Force, focusing on US policy; and the Will to Intervene Project, which looks at both US and Canadian policy.
There are several drawbacks, however, to all of these approaches. One is that they tend to stress intervention over prevention, which tilts the balance toward short-term military solutions and away from longer-term, political or economic approaches. The second is that they view the solution as coming from outside the country at risk, as opposed to from within.
In any case, history clearly suggests that it would be naïve to expect direct action by the international community to prevent genocide in Burma anytime soon. Perhaps the most promising avenue for change at the moment is the recently created International Criminal Court (ICC), which is empowered to investigate and prosecute genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. In 2009, the former UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma called on the UN security council to investigate crimes against humanity in Burma with an eye to referring the case to the ICC. And earlier this year, the British government issued a statement saying that it would support a referral of Burma to the ICC by the UN Security Council. The wheels of international justice grind slowly, though. The question is, can they grind quickly enough for Burma’s ethnic minorities?
Alex Zucker is Communications and Development Officer of the New York-based Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Burma: Genocide against Ethnic Minorities
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
European Karen Network: New Burma Army Attacks Target Civilians – Europe Must Support Commission of Inquiry
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=433002284728&id=192809468269&ref=mf
New Burma Army Attacks Target Civilians – Europe Must Support Commission of InquiryShare
Today at 6:03pm
Media Release from European Karen Network
For immediate release, 27 July 2010
New Burma Army Attacks Target Civilians – Europe Must Support Commission of Inquiry
As the Burmese Army steps up attacks against ethnic Karen civilians in Eastern Burma, the European Karen Network, which represents Karen communities in Europe, today called on European governments to support a UN Commission of Inquiry into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the dictatorship.
On 23rd July Burma Army soldiers attacked Tha Dah Der village in Mutraw (Papun) District, Karen State, burning 50 homes, a school and a church. Approximately 540 people from this and neighbouring villages are now in hiding in the jungle. They have only a small amount of food they were able to carry with them, and no shelter. It is the rainy season in Eastern Burma at the moment.
Hundreds more civilians are fleeing towards the Thailand border as the Burmese Army and troops from the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, which has been allied to the dictatorship, prepare for a new offensive. The offensive is expected against Democratic Karen Buddhist Army soldiers who are refusing to join the Burmese Army as a border guard force, which the dictatorship is demanding ahead of their fake elections later this year.
The European Karen Network has also received a report that a Karen woman in Mutraw (Papun) District was raped by a Burmese Army soldier on 10th July 2010.
The new attack on 23rd July and the rape on 10th of July are against civilians, not soldiers, as such constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The European Karen Network calls on European governments to:
•Support a UN Commission of Inquiry into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the dictatorship in Burma.
•Provide cross-border aid to those displaced by the attacks.
•Stop ignoring attacks against ethnic people and making policy solely based on developments in Rangoon and Nyapyitaw.
•Call on the dictatorship in Burma to stop attacks against Karen and other ethnic civilians.
“The dictatorship talks about reform and elections but its real intentions can be seen in its actions, burning civilian villages and raping women.” said Nant Bwa Bwa Phan, board member of European Karen Network from Germany. “The people ruling Burma are criminals and the international community is letting them stay free. European governments are complicit in these crimes because they fail in their responsibility to take action.”
Monday, May 31, 2010
Armed ethnic groups put junta's election in doubt
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/politics/37986/armed-ethnic-groups-put-junta-election-in-doubt
Armed ethnic groups put junta's election in doubt
Plans by the military to hold elections and take control of border areas have been derailed
Published: 30/05/2010 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: Spectrum
The Burmese military's grand plan to hold an election later this year has been thrown into doubt as armed ethnic groups along the Thai border threaten to form an alliance and fight the junta's army, which is trying to take control of their areas.
DETERMINED: Brig Gen Hsar Gay, the KNU’s deputy minister for foreign affairs and a central committee member.
PHOTO: PORNPROM SARTTARBHAYA
If armed conflict breaks out in Burma, the alliance of ethnic groups, both ceasefire and non-ceasefire groups, would pose a significant threat to the Burmese military. The combines strength of the ethnic groups to fight the Burmese army would be about 65,000 soldiers if they joined together.
The Burmese military has been trying to bring the armed ethnic groups along Burma's borders under their control by forcing them to join the Border Guard Force (BGF), a body the junta is desperate to set up so it can gain control of the lucrative trade along the borders.
But the ethnic groups are not keen on the idea and fear losing their independence, along with the all the trade and business they do along the borders.
David Tharckabaw, vice-president and head of the Foreign Affairs Department for the Karen National Union (KNU), and Brig Gen Hsar Gay, the KNU's deputy minister for foreign affairs and a central committee member, recently spoke to Spectrum about the latest developments in Burma and their group, which was formed in 1949.
"If fighting erupts and all the opposition ethnic and ceasefire groups join together, we would control about 25% of the whole country. About 57% of the land in Burma is ethnic areas," said Brig Gen Hsar Gay.
"We could match the Burmese military. Of course, they have artillery - something we don't have - but we could match them by employing mobile warfare tactics. This includes the use of booby traps and claymore mines - we call it above the ground warfare behind the lines."
With the majority of the armed ethnic groups trained for guerrilla warfare, they would be a match for the much better equipped Burmese military, which is estimated to have a maximum of 180,000 men, including the army, navy and air force.
Claims by the Burmese that their armed forces number about 400,000 is an exaggeration designed to scare their enemy, the senior KNU officials say.
When the military regime started trying to form its border guard with the ethnic groups, it sent shock waves through the border areas, and groups that had fought with each other in the past started talking and formed and alliance.
"We get intelligence information about movements of the Burmese soldiers from our sources and also from the non-ceasefire armed groups allied with us. We share information," said Brig Gen Hsar Gay.
"As for ceasefire groups, we also share some intelligence about movements etc, but not with all those groups.
"There were several deadlines set by the military for the ethnic ceasefire groups to join the BGF, with the last one expiring on April 28.
"The Burmese, instead of giving a new deadline, asked the KIO [Kachin Independence Organistaton] and Wa [United Wa State Army] to submit a counter-proposal or suggestions about the BGF plan.
"The Burmese military are desperate to stage an election some time later this year to legitimise a civilian government, but the election, the constitution and the BGF have all been dismissed by many of the ethnic groups."
"Other ethnic groups in opposition think along the same lines as the KNU about the parliamentary elections. They want a nation-wide ceasefire and the release of all political prisoners first.
"They can't accept either the constitution which, first of all, is illegal, and secondly, has not enough provisions for the ethnic nationalities," said the KNU's David Tharckabaw.
"The KNU is completely against the election. We don't participate because firstly, we haven't had any national ceasefire agreement yet. Secondly, we want the right of association and lastly, we cannot accept the election under the present constitution.
"Actually, we are in the line with the National League for Democracy (NLD) which also refused to take part for other reasons. We think that there are not enough provisions for ethnic nationalities to set up a genuine federal union.
"If the Kachin, Wa, Karen and Karenni states don't give support, and with the NLD out, then the elections will be meaningless."
"The SPDC will try to save face and postpone it by making some excuse. However, if the elections are held - maybe in September or October - the opposition will continue its political struggle and there will also be military resistance," said Brig Gen Hsar Gay.
However, he offered an olive branch to the ruling Burmese State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).
"We are always looking for a peaceful resolution to the conflict from the very beginning," he said. "All the Burmese regimes in power always said that the KNU started the fighting. Actually, this is not true. It was started by General Ne Win in 1948 when he was Vice-Chief of Staff of the Burmese armed forces.
"An armed struggle is essentially self defence. But we always look for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
"To achieve that we met five times with various Burmese governments, but every time they didn't talk about the problems of the Karen or our grievances. They only wanted us to give up our arms and talk later. How can we do that? We would have no more bargaining chips."
If negotiations and talks fail and fighting does break out between the military and the ethnic groups, the biggest armed ethnic group, the KNU, is ready for full scale war.
"Our fighters have been using mobile warfare techniques for many years, making a lot of weapons to be used in ambushes like claymore mines, which is very important, one of our main weapons. Claymore mines and booby traps are weapons that we are using regularly, but the claymore is only one of our resources," said Brig Gen Hsar Gay.
"The mines have also been introduced to all opposition ethnic groups. The mine was extensively used by the Americans during the Vietnam war, but we modify it and we have the technology to produce it. Also, we use some Burmese and American claymore from old times.
"Claymore mines have steel balls inside that will disperse in one designated direction after it explodes. It is similar to a road-side bomb. This ambush weapon can be planted along the road or in places where we think the enemy will come. It is an ambush weapon, designed not to confront the person but ambush them while they are walking or travelling in a vehicle.
"We can use one at a time or three or four or up to 10 or 20, depending on how many enemy will come.
"It can be operated by one or two persons and it causes a lot of damage to the enemy. Three or four men can detonate 10 claymore at one time and wipe out an enemy company of 30-40 men in one second."
The KNU leaders say they don't want a war with the Burmese military, and would prefer talks and a meaningful dialogue.
"The peace talks must be meaningful. They must talk about our suffering, our grievances, why we go on resisting, why we don't want to come under their control, etc.
"They have to talk about that first. They might talk about their problems and their understanding. Maybe they are also suffering. Then it is a meaningful dialogue," said David Tharckabaw.
"We are not saying that everyone in the SPDC is bad. They are changing. Because of the elections there will be more changes. The majority of the SPDC - at least the lower ranking officers - also want democracy.
"They want to see a real democratic government in power. Now is the right time for a change of thinking by the SPDC.
"If we cannot settle the problem before the election, maybe we can do it peacefully after that. This is our hope. We are peaceful. We don't say the SPDC is peaceful, but we want to find a reasonable peaceful solution.
"We have been fighting different regimes for the past 61 years, making us the world's longest resistance movement.
"However, there are three equally important tasks that the KNU must follow: The armed struggle, the internal political front and the international diplomatic offensive. Only a political settlement will bring peace and stability to the region.
"Among the non-ceasefire armies, we are the largest military force outside the ceasefire groups followed by the Shan State Army-South [SSA-S]. We also control the second largest liberated territory after the SSA-S."
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
BURMA: Ethnic Women Expose Opium Fields in Junta Strongholds
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50170
BURMA: Ethnic Women Expose Opium Fields in Junta Strongholds
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Jan 31, 2010 (IPS) - A report exposing the spreading opium fields in the north-eastern corner of the military-ruled Burma has brought to light an equally revealing story. It was produced by a team of ethnic women who risked their lives to document the heroin-filled world they inhabit.
"One of the most damning points of this new report is to show the extent of opium being grown in areas under the control of the Burmese military regime," said Debbie Stothard, coordinator of ALTSEAN, a regional human rights group monitoring rights violations in Burma.
"The regime has tried to give the impression that poppy cultivation continues in areas only under the control of ethnic rebel groups," she told IPS. "But these women have seriously undermined that picture."
"What these women have done must come as a rude shock to the regime," Stothard revealed. "They were able to do so because women have been largely under the radar in how information and intelligence is gathered in the field."
Yet Stothard admitted that the women involved in the report, ‘Poisoned Hills’, released on Jan. 26, had embarked on a dangerous mission to complete their task. "They took great risks in gathering this information for they know what it means to be seen as an enemy by the junta."
Some 30 women from the Palaung ethnic community, who live close to the border that Burma shares with China, were involved in the report that took two years to produce, said Lway Aye Nang, co-author of the groundbreaking report. "They were all above 25 years. Some had basic education – middle school, high school; some had gone to university."
The Palaung are one of some 130 ethnic communities who live in Burma, also known as Myanmar. These include the Shan, the Karen and the Kachin. The majority of the South-east Asian country’s estimated 56 million people are Burmans.
There is little mystery why the Palaung women were drawn to serve as grassroots researchers for the report produced by the Palaung Women’s Organisation (PWO), based in Mae Sot, a town along the Thai-Burma border. "They were directly affected by the consequence of opium cultivation in their communities," Lway Aye Nang remarked in an IPS interview.
"We have been motivated in this research by the suffering of women in our communities whose lives are continuing to be devastated by the addiction of their husbands, sons and fathers," the report declares in its introduction.
Most disturbing, according to PWO, is the litany of abuse wives face from their heroin-addicted husbands. These women, who make a barely livable income working in the tea cultivations in that hilly terrain, are verbally and physically abused when their husbands, who are reportedly unemployed, need money for a heroin fix.
"The women have suffered more because of this," said Lway Aye Nang. "The men use violence to get money from their wives. They sometimes steal things the women own or things from the house to sell to buy drugs."
