Media Advisory: National Mekong Committee urged to take people-centered role on Mekong mainstream dams

[2.12.09] Yesterday (1st December), on the final day of the Mekong River Commission’s (MRC) call for public submissions to its Strategic Environmental Assessment on the Mekong mainstream dams, the Save the Mekong Coalition sent a letter to the Chairpersons of the National Mekong Committees (NMCs) of Lao PDR, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, urging for a strong and trusted consultative process at the national and local level on development options for the river, which guarantees the participation of all riparian communities who would be affected by the eleven dams proposed on the lower Mekong mainstream.

The letter, copied to the MRC Secretariat and its donors, presents to the NMC Chairpersons the 23,110 signature “Save the Mekong” postcard petition, gathered by civil society groups in the Mekong region and around the world since March 2009. The “Save the Mekong” postcard petition was sent to the Prime Ministers of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam on 19th October 2009, requesting all the Prime Ministers, as well as the NMC Chairpersons and international donors, to listen to the voice of the Mekong People and keep the Mekong flowing freely of dams, while also considering more sustainable ways to meet the region’s electricity needs that avoid creating cross-border impacts and disputes.

“Mekong mainstream dams threaten serious social and environmental impacts, and to undermine regional food security, economy and existing efforts to alleviate poverty and meet Millennium Development Goals” the letter states.

Additionally, the letter to the NMCs emphasizes the absence of strong national and local level processes as a barrier to the MRC’s assessment, by stating that “the MRC Secretariat has failed to listen and respond to peoples’ requests and kept the assessment process on Mekong mainstream dams separate from the actual realities on the ground.”The Save the Mekong coalition is a network of non-government organizations, community groups, academics, journalists, artists, fishers, farmers and ordinary people from within the Mekong countries and internationally.

Download the letters sent to:

H.E. Mr Lim Kean Hor, Chairman of Cambodia National Mekong Committee
H.E. Ms Khempheng Pholsena, Chairperson of Lao National Mekong Committee
H.E. Mr Suwit Khunkitti, Chairman of Thai National Mekong Committee
H.E. Dr Pham Khoi Nguyen, Chairman of Viet Nam National Mekong Committee
For more information, please contact:

Premrudee Daoroung, Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance (TERRA)
Tel. +66 (0) 81-4342334; email: premrudee@terraper.org ; http://www.terraper.org

http://www.savethemekong.org/news_detail.php?nid=69

National Mekong Committee urged to take people-centered role on Mekong mainstream dams

Thu, 03/12/2009 – 08:19
Save the Mekong Coalition
On 1 Dec, the final day of the Mekong River Commission’s (MRC) call for public submissions to its Strategic Environmental Assessment on the Mekong mainstream dams, the Save the Mekong Coalition sent a letter to the Chairpersons of the National Mekong Committees (NMCs) of Lao PDR, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, urging for a strong and trusted consultative process at the national and local level on development options for the river, which guarantees the participation of all riparian communities who would be affected by the eleven dams proposed on the lower Mekong mainstream.

The letter, copied to the MRC Secretariat and its donors, presents to the NMC Chairpersons the 23,110 signature “Save the Mekong” postcard petition, gathered by civil society groups in the Mekong region and around the world since March 2009. The “Save the Mekong” postcard petition was sent to the Prime Ministers of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam on 19th October 2009, requesting all the Prime Ministers, as well as the NMC Chairpersons and international donors, to listen to the voice of the Mekong People and keep the Mekong flowing freely of dams, while also considering more sustainable ways to meet the region’s electricity needs that avoid creating cross-border impacts and disputes.

“Mekong mainstream dams threaten serious social and environmental impacts, and to undermine regional food security, economy and existing efforts to alleviate poverty and meet Millennium Development Goals” the letter states.

prison_transferred_Dec_09.

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Tatmadaw Founder Calls on Soldiers to Work for People’s Sake

By WAI MOE
Former Brig-Gen Kyaw Zaw, one of only two founders of the Tatmadaw (Burmese armed forces) still alive, on Thursday called on Burma’s military to work for the sake of the country’s people.

