Three Pagodas Pass authorities ban monk donation ceremony

October 18th, 2010

These photos was soon gyi lounge at kamawet village from the previous year and after 2007 Saffron Revolution

Thu Rein, IMNA : The Township Peace and Development Council (TPDC) from Three Pagodas Pass Sub-Township, Karen State, has prohibited residents from gathering at all monasteries in the region to celebrate an upcoming festival.

This year’s annual monk donation festival at TPP, where attendees give communal offerings of provisions and articles of clothing to members of the local monastic community, was to originally to be held on October 22nd,  the full moon day of the Buddhist month of Thadingyut, a sabbath day devoted to fasting and abstinence from sensual pleasures. As of the second week of October, the festival for 2010 has been cancelled.

Authorities reported that they banned the festival on the grounds that large gathering have been discouraged by the Burmese government until after the upcoming Burmese elections this November. Similar anti-assembly mandates banning local festivals were reported in Mudon Township, Thanphyuzayart Township,and Kyiakmayaw Township in Mon State earlier this month.

According to a member of the TPDC at TPP, “[We] will not allow to hold [the festival] for fear of crowding people before the election. No celebration in this year”.

Three Pagodas Pass residents are reportedly extremely unhappy with this recent prohibition, which prevents residents from donating provisions to monks living in the roughly 80 townships in the region.

The donation celebration is traditionally led by the TPDC chairman and the head pagodas trustee from the TPP Sub-Township. Angry residents reported that they had been preparing for the festival by compiling donations of rice and other foodstuffs, and had been in the process of sewing special celebration garments to wear to the celebrations.

TPP residents attributed the ban to an alleged desire by Burmese government and its proxy party, the Union Solidarity and Development Council (USDP), to limit contact between monks and civilians before the upcoming elections, as a means of stifling anti-government sentiment. Since the monk-led uprising known as the “Saffron Revolution” in 2007, donation ceremonies to monasteries all over Burma have been strictly monitored by Burmese government forces, although this year marks the first instance of festivals being completely banned.

A TPP resident said, “The issue is the monks and people were closed. The USPD is being busy campaigning in the area, that’s why they ban it [the festivals]. They [the USDP] are worrying it will become a difficultly for them”.

While the donations festivals themselves have been banned, monks residing in TPP monasteries still stand a chance of receiving a portion of their typical donations. A woman residing in Mudon Township in Mon State reported that the festival organizer from the township has been busily collecting funds to donate to the area’s monks; it is unknown if such a measures will be taken in TPP.

Short URL: http://monnews.org/?p=1182

 

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ေခါင္ကယ္ငါးဖမ္းပိုက္စက္ရံုမွဆႏၵျပအလုပ္သမားမ်ားအလုပ္အကိုင္ေနသားတက်ျဖစ္ျပီ

