ေဆာင္းပါးရွင္ – မန္းေရာဘတ္ ဘဇန္ by Thaw Thi Kho

စစ္ေၾကာင္းမွဴး ဗုိလ္မွဴးေဂ်ာ္နီသည္ (ကစုိ) ေရာက္ျပီး အျငိမ့္ငွားသည္။ ထုိအျငိမ့္အဖဲြ႔ကုိ (ဖါးကပ္) သုိ႔ေခၚခဲ့ကာ ရန္သူကုိ (ဖါးကပ္) သုိ႔ျမဴဆြယ္၍ က်ံဳးသြင္းရန္ စီစဥ္ခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။ မိမိတုိ႔စစ္ေၾကာင္းသည္ စစ္ဆင္ေရး စီမံခ်က္အတုိင္း (ညာမေရာ) မွတဆင့္ (ဖါးကပ္)သုိ႔ ည (၉)နာရီတြင္ ေရာက္ရွိသြား ေတာ့သည္။

တပ္ခဲြမ်ားအား သတ္မွတ္ထားသည့္ေနရာ၌ ေနရာယူျခင္း၊ လက္နက္ႀကီးမ်ား ပစ္လမ္းေၾကာင္း ေရြးခ်ယ္ျခင္း၊ ကတုတ္က်င္း တူးျခင္း၊ ပစ္ပုိင္နယ္ ရွာေဖြ သတ္မွတ္ျခင္း၊ သတ္ကြင္းမ်ား ေရြးခ်ယ္ျခင္း စသည္တို႔ကို ခံစစ္စီမံခ်က္အတိုင္း စနစ္တက် ျပင္ဆင္ေဆာင္ရြက္ခဲ့ပါသည္။ ထို႔ေနာက္ တပ္ခဲြရွိ ရဲေဘာ္ မ်ားအား တစ္ဝက္ပဲြၾကည့္ေစၿပီး တစ္ဝက္ကို ကင္းခ်ရန္ ညြန္ၾကားလုိက္သည္။ စစ္ေၾကာင္းမွဴး ငွားလာေသာ အျငိမ့္အဖဲြ႔သည္ (ဖါးကပ္) ရြာ၌ စတင္ ကျပလ်ွက္ရွိသည္။ ဆုိင္းသံ၊ ဗံုသံကတညံညံ၊ ရယ္သံက တေဝါေဝါ၊ မင္းသမီး သီခ်င္းသံက တလြင္လြင္၊ ၾကည္လင္ေအးျမတဲ့ ညအခ်ိန္ ျဖစ္ေနပါ ေတာ့သည္။

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Burma watchers are right to be cautious about signs of change

Andrew Heyn
The Guardian, UK
November 26, 2009

Flurry of activity could prove, as so often before, to be just window dressing, writes British ambassador Andrew Heyn
This is a particularly interesting time for Burma watchers. A flurry of activity, both domestically and internationally, has aroused hopes that things might be starting to move in a positive direction. But the optimism is offset by fears that this might be a repeat of the window dressing, so often seen before, that is designed to obscure the reality of a regime conducting business as usual.

The optimists point to recent engagement by the US, and nascent dialogue between Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese regime. Aung San Suu Kyi has recently written to Senior General Than Shwe offering to meet him to discuss how they can work together for the benefit of the people of Burma.

Were it not for bitter experience, people might be getting ready to celebrate and preparing for a new, properly inclusive form of politics. But Burma has seen many false dawns and no one is getting too excited.

In terms of hard facts there is not much to get excited about. A few months ago I sat in the Rangoon court that, after a show trial, sentenced Aung San Suu Kyi to a further period of house arrest. More than 2,100 political prisoners remain in jail. Elections next year look like going ahead on the basis of a constitution that delivers 25% of the seats in the new national assembly to the military before a single vote has been cast. Burma’s record on human rights and wider political freedoms remains dreadful, as last week’s EU-tabled resolution in the UN’s human rights committee made depressingly clear. The economy continues to stagnate.

The most widespread reaction in Burma to these recent developments is to wait and see. People recognise that it is far too early to assess how successful renewed international efforts by the US and EU (along with the UN and Asean) will be. Neither do we know whether Senior General Than Shwe will respond positively to Aung San Suu Kyi’s conciliatory and constructive offer to work together for the benefit of all the Burmese people.

