Day: February 9, 2012
ABSDFႏွင့္ အစုိးရ ပဏာမ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြး
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံလံုးဆိုင္ရာေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားဒီမိုကရက္တစ္တပ္ဦး (ေက်ာင္းသားတပ္မေတာ္) ကိုယ္စားလွယ္အဖြဲ႔ႏွင့္ ျပည္ေထာင္စုအဆင့္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဆြးေႏြးေရးအဖြဲ႔တို႔၏ ပဏာမ ေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးပြဲမွတ္တမ္းဓါတ္ပံုမ်ား
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံလံုးဆိုင္ရာေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားဒီမိုကရက္တစ္တပ္ဦး (ေက်ာင္းသားတပ္မေတာ္) ကိုယ္စားလွယ္အဖြဲ႔ႏွင့္ ျပည္ေထာင္စုအဆင့္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဆြးေႏြးေရးအဖြဲ႔တို႔၏ ပဏာမ ေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးပြဲမွတ္တမ္းဓါတ္ပံုမ်ား
ဒီကေန႔ ေဖေဖာ္ဝါရီလ ၉ ရက္ေန႔ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံလံုးဆိုင္ရာေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားဒီမိုကရက္တစ္တပ္ဦး (ေက်ာင္းသားတပ္မေတာ္) ကိုယ္စားလွယ္အဖြဲ႔ႏွင့္ ျပည္ေထာင္စုအဆင့္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဆြးေႏြးေရးအဖြဲ႔တို႔၏ ပဏာမေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကပါသည္။ (From http://www.absdf.com/)
BURMA:AHRC Urgent Appeal: joint military-police-immigration team detained U Win Naing Kyaw, a former army major came on a flight from Bangkok to Yangon on 29 July 2009
AHRC WEBSITE: BURMA PAGE
http://www.humanrights.asia/countries/burma
———————————————————————
Dear friends,
As the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has noted in a recent update (UAU-004-2012), we are very happy to see the release in recent months of many people on whose behalf we have campaigned for a number of years. However, many other unjustly imprisoned persons remain in Burma’s jails. As at this time people see the opportunity and prospects for release are better than in recent years, many are appealing for amnesty or for reviews of their cases. In this appeal we bring you the case of a former army officer and two other men imprisoned in 2010 on a confession extracted through use of torture.
CASE NARRATIVE:
The AHRC has obtained details of a case that the Supreme Court dismissed on appeal in 2010, of alleged torture and forced confession of a former army officer and two men associated with him. These men are all still in prison but in view of the recent releases are hoping to have their case reviewed.
In this case, a joint military-police-immigration team detained U Win Naing Kyaw, a former army major working as a businessman, as he came on a flight from Bangkok to Yangon on 29 July 2009. After accusing him of having on his laptop secret information and passing that information to news agencies based abroad, they held him in custody for 105 days before lodging charges against him.
When the officials lodged the charges, they based them on a confession from Win Kyaw Naing obtained after 42 days held in custody. According to Win Kyaw Naing, the confession was extracted from him through physical and psychological torture. Specifically, he was forced to go without sleep, was drugged, and interrogators also threatened the physical safety of his family members.
In the district court, the judge acknowledged that the confession was obtained after 42 days but said that did not make it inadmissible. The judge concluded that because the contents of the confession corresponded with other testimonies and evidence brought by the police, then it should be genuine; however, this is nonsensical reasoning, since if the police wrote a confession and forced the accused to sign it under duress, naturally its contents would correspond with the version of events that they had prepared for the case. Continue reading “BURMA:AHRC Urgent Appeal: joint military-police-immigration team detained U Win Naing Kyaw, a former army major came on a flight from Bangkok to Yangon on 29 July 2009”
KNU Divided Over Peace Treaty
Disagreement within the Karen rebel leadership over its recent signing of a truce with a Burmese government peace delegation has led to confusion.
Nineteen members of the Karen National Union, led by its military chief Gen. Mutu Say Poe, signed on Jan. 12 a ceasefire agreement with Burmese government peace delegation in Karen capital, Pa-an, without the consensus of other top KNU officials.
Brig-Gen Saw Johnny, the commander of Brigade 7 of the KNU’s military wing, Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), was involved in the negotiations in Pa-an. He toldThe Irrawaddy that the KNU delegation signed an 11-point agreement, including an immediate ceasefire, with the Burmese government delegation.
He said that the KNU delegation signed the agreement to end hostilities between the Burmese army and the KNLA.
“How can we proceed with peace talks if we don’t stop fighting each other,” Johnny said. “Now the government officials are able to travel freely to our areas and visit us. They also ordered their troops not to attack our units.
“But this is just the first step of many,” he added. “We don’t know for how many months or years we will have to continue this process of peace talks.” Continue reading “KNU Divided Over Peace Treaty”
SSA clashes: one on 6 February near South Monghai, Tachilek district and the other on 7 February in Mongpulong, Mongpiang township.
Burma Army units have been in a drive to and to dislodge units of Shan State Army (SSA) that had concluded a ceasefire agreement on 2 December in Shan State East, according to Lt-Gen Yawdserk, Chairman of the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS), the SSA’s political arm.
“The agreement with the government is that we stay out of towns and the Burma Army out of the countryside,” he said, “and that movements outside of one’s sphere of control must be notified in advance to the other. This is a deliberate act of discredit against the government.”
According to SSA sources, SSA units in Shan State East are under relentless pressure to withdraw to their main bases along the Thai-Burmese border.
Inevitably, the drive resulted in clashes: one on 6 February near South Monghai, Tachilek district and the other on 7 February in Mongpulong, Mongpiang township.
“I have lodged a protest with the Triangle Region Command in Kengtung,” said the SSA leader. “So far no reply has been forthcoming.”
The SSA’s liaison officer in Kengtung, Shan State East capital and headquarters of the Triangle Region Command, is Col Aung Mawng.
All SSA units have been placed on a state of alert since.
“Now we are learning first hand how the Burma Army is flouting ceasefire orders coming from Naypyitaw in Kachin State,” said an SSA officer who requested anonymity. “It should serve as another warning for all movements that have signed ceasefire agreements.”
So far, Naypyitaw has concluded ceasefire pacts with 8 armed movements (though 2 say they have only reached initial agreement to discuss for durable ceasefire). It is still in negotiation with two other main groups: Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP).
US : Supporting Assessment Missions in Burma by International Financial Institutions
Office of the Spokesperson
Washington, DC
February 6, 2012
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton today signed a partial waiver of restrictions imposed on Burma under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. This waiver will enable the United States to support assessment missions and limited technical assistance by international financial institutions (IFIs), such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, in Burma. The President delegated this authority to the Secretary on February 3.
Secretary Clinton committed to supporting IFI assessments during her visit to the Burma in late 2011 in response to encouraging reforms underway in that country. The Burmese government’s positive steps include electoral measures to pave the way for Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy to participate in upcoming parliamentary by-elections, release of political prisoners, broader civil liberties, and preliminary ceasefire talks with certain ethnic minority groups. The government has also taken some steps to address deficiencies cited in the Department’s June 2011 Trafficking in Persons Report.
Assessments by international financial institutions will provide critical means to gain a greater understanding of Burma’s economic situation, particularly its severe poverty alleviation needs and capacity gaps. The United States remains committed to supporting and partnering with the Burmese Government along the path of reform.
democracy for burma 
You must be logged in to post a comment.