Besides domestic violence, the Palaung women endure other trials. They range from being infected with HIV by their husbands to the inability to educate their children as the household incomes are drained to pay for the male heroin addiction.
The PWO’s report goes beyond shredding the Burmese regime’s picture of the opium fields in the northern stretches of Shan state, part of the infamous drug-producing and -trafficking area spread across Thailand and Laos and dubbed the ‘Golden Triangle’. The 55-page ‘Poisoned Hills’ also questions the findings of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
"Between 2007 and 2009, PWO conducted field surveys in Namkham and Mantong townships, and found that the total area of opium cultivated increased almost fivefold over three years from 963 hectares in the 2006-7 season to 4,545 hectares in the 2008-9 season," states the report.
"The amounts are far higher than reported in the annual opium surveys of the (UNODC), and are flourishing not in ‘insurgent and ceasefire areas,’ as claimed by the U.N., but in areas controlled by Burma’s military government," adds the report.
"Namkham and Mantong are both fully under the control of the (Burmese regime). The areas have an extensive security infrastructure, including Burmese army battalions, police and pro-government village militia."
The U.N. drug agency’s findings, although more conservative, indicated that opium production was on the rise in north-eastern Burma, an area more extensive than the two townships surveyed for the PWO report.
The area under opium cultivation had expanded by 11 percent since 2008 and by "almost 50 percent since 2006, reaching a total of 31,700 hectares in 2009," the U.N. agency revealed in mid-December in a survey, ‘Opium Poppy Cultivation in South-East Asia’. "More than one million people are now involved in opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar, most of them in Shan State, where 95 percent of Myanmar’s poppy is grown."
But the current area of opium cultivation is still well below what it was in the 1990s, when the land area covered by opium fields was nearly five times the current number and earned Burma the notoriety of being the world’s leading opium producer.
Burma gave way to Afghanistan as the world’s largest supplier of heroin after the junta declared publicly in 2000 that it was committed to eradicating opium fields in the country by 2014. Some eradication efforts saw the number of opium fields dwindle till 2005, for which the Burmese regime won much needed praise and support from the UNODC and the international community.
Yet such praise by the UNODC of the junta’s efforts to end heroin production blinds it to the actual picture on the ground, said Khuensai Jaiyen, editor of the ‘Shan Herald Agency for News’, a web publication based in Thailand’s northern city of Chiang Mai. "This is what the report by the PWO also confirms."
"They (UNODC) rely too much on official information the junta gives them," said Khuensai, who has written extensively about Burma’s narcotics trade. "They need to work with the local ethnic groups to get a better picture."
The courageous women of Palaung have provided that picture.
(END)
Thursday, January 28, 2010
မိုင္းလားတပ္ဖြဲ႕ အေထြအေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉး လုပ္ႀကံသတ္ျဖတ္ခံရ
မိုင္းလားတပ္ဖြဲ႕ အေထြအေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉး လုပ္ႀကံသတ္ျဖတ္ခံရ
ဗုဒၶဟူးေန႕၊ 27 ဇန္န၀ါရီ 2010 သွ်မ္းသံေတာ္ဆင့္
မိုင္းလားတပ္ဖြဲ႕ အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉး ဦးမင္းအိမ္ ယေန႕ မနက္ပိုင္း ၈း၃၀ ခန္႕တြင္ လုပ္ၾကံသတ္ျဖတ္ခံ ရသည္ ဟု ထိုင္းႏွင့္ တ႐ုတ္နယ္စပ္ သတင္းရပ္ကြက္မ်ား ကေျပာပါသည္။
“အခုက ကားေတြ ခရီးတင္ကားေတြ မိုင္းလားနယ္ေျမေတြကေန အျပင္ထြက္ခြင့္မရေတာ့ဘူး၊ က်ဳိင္းတံု ကေန၀င္လာရင္ ေတာ့ရတယ္။ လူထု လဲ အိမ္ျပင္မထြက္ဖို႕ မိုင္းလားအာဏာပိုင္ေတြက အမိန္႕ထုတ္ထားတယ္”- အမည္မေဖၚလိုသူတဦး က ေျပာပါသည္။ 
NDAA-ESS မိုင္းလားတပ္ဖြဲ႕ ဒုဥကၠဌ ခြန္ဆန္လူ၊ အတြင္းေရးမႉး ဦးမင္းအိမ္(အလယ္)၊ အတြင္းေရးမႉး ၂ ဦးေႏြဦး
အျခားသတင္းရပ္မ်ားက ယေန႕ မနက္ ၆း၃၀ နာရီ တြင္ ဦးမင္းအိမ္ အေဖၚတေယာက္ ႏွင့္ အိမ္ေ႐ွ႕တြင္လမ္းေလွ်ာက္ ေနစဥ္ ေသနတ္သမားက ၀င္ေရာက္ပစ္ခတ္သြားသည္ဟု ဆိုပါသည္။
ဦးမင္းအိမ္ သတ္ျဖတ္ခံရျခင္းႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ မည္သူ႕လက္ခ်က္ျဖစ္သည္ဆိုသည္ကို မိုင္းလားအာဏာပိုင္ စံုစမ္းေဖၚထုတ္ ဆဲျဖစ္သည္။
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Situation in Eastern Burma 'comparable to Darfur
Situation in Eastern Burma 'comparable to Darfur
'A new report shows that conditions in Eastern Burma are now comparable to the war-torn Darfur in Sudan. As a result of the systematic violations of human rights by Military Junta, there are already tens of thousands new refugees during last years.
Wednesday, 02 December 2009, by HRH Oslo, based on www.burma.no, www.uriks.no
A new report from the Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), one of the Church NCA main partners in Burma, shows that the inhumane conditions in large parts of eastern Burma has gone from bad to worse during last years.
Last years, 120 villages have been destroyed, and at least 75,000 people became refugees and more than half a million were internally displaced in eastern Burma in the past year, following increased militarisation, which strongly indicates crime against humanity comparable to the situation in Darfur.
According to the report, since 1996, over 3,500 villages, including 120 communities between August 2008 and July 2009, in Eastern Burma have been destroyed and forcibly relocated.
Food insecurity, landmines, forced labour and very limited access to life-supporting health and sanitation facilities characterize the conditions for the civilian population.
- The number of human rights violations as well as the increasing number of the displaced people is a scary prospect. The only way to realize our hope to resolve the catastrofic refugee situation in Bruma means is to introduce fundamental polotical, economic and social changes. The international community must strengthen its pressure on the military junta and its supporters," says Secretary General of Norwegian Church Aid, Atle Sommerfeldt.
HRH Oslo, based on www.burma.no, www.uriks.no
http://humanrightshouse.org/Articles/12655.html
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Fw: [BurmaInfo] 東京新聞11月4日「ミャンマー軍政『開発』で弾圧 少数民族居住地にダム」
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ビルマ市民フォーラム メールマガジン 2009/11/4
People's Forum on Burma
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ＰＦＢ事務局 宮澤
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東京新聞 2009年11月4日朝刊 こちら特報部
「ミャンマー軍政『開発』で弾圧 少数民族居住地にダム」
ビルマ（ミャンマー）軍政が、同国の少数民族居住地域で大型ダム建設計画を進めて
おり、大量の「ダム難民」が発生する可能性があることを指摘しています。
ビルマ情報ネットワーク秋元由紀のコメントも入っています。
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Thursday, October 29, 2009
'Jungle girl' gives voice to oppressed
'Jungle girl' gives voice to oppressed
Zoya Phan is the face of the Karen people
Peter Goodspeed, National Post Published: Thursday, October 29, 2009
Zoya Phan may be destined to become as famous as Burma's detained opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
The tiny, soft-spoken refugee is rapidly becoming the best known spokeswoman for the Karen people, Burma's second-largest ethnic group.
The author of a best-selling autobiography, Little Daughter, she has been a guest speaker at British political conventions and is a regular panelist on news shows, where she calls for international pressure to topple a military dictatorship that has ruled Burma since 1962.
Journalists and book reviewers describe Ms. Phan, 28, as "an icon of a suffering land" and "the voice of an enslaved nation."
This week she is touring Canada as the guest of Montrealbased Rights & Democracy.
Like Ms. Suu Kyi, the daughter of Burmese independence hero Aung San, Ms. Phan is the daughter of freedom fighters. Her father, Padoh Mahn Sha Lah Phan, was secretary general of the Karen National Union, before he was assassinated last year at his home in a refugee camp inside Thailand.
"He was my hero, my leader," she says.
"He was humble, a man of principle, committed to human rights and democracy. He was killed because they feared him and what he stood for."
Her mother, a gentle woman who constantly "adopted" needy children, was a former guerrilla who told her children she once killed and skinned a python to feed her platoon.
For most of her childhood Ms. Phan lived an idyllic life in bamboo huts by the banks of the Moei River.
"I was a jungle girl," she says.
Life was simple but harsh. The closest medical clinic was kilometres away and she foraged for food in the forest with her brothers and sister to supplement a diet of rice and fish paste.
But danger lurked in the shadows.
In her book Ms. Phan describes the day she discovered the bloated corpse of a slave labourer floating in the river. A Karen tribesman, forced to act as a porter for the Burmese Army, had been beaten till his back was shredded and thrown into the water.
When she was 14, the war that had raged between the Burmese Army and Karen nationalist guerrillas since 1947 finally caught up to her. Soldiers attacked her village, torched its houses and destroyed crops.
She ran for her life as mortar shells crashed nearby, then spent two years hiding in the jungle with thousands of other displaced people.
Ultimately, they ended up in a refugee camp inside Thailand.
"The camps are like prisons," she says. The Karen are not allowed to leave, to work or to farm. There is little education and food is rationed.
Ms. Phan won a scholarship from a foreign aid agency and went to university in Bangkok and later to the University of East Anglia in Britain.
"I am very lucky," she says. "Many of my friends in Burma and in neighbouring countries have had to work as prostitutes in the sex industries."
After her mother died, and she and her father escaped two separate assassination attempts, she fled to Britain, where she claimed political asylum.
"It was a big shock," she says. "A girl from the jungle stepped into the big city. It was a cultural shock, a language problem, a technology shock. I didn't even know how to use a kettle."
The change had benefits. Ms Phan learned more about Burma.
"Under the military dictatorship the practice was to divide and rule," she says. "The state owns and operates all the news media, and the people of Burma know very little of what is going on in their own country."
"It sounds strange, but I knew almost nothing about Aung San Suu Kyi," she says. "I had heard about her and seen her picture but I didn't know who she really was."
Now, Ms Suu Kyi is her hero. "She's a role model not just for women, but for the people of Burma," she says. "The strongest army in southeast Asia is afraid of her because she represents freedom; freedom of fear; freedom from ethnic cleansing; freedom from rape as a weapon of war ..."
While attending a Free Burma demonstration outside the Burmese embassy three years ago in London, Ms. Phan, dressed in traditional Karen costume, was plucked from the audience to give a speech.
Her eloquence endeared her to the news media and she became an overnight sensation.
She met Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, and addressed the British Conservative party's annual conference in 2006 and 2007.
In the absence of Ms. Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 14 years, she has become the voice of Burma's opposition movement.
But she says, "I just see myself as a refugee and I just want to go home. I want to see peace in my homeland."
pgoodspeed@national post.com
Thursday, October 8, 2009
US Must Understand Myanmar’s Diversity
US Must Understand Myanmar’s Diversity
By Nehginpao Kipgen
http://www.koreatim es.co.kr/ www/news/ opinon/2009/ 10/165_52931. html
Developments are indicating that the Obama administration is starting to ease tension with the military junta of Myanmar (Burma). At the U.N. headquarters in New York on Sept. 23, Hillary Clinton said the U.S. will be ``moving in a direction of both engagement and continued sanctions.''
Clinton is reiterating the comment she made earlier this year during her maiden visit to Asia as secretary of state.
The announcement comes at a time when the world awaits what the U.S. government's policy review on Myanmar might be. The outcome of the 9-month long policy review is something not unexpected. The Obama administration understands the ineffectiveness of either engagement or sanction by itself, without a coordinated international approach.
In another development, Myanmar's foreign minister was allowed a 24-hour visit to Washington, D.C. on the night of Sept. 18. This visit happens after years of the U.S. sanctions since the late 1990s, under which the military generals were banned from traveling to the United States, except for international organizations' meetings.
Under the 2003 Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act, the White House needs to approve a waiver to allow Myanmarese officials attending the U.N. General Assembly to travel more than 25 miles out of New York.
Though Nyan Win did not meet with the Obama administration officials, he met with Myanmarese Embassy staff, the U.S.-Asian Business Council and James Webb, a democrat senator from Virginia, who recently returned from a visit to Myanmar. Webb has been a vocal proponent of engagement.
