thanks to ko Latt
http://www.scribd.com/doc/12460962/NCUB-Statement-and-Span
Day: February 16, 2009
khitpyaing news KNU 16.02
စေနေန႔ နံနက္ ၂ နာရီခန္႔က ကရင္ျပည္နယ္ ျမဝတီၿမိဳ႕တြင္ လက္နက္ႀကီးက်ည္မ်ား က်ေရာက္ေပါက္ကြဲခဲ့မႈသည္ ကရင္အမ်ဳိးသားအစည္းအ႐ံုး (ေကအန္ယူ)၏ အၾကမ္းဖက္လုပ္ရပ္မ်ား ျဖစ္သည္ဟု နအဖ၏စြပ္စြဲမႈသည္ အေျခအျမစ္မရွိသည့္ စြပ္စြဲမႈသာျဖစ္သည္ဟု ကရင္အမ်ဳိးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးတပ္မေတာ္ (ေကအန္အယ္လ္ေအ) က ျငင္းဆိုလိုက္သည္။ continue
khitpyaing Interview Quintana 16.02
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသို႔ (၆) ရက္ၾကာခရီး ေရာက္ရွိေနသည့္ ကုလလူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ကုိယ္စားလွယ္ မစၥတာ ေတာမတ္ကင္တားနား၏ ၂၀၀၈ ခုႏွစ္က စစ္အစိုးရအေပၚ အႀကံံေပးခ်က္မ်ား မေအာင္ျမင္ဟု ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕မွ ၀ါရင့္ႏုိင္ငံေရးသမားႀကီး ဦးမင္းလြင္က ေခတ္ၿပိဳင္သို႔ ေျပာသည္။
continue http://www.khitpyaingnews.org/interviews/feb_09/16-2-09a.php
Junta goes for prison makeover for visiting UN rights expert
“He met five political prisoners, but we still don’t know who they are,” said the source, who is close to Insein prison.
by Solomon
Monday, 16 February 2009 20:38
New Delhi (Mizzima) – The United Nations Human Rights expert on Monday met five political prisoners in Rangoon’s notorious Insein prison as part of his second trip to assess the situation of human rights in military-ruled Burma.
“He met five political prisoners, but we still don’t know who they are,” said the source, who is close to Insein prison.
Quintana on Monday was escorted to the notorious Insein prison in Rangoon by a convoy of security personnel and security was beefed up in and around the prison.
Quintana, who went into the prison at about 3:30 p.m. (local time), was seen leaving the Insein prison from the front gate at about 7:20 p.m. (local time), the source said.
The source said, “6 p.m. (local time) is usually the time for prisoners to have dinner and it could be that he is observing the food given to the prisoners.”
But the source said, with prison authorities well prepared for the visit of the UN envoy, Quintana might be fooled if he judges the prison conditions by appearances.
Prison authorities in Burma, according to sources, are reportedly busy cleaning up prison cells, supplying cleaner uniforms and better meals to prisoners as the United Nations Human Rights expert began prison visits on Sunday, sources said.
The source said authorities have cleaned up the compound, re-painted the walls and supplied new uniforms to security personnel as well as to the prisoners.
On Sunday, Tomas Ojea Quintana, the UN rights expert, visited the Pa-an prison, capital of Karen State in eastern Burma, where there are at least nine prisoners of conscience including popular blogger Nay Phone Latt, a prison official on Monday told Mizzima.
“Yesterday, he [Quintana] came here and stayed around one hour from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.” the official said.
But the official declined to give details as to whom Quintana met during his visit to the prison saying, “No one is allowed to speak about this, we don’t know.”
But Nay Phone Latt’s mother, who visited her son at the Pa-an prison in Karen State of eastern Burma on Saturday, said she saw the prison authorities cleaning up the prison and changing the prisoner’s uniforms.
“I saw that authorities are cleaning and re-painting the prison,” she said.
Aye Aye Than, mother of Nay Phone Latt, said, “My son is aware that Quintana will be visiting the prison but I am not sure whether my son met with the UN expert.”
Nay Phone Latt, who was arrested January 2008, was sentenced to 20 years and six months in prison in November 2008 under various charges including video law and electronic acts. He is 28. He was moved to Pa-an prison in remote eastern Burma in November 2008 from Insein prison in Rangoon.
In Myitkyina jail, in the capital of Kachin State in Northern Burma, where there are at least 10 political prisoners including popular comedian Zarganar, prison authorities have began providing better meals to prisoners since last month, a relative of a political prisoner, who visited the prison on Friday said.
