MYANMAR HELP THAILAND INVESTIGATE ON ROHINGYAS MIGRANTS

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN – Myanmar will send officials to Thailand to help investigate whether 2,000 Rohingya migrants now being sheltered in Thailand really travelled from Rakhine state, Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul said on Wednesday.

Myanmar was unconvinced that all had travelled from Rakhine and believed some of them might travel from Bangladesh’s  border area to Myanmar, the minister said.

Myanmar refuses to recognise most Rohingya as Myanmar citizens.

Mr Surapong said Myanmar Foreign Minister Wanna Maung Lawin told him that  Myanmar was ready to bring the Rohingya in Thailand back to Rakhine if the investigation found these people had really migrated from Myanmar.

“The Myanmar foreign minister told me that he would convey my concern to Myanmar President Thein Sein and after that he would send his officials to Thailand to probe the migration of about 2,000 Rohingya, about 500 of them children and women, as quickly as possible,” he said.

The two met ahead of the Asean foreign minister meeting, which begins on Thursday in Brunei’s capital.

Mr Surapong said he also asked Myanmar to help bring back refugees along the Thai-Myanmar border as he had information that some of them wanted to return to their motherland but they were  still concerned over their livelihood.

Mr Surapong raised the concern after the inferno that killed 38 Karen refugees at Ban Mae Surin camp in Mae Hong Son’s Khun Yuam district on March 24.

 http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/344860/?

SHAN ARMY open a drug rehabilitation hospital

EMG

The Shan State Progressive Party and Shan State Army plan to open a drug rehabilitation hospital near Muse and Namhkham townships in northern Shan State, a spokesperson for the party said.

“There has been an increase in the number of drug addicts in our state. Most of them are living in downtown [areas]. Our party has a strong desire to improve Shan State in all aspects. So, we are now planning to build a drug rehabilitation hospital for ethnic Shan drug addicts,” he said.

The site for the hospital has not been selected yet but it will be near Muse and Namhkham, the spokesperson added.

“Human resources play a vital role in the development of a nation or a state. The major problems of the people living in Shan State are war and drug abuse,” he said adding that drug abuse was damaging youths in particular.

President pushes for swifter rehabilitation in Rakhine State

EMG

New homes for the victims of last year’s communal violence in Rakhine state must be completed within three months, President Thein Sein said at a meeting of the Rakhine State Peace and Stability Implementation Central Committee in Nay Pyi Taw yesterday.

President Thein Sein said a team of ministerial official under the leadership of the Ministry of Border Affairs ministry would be formed in Sittwe, Rakhine State’s capital, to expedite the rehabilitation work. The team will ensure new houses are completed within three months and steps to regenerate local businesses are implemented, he added.

“It is essential to work for peace and development of Rakhine state. So, the respective committees are to carry out their tasks speedily and to continue assisting in education, health and social affairs for the victims,” the president said.

As the majority of the people in Rakhine State are engaged in farming and fishing, the regional and central governments need to cooperate in providing them with farming and fishing equipment so that they can begin working in the upcoming rainy season, Thein Sein added.

The Rakhine conflict must be resolved to prevent it from worsening, said Thein Sein, adding that all citizens need to resolve internal affairs peacefully. The deployment of security forces in the state will be reduced when peace and stability improves, he added.

Since the communal violence erupted last June, 5,000 police, 1,000 border security troops and 51 military regiments have been deployed to the state.

Legal action has also been taken against 2,058 people for alleged involvement in the riots, the government has said.

Two waves of violence broke out between ethnic Rakhine and Bengali residents of the state, in June and October last year, killing 167 people, injuring 223 more, and destroying 10,100 houses, according to official figures.

❤… ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪… ျမန္မာ႔ရိုးရာႏွစ္သစ္မဂၤလာ မဟာအတာသႀကၤန္ ကုိ ေပ်ာ္႐ႊင္စြာဆင္ႏႊဲရင္း ျမန္မာ့ႏွစ္သစ္မဂၤလာ ၁၃၇၅ ခုႏွစ္ မဟာအတာသႀကၤန္ ကုိ ႀကဳိဆုိၾကပါစုိ ့… ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪… ❤

❤… ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪… ျမန္မာ႔ရိုးရာႏွစ္သစ္မဂၤလာ မဟာအတာသႀကၤန္ ကုိ ေပ်ာ္႐ႊင္စြာဆင္ႏႊဲရင္း ျမန္မာ့ႏွစ္သစ္မဂၤလာ ၁၃၇၅ ခုႏွစ္ မဟာအတာသႀကၤန္ ကုိ ႀကဳိဆုိၾကပါစုိ ့… ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪… ❤

❤ ခ်စ္ေသာေမာင္ႏွမမ်ားအားလုံး၊ ျမန္မာတျပည္လံုး ျပည္သူျပည္သားအေပါင္းမ်ား အားလံုး ကိုယ္ေရာစိတ္ပါ က်မၼာခ်မ္းသာ၍ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းၾကပါေစ၊ေဘးဘယာေ၀းကြာ လိုအင္ဆနၵအလံုးစံု
ျပည့္စံုၾကပါေစလို ့ဆုမြန္ေကာင္းေတာင္းေပးလိုက္ပါတယ္။ ❤

art illustrations & graphic design: ko myoe, cartoon maung maung aung.

