Day: November 19, 2011
Burma_Myanmar president has decided to release all political prisoners: adviser
By Christine Tjandraningsih and Myat Thura
NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Nov. 19, Kyodo
Myanmar’s President Thein Sein has decided to release all political prisoners in the country, his chief political adviser said Saturday.
”For the release of the prisoners, it’s already in the mind of the president,” Thein Sein’s Chief Political Adviser Ko Ko Hlaing told Kyodo News in an interview on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit.
The president believes that political prisoners should be released ”sooner rather than later,” Hlaing said.
According to Hlaing, Thein Sein has said Myanmar needs ”all the citizens’ hands to make a new nation” and he has invited Myanmarese living in exile to return to help build a new country.
”So why are we maintaining these people in jail? It’s a waste of time, a waste of money and a waste of people,” Hlaing said.
The Myanmar government released about 230 political detainees last month. No further amnesty has been announced, however, prompting speculation that internal dissent is deepening within the government on how to proceed with political reforms.
Hlaing said Myanmar’s Ministry of Home Affairs data show there were over 500 political prisoners in the country’s jails prior to last month’s amnesty and about 300 politicians are still locked up in prisons.
Earlier on Saturday, Thein Sein had a meeting with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon over breakfast in Bali.
”We discussed about better cooperation between Myanmar and the United Nations,” Myanmar Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin told reporters after the meeting.
Asked whether there is a plan for the U.N. chief to visit Myanmar, Maung Lwin said, ”There would be, but we are trying to find (a) mutually convenient time.”
Thursday, Southeast Asian leaders attending the ASEAN summit on the Indonesian resort island of Bali approved Myanmar’s chairmanship of the grouping in 2014, on the grounds that significant political changes have taken place in Myanmar.
In 2006, Myanmar agreed to forgo its turn for the rotating chairmanship because some ASEAN members at the time feared that the then junta-led government’s chairmanship would affect ASEAN’s international standing.
U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will visit Myanmar next month, the first visit by a U.S. secretary of state in more than 50 years.
U.S. officials said Clinton will arrive in Myanmar on Dec. 1 for a two-day stay, during which she will visit Myanmar’s capital Naypyitaw and its largest city Yangon, and meet with President Thein Sein and other senior government officials, pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and civil society representatives.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
==Kyodo
D-Day for not only the National League for Democracy (NLD) but for all the pro-democracy opposition forces and the people of Burma
(Editorial) – November 18, 2011, will go down as D-Day for not only the National League for Democracy (NLD) but for all the pro-democracy opposition forces and the people of Burma. For the past 23 years, the people have fought and died for a more democratic Burma.
NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi among her supporters outside the NLD headquarters in Rangoon after the NLD voted to re-register and to reemerge as a legal political force in Burma. Photo: Mizzima
The Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD party took an historic step by deciding to register as a legal political party and to resume its role as the country’s most successful democratic party.
The vote by the 106 NLD central committee members was unanimous, although a small conservative minority still argues that it is too early to recognize real reform and trust the new government formed by President Thein Sein, a former general.
