FM KASIT’S VISIT TO BURMA Thailand asked to talk to Burma’s rebellious minorities

By Supalak Ganjanakhundee
The Nation

Burma urged Thailand to help convince rebellious ethnic minorities to join seven-step roadmap toward national reconciliation, Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said Monday.
By Supalak Ganjanakhundee
The Nation

Burma urged Thailand to help convince rebellious ethnic minorities to join seven-step roadmap toward national reconciliation, Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said Monday.
“(Burma’s) Prime Minister Thein Sein and Foreign Minister Nyan Win have asked me to talk with the minorities and we are pleased to help,” Kasit told reporters via telephone from Rangoon.

Kasit made his two-day official visit to Burma on Sunday and Monday for self-introductory and preparing an official visit for Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

Of the 18 armed ethnic minorities, Karen Nation Union and Shan State Army remained their arm struggles for independence and rejected the junta-sponsored seven step road map.

“I know some of them since I was the opposition but cannot unveil the plan to public for now,” Kasit said.

Burma was in the middle of the roadmap toward national reconciliation and democracy.

The junta would call a general election next year which Kasit said would able to bring to civilian-led government in Burma’s politics, replacing military-ruled regime which ruled the country since early 1960s.

However, the international community expressed concerns that the 2010 poll would not be inclusive enough to bring all stakeholders in the political process.

Opposition Aung San Suu Kyi, who would complete her six years in house arrest in May, stayed outside the politics and the junta remained no plan to let her in.

Kasit said he did not discuss with the general in Nay Pyi Taw about the role of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy Party in the roadmap but said the generals and Suu Kyi have contacted each other regularly.

“They are talking to find common solutions to end the political difference,” he said.

Shwedog wants to clean Borderregions!! and Thais want bilateral trade…

Wild Elephants Attack Cyclone-hit Areas

RANGOON — Local media says wild elephants that lost their habitats in last year’s devastating cyclone are destroying farm lands and attacking villagers as they forage for food.

The privately owned Weekly Eleven journal said Monday that wild elephants lost a swath of their habitat as Cyclone Nargis destroyed forests of the Arakan (Rakhine) mountain range in the southern tip of the Irrawaddy River delta.

The journal did not say whether villagers had been killed or injured in the attacks or if authorities were taking any preventive measures.

The area was the first hit by the cyclone on May 2, which left nearly 140,000 people dead or missing in the delta and other areas.

International and domestic operations to help survivors continue. Irrawaddy News

Khitpyaing news 23.March UDP

ကေနဒါႏုိင္ငံရွိ (က်ံဳယြမ္) ဦးေက်ာ္ျမင့္ဖြဲ႔စည္းထားေသာ ညီၫြတ္ေသာ ဒီမုိကရက္တစ္ပါတီ (UDP) သည္ ၎ႏွင့္ သက္ဆုိင္ျခင္းမရွိေၾကာင္း ေခတ္ၿပဳိင္ႏွင့္ သီးသန္႔ ဆက္သြယ္ေမးျမန္းရာတြင္ ၀ါရင့္ႏုိင္ငံေရးသမားႀကီး ဦးသုေ၀က ျငင္းဆုိလုိက္သည္။
သုိ႔ေသာ္ ဦးသုေ၀သည္ အဆုိပါပါတီ၏ ဥကၠ႒ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ညီၫြတ္ေသာ ဒီမုိကရက္တစ္ပါတီ (UDP) ၏ ၀ဂ္ဆုိက္ျဖစ္သည့္ http://udpmyanmar.blogspot.com/ တြင္ ဦးသုေ၀၏ ဓာတ္ပုံႏွင့္တကြ ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။ အဆုိပါ ၀ဂ္ဆုိက္တြင္ UDP ပါတီမွ ဦးေက်ာ္ျမင့္၏ ရာထူူးကုိ Ex Vice Chairman ဟု ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။
continue http://www.khitpyaing.org/interviews/march_09/23-3-09.php

Thakhin Ko Daw Hmlaing-Picasa by Niknayman/Dr.LunSwe

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/niknayman.niknayman/ThakhinKoDawHmlaing#5225849504362541970

Thanks to Niknayman and Dr.Lun Swe

http://picasaweb.google.com/lunswe70/TKKDM#5174571489117814994

23 March (1876), DOB, Thakin Kodaw Hmaing (1876-1964), native of Wa-le village, Shwetaung

23 March (1876), DOB, Thakin Kodaw Hmaing (1876-1964), native of Wa-le village, Shwetaung
Township, Prome
23 March (1976), 1976 Hmaing Rarpyi uprising (a) Hmaing Centenary uprising, Students uprising
commemorating the centenary of the birth of Thakin Kodaw Hmaing
23 March (2006), death in custody at Tharawaddy prison, U Ko Oo, secretary of NLD, Thayet Township
24 March (1982), World Tuberculosis (TB) Day

27 March (1945), Resistance Day, marking the start of Burmese resistance to occupying Japanese army and
today we are still struggling to get out from under oppressive military dictatorship and achieve
democracy

28 March (1948), People’s Democratic Revolution Day of Burmese Communists
Freedom Burma Calendar 2009 http://documents.scribd.com/docs/vk6ownxjqtia4ujwb7z.pdf

France’s Human Rights Minister visits Karenni refugee camp, promises aid

Daily Hteh/March 19, 2009

Karenni refugees are expecting that with the arrival of France’s Junior Human Rights Minister, Mrs. Rama Yade, support and help for Karenni refugee camps would be more forthcoming. Relief measures and items of daily necessity, which were earlier given to refugee camps, have been reduced after Cyclone Nargis hit Burma.

