Easier to apply Myanmar visa(BKK)

In and outs of applying for a visa to Myanmar appear to be easier.

Applying for a Myanmar visa is now easier after the embassy streamlined rules on documents required and extended its working hours.

The embassy claims it now requires fewer documents and has extended opening hours with both morning and afternoon sessions.

According to tour operators in Thailand, the visa procedures are more convenient as a visitor is required to submit a passport, a photocopy of the passport, two photographs, an application form for a tourist visa and the appropriate fee.

Before, visitors had to present their bank statements, copy of house registration, in addition to all the above travel documents.

A tourist visa still takes three working days and currently costs Bt810, but tour operators said they no longer need to queue. Generally, if visitors apply through a travel agency, the visa will cost Bt1,000.

The Bangladeshi border patrol troops have taken positions at the bank of Naaf river in Palongkhali as the Burmese border force Nasaka again started erecting earth embankment within 80 yards of the border.

The Nasaka has deployed 300 workers to build the embankment without consultation with Bangladesh government though they stopped the work yesterday following a protest from the Bangladesh Rifles, a special force that patrols the long border.

BDR officials claimed that Nasaka has stopped their work while they blew whistle and showed red flags.

But the local people yesterday (April 22) said, Nasaka did not stop their work. Few days back, Nasaka built around 300 feet of the embankment, they said.

Meanwhile, a total of 135 Rohingyas whose jail term ended have been staying in the Cox’s Bazar jail while the Burmese government is totally reluctant to receive them.
continue http://www.asianewsnet.net/news.php?id=5382&sec=1

In a fresh crackdown on migrants, Malaysian authorities arrested at least 200 Burmese nationals on Wednesday, in Kuala Lumpur.

During a joint operation conducted by the Malaysian police, immigration officials and peoples’ volunteer corps – RELA – on Wednesday, at least 200 Burmese nationals, both possessing legal documents as well as illegal migrants, were picked up at Zalam Imbi in Kuala Lumpur.

“At around 7:00 pm yesterday, they started launching the operation in Imbi near Times Square. It took over two hours,” Bawi Hre, Chairman of the Chin Refugee Committee- Malaysia, who is following the case closely, told Mizzima.

“Some were arrested on the streets and some were picked up from their residence,” he added.

He said, among the arrested Burmese, including women and children, several of them were registered refugees of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), while some have legal travel documents. However, many of them are illegal migrants, seeking jobs.

For Immediate Release21.april:Over 250,000 signatures secured for Burma’s political prisoners

Mae Sot, Thailand, 21 April 2009

Over 250,000 signatures secured for Burma’s political prisoners
“We must show them they have not been forgotten,” says Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

A global petition campaign for Burma’s political prisoners has secured over a quarter of a million signatures. Campaign activities are taking place across five continents in 32 countries around the world, from the Czech Republic to South Africa. The campaign – which launched on 13 March Burma’s Human Rights Day – aims to collect 888,888 petition signatures before 24 May 2009, the legal date that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi should be released from house arrest.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams today called for increased support for the global campaign to free all of Burma’s political prisoners, including fellow Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. She is the only Nobel Peace Laureate currently imprisoned, and has been under house arrest for 13 of the past 19 years.

Williams won the Peace Prize in 1997 for her work to secure an international treaty to ban antipersonnel landmines. Speaking on behalf of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, founded in 2006 by six of the seven living women Nobel Peace Laureates, she said, “Many of us struggling for peace around the world can use our freedom to express our views. But the people of Burma risk prison to do this. We need to stand shoulder to shoulder with those democracy activists who have been locked up in the dark. We must show them they have not been forgotten. Please embrace our fellow Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her colleagues as heroes for freedom, peace, and democracy, and sign the petition.”

The petition calls on the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to make it his personal priority to secure the release of all political prisoners in Burma, as the essential first step towards national reconciliation and democratization in the country. The target symbolizes 8.8.88, the day the junta massacred some 3,000 people who courageously protested in Burma’s largest democracy uprising.

To sign the petition, visit http://www.fbppn.net

“Secret Genocide is a scholarly book on the plight of the Karen of Burma”by Daniel Pederson

“Secret Genocide is a scholarly book on the plight of the Karen of Burma. Author Daniel Pedersen writes about the secret genocide of the Karen people at the hands of the Burmese junta, who use murder, rape, forced labour and torture to quell their enemies. Decades after the Karen took up arms against Rangoon; there is no telling when – or if – their struggle for a secure homeland will finally be accomplished.” — Maverick House

Secret Genocide

During the past eight years Australian journalist Daniel Pedersen has reported on and off the plight of the Karen people of Burma.
The culmination of that work is to be published in September 2009, by Irish publishing house, Maverick House.
His reports relating to the Karen have appeared in the The Economist, the Courier Mail, The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post, The Nation, The Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun, the Tasmanian Times, SeeBurma.com, Mizzima.com and Tasmania’s The Mercury.
He lives in Mae Sot, Thailand.

