According to a Bangladesh source, there are over 130 Burmese prisoners due to be released from custody, but Burmese authorities have so far only agreed to accept the 68.

68 Released Burmese Prisoners Return Home

4/29/2009
Maungdaw: 68 Burmese nationals were able to return home yesterday from Bangladesh after languishing in Bangladesh prisons for many years.

A witness said, “They arrived at Maungdaw from Bangladesh at 6 pm by ferry and now they are staying at a primary school near the football grounds in Maungdaw.”

Among the release prisoners are 20 people from Maungdaw and nine from Buthidaung. The remaining prisoners are from Sittwe, Paletwa in Chin State and Mawlamyin in Mon State.

“I saw only one woman among them and she is from Paletwa Township. She served many years in Bangladesh,” the witness said.

The prisoners were transferred by Bangladesh authorities to Burma during a flag meeting that was held in Teknaf in Bangladesh, opposite Burma’s Maungdaw, yesterday.

At the flag meeting, a 16-member Burmese team was led by the Nasaka sector 6 commander while a seven-member Bangladesh team was led by Bangladesh Rifles Battalion 42’s commander.

According to a Bangladesh source, there are over 130 Burmese prisoners due to be released from custody, but Burmese authorities have so far only agreed to accept the 68.

Photo of the day-Mr.creator and Swineflu

Thanks Mr.Creator you are the greatest

အမ်ဳိးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးတိုက္ပြဲအတြင္း -Soldier

ခုခံကာကြယ္ရင္း ဧျပီလ ၂၅ရက္ေန႔(စေနေန႔ည)တြင္ တိုင္းျပည္ ႏွင့္လူမ်ဳိးအတြက္ အသက္ေပးသြားခဲ့သူ ကရင္အမ်ဳိးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးတပ္မေတာ္ ၂၀၁တပ္ရင္းမွ ဗိုလ္မွဴးၾကီးေစာေဂ်းအား မိသားစု၊ ရဲေဘာ္ရဲဘက္မ်ားႏွင့္ ထပ္တူထပ္မွ် ၀မ္းနည္းပါသည္။ ဗိုလ္မွဴးၾကီးေစာေဂ်း ေကာင္းရာသုဂတိ လားပါေစ။

ေစာေက်ာ္ခြိ
http://sawkyawkhwi.blogspot.com/2009/04/blog-post_9404.html

NLD NEWS_Speech of the Chair of Meeting(english)

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Thanks to Arzarni

One Year after nargis

Cyclone hit farmers face new plague – pests
by Salai Pi Pi
Tuesday, 28 April 2009 22:45

New Delhi (Mizzima) – A year after Cyclone Nargis devastated Burma’s rice bowl, the Irrawaddy delta, farmers say they are plagued with another disaster – pests.

A farmer in Paunte village in Bogale Township said fighting off pests in their paddy fields is a major task in order to prevent a fall in production.

Pests of various kinds have crept into their paddy field and destroyed farm lands. This has left farmers with little yield impacting their daily lives as well as heralding bad times.

“The pests have destroyed many paddy plants in the field. The problems that we face now are larger than that before the Nargis hit us,” he said.

Cyclone Nargis, which lashed Burma’s Irrawaddy and Rangoon division on May 2 last year, left at least 140,000 dead or missing and devastated over 2.4 million peoples lives.

Despite several aid groups including United Nations agencies helping cyclone survivors with relief aid and reconstruction, farmers said the current problem of pests is a new one facing them.

“I am not even sure whether I can continue farming in the ensuing monsoon season,” said a farmer from Demoeyin Village, who recently visited Bogale town to Mizzima on Tuesday.

