Story and essay by Naytthit 20.02

အံ့ေက်ာ္ႀကီးလိုပဲ

တစ္)

အသုဘရႈသူ ပရိတ္သတ္ႀကီးသည္ တံလွ်ပ္ေတြတေျပာင္ေျပာင္တလက္လက္ဆီသို႔ဦးတည္လွ်က္ ရြာ၏အေရွ႕ေျမာက္ဘက္သို႔ တလႈပ္ လႈပ္ေရြ႕ ေနၾကသည္။ တကယ္ဆို ရြာထံုးစံအတိုင္း ရြာ၏သခ်ဳႋင္းက အေနာက္အရပ္မွာ ရွိေနၿပီး သုႆန္ပီသစြာ သရဏဂံုတင္ရန္ ဇရပ္ရွိသည္။ အသုဘရႈသူမ်ား နားေနရန္အရိပ္ရအပင္မ်ားႏွင့္ သက္ေတာင့္သက္သာ အသုဘရႈႏိုင္သည္။ က်န္ရစ္သူ မိသားစုထဲမွ အသည္းအသန္ ငိုလိုသူမ်ားလည္း စိတ္ေအးလက္ေအး အားပါးတရစိတ္ႀကိဳက္ လူးလွိမ့္ငိုႏိုင္ေလာက္သည့္ ေျမျပန္႔ေကာင္းေကာင္းရွိ ေသာ သုႆန္အဂၤါရပ္ႏွင့္ ျပည့္စံုႂကြယ္၀သည့္ အရပ္ျဖစ္သည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ သည္အသုဘႀကီးကေတာ့ ၿမိဳ႕မ်က္ႏွာဖံုးပီပီ ေရာဂါကိုလည္း ေတာသူေတာင္သားမ်ားျဖစ္သည့္ ေရာဂါမျဖစ္။ ေသေတာ့လည္း ရြာမွာပဲမေသ။ ေနာက္ဆံုးကုန္ကုန္ေျပာရလွ်င္ အသုဘကို သၿဂႋဳဟ္ေျမ ျမႇဳပ္ဖို႔ကိုပဲ အျခားရြာသားမ်ားႏွင့္ ဒိုးတူေဘာင္ဘက္ သခ်ဳႋင္းတစ္ခုထဲမွာ မေနလိုဘဲ မိသားစု သခ်ဳႋင္း လုပ္ခ်င္သည္…ဆုိကာ ၎တို႔ပိုင္ လယ္ေျမမ်ား၏ အစြန္တြင္ဂူဗိမၼာန္ကို ခန္႔ညားစြာတည္ေတာ္မူေသာေၾကာင့္
continue http://www.naytthit.com/StoryandEssay/storyfeb20.html

Chin National Day turns into Chin State Day celebration in Burma

by Salai Pi Pi
Friday, 20 February 2009 22:33

New Delhi (Mizzima) – With the Burmese military junta’s profound objection to the celebration of Chin National Day, ethnic Chin in Rangoon are albeit being forced to mark the day under different banners, organisers said.

On Friday, Chin people in Rangoon, celebrated the 61st anniversary of Chin Nation Day under the banner of ‘Fresher Welcome’ of University students.

“We requested the local authorities in the township and district levels in Rangoon but they rejected our request to allow us to hold the Chin National Day celebration,” an organizer said.

“So, we had no choice but to celebrate our national day under a different name.”

But in Hakha, capital of Chin State, authorities forced Chin community leaders to observe the Day as ‘Chin State Day’, a local resident said.

“Actually, we prefer to use the actual name ‘Chin National Day’. But the authorities do not allow us to do so. So we have no choice,” she added.

Chin National Day was adopted at the first Chin National Conference held on February 20, 1948 in Falam town in Chin state. During the conference, Chin leaders agreed to abolish the use of the chieftainship system of administration and agreed to form a democratic system of governance.

However, the Chin National Day was later renamed as the Chin State Day during the rule of the Burma Social Programme Party (BSPP) regime led General Ne Win, who assumed power in a military coup in 1962.

Salai Kipp Kho Lian, a Germany based Chin activist, alleged that changing the Chin National Day into Chin State Day is part of the junta’s nationalization policy to eradicate the identity of ethnic minorities in Burma.