“The prisoner’s daily meals have been changed since last month and its becoming extremely good something they have never seen before,” the relative said.
She said her relative told her that all the prisoners are aware that the UN rights expert is to visit the prison soon and are eagerly looking forward to his coming.
A family member of Zarganar, who requested anonymity, told Mizzima on Monday that prison authorities are busy getting new uniforms as preparation to the visit by the UN envoy.
An official of the Myitkyina prison told Mizzima that they have been informed that Quintana will be visiting the prison but, “I don’t know when he will be coming.”
The UN rights expert, who is visiting Burma for the second time since his appointment, is on a six-day trip, from February 14 to 19, and will visit prisons in Karen, Kachin and Arakan states.
Sources said Quintana has also requested a meeting with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, but it is still unclear whether he will be granted permission to meet her, given that he was unable to meet her during his earlier visit in August 2008.
http://www.mizzima.com/
HOW long will the world watch …
U.S.: Clinton’s Maiden Voyage Aims to Reassure Asian Allies
WASHINGTON, Feb 15 (IPS) – Hillary Clinton’s maiden voyage overseas as secretary of state is designed above all to reassure Washington’s key East Asian allies and China of the U.S.’s enduring interests in the region and commitment to its stability, according to regional experts here.
The week-long trip, which begins Sunday and will take her to Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, and China, in that order, is also being billed as a “listening tour” that, in addition to re-establishing Asia a top priority in U.S. foreign policy after eight years in which the Greater Middle East took centre-stage, will permit her to hear firsthand the chief concerns of the region’s most powerful players.
From her side, the emphasis will likely be on the eagerness of the new administration of President Barack Obama to cooperate on a range of global issues, beginning in particular with the ongoing financial crisis, but also featuring non-proliferation, regional security, energy, and climate change.
In a preview of her trip at the Asia Society in New York Friday, Clinton stressed Washington’s need for “strong partners across the Pacific” to tackle these challenges.
Officials here hope that North Korea, which has ratcheted up tensions with South Korea in recent weeks, will not try to upstage her tour by testing a long-range ballistic missile as intelligence reports have indicated it may be preparing to do. Clinton’s remarks Friday appeared designed in part to reassure Pyongyang of Washington’s readiness to fully normalise relations if it follows through on its pledge to abandon its nuclear weapons programme. continue
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45777
UN human rights envoy on ‘Show Boat’ mission to Burma_ agreed to by the junta to give them face before the regional grouping of the summit South-East Asian leaders of ASEAN meet in Thailand in two weeks time.
by Larry Jagan
Monday, 16 February 2009 19:33
Bangkok (Mizzima) – The United Nations’ human rights envoy to Burma is currently half-way through a six-day visit to the country, assessing the current human rights situation. During his trip, the special rapporteur, Tomas Ojea Quintana, hopes to meet privately with some of the Burma’s key political prisoners, according to UN sources.
But many analysts and diplomats in Rangoon believe the trip is only a “show-boat” mission, agreed to by the junta to give them face before the regional grouping of the summit South-East Asian leaders of ASEAN meet in Thailand in two weeks time.
“The SPDC [State Peace and Development Council] invited the UN VIPs only to prevent a strong declaration being adopted at the ASEAN summit criticising them,” a senior diplomat told Mizzima, on condition of anonymity.
The UN envoy made his first visit to Burma last August, and is keen to see what developments there has been since, before he reports to the UN Human Rights Council, scheduled for later next month.
But pro-democracy activists and human rights advocates believe the visit is very timely, as more than 300 political dissidents have been sentenced to stiff jail terms in the past six months – around 20 leading student activists from the pro-democracy movement 20 years ago were each sentenced to 65 years in prison for their alleged involvement in the anti-prices protests in September 2007.
On the eve of his visit, UN officials told Mizzima that the envoy had hoped to meet senior members of the junta, opposition leaders and representatives of the country’s ethnic minorities. He is particularly keen to talk to the detained opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, according to UN sources, but is not overly hopeful that a meeting with her will be arranged, they added. Mr. Quintana had also planned to visit some of the key ethnic minority areas in Burma’s border regions, including Arakan, Karen and Kachin states.
“It is important that the envoy visit ethnic areas – and tries to set his own agenda,” said a UN expert who declined to be identified. “It is good for him to show the junta that he does not want to be herded around and sees places other than Rangoon and the capital Naypitdaw. continue
http://www.mizzima.com/edop/anslysis/1716-un-human-rights-envoy-on-show-boat-mission-to-burma.html
democracy for burma 
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