Min Ko Naing letter by NLDajb

အာက္တိုဘာလ ၁၈ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ က်ေရာက္ေသာ ေက်ာင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ မင္းကိုႏိုင္(ေခၚ) ကိုေပၚဦးထြန္း၏ ေမြးေန႔အထိမ္းအမွတ္အျဖစ္ မဲေဆာက္ၿမိဳ႔ရွိ ေရြ႔ေျပာင္းျမန္မာအလုပ္သမားမ်ား၏ ကေလး ေက်ာင္းမ်ားတြင္ တရက္စာ အာဟာရေကြၽးေမြးျခင္း အလွဴဒါနႏွင့္ အခမ္းအနားတရပ္ကို ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံေရာက္ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီအင္အားစုမ်ားႏွင့္ continue
Min Ko Naing

KHRG:” Starving them out- Food shortages and exploitative abuse in Papun District“

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Dying Alive Part 1-3 vdo

14 October (1988), Founding Day of Democratic Party for New Society (DPNS)-14 October (1991), Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Aung San Suu Kyi as 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

10 October (2003), death in custody at Insein prison, Saw Do Saw (a) Saw Than, Karen National Union,
Karen
11 October (1999), death of U Ye Kyaw Thu, co-founder of Committee for the Restoration of Democracy in
Burma (CRDB)
11 October (2002), death in custody at Kengtung prison, Sai Pha Than, NLD Kengtung, Shan
12 October (1988), Founding Day of Arakan League for Democracy (ALD)
13 October (1993), death in custody at Thayet Prison, Ko Ai Ko (a) Aik Ko, student at Workers’ College
during 8-8-88 uprising, Hlaing, Rangoon
14 October (1988), Founding Day of Democratic Party for New Society (DPNS)
14 October (1991), Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Aung San Suu Kyi as 1991 Nobel Peace Prize
winner.
16 October (2006), death in custody at Mandalay prison, Ko Thet Win Aung, US State Department
statement: This death demonstrates the tragic price the people of Burma are forced to pay for
opposing the repressive policies of the regime and standing up for their human and democratic rights
18 October (1936), DOB, Dr. Than Nyein, MP, NLD Kyauktan (1), Rangoon, political prisoner 7-year
imprisonment (1997) and extended yearly in January at Insein / Tharawaddy / Paungde / Prome
prisons
18 October (1962), DOB, Ko Min Ko Naing, 88 Generation Students Group, 65-year imprisonment (2008)
Insein / Maubin / Kengtung prisons
18 October (1990), death in custody at Insein prison, Hse Shi (a) Hsi Shi (a) Se Shi, Kachin Independence
Army, Kachin
19 October (2004), death in custody at Insein prison, Rangoon General Hospital, Ko Zaw Myo Htet (a) Zaw
Zaw, university student, Min Hla, Mandalay.
20 October (1998), death in custody at Wakema prison, U Kyaw Din, NLD Wakema, Irrawaddy
20 October (2007), World Malaria Day. It is hoped that the establishment of World Malaria Day will
mobilize communities across the world to get involved in the fight. It is in recognition of the fact
that the world health community recognizes malaria as a global emergency that knows no borders.
21 October (1998), death in custody at Military Camp Mandalay, U Aung Min, NLD, Mandalay
24 October (1876), DOB, Sayar San (a) Ya Gyaw (1876-1931), native of Shwebo, leader of the anti-British
rebellion of 1930-32
26 October (2006), death in custody at Moulmein prison, Maung San

Second Rat-Caused Famine Hits Kachin Hills

Written by KNG
Friday, 16 October 2009 16:09
Rat infestation has caused severe famine for the second time in recent memory in the Kachin hills in military-ruled Burma’s northern Kachin State, said local sources.

In a 50-year cycle, bamboos flower when bamboo groves begin to die. The flowers are eaten by rodents which multiply in huge numbers. The rats go on the rampage and eat crops both on the field and in godown storages, causing famine. The phenomenon is common in Chin state, Burma and contiguous Mizoram state in northeast India.