Ma Sie, a youth secretary from Karenni refugee camp 2, said, “We hope that being from the European Union (EU), she will herself come to our refugee camp and find out our difficulties. Therefore, we would be likely to get a little more support than before.”

A delegation of France’s Junior Human Rights Minister, Mrs. Rama Yade, the Thai Foreign Minister and representatives from NGOs arrived in the Karenni refugee camp on March 13. She met camp administrators and visited an orphanage. She asked about various problems. She said that she would put pressure to change Burma’s military politics.

“They do not have a lot of time. Therefore they cannot talk much about it. She said at the camp’s administration office, that she would help by putting pressure to change Burma’s military regime. Besides, she saw what difficulties there were at the orphanage,” a Karenni refugee said.

According to the Human Rights Minister’s statements, she has already opened an orphanage in France. Therefore, it is related to her work. I hope that these children can benefit with some support and help from her visit, Ma Sie added. http://www.ktimes.org/en/

Army Uses Dynet People for Forced Labor

3/23/2009

Buthidaung: Dynet tribal people in northern Arakan have been forced by the Burmese army to work at many government construction sites and on other projects without any pay, said a tribal leader.
“we have to send at least three or four people, along with our own food, from each village in a week to army headquarters to labor at the army compound,” he said.

Most of the villagers have been working in the army compounds on tasks such as carrying water from the pond to the base, clearing out brush and grass, transporting letters from one battalion to another, and cooking for the soldiers.

“The army authorities have used forced labor at LIB 353 and 534 based in Buthidaung on a rotating system where the villagers work one group at a time. One group is able to return home when another group arrives at the headquarters. If any group does not arrive, the previous group has to continue working at the headquarters until another group shows up,” the leader said.

Dynet villagers from Long Chaung, Tet Ma Chaung, Kyauk Pru Daung, Pyin Kaung, and Nga Kyin Dauk villages are being forced to work on a daily basis. The Dynet people are an ethnic group in the Arakanese community that lives in the border area of Burma near Bangladesh. Most of the community members are uneducated.

Since the people are unable to complain about the use of forced labor by the army to the Rangoon ILO office, the army has taken advantage of them and used them for labor whenever they need work done, the leader added.

According to local source, forced labor is continuing in Arakan State but is primarily now occurring in remote areas near Bangladesh where foreigners are unable to visit
Narinjara News

Construction work on the barbed-wire fencing was suddenly stopped yesterday at Maungdaw in Arakan State, as the authorities received information that about 16,000 army personnel from Bangladesh were ready to penetrate into Arakan North from Chittagong Hill Tracts, a close aide of the Nasaka from Maungdaw said.

The Burmese army personnel immediately left the work site, after hearing the rumor regarding the Bangladesh Army planning to enter North Arakan. After leaving some soldiers in the Nasaka camp, all the rest went to the nearby mountains to observe the situation, after taking shelter in the forest.

Meanwhile, on the Burmese side, recently, at least eleven Burmese army battalions have been deployed along the Burma-Bangladesh border to raise barbed-wire fences. They are LIB, No. 536, 535, 564, 353, 538, 263, 234, 344, 289, 20 and 55.

Imprisoned activist Su Su Nway ‘too weak to even walk’

Mar 23, 2009 (DVB)–Labour rights activist Su Su Nway, who is serving eight and a half years’ imprisonment in Sagain’s Kalay prison, is feared to be seriously ill, according to the family member of an inmate in the prison.

Kyi Shwe, whose son Yan Shwe was a political prisoner inmate in Kalay, said he saw Su Su Nway being carried into the woman’s ward who looked weak and pale.
“I was talking to my son when I saw Su Su Nway, not in her inmate uniform, being taken back into the prison from the outside with support from wardens,” said Yan Shwe.
“She seemed too weak to even walk by herself.”
Su Su Nway was jailed in November 2008 after reporting forced labour practices to the International Labour Organisation.
She was initially sentenced to 12 and a half years but this was later reduced.
Su Su Nway’s sister Htay Htay Kyi said that she was preparing for an immediate visit to her today after learning about her status.
“She was born with a heart problem that needs to be operated on but she never had time for it as she was always busy with her political activities.”

Letter: Return Rohingya civil rights!

This is a comment on an article titled “SBY urged to ask Myanmar to speed up democratization” (The Jakarta Post, March 16).

We do appreciate the Indonesian government’s humane gesture toward our Rohingya refugees there and we hope Indonesia will maintain a continuous pressure on the Myanmar junta to release all political prisoners, prisoners jailed for various unfounded and unfair crimes.

Indonesia must stand above the other authoritarian regimes in ASEAN and push for ASEAN to uphold internationally recognized standards of human rights, civil rights and the rights of all minorities in their respective countries, as the biggest democracy in Southeast Asia and the country with the largest Islamic population in the world.