(ေအာက္တိုဘာ ၁၈၊၂၀၁၀)
ထိုင္း-လာအိုနယ္စပ္ ေခါင္ကယ္ငါးဖမ္းပိုက္စက္ရံု မွဆႏၵျပ အလုပ္သမားမ်ား ယာယီပတ္စပို ့မ်ားအားကုိင္ ေဆာင္ခြင့္ရရွိခဲ့ျပီးေနာက္လွ်က္ ယေန႔တြင္ထိုင္းနိုင္ငံေနရာအႏွံ႔အျပားတို႔တြင္အလုပ္အကိုင္မ်ားေနသားတက်
ျဖစ္သြားျပီးျဖစ္သည္။
ဘန္ေကာက္၊မဟာခ်ိဳင္၊စူရဌာနီ၊ခိုလတ္ႏွင့္မဲေဆာက္တို ့တြင္ အလုပ္သမားအာလံုး တရား၀င္ျပန္လည္အလုပ္
လုပ္ကိုင္ခြင့္ရရွိသြားၾကျပီးျဖစ္သည္။ယမန္ေန႔ကအထိ ေနရာအေျပာင္းအလဲရွိခဲ့ၾကေသာ္လည္း ယေန ့တြင္အား
လံုးအဆင္ေျပသြားခဲ့ျပီးျဖစ္သည္။
ျပီးခဲ့သည့္ေအာက္တိုဘာလ၁၃ ရက္မွ ၁၅ရက္အတြင္း စက္ရံုတာ၀န္ခံႏွင့္ ထိုင္းေရွ႕ေနမ်ားေကာင္စီႏွင့္MAP ေဖါင္ေဒးရွင္းႏွင့္ထိုင္းနိုင္ငံေရာက္ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံသားမ်ားအသင္း(BAT) တို႔ မွ ၃ ရက္တိုင္တိုင္ ညွိႏွိဳင္းခဲ့ၾကျပီးေနာက္ပိုင္းအလုပ္သမားမ်ားေတာင္းဆိုခ်က္မ်ားတစ္ခုအနက္၆၅၈ဦးမွာယာယီပတ္စပို ့ကိုင္ ေဆာင္ခြင့္ရရွိခဲ့ၾကျပီးျဖစ္သည္။
အလုပ္သမထိပ္တင္ေအးက“သမီးတုိ ့ပတ္စပို ့ကိုခုမွျမင္ဖူးေတာ့တယ္။ ဘယ္လို၀မ္းသာမွန္းမသိေတာ့ဘူး
ေျပာမျပတတ္ေအာင္ပါပဲ၊အားလံုးကိုေက်းဇူးတင္ပါတယ္”ဟုေျပာသည္။
ေအာက္တိုဘာ ၁၃ ရက္ေန ့ကလုပ္ငန္းရွင္ဘက္မွအလုပ္မဆင္းပဲဆႏၵျပေနသည့္အလုပ ္သမားမ်ားအား ေပးရန္က်န္ရွိသည့္လုပ္အားခေငြ မ်ားကုိစက္ရံု၀င္း အတြင္းမွာထုတ္ေပးမွာမဟုတ္ပဲ။အျပင္တစ္ေနရာ တြင္ထုတ္ေပးမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္းထိုင္းေရွ႕ေနမ်ားသို ့ေတာင္းဆိုခဲ့သည္။
ထိုင္းေရွ ့ေနမ်ားကလည္း စက္ရံုႏွင့္ ၃ကီလိုအကြာ (ဟြာလန္း)ထိုင္းဘုန္းေတာ္ၾကီးေက်ာင္းတြင္ေနရာခ်ထား
ခဲ့ျပီး ၂ရက္တိုင္တိုင္ ေျဖရွင္းခဲ့ၾကရသည္။
MAP ေဖါင္ေဒးရွင္းမွ တာ၀န္ရွိသူတစ္ဦးျဖစ္သူ မမိုင္က“လုပ္ငန္းရွင္ကတိမတည္ဘူး၊အျပင္ကိုထြက္ဖို ့သူ အကြက္ဆင္ခဲ့တာ၊တကယ္လည္းအလုပ္သမားေတြထြက္လာေရာ့ ထုတ္ေပးတဲ့ပိတ္ဆံေတြေလ်ာ့ေနတယ္
ဒါေပမယ့္ က်မတုိ ့တရားစြဲျပီးျပန္ေတာင္းမယ္။ အလုပ္သမားေတြအေပၚမွာဖိႏွိပ္ထားတာေတြကိုတရားစြဲမယ္၊
အလုပ္သမားေတြအတြက္ ရသင့္ရထိုက္တဲ့အခြင့္အေရးေတြကိုေတာင္းဆိုသြားမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္”ဟုေျပာသည္။
ဘုန္းေတာ္ၾကီးေက်ာင္းတြင္ေက်ာင္းထိုင္ ဆရာေတာ္မွ ညေနစာထမင္းအားေကၽြးေမြးလွဴဒါန္းပါသည္။
အလုပ္သမားေခါင္ေဆာင္တစ္ဦးျဖစ္သည့္ ကိုထြန္းထြန္းလြင္က“က်ေနာ္တို ့ရဲ ့ညီညြတ္မႈေၾကာင့္ပါ။BAT
အဖြဲ ့ကေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြညြန္ၾကားတာေတြ၊မမိုင္ညြန္ၾကားတာေတြကို က်ေနာ္တုိ ့အတတ္နိုင္ဆံုးအေကာင္
အထည္ေဖၚပါတယ္။က်ေနာ္တို ့အက်ဥ္းအၾကပ္ထဲေရာက္ေနတဲ့အခ်ိန္မွာ ခုလိုထိထိေရာက္ေရာက္ကူညီ
ေပးတဲ့အဖြဲ ့ေတြအားလံုးကို ေက်းဇူးတင္ပါတယ္ဗ်ာ”ဟုေျပာသည္။

17.9.2010

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The Voice of Hope Audio Book

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Abhisit sets new tone for Thai relations with Burma by Pavin Chachavalpongpun

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s visit to Naypyidaw, the almost secluded capital of Burma, on Oct 11 has marked a new phase in the Democrat Party’s relations with the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).