Kipp said it was on January 3, 1974 that the Burmese regime declared the Chin Special Division into Chin State so February 20 cannot be in anyway observed as Chin State Day.

“It does not make any sense to change Chin National Day into Chin State Day,” Kipp said.

“It is apart of the Burmese regime’s Burmanization campaign to eliminate ethnic groups,” Kipp alleged.

But he said, “The more they [the regime] oppress us, the more we become active to promote our national identity.”

On Friday, Chin people around the world including New Delhi, Denmark, and Malaysia marked the Chin National Day.

In New Delhi, more than 1000 Chin communities gathered in the western region of the city to celebrate the Chin National Day, where they performed traditional dances and sang folk songs to depict the culture of various ethnic groups among the Chin community. http://www.mizzima.com/

Rights Groups Question ASEAN Human Rights Priorities Ahead of Summit

Rights groups say the Association of Southeast Asian Nations needs to do more to protect human rights, especially in Burma. Activists and rights organizations are meeting in Bangkok to pressure the regional organization, ahead of its annual summit next week in Thailand.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is coming under increasing pressure to improve human rights in the region.
Rights groups have applauded ASEAN’s forming a human rights body, but say so far it appears largely toothless and not willing to take on human rights violators like Burma’s military rulers. read all http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-02-19-voa17.cfm

19 February (1996), death in custody at Insein prison, U Tun Sein, Labor Union of United National Unity Front, Union of Prisoners in 1970s, Kemmendine, Rangoon, 20 February (1948), Chin National Day

Burma Freedom Calendar http://documents.scribd.com/docs/vk6ownxjqtia4ujwb7z.pdf

An official of the ethnic rebel group the United Wa State Army has alleged that the Burmese military regime was pressurising the group to transform its army into a militia under the junta’s control.

Junta urges UWSA to turn into militia group

by Solomon
Friday, 20 February 2009 21:47

New Delhi (Mizzima) – An official of the ethnic rebel group the United Wa State Army has alleged that the Burmese military regime was pressurising the group to transform its army into a militia under the junta’s control.

An official of the UWSA, who requested anonymity as he is not authorized to speak to the press, told Mizzima that Lt Gen Ye Myint, Chief of the Military Affairs Security (MAS), in January had pressurised the UWSA to allow the junta to control its armed group and asked it to participate actively in the 2010 election.

Lt Gen Ye Myint, who came with Maj-Gen Kyaw Phyo and Maj-Gen Aung Than Htut to UWSA’s headquarters in Pang Sang from January 18 to 19, urged the Wa group to change its army into a militia to be used by the junta as a border security force under its control.

“Ye Myint pressured us to change the leadership of our group and allow it to control our army,” said the official. “He wanted the current leadership to retire and to promote young leaders from our group.”

But the official said it was not possible for the UWSA to accept the offer and tension has again flared up between them and the Burmese Army.

“We cannot agree to the terms of the offer. We will observe the developments before we decide whether to contest the 2010 election,” the official said.

He added that if the Burmese Army continues its pressure, the UWSA might be forced to prepare militarily for self-defence.

Meanwhile, Aung Kyaw Zaw, a Sino-Burmese border based analyst said, “It is impossible for Wa to agree to the junta’s demand because they are living like a small country in their own territory for nearly two decades now.”

“The main problem is most of the armed groups do not trust the junta, so if they continue pressurising the armed groups there is a likelihood of ceasefire agreements breaking,” Aung Kyaw Zaw said.
http://www.mizzima.com/

VDO UN meets Thai offical to discuss Rohingya_Mizzima TV

The United Nationalities Alliance (UNA) today said that they were opposed to the Burmese military junta’s proposed general elections scheduled to be held in 2010.

The UNA’s announcement coincided with the submission of a report by the UN Secretary General’s special envoy Mr. Ibrahim Gambari at a UN Security Council closed-door meeting.

“We expressed our stand especially on the proposed general elections in 2010. The UNSC will hold its closed-door meeting today and we expressed clearly that we would not contest this planned general election. Previously, we just expressed that we were against this election. The election should be held only after resolving all issues and deadlocks. Currently, they have not yet released any (political) prisoners and have not held dialogue with anyone else,” Pu Cing Tsing Thang, UNA spokesperson and Chairman of ‘Zomi National Congress’ (ZNC), told Mizzima.

