Day: December 5, 2009

‘Paresh Baruah hiding in Kachin area of Myanmar’

On By Burma Myanmar newsIn BurmaLeave a comment

New Delhi, Dec 4 (PTI) The elusive ‘commander-in-chief of ULFA Paresh Baruah is hiding in Myanmar’s Kachin area, bordering China, and under the full grip of anti-India forces like Pakistan’s ISI, a top government official said.

Baruah, who has been against holding any peace dialogue with the government, has fled from his hideout in Bangladesh some time ago.

“He is now in Kachin area of Myanmar,” the official said.

Several militant outfits in the Northeast have training camps and bases in Kachin, which borders China’s Yunnan province which Baruah visits regularly.

Asked about Baruah’s opposition to talks with the government, the official said he was under full grip of forces inimical to India like ISI and some elements in China and works under their directions.
http://www.indoburmanews.net/archives-1/2009/november-2009/paresh-baruah-in-kachin-area-of-myanmar

general-and-his-commands-part-3 by photayokeking

On By Burma Myanmar newsIn BurmaLeave a comment


လူမ်ဳိးေရးႏွင့္ပတ္သက္၍ သေဘာထားထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္

ရွာေဖြတင္ျပသူ – ေမာင္ေက်ာ္ရင္

ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္၏ အမိန္႔မ်ား – အပိုင္း ၂ ကို ဒီေနရာမွာ ႏွိပ္ၿပီး ျပန္လည္ေလ့လာၾကည့္႐ႈႏိုင္သည္။

ကရင္အမ်ဳိးသားရဲေဘာ္အေပါင္းတို႔

ရဲေဘာ္တို႔၏ ညီလာခံကြန္ဖရင့္သို႔ အထူးတက္ေရာက္လိုေသာ္လည္း မလြဲမကင္းသာေသာ အေရးေပၚ အလုပ္ကိစၥမ်ား သည္ ႐ုတ္ျခည္း ေပၚေပါက္လာ၍ ကၽြႏု္ပ္ကိုယ္တိုင္မလာႏိုင္ဘဲ၊ ကၽြႏု္ပ္ကိုယ္စား ဒုတိယစစ္၀န္ႀကီး ဗိုလ္မွဴးႀကီး လက်္ာႏွင့္ ဗိုလ္မွဴးႀကီး ေစာၾကာဒိုးတို႔ကို ေစလႊတ္ပါသည္။
continue
http://www.photayokeking.org/Articlesmm/general-and-his-commands-part-3.html

Chronic food shortages and continuing severe human rights violations are taking place in Chin and Kachin states in Burma.

On By Burma Myanmar newsIn BurmaLeave a comment

CSW reports new evidence of humanitarian crisis in India-Burma border

Fresh evidence of the need for humanitarian assistance and international action was presented during a recent fact finding visit by Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) and the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART) to the India-Burma border. In some areas international funds for emergency food relief channeled through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are allegedly being provided as loans, instead of aid, to malnourished villagers, repayable at 200 per cent interest.

Over the past two years Chin State has been devastated by a chronic food shortage caused by the flowering of bamboo, a natural phenomenon which occurs every fifty years. The bamboo flowering attracts plagues of rats, which then destroy rice fields, rice supplies and almost all means of survival for the local population. The Chin Human Rights Organisation (CHRO) estimates that at least 100,000 people in over 200 villages are severely affected.

The delegation led by Baroness Cox, Chief Executive of HART was told by representatives of the Chin Famine Emergency Relief Committee that in at least 17 villages in Paletwa Township, the worst affected part of Chin State, the local UNDP have distributed international funds in the form of loans, instead of providing food aid. Villagers claim they have been told they must repay twice the amount they are given, either in cash or in rice bags. CSW and HART have written to UNDP to request an urgent investigation.

The delegation, which also met with Kachin refugees, received evidence from Kachin and Chin states of religious persecution, forced labour and attempted ‘cultural genocide’ Continue reading “Chronic food shortages and continuing severe human rights violations are taking place in Chin and Kachin states in Burma.” →

Omkoi to be focus of special task force-Plan for opium poppy eradication

On By Burma Myanmar newsIn BurmaLeave a comment

An integrated task force has been formed to patrol Omkoi district in Chiang Mai Province. Due to the poverty of its residents and its isolated location, it has seen an increase of illegal activities ranging from opium poppy production, illegal immigration, and has become a center for the transportation of stolen vehicles across the border. Illegal immigrants and the illegal harvesting in the National Forests remains a problem, according to the report released by the Office of Narcotics Control Board this November.
The task force created to monitor the area will consist of members of the Border Patrol Police, local administrative officials, Royal Thai Rangers, and the Omkoi police to be led by Pol, Col, Satit Katetanon, Deputy Commander of the Border Patrol Police Division, Region 3. The Omkoi Special Command, led by Lt. Col. Adul Jampatong, Deputy Commander of Rangers Force Division 36, has already found and destroyed 4 rai of opium poppy plantations.
Meanwhile, the 2010 plan for the eradication of opium poppy planting was announced November 24 at the Pha Muang Task force Center by Lt. General Wantip Wongwai, Deputy Commander of the Army Area 3. The plan will cover 76 separate areas in the north, of which the army will be responsible for 65 areas in Mae Chaem and Omkoi. They will be supported by the Office of Narcotics Control Board, Provincial and Border Patrol Police.
Lt. General Wantip traveled to the Omkoi district to observe the destruction of opium plants and to distribute sporting equipment and other goods to Rang Bee village members of which have cooperated with officials in their goal to eradicate opium poppy planting.
To date, 46 rai of opium poppy fields have been destroyed with a further 94 rai awaiting destruction.