The small rats, also called Yu Nun in Kachin language have destroyed all standing crops in the Triangle Areas, which are under the control of the 1st Brigade of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) since June, said local sources.

According to data compiled by the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the political-wing of the KIA, 1,086 Kachin villagers in 16 villages in Hkin Dawng and Dagu Lum Townships in Puta-O district of KIO/KIA are suffering the effects of the famine caused by rats.

တပ္ခဲြမွဴးအပါအ၀င္ DKBA တပ္ဖဲြ႕၀င္ (၁၀) ဦး KNU ႏွင့္လာေရာက္ပူးေပါင္း

ေဇာ္ႀကီး။
ေအာက္တုိဘာလ ၁၅ ရက္၊ ၂၀၀၉ ခုႏွစ္။

တုိးတက္ေသာဗုဒၶဘာသာ ကရင္အမ်ဳိးသားတပ္မေတာ္ (DKBA) မွ တပ္ခဲြမွဴးအပါအ၀င္ တပ္ဖဲြ႕၀င္ (၁၀) ဦးသည္ ကရင္အမ်ဳိးသားအစည္းအရံုး(KNU)ႏွင့္ လာေရာက္ ပူးေပါင္းခဲ့သည္။

ယခုလ ၁၃ ရက္ေန႔က ေကအဲန္ယူႏွင့္ လာေရာက္ပူးေပါင္းသူမ်ားသည္ DKBA တပ္မဟာ (၉၉၉)၊ တပ္ရင္း(၅)၊ တပ္ခဲြ ၄ မွျဖစ္ၿပီး KNU လက္ေအာက္ခံ တပ္မဟာ ၅ ကုိ တုိက္ခုိက္ရန္ ျမန္မာစစ္အစုိးရ၏ အမိန္႔ေပးေစခုိင္း မႈကုိ လက္မခံႏုိင္သည့္အတြက္ KNU ထံ လာေရာက္ပူးေပါင္းျခင္းျဖစ္သည္ဟု ထုိအဖဲြ႕မွ ဒုဗုိလ္ေစာညာက ေျပာ သည္။

Couple decapitated in fishing-boat accident in Karen State

Fri 16 Oct 2009, IMNA
According to IMNA’s field reporter, a young Mon couple from Winyaw Seikgyi village in Kyainnseikyi Township, Karen State, was killed last Tuesday October 6thu. The couple was reportedly fishing on the Winyaw River when their fishing boat was run over by a larger ferryboat. The fishing boat was crushed by the ferryboat’s motor, and the couple was decapitated.

“Both of them are from Winyaw Seikgyi village. Both of their heads were cut by the fan from the boat after their boat went under the machine boat,” a fellow Winyaw Seikgyi fisherman and friend of the victims’ family informed IMNA.

IMNA’s field reporter learned that the accident happened near sunset on the 6th, and that the Burmese-Karen ferryboat owner was unable to see the much smaller fishing boat in the growing dark.

“The couple’s relatives complained to the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) [who control] the area. The DKBA ordered the ferryboat owner to pay 1 million kyat for each person [to the victims’ relatives]. They [the DKBA] didn’t take any action against the ferryboat owner. The case was finished by him giving 1 million kyat each,” stated the friend of the family that IMNA interviewed.

Zarganar receives PEN/Pinter award

Oct 16, 2009 (DVB)–Imprisoned Burmese comedian and satirist Zarganar has been chosen by one of Britain’s top poets to receive the prestigious PEN/Pinter award.

The award, named after the late British playwright Harold Pinter, is given annually to one British literary figure and one international ‘imprisoned writer of courage’, according to the PEN organization, which advocates freedom of expression.
British poet Tony Harrison, known for his poems sent from the frontline of the Bosnian war, was chosen for the main prize. He in turn picked Zarganar for the second prize.
Carole Seymour-Jones, chair of English PEN’s writers in prison committee, received the award on Zarganar’s behalf and paid tribute to ‘the wise fool of Burma’. She also paid tribute to the award’s namesake, who was an ardent supporter of imprisoned writers.
The assistant director of English PEN, Sarah Hesketh, told DVB today that the award was also an effort to publicise Zarganar’s plight and that of all the “people on the ground [in Burma] who speak out” but are not acknowledged.
Zarganar was sentenced in November 2008 to 59 years, later reduced to 35 years, after giving interviews to foreign media in which he criticized the Burmese junta’s reaction to cyclone Nargis in May 2008.