 

ARAKAN ARMY BASIC MILITARY TRAINING CONCLUDES IN KIO CONTROLLED AEREA

The training is four months long where there were 82 Arakanese solders including three females participating. The basic military training gave instruction in the use of guns and military equipment, guerrilla tactics, basic political concept including Arakanese nationalist movement and military discipline.

Arakan army held a closing ceremony  on the day after the training concluded. A number of high raking military officials from the KIA, Arakan army and northern Alliance forces that a combination of some ethnic armed forces including KIO and Arakan army attended the ceremony.

Arakan army deputy chief colonel Dr Nyo Tun Aung also attended the closing ceremony where he delivered a speech.

Replying to Narinjara, colonel Nyo Tun Aung said that the basic military training is needed for all soldiers if they want to be good fighters. Every one of our comrades needs to understand the concept of the military, especially guerrilla welfare.

The Arakan army’s basic military training has reached 11 batches in KIO controlled area since the Arakan army was formed in the area of the KIO in 2008.

However Colonel Nyo Tun Aung did not divulge the numbers of soldiers in the Arakan army due to security concerns. Many people believe that nearly 1000 soldiers are serving in Arakan army currently.

Narinjara asked another question to Colonel Nyo Tun aung if there is any plan by the Arakan army to move to Arakan state from KIO area in the near future to fight Burmese troops from Arakan state.

Colonel Nyo Tun Aung replied on this question that it is very hard to know timing of exact movements to Arakan adding that they have bitter experience from previously moving to Arakan from Kachin state, so it is a little difficult to tell.

Arakan Army is only an armed group, not a political party fighting against the government for freedom of Arakanese people. Arakan army is one ethnic armed group that does not have a ceasefire with the present government.

The newly form Arakan army is not related to the former Arakan army led by Khaing Raza who was assassinated by the Indian army.

Arakan Army was formed by the young Arakanese generation in KIO controlled area in 2008 to struggle for equal rights and self determination in Burma. They are fighting against Burma army along with the KIA in Kachin state.

http://www.narinjara.com/main/index.php/arakan-army-basic-military-training-concludes-in-kio-controlled-area/

ARAKAN AUTHORITIES PERMIT DEMONSTRATION AGAINST CHINESE COMPANY

The activist U Tun Kyi, who is a resident of Madae Island where the Chinese  National Petroleum Cooperation (CNPC) has been carrying out many projects, told Narinjara over the phone that the Kyauk Pru district police chief informed them the Arakan state government permitted them to stage a demonstration on the Island of Madea against the CNPC.

“We submitted an application last week to Arakan state government to allow a demonstration in Madae Island against the Chinese company. We did not receive the permission from the Arakan state government but we received information from the District police chief authority who  told me the Arakan state government has allowed us to stage the demonstration,” U Tun Kyi said.

Local residents firstly submitted an application to Kyauk Pru district police station to stage the demonstration but the authority denied the issue permission. So the residents submitted the appeal to Arakan state government continually.

GLOBAL:UPDATE NEWS FOR ANDY HALL SUPPORTERS

SOURCE ANDY HALL

• 3rd hearing in malicious criminal defamation case against me by Natural Fruit is 9am on May 7th 2013. All welcome to observe the show:)

update court 11 april by andy hall:

Stating again on the record, I will not attend court to defend a malicious criminal defamation case until I am legally obliged to do so.

Imp: informed by senior diplomat investigation Thai violating UN Principles on Civil Human Rights applying criminal penalties for defamation

My Local MP requests Foreign Office for UK government position on Natural Fruit criminal/civil prosecution against me http://t.co/Ei1R58VHz0

11th april 1pm bkk south criminal court 2nd hearing into natural fruit criminal defamation/computer crimes act prosecution against me

PLEASE SIGN PETITION FOR HIM THANK YOU

http://www.uniglobalunion.org/Apps/uni.nsf/pages/reg_asiaEn?Opendocument&exURL=http://www.uniglobalunion.org/Apps/UNINews.nsf/vwLkpById/F5AE6D80F1D00DDCC1257B42001476D1?OpenDocument

ANDY HALL with Ambassador Mark Kent at the UK Embassy in BKK

Just finished productive meeting with British Ambassador Mark Kent @ british embassy bangkok regarding natural fruit prosecution against me. In meeting with British Ambassador, made clear I will not negotiate with Natural Fruit until they drop the malicious law suits against me. Also requested UK Embassy through EU FTA to urgently review trade relations with Thailand given systematic abuse/trafficking of migrants. Finally, made clear suspicions despite Thai gov apparent position prosecution more than private suit by private company against an individual. It is also politically motivated involving one or more prominent politician in Thailand and the government are not doing enough to improve standards at natural fruit and get the malicious case dropped. British Ambassador made clear the Embassy and wider EU’s support and commitment to my personal safety and my decade’s work for migrants in Thailand.

