ထုိင္း-ျမန္မာနယ္စပ္ ျမ၀တီၿမဳိ႕တြင္ ဧၿပီလ(သႀကၤန္ကာလ)မွစ၍ ႏွစ္ႏုိင္ငံ ကုန္သြယ္ေရးအေျခအေန ေအးသြားရာမွ ယခုလလယ္ ပိုင္းအထိ ပုံမွန္အေနအထားသုိ႔ ျပန္မျဖစ္ေသးေၾကာင္း ၿမဳိ႕ခံမ်ားႏွင့္ ကုန္သည္မ်ား၏ ေျပာျပခ်က္အရ သိရသည္။
သႀကၤန္ကာလေနာက္ပုိင္း ျမ၀တီၿမဳိ႕တြင္ ကုန္သည္ကားမ်ား ယခင္ကထက္ အ၀င္အထြက္နည္းလာသျဖင့္ ကုန္ပစၥည္း ေရာင္း ၀ယ္အားမွာလည္း ယခင္ကထက္ က်ဆင္းသြားသည္ဟု ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံမွ ဆိုင္ကယ္ႏွင့္ ကားေရာင္း၀ယ္သည့္ ကုန္သည္တဦးက ေကအုိင္စီကုိ ယခုလို ေျပာသည္။
Baptist pastor and peace mediator Rev. Dr. Lahtaw Saboi Jum has lambasted the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) for rejecting conversion to the Burmese Army controlled Border Guard Force, said local sources.
He expressed his displeasure in front of over 800 worshipers during his sermon on the May 9 Sunday worship in Shatapru Kachin Baptist Church between 8 a.m. – 10 a.m. in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State, said local worshipers.
Conversely, the pastor patted the two smaller Kachin armed groups— the New Democratic Army-Kachin that transformed to the junta-proposed BGF in November last year, and Lasang Awng Wa Peace Group that also changed to two local militia groups in October last year, a worshiper told Kachin News Group today.
Young men in the church have been angered by Saboi Jum’s sermon. He has always been treated with skepticism for his mediation efforts between ethnic armed groups and the junta, said a youth in the church.
Meanwhile, Saboi Jum was recently awarded 5,000 acres of land on the road between Myitkyina and Bhamo by the junta, whereas common people cannot even get an acre of land from the regime in Kachin State, local sources close to the pastor said.
Earlier, Saboi Jum and his younger brother Hkun Myat had suggested to the KIO in writing to accept the junta’s BGF proposal— or else relations between them would cease.
The two brothers are trying to mediate between the KIO and the junta. Saboi Jum is the founder of the national peace NGO known as Shalom Foundation, or Nyein Foundation in Burmese. He is also the active director of the foundation.
With the intervention of the two brothers, the KIO delegates and junta officials met at least 17 times on the contentious BGF issue in Myitkyina since April 28 last year. But the meetings failed to resolve the imbroglio.
The KIO has been rigid in its stance that it will not accept the BGF without the consensus of the Kachin people inside and outside the country.
Moulmein: According to HURFOM field researcher, since May 5th, 2010, joint forces of State Peace and Develop Council (SPDC) included members of Township Peace and Development Council (TPDC), Police forces, People’ militia, Immigration and Military Intelligence have been cracking down on residents and family members whose names have not been listed on their families’ lists in Moulmein Township, Mon State. Residents claimed that some family members have been arrested and had fines extorted as punishment for failing to present their names on the families’ list.
According to information based on local sources, the crackdown started on May 5th, and has been occurring every night around 10 P.M. to 12 midnight by the joint forces (known as multi-forces), targeting the persons whose names were not listed on the families’ list or guests who have not asked permission from the local TPDC office to stay as guests with residents. An eyewitness, Nai Htoo, 30, confirmed that the SPDC joint forces consist of 12 persons in total and they have crackdown some households in his village, Pha-Ought, arresting 5 men who were originally from other areas of Mon State and who were married and now living in Pha-Ought village.
