Day: April 19, 2011
China warns citizens in Burma to return home
China warned its citizens who work in Burma’s Shan State, bordering the country’s southwest Yunnan province, to return home, early last week, sources at the border said.
The urgent warning was released by Chinese authorities at Mangshi, because fighting may escalate between ethnic armed groups and the Burmese Army in the region.
China is concerned the current fighting between the Shan State Army-North (SSA-N) and Burmese troops may spread to include two more powerful ethnic armed groups- the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and United Wa State Army (UWSA), also based in the region, sources close to Chinese border authorities said.
The SSA-N and KIA are military allies and members of the ethnic military and political alliance known as the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), which was formed on the Thai-Burma border in February.
There are about 2,000 Chinese working in mining, timber logging and charcoal production in the main areas of Kutkai Township and Mongkoe, (also Mung Gu) in Kachin Township.
Chinese workers are busy harvesting timber and charcoal from different areas in the two townships, said witnesses in Mung Gu.
The number of Chinese trucks crossing into the Burmese border town of Mongkoe, from Manghai in China, have more than doubled from 30 to about 70 trucks every day, witnesses said.
Currently, timbers and charcoal are being temporarily unloaded at Manghai and the trucks are busy 24-hours-a-day transporting timber and charcoal from the Burma side, according to local residents.
Truck owners who can transport faster are paid more by the timber and charcoal businessmen, truck drivers said.
Local military analysts said the Burmese government is planning to eliminate ethnic armed groups in Northern Shan State because the oil pipeline from Burma’s western coast in Arakan State (also called Rakhine State) to Ruili, in China, will cross the region.
At the same time, the construction of Chinese military posts in Manghai, the former headquarters of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB), is about to be completed. The posts will monitor the political instability in Burma, military analysts said.
The New Government Must Respect Freedom-commentary Hurfom
April 18, 2011
On the 31st of March, when the new government leader and former military commander, Lt. Gen. Thein Sein, took office in Naypyidaw, the capital of Burma, he promised a clean and good governance. This was his promise, but in practice, if he and his government do not allow various freedoms inherent in a democracy, the people will never believe that the government will bring them toward democracy.
If the government is really promoting a democratic system, they must agree to allowing the freedom of expression, political opinions, and political beliefs. They must allow the opposition parties or other political forces to analyze the government policies and its rules. First, the government should release all political prisoners or social workers imprisoned in the previous government. These political figures and activists were put in jail just for expressing their political opinions. If freedom of expression is allowed in this new government, all political prisoners must be released.
Similarly, many social activists who were working in the fields of labor rights, relief, health care, and education were arrested and put in jail for their competing activities against the previous military governments. They were working in the field against forced labour, the relief program during the 2008 Cyclone Nargis incident, and providing education for poor students. If the new government respects freedom of association and assembly and respects the rights of people for education and health care, they must release all of these social activists.
For a democratic and peaceful Burma, the new government must respect the opinions of the ethnic minority people. Ethnic people have concern for their nationality identity and territories, so the new government must talk to all ethnic minorities, asking them what their needs are to protect their national identity. The government should find a way to bring about national unity and peace in the country. If not, the democratic system will not come about peacefully.
If the government claims that they are an elected government, then they must respect all opinions from different individuals, organizations and ethnic groups.
Petition addressed to the President of the Union of Myanmar by NLD
On the first day of the Burmese New Year, a signature campaign has been initiated by NLD members at the headquarters of NLD. In this campaign, people signed a petition addressed to the President of the Union of Myanmar requesting to take some concrete actions for national reconciliation and domestic peace of the country. In the letter, it is said that new government which is not just an ordinary administration that has been elected for ordinary term but the one that is responsible for bringing about a working democracy by opening a new page of Burmese history.
It also requests the new government to release all political prisoners unconditionally and immediately, to make a dialogue by peaceful political means after ceasing all armed conflict among Tatmadaw and ethnic armed groups and to create an environment for all organizations in exile, Burmese people living abroad and refugees to be able to come back home safely.
http://www.nldburma.org/political-activity/88-headquarters/283-signature-campaign-.html
Without respecting ASEAN Charter, Burma doesn’t deserve ASEAN chair
The Burma question seems unresolved within the short-term as Asian leaders have no compassion towards the people of Burma who have been suffering hellish plights underneath an atrocious military dictatorship. Currently, they are collaborating with Thein Sein’s sham civilian government so as to exploit the resource-rich country.
If China together with ASEAN countries were high-minded and unbiased nations, the question of Burma could be easily sorted out.
Particularly, the ASEAN doesn’t follow its well-founded principles and gives shelter to the dictators, not the oppressed people. It is the time for ASEAN to amend its manners and prove compassion towards the people of Burma.
