Myanmar’s international airports the top hub for drug smugglers

emg

An aviation policewoman seen checking up a passenger at Yangon International Airport on Oct 28 (Photo-Win Myint Kyaw)

Myanmar’s three main international airports have become a major transfer hub for illegal narcotics, according to the chief of the Aviation Police Department.

The aviation police force has found most narcotic drugs smugglers using Yangon, Mandalay and Nay Pyi Taw international airports to smuggle drugs. The force has also taken action against some foreigners carrying bullets.

“The detectors we use in the three airports are of the highest technology. We are planning to buy more modern equipment if it is available. We have uncovered narcotic drug cases mostly at these airports,” said Police Brigadier General Nay Win.

One of the largest shipments of narcotic drugs was found on the morning of October 7 in the departure lounge of Yangon International Airport.

Checking the luggage of Phyu Ou, airport security found approximately Ks 274 million worth of narcotic drugs labeled “WY” hidden inside 18 paper boxes of Myint Myint Wai & Kabar San pudding, along with a passport, round-trip ticket for Yangon-Bangkok-Dakar, US$400, a wallet, and a handset.

Army Chief: Thai-Cambodian border still calm

BANGKOK, 31 October 2013 (NNT) – Army Chief Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha confirms that the situation in the conflict area along the Thai-Cambodian border is still peaceful as the ruling of the Phra Viharn case is approaching. Gen. Prayuth and Interior Minister Gen. Yuthasak Sasiprapha on Thursday were briefed on the Thai-Cambodian border situation and delivered policy to army forces stationed in the provinces bordering Cambodia. The army chief said no incident had been reported in the disputed area and asked local officers to talk with the Phra Viharn demonstrators in order to prevent the border tensions from escalating. A specific area has been zoned for the demonstrators so that they would not obstruct the army’s practices and deployment of forces. Gen. Prayuth added that the army had the policy to avoid fights if it was not necessary. He said the army was determined to maintain good relations with the neighboring country but it was always ready to respond to the situation at hand based on the border protection plan.

400 newly arrived Kachin IDPs in Mai Hkawng IDP camp-VIDEO

http://www.mediafire.com/download/jobdpzoeawqjofv/400_newly_arrived_Kachin_IDPs_in_Mai_Hkawng_IDP_campmov

 

Hpaulu Kaw, a 78-year-old Kachin woman, died of shock on Thursday at around 4 pm while being surrounded by Burmese army soldiers inside a church in Mungding Pa village, said a KLN source. After Hpaulu Kaw’s death, two men were taken out of the church by soldiers to bury her body.
About 400 villagers are currently being confined inside the church compound as they could not flee during Tuesday raid by government soldiers on Mungding Pa village. Some villagers managed to escape Burmese army’s raid and fled to nearby villages but some are still wandering in the forest, said a villager who had fled to Namlim Pa village.

ABSDF(မကဒတ)ေက်ာင္းသားတပ္မေတာ္၏(၂၅)ႏွစ္ေျမာက္ေငြရတုအခမ္းအနား

ABSDF(မကဒတ)ေက်ာင္းသားတပ္မေတာ္၏(၂၅)ႏွစ္ေျမာက္ေငြရတုအခမ္းအနားသို.ႏုိင္ငံေရးအ
က်ဥ္းသားေဟာင္းမ်ားအဖြဲ.မွေပးပိုေသာသ၀ဏ္လြွာ

http://www.mediafire.com/view/ynu23cov3llgv9j/ABSDF(မကဒတ)ေက%E1%80%BAာင္းသားတပ္မေတာ္၏(၂၅)

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BURMA ARMY DETAIN 18 people from Bangladesh in Rathidaung township

NARINJARA NEWS

(Rathidaung, 29 October 2013): The Burma Army have detained at least 18 people from Bangladesh in Rathidaung township, 20 miles away from Arakan capital city Sittwe, while they were entering into the Burmese territory without valid documents by a machine boat, said a source in the authority.