Security tightens after Thanphyuzayart blast

Sat 28 Nov 2009, INMA, Rai Maraoh
Security has tightened around the site of a November 15th explosion in the Kanbuak to Miang-Kalay gas pipeline, near a rural settlement between the villages of That Kaw and Wei Win Kara in Thanphyuzayart Township.

Artillery Regiment (AR) 318, the battalion that that has thus far led the security measures enacted at the site, has unofficially blamed the explosion on Mon splinter group activity in the area, and a new security checkpoint has been created on the central highway running through the region. IMNA’s field reporter also learned that as of this week, the Township Peace and Development Council (TPDC) in Thanphyuzayart Township has ordered all villages in the Township to take responsibility for reburying exposed sections of the pipeline, as a precaution against rebel activity.

“Yesterday, the soldiers checked the people who passed through on the Thanphyuzayart to Kyaikkhami main road. The checkpoint is at the rain road pass” said a source who passed through the check point.

Locals report that the explosion resulted in an 18- inch horizontal crack in the pipeline itself and a 3-foot-deep crater at the site of the blast.

IMNA reported on the pipeline explosion on November 18th; at the time, the cause of the explosion was still up for debate. However, the recently tightened security in the area indicates that the Burmese Army has attributed the blast to a rebel group-laid bomb, rather than to a structural problem in the pipeline.

“The gas explosion was not normal, the explosion was like a bomb exploding, not through gas or a fire accident. One possible is, maybe they [Burmese soldiers] caused the explosion, so that after it happened they could accuse Mon splinter groups [of setting a bomb on the pipeline],” a New Mon State Party (NMSP) member living in the area told IMNA.

Thailand and Russia are ready to expand their collaboration

BANGKOK, 28 November 2009 (NNT) – Mr Sergei Sabianin, the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia and the Presidential Office Head, paid a visit to Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva at the Government House in Bangkok yesterday.

The two sides discussed joint collaborations on various aspects particularly in military and security, culture, and energy development. The Russian Deputy Prime Minister stated his readiness to support Thailand for development and research of fuel resource and natural gas in the same manner as the collaboration with other countries.

Mr Abhisit said the participation of Mr Sabianin in the 4th Joint Commission (JC) Thailand – Russia held on 27 November could lead to the progress in the two countries’ relations and the expansion in diverse aspects. To tackle the collaborating expansion, Thai government presently has implemented the second phase of economic stimulation scheme. Also, the progress of ASEAN integration as a community would bring about preferable environment for investment in the country. Thailand’s EXIM bank was another organization to support the investment of the two countries.

In addition, Mr Abhisit pointed out that the meeting of the Joint Commission between Thailand and Russia should bring forward matters such as energy development for mutual benefit. Thailand was emphasizing the feasibility study of a nuclear power plant project concerning environmental effects and related issues.

Prime Minister Abhisit also expected to visit Russia in early 2010 and hoped to see strengthened relations of the two countries through the Joint Commission implementation.

News ID: 255211280024

47 IFEX members condemn massacre of journalists, call for justice

Sat, 28/11/2009 – 09:48
IFEX
(CMFR/SEAPA/IFEX) – Condemning the problem of impunity in the Philippines, 47 IFEX members appeal for justice in the horrible massacre of a reported 28 journalists:

Attn: Members of the Philippines government, judiciary, police and military

We, the undersigned 47 members of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) network join the people of the Philippines in condemning, in the strongest terms possible, the massacre of at least 57 Filipinos in the southern Philippines.

Any murder is reprehensible, but as freedom of expression and press freedom advocates, we are especially appalled by the most recent media reports that at least 28 of those killed in the province of Maguindanao on 23 November 2009 were journalists.

IFEX members monitor attacks on journalists and media on a daily basis, throughout the world. Our members call attention to various forms of violence and threats not just to journalists, but to the larger environments in which independent media must survive. And still, the massacre of journalists in Maguindanao staggers our community. It is a crime of such scale and horror that is incomparable to anything we have seen.