In anticipation of a softer tone at the ongoing U.N. General Assembly and from the Obama administration, the Myanmarese military junta on Sept. 17 released over 7,000 prisoners, which included about 100 political prisoners. Both the Myanmarese opposition and U.N. secretary General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the news.
While the U.S. is starting to engage Myanmar, it must understand the ethnic diversity of this Southeast Asian nation. What is today called Myanmar came into being at the 1947 Panglong Agreement. In fact, the correct name of the country should be the ``Union of Burma'' and not just Myanmar. The military junta changed from Burma to Myanmar in 1989, and as a result, it becomes the ``Union of Myanmar.''
Primarily based on dialectical variations, the military junta identifies ``135 races'' in the Union of Myanmar. In fact, the peoples of Myanmar were under two separate British administrations before it gained independence in 1948: ``Burma Proper'' and ``Frontier Areas.''
The Burma Proper was predominantly occupied by ethnic Burmarns, while Frontier Areas belonged to other ethnic nationalities, which are now identified as ``ethnic minorities.' '
The Union of Burma has the longest armed insurgency in the entire Southeast Asian region. While the military has persuaded more than a dozen armed groups to sign ceasefire agreements, there are still armed groups operating along the Indo-Myanmar and Thai-Myanmar borders.
These armed groups are neither terrorists nor separatists. They are demanding autonomy under a federal government, a foundation in which the Union of Myanmar was established in 1947.
The conflicts in Myanmar are not only political, but also ethnical. Only restoring democracy is unlikely to restore the trust and confidence of the so-called ``ethnic minorities.' '
The U.S. government and the international community need to understand the complexity nature of the conflicts. Though the Myanmarese military junta has the power to suppress ethnic armed insurgents, given the army strength of over 400,000 without any foreign enemy, the aspirations of ethnic minorities cannot simply be suppressed by force. The root cause of the conflicts needs to be addressed.
There are two different stages in the ongoing democratic struggle in Myanmar. While a majority of the ethnic Burmarns may be satisfied with the restoration of a democratic government, the overwhelming ethnic minority population, which constitutes a little less than 40 percent of the country's total population but occupies more than two-thirds of the land, will continue to demand their fundamental political rights.
In order to find a way out for Myanmar, the Obama administration is doing the right thing by applying both engagement and sanction tools. The administration needs to continue to put pressure on the military junta to release all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and the 1991 Nobel peace laureate. Sanctions should not be unconditionally lifted before any tangible changes are happening inside the country.
The new policy will provide a platform for the U.S. government to have access to both the engagement and isolation groups. With the engagement agenda, the Obama administration can now work with members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations, China, India, and Russia. With the continued sanction policy, the administration can still work together with the European Union, its traditional ally.
While the policy shift is a welcome move, the Obama administration needs to understand the root cause of conflicts in Myanmar. The U.S. engagement should not be just with the military junta and the NLD, but inclusive. The plights and aspirations of ethnic minorities should always be part of the solutions.
Nehginpao Kipgen is a researcher on the rise of political conflicts in modern Myanmar (1947-2004) and general secretary of the U.S.-based Kuki International Forum (www.kukiforum. com). He has written numerous analytical articles on the politics of Myanmar and Asia for many leading international newspapers. He can be reached at nehginpao@yahoo. com.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
THE ONLY WAY TO HAVE CHANGE IN BURMA IS TO FORCE THE REGIME-2007-SEPT-28- BY ZOYA PHAN
JUST TO REMIND EVERYBODY
PHONE HLAING
AlJazeeraEnglish
September 29, 2007
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Sir David Frost talks to Zoya Phan, an exile from Mynamar, formerly knowns as Burma, and Razali Ismael, former UN envoy to the country, about the current violence and why the people are agitating f...
Sir David Frost talks to Zoya Phan, an exile from Mynamar, formerly knowns as Burma, and Razali Ismael, former UN envoy to the country, about the current violence and why the people are agitating for change.
Category: News & Politics
Tags: Al Jazeera David Frost Burma Myanmar Razali Ismail Zoya Phan
Monday, October 5, 2009
“ရခိုင္ျပည္ကို ရခိုင္ေတြက အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခြင့္ရခ်င္လို႔….”
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“ရခိုင္ျပည္ကို ရခိုင္ေတြက အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခြင့္ရခ်င္လို႔….”
Saturday, 03 October 2009 17:36 ဧရာဝတီ
ရခိုင္လူမ်ိဳး သမိုင္း ပညာရွင္တဦးျဖစ္သည့္ ေဒါက္တာေအးေက်ာ္ ထိုင္းႏုိင္ငံ ဘန္ေကာက္ၿမိဳ႕သို႔ ေခတၱ ေရာက္ရွိစဥ္ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္၏ ေနာက္ခံ သမိုင္း၊ ႏုိင္ငံေရး အေျခအေနႏွင့္ ႐ုိဟင္ဂ်ာ ေနာက္ခံသမိုင္း၊ ႐ုိဟင္ဂ်ာ အေရးႏွင့္ အျမင္မ်ားအား ဧရာဝတီ သတင္းေထာက္ ဘေစာတင္က ေတြ႕ဆုံေမးျမန္းထားသည္ မ်ားကို ေဖာ္ျပလိုက္ပါသည္။
ေဒါက္တာေအးေက်ာ္သည္ လက္ရွိတြင္ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု နယူးေယာက္ၿမိဳ႕၌ အၿငိမ္းစား ပါေမာကၡ တဦးအျဖစ္ ေနထိုင္လ်က္ရွိသည္။ ေဒါက္တာေအးေက်ာ္၏ ကုိယ္ေရးအက်ဥ္းကိုလည္း ေအာက္တြင္ ပူးတြဲ ေဖာ္ျပထားပါသည္။
ေဒါက္တာေအးေက်ာ္
ေမး။ ။ လြတ္လပ္ေရးမရမီ ရခိုင္ျပည္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအေျခအေနေတြကို ေျပာျပေပးပါ။
ေျဖ။ ။ ျမန္မာ့ေတာ္လွန္ေရးသမိုင္းမွာ ရခိုင္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြဟာ အၿမဲတမ္းေရွ႕က ပါ၀င္ခဲ့တယ္၊ အဂၤလိပ္ ကိုေတာ္လွန္တဲ့ေနရာမွာေရာ ဂ်ပန္ကိုေတာ္လွန္တဲ့ေနရာမွာပါ ေရွ႕တန္းကပါပဲ ၊ ရခိုင္ေတြဟာ ဘာကို လုိခ်င္ လို ့ေတာ္လွန္ေရးမွာ ေရွ႕တန္းက ပါရသလဲဆိုရင္ ရခိုင္ျပည္ကို ရခိုင္ေတြက အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခြင့္ ရခ်င္လို ့ျဖစ္တယ္၊ အဂၤလိပ္ေခတ္က ထင္ရွားတဲ့ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြကို ေျပာပါဆိုရင္ ဆရာေတာ္ဦးစိႏၱာ၊ ဆရာေတာ္ ဦးပညာ သီဟ၊ ဦးညိဳထြန္း၊ ဦးေအာင္ဇံေ၀၊ ဦးေက်ာ္မင္း၊ ဦးဘေစာ စတဲ့ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေတြဟာ ရခိုင္ျပည္ေတာ္လွန္ေရး ရခိုင့့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး ေလာကက ထိတ္ထိတ္ႀကဲေတြပဲေပါ့၊ ျမန္မာတႏိုင္ငံလံုးအတြက္ ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ ဆရာေတာ္ ဦးဥတၱမ ဟာ နံပါတ္တစ္ပါပဲ။
