Southern Wa fighters on the move

TUESDAY, 06 OCTOBER 2009 17:49 HSENG KHIO FAH

Many sources reported that units of the United Wa State Army (UWSA)’s southern region along the Thai-Burma border has been on the move especially during night time.

On 3 October, 4 ten-wheel trucks of the Wa force in Mongyawn, Shan State East’s Monghsat township, opposite Thailand’s Mae Ai district, were reportedly moving to a Wa stronghold, Wanhoong, east of Monghsat. About 50 men were carried along on each truck, said a local source.

“But those trucks disappeared before reaching Wan Hoong,” he said.

On the next day, 6 more trucks were reported to have gone again to Wanhoong. Two of them dropped some fighters on the way and the rest went on to Wanhoong, he added.

Two more casualties in Kokang

TUESDAY, 06 OCTOBER 2009 16:21 S.H.A.N.
Apart from the 26 killed and 47 wounded as announced by official media which could not be verified, there were two other casualties from Kokang that were left unannounced, according to a report coming from a reliable source on the border.

One was Police Officer Ne Win who was in charge of the law enforcement unit in the Kokang capital Laogai where 15 policemen were killed. He was replaced with Myint Aung from Monywa, Sagaing division, on 31 August, just two days after the fighting at Qingshuihe on the Kokang-Wa-Yunnan triangle.

Another casualty was Brig-Gen Win Maung, Commander of the Laogai Regional Operations Command (ROC), who was arrested also after the fighting. “The exact cause for his downfall is not disclosed,” said the source. “But he was reported to have been taking kickbacks from the drug business and the cross-border trade.”

The purges inside the police department that took place last month involving police chief Khin Yi however appeared to have nothing to do with the Kokang campaign in August, he said.

Clarification of KNU Policy on 2010 Elections

OFFICE OF THE SUPREME HEADQUARTERS

KAREN NATIONAL UNION
KAWTHOOLEI

Clarification of KNU Policy on 2010 Elections

October 5, 2009

1. We, the Karen National Union (KNU) are aware that a recent letter by the Ethnic Nationalities Council (ENC), appearing to state that the SPDC’s elections due in 2010 could present some kind of opportunity for change, has caused some confusion.

2. We would like to reaffirm our statement of April 24, 2009 that elections due in 2010 do not represent any kind of progress towards democratization in Burma.

3. The overwhelming evidence that the elections due in 2010 offer no hope for any kind of change is as follows:

· The referendum in 2008 exposed that no political campaigning is allowed unless approved and in line with SPDC policy, so no genuine political space will be created by the process of the elections.

· The referendum in 2008 has shown that results will be rigged, and with the many other restrictions on freedom, they will ensure there is no way the elections will be free and fair.

· The Constitution not only enshrines military rule, it also grants no ethnic rights or protection. The Constitution represents a serious threat to ethnic diversity in Burma.

· The Parliament will be a rubber-stamp Parliament, and with laws blocking freedom of speech remaining in place in the new Constitution, and the SPDC investing in a new computerised media censorship system, it is clear there will be no genuine opening of political space after the elections.

4. The 2008 Constitution is in breach of international law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

5. We have repeatedly warned that elections in 2010 will not result in any improvement of the human rights and humanitarian situation in Burma, and that repression and instability will continue.

6. We are saddened that our predictions have proved correct, and that there has been a dramatic escalation in military attacks as the dictatorship seeks to crush all opposition ahead of the election.

7. The apparent ‘wait and see’ approach of the international community regarding the 2010 elections is not a viable option. A major human rights and humanitarian crisis is unfolding in ethnic areas of Burma as attacks on ethnic people escalate. This is a result of SPDC’s 2010 elections agenda.

8. The international community seems content to allow the SPDC to defy them, and is following their 2010 agenda. We repeat our call on governments around the world not to endorse the 2010 elections and to redouble efforts to persuade the SPDC to enter into genuine tri-partite dialogue.

9. We call on the SPDC to follow the demands of the UNGA, UNSC, EU, USA and others, and engage in genuine tripartite dialogue leading to genuine change in our country.

10. We are working for a peaceful, stable, federal Burma. We stand ready to enter into genuine tripartite dialogue, as facilitated by the United Nations, at any time.