It was a crucial visit since the election in Burma is imminent. Due to take place on Nov 7, it will be the first poll in 20 years. It was also the first time a prime minister from his political party has paid a visit to Burma in almost two decades. During 1997-2001, Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai refused to visit Burma because of his supposedly pro-democracy agenda at home. But the situation surrounding Thai-Burmese relations has changed over the years, so has the current government’s policy toward Naypyidaw.

Legitimate or otherwise, Mr Abhisit’s foreign policy towards Burma reflects the political realities in both countries. Thailand’s democratisation has in the past few years stagnated with the Abhisit government fighting for its survival against political threats posed by the red shirt movement.

Meanwhile, the Democrat Party’s long-held pro-democracy platform has increasingly become rhetorical. The perception of the Abhisit government being reluctant to push for political reforms serves to belittle its pro-democracy credentials. On this basis, Thailand is finding it more difficult to preach to its Burmese neighbour about the promotion of democracy and respect for human rights.

In Burma too, with the election upcoming, the Burmese generals have planned this political transition carefully, ensuring that political power will remain firmly in the hands of the military elite – some of whom are now wearing civilian clothes. Like it or not, there will be no new Burma, just a more civilianised and perhaps a less repressive regime.

Mr Abhisit’s visit to Naypyidaw seems to symbolise the shift of direction in Thailand’s Burmese policy and its realistic response to Burma’s political transition.

Currently, there are two emerging views in Thailand. On the one hand, the advent of a civilian regime in Burma could instigate a legitimacy crisis and a loss of justification for Thailand’s traditional hostile policy toward Burma which was deeply rooted in their embittered historical interactions. After the elections, however, Thailand will expectedly legitimise Burma’s civilian regime, thus debunking its old construct of Burma as a threat.

The first few years after the elections will be a trial period for the new regime. There will be numerous obstacles that will stand to challenge Burma’s civilianised government. The change will not be restricted within the domestic domain, but will engender an impact on Thai-Burmese relations. With this change, Thailand is conditioned to search for a new legitimacy in its policy toward Burma. Certain Thai governments in the past exploited the negative image of Burma’s military regime in order to justify their foreign policy interests and appease their international allies though they were not any less despotic than their Burmese counterparts.

In retrospect, Thai-Burmese relations have been marred by distorted historical memories and the state-constructed perception of threat. Ties became “normal” only when the leaders of both sides agreed to let their economic imperatives take a front seat in the conduct of diplomacy toward each other.

Sceptics may have dismissed the upcoming elections; they believe Burma is leaping into a greater unknown. Regardless, Burma will be recasting itself into a more recognisable entity, not necessarily a democratic one.

Asean and Thailand will be welcoming the new regime, since both have already endorsed the SPDC’s road map to democracy.

Min Ko Naing Celebrates Birthday in Prison

Prominent Burmese activist Min Ko Naing (aka Paw Oo Tun) celebrated his 48th birthday in prison suffering from osteoporosis and other illnesses, according to family members.

Family members in Rangoon on Monday offered alms to five monks to mark his birthday, which was commemorated inside and outside Burma.
On Oct. 11, his sister, Kyi Kyi Nyunt, visited Min Ko Naing in Kengtung Prison, a remote prison in Shan State.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Monday, she said: “The weather in that region is cold and his arms, hands and legs are aching. His osteoporosis is worse so we have to send medicine regularly. He has to take medicine that can kill the pain.”

In addition, he suffers from a bone spur on his heel which makes it difficult to walk, she said. 

“If he can wear high-heeled shoes, he can relieve some of that pain,” she said. The former chairman of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU) and a leading member of the 88 Generation Students group, Min Ko Naing was arrested in 1989 for participating in the student-led uprising. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

After being released from prison in 2004, he lead a “white campaign” that distributed T-shirts to people in Rangoon who wore the T-shirt as a symbol of peaceful opposition to the regime.

