Articlesmm/general-and-his-commands-part-2 by photayokeking

ကမၻာ့အလားအလာ ဗမာ့အလားအလာႏွင့္ လူငယ့္တာ၀န္ – အပိုင္း(၂)

ရွာေဖြတင္ျပသူ – ေမာင္ေက်ာ္ရင္

အပိုင္း (၁) ကို ဒီေနရာမွာ ၾကည့္႐ႈႏိုင္ပါသည္။

အဲဒီက မီးေတြဟာ ယခုကမၻာစစ္ႀကီး ျဖစ္တဲ့အထိ ဥေရာပတိုက္ေရာ အာရွတိုက္ကပါ ျဖစ္ေနတယ္။ ေရွးေခတ္ႏွင့္ ယခုေခတ္ ႏႈိင္းစာၾကည့္လွ်င္ အစစ အရာရာ အကုန္ပိုလာတယ္။ စီးပြားေရးမွာလည္း အရင္ကထက္ ပိုတယ္။ လူအား မွာလည္း အရင္ကထက္ပိုတယ္။ နယ္ကလဲ အရင္ကထက္ ပိုက်ယ္လာတယ္။ ဒီစစ္ႀကီးျဖစ္တဲ့အတြက္ ဗမာျပည္ ကလဲ လြတ္လပ္တဲ့ ဗမာျပည္ ေပၚလာတယ္လို႔ ေျပာၾကတယ္။ ဒီစစ္ကို ဘယ္သူႏိုင္သလဲ ဘယ္လိုျဖစ္မလဲ ေရွ႕အျဖစ္ ေနာက္အျဖစ္ အခ်ိန္အခါေတြကို ေတြးေတာၾကည့္ရင္ အေတာ္အေတြးရက်ပ္တယ္။ သို႔ေသာ္လည္း ဒီစစ္ႀကီး ဘယ္သူ ႏိုင္မယ္။ ဘယ္သူ႐ွဳံးတယ္ဆိုတာ ဘယ္သူမွ မေျပာႏိုင္ဘူး။

ပထမဦးအစက ဥေရာပတိုက္မွာ ဂ်ာမနီႏိုင္တယ္။ အခုေတာ့ သူတို႔ကို ျပန္ခ်ေနတယ္၊ အေရွ႕ဘက္မွာဆိုရင္ တ႐ုတ္က ေတာင့္ခံေနတယ္။ အေနာက္ဘက္မွာဆိုရင္ ႐ုရွားက ေတာင့္ခံေနတယ္။ ဒီၾကားထဲ အဂၤလိပ္က လက္နက္ေတြလုပ္ၿပီး တိုက္ခိုက္တဲ့အတြက္ ဒီလို ျဖစ္တယ္၊ အဂၤလိပ္က မႏွစ္ကၾသဂုတ္လမွေနၿပီး တိုက္တာ အခုထက္ထိ အကုန္မႏိုင္ေသးဘူး။ ပထမဦးဆုံးေတာ့ ဂ်ာမနီက အေတာ္အေရးသာေနတယ္။ ေနာက္က်ေတာ့ ႐ုရွားက ျပန္ခ်လိုက္တယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ လုံးလုံး မႏိုင္ေသးဘူး၊ အေနာက္ဘက္ စစ္္မ်က္ႏွာဟာ စစ္ျဖစ္တာ ၅ ႏွစ္ေက်ာ္ေနၿပီ၊ ဒါေပမဲ့ ဘယ္သူ႐ွဳံးတယ္၊ ဘယ္သူ ႏိုင္တယ္ ဆိုတဲ့ အေျခကို မေရာက္ေသးဘူး။

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We Are Burma:Brussel December 12.

Dear friends, Burma workers, Europeans, supporters and all,
As many of you know we are weeks away from a major event happening in Brussels this December 12. Director Ruud Gielens has put together an incredible line-up of speakers, entertainers, activists and all manner of engaged people.
Speakers like Karel De Gucht, current E.U. Commisioner for Development have lent their time and efforts to this one-off social enterprise (in the form of an event). Burma VJ is recieving international aclaim and we have one of the main protagonists, Aung Htun, coming from S.E. Asia to speak with us. There is strong media interest and we will be shining a light on the prospective 2010 elections. We are also highlighting the human response of cross-border NGO agencies and in this light we are delighted that Steve Gumaer, founder of Partners World will be speaking at the event

Information November-25-2009 Karen News

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ASEAN Mobilises Over US$ 88 Million for Cyclone Nargis Survivors

Bangkok, 25 November 2009
ASEAN, in partnership with the UN and humanitarian partners, mobilised over US$ 88 million to assist Cyclone Nargis survivors with recovery activities at the Post-Nargis and Regional Partnership Conference in Bangkok today.
The conference – co-chaired by Dr Surin Pitsuwan, Secretary-General of ASEAN and Dr Noeleen Heyzer, Under Secretary General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) – aimed to raise funds to address critical needs for the continuing reconstruction in cyclone affected areas.