Unknown offenders poisoned the water supply of Mae La refugee camp with weed killer on April 11.

Mae La refugee camp water supply poisoned

Daniel Pedersen
Mae Sot, Thailand
April 23, 2009
Unknown offenders poisoned the water supply of Mae La refugee camp with weed killer on April 11.
The camp, on the Thai-Burma border and home to more than 30,000 people, was without water for four days, as pumps and water treatment plants were sent to Bangkok for analysis and scrubbing down.
There were no deaths reported, although a spate of people claimed to have fallen ill with vomiting and diarrhea.
The water that supplies the camp is pumped from underneath the Mae Yuam River, which runs through the camp.
It is then pumped to a high point near the camp’s northern end and gravity fed to tap stations and wells throughout the sprawling bamboo shanty-town.
Empty broad-spectrum herbicide containers were discovered near the pumping station on the morning of April 11 and camp residents were quickly warned not to drink any water drawn from wells throughout the camp.
One camp resident, who asked not to be named, said there was great dismay when the initial discovery was made.
But more sinister rumours spread throughout the settlement when old, faded and empty poison canisters were found nearby, suggesting that feeding the weed killer into the camp’s water supply might have been a long-term project.
Some people in the camp are convinced they will be dead within six months.
An official head count at Mae La in 2005 put the population at 52,000.
Since then 18,000 people have been relocated to third countries, but camp residents said the population really remained static, because there were more people arriving all the time.

Child Soldiers Still Common in Burma: UN Report

WASHINGTON — The Burmese military regime’s army and nine other armed groups are still recruiting child soldiers, according to the latest Annual Report of the UN Secretary-General to the Security Council on Children and Armed Conflict, released on Wednesday.

The report accuses both the Burmese junta and an array of armed ethnic groups, including ceasefire groups and active anti-government forces, of continuing to engage in the practice of recruiting child soldiers
Apart from the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), the Karenni Army (KA) and the Shan State Army-South (SSA-S), all of the armed ethnic groups singled out in the report have signed ceasefire agreements with the Burmese regime.

Researchers Respond to INGOs Criticism(Cyclone nargis-Voices from Delta)

The researchers of a report, “After the Storm: Voices from the Delta,” which details human rights issues in the cyclone-affected areas of southwestern Burma, responded on Tuesday to criticism by 21 international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) by defending their report, saying “we stand by the integrity of our methods.”

The researchers of the report, the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Thailand-based Emergency Assistance Team-Burma (EAT), said they recognized that INGOs in Burma are motivated by real concern for the welfare of the people affected by the cyclone and called on the INGOs to “engage in open dialogue with our organization … to create a more complex picture … Of the situation in the cyclone-affected areas.”
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=15520

read also statement https://democracyforburma.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/statement-of-emergency-assistance-team-burma-and-the-johns-hopkins-center-for-public-health-and-human-rights-regarding-the-report-after-the-storm-voices-from-the/

Three men confess to NMSP man’s murder

Thu 23 Apr 2009, Kon Hadae, IMNA
Three men arrested in Moulmein last night confessed to the murder of NMSP member, Nai Min Aung on April 18th. They were arrested around 8pm for firing shots illegally in the town and charged with the murder when police matched bullet casings from the scene with those recovered after Nai Min Aung was shot. The men then confessed to his murder during police questioning.

A NMSP officer said, “ they’d arrested the three men and that they were still looking for two others in connection with the murder although they did not tell us why. We cannot question them ourselves.”

MAE LA, 23 April 2009 (IRIN) – For decades or more remote Burmese refugee camps strung out along the Thai-Myanmar border have been in a kind of legal limbo, with camp leaders more or less administering justice on an ad hoc basis, say aid workers(IRIN)

MYANMAR-THAILAND: Bringing the law to Burmese refugee camps

MAE LA, 23 April 2009 (IRIN) – For decades or more remote Burmese refugee camps strung out along the Thai-Myanmar border have been in a kind of legal limbo, with camp leaders more or less administering justice on an ad hoc basis, say aid workers.

However in recent years, the Thai authorities have shown an increased willingness to assert the rule of law in these camps.

In 2006 the government gave the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC) permission to assess the legal process and camp residents’ understanding of the law and their responsibilities. In the following year LAC was allowed to provide legal assistance in the camps.

LAC is run by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) currently with the support of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).