London Calling:Invitation to Protest Against Junta Planned Sham 2010 Election

View this document on Scribd

Crimes in Burma-World’s Leading Jurists Call for Investigation into Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes in Burma

View this document on Scribd

Burma Lawyers Council Press Release

View this document on Scribd

K.P.F ကရင္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးတပ္ဖြဲ႔ အမွတ္(၃) ယာယီတပ္ရင္မႈး ေစာဝါးခ်ဲ႔ကို K N U မွဖမ္းဆီးမိၿပီး ျပန္လည္လြတ္ေျမာက္သြား

ေကာင္းဝါ(နိုဝင္ဘာ- ၂၂)။ ။ ကရင္ျပည္နယ္ ၾကာအင္းဆိပ္ၾကီးျမိဳ႔နယ္ ဘုရားသုံးဆူၿမိဳ႔ အေျခစိုက္ K.P.F ေခၚ ကရင္ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးတပ္ဖြဲ႔၏ အမွတ္(၃)ယာယီတပ္ရင္းမႈး ဗိုလ္မႈးေစာဝါးခ်ဲ႔ အပါအဝင္ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ဝင္(၅)ေယာက္ကို လက္နက္(၆)လက္ႏွင့္အတူ KNU ဘက္မွ နိုဝင္ဘာ(၂၀)ရက္နံက္(၈)နာရီအခ်ိန္တြင္ ဖမ္းဆီးမိခဲ့ၿပီး ေနာက္ပုိင္းတြင္ ျပန္လည္လြတ္ေျမာက္သြားသည္ဟု K.P.F အဖြဲ႔ႏွင့္ နီးစပ္သူတစ္ဦးမွ ေျပာပါသည္။

ဗိုလ္မႈးေစာဝါးခ်ဲ႔ႏွင့္ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ဝင္(၅)ဦးတို႔သည္ ဘုရားသုံးဆူမွ သံျဖဴဇရပ္ၿမိဳ႔တို႔အျပန္ ၿမိဳင္သာယာ႐ြာၾကားတြင္ KNU ဘက္မွ လယ္ယာစိုက္ပ်ိဳးေရးတာဝန္ခံ တိုင္ကီ(ေခၚ)စိုးပိုင္ တို႔အဖြဲ႔မွ ဖမ္းဆီးခဲ့သည္ဟု ေဒသခံတို႔မွ ေျပာပါသည္။ K.P.F တပ္ဖြဲ႔ဝင္(၆)ေယာက္ႏွင့္အတူ လက္နက္အတို (၂)လက္၊ AK 47(၃)လက္၊ ကာဘိုင္ (၁)လက္ ဖမ္းမိ သိမ္းဆီးထားသည္ဟု K N U ဘက္မွ ေျပာပါသည္။

Gas pipeline explosion in Thanphyuzayart Township pics

by IMNA 23.November 2009

Traffic police make a profit selling Buddha images

Mon 23 Nov 2009, Jaloon Htaw
According to motorbikers and public bus drivers in the area, as of November 16th traffic police have been forcing drivers to buy Buddha images at the government-run checkpoint, located on the highway between Moulmein and Mudon Town.

According to a bus driver, starting on November 16th, 5 traffic police began marketing the images at the checkpoint between Moulmein and Mudon Town; three days later, on November 19th, they moved the operation to a checkpoint located between Kawkhapone village and Kwan-tha village in Mudon Township. The Buddha image in question was apparently originally created by a monk in Kyaikmayaw Township.

“They sell one image for 3000 kyat, they force us to buy them. I did not argue because it is the Buddha’s image. I bought one. This is not good, that they are selling [the images] for their [police] fund. This is just a way for them to find money,” this bus driver informed IMNA.

According to a student at Moulmein University, traffic police stop buses and motorbikers under the pretense of checking license validity, motorbike safety, and for the use of motorbike helmets; once the vehicles have been pulled over, their drivers find a Buddha image being pressed upon them. In this student’s case, he was able to con his way out of purchasing the policemen’s wares.

“They stopped my motorbike and checked it. I have both a license and I had my motorbike hat on too. So they told me to buy the image. I told them that I had no money, and that when I came back I would buy it. After that they give permission for me to go” this student informed IMNA

Burmese army targets 11 officers from a Karen splinter group for arrest

Fri 20 Nov 2009, IMNA, Weng Mon
Arrest orders have been issued for 11 officers of a Karen splinter group, by the Burmese army. The 11 officers are accused of profiting from the illegal sales of drugs.

According to sources close to the Karen National Union / Karen National Liberation Army – Peace Council (KNU/KNLA-PC), officers from three of their offices, including the location in Three Pagodas Pass that opened recently in 2009, are targeted for arrest.