“While much has been done, there are many affected communities across the Delta who are still highly vulnerable and require urgent continued humanitarian assistance, especially in the areas of shelter, livelihoods, water, sanitation and hygiene, education and health,” said Dr Surin Pitsuwan in his opening statement. “If support is not forthcoming soon, gains made over the past 18 months will be quickly lost, and the window to provide timely assistance will close.”

Dr Noeleen Heyzer also called for increased funds for recovery activities in her statement.

“Today, we are in danger of falling short of our promise to the people of the Ayeyarwady Delta. International support for the post-Nargis recovery effort has helped open an extraordinary window of opportunity for the international humanitarian community to work with ASEAN and the Government of Myanmar,” Dr Heyzer said. “However, so far only a small portion of the total appeal for humanitarian assistance has been met by the international community. If we are to continue our work for the victims of Cyclone Nargis, additional resources are urgently needed.”

Burma traditional cosmetic paste wins int’l awards

traditional cosmetic paste, known as Thanakha in Myanmar language and produced by the “Shwe Pyi Nan” Company, has won two international awards presented by the Philippines, sources with the company said on Wednesday.

The awards given are titled — 2008 Global Excellence Awards and 2009 People’s Choice Awards, the sources said.

The company’s ready-made Thanakha products are being exported to Thailand and the Philippines, the sources said, adding that, these products are also seeking export market to South Korea.

Myanmar has opened its first traditional cosmetic paste museum in the ancient city of Bagan to introduce to the world its Thanakha, which is a kind of tree and its bark and root are used in making a fragrant paste for cosmetic purposes

Collected nationwide by the famous private company of Shwe Pyi Nan since 1999, these 100-year-old rare and valuable Thanakha trees with flat and circular stone used for grinding Thanakha or medicinal herbs in successive eras are displayed at the museum.

The Myanmar Thanakha traditional cosmetic paste has also traditionally attracted tourists visiting the country, standing as one of the popular local cosmetic products that world travelers used to buy for its wonder when they land in Myanmar.

In UN Dispute Tribunal, Ethics Officer Blocked, Cambodia Trial Unwatched

UNITED NATIONS, November 21 — The UN proclaims that it protects whistleblowers, as a way of reforming its far flung under overseen work. The UN Ethics Office, headed until April 2010 by Robert Benson, is in charge of protection against retaliation. But in a case pending in the UN Dispute Tribunal, lawyers from the UN Secretariat and UN Development Program have argued that Ethics Officer Robert Benson should not be allowed to testify in the case of a whistleblower he recommended be awarded back pay for due process violations.
Inner City Press ventured down to another UN Dispute Tribunal hearing on November 20, to find a official of the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials explaining by video conference that a staffer working on audio visual production for UNAKRT had been underperforming. Or was it that the equipment bought by UNAKRT — already embroiled in corruption allegations — was of the wrong kind? continue
http://www.innercitypress.com/undt1basement112109.html

Aung San Suu Kyi allowed repairing her home

by Nem Davies
Wednesday, 25 November 2009 20:20

New Delhi (Mizzima) – Aung San Suu Kyi, detained Burmese opposition leader has been permitted to repair her lakeside home on Rangoon’s University Avenue, Nyan Win her party spokesperson said.

The Rangoon municipality has granted the Nobel Peace Laureate permission to repair the balcony of her lakeside home, following a request about three months ago, Nyan Win told Mizzima on Wednesday.

“The permission was granted about two weeks ago. Now Daw Suu is in discussions with engineers and the Special Branch of the police about bringing in workers to repair her house,” Nyan Win said.

“The repair work will start by this week. Daw Suu is also scheduled to meet her [engineer] friend and other engineers who will oversee the work,” Nyan Win added.

Authorities, according to Nyan Win, have set February 2010 as the deadline to complete the repair work.

But Nyan Win, the spokesperson of the National League for Democracy, said he does not believe that the permission to repair the house, where Aung San Suu Kyi has spent most of her 14 years in solitary confinement, is an indication of relaxation of her house arrest.

Following the devastating Cyclone Nargis in May 2008, authorities allowed the Burmese pro-democracy leader to repair the roof of her house, which was blown off and damaged.