The Central Executive Committee
Karen National Union

6 Burmese Sex Workers Arrested after CNN filmed a picture board

Three male and three female Burmese sex workers were arrested after a surprise raid by Thai police in HatYai on the Thailand-Malaysia border.
The female workers aged 24, 21 and 19 confessed to having upwards of three years experience in the sex industry.
Their images were broadcast widely in the international media after CNN filmed a picture board with their images and broadcast it on the internet and news media without their permission.
The sex workers were released after paying a fine, and escaped further punishment due to the prominent standing of their Thai boss in the community it is being reported.
Many Burmese workers enter Thailand hoping to find employment, however after an innability to find a job, or with the promise of an easier life they turn to the exploititive sex-industry.
There is also a reported increase of female and male workers being trafficked across the border for work in Thailand’s burgeoning sex industry.

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

Six Burmese soldiers shot dead one of their officers on the frontline near Battalion No. 1 of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in Burma’s northern Kachin State and fled with their arms

Six Burmese soldiers shot dead one of their officers on the frontline near Battalion No. 1 of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in Burma’s northern Kachin State and fled with their arms, said sources close to the Burmese military base in Loije.

The murdered officer held the rank of Sergeant. He was shot dead at the military camp near Loije (also Lweje) in Bhamo district on October 3 (Saturday) at about 8:30 p.m. local time by soldiers under his command, said sources close to the Burmese Army camp in Lweje. The officer is yet to be identified.The incident occurred in the area near Sadung Bum Burmese Army camp south of Loije, according to local residents.

The killers are being searched by over 30 Burmese troops in Kachin villages around Loije. Villagers in these areas have been interrogated by soldiers since yesterday but there is no trace of the missing soldiers, the sources added.

The dead officer and all the killer soldiers were from the Sarhmaw-based Infantry Battalion (IB) No. 105. They were sent to Burmese military camps near KIA Battalion No. 1, said sources close to the Burmese military base in Loije.

KIO Trying Compromise Formula With Burma Junta

Written by KNG
Tuesday, 06 October 2009 17:35
The Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), one of the largest ethnic armed groups in Northern Burma is trying to work out a compromise formula with the Burmese military junta over the issue of transforming its armed wing, said KIO officials.

The regime is in no mood to compromise on its proposed Border Guard Force (BGF). However, the KIO will continue negotiating with the military junta through dialogue, Dr. Lahkyen La Ja, General Secretary of the KIO in the Laiza headquarters on the Sino-Burma border in Kachin State told KNG today.
Since April, the KIO has been under mounting pressure to convert its armed-wing the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) to the Burmese Army controlled BGF on a battalion level by the junta.

The KIO, on the other hand has proposed to the junta that it wants to transform the KIA to a brigade level self-governed Kachin Regional Guard Force (KRGF). It also desires direct participation in administration, the legislature and judiciary of the new Kachin State government to be formed after the 2010 elections.

On the BGF, Dr. La Ja, one of the key policy makers of the KIO told KNG that the highest level of compromise that the KIO is willing to make with the junta is transforming KIA to KRGF.

Motorbike owners forced to buy coupons for police force’s restaurant stand fund

Tue 06 Oct 2009, IMNA
The Burmese government’s police unit in Thanbyuzayat Township in Mon State are forcing motorbike owners traveling on the Thanbyuzayat highway (a major highway serving most of Mon State, including Moulmein, Thanbyuzayat, and Ye Townships) to buy coupons for the police unit’s restaurant booth at the Kyaikamee pagoda festival, which began yesterday on October 5th, and will last through today. The booth is intended to raise money for the Thanbyuzayat policemen’s fund.

The Thanbyuzayat police unit is based in Phaungsein village, located on the Thanbyuzayat highway. The police unit has used its favorable location to pull over and force a coupon sale on every motorbiker passing through their area of the highway, claim a number of Mon State motorbikers who have been forced to purchase coupons for the festival.

IMNA’s reporter in Thanbyuzayat township polled a number of victimized motorbikes from various regions of Mon State, who all claimed to have been pulled over on the highway and forced to buy coupons to support the policemen’s fund. The coupons in question were “sold” for a price between 700 and 1000 each. According to the interviewed motorbikes who found themselves in possession of coupons, motorbikes can exchange their coupons for a meal at the policemen’s restaurant booth at the Kyaikamee festival between the hours 10 am to until 9 pm. Kyaikamee village is far 24 km from central Thanbyuzayat town. The Kyaikamee pagodas are known locally as the “Kyaikamee Yelelpaya”.

KNU-DKBA News by KaoWao 6.oct.

