Leader of the National League for Burma and Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi will be awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (LLD) in abstentia due to her continuing detention by the military dictatorship in Burma.

Peacemakers and politicians, artists and academics are among the outstanding individuals who will receive honorary degrees from the University of Ulster in 2009.

Leader of the National League for Burma and Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi will be awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (LLD) in abstentia due to her continuing detention by the military dictatorship in Burma.

The pro-democracy activist has led a peaceful and non-violent resistance against the Burmese dictatorship for over 20 years and won the right to be prime minister in the 1990 election despite being put under house arrest.

She continues her fight for democracy and freedom for the people of Burma despite her imprisonment by the Burmese authorities.

The full list of honorary graduates for 2009 include:
http://news.ulster.ac.uk/releases/2009/4243.html

OKO-Japan,KNU-Japanနွင့္Karen Human Rights Commttee-Japan တို ့မွပူးေပါင္းပါဝင္ၾကသည္၊၊

http://www.knljapan.co.cc/

“After the rape case news spread, the police have been continuously arresting the Burmese and the number of arrests has touched over 200. I heard that in some places in the city, notices were pasted saying not to employ Burmese workers in restaurants and at home or else their houses will be set on fire,” Sai Khro Pha from Thai based ‘SHAN’ news agency said.

Authorities in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand raided the work sites of Burmese migrant workers and arrested them following the rape and killing of a Thai university student recently.

After the news spread that two Burmese migrant workers allegedly raped and killed a Thai university student on February 7, Thai police and Immigration officers raided places where Burmese migrant workers live in groups and made more arrests.

“After the rape case news spread, the police have been continuously arresting the Burmese and the number of arrests has touched over 200. I heard that in some places in the city, notices were pasted saying not to employ Burmese workers in restaurants and at home or else their houses will be set on fire,” Sai Khro Pha from Thai based ‘SHAN’ news agency said.

Most of the persons arrested are from Kanjanood workers quarter No. 2 and 4 in Doi Saket and Huay Sai, Mae Jo.

The Thai police arrested two Burmese migrant workers as suspects in connection with the rape and murder case.

The Thai language newspaper ‘Chiang Mai News’ reported on its internet website that a 22 year old Thai student was raped and murdered and then the perpetrators fled with her hand phone and cash. She was studying in the 3rd year as an Accounting major at Mae Jo University in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Outraged students from Mae Jo University sent a letter to the university administrator demanding resolving the Burmese migrant workers issue by expelling them from Chiang Mai.

Moreover they accused Burmese migrant workers of committing similar crimes which occurred on January 22 and February 3 respectively. In the first case, a foreigner was killed in Lek Len village in Chiang Mai and his belongings were looted. In the second case an 82 year old Thai lady was allegedly killed and her jewellery was stolen.
http://www.mizzima.com/

https://democracyforburma.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/hundreds-of-migrant-workers-in-chiangmai-arrested-in-raid/

A gang of unidentified gunmen in Northern Shan state on Tuesday looted at least 20 trucks plying on the Mandalay-Muse highway, according to other truck drivers.

Loot on Kotkai highway
by Myo Gyi
Thursday, 12 February 2009 20:53

Ruili (Mizzima) – A gang of unidentified gunmen in Northern Shan state on Tuesday looted at least 20 trucks plying on the Mandalay-Muse highway, according to other truck drivers.

The trucks operating on the Mandalay-Muse highway were looted by the gunmen, who lay in wait on the road between Kotkai and Hnamphaka town, a truck driver said.

“Yes it is true that several trucks were looted. How did you hear of it? I actually do not want to say anything about it. Even those who were looted dare not speak about it,” a truck driver, who requested anonymity, told Mizzima.

He added that besides the looting, a vehicle was also torched on the highway.

“The truck that was burnt was carrying apples, and the looters set fire to it damaging the truck. There were a total of 20 trucks,” he added.

But he refused to give details of the incident.

The highway where the looting took place is in the deep jungles and is often used by local militia groups. http://www.mizzima.com/

Exiled Burmese government calls for tripartite dialogue on Union Day

by Salai Pi Pi
Thursday, 12 February 2009 22:42

New Delhi (Mizzima) – Burma’s government in exile – the National Coalition Government of Union of Burma – today urged the ruling military junta to immediately begin a tripartite dialogue with the opposition party and the ethnic nationalities in order to build a genuine federal state.

Dr. Tint Swe, Information Minister of NCGUB, during Burma’s 62nd Union Day celebrations held in New Delhi, said a tripartite dialogue between the ruling regime, Burma’s main opposition party – the National League for Democracy – and leaders of ethnic nationalities was the only way to revive the spirit of the Union Day and build a federal union.