HRW on Andy Hall’s case “The Thai government should welcome efforts to protect migrant worker’s rights, not penalize them.”

(New York) – Criminal defamation charges against a prominent labor activist violate his right to free speech and will have a chilling effect on investigations of alleged rights abuses by companies in Thailand. Proceedings in the case, brought by a fruit processing company before the South Bangkok criminal court, are scheduled for April 11, 2013.

READ ALL

http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/04/09/thailand-defamation-charges-chill-labor-rights-inquiries

European Commission questioned on Free trade agreement with Thailand and child labour in the canning industry

Subject:  Free trade agreement with Thailand and child labour in the canning industry

Negotiations have recently begun for a free trade agreement between the EU and Thailand, the third largest EU trading partner in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), with bilateral trade of more than EUR 30 billion (EU exports of EUR 14.8 billion and imports of EUR 16.9 billion). The EU is the main international investor in this country.Several weeks ago, the Finnish organisation Finnwatch reported on the practice of child labour and labour abuses in two of the main tinned tuna factories in Thailand that supply the EU and US markets (Unicord and Thai Union Manufacturing).1. Can the Commission state whether it is aware of these reports of child labour and labour abuses in the Thai canning industry?2. What controls are there to prevent products produced without respecting the fundamental rights from gaining access to the European and international market?3. What new guarantees does the Commission plan to introduce in the new free trade agreement to ensure fair competition and prevent unfair competition? With regard to the strictly trade-related content of the agreement, will the Commission prevent tariff and non-tariff conditions for the tinned tuna trade from unjustifiably damaging the European sector?

BURMA STUDIES 2012-Rohingya_Rakhaing And__ the Recent Outbreak of Violence 2012

View this document on Scribd

The real history of the Rakhaings. It was published in Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group, number 89 and 90, Spring/Fall 2012.

ဘယ္သမိုင္း ဘယ္ရာဇ၀င္မွမရွိတဲ့ ဘဂၤလီေတြက ေစာ္ကားတာ ျငိမ္မခံေနၾကပါနဲ ့BENGALI ROHINGYA BURN t-shirt with a picture of Aung San Suu Kyi on it during a protest

BENGALI,so called  Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar burn a t-shirt with a picture of Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi on it during a protest outside Myanmar\’s embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, April 9, 2013. The protest follows renewed fighting between Buddhists and Muslims in many areas of Myanmar. (EPA Photo/Narong Sangnak).

U TUN WAI

ဘယ္သမိုင္း ဘယ္ရာဇ၀င္မွမရွိတဲ့ ဘဂၤလီေတြက ေစာ္ကားတာ ျငိမ္မခံေနၾကပါနဲ ့
ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ ျမန္မာျပည္သားေတြ စိတ္ေတာင္ မကူးမိတဲ့ အလုပ္ကို လုပ္တာဘယ္က်မ္းစာမွမရွိတဲ့ေကာင္ေတြပါ။ဘဂၤလီဆိုတာတိရစၦာန္သာသာဘဲ..ဒါဟာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသား မဟုတ္လို႔ ဒီလိုလုပ္တာပါ..ရွင္းရွင္းေလး က်ေနာ္တို ့အဘိုး အဘြား၊အေမကိုထိရင္က်ေနာ္တို ့ကာကြယ္ရလိမ့္မယ္။အသားထဲကေလာက္ေကာင္ေတြကိုအေသကစ္မယ္ဆိုရင္ လက္တြဲၾကရေအာင္။ဘဂၤလီဆိုတာ ေသြးမရွိလို ့ဒီလိုလုပ္တာပါ။
ငါတို ့အဘိုး ငါတို ့မေမကို ဒီလိုအလံေတြမီးရီႈ ့တာ ေသေတာင္မေက်ဘူး။
သိပ္နာတယ္။ထပ္ေျပာလိုက္မယ္.ေရာက္ရာေနရာကေရွာင္ေနၾကပါ။ အမ်ိဳးသားသာ၊သာသနာထိရင္ေတာ့ ေၾကြးရလိမ့္မယ္။

U TUN WAI

ကိုထြန္းေ၀
10.4.2013

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/international