UNA was formed with 12 ethnic political parties, which contested in the 1990 general elections. But, the Burmese regime deregistered 10 parties and now only two parties, the ‘Kokang Democratic Party’ and the ‘Shan Nationalities League for Democracy’ (SNLD), are officially registered parties.

In the statement issued today, the UNA said that they would not recognize the proposed 2010 general elections, which would be held under the unilaterally drafted and forcibly approved 2008 Constitution.

Moreover, it also said that all the issues of Burma, could be resolved only by the concerted efforts by the army, ‘National League for Democracy’ (NLD), and the representative of ethnic nationalities.

The statement also said that UNA’s stand was no different from NLD’s recent Special Statement No. 2, which demanded dialogue without preconditions, between Senior Gen. Than Shwe and Aung San Suu Kyi. UNA supported the NLD statement, which also demanded the review of the 2008 constitution. continue
http://www.mizzima.com/news/election-2010/1745-una-opposes-juntas-proposed-2010-general-elections.html

Grassrootes Human Rights Education Phang Nah News english

38 Migrant Workers without work permit cards were arrested by the Thai army and Takuapa provincial police at their working site in Bang Niang, Phang Nga Province, Southern Thailand. The officers were conducting ID checks on the construction sites…. The Thai Lawyers council of Mae Sot received the compensation to give to four Burmese migrant women….Burmese Migrants in Thailand are doing cleaning Activities….

read all http://www.ghre.org/en/

Burma has announced it will release 6313 prisoners on Saturday, from prisons across the country, state television and radio reported on Friday.

first 6000,…
The announcement, however, did not mention whether political prisoners would be included among those released. Burma’s ruling junta has persistently denied the presence of political prisoners in the country.

The announcement came a day after UN human rights expert Tomas Ojea Quintana wound up a six-day visit to Burma on Thursday.

A journalist in Rangoon told Mizzima, “It could be a move by the ruling junta to save face after Quintana visited the country.”

But he added that it was unlikely that political prisoners would be included among those freed. “Most of those released would probably be criminals and robbers,” he added.

But sadly, despite the announcement both on television and radio, people remain unaware of the overwhelming nature of the news as they could not tune in to their TV sets due to electricity failure.

“I heard it from a friend but I cannot watch TV, because there is no electricity,” a Rangoon-based correspondent said.

Meanwhile, a court in Rangoon on Thursday reduced 8 and half years of the imprisonment term of blogger Nay Phone Latt, leaving him to serve 12 years. Aye Aye Than, mother of Nay Phone Latt told Mizzima, “The Yangon [Rangoon] Divisional Court today announced that 8 and a half years have been reduced from my son’s imprisonment term.”

Nay Phone Latt, who was arrested on January 2008, was sentenced to a total of 20 and half years under various counts including the Electronic Act and Video Act.

Nay Phone Latt is the fourth political prisoner, whose sentence has been reduced since last week, just before the UN human rights expert paid a second visit to Burma.

Other political prisoners include, popular comedian Zargarnar, Kay Thi Aung and Wai Myo Htoo.

http://www.mizzima.com/news/inside-burma/1744-burma-announces-release-of-over-6000-prisoners.html

MYANMAR: Water shortages loom in delta IRIN News

YANGON, 20 February 2009 (IRIN) – Aid agencies working in the cyclone-hit Ayeyarwady Delta are scrambling to provide tens of thousands of people with water as the peak of the dry season approaches.

The delta’s water storage ponds, which traditionally tided villagers over the dry season, were contaminated with salt water when Cyclone Nargis hit on 2 and 3 May 2008, bringing with it a wall of seawater. Traditional clay storage jars were also destroyed or washed away.

Now survivors of the cyclone will need help to meet their water needs until the monsoon rains return in late April or May, humanitarian workers told IRIN.

“People are using up what stores they have quickly, which indicates there will be a problem at the end of the dry season in April,” said Than Myint, head of Save the Children’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programme in Myanmar. “Some villages will run out of water.”

Humanitarian agencies are implementing several measures – from working with local water vendors to ensure water reaches the most needy villages, to installing high-tech reverse osmosis machines to remove the salt from brackish water.

However, Waldemar Pickardt, WASH chief at the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which leads the cluster of government representatives, UN agencies and NGOs dealing with water issues, said it was important not to overstate the problem. continue
http://www.IRINnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=83045