One of those released is prisoner of conscience Ma Khin Khin Leh, who has been the subject of Amnesty International campaigns since her arrest in July 1999.

Amnesty International

The authorities detained her because they could not find her husband, Kyaw Wunna, who was connected to a pro-democracy march expected to take place that month.

Of the other released political prisoners, there were nine Buddhist monks and one nun. Some were members of Myanmar’s opposition party, the National League for Democracy. These included Dr. Zaw Myint Maung, a MP-elect who had been in prison since 1990.

Another man, Zaw Naing Htwe, was released from a labour camp. Zaw Naing Htwe was sentenced to nine years in prison in December 2008 because he had received a letter from his elder brother, who was one of the imprisoned 88 Generation Students group leaders.

“There are still more than 2,100 political prisoners behind bars in Myanmar. Many of them are in poor health, partly as a result of harsh prison conditions,” said Donna Guest, Asia Pacific Deputy Director.

“While the release of these prisoners is welcome, the Myanmar government must release all other prisoners of conscience immediately and unconditionally.”
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/good-news/political-prisoners-set-free-myanmar-20090224

Another Than Shwe Smoke Screen by Buffalohair

With the release of about 6,300 prisoners, with only a hand full of political prisoners, it is clear this is yet another tactical ploy by Than Shwe. Last year the Burmese government released about 2,000 prisoners only to secretly refill the prisons with pro democracy advocates, entertainers and anyone who opposed his rule. There is no question this prison release will make more room for more pro democracy and human rights advocates who oppose the illegal 2010 elections.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s failure to address human right’s concerns in favor of profits before humanity was the wrong message to send China and Burma, let alone Tibet. United Nations Human Rights envoy Tom Quintana’s failure to speak with pro democracy groups and eye witnesses to egregious crimes against humanity only exacerbated the plight of human beings who looked with hope and promise to these so called icons of freedom and human eights. How far beyond stupid were these envoys or was it calculated all along?

Mr.Creator would like it…

continue http://buffalohair-jage.com/WP-BGI/2009/02/23/another-than-shwe-smoke-screen/

VDO_Inside the Kachin Independendence Army(PulitzerCenter)

VDO_Myanmar: UN Secretary-General urges for the release of all political prisoners

UDP ေခါင္းေဆာင္ မူးယစ္လုပ္ငန္း ပတ္သက္ခ့ဲဟု VOA သတင္းကဆုိ

ႏုိင္ငံေရးပါတီေခါင္းေဆာင္တဦးသည္ မူးယစ္ေဆးလုပ္ငန္း၊ ေငြမည္းခဝါခ်သည့္လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားႏွင့္ ဆက္ႏြယ္ေန ေၾကာင္း ေထာက္လွမ္းေရးအရာရိွေဟာင္း ဦးေအာင္လင္းထြဋ္က ဗီအုိေအ ျမန္မာပုိင္းအသံလႊင့္ဌာနသုိ႔ ေျပာ လုိက္သည္။

အဆုိပါေခါင္းေဆာင္မွာ ညီညြတ္ေသာဒီမိုကရက္တစ္ပါတီ (UDP) ဒုဥကၠ႒ ဦးေက်ာ္ျမင့္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ ဝ ျပည္ ေသြးစည္းညီညြတ္ေရးတပ္မေတာ္ (UWSA) ၏ ဘ႑ာေရးဌာနတြင္ ဒုတိယဌာနမွဴးအျဖစ္ ဦးေက်ာ္ျမင့္ တာ ဝန္ယူခ့ဲစဥ္က ထုိလုပ္ငန္းမ်ားကုိ လုပ္ကုိင္ခ့ဲျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ဦးေအာင္လင္းထြဋ္က ဆုိသည္။

ထုိအခ်ိန္က ျမန္မာက်ဳံယြမ္ကုမၸဏီကုိ တည္ေထာင္ၿပီး၊ UWSA အဖဲြ႔က စီးပြားေရးဘဏ္ ၄ ခုကုိ ေက်ာေထာက္ ေနာက္ခံျပဳေပးခ့ဲသည္ဟု ဦးေအာင္လင္းထြဋ္က ဆုိသည္။

Asiaweek မဂၢဇင္းကလည္း ျမန္မာက်ဳံယြမ္သည္ ေငြမည္းခဝါခ်သည့္လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားႏွင့္ ဆက္ႏြယ္ေနသည့္ ကု မၸဏီအျဖစ္ စြပ္စဲြခံေနရေၾကာင္း ၁၉၉၈ခုႏွစ္ ဇန္နဝါရီလတြင္ ေရးသားခ့ဲသည္။
continue http://drlunswe.blogspot.com/2009/02/udp-voa.html

China Colonies:Laos, Myanmar discuss increased military cooperation

HANOI, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) — Lao President Choummaly Sayasone met Chief of Staff of the Myanmar Armed Forces General Thura Shwe Mannin Vientiane to discuss the continued exchange of border security delegations to ensure a secure shared border, the Lao newspaper Vientiane Times reported Tuesday.

General Thura Shwe Mann, who is also Coordinator of Special Operations (Army, Navy and Airforce) and a member of the State Peace and Development Council, paid a two-day visit to Laos in response to an invitation from Lao Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense Lieutenant General Duangchay Phichit.