အဲဒီကာလက ရခိုင္ေတြရဲ့ အေနအထားကို ခြဲစိပ္ၾကည့္မယ္ဆိုရင္ ၿဗိတိသွ်ေတြရဲ့ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ ေရးထဲမွာ ပါ၀င္တဲ့ အပိုင္းကတပိုင္းနဲ ့ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ဆန္း ဦးေဆာင္တဲ့ လြတ္လပ္ေရး တိုက္ပြဲေတြထဲမွာ ပါ၀င္တဲ့အပိုင္းေတြကို လည္း ေတြ ့ရပါမယ္။
ဦးညိဳထြန္းဆိုတာက ၁၉၃၆ ခုႏွစ္ ေက်ာင္းသားသပိတ္မွာ ပါ၀င္ခဲ့တဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ တဦးလည္း ျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ သူဟာ ရခိုင္အသိုင္းအ၀ိုင္းမွာေရာ ဗမာအသိုင္းအ၀ိုင္းမွာပါ လူသိမ်ားတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရး ေခါင္းေဆာင္တဦးပါ၊ ဒီကေန ့ျမန္မာသမိုင္းမွာ မတ္လ(၂၇)ရက္ေန ့ကို ေတာ္လွန္ေရးေန႔ရယ္လို ့သတ္မွတ္ ထားၾကတယ္၊ ဦးညိဳထြန္းေခါင္းေဆာင္တဲ့ ရခိုင္ေတြဟာ ဂ်ပန္ကို မတ္လ(၂၇)ရက္ထက္ေစာၿပီး ေဖေဖာ္၀ါရီ လ (၁၂)ရက္လား (၁၃)ရက္လား က်ေနာ္အေသအခ်ာ မမွတ္မိေတာ့ဘူး။ အဲဒီကတည္းက စၿပီး ဖက္ဆစ္ ဂ်ပန္ ေတာ္လွန္ေရးကို ရခိုင္ျပည္က စေတာ္လွန္ခဲ့တယ္။ ဒါကို ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ဆန္းရဲ့ မိန္႔ခြန္းေတြ ထဲမွာ လည္း ပါပါတယ္။ ေမၿမိဳ ့မိုးၾကည့္ေရးတဲ့ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ဆန္းမိန္ ့ခြန္းမ်ားထဲမွာ ရွာေဖြေတြ ့ရွိႏုိင္ပါတယ္။ ေလ့လာၾကည့္ပါ။
ေမး။ ။ လြတ္လပ္ေရး ရၿပီးတဲ့ေနာက္ပိုင္း ရခိုင္ျပည္ရဲ႕အေျခအေနကေရာ ဘယ္လိုရွိပါသလဲ။
ေျဖ။ ။ ရခိုင္ေတြဟာ အဂၤလိပ္ကိုေတာ္လွန္တဲ့ေနရာမွာေရာ။ ဂ်ပန္ကိုေတာ္လွန္တဲ့ေနရာမွာပါ ေရွ႕တန္းက ပါ၀င္ခဲ့တယ္ဆိုတာကို ေျပာခဲ့ၿပီးၿပီ၊ အဲသလို ဗမာအပါအ၀င္ အျခားေသာ တိုင္းရင္းသားေတြနဲ ့အတူတကြ လြတ္လပ္ေရးတုိက္ပြဲ ဆင္ႏႊဲခဲ့တာရဲ႕ တကယ့္ ရည္မွန္းခ်က္က ဘာလဲဆုိရင္ ရခိုင္ေတြဟာ မိမိတို ့ရခုိင္ျပည္ ကို ရဖို႔ပါပဲ၊ တန္းတူအခြင့္အေရး ရဖို ့ပါပဲ၊ ဖက္ဒရယ္ျပည္ေထာင္စုမွာ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ ရဖုိ ့ပါပဲ၊ ဒါေပမယ့္ တကယ္တမ္း ျမန္မာ ႏိုင္ငံလြတ္လပ္ေရးရရွိလာတဲ့အခါ ရခိုင္ေတြအတြက္ ဘာမွမရခဲ့ဘူး၊ ျပည္နယ္ အဆင့္ ေလးေတာင္ သတ္မွတ္ေပးတာကို မခံခဲ့ရဘူး၊ ရခိုင္ေတြ မြန္ေတြဟာ ဦးႏုကို ျပည္နယ္ေပးဖို ့ေတာင္းဆိုေပ မယ့္ ဦးႏု ဟိုလိုလို ဒီလိုလို ေ၀့လည္ေၾကာင္ပတ္လုပ္ခဲ့တာေၾကာင့္ ရခိုင္ေတြရဲ့ ရည္မွန္းခ်က္မျပည့္၀ခဲ့ရဘူး၊ ဦးႏုဟာ သူ ့ပါတီအက်ိဳးကိုသာ ၾကည့္ခဲ့လို ့တကယ္အေရးပါတဲ့ National Interest (အမ်ိဳးသားအက်ိဳး အျမတ္) ကို ဆံုးရႈံး ေစခဲ့တယ္။
ေမး။ ။ လြတ္လပ္ေရးရၿပီး ဆယ္ႏွစ္ ကာလအတြင္း ရခိုင္ျပည္မွာ ဘာေတြ ျဖစ္ေနခဲ့ပါသလဲ။
ေျဖ။ ။ ဦးႏုရဲ့ ဖဆပလ ေခတ္မွာ ရခိုင္ျပည္မွာ အဓိကလႊမ္းမိုးတဲ့ ပါတီႀကီးနွစ္ခုရွိတယ္၊ ဖဆပလ နဲ ့ရတည (ရခိုင္ စည္းလံုးညီညြတ္ေရး ပါတီ)ေတြပါ၊ ရတညရဲ႕ေခါင္းေဆာင္က ဦးေက်ာ္မင္းျဖစ္တယ္၊ သခင္ဦးေက်ာ္ရင္ တို႔လည္း ႏိုင္ငံေရးလႈပ္ရွားမႈထဲမွာ ပါတယ္၊ ဦးေအာင္ဇံေ၀၊ ေတာင္ကုတ္က ဦးေက်ာ္တင္ စတာေတြက ဖဆပလေတြ၊ လြတ္လပ္ေရးရၿပီးေနာက္ ဖဆပလ ႏွစ္ျခမ္းကြဲခ်ိန္မွာ တည္ၿမဲ (ဖဆပလ)နဲ ့သန္ ့ရွင္း (ဖဆပလ) ဆိုၿပီး ရွိလာတယ္၊ ဒီေတာ့ သန္ ့ရွင္းဖဆပလ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ျဖစ္တဲ့ ဦးႏုဟာ တိုင္းျပည္ရဲ႕ အက်ိဳး ထက္ သူ ့ပါတီအက်ိဳးကိုပဲ ၾကည့္တဲ့အေနနဲ ့ေမယုခရိုင္ဆိုတာ လုပ္လာတယ္၊ အဲဒီမွာရွိတဲ့ ဘဂၤါလီ ေတြကို မဲရဖို ့အတြက္ မ်က္ႏွာသာေပးတယ္၊ မွတ္ပံုတင္ ျပဳလုပ္ေပးတာေတြ ရွိလာခဲ့တယ္၊ ကိုလိုနီေခတ္က ဘဂၤါလီ ေတြဟာ ရခိုင္ျပည္ကို အလုပ္လာလုပ္တယ္၊ စပါးရိတ္တယ္။ လယ္ထြန္တယ္။ ၿပီးရင္ ျပန္သြားၾကတယ္၊ ဒါေပမယ့္ ဦးႏုက မဲရဖို ့အတြက္ မ်က္ႏွာသာေပးတာနဲ ့ဘဂၤါလီေတြဟာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအဆင့္ထိကို တိုးတက္ လုပ္ေဆာင္လာတာကို ေတြ ့လာရတယ္။ သူတို ့အထဲက စူလတန္ မာမြတ္ဆိုတာ ဟာ ထင္ရွား တဲ့သူ တဦး ပါ၊ ရခိုင္ေတြရဲ႕ရတည ကေတာ့ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ရရွိေရးကို တစိုက္မတ္မတ္ ဆက္လုပ္လာခဲ့တယ္။
ေမး။ ။ ဦးႏုက အဲ့ဒီလို လုပ္ခဲ့ေတာ့ ဘာေတြ ဆက္ျဖစ္လာခဲ့ပါသလဲ။
ေျဖ။ ။ အဓိက အေၾကာင္းရင္းကေတာ့ ၁၉၅၈။ ၅၉။ ၆၀ ကာလမ်ားမွာ ဖလပလ ႏွစ္ျခမ္း ကြဲလာတယ္၊ ႏွစ္ျခမ္းကြဲလာေတာ့ ဖဆပလ အားနည္းလာတယ္၊ အဲဒီမွာ ဦးႏုက သူ ့ပါတီ အႏိုင္ရဖို ့ေမယုခရိုင္ကို ဘဂၤါလီ ေတြကို ၀င္ခြင့္ျပဳတယ္၊ အဲဒီလို ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ျခင္းက ဒီကေန႔ျပည္ပမွာ က်ယ္က်ယ္ေလာင္ေလာင္ အသံထြက္ေန တဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဆိုတဲ့ ျပႆနာေတြကို ျဖစ္ေပၚေစတဲ့ အေၾကာင္းအရင္းပါပဲ။
ေမး။ ။ ဒီရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဆိုတဲ့ အသံုးအႏႈန္းဟာ ဘယ္တုန္းက စေပၚခဲ့တယ္ဆိုတာ သိပါသလား။
ေျဖ။ ။ ၁၉၆၀ ၀န္းက်င္ေလာက္မွာ စေပၚခဲ့တယ္လို ့ထင္တယ္။ ဘာေၾကာင့္လဲဆိုေတာ့ စူလတန္ မာမြတ္ ဆိုတဲ့ ဘဂၤါလီႀကီးဟာ အမတ္ျဖစ္ခဲ့ေပမယ့္ တခါမွ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဆိုတဲ့ စကား ကို သံုးစြဲခဲ့တာ မေတြ ့ရပါဘူး၊ လြတ္လပ္ေရးမတိုင္မီက ျမန္မာ့သမိုင္းမွာေရာ ရခိုင္သမိုင္းမွာေရာ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဆိုတဲ့ ေ၀ါဟာရဟာ မရွိခဲ့ပါဘူး၊ လြတ္လပ္ေရးရၿပီးခါစမွာေရာ မရွိခဲ့ပါဘူး။
ေမး။ ။ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဆိုတဲ့ ေ၀ါဟာရကေရာ ဘယ္လို အဓိပၸာယ္ကို ေဆာင္ပါသလဲ။
ေျဖ။ ။ ဆရာႀကီး ဦးသာထြန္း က်န္းမာစဥ္တုန္းက သူရန္ကုန္ကိုလာတုိင္း က်ေနာ့္ဆီကို၀င္တယ္၊ သူနဲ႔ လက္ဖက္ရည္ေသာက္ရင္း စာအေၾကာင္းေပအေၾကာင္း သမုိင္းအေၾကာင္း ေတြကို ေဆြးေႏြးတယ္၊ အဲဒီ အခါမွာ ဒီေ၀ါဟာရကို ဆရာႀကီး ဦးသာထြန္းက အခုလို ဆိုပါတယ္။ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ဆိုတာ ရခိုင္စကား လြင့္ဂ်ာက ျဖစ္လာတဲ့စကားျဖစ္တယ္။ လြင့္ဂ်ာဆိုတဲ့ အဓိပၸာယ္က ဥပမာ သစ္ပင္ေတြက သစ္ရြက္ေတြေၾကြရင္ ေလထဲ မွာ ၀ဲၿပီး ဦးတည္ရာမဲ့ လြင့္ေနတာကို ဆိုလိုတယ္၊ ဒီ ဘဂၤါလီေတြကိုမွ အခုလို ဆိုလိုတာမဟုတ္ပါဘူး၊ ရည္ ရြယ္ခ်က္ ဦးတည္ခ်က္မရွိဘဲ လြင့္ေနတဲ့ဘယ္သူ ့ကိုမဆို ရခိုင္ဘာသာစကားနဲ ့လြင့္ဂ်ာလို႔ ဆိုတယ္။ ဒါကို ဘာသာေဗဒနဲ ့ဆန္းစစ္ၾကည့္ရင္လည္း လြင့္ဂ်ာကေန ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာလို ့ေျပာင္းလဲလာတယ္ဆိုတာ ျဖစ္ႏိုင္တယ္ လို ့က်ေနာ္ တကၠသိုလ္ ပညာပေဒသာ စာေစာင္မွာ က်ေနာ္ေရးခဲ့ဖူးတယ္။ ယရလ၀ ဆိုတဲ့ ဗ်ည္းေတြဟာ အသံေျပာင္းလဲတဲ့ သေဘာရွိ တယ္။
(ဆရာႀကီး ဦးသာထြန္းမွာ ဝန္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ေဟာင္း ဦးႏု လက္ထက္က ရခိုင္-ျမန္မာ ပညာရွိႀကီးျဖစ္သည္။ ဦးႏု ကိုယ္တိုင္
ပ႑ိတ္ (ပညာရွိ) ဘြဲ႔ အပ္ႏွင္းခဲ့ဖူးေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။ အယ္ဒီတာ)
ေမး။ ။ အခုကာလမွာ ရခိုင္လူမ်ိဳးေတြက ဒီရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဆိုတဲ့အသံကိုေတာင္ မၾကားခ်င္ေလာက္ ေအာင္ျဖစ္ ေနၾကတာ ဘာေၾကာင့္ပါလဲ။
ေျဖ။ ။ ဒီရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ဆိုတာျဖစ္လာဖို ့ရခိုင္ျပည္မွာ အရင္းခံတာက မူဂ်ာဟစ္ေတြျဖစ္တယ္။ သူတို ့ဟာ ရခိုင္ျပည္မွာ ေနရာရဖို ့ေျမရဖို ့သူပုန္ထၾကတယ္။ သူတို ့ဟာ အစက ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္က ဘဂၤါလီေတြပါ၊ ေရွးတုန္းက သူတို႔ေတြဟာ အလုပ္လုပ္ၿပီးရင္ သူတို ့ေနရပ္ကို ျပန္ၾကတယ္၊ ေနာက္ၾကာလာေတာ့ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္ႏိုင္ငံ ကိုယ္တိုင္က လူဦးေရေပါမ်ားလြန္းလို႔ ေနရထိုင္ရအခက္အခဲ ရွိလာတယ္။ ဒီအခါ ဦးႏုက ေမယုခရိုင္အျဖစ္ သတ္မွတ္ထားတဲ့ ဘူးသီးေတာင္၊ ေမာင္းေတာ၊ ရေသ့ေတာင္နယ္ေတြကို မြတ္စလင္ ျပည္နယ္ ထူေထာင္ဖို႔ ့မူဂ်ာဟစ္ေတြ ႀကိဳးစားခဲ့တယ္၊ အဲဒီမူဂ်ာဟစ္ေတြက နာမည္သစ္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာကို တင္ သြင္းလာတဲ့အခါ ရခိုင္ေတြက လံုး၀လက္မခံပါဘူး၊ မိမိတိုင္းျပည္ရဲ့ နယ္ေျမေတြကိုေရာ ဘာသာ သာသနာ ကိုပါ အႏၱရာယ္ျပဳႏိုင္တဲ့ ဒီ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဆိုတာကို ရခိုင္ေတြက အသံကိုပင္ မၾကားႏိုင္တာျဖစ္တယ္။
ေမး။ ။ ဒီရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ေပၚေပါက္လာရတဲ့ ေနာက္ခံ အေၾကာင္းတရားက ဘာေတြမ်ားျဖစ္ႏိုင္ပါသလဲ။