A police officer from Long Chaung police station located near the spot said that the Burmese Army personnel detained 18 people from both Burma and Bangladesh on the last Sunday morning from nearby the Chaingkha Le village, located at southwestern part of  Rathedaung township.

“Some villagers from Chaingkha Le village informed an Army outpost stationed in the village about the group of people in a machine boat harbored on a bank near to their village creek. The security personnel quickly traced them with the help of local villagers,” informed the police officer.

A villager from Chaingkha Le village said that the Army had detained around 21 people, among them 12 were from Bangladesh and 9 from Maungdaw township of Burma, when they tried to enter the Burmese territory from Bangladesh by a machine boat.

Some of the passengers of the machine boat had however fled into the nearby jungle with fear of arrest by the Burmese authority. The security forces and local residents are still looking for those fleeing passengers.

The local source suspects that the machine boat was likely moving towards Malaysia with passengers from Burma and Bangladesh who would have tried to enter the country, but the bad weather had forced the boat-riders to enter into the Burmese territory for temporary solace.

Myanmar-Burma: family-members-appeal-for-release-of-ex-military-intelligence-jailers

NARINJARA NEWS

(Yangon, 28 October 2013): Family members of 22 former military intelligence jailers, who have been serving their jail terms in various prisons of Burma since 2004, have appealed to the authority to release them on humanitarian ground, said an affected family member on the condition of anonymity.

“We have appealed to the highest authorities of Burma including the President to release the intelligence jailers on the humanitarian ground as our country is approaching for a democratic change. We hope they should be free now,” the family member said.

Though they said 22 former intelligence jailers are inside the bar, many of their colleagues including the former Prime Minster and intelligence chief U Khin Nyunt have been released in the recent years.

The family members issued the appeal through a letter dated 24 October 2013,which was circulated among some high placed officials including the President, vice-President, Country’s human rights commission, chairperson of Lower House Committee for Rule of Law, Peace and Tranquility in the Parliament, human rights defenders,  lawmakers, foreign embassies etc.

The jailed military intelligence officers include U Thein Shwe (lodged in Myingyan prison), U Than Tun (Monywa prison), U Tin Oo ( Lashio prison), U Myint Aung Kyaw ( Thayawaddy prison), U Mauang Than (Pathein prison), U Tin Hla (Kalay prison), U Aung Ngwe ( Pathein prison), U Tun Hla Aung ( Myitkyina prison), U Zaw Tun Aung (Hinthada prison), U Min Thu ( Ma-U-Pin prison), U Myint Oo ( Thayawaddy prison), U Nay Soe (Pyi prison), U Moe Thu ( Hpa-an prison), U Naiang Htay (Taungoo prison), U Min Lwin (Shwebo prison), U Htin Win (Meiktila  prison), U San Aung ( Mawlamyaing prison),U Aung Kyaw Moe (Pakkoku prison), U Aung Zaw ( Myeik  prison), U Tin Htut ( Pagu prison), U Mrat Shwe( Taunggyi prison) and U Tin Tun ( Shwebo prison).

The family members argued in the letter that the present Burma government, as it is carrying out the democratic reform process  to achieve the goal for all round development, prosperity, peace and tranquility, should consider releasing those 22 intelligence jailers under humanitarian and sympathy ground.

EDITORIAL: Myanmar government plans to increase electricity bills by 40 percent for private households

Concerning Tuesday’s government announcement in the New Light of Myanmar, the public was informed of a hike in the price of electricity to be put into effect immediately. The announcement stated that: “In order to cover costs of producing and purchasing electricity to a certain context, Yangon City Electricity Supply Board has set the following unit prices to be charged as of electricity consumption in November 2013.”

Basically, it kindly informs us that the government plans to increase electricity bills by 40 percent for private households and up to double the current rate for businesses.

After the new government formed in 2011, the president made a promise to combat poverty. The average income per person is extremely low and people struggle to cover daily costs. Although reforms are underway, prices are high and people’s living standard is still low. Foreign investment has not had a wide impact and most people still have difficulty in finding jobs.