ဘုရားသုံးဆူ- သျံဖဴဇရပ္ကားလမ္းမေပၚ႐ွိ ဒီေကဘီေအဂိတ္မႉးတစ္ဦး

ေကာင္းဝါ(ေအာက္တုိဘာ-၆) ။ ။ နအဖျမန္မာစစ္ေၾကာင္းတစ္ေၾကာင္းတြင္ ဒီေကဘီေအတပ္ဖြဲ႔ဝင္ ၁၀ဦး အင္အားျဖည့္လႈပ္႐ွားသြားရန္ အေ႐ွ႔ေတာင္တုိင္းစစ္ဌာနခ်ဳပ္(ရတခ)မွ ၫႊန္ၾကားထားေၾကာင္း ဘုရားသုံးးဆူေဒသ ႐ွိ အမည္မေဖၚလုိသူ ဒီေကဘီေအအရာ႐ွိတစ္ဦးႏွင့္ ဆက္သြယ္ေမးျမန္းခ်က္အရ သိရသည္။

အဆုိပါၫႊန္ၾကားခ်က္မွာ ယခုရက္သတၲပတ္အတြင္း ဘုရားသုံးဆူ – သံျဖဴဇရပ္ကားလမ္းမေပၚ႐ွိ ကရင္ျပည္နယ္၊ ၾကာအင္းဆိပ္ႀကီးၿမဳိ႕နယ္၊ အနန္းကြင္း႐ြာသုိ႔ ေျပာင္းေ႐ြ႕အေျခစုိက္ခဲ့ေသာ ရတခေ႐ွ႔တန္းဗ်ဴဟာ ၃ မွထပ္ဆင့္ ၫႊန္ၾကားခဲ့သည္ဟု ဆုိပါသည္။

Junta supremo postpones delta trip

Tuesday, 06 October 2009 17:47

New Delhi (Mizzima) – Burma’s ruling military supremo Snr Gen Than Shwe, who was scheduled to pay a two-day visit to the Irrawaddy Delta, has postponed his trip to mid-October, at the eleventh hour, military sources said.

According to the source, Than Shwe had earlier planned a trip to the delta, as part of a good will measure to show solidarity and support to victims of Cyclone Nargis. He had also planned to inaugurate the Yuzana Cyclone Shelter in Pyar Pone Township.

“[Than Shwe] postponed his delta trip to the middle of the month… everything was prepared there and ministers waiting in the delta area are calling back……he must have changed his mind at the last minute,” the source said.

Cyclone Nargis (2008) left over 140,000 dead and several missing. It destroyed the lives of over 2.4 million people in the Irrawaddy Delta and Rangoon Division.

Than Shwe is reportedly in Rangoon, meeting and accepting gifts and offerings from military officials and his business cronies as part of the ceremony of the end of Buddhist lent.
mizzima

The Karen National Union (KNU) made the statement in reaction to a letter sent by the umbrella Ethnic Nationalities Council (ENC) to US senator Jim Webb, suggesting that elections might herald change in Burma.

Oct 6, 2009 (DVB)–Burma’s elections next year are not a sign of progress towards democratization, according to a prominent ethnic opposition group who said that repression will continue beyond 2010.

The Karen National Union (KNU) made the statement in reaction to a letter sent by the umbrella Ethnic Nationalities Council (ENC) to US senator Jim Webb, suggesting that elections might herald change in Burma.
“It is…our hope that the new government will be more open to negotiating a political solution with the ethnic groups that are still engaged in armed struggle,” the ENC letter said, adding that it would “support eligible ethnic groups in running for office in the 2010 elections”.
Critics of the Burmese government have said however that the elections are likely to be a farce, with the 2008 constitution appearing to guarantee continuation of military rule.
The KNU today responded with a statement repeating its calls to the international community not to endorse the elections, claiming that they “will not result in any improvement of the human rights and humanitarian situation”.
“Before the elections there must be freedom to campaign, and there must be freedom of the press…and there must election monitoring by international NGOs and organizations,” said KNU spokesperson David Thakabaw.
While the ENC letter echoed Thakabaw’s comments, it appeared ultimately to support participation in the elections.
“[ENC] thinking has become very reactionary,” Thakabaw said. “They think if they boycott the elections, the ethnic groups will become very sidelined or isolated.
“But if democratic and ethnic groups boycott the elections, then the [government] will become sidelined. Nobody will accept the election results.”