Kavi Chongkittavorn on ASEAN and Burma ‘The Nation (Thailand)’: “Last week, when the newly appointed foreign minister of Burma Wunna Maung Lwin briefed the Asean foreign minister in Bangkok on the latest political situation inside his country, he also asked for the grouping’s support to allow Burma to take the role of chairman.”
Khun Kavi says in his article, “Since its admission in 1997, Burma has resisted repeated calls from Asean for national reconciliation, political reforms as well as hordes of other issues. As part of a family, Asean has quietly swallowed its pride and lived with its bruised reputation to render support for the brutal regime in Naypyidaw. At this juncture, Asean still holds the last bargaining chip, albeit very small, to salvage international standing of the group. At the Bangkok meeting, Singapore and Malaysia made it clear they wanted a credible Burma to chair Asean.”
He also pointed out in his ‘Regional Perspective’ commentary – Burma seeking to be the chairman of Asean in 2014 – that Burma desires ASEAN leaders to come to a decision at the approaching summit on May 7-8 in Jakarta so as to have enough time organizing the year-long chair in three years. However, several ASEAN countries still have doubts. Before ASEAN makes any decision on this matter, they have asked the Burmese Government to allow a delegate from ASEAN to visit the country to assess the latest situation and its readiness to take up the chair. Foreign Minister of Burma could not decide and said he would take the matter back to the head of state.
Khun Kavi’s comment exactly resembles the concern of Burmese people. The new Thein Sein led namesake civilian government may not possess independent decision-making power which is still in the hand of Senior General Than Shwe. The new Burmese civilian government ought to prove that it has complete self-sufficiency exclusive of the military dictatorship. Continue reading “Without respecting ASEAN Charter, Burma doesn’t deserve ASEAN chair”
SSPP/SSA အား ဆွေးနွေးရန် ရမခ တိုင်းမှူးဟန်ပြ ကမ်းလှမ်းချိန် တိုက်ပွဲများဆက်လက်ဖြစ်ပွါး
အပစ်ရပ်စဲရေးအတွက် စိန်ကျော့ပြည်သူ့စစ် တပ်ဖွဲ့ ခေါင်းဆောင်အား ရမခ တိုင်းမှူးစေလွှတ် ဆွေးနွေး ခိုင်းစဉ် တပ် အင်အားဖြည့်တင်းမှု မရပ်ဘဲ သျှမ်းပြည် အလယ်ပိုင်း၊တောင်ပိုင်းတွင် တိုက်ပွဲများဆက်လက် ဖြစ်ပွားနေ သေးကြောင်း သျှမ်း ပြည်တပ်မတော် SSPP/SSA သတင်း ရပ်ကွက်က ဆိုပါသည်။
“၁၁ ရက်က မိန်းခေးမှာတွေ့ဆုံဖို့ စိန်ကျော့က ကမ်းလှမ်းလာတယ်။ ကျနော်တို့ဖက်က ဗိုလ်မှူးခေးမောဝ်း ဦးဆောင် တဲ့ အဖွဲ့သွားတွေ့တယ်။ စိန်ကျော့ဖက်က ဦးကိုင်ဖှနဲ့ ဦးလှမြင့်တို့ပေါ့။ မန္တလေး- လားရှိုး ကားလမ်းအထက်ပိုင်း သီပေါ၊ ကျောက်မဲ၊ လားရှိုး၊ မိုးမိတ်၊ နမ့်ဆန် ဖက်မှာလှုပ်ရှားနေတဲ့ SSPP/SSA တပ်သားတွေ ဝမ့်ဟိုင်းဌာနချုပ်ကို ပြန်ဆုတ်ပေးရင် သီပေါ မြို့နယ် နမ့်မ မောက်တောင်း နဲ့ တန့်ယန်းမြို့နယ် နမ့်လောဝ်း ဒေသဘက်မှာ (လက်နက် မကိုင် ယူနီဖောင်းမဝတ်ဘဲ) ပုံမှန် ပြန်နေခွင့် အခြေချခွင့်ပြုမယ်။ မဆုတ်ပေးရင်တော့ ဆက်လက်တိုက်ခိုက်သွား မယ်လို့ပြောလာတယ်။ ကျနော်တို့ ကတော့ ပြည်သူလူထု ဆန္ဒကိုမေးမြန်းကြည့်ရ ဦးမယ်လို့ဘဲ ပြန်ဖြေခဲ့တယ်” – ဟု SSPP/SSA ပြောခွင့်ရပုဂ္ဂိုလ်က ပြောသည်။
နယ်မြေလေ့လာနေသော သျှမ်းပြည်တပ်မတော် SSPP/SSA တပ်မဟာ ၃၆ မှအရာရှိများ
democracy for burma 
You must be logged in to post a comment.