Public transportation, electricity supply and public health are basic needs for the people. The government cannot be benefitting from public services in a country like Myanmar where most people still live under the poverty line. The government needs to take some responsibility. The amount the government spends on social welfare is still very low.

If the government can’t take full responsibility for the basic needs of the people, the big corporations which are profiting from mega projects should shoulder some responsibility. But big corporations only seek big profits and do not want to operate at a loss. It’s a shame that tycoons don’t want to take social responsibility for the country and its people after exploiting our common resources. The government should handle these cases. If the government wants to give mega projects to the tycoons, it should also ensure that it is providing the social welfare and looking after the public good.

The Daily Eleven urges the government not to seek to benefit from public services and to make tycoons take responsibility as they exploit our natural resources for private gain under the watchful eyes of the government.

Electricity blackout in Yangon on Tuesday nights (Photo – EMG)

http://elevenmyanmar.com/editorial/3897-public-services-for-public-interest

စစ္ေျပး ဒုကၡသည္ ပေလာင္ မိသားစုမ်ား ဓါတ္ပံု – (TNLA)

Thursday, 31 October 2013 10:22
Written by ျဖဴျဖဴကို

စစ္ေျပး ဒုကၡသည္ ပေလာင္ မိသားစုမ်ား
စစ္ေျပး ဒုကၡသည္ ပေလာင္ မိသားစုမ်ား ဓါတ္ပံု – (TNLA)

ျပည္တြင္း ထဲတြင္ တိုက္ပြဲ ခဏခဏ ျဖစ္လာသည့္ အတြက္ ျပည္တြင္း စစ္ေျပး ဒုကၡသည္မ်ား ျဖစ္လာ ေပသည္။ အစိုးရတပ္ မ်ားသည္ ပေလာင္ ေဒသ ျဖစ္သည့္ နမ္းဆန္၊ ကြတ္ခိုင္၊ နမ့္မတူ၊ တန္႔ယန္း၊ နမ့္ခမ္း နွင့္ မန္တုန္ ႃမိဳ႕နယ္ တေလွ်ာက္၌ ထိုးစစ္ဆင္လွ်က္ ရွိပါသည္။

ေဒသ စိုးမိုးေရး၊ လံုျခဳံေရး နွင့္ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး အတြက္ ဖိအားေပးေရး စသည့္ အေၾကာင္း အမ်ဳိးမ်ဳိး ျပကာ စစ္ဆင္ေနျပီး ေဒသခံမ်ားအား အဓမၼ စြပ္စြဲကာ ရိုက္ႏွက္ျခင္း၊ ေပၚတာေခၚျခင္း၊ အေၾကာင္းမဲ့ ပစ္သတ္ျခင္း၊ ေက်းရြာအတြင္း တိုက္ပြဲေဖၚျခင္း၊ ရြာအျပင္ မထြက္ေစျခင္း စသျဖင့္ ေဒသခံ လူထုအား ေၾကာက္လန္႔ ေနေစရန္ ဖန္တီး ေနခဲ့ပါသည္။

ဤကဲ့သို႔ ေၾကာက္လန္႔ တၾကား စိုးရိမ္ေနရေသာ လူထုမ်ားသည္ နီးစပ္ရာႃမိဳ ႔သို႔ လည္းေကာင္း၊ ေတာထဲတြင္ လွည့္လည္ သြားလာ ေနရျခင္း (IDP)၊ စစ္ထဲ မ၀င္မျဖစ္ ၀င္ခဲ့ရျခင္းမ်ား ျဖစ္လာ ခဲ့ပါသည္။ အလုပ္ လက္မဲ့မ်ား ျဖစ္လာျခင္း၊ မူးရစ္ေဆး၀ါး ျပသနာ ထူေျပာလာျခင္း၊ အက်င့္ပ်က္မွဳမ်ား နွင့္ေက်းရြာ ေရႊ႔ေျပာင္းျခင္း ေၾကာင့္ ဒုကၡသည္ ဘ၀မ်ား ျဖစ္လာ ခဲ့ပါသည္။