General Thura Shwe Mann was earlier welcomed by a Lao delegation led by Lieutenant General Duangchay at an official welcoming ceremony held at the National Defense Ministry.

After the ceremony, the two sides informed each other about socio-economic, national security and defense developments in their respective countries.

Both sides reviewed bilateral cooperation efforts between the two armies, which has facilitated trade across the shared border and helped to improve the living standards of people in both countries.

The two sides discussed future cooperation efforts, particularly regular exchanges of information regarding cross-border issues. They also discussed measures to prevent the illegal passage of people, goods and drugs across the two countries’ border.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-02/24/content_10886018.htm

Thugs and Thieves_Owners of seized motorcycles must face jail time or lose their bikes

Mon 23 Feb 2009, IMNA
Owners of 53 motorcycles seized in western Ye Township during celebrations for Burma’s Independence Day have been ordered to spend 3 months in jail or lose their bikes, say local sources.

On February 18th, the Chairman of the Township Peace and Development Council (TPDC) order quarter headmen in Ye to announce that owners of the seized motorbikes should register with authorities. Admitted owners will face 3 months in jail but will then have their bikes returned. Owners who fail to register will avoid jail time, but will not recover their bikes.

“The headman said at our quarter that we [bike owners] have to face the court for what we did at the gambling site. We will get our bikes after we go to the jail,” a Ye resident whose bike was seized told IMNA.

“Nobody has registered due to being afraid of the local authorities,” he added.

The 53 bikes were seized on January 7th when authorities raided a gambling operation near the Animal Husbandry Zone one mile west of Ye Town. Gambling had been temporarily permitted for 3 days surrounding celebrations for Burma’s Independence Day, but it expired on January 6th. The raid was conducted by about 20 armed officers from the TPDC, police, fire brigade and Municipal.

According to a police officer in Ye Town, unlicensed bikes and bikes with Ma La Ma regional licenses from Moulmein were seized. Owners of unregistered bikes face 6 months in jail. The bikes are currently being stored at the Ye police station, and it is unclear what will happen to them when their owners do not materialize.

In March 2007, Burmese army officers from Naypyidaw and the Southeast Command in Moulmein seized about 40 bikes and 50 million kyat from a gambling site near Ankhae village in Thanbyuzayat Township. Unlike the seizure in January 2009, the gamblers had permission from higher ranking officers.
http://www.monnews-imna.com/newsupdate.php?ID=1332

MINGALABA! Musicians Wanted for Burma Broadcast…From sound bytes to musical scores we want the people to know they are not forgotten and offer hope from the outside world

Burma Democratic Concerns has begun a music broadcast targeting the Burmese communities within the borders of Burma. With the assistance of pro democracy organizations in Burma we are sending music, via Internet Radio (Mingalaba Show). The people of Burma want to hear both music and news from the outside world. Join our effort in giving hope to this repressed nation.

We seek music from all genres and cultural groups. Whether you’re Kachin, Karin, Mon or Rohingya we will air your music on our shows. This is an open invitation to all artists regardless of nationality, creed or gender. Rock and Roll, Classical and Ethnic is welcome for this is a world wide effort and your participation in any capacity is most welcome. From sound bytes to musical scores we want the people to know they are not forgotten and offer hope from the outside world. We are exiles living in various countries and need your support in our struggle for democracy and human rights.

Help us make a difference in the lives of those who are living in tyranny. Help us be a ray of sunshine to a nation that lives in darkness and repression. Help us free Aung San Suu Kui, our rightful leader of Burma. Only with the help of the citizens of the free world can we succeed and bring democracy to Burma.

Thank you for your consideration
http://www.bdcburma.org/
http://bdc-burma.blogspot.com/

Hurform:Regime still fails to improve human rights before the 2010 election

February 24, 2009
Although the Burmese military regime is planning to register new political parties and hold elections in 2010, it has made no concrete progress or plan to improve the human rights in the country.
Just recently, the United Nations Human Rights Special Rapporteur visited Burma to learn about the human rights situation. After the visit, he announced that there has been no improvement. Arbitrary arrest, detention of political and social activities, forced labor and forced relocations in rural ethnic areas all still continue.
Currently, the ASEAN countries are also trying to develop an ASEAN charter, with plans to guarantee the rights of all citizens in ASEAN countries. In order to implement human rights principles in this region, many other ASEAN countries should consult and work with each other. And cooperative, coordinated action between western countries and ASEAN members is vital to push the Burmese generals to respect and uphold human rights in Burma.

http://rehmonnya.org/archives/629

March 2009 2 March (1962), The darkest hellhole of military dictatorship terminating democracy and human rights by

Gen. Ne Win (Burma Socialist Program Party, BSPP / Ma Sa La, 4 July 1962) with his henchmen
Gen. Saw Maung, 18 September 1988/ Gen. Than Shwe, 23 April 1992 (State Law and OrderRestoration Council, SLORC / Na Wa Ta / Nyeinpi, 18 September 1988) and Gen. Than Shwe (State
Peace and Development Council, SPDC / Na Ah Pha, 15 November 1997).
Sao Myi Myi Thaike, son of the first president Sao Shwe Thaike, younger brother of Eugene and
elder to Harn, first democracy martyr was killed by Burmese soldiers

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