“The arrested men were mostly from other areas of Mon State. I heard 5 men were arrested on the night of May 5th. Out of the 5 people, two men are from Kyaikmayaw and another Tow from Paung Townships of Mon State. I don’t know the original place of another ones.” Nai Htoo confirmed to the HURFOM field researcher on May 11th the original locations of the 5 people arrested. Continue reading “SPDC township authorities arrest and extort fees from residents not included in family lists”
Myanmar Times
By Thomas Kean
(Volume 26, No. 521)
A HYDROPOWER project in eastern Myanmar appears to be back on track after a new Memorandum of Agreement – four and a half years after the original – was signed on April 24 in Nay Pyi Taw.
The MoA for the Hutgyi project was signed by the Department of Hydropower Planning, under the Ministry of Electric Power (1), China’s SinoHydro Corporation, the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) International and local firm International Group of Entrepreneur at the ministry building, state media reported last week.
The 1360-megawatt (MW) Hutgyi dam will be built in Kayin State along the Than Lwin River; the cost is tipped at more than US$1 billion.
In December 2005, EGAT signed an agreement with the department to develop the project. Chinese company SinoHydro later joined the consortium in June 2006.
The dam will comprise eight 170MW turbines, according to SinoHydro, who is providing most of the financing for the project.
A feasibility study and detailed design report were completed in August and September 2007 respectively but construction work is still yet to get underway. Last week’s report did not give an expected completion date for the project. The dam was originally expected to begin generating electricity in 2015 or 2016.
A ceremony in honor of two distinguished Shan monks who had received honorary doctorate degree from Thailand’s prestigious Mahachulalongkorn Buddhist University on Sunday, 9 May, was held on Tuesday, 11 May, by Shan and Thai devotees.
One was Venerable Panyananda, 59, President of the Shan State Sangha and Member of the State Sangha Mahanayaka Committee, the highest executive body of the Sangha in Burma. He has, since 2003, been the head of the Pali-to-Shan Translation of the Tripitaka project. “Most Thai monks can read and write Pali,” said Venerable Associate Professor Dr Phra Sutthivorayan, Deputy Rector of Mahachulalongkorn. “But, Venerable Panyananda, he can also speak it fluently.”
He compared Burma’s Panyananda favorably with Thailand’s own Panyananda, better known as Panyananda Bhikkhu (1911-2009), one of the kingdom’s most respected monks.
Venerable Panyananda and Venerable Khammai Dhammasami
The Shan Panyananda is modest about his achievements. “Honor is like a shadow: when you seek it, it runs away. But when do not seek it, it follows you,” he said.
The other recipient, Venerable Khammai Dhammasami, 46, is already a world reknown Shan monk for his leading participation in the International Day of Vesak held annually in Bangkok since 2005. “Not only he is one of the few monks teaching in a western university,” one of his Thai admirers exclaimed, “but at Oxford, of all universities.”
Dr Khammai Dhammasami, also known as Sao Khu (Chao Khru in Thai) to his disciples, widely respected for his Dhamma Made Easy for today’s generation sermons, said, “ We have to balance the two kinds of progress: spiritual and material. If there is imbalance between the two, there arises conflict.” He then said in Shan, “What I’m teaching is not only for the heaven goers, but also for those who still live on earth (Kya Mongphi, Li Mong-kon).”
The ceremony, held at the Royal River Hotel near the Chao Phraya, was attended by some 300 monks and lay people. Among them were Venerable Dr Anil Sakya Sudgandho, Assistant Secretary to Thailand’s Supreme Patriarch, Venerable Phrakhupalad Suwatthanawachirakhun, Director of Buddhist Research Institute, General (retired) Phon Wanakamol (once known as ‘the only Shan general in Thailand’), Professor Sai Aung Tun, who last year published the much-acclaimed “History of the Shan State.” and some Thai alumni of UK universities.
Many Shan migrants in Bangkok expressed disappointment at not being allowed to attend the event. “Our quota is only 30,” complained Hsai Khong, executive member of the Phra Dhammaseng Fouondation chaired by Gen Phon. “But there are at least 500,000 Shans in Bangkok.”
The first Shan monk to be awarded the honorary Ph. D from the Mahachulalongkorn is Khruba Sengla Aggamahapandita of Tachilek last year for his efforts in modernizing the Tripitaka in the Tai-Khuen language.
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