၀ုိင္းထားဆဲ အစုိးရတပ္မ်ားလႈပ္ရွားမႈကို KIA ခ်ဳံခိုတိုက္ခိုက္

ကခ်င္လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးတပ္ဖြဲ႔ KIA တပ္မဟာ (၃) တပ္ရင္း (၁၂) ေဒသသုိ႔ အစိုးရစစ္တပ္ စကခ -၂၁ ေအာက္ နည္းဗ်ဴဟာ (၃) မွ စစ္အင္အား ၁၀၀ ေက်ာ္ရိကၡာႏွင့္ ျမင္းအေကာင္ ၅၀ ေက်ာ္ျဖင့္ စစ္ကူလာေသာစစ္ေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ ဆဂနမ္ခြမ္ (Saga Nam Hkum) သြားလမ္း ေအာင္နန္ (Awng Nan) ရြာေဟာင္းလမ္း တေလ်ွာက္တြင္ ယမန္ေန႔တိုက္ပြဲျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

“စစ္ကူ အင္အား ၁၀၀ ေက်ာ္နဲ႔ အရင္ပစ္ၾကတာ ၂၈ ရက္ ည ၉ နာရီမိုးခ်ဳပ္သြားတဲ့အထိ ပစ္ၾကတာ ၂၉ ရက္ မနက္ေတာ့ စစ္ကူေတြနဲ႔ စစ္ကူေတြကိုလာၾကိဳတဲ့သူေတြအျပင္းထန္ဆံုး ပစ္ခတ္ၾကတာ။ သူတို႔ဘက္ က အေသအေပ်ာက္ရွိႏိုင္ပါတယ္” ဟု KIA တပ္ရင္း (၁၂) တပ္ရင္းမွဴး ဗိုလ္မွဴး လဘန္ ဂြ်န္းေအာင္ (Major Labang Jawn Awng) KNG ကခ်င္သတင္းဌာန သို႔ေျပာသည္။

ထုိသုိ႔အင္အားတိုးခ်လႈပ္ရွားလာေသာ အစိုးရတပ္စစ္ေၾကာင္းကို KIA တပ္ရင္း (၁၂) ဝုိင္းထားဆဲ ဆဂနမ္ခြမ္သုိ႔မေရာက္ေသးခ်ိန္ လမ္းခုလပ္တြင္ ယမန္ေန႔ညသန္းေခါင္ခ်ိန္က KIA တပ္ရင္း (၁၂) ဖက္မွ ခ်ဳံခို၍ ထပ္မံပစ္ခတ္တိုက္ခိုက္ခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

၎အစိုးရစစ္ေၾကာင္းသည္ နမ္ေကာန္ (Nam Gau)၊ ေအာင္နန္ (Awng Nan)၊ နမ္အက္ (Nam Ak) တြင္ စစ္အင္အား ၂၀၀ ခန္႔ခ်ထားေၾကာင္းသိရသည္။

ေအာက္တိုဘာလ ၂၂ ရက္ေန႔မွစတင္ျဖစ္ပြားေနေသာတိုက္ပြဲမ်ားသည္ ေန႔စဥ္ရက္ဆက္ျဖစ္ပြားေနျခင္းျဖစ္ျပီး ႏွစ္ဖက္တပ္မ်ား လက္နက္ၾကီးလက္နက္ငယ္မ်ားအသုံးျပဳတိုက္ခိုက္မႈတြင္ ႏွစ္ဖက္ ထိခိုက္ေသဆုံးမႈရွိေၾကာင္း KIA တပ္ရင္းမွဴးေျပာသည္။

ထိုသုိ႔ ႏွစ္ဖက္ေဆြးေႏြးမႈတြင္ တိုက္ပြဲမ်ားေလွ်ာ့ခ်သြားရန္ႏွင့္ အမ်ားျပည္သူသုံးလမ္းမမ်ားမွ ေနာက္ဆုတ္ရန္ သေဘာတူညီခဲ့ေသာေၾကာင့္ KIA ဖက္မွ ေနာက္ဆုတ္ထားခဲ့ေသာ္လည္း အစိုးရစစ္တပ္မ်ားလႈပ္ရွားမႈေၾကာင့္ တိုက္ပြဲမ်ားစတင္ျဖစ္ပြားလာျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း KIA ဖက္မွေျပာသည္။