ေျဖ။ ။ အင္မတန္ေမးသင့္တဲ့ ေမးခြန္းေကာင္းတခုပါပဲ၊ တကယ္ေတာ့ ဒီရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဆိုတာက အေပၚယံ ျပႆနာပါ၊ တကယ္နက္ရႈိင္းတဲ့ အရင္းခံက“အစၥလမ္၀ါဒ လႊမ္းမိုး ျပန္႔ပြားေရး”ဆိုတဲ့ဟာက အရင္းခံ ျပႆနာပါ၊ အဲဒီလႈပ္ရွားမႈကို ေက်ာေထာက္ေနာက္ခံျပဳေပးတာက အာဖရိကတိုက္ ေျမာက္ပိုင္းက တိုင္းျပည္ ေတြ၊ အေရွ႕အလယ္ပိုင္းက ႏိုင္ငံေတြက ေငြေၾကးေတြ၊ လက္နက္ေတြ စသျဖင့္ လုိအပ္တာေတြကို ထုနဲ႔ ထည္နဲ ့ပံ့ပိုးၿပီး လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနတာကို ေတြ ့ရတယ္၊ အေရွ ့ေတာင္အာရွကဆိုရင္ မေလးရွားႏိုင္ငံမွာရွိတဲ့ အဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြက ဒါကို အားေပးတယ္။ မြတ္စလင္ ဘာသာျပန္႔ပြားဖို ့လႊမ္းမိုးဖို ့နယ္ေျမရရွိေစဖို ့အင္တိုက္ အားတိုက္ ကူညီတယ္၊ ဒါေၾကာင့္ သူတို ့ဟာ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာအမည္ကို သံုးၿပီး ျမန္မာတိုင္းရင္းသား၊ ရခိုင္တိုင္းရင္း သား ျဖစ္ဖုိ ့အားထုတ္လာတယ္၊ တကယ္ေတာ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဆိုတာ လူမ်ိဳးလည္းမဟုတ္ဘူး၊ျမန္မာတိုင္းရင္းသား လည္းမဟုတ္ဘူး။
ေမး။ ။ ျပည္တြင္းမွာေတာ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဆိုတာကို နအဖက အသိအမွတ္လည္း မျပဳဘူး၊ ဘယ္တုန္းကမွလည္း မရွိခဲ့ဘူးလို႔ အတိအလင္းဆိုပါတယ္၊ ဒါေပမယ့္ ျပည္ပမွာရွိတဲ့ တိုင္းရင္းသား လူမ်ိဳးမ်ားေကာင္စီမွာ တိုင္းရင္း သား အခြင့္အေရးရဖို႔ ႀကိဳးစားေနတာေတြကိုေတာ့ ၾကားဖူးတယ္၊ ဒါေပမယ့္ ရခိုင္ေတြက ကန္႔ကြက္လို ့အခု အခ်ိန္ ထိေတာ့ ေအာင္ျမင္မႈမရေသးပါဘူး။ တိုင္းရင္းသားဆိုတာ ဘယ္သူေတြကို သတ္မွတ္ခဲ့ သလဲ ဆိုတာ ကို သိခ်င္ပါတယ္။
ေျဖ။ ။ ၁၉၇၈ ခုနွစ္က ရန္ကုန္မွာ လမ္းစဥ္ပါတီေခတ္က တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ိဳးမ်ားနဲ ့ဆိုင္တဲ့ ဥပေဒတရပ္ကို သတ္မွတ္ဖို ့ဆရာေဒါက္တာေမာင္ေမာင္ရယ္၊ ဆရာႀကီး ဦးစံသာေအာင္ ရယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို ့ေတြ ့ဆံုေဆြးေႏြး ခဲ့ဖူးပါတယ္။ ေဒါက္တာေမာင္ေမာင္က ဥပေဒ ပညာရွင္၊ က်ေနာ္က သမိုင္း၊ ဦးစံသာေအာင္က အဲဒီတုန္း က အထက္တန္းပညာဦးစီးဌာနက ညႊန္ၾကားေရးမႉးခ်ဳပ္ေပါ့၊ ေနရာကေတာ့ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ေကာင္စီ ရံုးခန္းမွာပါ။
အဲဒီမွာ က်ေနာ္က ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ တိုင္းရင္းသားအျဖစ္ သတ္မွတ္ေရးအတြက္ဆိုရင္ ဘိုးေတာ္ဘုရား စစ္တမ္း ဆိုတာရွိတယ္၊ ခရစ္သကၠရာဇ္ ၁၈၀၀ ေက်ာ္ေလာက္က စစ္တမ္းေကာက္ခဲ့တာ၊ အဲဒါဟာ အင္မတန္ျပည့္စံု တယ္၊ အဲဒီမွာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြင္းမွာ ေနထိုင္လာတဲ့ လူမ်ိဳးေတြ အားလံုးကို က်က်နန စစ္တမ္းေကာက္ထား တာရွိတယ္၊ ရခိုင္ေတြ၊ ကရင္ေတြ၊ မြန္ကိုေတာ့ တလိုင္းလို႔ေခၚတယ္၊ အဲဒီဟာကို မူတည္ၿပီးရင္ ဆံုးျဖတ္ရင္ မေကာင္းဘူးလားလို႔ က်ေနာ္က အႀကံေပးတယ္။
အဲဒီအခါ ဆရာေဒါက္တာေမာင္ေမာင္က မေစာလြန္းဘူးလားလို႔ျပန္ေမးတယ္၊ ဒါဆိုရင္ သမိုင္းမွာအေရးပါတဲ့ အလွည့္အေျပာင္းျဖစ္တဲ့ ခရစ္သကၠရာဇ္ ၁၈၂၄ ခုႏွစ္က စသင့္တယ္လို႔ေျပာခဲ့တယ္၊ ၁၈၂၄ က ျမန္မာျပည္ ကို အဂၤလိပ္ေတြစသိမ္းတဲ့ ႏွစ္ပါ၊ ဒါကို ေဒါက္တာေမာင္ေမာင္က သေဘာတူလို႔ အဲဒီမတိုင္မီက ေနထိုင္ခဲ့တဲ့ လူမ်ိဳးေတြကို တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ိဳးမ်ား အျဖစ္ သတ္မွတ္တယ္လို ့ ဥပေဒ ျပဳခဲ့တယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဆို တဲ့ အသံုးအႏႈန္း မရွိခဲ့ဘူး။
ေဒါက္တာေအးေက်ာ္ ကိုယ္ေရးအက်ဥ္း
ေဒါက္တာေအးေက်ာ္ကို ၁၉၃၉ ခုႏွစ္ က ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ ေတာင္ကုတ္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ တန္းလြဲေခ်ာင္း ႐ြာမ ရြာသစ္ တြင္ ေမြးဖြားခဲ့သည္။
ေဒါက္တာေအးေက်ာ္ ဆည္းပူးရရွိခဲ့ေသာ ပညာရပ္ဆိုင္ရာ ဘြဲ႕မ်ားမွာ B.A (History and Religion) ရန္ကုန္ တကၠသိုလ္ (၁၉၅၉) ၊ B.A (Honors) Oriental History ရန္ကုန္ တကၠသိုလ္ (၁၉၆၀) ၊ M.A (History of Asia) ရန္ကုန္ တကၠသိုလ္ (၁၉၆၄) ၊ B.L (Law) ရန္ကုန္ တကၠသိုလ္ (၁၉၆၆) ၊ PhD (History of Southeast Asia) Monash University. Australia. 1979 စသည့္ ဘြဲ႔မ်ားကို ရရွိခဲ့သည္။
ေဒါက္တာေအးေက်ာ္သည္ ကထိက (သမိုင္းဌာန) ရန္ကုန္တကၠသိုလ္ (၁၉၆၂-၁၉၈၀) ။ တြဲဖက္ ပါေမာကၡ (သမိုင္းဌာန) ဖယတ္ တကၠသိုလ္၊ ခ်င္းမိုင္၊ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ (၁၉၈၂-၈၄) ။ ကထိက (ေခတ္သစ္ ဘာသာေဗဒႏွင့္ သဒၵေဗဒ ဌာန) ေကာ္နဲ တကၠသိုလ္၊ နယူးေယာက္၊ အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု၊ (၁၉၈၄- ၈၉) ။ ဘာသာျပန္ ကၽြမ္းက်င္သူ ( သကၠတစာေပ ဌာန) ဟားဗတ္ တကၠသိုလ္၊ အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု၊ (၁၉၉၁-၀၂) ။ တြဲဖက္ ပါေမာကၡ (သက္ႀကီးမ်ားအတြက္ စဥ္ဆက္မျပတ္ ပညာသင္ၾကားေရး အစီအစဥ္) နယူးေယာက္ တကၠသိုလ္၊ အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု၊ (၁၉၉၃- ၉၅) ။ တြဲဖက္ပါေမာကၡ (အာရွသုေတသန ဌာန) နယူး ေယာက္ တကၠသိုလ္၊ အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု (၁၉၉၆- ၉၉)၊ လြတ္လပ္ေသာ အာရွအသံ (R.F.A) ျမန္မာပိုင္း အစီအစဥ္တြင္ အႀကံေပး အယ္ဒီတာ (၃ႏွစ္ခန္႔)အျဖစ္ တာဝန္မ်ား ထမ္းေဆာင္ခဲ့ၿပီး ယခုအခါ အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု နယူးေယာက္ၿမိဳ႕တြင္ အၿငိမ္းစားယူ၍ ျမန္မာ့အေရးဆိုင္ရာမ်ားကို ေဆာင္႐ြက္ ေနထိုင္လ်က္ရွိသည္။
ေဒါက္တာေအးေက်ာ္ ေရးသားထုတ္ေ၀ခဲ့သည့္ စာအုပ္မ်ား -
၁၊ ရွမ္းလူမ်ိဳးမ်ား၏ ယဥ္ေက်းမႈမ်ားႏွင့္ ရိုးရာဓေလ့ (၁၉၆၈)
၂၊ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ အမ်ိဳးသားပညာေရးသမိုင္း (၁၉၇၀) စာအုပ္ျဖင့္
၁၉၇၁ခုႏွစ္အတြက္ အမ်ိဳး သားစာေပဆုကို ဆြတ္ခူးခဲ့သည္။
၃၊ ရခိုင္လူမ်ိဳးမ်ား၏ ယဥ္ေက်းမႈမ်ားႏွင့္ ရိုးရာဓေလ့ (၁၉၇၃)
၄။ On the Birth of Modern Family Law in Burma and Thailand. Singapore (1990)
၅၊ The Voice of young. Cornell University, March 1990
၆၊ Code and Custom in Burma and Thailand. Scotland. 1993
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အမွန္တရား
written by Burmese Buddhist, October 05, 2009
ေဒါက္တာ ဦးေအးေက်ာ္ ေျပာသြားတာေတြကို အျပည့္အ၀ အၾကြင္းမ႐ွိ ေထာက္ခံပါတယ္
+0 ေက်းဇူးတင္ပါတယ္
written by Aung Mrin Soe, October 05, 2009
သမိုင္းမွန္ေတြကို သတၱိရွိရွိ ျပတ္ျပတ္သားသား ေျပာျပေပးတဲ့ သမုိင္းပညာရွင္ ဆရာႀကီးေဒါက္တာ
ေအးေက်ာ္ကို အထူးပဲ ေက်းဇူး တင္ပါတယ္။
+0 သိထားသင့္တယ္
written by မင္ဆက္ရခိုင္, October 05, 2009
ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ဆိုတ့ဲ ဘဂၤလီေတြ ပတ္သတ္တ့ဲ သိသင့္တ့ဲ အင္တာဗ်ဳးတစ္ခုပါ။ လူသားမ်ားဆိုင္ရာ လႈ႔အခြင့္အေရး ကို က်ဴပ္တို႔ ေလးစားပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ က်ဴပ္တို႔အိမ္ကို လာျပီး ၂ ျခမ္းခြဲဖို႔ လုပ္ရင္ေတာ့ က်ဳပ္တို႔ ခံမွာ မဟုတ္ဘူး။ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ဆိုတ့ဲ သူေတြကုိ ေထာက္ခံ တ့ဲ သူေတြဟာ ဒီျပႆနာ သူတို႔ ေခါင္းေပၚ မက်ေသးလို႔ ဒီလို႔ ေျပာေနတာပါ။ ဒီေနရာ လူ႔ အခြင့္ေရး န႔ဲ ကိုင္ေပါက္လို႔ မရပါဘူး။
+0 ဝင္ေျပာၾကည့္မယ္ေနာ���.....
written by white peacock, October 05, 2009
ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ကေတာ့ ေလွသၾကီးရူးနဲ႔ ေလွလူး လိုျဖစ္ေနျပီး။ အာဏာရူး စစ္ဗိုလ္ေတြနဲ႔ နားလည္မႉ လြဲေနတဲ့ တိုင္းရင္းသား လူထုနဲ႔ေတာ့ ေတြ႔ေနျပီး။ ကိုယ့္တိုင္းျပည္တြင္းမွာ ရိွတဲ့ တိုင္းရင္းသားလူထု ကိုေတာင္ မ်ွမ်ွတတ ေနရာခ် မအုပ္ခ်ဴပ္နိုင္တဲ့ ဒီစစ္အစိုးရလက္ေအာက္မွာ ျပည္ပက အေျခ လာခ်တဲ့ လူမ်ိဳး ေတြတြက္ ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ မစဥ္းစားနဲ႔ေတာ့။ စစ္စိုးရရဲ႕ ေငြမ်ား တရားႏိုင္ ဥပေဒရယ္၊ လူကိုခင္ရင္ မူကိုျပင္တယ္ လူကိုမုန္းရင္ မူကိုသံုးတယ္ဆိုတဲ့ ဝါဒ ေအာက္မွာ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြ အဆင္မေျပတာ ရိွတလို၊ ရခိုင္လူမ်ိဳးေတြ နစ္နာတာေတြလဲ ရိွပါတယ္။ အားလုံးစြတ္စြပ္ မတြန္းၾကပါနဲ႔။ ႏိုင္ငံတြင္းမွာ ရိွတဲ့ တိုင္းရင္သား လူမ်ိဳးေပါင္းစံုရဲ႕ အက်ိဳးစီးပြားကို ထိေရာက္စြာ သယ္ပိုးႏိုင္တဲ့ တိုင္းရင္းသား လူထု တင္ေျမာက္တဲ့ အစိုးရေအာက္မွာ စည္းလုံးစြာရိွမွ အားလံုးတြက္ အဆင္ေျပဆုံး ျဖစ္မယ္လို႔ ျမင္တယ္။
+1 ...
written by Bagan Thar, October 05, 2009
I wish future politicians of Myanmar will not sell their land and dignity at the expense of our own people to suppose their political cause.
