Thura Shwe Mann Visit to N. Korea – Photos & VDO-digging the tunnels- death sentenced for leaking details

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A court in Myanmar has sentenced a retired military officer and a foreign ministry official to death for leaking details of secret trip to North Korea by top government officials, according to news reports that cited lawyers in the country.

The case appeared to highlight the repressive government’s concern about a number of leaks and lapses in recent years, including the publication of minutes of high-level military meetings and photographs of extensive tunnel systems reportedly built by North Korean engineers in the country’s administrative capital, Naypyidaw.

ဦးသုေ၀ ပါတီက ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ၀င္ရၿခင္း အေၾကာင္းၿပခ်က္မ်ား

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Appeal against death sentence for leaking official secrets

Friday, 08 January 2010 21:32 Kyaw Thein Kha

Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Lawyers plan to file an appeal against the death sentences on two of their clients handed down by the special court in Burma yesterday for allegedly leaking official secrets to the public.

The two former high ranking officers of the regime were sentenced to death in a secret trial by the court sitting inside Insein prison for leaking information about tours made by two junta leaders to Russia and North Korea.

According to Insein prison sources, the lawyers planned the appeal process today for the two clients, retired Major Win Naing Kyaw and upper division clerk Thura Kyaw from the Foreign Ministry, Europe Affairs Department.

“The lawyers Htun Aung, Myo Aung and Khin Maung Myint co-signed on the criminal power to represent retired Major Win Naing Kyaw and they plan to file the appeal today. We also learnt that Thura Kyaw’s lawyer is planning to file an appeal for his client,” a source close to Insein prison told Mizzima.

Activist sentenced to 71 years in prison-also volunteers who did relief work for Cyclone Nargis victims.

Activist sentenced to 71 years in prison

New Delhi (Mizzima) – Fifteen political activists from three townships in Mandalay Division, who were held in Obo prison in Mandalay for three months, were given various prison sentences ranging from two years to 71 years on 30 December by a court sitting inside the prison.

The special branch of the police arrested the political activists from Myingyan, Nyaung Oo and Kyauk Padaung towns last September and October without giving any reasons and did not allow them to meet their family members during detention. They have been given prison sentences now, a family member who met one of the activists in a prison interview on January 6 said.

“Myo Han (Myingyan) was charged in 10 cases and sentenced to 51 years in prison. His elder sister saw him on January 6 but she was not allowed to speak to her brother freely,” a source close to the family member said.

Myo Han was given 15 years in prison with cases under the Electronic Act, nine years with three cases under Unlawful Associations Act, two years for inciting people against state security, 14 years with two cases under Printing and Publishing Act, eight years in the with Associations Act and three years under the Television Act, he said quoting his lawyer Myint Thwin.

Fewer Senior Monks granted honorific religious titles by Burmese government

Thu 07 Jan 2010, Tawlawi
This year the senior Burmese military office that has traditionally conffered significant honorific titles for Buddhist monks, has approved fewer title confirmations than in previous years.

On January 4th, Burmese Independence Day, the Lt General Secretary of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), Tin Aung Myin Oo, announced the results in notification No. 1/2010. Senior Buddhist monks apply directly to the Ministry of Religious Affairs in order to be considered for the honorific titles, and receive confirmation in a congratulatory letter.

Yet according to a senior monk who preferred to remain anonymous for security issues, the numbers of senior monks who were notified of new titles has decreased compared to last year.

Specifically this year the SPDC only granted 120 titles to senior monks, as opposed to the 251 titles given in 2009.

Clean your Campus Than Shwe by Mr.Creator

Karen youth bow in unity to honor their national flag.

REPORT BY WINRAW SAW HTEL NAY
FRIDAY, 08 JANUARY 2010 13:21

KAOWO- The large crowd filling the chairs in front of the stage at the recent Karen New year celebrations, held on the grounds of the Mae Towe Clinic, in Mae Sot, rose to their feet in unison to focus their attention on the most venerated symbol of their shared hopes and aspirations for freedom.

The Karen national flag has deep meaning to Karen people, because it has been a rallying point during their decades long armed struggle against the Burmese military.

Many in the audience wore clothing displaying the vivid colors Karen traditional dress has become famous for. But, nine year old Saw Zin Min beamed with pride as his mother helped him wrap his head in a scarf with red, white and blue stripes- the predominant colors in the Karen flag.

“I want to wear it because it’s Karen new year. All Karen people respect their flag,” he said.

The young boy’s sentiment was echoed by Master of Ceremonies, Mahn Shwe Hnin, Headmaster of CDC School, in Mae Sot.

“You have to love your flag and be proud of it,” he said. “If not, maybe one day Karen people will disappear from the world.”

Karen people are proud of the fact that their flag is widely recognized.

Dr. Tee Than Pyar founded The Karen National Association in 1881, becoming its first chairman. Afterwards, Dr. Tee Than Pyar, Sayar San Baw from Thararwaddy served as a chairman between 1930 and 1940. During this period, he and other Karen leaders petitioned parliament for the creation of a Karen flag and national anthem.

Burma to transfer ownership of key industries to firms associated with generals

As Burma gears up for elections to be held sometime later this year, the country’s military junta is moving ahead with plans to transfer ownership of key industries to business firms closely associated with the ruling generals.On Wednesday, state-run newspapers reported that the No 2 Mining Enterprise, operating under the Ministry of Mines, signed a contract with the privately owned DELCO Co Ltd on apportionment of tin and tungsten quotas at the Kanpauk Mine in southern Burma.

Although little is known about the ownership of DELCO, the company is on the UK’s financial sanctions list, along with 1,225 other businesses run by senior military officials or their cronies. It is also one of four private firms that recently received a Build-Operate-Transfer agreement for hydro-power projects in Burma.

Some analysts have suggested that the junta has begun to privatize energy generation as a way to address the country’s electricity shortages. Despite abundant energy resources, domestic power consumption lags far behind neighbouring countries due to a lack of infrastructure and decades of economic mismanagement.

Karen Information Center- KIC-Dec-09

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နအဖ ေ႐ြးေကာက္ပဲြကို ၂၀၁၀ ေအာက္တိုဘာ ၁၀ ရက္တြင္ျပဳလုပ္မည္

နအဖ စစ္အစုိးရမွ ၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္ေရႊးေကာက္ပြဲကို ေအာက္တိုဘာလ ၁၀ ရက္ေန႕တြင္ က်င္းပျပဳလုပ္မည္ဟု အာဆာဟိသတင္းကို ကုိးကားျပီး မိုးေသာက္ၾကယ္ ဘေလာ့တြင္ ေဖၚျပသည္။

အာဏာသိမ္း နအဖ စစ္အုပ္စုအေနျဖင့္ ၂၀၁၀ ေ႐ြးေကာက္ပဲြကို လာမည့္ ေအာက္တိုဘာ ၁၀ ရက္ တနဂၤေႏြေန႔ တြင္ ျပဳလုပ္မည္ဟု ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံရွိ နာမည္ႀကီးသတင္းစာ တစ္ခုျဖစ္ေသာ အာဆာဟိ(Asahi) သတင္းစာက ေဖၚျပေၾကာင္း မိုးေသာက္ၾကယ္က ေျပာသည္။

အဆိုပါသတင္းကို ထုိင္းႏိုင္ငံ ဘန္ေကာက္ရွိ ယာမာမိုတို ဒိုင္းဆုေကး(Daisuke Yamamoto) ဆိုသူက ေရးသား ေပးပို႔ ခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္ဟု ဆိုုသည္။