Maj Gen Htain Maung (Htay Maung), chairman of the KNU/KNLA-PC was contacted by the Burmese military government, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), and informed that members of the KNU/KNLA-PC were involved in drug sales. According to the same sources, Maj Gen Htain Maung informed the SPDC that they could arrest the officers if they were able to catch them.

This is apparently first time members of the KNU/KNLA-PC have been accused by the Burmese government of being connected to drug sales.

The 11 officers had been stationed at offices in Three Pagoda Pass, Myawaddy in Karen State and Kaw Thaung, Tenasserim Division, were they had been accused of being involved in drug sales. The officers have since been missing and office staffs didn’t know where they located, said sources close staff from KNU/KNLA-PC at Three Pagodas Pass.

The same sources have reported that currently most KNU/KNLA-PC offices are without officers.

ICC Campaigns in Asia: Prospects and challenges in Afghanistan, Burma and Indonesia

Events Nov 2009

ICC Campaigns in Asia: Prospects and challenges in Afghanistan, Burma and Indonesia
25 Nov 2009
25 November 2009 – 7:30 P.M.

Moderator: Ms. Evelyn Serrano, Asia and Pacific Coordinator, Coalition for the ICC (Manila, Philippines)

Panellists:
Mr. Niamatullah Ibrahimi, Deputy Director, AfghanWatch
Mr. Aung Htoo, general secretary, Burma Lawyers’ Council
Mr. Bhatara Ibnu Reza, executive member, Indonesian Civil Society Network for the ICC

The Supranational Criminal Law Lectures series are organised by the T.M.C Asser Instituut, the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC) and the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies (Leiden University, Campus The Hague).

Attendance is free. Seats are limited.
Location: T.M.C Asser Instituut, Schimmelpennincklaan 20-22, The Hague – For directions check the T.M.C Asser Institute website
Contact Information: For more information, please contact +31 (0) 70-3420300 or conferencemanager@asser.nl

The Burma Lawyers’ Council (BLC) is attending a Nov 18-26 meeting of the Assembly of State Parties to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to discuss the Burmese military government’s alleged crimes against humanity, war crimes and other human rights abuses.

Junta Crimes to be Raised in The Hague

The Burma Lawyers’ Council (BLC) is attending a Nov 18-26 meeting of the Assembly of State Parties to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to discuss the Burmese military government’s alleged crimes against humanity, war crimes and other human rights abuses.

BLC General Secretary Aung Htoo, who is based in exile, has been attending the meetings in the Netherlands as an NGO delegate from Burma for the first time.

According to the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) web site, the grouping will discuss “ICC Campaigns in Asia: Prospects and Challenges in Afghanistan, Burma and Indonesia” on Nov. 25.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Monday, Thein Oo, the chairman of the BLC, said, “We intend to cooperate with International Criminal Court and to create a network to take more action against the Burmese military junta. Moreover, we intend to share our experience of the junta’s abuses and crimes, and discuss how we can cooperate to establish a regional network.”

He added: “We expect the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC) to cooperate among state parties and put more pressure on the Burmese junta through the UN and the ICC. We especially want to lobby harder because representatives of China and other world powers will be attending.”

The CICC is a network of over 2,500 nongovernment organizations which work closely with the ICC.

Orchards Being Converted To Chinese Gold Mines owner Zahkung Ting Ying,

Written by KNG
Monday, 23 November 2009

Orchards famous for its oranges in Burma’s northern Kachin State is being converted to Chinese-owned gold mines by Zahkung Ting Ying, leader of a former Kachin armed group, who is loyal to the repressive Burmese junta, said local sources.
Mandung orange fields in Waingmaw Township are located about 20 miles east of Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State. Local orchard owners have been pressurized to sell their orange fields to Chinese gold mining companies by former New Democratic Army-Kachin (NDA-K) leader Ting Ying since October, said villagers of Mandung.

On October 29, over 10 orchard owners in Mandawng sold about 90 acres to Chinese gold mining companies for over 50 million Kyat (over US$52,083) on Ting Ying’s say so, said Mandung’s villagers. Ting Ying is also a land contractor for all gold mines, added locals.

Currently, gold mining activities are undertaken with large sophisticated machines in Kachin State such as bulldozers, power-shovels, trucks and modern gold filtering equipment, said Salang Tsa Ji, General Secretary of Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG), who recently visited the gold fields.

Relatives of Ting Ying and dozens of Chinese gold mine workers are stationed in the areas known as Chaung Sone and Hka Wan, on the riverbank of N’Mai Hka in several plastic-fibre-roof tents, said local eyewitnesses.