We all ( Burmese, Rakhine, Shan, kachin, etc) are minors compared to Bengali, Indian, and Chinese.
If we read history it is clear to see that British put a layer between them and us- Indians in administration.
Politicians close their eyes in this aspects and one even said colonial time is better.
We all must be united.To be united we all must TRY TO understand each other.
While we must look after those people wo is part of us already, we must protect Rakhine land and all border states for any further infiltration.
+0 ဟုတ္ပါမလား
written by အမွန္, October 04, 2009
လူဦးေရး ၅ သိန္း ၆ သိန္း ေလာက္ရွိတ႔ဲ ဒီရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ လူမ်ိဳးေတြက ိုဘာသာ သာသနာကို အႏၱရာယ္ ျပဳမည္သူေတြ အျဖစ္ ေၾကာက္ေနၾကတယ္ ဆိုတာ ရယ္စရား ျဖစ္မေနဘူးလား ကိုယ္႔ကိုးကြယ္တ႔ဲ ဘာသာ သာသနာကို ကိုယ္ကိုယ္တိုင္ ျဖတ္ဆီးေနတ႔ဲ နအဖ အၾကမ္းဖတ္ အုပ္စုကို ဘာသာ သာသနာ ျဖတ္ဆီးသူေ တြအျဖစ ္မျမင္ၾကဘူးလား
+1 ...
written by Mtll123, October 04, 2009
hav u ever went to Rakhein State...the place where these Rohingya people are living..how they survive their live..
-1 ...
written by KZ, October 04, 2009
When these people going to realise and exercise the democracy? I don't think Rohingya problem is not connecting with any Islamization. Come on! wake up! Guys,
-2 တန္ဖိုးရိွတဲ ့ သမိုင္းပညာရွင္ပါ..................
written by thant kyaw oo, October 04, 2009
ပညာတတ္ ၿမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသား တစ္ေယာက္အၿဖစ္ ဂုဏ္ယူသလို. ........ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာနဲ ့ ပါတ္သက္လို ့ ၿမန္မာနိုင္ငံသား တစ္ေယာက္အေနနဲ ့သမိုင္းေၾကာင္း အေၿခအၿမစ္ကို ေရေရ ရာရာ သိလိုက္ရလို ့ အထူး ေက်းဇူး တင္ပါတယ္ခင္ဗ်ာ..........
က်ေနာ္ ရခိုင္လူမ်ဳိး မဟုတ္ေပမဲ ့ ရခိုင္ တိုင္းရင္းသား ညီကိုမ်ား ရခိုင့္ေၿမေပၚမွာ ကမာၻတည္သ၍ တည္ရိွနိုင္ၿပီး ဘာသာ သာသနာကို ေစာင့္ေရွာက္ႏိုင ္ၾကပါေစ။
+2 No Rohinjer in Myanmare
written by iRobot, October 04, 2009
I support Dr Aye Kyaw's comment. There is no Rohinjer in our country.
+3 ...
written by ျပည္ခ်စ္, October 04, 2009
ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ အတြက္ အရမ္းအေရးပါတဲ့ အင္တာဗ်ဴးတစ္ခုပါ...
+0 This is true
written by payonsae, October 04, 2009
This is true and I strongly support the writer and the topic... . I don't like our government, but I have to stand their side for this time for good cause, for our country sake. Please don't take it wrong, we have our own history. If you guys want to say bad about the military government, you can say in many way but please not mention with human right (or) to accept them as our citizens. Please do not look for short term... Please
+1 အမွန္တရားဆိုတာ ေပ်ာက္ကြယ္သြားရိုး���ရွိပါ
written by အမွန္တရား, October 04, 2009
ဒီစကားကိုဘဲ မၾကာခဏ ၾကားရတာ ဖတ္ရတာ စိတ္ ပင္ပန္းပါတယ္
သန္း ၆၀ ေက်ာ္ရွိ ျမန္မာျပည္သူေ တြဟာ လက္ရွိ ရွိေနတ႔ဲ စစ္အစိုးရႏွင္႔ တရားဥပေဒကို မယံုၾကည္ၾကလို႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီ စနစ္ကို တစိုက္မက္မက္ ေတာင္းဆိုေနၾကသူေတြဟာ ဘာမဟုတ္တ႔ဲ နအဖ စစ္အစိုးရရ႔ဲ တရားဝင္ မက်ေသာ စကားတခြန္းကို လက္ခံယူျပီး ျငင္းခံုေနမယ႔္ အစား တရားဝင္ အစိုးရ တစ္ရက္ ျဖစ္ထြန္းလာတ႔ဲ အခါက်မွ ရွင္းယူတာ ပို မေကာင္းဘူးလား မည္သူမွန္သလဲ ဆိုတာ အမွန္တရားက ဆံုးျဖတ္ေပးပါ လိမ္႔မယ္ အမွန္တရား ဆိုတာ ေပ်ာက္ကြယ္သြားရိုး မရွိပါ
+0 To Dr. Aye Gyaw
written by REALITY, October 04, 2009
Saya Dr. Aye Gyaw,
I respect your knowledge. If you don't mind, please let me write this comment to you as a reminder.
You currently live in a country which has freedom of religion and no discrimination in races.
Please let me mention about Los Angeles, the city I live .There is no little Saigon, no little Tokyo, no Thai town, no Korea town and many other communities before 1900 in LA. All those different people are Americans whom are guaranteed by US constitution to get the same rights. They can vote any candidate they want. They can travel anywhere they want. They can be elected. They can pursue any education they want. They can believe anything they want or they have right not to believe. They can be black, brown or white.
Please be broad-mided since you live in the country which is a champion of Democracy and freedom.
Please do not hurt others believe while you are trying to make somebody believed in your statement. Be fair and Be professional. I hope you will find many ways to promote your race without hurting other races and religion.
After all, we all are citizens of the world, brother Dr. Aye Gyaw.
+2 Thank ku
written by maung thin, October 03, 2009
Dear
Dr Aye kyaw
We need to know that true.We want to know Rohinjar.
+0 MR
written by U ZAW WIN, October 03, 2009
Dear Aye Kyaw
Most educate people are working and thinking for global and human rights.This is latest digital World. NOT COLONY WORLD.
MR ZAW WIN, ENGLAND
+0 ...
written by shwe bamar, October 03, 2009
That's right.
-4 ...
written by Htwe Htwe, October 03, 2009
Now I know who were responsible for the racist Burmese Citizenship Law of 1982.
The law denied citizenship to those who could not prove that their ancestors had lived in Burma before 1824 was exactly similar to Nuremberg Laws which denied German citizenship to Jews.
Any ethnic or religious group has their own fair share of thieves, murderers and trouble makers. Most the Muslims living in Rakhine state want to provide for their family similar to people from other ethnic or religious groups.
Thousands and thousands of Chinese and Indian and other Muslims who were born and raised in Burma and could not even speak languages other than Burmese were denied the chance to pursue professional degrees, the chance to travel and sometimes the chance to seek medical treatment because they could not go Rangoon or Mandalay.
You and your family lived in United States, the country which has a strongest anti-discrimination law. You, your family and your children would not be denied of US citizenship just because you did not come to US before their independence in 1776.
They could not give you less money than an American of European origin just because you are a Rakhine. You and your family enjoy the fruits of a society which cherishes non-discrimination.
+3 Good but it might leave to conflict
written by upanna, October 03, 2009
မသိေသးတဲ့ ေရွးက သမိုင္းေၾကာင္းေတြကို သိရတာ အေတာ္ဗဟုသုတ ရပါတယ္
ေရွးေခတ္အ ာဇာနည္းေတြရဲ့စ ိတ္ဓာတ္ေတြက အံ့အခန္းေလာက္ေ အာင္ပါပဲ
ခုေခတ္ မ်ိဳးဆက္သစ္ေတြ အတြက္ မျဖစ္မေန သိသင့္ သိထိုက္တဲ့ အရာေတြပါ
သုိ႔ေသာ္လည္း တစ္ခ်ိုဳ႔အသံုး အနွဳံးေတြကို တိုင္းရင္းသားေတြ အခ်င္းခ်င္း စိတ္၀မ္းကြဲစရာေတြ
ျဖစ္ေစ နိုင္သလားလို႔ စိုးရိမ္မိပါတယ္
+4 အရမ္းေကာင္းတယ္....
written by Burmese, October 03, 2009
မွန္တယ္... ေဒါက္တာေအးေက်ာ္ ေျပာတာ ေထာက္ခံတယ္...ေမးတဲ့သူကလည္း ေမးသင့္တဲ့ ေမးခြန္းေတြကို ေမးသြားတယ္....စစ္အစိုးရက ဗမာႏိုင္ငံမွာ ဒီရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ လူမိ်ဳး မရိွဘူးလို ့ အတိအလင္း ဆိုတာကလည္း လက္ခံတယ္။ တစ္သက္လံုး လိမ္လာတဲ့ အစိုးရ ဒီတစ္ခါ အမွန္အတိုင္း ေျပာတာကိုေတာ့ ၾကိဳက္တယ္။ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဆိုတာ တကယ္ေတာ့ ဦးေအးေက်ာ္ ေျပာသလို ဗမာျပည္မွာ မူဆလင္ ဘာသာနဲ ့နယ္ေျမကို ထူေထာင္ခ်င္ေနတဲ့ လူမိ်ဳးေတြပါ....လူမိ်ဳးနဲ ့ ဘာသာ တရားကို ကာကြယ္ဖို ့အတြက္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ဆိုတာ စစ္အစိုးရကို ဆန္ ့က်င္ဖို ့အတြက္ တစ္ခုတည္းနဲ ့ေတာ့ လက္မခံသင့္ဘူး ထင္တာပဲ။
Sunday, October 4, 2009
ENC wants ethnic groups to contest 2010 elections
Please read the difference between U Aye Tha Aung and ENC. The question is
who are the representatives for non-Burman ethinics ?
CRPP or ENC or what ?
ENC wants ethnic groups to contest 2010 elections
by Mungpi
Friday, 02 October 2009 23:31
New Delhi (Mizzima) - A group of Burma’s ethnic political organizations in exile – the Ethnic Nationalities Council (ENC) - has urged US Senator James Webb not to condemn the junta’s 2010 election before it takes place but to call for more inclusiveness and for it to be free and fair.
In a letter to Sen. Webb, a strong advocate of engagement with the Burmese regime, two days before he hosted a Congressional hearing on Burma, the ENC urged the Virginian Senator that the US can best help by “Not condemning the 2010 elections before they are held.”
“But instead call for a more inclusive election process that will be free and fair. Electoral assistance can be offered either directly or indirectly through neighbouring countries,” said the letter dated September 28, 2009.
The le tter, a copy of which is in Mizzima’s possession, was sent to Senator Webb in appreciation for his interest in the Burma issue and as an explanation on the nature of the complex problems of Burma’s diverse ethnic minorities.
Webb on Wednesday hosted a Congressional hearing on Burma where four experts gave their testimony on what should be the policy of the US towards Burma and the potential role that the US can play in bringing change in the military-ruled Southeast Asian nation.
The letter signed by Saw David Thaw, General Secretary of the ENC, states that ‘in principle’ ethnic nationalities in Burma cannot accept the junta’s 2008 constitution and does not believe that the 2010 elections will lead to democracy.
But the ENC argues that since the ethnics are left with little or no choice, they will have to participate in the elections, because “If there are no opposition parties, the military’s candidates will win by default. The military (and the majority ethnic ‘Burman’) candidates will then become the “elected representatives” of the seven ethnic states.”
Besides, the ENC said, if the ethnic armed ceasefire groups refuse to participate, they will be forced to revert to armed struggle, which will then cause further complications.
Burma under the current administration has seven states, which are home to seven major ethnic groups, and seven divisions, which have no particular attachment to any et hnic groups but are mostly known as habitats of the majority Burmans.
In view of the ENC’s policy of ethnic groups having a voice in Burma’s national politics, participating in governance and development of their homelands, the letter urged Senator Webb not to condemn the 2010 elections until it takes place but to urge the Burmese junta to make it more inclusive and free and fair.
