Trial of American citizen of Burmese origin tomorrow

by Phanida
Tuesday, 13 October 2009 21:46

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Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – The trial of American citizen of Burmese origin Kyaw Zaw Lwin (alias) Nyi Nyi Aung will begin on Wednesday, his lawyers and families said.

Nyi Nyi Aung was arrested at the Rangoon airport while arriving from Bangkok despite having a valid US passport and Burmese visa.

Nyan Win, one of his attorneys, said they were allowed a meeting with Nyi Nyi Aung on Monday and was told that he was charged by the police of fraud and forging documents.

“The trial will begin tomorrow [Wednesday] at 10 a.m. but we still don’t know in which court he will be produced. He has been remanded twice. Now he has to be produced in court or released,” Nyan Win, one of the lawyers, told Mizzima on Tuesday.

“He was remanded under sections 420 (fraud) and 468 (forgery) of the Penal Code,” Nayn Win added.

High Court Advocates Nyan Win and Kyi Win have been registered as Nyi Nyi Aung’s attorney to defend him. Both the lawyers have earlier team up in defending detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was charged, tried and sentenced on August 11.

-Birth Registration and Citizenship in Thailand

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DKBA has recently been recruiting members from among the villagers and has forbidden them from leaving the relocation site.

DKBA Takes Aim at Brigade 5
About 2,000 Karen villagers have been forced to relocate by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) since May, as the pro-junta ethnic army takes up position to move into northern Karen State where the Karen National Union’s (KNU) Brigade 5 is based, according to Karen sources.

According to a Karen relief group, the Karen Office for Relief and Development (KORD), the estimated 2,000 Karen villagers are from six villages in Papun District and were forced to relocate to a makeshift jungle camp known as Thapepan, which is controlled by the DKBA.Maw Law, a KORD field relief worker who recently returned from northern Karen State, said the DKBA has recently been recruiting members from among the villagers and has forbidden them from leaving the relocation site.

“They won’t even let villagers go out of the camp to forage for food,” said Maw Law.

He speculated that the DKBA wants to cut the Karen villagers’ lines of communication with the KNU’s military wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA).

About 35 villagers escaped and ran away from the relocation camp due to the restrictions, said Maw Law.

After seizing KNLA Brigade 7 in June, the DKBA vowed to launch a military operation against KNLA Brigade 5 in Papun District by September.

A member of the Free Burma Rangers, a locally based relief group, said DKBA battalions are active in Mae Mwe areas in Papun District and that the DKBA soldiers were trying to “clean up” KNLA Brigade 5 in Papun district.Fighting in Papun district is now reported every day, he said.

Getting to Know Burma’s Ruling General

Among Manchester United Football Club’s 300 million or so supporters worldwide are two Burmese men whose love of the game spans generations. One is a stout, bespectacled, betel nut — chewing septuagenarian, the other his favorite teenage grandson, and like many of their soccer-mad compatriots they stay up late into Burma’s tropical nights to watch live broadcasts from faraway England. So far, so normal. But knowing the grandfather in this touching scene is Senior General Than Shwe, the xenophobic chief of Burma’s junta, makes it seem all wrong. Rabidly anti-Western, yet pro-Wayne Rooney, is this the tyrant we know and hate?
That English football is one of Than Shwe’s surprise passions might seem trivial, but it raises a serious question. With U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying on Sept. 24 that Washington would begin “engaging directly” with Burma’s military leaders after 20 years of American censure and sanctions, how well do we really know the junta? “We don’t understand it very well at all, although it’s not very easy to understand,” says Donald M. Seekins, a Burma scholar at Meio University in Okinawa, Japan. Trying to fathom the regime’s worldview doesn’t mean we condone its human-rights abuses; many believe that ongoing atrocities by the Burmese military constitute war crimes. But policies based on a flawed understanding of Than Shwe and his men will be ineffective or even counterproductive, warn Burma experts. Now, therefore, is time to get to know the generals — starting with the man his soldiers call Aba Gyi, or Grandfather. continue
Getting to Know Burma’s Ruling General

အေမ – ၆၄ (Generation Wave) rap

Burma’s New Constitution: A Death Sentence for Ethnic Diversity by ZIPPORAH SEIN

Zipporah Sein is general secretary of the Karen National Union

As Burma’s rainy season draws to a close, ethnic Karen villagers in eastern Burma are bracing themselves for a new military onslaught. It is expected that this new military offensive will be much larger than the one in June, which forced around 6,000 people to flee for their lives.

We already have strong indications that the new offensive will take place in Dooplaya and Mutraw (Papun) districts, as attacks have been going on there throughout the rainy season. Until three years ago, the Burmese government’s army mostly ceased operations during the rainy season, but now civilians get no respite.

So, why this new urgency to escalate attacks? The reason is the same as why the number of political prisoners has doubled in the past two years. It is the same reason why Aung San Suu Kyi was put on trial and her detention extended, and why the dictatorship has broken cease-fire agreements and demanded cease-fire groups place their soldiers under the control of the regime’s army. All opposition and ethnic groups must be crushed in the run up to elections in 2010.

The elections bring in a new Constitution that legalizes dictatorship through a civilian front and a rubber-stamp Parliaments to do its bidding. For Burma’s generals this Constitution is a way of securing their rule.