Initial reports from Maguindanao point to the massacre being politically motivated, specifically tied to a rivalry between two entrenched political clans. Among those reported killed, after all, was the wife of one clan leader who was hoping to make a run against the incumbent governor.

Child Labor On Rise in Burma-vdo

Number of under age children working in Burma are raising. Children are out of school and getting all kinds of jobs to support families.

Drivers arrested for rape of up to 70 women

A taxi driver, who allegedly raped 40 women, and another man posing as a rental bike driver who also allegedly raped about 30 women, have been arrested by Thai police intelligence at Patonthani Township, Southern Thailand.
The taxi driver, aged approximately 30 years, drove a green colored taxi within the Patonthani Township. From the Police Station he stated that he had raped 40 pretty, young women.
“I couldn’t control myself whenever I saw a pretty girl. I raped them, in my cab and I also took them to my home. Usually I was drunk”. He stated.
Many young women reported the rapes to the Patonthani police station. When the police recorded the crimes, they collected all the photographs of taxi drivers within the region.
The police crime inspector reported to Thai Channel; “When a woman reported a case of rape, I showed her photos and asked her; “Is that him” She said “Yes”. We then used our phone network and was able to arrest this man at once. He admitted to the rape of several victims, and we also know this from his statement. We have several other open cases”. He said.
Similarly, a man posing as a rental bike driver also committed the rape of up to 30 female customers. He was arrested by the police intelligence unit two days ago.
The bike driver, who was wearing a false rental bike driver’s suit, took his victims to deserted places and raped them.

Fish box factory raided by Immigration

Tuesday, 24 November 2009 15:10
Several Burmese migrant workers, including two children aged about 10 years, were arrested and sent to the IDC main prison by Immigration officials this morning, following an earlier raid at the Fish Box Factory. The factory is located near Banbaw Railway Station, on the Phalansoung main road, Bangkok, Thailand.
At 6 am, thirty officers from the combined forces of Thai immigration and police, arrived at the factory compound and checked work IDs of the all the workers in the rooms. At first, all workers from A. B. and C buildings were arrested and loaded onto trucks. Most were later released when authorities from the factory arrived and showed relevant working permit documents.
Two 10 Year old children and three workers were arrested. Although they had work permits, these were issued to work in a different province and so all were taken to the IDC Main prison.
The father of one of the arrested children, Kyaw Soe Min, said; “My wife and I have a work ID. He was sleeping, he tried to run when the police came but they had already circled our building”. The mother added that the child had only been in Thailand for two months.
Ko Ashaygyi (who has lived near the factory for almost ten years) said; “Before the factory had a good relationship with local authorities, but this year they may have stopped paying under the table for work IDs for new arrivals. That is why I think they might have raided the factory, but I’m not sure”.
Maung Zaw Linn, a 12 year old child from Kawkarieak, Karen State, originally staying and learning at one of the monasteries in Bangkok, was arrested when he came home to rest with his mother because he felt sick.
Ko Nyi Nyi, elder brother of Maung Zaw Linn said; “Because my younger brother was arrested, I went to the IDC main prison. The officer said to me that ‘very hard talking Burmese, Cambodian and Lao apply for passports but nothing happens. If these Burmese don’t get passports by the end of this year, we will be arresting more.’ “Ko Nyi Nyi added “It seems to me that they are pressuring us to get passports.”
Both the Thai and Burmese Governments implemented passport processing, but they do not go through smoothly or successfully. The legal term for Burmese migrant workers to stay and work in Thailand will end next February 28th.
http://www.ghre.org/en

‘Consultation Meeting on Parliamentarians’ Solidarity for the Struggle of Democracy in Burma,’

Parliamentarians from India, Nepal, Singapore and Britain on Friday strongly expressed the need for regional governments to support Burma’s democracy movement at the ‘Consultation Meeting on Parliamentarians’ Solidarity for the Struggle of Democracy in Burma,’ organized by Indian Parliamentarians’ Forum for Democracy in Burma (IPFDB), at the Constitution Club in New Delhi on November 27, 2009. Photo – Salai Pi Pi/Mizzima

http://www.mizzima.com/gallery/photo-news/2989-photo-news-november-2009.html