The letter also states that the US can best help the people of Burma by providing assistance in civic education on elections and helping civil organizations that are educating potential political candidates on how to run for office and on democratic governance. And also to support groups that are educating the people about their rights and preparing local organizations on how to monitor the forthcoming elections.
The letter, which for the first time reveals ENC’s policy, states that ENC’s short-term policy is to support eligible ethnic groups in running for office in the 2010 elections.
It also said the ENC’s long-term policy is to develop a robust civil society that will be capable of holding an elected government accountable to the people.
“While the Burmese military will remain in control after the 2010 elections, it is our hope that representatives elected by the people will be able to help hold the military accountable to their own constitution,” said the letter.
“It is also our hope that the new government will be=2 0more open to negotiating a political solution with the ethnic groups that are still engaged in armed struggle,” added the letter.
In contrast to the ENC’s policy, the Committee Representing Peoples’ Parliament (CRPP), a group formed with 1990 election winning parties, said unless the regime amends the 2008 constitution, the elections would be meaningless and the CRPP would not contest.
Aye Thar Aung, Secretary of the CRPP, told Mizzima on Friday, “Without amending the 2008 constitution, the ethnics can do nothing even if they participate and are elected. They would just end up as puppets of the junta.”
He said the CRPP as well as Aung San Suu Kyi’s party – the National League for Democracy – have both demanded that the junta release political prisoners, amend the 2008 constitution, and recognize the 1990 election results.
“Unless these demands are met, we the CRPP and the ALD, will not participate in the elections,” Aye Thar Aung, who is also secretary for the Arakan League for Democracy, said.
“And without the junta fulfilling these demands, I would like to urge ethnic groups and others not to participate in the elections,” he added.
The CRPP, formed in September 1998, is an alliance of ethnic political parties that won elections in 1990, which the junta refused to honour. Its members include the NLD, ALD, Shan National League for Democracy (SNLD), Mon National Democratic Front (M NDF) and Zomi National Congress (ZNC).
Burma’s military rulers, as the fifth step of its seven-step roadmap to democracy, said it will hold general elections in 2010, that will elect a semi-civilian government based on the 2008 constitution, which according to the junta was approved by over 90 per cent of voters in May last year.
Critics said the junta’s roadmap is to buy-time and to cement the role of military in Burma’s future politics.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Chinese Blood on Burmese Soil
Chinese Blood on Burmese Soil
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Monday, September 14, 2009
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Peng Jiasheng is the Kokang leader whose residence was raided by government troops on August 8, setting off a regime offensive and leading to the loss of the Kokang region to junta troops. He was interviewed by The Irrawaddy on the reasons for the offensive, the role of China, the allegations of illegal drug trafficking, the borders guard force and the future of ethnic minorities in Burma.
Question: How would you describe the current situation in the Kokang region?
Answer: The incident on August 8 was the junta’s excuse. It wanted to do away with the local ethnic minority army a long time ago. A larger nationality wants to eliminate a smaller one. This is typical nationalistic chauvinism. This was a massacre.
Peng Jiasheng (Photo: Tom Kramer)
In order to avoid further harm to the Kokang people, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) retreated. This is not what we wanted and also it is not what the people in the international community who support our people would like to see.
Now the situation in Kokang is even more complicated. Currently, the situation is very bad. The government troops took over the Kokang area for about 10 days, but there were many reported cases where their soldiers committed robbery, rape and killed civilians. Many people are still afraid to go back home. Most of the shops owned by Chinese businessmen were either destroyed or robbed. This is a calamity. The prosperous environment of Kokang of only a few months ago no longer exists. People are living in deep distress.
This conflict has brought great trauma to the Kokang people. The war will be long. It will be impossible to end soon.
Q: The ceasefire agreement you signed with the regime in 1989 has collapsed. What do you believe was the motive behind the offensive and the regime’s attempt to arrest you?
A: In March 1989, the Kokang people agreed to peace and development. In the same year, 17 other local ethnic armed forces also started peace talks with the junta. This brought to an end the large scale of armed conflict in the country.
The alliance army is also one of the legal ethnic armed forces that were recognized by the military government. Over the past 20 years of peace and development, the Kokang was the first group in the country to promise the international community that we would stop drug production. We enforced the ban on poppy cultivation in 2002 in our area. The anti-drug production effort and success were recognized by the UN and the international communities. With help from the World Food Programme, the Chinese government and other international aid agencies, we implemented a lot of poppy substitution projects, mainly to grow sugar crane, tea, walnuts and other crops. We achieved very good progress in the poppy substitution.
Step by step, the people in our area began to work their way up from poverty. This can be seen by everybody. However, as the military government wants to achieve their goal of controlling the whole country, it felt it needed to take action against the peace and the ceasefire groups.
Q: Soon after the government troops captured Laogai, the state-run-media repeatedly accused you of involvement in illegal arms factories and drugs. How do you respond to those allegations?
A: Burma is still a country without a real government. The army cannot represent the government. After the election in 1990, the junta usurped power in the country. Ever since then, there has been no proper government in our country. The international community has never officially acknowledged them as the government. Burma is currently a country managed by a temporary council that was set up by the junta. It was called the State Law and Order Restoration Council and was later changed to the State Peace and Development Council. The government army is also an ethnic armed force, so it can not represent this country.
In 1989, for the sake of the peace and welfare of the country, the Kokang people took the initiative to approach the junta-controlled council. This was to protect peace in the country, and to let the people live in peace. Over the past 20 years, we trusted the junta and have been respectful of them. Our political proposition is always the same: support the central government, take the road to peace and development, maintain nationality unification, guard national unity and strive for the autonomous rights of the Kokang people. We never wanted to separate from the country; we only wanted a recognized position for the Kokang people among all of Burma’s nationalities.
Q: How many people were killed in the latest conflict?
A: In this conflict, the Kokang people suffered great loss. We had 14 alliance army soldiers killed in battle, but what we do not know is the number of civilians killed. For example, some na?ve young people joined with the traitor Bai Suocheng and his army. In the battles, they were to be used by the government troops to fight against us. These young people refused because they were Kokang and could not kill their own people. The government troops took their weapons away and shot them with machine guns. On Aug. 27, 27 Kokang youth were killed together.
Q: Why did the junta decide to single out your group? Was there any reason other than the regime’s allegation of your involvement in opium and illegal drugs?
A: A lot of things happened over the past month that we never thought could happen. The Kokang alliance army is one of the legal armed forces in the country. All our weapons are old and the ammunition is left over from the days of the Burmese Communist Party. Many of these weapons are in need of repair. It is reasonable to have a factory to repair weapons. This factory is well known by all the SPDC officials in Kokang. They have visited it before. But now they used it as an excuse to take action against us.
The motivation behind this is obvious. They want to eliminate the Kokang and other ethnic armed forces and achieve their goal of a junta-managed “unified” country. It goes without saying that the junta will not stop with the Kokang. They will take the war to other groups with all kinds of excuses. If you want to condemn something, you can always find a charge. The government army is the strongest in the country. It can crack down on whichever ethnic groups it wishes. It can accuse any ceasefire group of drugs, or weapons…anything. The current situation on drugs, for example, in the four special regions in Shan State is that there is no poppy cultivation, according to investigations by the international agencies. However, in SPDC-controlled areas, there is more than 250,000 mu [Chinese land unit: 667 square meters] of poppy cultivation. This is the work of the junta, and this is how it behaves.
Q: Several ethnic ceasefire groups including the MNDAA rejected the junta's proposal for a Border Guard Force (BGF). Why did you reject the BGF plan?
A: We are not really against the idea of transferring the army to a BGF, but the terms and conditions were too rigorous. For example, all the officers above 50 would be forced to retire and find their own livelihood. The key leaders of the local government and the commanders of the army would also be appointed by the junta. These proposals are not acceptable to any of the ceasefire groups. It is also not acceptable to the local people. Our requirements were simple: we want to have a high level of national autonomy to protect the interests of the Kokang people.
Q: The Kokang and other ethnic groups are unhappy with the 2008 constitution. What do you see as its faults?
A: Regarding the constitution proposed by the junta in 2008, it is all about the power and interest of the junta. We do not believe that any rights and interests of the minorities are ensured in the constitution. How can we accept such a constitution that does not represent the people of the country? on the approval of this constitution, there are things that happened that few people know about. For example, in some of the Kokang villages, the junta sent people to vote in the referendum. The local people did not want to participate, so the junta officials themselves wrote [out] all the votes. There were villages where about 100 people voted No, but on their ballots it was reported that more than 3,000 people voted Yes. This is how it was approved.
Q: You merged with the CPB in the past and led the successful mutiny in 1989. You went to Beijing and you were closely associated with Chinese officials in the past. Today, China is the closest ally of the regime as well as a good friend of ethnic groups along the Sino-Burmese border. What was China's role in the recent conflict in the Kokang region?
A: During the Aug. 8 incident planned by the junta and the armed conflict afterwards, the Chinese government did not give us assistance. We could not talk to the Chinese government about protection and asylum. However, as the Kokang are in fact Chinese, when the refugees fled to China the local authorities took very good care of them. That we really appreciate.
Q: What is your message to Chinese leaders who plan to build a gas pipeline through the Kokang region?
A: What I want to say here is no matter what happens in Burma, we are ethnic Chinese and our roots are in China. This we will never forget. For the sake of the rights and position of the Chinese in Burma, we will continue our struggle.
Q: How do you see the future of Burma and the ethnic minorities?
A: Regarding the future of the ethnic minorities in Burma, this is a complicated issue. If Burma does not set up a democratic government that is elected by the people and therefore really represents the people, the future of the minorities in Burma will get worse.
Q: Did you receive any political backing or military support from other ethnic groups along the border? Are they united in their goals?
A: All the minority ceasefire groups along the China-Burma border areas have good relations with each other and have supported each other over a long period of time. Our fate and experiences are the same. But due to certain difficulties, our alliance is not as strong as it should be. Therefore the junta had its opportunity, and now the Kokang area is under junta control.
Q: Are you worried about losing your personal property and your businesses in Burma and China?
A: Currently, all my personal property has been confiscated by the junta. My property in China was also taken away by the relevant department of the Chinese government. This is a problem that I can not solve by worrying about it.
Q: Please describe the refugee situation. There were reports of government officials and soldiers attacking Chinese nationals? Was the recent attack designed to demonstrate that the government is not a puppet of China?
A: I think the reason why the junta attacked the Kokang is because of the following:
First, the junta wanted to develop better relationships with America, India and some Western authorities, in particular with America. In order to improve the relationship with America, the junta is eager to prove that the junta is not a puppet government supported by the Chinese government. That is why the junta chose the Kokang to fight against.
They also wanted to test the response of the Chinese government. The Kokang and the Chinese have a blood relationship. The Kokang people are basically Chinese; they are part of the Chinese family. The Chinese in Burma were not officially recognized by the Burmese and therefore for centuries they lived in a very low economic and social position. Only after the meeting in Ninakan in 1947, after the national government’s recognition, were the Chinese living in these areas called Kokang. But as a matter of fact, the Kokang people are Chinese. We are the descendants of the Yellow emperor. The anti-Chinese movement in 1967 in Burma feels like yesterday.
Even today, many Chinese living in Burma still do not dare to declare that they are Chinese. In 1989, when the Kokang Alliance Army was established, all the Chinese in Burma looked at the Chinese armed forces as the “lighthouse.” Now the ‘”lighthouse” has gone off.
The second reason I think is that the SPDC forces were already in Kokang for more than 10 years, and they understood the situation in Kokang, including the relationships among the Kokang leaders.
They therefore bought off the traitors Bai Suocheng and Wei Chaoren. This resulted in an internal split in Kokang before the war broke out. Bai Suocheng and Wei Chaoren betrayed their people and surrendered to the junta.
Now the junta has taken over the Kokang area, and it is clear about the response of the Chinese government. So their next step will be to reinforce the policy of cracking down on other minority groups along the border. The junta will act recklessly and become more unbridled.
Q: Where are you living now?
A: For many years, I worked in Kokang. I never had a chance to travel to the big cities in Burma. Now that I have more time, I am travelling in the big cities in Burma. I really feel that my country is beautiful, and it deserves a government that can represent the people by building and developing the country. I currently have no plans to go back to Kokang.
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
Friday, September 11, 2009
In search of a Burmese rebel leader
Friday, 11 September 2009 01:03 UK
In search of a Burmese rebel leader
By Ko Ko Aung
BBC Burmese Service
Fighter from the PAO ethnic group in Burma
The Pao say they must fight to keep their own cultural identity
After flying half-way across the world I finally arrived at a rebel camp on the Thai-Burmese border on my quest to track down the elusive leader of the Pao National Liberation Army, Khun Thurein.