An involved Ambassador told Inner City Press that the cynical explanation is that the United Kingdom wants someone more strident to be the envoy to Myanmar

On By Burma Myanmar newsIn BurmaLeave a comment

UNITED NATIONS, December 1 — That the UN is giving its top Darfur post to Nigerian Ibrahim Gambari was an open secret Tuesday night at the UN, although so far only Inner City Press has reported it, repeatedly, four times in the last 36 hours. A top UN peacekeeping official told Inner City Press that Nigeria made a strong play for the post, citing its high number of peacekeepers in Darfur.

An involved Ambassador told Inner City Press that the cynical explanation is that the United Kingdom wants someone more strident to be the envoy to Myanmar, Gambari’s current job, and so agreed to move him to Darfur. But why did the U.S. go along?

Inner City Press approached Gambari himself, for the second time in 12 hours, at Thailand’s national day reception on Tuesday night. “No comment,” Gambari began, laughing. He said he had met in Washington with the the State Department’s Kurt Campbell. As before, he argued that his strategy of engagement with the Than Shwe military government in Myanmar is now being adopted by the U.S. — why not in Darfur? Scott Gration may be only the beginning. continue
http://www.innercitypress.com/darfur4nigeria120109.html

King asked to pardon Internet users prosecuted on lese majeste or national security charges

On By Burma Myanmar newsIn AseanLeave a comment

Reporters Without Borders has written to King Bhumibol Adulyadej on the eve of his birthday on 5 December asking him to pardon Thai Internet users who are in jail or who are being prosecuted in connection with the dissident views they allegedly expressed online.
“By agreeing to this request, the king would show the entire world that he respects freedom of expression and would be putting in to practice what he said on 5 December 2005 about protecting this freedom,” Reporters Without Borders said.
The letter urges the king to release Suwicha Thakor, a blogger who is being held in Klong Prem prison. Suwicha was sentenced to 10 years in prison on 3 April on a charge of lese majeste although there was no evidence against him. He is neither a politician nor an activist, and never criticised the king or posted articles about him.
A pardon for this innocent man who has already suffered too much would serve as gesture that confirmed what the king said on his birthday in 2005. “In reality, I am not above criticism,” the king said. “I do not fear criticism if it concerns what I do wrong. It is thanks to this that I will be able to realise my mistakes. If you say the king cannot be criticised, it means the king is not a man.”
The letter also asked the king to intercede to obtain the withdrawal of all charges against the following Internet users:
Giles Ji Ungpakorn, a political science professor at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, who was charged with lese majeste on 20 January in connection with a book entitled “A coup for the rich” that was published in 2007 and could be downloaded from his website. He never criticised the king.
Jonathan Head, the BBC’s Southeast Asia correspondent, who was accused of lese majeste by Lt. Col. Wattanasak Shinawatra on 23 December 2008 without any evidence. There is no information about the current state of the investigation against him.
Nat Sattayapornpisut, a blogger who was held for 10 days in October for sending video links to a blogger in Spain who is campaigning for the repeal of the lese majeste law. “When you criticise a law, you are not criticising the king or threatening national security,” Reporters Without Borders said at the time (http://www.rsf.org/Online-censorship-and-arrests-of.html). Nat was accused of breaking the 2007 Computer Crime Act but no decision has no far been taken on his case.
Praya Pichai, a blogger who was accused in September 2007 of criticising the royal family. The public prosecutor has until 2017 to decide whether or not to prosecute him, which is unacceptable from the viewpoint of both the right of defence and the right to free expression.
Tasaparn Rattawongsa, a doctor at Thon Buri hospital, Theeranan Wipuchan, a former UBS Securities executive, Katha Pajajiriyapong, an employee at the KT ZMICO brokerage house and Somchets Ittiworakul. They are all charged under section 14 of the 2007 Computer Crime Act with posting false information endangering national security. All they did was seek an explanation for the fall in the Bangkok stock exchange (http://www.rsf.org/Three-Internet-users-arrested-for.html and http://www.rsf.org/Online-censorship-and-arrests-of.html).
“We hope that King Bhumibol Adulyadej will respond positively to this request for a royal pardon,” Reporters Without Borders said. “By violating the freedom of expression of Thailand’s citizens, charges of lese majeste and endangering national security under the 2007 Computer Crime Act are hurting the image of both the king and his kingdom.”