“The role of ethnics is essential to form a federal Union of Burma,” Dr. Tint Swe told Mizzima.

On Thursday, more than a hundred Burmese pro-democracy activists in New Delhi held celebrations to commemorate the 62nd anniversary of the Union Day. Speeches, felicitations and cultural dances were performed to depict unity in diversity, which the founding fathers of the ‘Union Day’ had envisaged.

Nearly a year before Burma gained independence from the British colonial rulers, on February 12, 1947, General Aung San, who is regarded as the architect of Burma’s independence, along with leaders of ethnic Chin, Kachin and Shan came together at a conference in Panglong town of Shan state to sign the historic ‘Panglong’ Agreement.

In Burma’s history, the day came to be known as Union Day, and has always been annually observed as a state holiday. But the essence of the agreement, however, deteriorated after the assassination of General Aung San on July 19, 1947.

Burma gained independence on January 4, 1948, and with General Aung San already assassinated, ethnic leaders said they had been betrayed and the Panglong Agreement was never honoured.

Dr. Tint Swe said the spirit of the Panglong Agreement disappeared as the country came under military dictators, who led the country under a unitary system.

“The spirit of the Panglong Agreement has disappeared in Burma,” said Dr. Tint Swe, adding that the NCGUB and ethnic leaders were under no illusion that the government to be formed by the military junta, through its Constitution approved in May 2008, would bring back the spirit of the Union.

He said, the only way to bring back the spirit of the union was to start a tripartite dialogue and that should be the objective of the movement.
http://www.mizzima.com/

General Aung San Or Our Hero. VDO

Thanks to Ma Thadar

UNION DAY Statement NLD Malaysia

http://www.scribd.com/doc/12276603/UNION-DAY-Statement

thanks to Arzarni

Generation Wave

ေတာ္လွန္ေရးေမာင္ႏွမမ်ားခင္ဗ်ား

က်ေနာ္တို႔ Generation Wave (မ်ိဳးဆက္သစ္လူငယ္မ်ား အစည္းအရံုး)မွ
ေဖေဖာ္၀ါရီလ ၁၃ရက္ေန႔တြင္က်ေရာက္မည့္ျမန္မာ့သူရဲေကာင္း အာဇာနည္ သခင္ေအာင္ဆန္း၏ေမြးေန႔ကို ရည္စူး၍ ဂုဏ္ျပဳလႈပ္ရွားမႈတရပ္ကိုျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ပါသည္။

http://arzarni.blogspot.com/

62ND ANNIVERSARY OF BURMAS UNION DAY.

Thanks to Ko Myo
http://www.pbase.com/komyoe88

Six members of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions and four others who were arrested after helping victims of Cyclone Nargis appeared in Insein prison court without their lawyers on 10 February.

Lawyers denied entry to Insein prison court
Feb 12, 2009 (DVB)–Six members of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions and four others who were arrested after helping victims of Cyclone Nargis appeared in Insein prison court without their lawyers on 10 February.

Phyo Phyo Aung, her father Dr Ne Win, Shein Yarzar, Aung Thant Zin Oo, Aung Kyaw San, Phone Pyit Kywe, Yin Yin Waing, Tin Tin Cho, Ni Mo Hlaing and Myat Thu were arrested for collecting rotting corpses in the aftermath of the cyclone and burying them.
Kyaw Hoe, Khin Htay Kywe and Maung Maung Latt, the lawyers representing the ten people, were not allowed to enter the court on the orders of special branch, a lawyer said.
Lawyer Kyaw Hoe said that MPs-elect Nyi Pu and Dr Tin Ming Htut had also appeared at the court without legal representation.
Kyaw Hoe said it was special branch, not the prison authorities, who had barred him from attending.
The lawyers wrote a letter to Tin Htut, the presiding judge at Western Rangoon district court, but he also rejected their appeal on the orders of special branch.
National League for Democracy legal advisor Thein Nyunt insisted that action should be taken against those who interfere with court procedures.
“If we are to maintain the right to a free trial, the court has a duty to prevent outside interference,” he said.
“It won’t be a free trial if lawyers are not allowed to represent their clients; this should be reported to the court. Their relatives should also report it to justice ministry.”
NLD members Ma Cho and Theingi were also denied legal representation on 11 February, when their lawyer Myint Thaung was refused access to the court to defend them, according to party spokesman Nyan Win.
The two women were arrested five months ago and charged with having contact with illegal organisations. http://english.dvb.no/news.php?id=2204