Unwanted news, Rangoon electricity and irrationality

By Awzar Thi
Column: Rule of Lords
Burma’s government claims to welcome complaints about malpractice, inefficiency and corruption in the public service. But a recent case of a man imprisoned for repeatedly complaining about bad electricity supply speaks to how easy it is in an irrational system for the complainant, not the government officials, to wind up in trouble.
In early August, U Khin Maung Kyi called the electric supply corporation in his suburb of Rangoon a number of times to complain about a surge in power at his house. It was not the first time that he had called to make a complaint, and the township supply director had already lodged a criminal case with a local court, alleging that the 45-year-old’s repeated calls were obstructing his staff from performing their duties.

This time, Khin Maung Kyi argued with the duty officer, who refused to give his name or let him speak with his superior. Khin Maung Kyi then threatened to make a complaint higher up. Later when asked about this in court the official admitted that the caller had not used offensive language or made unlawful threats, but testified that his manner was impolite and that his calls were an inconvenience.

The director might have thought that in lodging a case in court he would put Khin Maung Kyi off making more calls. In any event, after this latest incident, he set the local state apparatus into movement against the annoying resident.

BURMA: Misuse of law to imprison man who complained about electricity supply

BURMA: Misuse of law to imprison man who complained about electricity supply

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AHRC-STM-214-2009
October 14, 2009

A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission

BURMA: Misuse of law to imprison man who complained about electricity supply

Last week the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) issued an urgent appeal on the case of a man in Burma who has been imprisoned as a consequence of making repeated complaints about electricity supply and other poor services in his neighbourhood of Rangoon. The complainant, U Khin Maung Kyi, 45, in August had called the township electricity supply office over problems with the service to his house. He had argued with the staff on the phone. Thereafter, officials brought a security bond order against him. But because there is already a criminal case pending, he was imprisoned instead of being released on the bond. (The full details of the case are in the appeal: AHRC-UAC-133-2009.)

The case deserves our attention not because it is particularly bad–in comparison to many other cases in Burma it is not–but because it is indicative of how in a perverted system of law and government administration any law can be used for any purpose, including to jail a man whose so-called crime was merely to have been an annoyance to government personnel.

The law under which Khin Maung Kyi has been jailed is the 1961 Restriction and Bond Act. Under that act, if the authorities have credible information that a person or persons are likely to commit a criminal offence, they can apply for a good behaviour bond to be placed on the person or persons. The types of offences for which the act is envisaged are listed under its section 3. They include housebreaking, theft, robbery, procurement, criminal intimidation, destroying railway lines or bridges, arms offences, endangering law and order, or abetment of such crimes.

The list is rather long and some of the offences, including the last–under which Khin Maung Kyi was accused–are ambiguous. In any event, it is clear that the making of repeated telephone calls to a government office does not constitute grounds for the issuance of an order. That this is the case is all the more obvious when considering the contents of the Courts Manual. The manual makes strenuously clear to judges that rumours of possible offences are not satisfactory grounds for issuing these orders. Judges have a special obligation to check that the facts are credible. It states in section 376(1) of chapter XVI that:

“No person should be called upon to give security except under credible, clear and substantial information. Although a police report is credible information, Magistrates must not take action too readily upon such reports…”

The manual and later the 1961 act were both introduced at a time that the courts in Burma were still functioning according to legal principles rather than the policy-directives of a military regime. Therefore they do not consider explicitly a case like that made against a man who merely had the affrontery to complain about his electricity supply. They also both presume that a judge will act more or less according to the concept of a judge that once existed: that of a judicial officer rather than an executive officer in judicial garb. The absurdity of the current case speaks to the vast gap that now exists between the notion of a judge in Burma of the past and the one of the present.