The US citizen currently detained in Burma on charges of masterminding a bomb plot and inciting rioting met with his lawyers yesterday to discuss the pending trial

US detainee in Burma meets with lawyers
Oct 13, 2009 (DVB)–The US citizen currently detained in Burma on charges of masterminding a bomb plot and inciting rioting met with his lawyers yesterday to discuss the pending trial.

Nyi Nyi Aung (also known as Kyaw Zaw Lwin) is due to appear at Rangoon’s Insein prison courtroom on Wednesday to hear details on the trial, his lawyers said.
He is being represented by Nyan Win and Kyi Win, two of the lawyers who represented opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in her recent trial.
Nyi Nyi Aung, a Burmese national who has US citizenship, was arrested on 3 September upon arrival at Rangoon International Airport.
According to Nyan Win, he is being held under charges of forging documents, although he has also been accused of masterminding bombing plans, inciting riots and funding political activists.
An article in the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper last month mentioned him in relation to a series of bomb blasts that hit Rangoon on 16 and 17 September, two weeks after he was arrested.

Eighteen human trafficking victims were freed from captivity this week when Thai police and human rights activists raided two boats and broker houses in Samaesan, a fishing town in Santthip Province.

Burmese Trafficking Victims Freed in Raid
In a joint operation by the Labour Rights Promotion Network (LPN), Seafarer’s Union Burma (SUB) and the Department of Special Investigation (DSI), two major brokers in the region and a Thai boat captain were arrested.
The victims, all Burmese nationals, had been assured jobs in Thai factories by job brokers inside Burma but instead were sold as fishermen to two Thai boat captains.

Having passed through the hands of three different brokers, the victims were told they would have to work without pay for seven months in order pay off the trafficking costs, which equaled 22,000 baht (US $650).

The victims, all Burmese nationals, had been assured jobs in Thai factories by job brokers inside Burma but instead were sold as fishermen to two Thai boat captains.

Having passed through the hands of three different brokers, the victims were told they would have to work without pay for seven months in order pay off the trafficking costs, which equaled 22,000 baht (US $650).

Following a tip off from two of the fishermen working on one of the boats, 20 DSI police waited at a pier for the boat to return from its day at sea. When the boat arrived, the police interrogated the captain while Ko Ko Aung of the SUB, which is affiliated with the International Trade Federation (ITF), informed the fishermen they could leave the boat if they wished.

The Burmese military junta has been constructing a tunnel bunker in Ann Township in Arakan State since the beginning of this year for storing fighter jets, said a military source.

Burmese Military Junta Constructs Tunnel in Arakan

10/13/2009
Ann: The Burmese military junta has been constructing a tunnel bunker in Ann Township in Arakan State since the beginning of this year for storing fighter jets, said a military source.

The tunnel is located in Mae Daung Mountain, located ten miles north of Ann where the Western Command is stationed.

According to a local source, a military air base has also been under construction Ann Town for the last few years but is now complete, and fighter jets are now landing at the base.

The tunnel is intended to be connected with the air base but no further information about the tunnel is known, one analyst said.

The Burmese military junta has been constructing many underground tunnels throughout Burma with the help of North Korea, but there is no detailed information on the tunnel in Arakan, or whether North Korea is assisting in the construction.

According to the military source, this is the latest military build-up in Arakan State. Prior to this, the regime built other military infrastructure, including Kyauk Pru Navy Base, Ann Air Base, and Kyaun Thaya Radar Station.

The Burmese military has been increasing its strength in Arakan State because it is in a strategic location on the Bay of Bengal, which is rich in natural resources. Narinjara

Mystery surrounds ceasefire leader’s death

TUESDAY, 13 OCTOBER 2009 10:33 S.H.A.N.

The death of Maj-Gen Sai Nawng of Shan State Army (SSA) North on Sunday, in Hsipaw, seemingly a suicide, was shrouded in mysterious circumstances, according to sources from Shan State, who insisted Sai Nawng, 64, a seasoned combat veteran, had no sound reasons to kill himself.

“Most disturbing was the position of his pistol,” said an officer. “It was lying in front instead of on his side, leading to suspicion that it could have been an assassination.”

Sai Nawng was found dead of a gunshot wound on the morning of Monday by the housemaid. “The gunshot was not heard by his neighbors,” a source close to the SSA told Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma. “They believed the assassin had used a silencer.”Sai Nawng was born in Kutkhai on 22 March 1945, attended St Albert’s before joining the resistance on 19 October 1963, according to Who’s Who column in SHAN’s Independence monthly, February 2007 issue. As a company commander, he was responsible for the security of British TV crew who were in Shan State 1972-73, to shoot the much acclaimed “The Opium Warlords” documentary. He later commanded the famed Battalion 816. A member of the delegation led by Maj Gen Hso Ten that negotiated with the Burma Army for truce in 1989, he was elected as Deputy Commander of the SSA afterwards.

From 1993-1998, he served as its commander when Hso Ten retired. At the time of his death, he was one of the two honorary chairmen of the SSA. The other is Hso Ten who is serving a 106 year jail term at Khamti.

His funeral will be on 14 October in Hsipaw.