Summary report on military engagements in KNLA areas

y Daniel Pedersen on Apr.28, 2009, under Bangkok

between KNLA and SPDC army troops

March 1 to 31, 2009
KNLA areas No. of clashes Enemy Enemy items captured by KNLA
Dead Wounded MA LMG Assault rifles RPG-7 rounds Mag/Ammo clips Claymore mines M-14 Landmines
Bde-1 4 8 9 – 2 – 2 – –
Bde-2 50 13 55 – 3 – – – –
Bde-3 4 13 2 1 10 5 35 2 4
Bde-4 4 8 9 – – – – – –
Bde-5 39 33 44 – – – – – –
Bde-6 5 2 1 – – – – – –
Bde-7 – – – – – – – – –
GHQ – – – – – – – – –
Total 107 77 120 1 15 5 37 2 4
KNLA Losses
KNLA areas KNLA losses KNLA items lost
Dead Wounded Assault rifles M-79 Carbine M-79 rounds T-ceiver
Bde-1 – – – – – – –
Bde-2 – – 5 1 1 – –
Bde-3 – 3 – – – – –
Bde-4 – 1 – – – – –
Bde-5 – – – – – – –
Bde-6 1 1 1 1 – 25 1
Bde-7 – – – – – – –
GHQ – – – – – – –
Total 1 5 6 2 1 25 1
Dead ratio, KNLA to SPDC troops — 1: 77
Wounded ratio, KNLA to SPDC troops — 1:24
Note:
In Bde-1, among dead there were one SPDC Army Coy commander, one sergeant, & one corporal, and among wounded there were one column commander, one 2nd Lt. & 2 sergeants. One SPDC soldier surrendered.
In Bde-2, one enemy bulldozer was destroyed;
In Bde-4, among dead there were one SPDC Army Coy commander and one sergeant, and among wounded there was one Bn commander;
In Bde-5, among dead there was one SPDC camp commander;
In Bde-6, one DKBA soldier surrendered;
In Bde-7, one peace group (so-called KNU/KNLA Peace Council) soldier surrendered.
Abbreviations: Bde = Brigade; GHQ = General Headquarters; MA-1, MA-2, MA-3, K-3 etc. = Myanmar Army assault rifles, designed by China and manufactured by SPDC; T-ceiver =Radio transceiver; M-79 = 40 mm grenade launcher of US origin; LM G = Light Machine Gun; AK = Assault rifle of Russian origin; RPG=Rocket-propelled Grenade Launcher; M-16 = Assault rifle of US origin; Bn = Battalion; Coy =Company; 2 IC = Second in Command
Locations of KNLA Bdes : Bde-1, Thaton District; Bde-2, Toungoo District; Bde-3, Nyaunglaybin District; Bde-4, Mergue-Tavoy District; Bde-5, Papun district; Bde-6, Kawkareik district; Bde-7, Pa-an District; and GHQ Battalions, Kawkareik and Pa-an Districts.
ENDS

Karen Human Right Report-Whatever happened to the 2007 protesters?: Interviews with convict porters

This report presents the contents of January 2009 KHRG interviews with two Burmese men who were arrested for their participation in the 2007 popular protests against the rising cost of living in Burma. The 2007 protests reached their peak following the dramatic reduction in fuel price subsidies by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), Burma’s ruling junta, on August 15th 2007 and the subsequent participation of tens of thousands or Buddhist monks beginning in late August.[1] However, the demonstrations began on a smaller scale prior to August. In Arakan State, from where both interviewees hailed, the 2007 demonstrations began on June 19th with a solo protest by Maung Kyaw Naing.

The first interview included here was conducted with 29-year-old Ko W— who was arrested in Arakan State on November 27th 2007. On December 5th 2007, SPDC authorities sentenced Ko W— to two and a half years’ imprisonment. Ko W— was then moved to Kyauk Pyu prison. In November 2008, Ko W— was removed from prison, sent to the frontline in Karen State to serve as a convict porter alongside the Burma Army and subsequently escaped.

http://www.khrg.org/khrg2009/khrg09b2.pdf

http://www.khrg.org/khrg2009/khrg09b2.html

Karen Human Right Report-Food crisis: The cumulative impact of abuse in rural Burma

Introduction and Executive Summary

Rural villagers in Karen State are currently facing a food crisis, as a direct result of human rights abuses inflicted upon them primarily by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the military junta currently ruling Burma, and its allied armed groups. Villagers face not only the day-to-day abuses commensurate with the SPDC’s militarisation campaign, but also the long-term combined impacts of those abuses. However, there has been a glaring lack of attention on this issue by the international media.

This briefer considers the widespread and sustained human rights abuses at the root of this crisis, the compounding consequences of these abuses and the ways in which villagers have attempted to resist abuse, maintain their livelihoods and survive despite the food crisis. Recognising the strategies that villagers are already using to address food insecurity, the briefer gives recommendations to the international community on actions that can be taken to alleviate the current crisis and prevent future abuse and malnutrition in rural Burma.

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