The Burmese democracy icon is currently under house arrest serving an 18 months suspended sentence. She was convicted by a special court in the notorious Insein prison in August, on charges of allowing an American, John William Yettaw, who paid a secret visit to her lakeside home and stayed for two nights in May.

International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) operating in Burma are likely to suspend their activities during Election Period

INGO Work in Burma Could Stop During Election Period

International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) operating in Burma are likely to suspend their activities next May, according to NGO sources in Burma.

Although no official announcement has yet been made by the regime, some government officials warned that INGO work could be suspended from May until October because of the 2010 election, said INGO sources.

“We have heard from government officials that possibly because of the election, INGOs in the country will temporarily close project activities in the country,” said an INGO staffer in Rangoon, requesting anonymity. “No written order has yet been made by government ministries, however.”

A veteran lawyer in Rangoon, Kyi Wynn, said a non-Burmese friend working for an INGO told him he had been informed by a government official that INGO activities would be halted during the election period.

The lack of any official confirmation is causing confusion among INGOs, who are asking whether the decision to suspend activities applies to all or just those aid groups which have been operating in the country since the Cyclone Nargis disaster in May 2008.

A backlog in granting visas for foreign relief workers has also arisen.

William Sabandar, special envoy of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations secretary-general for post-Nargis recovery in Burma, told The Irrawaddy in July: “There’s a backlog in the granting of more than 200 visas.” The delays were hampering work in the cyclone-hit region, he said. The backlog has not yet been cleared, according to INGO staff.

A war on monks is still underway in Burma, revenge for the monk-led peaceful mass demonstrations in 2007.

A war on monks is still underway in Burma, revenge for the monk-led peaceful mass demonstrations in 2007. The military junta continues to put pressure on monks and their family members, place bans on preaching the Dhamma and impose travel restrictions.

Ashin Thavara, the secretary of the India-based All Burma Monks’ Representative Committee (ABMRC), told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday: “My parents go to sign up at the township authority every month, and the authorities order my family to inform them whenever I contact them. They also pressured my parents’ employer to fire them from their job.”Ashin Thavara, 26, played a leading role in in the demonstrations and is a founding member of the ABMRC, which launched the demonstrations together with other monk organizations.“The Burmese authorities confiscated all of my belongings in February 2008, they have pressured monks leave my monastery, Zeya Theikdi Monastery in Rangoon’s Thingankyun Township. It now has only one old monk.”

On Sept. 27, 2007, the military government cracked down on the demonstrators and scores of monks were forced to flee their monasteries to escape arrest. Dozens of monks fled the country .

According to official data, there are now more than 400,000 monks in Burma, and its community, the Sangha, is considered one of the strongest and most revered institutions in the country.
Ashin Issariya, one of the founders of All Burma Monks’ Alliance (ABMA), said: “The military junta still oppresses and insults monks and the Buddhist religion. There are currently more than 250 monks and more than 20 nuns in prison in Burma for their political activities.”

About 62 Burmese migrants who work at the Night Bazaar in Chiang Mai were arrested on Tuesday as part of a security sweep prior to Prime Minister Abhisit

About 62 Burmese migrants who work at the Night Bazaar in Chiang Mai were arrested on Tuesday, reportedly as part of a security sweep prior to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s two-day visit to Chiang Mai starting on November 28.

Aung Toe, 40, a Burmese migrant, told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday, “They arrested many people while they were working, including some who had work permits.”

He said authorities swept through the popular Night Bazaar looking for people who appeared to be Burmese.

“I escaped because I look more Chinese or Japanese,” Aung Toe said.

Another Burmese worker in the market, Phe Be, said people who tried to run away were beaten by police.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva will be in Chiang Mai on a two-day visit, his first since he was elected one year ago.

The security in the city is tighter than before since a local radio station announcer who supports anti-government group reportedly made threatening remarks about taking the prime minister’s life if he came to Chiang Mai. The government is investigating the threat.

An opposition political group, known as the Red Shirts, has said it will hold demonstrations during the prime minister’s visit.

Jackie Pollock, a founder of of the Migrant Assistance Program (MAP), a Chiang Mai-based NGO said, “The challenge to the current administration is from the electorate, not from the migrants who have no political rights. To try and silence a group of people like the migrants who are already silenced makes little sense beyond diverting the media and others’ attention away from the real issues.”

An estimated 80,000 Burmese migrants—both registered and unregistered—work in the Chiang Mai area. The majority are ethnic Shan.
irrawaddy