However, everyone agrees that Suu Kyi can play an important role in the process of moving democracy forward. Continue reading “D-Day for not only the National League for Democracy (NLD) but for all the pro-democracy opposition forces and the people of Burma”
UNFC မူနဲ့သာ မွန်ပြည်သစ်ပါတီငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးဆွေးနွေးမည်
မင်းသုတ – မွန်ပြည်နယ်အစိုးရ၏ ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးကိုယ်စားလှယ်များအား မွန်ပြည်သစ်ပါတီအနေဖြင့် UNFC
မွန်ပြည်သစ်ပါတီ ဥက္ကဋ္ဌ နိုင်ထောမန်
တပ်ပေါင်းစုအနေဖြင့်သာ မြန်မာအစိုးရနှင့်ဆွေးနွေလိုသည်ဟု ပြောကြားလိုက်ကြောင်း မွန်ပြည်သစ်ပါတီဥက္ကဌနိုင်ထောမွန်က လွတ်လပ်သောမွန်သတင်းအေဂျင်စီသို့ ယနေ့တွင်ပြောကြားသည်။
နိုင်ထောမွန်က “မွန်ပြည်သစ်ပါတီအနေနဲ့ UNFC မူအတိုင်းပဲဆက်ပြီးရပ်တည်သွားမယ်၊ ဒီမူတွေကတော့ ပြည်ထောင်စုအစိုးရအနေနဲ့ UNFC နဲ့ပဏာမ တွေ့ဆုံဆွေးနွေးပြီး တပြည်လုံးအပစ်အခတ်ရပ်စဲရေးကို အရင်လုပ်ပါ၊ အဲဒီအဆင့်ပြီးရင် နိုင်ငံရေးအရတွေ့ဆုံဆွေးနွေးသွားရမယ်” ဟု ပြောသည်။
အလားတူ လွန်ခဲ့သည့်အောက်တိုဘာလ(၆) ရက်နေ့တွင် ရေးမြို့၌ မွန်ပြည်နယ်အစိုးရကိုယ်စားလှယ်များနှင့် ပဏာမဆွေးနွေးမှုတွင်လည်း မွန်ပြည်သစ်ပါတီက အထက်ပါ UNFC မူဖြင့်သာ အပစ်ရပ်ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးဆွေးနွေးနိုင်မည်ကို တင်ပြခဲ့ပြီးဖြစ်သည်။
မွန်ပြည်နယ်အစိုးရက ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးကိုယ်စားလှယ်များမှတဆင့် အပစ်အခတ်ရပ်စဲရန်၊ ဆက်ဆံရေးရုံးထားရှိရန်၊ သတ်မှတ်နယ်မြေပြင်ပလက်နက်ကိုင်ဆောင်သွားလိုလျှင် ကြိုတင်သဘောတူညီမှုရယူရန်နှင့် ဒေသဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေးအတွက် ပြည်ထောင်စုအစိုးရနှင့် ဆက်လက်ညှိနှိုင်းလုပ်ဆောင်သွားရန် စသည့်ချက်များဖြင့် မွန်ပြည်သစ်ပါတီနှင့် ဆွေးနွေးခဲ့သည်။
“ဒေသတစ်ခုမှအပစ်ရပ်ထားပြီး နောက်ဒေသတစ်ခုကို ထိုးစစ်ဆင်နေတာတွေ မဖြစ်သင့်ဘူး၊ ဒါကြောင့် UNFC အဖွဲ့ဝင်တွေအနေနဲ့ တဖွဲ့ချင်းခွဲပြီးအစိုးရနဲ့သဘောတူညီမှုယူကြမှာတော့မဟုတ်ဘူး၊ ဒါပေမယ့် အစိုးရကိုယ်စားလှယ်တွေနဲ့ တဖွဲ့ချင်းတွေ့နိုင်တယ်လို့မူချမှတ်ထားတယ်၊ အစိုးရနဲ့ KNU တွေ့ရင်လည်း UNFC ချမှတ်တဲ့မူအတိုင်းပဲ ဆွေးနွေးတင်ပြမယ်လို့သိထားရပါတယ်” ဟု နိုင်ထောမွန်က ဆက်ပြောသည်။
တိုင်းရင်းသားလူမျိုးများဖက်ဒရယ်ကောင်စီ (UNFC) အဖွဲ့ဝင်များပါဝင်ခြင်းမရှိလျှင် မွန်ပြည်နယ် အစိုးရနှင့် ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးဆွေးနွေးမှု မပြုလုပ်ရန်မွန်ပြည်သစ်ပါတီ (NMSP) အား နိုင်ငံတကာရောက် မွန်အမျိုးသား ပူးပေါင်းဆောင်ရွက်ရေးကော်မတီ (OMCC)မှ ပြီးခဲ့သည့်အောက်တိုဘာလဆန်းပိုင်းတွင် ကြေငြာချက်ထုတ်ပြန်ခဲ့သည်။
အခြားတဘက်တွင် အစိုးရစစ်တပ်များသည် ကချင်အမျိုးသားလွတ်မြောက်ရေးအဖွဲ့ (KIO)၊ ရှမ်းပြည်တပ်မတော်မြောက်ပိုင်း (SSA-S) နှင့် ကရင်အမျိုးသားအစည်းအရုံး (KNU) အစရှိသည့် အဖွဲ့များနှင့် စစ်ဆင်ရေး ပြုလုပ်နေသည့်အတွက် တိုင်းရင်းသား လက်နက်ကိုင် အဖွဲ့များအားဖဲ့ထုတ် စည်းရုံးခြင်းသာ ဖြစ်သည်ဟု OMCC က ထောက်ပြထားသည်။
UNFC သည် ယခုနှစ်ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ ၁၇ ရက်နေ့တွင် တိုင်းရင်းသားလက်နက်ကိုင် အဖွဲ့များ ၁၂ ဖွဲ့မှ အခြေခံ ၆ ဖွဲ့နှင့် မဟာမိတ် ၆ ဖွဲ့ဖြင့်ဖွဲ့စည်းခဲ့ခြင်းဖြစ်သည်။
Burma,s notorious Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD) Still Alive and Censoring
Despite the recent relaxation of some of its media restrictions, Burma’s notorious Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD) is flexing its muscles once again, refusing to allow the publication of certain remarks made by pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Monday and rejecting news reports covering separate protests by monks in Mandalay and farmers in Rangoon, according to the managing editor of a Rangoon-based journal.
