Nasheed, an Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience in 1991, was elected as president of the Maldives in the country’s first multi-party elections in October 2008. He extended an invitation to Aung San Suu Kyi for his swearing in ceremony on 11 November 2008.

President urges release of Burmese political prisoner
Former political prisoner President Mohamed Nasheed has spoken out against the 14-year detention of Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi by the Burmese military authorities.

In a strongly-worded letter to Ibrahim Gambari, the UN special envoy to Burma, President Nasheed urged him to seek a “more substantial result” in the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners.

Aung San Suu Kyi, 63, has become a global symbol of non-violent resistance in the face of oppression by Burma’s military regime. In 1991, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to bring democracy to Burma.

Nasheed, an Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience in 1991, was elected as president of the Maldives in the country’s first multi-party elections in October 2008. He extended an invitation to Aung San Suu Kyi for his swearing in ceremony on 11 November 2008. continue http://www.minivannews.com/news_detail.php?id=5982

Haksar’s comment came in a form of a book, titled ‘Rogue Agent’, which details the case of the 34 Burmese rebels and the politics behind their arrest and accusations of India’s betrayal to the rebels.

Rogue Agent betrayed Burmese rebels
Leech Operation
The rebels, belonging to Burma’s Arakan and Karen ethnics, said they were betrayed by Indian Military Intelligence, who promised them a base at Landfall Island in Andaman and Nicobar.

According to the rebels, six of their key leaders were killed brutally by Indian Military Intelligence upon arriving at the landfall and the rest were arrested.

The Indian defence ministry later claimed that a huge consignment of arms and ammunition were seized during a joint operation codenamed ‘Operation Leech’ and charged the rebels with gun running.

The rebels were then kept at Port Blair without trial for eight years. But later in 2006 October, the Supreme Court of India, after the rebels’ petition, ordered the rebels to be transferred to Kolkata and to conduct a day-to-day trial.

The Rogue Agent
Haksar, who has tirelessly followed the case of the 34 rebels, in her book – ‘Rogue Agent’ – reveals that an Indian Military Intelligence officer named Lt. Col V.S. Grewal as the man masterminding the plot to betray the Burmese rebels. continue http://www.mizzima.com/news/regional/1694-rogue-agent-betrayed-burmese-rebels.html

Phadoh Mahn Sha One Year Event – Feb 14 09

Burma Point Thanks to emeraldsoe

http://www.scribd.com/doc/12085605/Phadoh-Mahn-Sha-One-Year-Event-Feb-14-09

watch Mon National Day on Jacba Slideshow

http://jacbaburma.blogspot.com/2009/02/10feb09_533.html

Whatever else one thinks of George Bush, few could deny the contribution he, and particularly his wife Laura, made to raising the profile of the suffering in Burma. In 2005, he spent almost an hour in the Oval Office with a young Shan woman activist from Burma, Charm Tong,

A Bush legacy worth keeping
As President Barack Obama dismantles the legacy of the Bush administration, there is one area in which he should actually emulate and build on his predecessor’s record: Burma.

Whatever else one thinks of George Bush, few could deny the contribution he, and particularly his wife Laura, made to raising the profile of the suffering in Burma. In 2005, he spent almost an hour in the Oval Office with a young Shan woman activist from Burma, Charm Tong, and heard about the military regime’s use of rape as a weapon of war. In 2006, a day after former Czech President Vaclav Havel and former Archbishop of Cape Town Desmond Tutu published a report calling for Burma to be placed on the UN security council agenda, the US declared its support for the initiative.

The US consistently led the way in raising Burma at the security council and seeking a resolution, initially with slow and grudging support from its natural allies. The US has the only meaningful set of sanctions against the regime, and in the past two years it has sought to tighten and target them further.