It took months of planning to meet the man, who with his force of just 100 men, is taking on the might of the Burmese military.
The men who follow him are all from a small ethnic minority group called the Pao. They have their own language, music, customs and traditional dress.
But they say the Burmese government is trying to destroy their culture. That's why two years ago Khun Thurein and his men dusted off their arms and began fighting once again.
In one recent ambush, Khun Thurein's men say they killed 12 Burmese soldiers.
The Pao are one of more than 100 different ethnic minorities in Burma. Most of them negotiated a ceasefire agreement with the Burmese government more than two decades ago.
Despite the Pao's own ceasefire agreement with the Burmese government in 1994, the Pao feel their culture is gradually disappearing.
As I waited to meet the elusive Khun Thurein, I decided to visit some rebel outposts inside Burma.
At one of the Pao rebel camps high in the mountains, I came across Khun Tun Kyaw.
He said he witnessed his dad being brutally murdered by Burmese soldiers and pro-government militias in 1993.
He vividly described how his father was "hanged from a tree, his stomach was cut open, his genitals were severed and stuffed into his mouth, and two bullets were pushed into each of his ears".
It's not the first time I've heard of such atrocities, but on this occasion I was lost for words.
Refugees
Many Pao felt they had no choice but to flee across the border to Thailand.
Many of them have ended up at the Ban Nai Soi refugee camp which was a couple hours drive away.
Some people have been living there for 15 years or longer, but several told me that they still missed Burma.
They might eventually find their way to another country, but it seems they will not find their way back to Burma where they really belong - simply because it is not safe, even in areas where the ceasefire still holds.
During my visit to the camp I met Ma San Thu, who explained why she joined Khun Thurein's army as a medic.
She told me about a nine-year-old girl who she treated who had been raped by a Burmese government soldier.
She said: "We complained but our leaders stopped us from speaking out. So the resentment just grew. This kind of thing happens very often, so we started to think why can't we defend our people."
The rebel leader
By this time I had received my long-awaited summons to meet the man himself - Khun Thurein.
His jungle headquarters was just on the other side of the border inside Burma.
The Burmese government is a fraction of the strength of the British Empire. So I believe that we can beat them
Khun Thurein
I was the first journalist to be invited into Khun Thurein's camp, and he was anxious to take me on a tour.
As we headed out he explained that the Burmese government has been trying to establish a "Burmese mono-culture" in the country.
"Our leaders wanted peace and democracy. They wanted to sort out the political problems by political means. We never had a chance to sort the problems politically, so I thought the Burmese government would eliminate us."
Khun Thurein told me that he was well aware of the risk he was taking.
"We were under British colonial rule for 100 years. We fought them to reclaim our independence. The Burmese government [is a] fraction of the strength of the British Empire. So I believe that we can beat them."
Khun Thurein's wife admitted that she was very worried, and didn't know what would happen.
After all, it would take just one successful strike to wipe out Khun Thurein's entire force of just 100 men.
But, he said, "I would rather die fighting than bowing down to the pressure of the Burmese military regime to lay down arms without a political solution." http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/asia- pacific/8247084. stm
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
War Is Not Answer: Wa Leader
War Is Not Answer: Wa Leader
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By WAI MOE Monday, September 7, 2009
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Speaking in an interview on China’s Phoenix TV broadcast on Monday, Bao You-Xiang, the leader of the United Wa State Army (UWSA), said, “We absolutely do not want fighting to break out in Wa State [Wa Special Region]. Only peaceful negotiations can defuse the tension.
“The Wa State hopes to become a democratic self-ruled autonomous region within a Burmese federal republic. Only peaceful means can solve the problem, not the use of force,” he said.
United Wa State Army leader Bao You-Xiang appears on China's Phoenix TV.
Phoenix TV pictures clearly showed pictures of Gen Aung San, the founder of the Burmese army, and Snr-Gen Than Shwe, the leader of the Burmese junta on the wall of the Wa leader’s office.
Tension has risen dramatically on the Sino-Burmese border after the UWSA, the Kachin Independence Army, the Kokang armed group known as the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDDA) and the Mongla-based National Democratic Alliance Army(NDAA) refused to transform their militias into border guard forces as ordered by the Burmese junta in April.
The armed ethnic groups rejected the plan saying it ignores ethnic minority rights. By transforming their troops into border guard forces, the armed ethnic ceasefire groups would effectively put their troops under control of the Burmese army. The junta has set October as the deadline to begin training and forming the border guard force.
Lt-Gen Ye Myint, the head of Military Affairs Security [Burmese military intelligence] and the secretary of the Transformation Committee for the Border Guard Force repeatedly said in a letter to the UWSA that the Tatmadaw [Burmese armed forces] would not attack Wa troops.
With an estimated 25,000 soldiers, the UWSA is the biggest ethnic ceasefire group in military-ruled Burma. It signed a ceasefire agreement with the Burmese junta in 1989 after the MNDDA agreed to a ceasefire with the Burmese army.
The US Congressional Research Service describes the UWSA as “the largest of the organized criminal groups in the region,” due to its involvement in the drug trade.
The status of the Burmese military junta’s ceasefire agreements with 17 ethnic armed groups has been uncertain after Burmese government troops seized the Kokang capital, Laogai, on August 24.
After the fall of Laogai, there were skirmishes between government forces and MNDDA troops. At least 30 people, including Chinese citizens, were killed and more than 30,000 people fled to China.
The Kokang’s resistance to the junta’s troops ended abruptly after more than 1,500 Kokang fighters crossed the Sino-Burmese border and surrendered their arms to Chinese officials on August 29.
After the collapse of the MNDAA, observers have been openly wondering who the next target for the Burmese army will be. Many say the UWSA is the Burma army’s main target among the ceasefire groups because it is the leading group resisting junta plans to neutralize the armed militias.
Observers on the ongoing ethnic conflict in Shan State said Beijing would play an important role in maintaining stability along the Sino-Burmese border through negotiations with both sides as the Sino-Burmese overland oil and gas pipelines are scheduled to start this month.
The Chinese government is a close ally of the Burmese regime and is influential with the ethnic armed groups along the border.
During a meeting with Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye in June, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made it clear that the Chinese favor pushing forward the democratic process in Burma to achieve national reconciliation, safeguard national stability and promote economic development.
“What the Chinese do is paramount,” said Aung Kyaw Zaw, a former Communist fighter who is monitoring the situation from the Chinese border town of Ruili.
“However, the junta’s No1 Snr-Gen Than Shwe, No 2 Maung Aye and Secretary 1 Gen Tin Aung Myint Oo have paranoia over Beijing’s relationship with the ethnic groups along the Sino-Burmese border,” he said. “They fought against communist troops backed by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. These troops became the militias of the UWSA, MNDAA and NDAA.”
On Sunday, a report about Burmese politics in a popular Chinese language news website, news.qq.com, said: “The Burmese people have been promised an improvement in their lives after the elections [in 2010]. However, analysts believe that if the new government fails to meet peoples’ needs, then this could lead to popular discontent.”
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
China's troubles: A vast nation faces unrest in many directions
China's troubles: A vast nation faces unrest in many directions
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Strife between Uighurs and Han Chinese in Xinjiang province, refugees pouring into China from Myanmar and heightening tensions with India are examples of problems that face China on its edges.
Sprawled across Asia from its borders with India, Pakistan and Afghanistan on the east to the sea on the west, and from Russia in the north to Southeast Asia, including Myanmar, to the south, China not only has difficult neighbors but also contains a complicated quilt of ethnicities.
By comparison, the United States -- with the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Canadian and Mexican borders, and regional and ethnic politics -- seem blessedly simple, even counting Texas and Alaska.
In Urumqi, in the Xinjiang region, Han Chinese, brought there by Beijing to water down the Muslim, independent- thinking Uighurs, claim that Uighurs are attacking them in the streets with hypodermic needles filled with HIV virus, and complain that the government isn't doing enough to protect them. Street disturbances have lasted for days.
The government of Myanmar, allegedly in advance of elections scheduled for next year, clamped down militarily on separatists in Kokang region, which borders China. The result was a flood of refugees into China, to the great displeasure of Beijing, which has to deal with them. China is otherwise the Myanmar government's best friend and greatest protector.
The third problem is a heating of tensions between China and the other Asian giant, India, in the Tawang region, part of long-standing wrangling between the two giants over their 2,521-mile border zone. Both sides have added to the danger of an outbreak of fighting by building up their military forces in the area.
Two points emerge from this prickly situation. The first is that it is difficult being China. The second is a hope that China and India, both of which will be at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh, will take that opportunity to soothe relations.
First published on September 8, 2009 at 12:00 am
Read more: http://www.post- gazette.com/ pg/09251/ 996249-192. stm#ixzz0QW9d2UJ X
Monday, September 7, 2009
Ethnic challenge for Myanmar
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Sep 6, 2009
Ethnic challenge for Myanmar
BANGKOK - MYANMAR'S military junta may have taken Aung San Suu Kyi out of the picture ahead of elections next year, but it could face an even greater challenge from rising ethnic unrest, analysts said.
The regime has recently stepped up its decades-long campaign against minority groups, with offensives against ethnic Chinese rebels in the northeast in August and Christian Karen insurgents near the Thai border in June.
Civil war has wracked the country since independence in 1948, and while most rebel groups have reached ceasefire deals with the junta, analysts say the army is determined to crush the rest before the 2010 polls.
The offensives have mirrored the ruling generals' efforts to take Ms Suu Kyi off the political stage by sentencing her to another 18 months' house arrest after a bizarre incident in which an American man swam to her lakeside home.
The Nobel Laureate's lawyers launched an appeal against her conviction last week, but with the country's pliant courts likely to do the junta's bidding, the ethnic problem is the next real hurdle for the regime, analysts said.
'This is a very complicated issue. After Aung San Suu Kyi's case, the next big issue is the issue of ethnic minorities,' Aung Naing Oo, an independent Myanmar analyst based in Thailand, told AFP.
Military ruler Than Shwe has long made the struggle for the 'stability of the state' the main justification for the army's continued dominance over the Southeast Asian nation.
In recent years the regime has been able to reach peace pacts with key ethnic groups, co-opting some to become junta-backed border forces that have taken on their former rebel brothers-in- arms.
But August's outbreak of fighting in Kokang, a mainly ethnic Chinese region of Myanmar's Shan state, showed the tensions near the surface and earned a rare rebuke from Beijing, usually Myanmar's closest ally.
The offensive was a warning to other minority groups thinking of causing disruption before the polls, said Win Min, a Myanmar expert at Payap University in the northern Thai city of Chaing Mai. -- AFP
Critics have denounced the elections as a sham aimed at legitimising the junta's grip on power, but the influential International Crisis Group (ICG) think-tank said recently that the polls could be an opportunity for change.
'These things are happening in the context of the 2010 elections. The Burmese military are showing ceasefire groups that if they don't agree with their plans they are going to fight,' Win Min said, using the country's former name.
The new constitution - pushed through in a referendum in 2008 just days after a cyclone ravaged southern Myanmar - does not provide the autonomy many groups had hoped for, Mr Win Min added.
'The groups signed ceasefires but in the hope that they would get greater autonomy. But they have been mostly rejected. They would like to wait until after there is a new government to negotiate greater autonomy,' he said.
Compounding the problem is the fact that many of the groups, especially the powerful Wa in northern Myanmar, are heavily involved in the drugs trade, often with the tacit assent of the government, analysts said.
'But now the government is using it (the narcotics issue) as a pretext to put pressure on the ethnic groups who don't want to join Burmese security forces,' Mr Win Min said.
The ethnic problems could end up with the effective 'Balkanisation' of Myanmar, a European diplomat in the region said on condition of anonymity.
'We've never been closer to this than we are now,' the diplomat said. 'If no political solution is found for these ethnic groups the whole situation is going to implode.' The diplomat said it was 'not at all the case' that Myanmar's political problems are just about the situation between Ms Suu Kyi and the regime.
'There are so many questions before 2010, so much that's to be done. I'm sure Than Shwe has no clue how to tie up loose ends.' But the Brussels-based ICG said in a report last month that some ethnic groups which had made ceasefire deals were endorsing political parties that would take part in the polls.
'These groups take a negative view of the constitution but feel that there may be some limited opening of political space, particularly at the regional level, and that they should position themselves to take advantage of this,' it said.
'There are increased tensions, however, as the regime is pushing these groups to transform into border guard forces partially under the command of the national army.' -- AFP http://www.straitst imes.com/ Breaking% 2BNews/SE% 2BAsia/Story/ STIStory_ 426174.html
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