“Some statements made by Daw Suu, such as ‘There are no political prisoners in a country which has the rule of law’; ‘The development and peaceful lives of the people is more important than becoming the chair of Asean’; ‘We all know that there’s no freedom and balance in the country’s judicial pillar’; and other such quotes were rejected for use in the journal,” said the managing editor, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The statements were made by Suu Kyi on Monday at a press conference held at the headquarters of her National League for Democracy (NLD), which marked the one-year anniversary of her release from house arrest.
Suu Kyi mentioned the PSRD, Burma’s censorship board, at the press conference as well. She said she wrote a series of a travel stories for the journal Pyithu Khit (People’s Age), and although two of the stories were published, the PSRD banned material about the NLD legal team in the third story and so she chose not to publish the article and said it will therefore not be possible for her to continue writing these types of travel pieces. Continue reading “Burma,s notorious Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD) Still Alive and Censoring”
Burma: Karen women accuse Thai workers of wooing them into false marriages
Karen villagers alleged Thai company workers of exploiting and marrying local women while they are employed in construction work in southern Burma.
A village elder said villagers are outraged at recent false marriages involving three Karen women in Kaw Htee Lor (Tha Byu Chaung) village, east of Tavoy. Villagers say the three women were dumped by the Italian-Thai Development Company workers stationed in their village and employed on the construction of the Tavoy-Kanchanaburi Road.
The Karen village elder who declined to be named said.
“They have degraded our people’s dignity and they [Thai workers] see our people as cheap. Villagers elders are really ashamed and angry about what has happened.”
The elder fears Karen culture and moral tradition is at risk.
“It never happened until the Thai company came to our village. This is just the beginning and if the company and other businesses come in here, it will only get worse. We are really worried that our moral tradition and culture will be fully exploited in the future.” Continue reading “Burma: Karen women accuse Thai workers of wooing them into false marriages”
Government’s police and agents forced Mr. Dingyau Tang Gun to confess to detonating bombs-KAchin TV
police in Myitkyina had arrested and taken Mr. Dingyau Tang Gun into custody following massive bomb blasts that killed at least 11 people and injured 27. Those killed in the bomb blast included an infant child and orphans escaped from war torn Kachin areas. Mr. Dingyau Tang Gun, the owner of the house which was blown into pieces, was beaten and tortured during interrogation by Burmese government’s police and military agents, said local sources. Mr. Dingyau was accused of keeping bomb and giving bomb training to children and youth in his house. He was also accused of detonating bombs killing his two sons and one grandchild. Local sources say Mr. Dingyau was repeatedly beaten by government police and agents to confess that he himself detonated the bombs. After seeing one of his legs broken from continuous beating, his wife pleaded him to confess what government police and agents want him to confess. He had later succumbed to his wife’s plea and confessed that he himself detonated bombs. Continue reading “Government’s police and agents forced Mr. Dingyau Tang Gun to confess to detonating bombs-KAchin TV”
democracy for burma 
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