Laura Bush became a particular champion of Burma, making personal telephone calls to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, hosting a roundtable at the UN in New York and holding her own press conference after Cyclone Nargis in which she strongly condemned the military regime’s denial of aid to the victims. Last year, on a visit to Thailand, Mr Bush met Burmese dissidents in the US embassy in Bangkok, and his wife visited a refugee camp along the Thai-Burmese border. continue
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/feb/09/burma-obama-bush-human-rights

now transl.:A poster reading ‘Do not trust easily’ in Burmese has been pos

A sign written in Burmese which reads ‘Do not trust easily’ has showed up at the Immigration office in Satun, Bangkok, Thailand.
A Burmese student who went there for visa extension said “The poster is quite big and I feel sad. A policeman smiled when I took a photo of it. The poster also has pictures on it. The first photo is of some burglers, the second photo is of sex workers and the third photo is of illegal Burmese workers on a work site.”
Everyday hundreds of foreigners come to this immigration office so he doesn’t understand why they have written this poster in Burmese said this Burmese student.
Last week, Thai police went to a factory and arrested only Burmese migrant workers. They also said they will only arrest Burmese workers, not Laos or Cambodian workers.
Some Burmese students said that the sign could be trying to tell people to be careful when coming to work in Thailand. Others suggested whether it shows that only Burmese women come to work as sex workers. Other suggestions by Burmese people are that it is telling them what the Thai authorities’ opinion is of Burmese people.
http://www.ghre.org/en/

MIN THU WUN 100TH BIRTHDAY BY THE FAMILY

http://moemaka.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=85&Itemid=118

THE FATHER OF INDEPENDENCE – BOGYOKE AUNG SAN’S 94TH BIRTHDAY (13-2-2009)

Thanks to Dr.Lun Swe

http://picasaweb.google.com/lunswe70/Bogyoke#

Khitpyaing news interview 11.02.

ေနျပည္ေတာ္ ဥပၸါတသႏိၲေစတီေတာ္ႀကီး ဒုတိယဆင့္ ဌာပနာလႉဒါန္းပြဲကုိ ေနျပည္ေတာ္မွာ က်င္းပခဲ့ေၾကာင္း ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရ သတင္းစာမ်ားက ေဖာ္ျပေနေသာ္လည္း အဆိုပါ ေစတီေတာ္အား ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မႉးႀကီးသန္းေရႊ တေပါင္းလျပည့္ေန႔ ထီးတင္ၿပီးသည္ႏွင့္ ဗုိ္လ္ခ်ဳပ္မႉးႀကီးသန္းေရႊ၏ စစ္အစိုးရ က်ဆုံးမည့္ေန႔ျဖစ္သည္ဟု ဆရာေတာ္ ရွင္ပညာသာမိက ေဟာကိန္းထုတ္လုိက္သည္။ continue
http://www.khitpyaing.org/interviews/feb_09/11-2-09c.php

Myanmar’s senior official in Hong Kong has described the Rohingya boatpeople as “ugly as ogres,” as a high-profile refugee case has highlighted the group’s plight, a report said Wednesday.

Myanmar envoy brands boatpeople ‘ugly as ogres’: report
Myanmar’s senior official in Hong Kong has described the Rohingya boatpeople as “ugly as ogres,” as a high-profile refugee case has highlighted the group’s plight, a report said Wednesday.
The country’s Consul General Ye Myint Aung wrote to heads of foreign missions in Hong Kong and local newspapers insisting the Muslim tribe should not be described as being from Myanmar, the South China Morning Post reported.
“In reality, Rohingya are neither Myanmar people nor Myanmar’s ethnic group,” he said.
The envoy contrasted the “dark brown” Rohingya complexion with the “fair and soft” skin of people from Myanmar, according to the Post.
“It is quite different from what you have seen and read in the papers. (They are as ugly as ogres),” Ye Myint Aung was said to have written.
The Rohingya are stateless and face religious and ethnic persecution from Myanmar’s military regime, forcing thousands to take to rickety boats each year in a bid to escape poverty and oppression, rights groups say.
But Myanmar’s junta denies the existence of the Rohingya as an ethnic group in the mainly Buddhist country and says the migrants are Bangladeshis.
Thailand’s military was accused in January of towing hundreds of Rohingya out to sea in poorly equipped boats with scant food and water after they tried to flee Myanmar, a charge Thailand has “categorically denied”.
The accusations surfaced after nearly 650 Rohingya were rescued off India and Indonesia, some saying they had been beaten by Thai soldiers. Hundreds of the boat people are still believed to be missing at sea.
The case has raised the profile of the group’s struggle, prompting Ye Myint Aung’s letter, the Post said.
No one from Myanmar’s Hong Kong consulate was immediately available to comment when contacted by AFP. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090211/wl_asia_afp/hongkongmyanmarrefugeesrights