“I would like to tell the junta and soldiers that the people of Burma are the parents [of the Tatmadaw]. Therefore I would like to say to the soldiers: “Look at the faces of the people! Don’t see the people as your enemies”,” he said.

“I am so sad that my beloved people are still in poverty. I am so sad about that,” he added.

Kyaw Zaw issued the statement to mark the occasion of his 90th birthday, which he celebrated in Kunming, in China’s Yunnan Province, today. He has lived there as an exile since 1989.

Along with the late Burmese independence hero Gen Aung San and late dictator Ne Win, he is one of the “Thirty Comrades” who are founders of the current Tatmadaw. The Tatmadaw was formed in Bangkok, Thailand, in December 1941, after the thirty comrades were trained by the Japanese Imperial Army on China’s Hainan Island.

NDF-Bul-No-04-Nov-2009-2

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Nationalities Youth Forum Statement

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NDF Letter to Irrawaddy

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Seven Chinese Jailed For A Night By Burmese Police

Wednesday, 02 December 2009

Seven Chinese loggers were secretly put in a prison cell for a night after their belongings were seized by Burmese policemen in a partially successful attempt at extortion in Bhamo district in Burma’s northern Kachin State, said local sources.

The Chinese loggers were stopped in Jan Mai village in Manje Township at about 5:30 p.m. on November 27. Their personal belongings such as two mobile phones, a camera, a clock and Chinese Yuan 1,000 (about US$147) were looted by the police and forest authorities of Manje, or Mansi in Burmese, said residents.

The secret operation was led by Kyaw Hsan Oo, the deputy in-charge of the Manje police station along with police sergeant Maw Zee and Than Aung and office staff of the Township Forestry, according to sources close to them.

kaowao-ရာမညတပ္ဖြဲ႔ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဗိုလ္မွဴးၾကီးနိုင္ေရွာင္အား အေရွ႕ေတာင္တိုင္းမွေခၚယူေတြ႔ဆုံ

ေကာင္းဝါ(ဒီဇင္ဘာ- ၃)။ ။ မြန္ခြဲထြက္တပ္ဖြဲ႔တစ္ဖြဲ႔ျဖစ္ေသာ ရာမညတပ္ဖြဲ႔ ၏ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဗိုလ္မွဴးၾကီး နိဳင္ေရွာင္သည္ နိုဝင္ဘာ(၃ဝ)ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ေရးျမိဳ႔နယ္မွ

ေကာင္းဝါ(ဒီဇင္ဘာ- ၃)။ ။ မြန္ခြဲထြက္တပ္ဖြဲ႔တစ္ဖြဲ႔ျဖစ္ေသာ ရာမညတပ္ဖြဲ႔ ၏ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဗိုလ္မွဴးၾကီး နိဳင္ေရွာင္သည္ နိုဝင္ဘာ(၃ဝ)ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ေရးျမိဳ႔နယ္မွ

HIV/AIDS rates in Burmese prisons high

Dec 3, 2009 (DVB)–Medical negligence and lack of contraception in Burmese prisons are leading to high rates of HIV infection among inmates, a political prisoner support group has warned.

At least 10 political prisoners in Burma have died of AIDS-related illnesses, many of whom were healthy before being sentenced, said Tate Naing, from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma (AAPP).
“U Hla Than, NLD’s [1990] people’s parliament representative was HIV positive when he died in prison in 1996, according to a doctor’s report. Ko Sithu of Rangoon University Students’ Union died of AIDS after a long stretch in prison – we also have doctor’s confirmation on that,” he said.
A recent UN report found that HIV/AIDS rates in Burma remain high, particularly among homosexual men, female sex workers and injecting drug users. Around 18 percent of female sex workers are thought to carry the disease.
The situation inside prisons is compounded by woefully inadequate healthcare. Rangoon’s notorious Insein prison has only one hospital with around 100 beds to cater for up to 10,000 prisoners.
Prisoners with only rudimentary medical training often double up as practitioners in the absence of sufficient numbers of doctors and nurses. According to a report released by a former Insein inmate, there were only three doctors to treat the whole prison population.
Tate Naing said that the use of one syringe on multiple patients by prison doctors was causing illnesses to spread rapidly.