He was rearrested on Aug. 21, 2007, on charges of organizing a demonstration that led to the “Saffron Revolution.” He was given a 65-year sentence.

Min Ko Naing was born on Oct. 18, 1962, the third son of the respected artist Thet Nyunt and Hla Kyi. From a young age, he was interested in politics. He studied zoology at Rangoon Arts and Science University before reforming and leading the ABFSU.

Min Ko Naing received the John Humphrey Freedom Award in 1999, the Student Peace Prize in 2001, the Civil Courage Prize in 2005, the Homo Homini Award by the People in Need Foundation and the South Korean Gwangju Human Rights Award for 2009.

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Min Ko Naing 48th Birthday_Eng

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Asiaweek, 28 October 1988

The Students Struggle On

It was the first real battle for Mya Thein and Maung Chain. The two 20-year-old university students from Rangoon had undergone elementary arms training in the capital before joining the Karen National Union (KNU), one of the major Burmese ethnic rebel groups operating along the Thailand-Burma border. But it was in the thickly forested terrain around the Burmese Army’s southern outpost of Mae Ta Waw that Mya Thein and Maung Chain goe their first taste of insurgent warfare. Along with other students who had fled to the border after the Sept. 18 military takeover, the two greenhorns were assigned by the KNU to a heavy weapons unit which had been pounding Mae Ta Waw with mortar barrages since fighting began Sept. 26. In the final assault on Oct. 13, Karen commandos climbed a steep cliff to trap the Burmese soldiers on the heights overlooking the winding Moei River. Some 500 government troops put up stiff resistance, but the strategic camp finally fell to the jubilant Karens and their enthusiastic student supporters. “It was good revenge on the military regime,” exulted Mya Thein. “Though we’re not professional, we have joined a professional army. And we’ll keep on fighting until we get true democracy.”

The Mae Ta Waw victory was one of the KNU’s biggest in a decade. At his headquarters further north in Manaplaw, KNU leader Gen. bo Yua said he had been waiting for four years to attack the camp, which the Burmese Army captured from the Karens in 1984. The opportunity presented itself after anti-government agitation erupted in towns and cities around the country. Thai border police said that almost half of the 800 Burmese soldiers previously positioned at Mae Ta WAw had been withdrawn in August and September to deal with the popular uprising.

The toll at Mae Ta Waw was high. Thai sources said 185 Burmese soldiers were killed or wounded, while Karen casualties were believed to be greater. Some 50 Burmese students reportedly participated in the attack, although they were kept on the sidelines. According to a KNU spolesman known as David, 22 students were led by Col. Htay Maung, commander of the KNU’s 7th Brigade, in the actual assault on Mae Ta Waw; 28 other joined the 21st Battalion commanded by Maj. Lar Moo in cutting off the Burmese Army’s supply routes. “We let the students join our armed forces, ” noted David, “but we cannot let them fight the Burmese alone. They still lack experience.”

to overcome that deficiency, some new recruits have been receiving military training at the rebel base. so far, 461 Burmese students have taken shelter at the KNU’s Kler Day camp, about 80 km north of Thai border town of Mae Sot; an other 3,000 stay at the Karens’ Thay Baw bo position further south. While the bulk of the dissidents have joined the Karens, a few hundred others have reportedly sought refuge at camps controlled by other armed minority groups such as the Mon National Liberation Army.

Many of the young radicals had been part of the Rangoon-based All Burma Federation of Students’ Unions, led by enigmatic student activist Min Ko Naing (see interview). Recent tactics of resistance adopted by the ABFSU included making contact with the insurgents while pursuing democracy through political means. Towards that end, the federation decided to apply for registration as a party with the elections commission, which was set up by the ruling military regime to make preparations for promised multi-party polls. It will be a long wait for the 22 groupings that have been legally recognised so far. On Oct. 14, the five-man election commission said balloting would be held only after pre-election work was finished by January(1989), after which political parties would be consulted on a date for staging polls. the same week, the government-backed National Unity Party (NUP) formerly the Burma Socialist Programme Party founded by longtime strogman Ne Win, registered with the elections commission. Under election laws, NUP first divested itself of BSPP assets and staff.

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