14.January
14/01/2010 ဧရာ၀တီသတင္း
ထုိင္းႏိုင္ငံ ေတာင္ပုိင္း၌ တရားမ၀င္ ေရာက္ရွိလာေသာ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံသား ၄၃ ဦးကို ယခုလအတြင္း ဖမ္းဆီးရမိ ခဲ့သည္ဟု ထိုင္း သတင္းမ်ား ေဖာ္ျပခ်က္အရ သိရသည္။ယမန္ေန႔က ထုိင္းႏိုင္ငံ ေတာင္ပိုင္း ခ်ံဳေဖာ္ ခရိုင္မွ တဆင့္ တျခား အရပ္သို႔ သြားေရာက္မည့္ ျမန္မာ ႏိုင္ငံသား ၁၃ ဦးကို ၿခံ၀န္း တခုတြင္ ထိုင္းအာဏာ ပိုင္မ်ားက စစ္ေဆး ဖမ္းဆီး ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း၊ ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္ ရက္ပိုင္းအတြင္း ကလည္း အမ်ဳိးသား ၁၆ ဦးႏွင့္ အမ်ဳိးသမီး ၁၄ ဦး တို႔ကုိ ဖမ္းဆီးခဲ့ ေသးေၾကာင္း ေဒသခံ အလုပ္သမားမ်ားက ေျပာသည္။
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http://socialactionforwomen.blogspot.com/2010/01/blog-post_15.html
Day: January 16, 2010
ASEAN should not trust in Tormenters of Burma by Zinn Lin
By – Zin Linn
ASEAN is seemingly committed to accelerating economic growth, social progress and cultural development in the South-East Asia region, to strengthen the institution for a thriving and composed community of Southeast Asian nations. So far one of its members is a military-ruled nation that pays no attention to the norms of the grouping. How can the association ignore the recalcitrance of its desperado member, Burma or Myanmar?
ASEAN aims to promote regional peace and stability through respect for justice and the rule of law and adherence to the principles of the U.N. Charter. Yet it shuts its eyes while extrajudicial killings and violence against women and children take place daily in one of its member countries. There is no law and order at all under Burma’s military dictatorship.
For example, on 30 December 2009, fifteen political activists from three townships in Mandalay Division, who were held in Mandalay for three months, were given various prison sentences ranging from two years to 71 years by a court sitting inside the prison. The special branch of the police arrested the political activists from Myingyan, Nyaung Oo and Kyauk Padaung townships last September and October without attributing any reasons, held them incommunicado, and did not let them to meet their family members during their detention period. They have been given harsh imprisonments by a kangaroo-court in jail without having a lawyer on 6 January.
Besides, a military-controlled township court in Burma has handed down a 20-year jail term to a freelance reporter Hla Hla Win, a young video journalist who worked with the Burma exile broadcaster “Democratic Voice of Burma” based in Norway, as the ruling junta continues its crackdown on the dissent. She was arrested in September after taking a video interview at a Buddhist monastery in Pakokku, a town in Magwe Division, the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres and the Burma Media Association said in a joint statement. For that she was given a seven-year prison sentence in October. Burma ranks alongside nine other countries in the “worst of the worst” category in Freedom House’s ‘Freedom in the World 2010’ report, which includes Libya, Tibet, China, Eritrea, North Korea and Equatorial Guinea. Continue reading “ASEAN should not trust in Tormenters of Burma by Zinn Lin”
(Junta) Promises by strategypage
January 16, 2010: The government promised to allow free elections this year. These would be the first national elections since 1990. Back then, the military dictatorship lost, and refused to recognize the result, putting the leader of the winning party, Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest most of the last two decades. The government hasn’t set a date for this years vote, and no one expects the results, if it goes against the dictatorship, will be respected.
The government has ceasefire agreements with 17 ethnic groups and six factions of the KNU (Karen National Union). But most of the Karen tribe refuse to make peace, and continue to fight via armed militias and small terrorist groups. A third of the 57 million population are minorities, mostly those belonging to tribes in the north and east. Religion is more of a unifying factor, with 85 percent of the population Buddhist.
While Chinese companies are developing Myanmar’s gas fields, a South Korean firm won the $1.4 billion contract to build the pipeline that will carry the gas to China, starting in 2013. China is building a 770 kilometer long oil pipeline, from western Myanmar to China, and will be moving 12 million tons of oil a year by 2012. Continue reading “(Junta) Promises by strategypage”
As UN Ban Plans Sunday Haiti Trip, Picks South Korean and UN Media, Spurned Sources Say
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will fly to Haiti for a one-day trip on Sunday. To publicize his trip, Ban will be accompanied by journalists from France’s wire service and television station, and in a surprise to some, South Korean media.
Several journalists who had put their names on the list to go demanded to know why they were not included, while not only South Korea media but also the UN’s own in house self documentarians were selected.
One reporter, representing a major South Florida daily, says he was told by Ban’s spokesman Martin Nesirky, this is not like selecting a soccer team, I don’t have to say how I made choices, remember, I’m not new at this job, I was with Reuters for years.
When pressed, Nesirky told the reporter the criteria included multi-media platforms, “coverage of the UN,” circulation, history of covering the region and inclusion in the directory of the UN Correspondents’ Association. At least one of the invitees does not comply with this last criterion. And it is unclear, at least to some, if by “coverage of the UN” positive or negative coverage is meant. continue
http://www.innercitypress.com/unban1quakehaiti011510.html
democracy for burma 
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