“တိုက္ပြဲေတြျဖစ္ျပီးေတာ့ ဒီေဆြးေႏြးပြဲမွာထိခုိက္မႈေတာ့မရွိဘူး ဒါမဲ့နည္းနည္းေတာ့ ထိေရာက္မႈျဖစ္တာေပါ့ အပစ္မရပ္ထားလို႔ သူတို႔ဘက္က တပ္လႈပ္ရွားမႈေတြလုပ္ခ်ိန္တဖက္နဲ႔တဖက္ေတြ႔ျပီး ပစ္ခတ္ေနတာ ဒီလိုေဆြးေႏြးပြဲမွာ အစိုးရကေနလည္း နည္းနည္းေတာ့ ေရွာင္ရွားသင့္တယ္ စီမံခ်က္ရွိရွိနဲ႔ လုပ္ေနတယ္ လုိ႔ျမင္တယ္” ဟု ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအက်ိဳးေတာ္ေဆာင္အဖြဲ႔မွ ဦးလမိုင္ဂြမ္ဂ်ာ KNG ကခ်င္သတင္းဌာန သို႔ ေျပာသည္။

ကခ်င္လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႔ KIO ဗဟိုဌာနခ်ဳပ္လုိင္ဇာျမိဳ႕တြင္ တႏိုင္ငံလံုးအတိုင္းအတာ အပစ္ရပ္ေရး အၾကိဳေဆြးေႏြးပြဲအတြက္ တိုင္းရင္းသားလက္နက္ကိုင္အဖြဲ႔ ထိပ္သီးေခါင္းေဆာင္ အသီးသီး ညီလာခံသုိ႔ ေရာက္ရွိေနစဥ္ ကခ်င္လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးတပ္ဖြဲ႔ (KIA) တပ္မဟာ (၃) နယ္ေျမတြင္ အစိုးရတပ္ႏွင့္ ေန႔စဥ္တင္းမာမႈတိုက္ပြဲမ်ားျဖစ္ပြားေနဆဲျဖစ္သည္။

Kachin Boys Used as Human Shields in Kawng Ja

kachin land

Burmese army troops stationed near Kawng Ja village used Kachin village boys as human shields as they marched across Nam Me creek towards KIA positions today at about 4:30 pm. A column of Burmese army troops took 3 boys from Kawng Ja village and forced them to walk in front of soldiers to protect themselves from KIA fire.

One KIA officer said they could not open fire as village boys walked in front of Burmese troops. “As they came nearer, we withdrew from our positions, but they chased us firing from behind,” said the officer. He said clashes continue between the two sides as of this evening.

The incident took place after a Burmese army tactical commander gave permission to local NGO Karuna to deliver rice sacks and other food items to Namlim Pa villagers and IDPs currently surrounded by government troops. An NGO worker says Burmese army’s frontline troops deliberately attack KIA positions to prevent food supplies from reaching Namlim Pa village.

80 students, 1 nurse and 2 school teachers, who had fled from Mungding Pa village, have arrived in Namlim Pa village today. About 500 Mungding Pa villagers fled to Tan Tadar and Hanhtet village on foot on Oct 28. Hundreds of villagers from Mungding Pa and surrounding villages are believed to be still wandering in the forest.

Despite both sides agreed on further de-escalation of hostilities and to end fighting, Burmese army significantly increased its presence in southern Kachin State beginning in third week of October, just a week after Myitkyina meeting.

KIA sources say Burmese army battalions being sent to Mansi Township in southern Kachin State include infantry battalions and regiments under 101^st LID, 33^rd LID, 99^th LID, Maing Nawng-based MOC-7, Theinni-based MOC-16, and Regional Military Commands from North Western Command and South Western Command.