Don't lift Myanmar sanctions /ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရကို ပိတ္ဆို႔ထားမွဳ မဖယ္ရွာလိုက္ပါနဲ႔

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also said that the punitive measures should remain in force unless Myanmar holds free and fair elections in 2010 that include opposition and ethnic groups.

'There remain two significant tests of whether or not Burma's relationship with the United States has improved to the degree that we should even consider moving away from a policy of sanctions,' Mr McConnell said in a statement.

'The United States must also insist that Burma comply with its international obligations and end any prohibited military or proliferation related cooperation with North Korea,' said the senator.

His comments came as the US State Department said that, as part of a new policy of engagement, one of its top diplomats would meet on Tuesday with a delegation from Myanmar on the margins of the UN General Assembly.

State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said at a press briefing in Washington that Kurt Campbell, assistant US secretary of state for Asia, was to meet in New York today with a delegation headed by Myanmar's science and technology minister U Thaung.

Myanmar's representative to the United Nations, Than Swe, is also expected to participate.

The meeting comes after the United States announced Monday it was starting a dialogue with the military-led Myanmar, though it insisted it would keep sanctions in place until the regime makes progress on democracy.

On Monday, Campbell announced that President Barack Obama's administration had decided to reengage Myanmar after years of stalemate proved unproductive.

ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ၾကီး သိန္းစိန္ ဝန္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္ တဦး အဂၤါႏွင့္ အညီ ပို႕ေဆာင္ နဳတ္ဆက္ မခံရ

စက္တင္ဘာလ ၂၇ ရက္ေန႔ထုတ္ အစိုးရပုိင္ ေၾကးမံုသတင္းစာတြင္ မ်က္နာဖံုး စာမ်က္ႏွာ၌ ဝန္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္ သိန္းစိန္အား နအဖ စစ္အာဏာရွင္မ်ား ျဖစ္ၾကသည့္ ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးၾကီး သန္းေရႊႏွင့္ ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးၾကီး ေမာင္ေအးတို႕မွ စက္တဘၤာလ ၂၆ ရက္ေန႕က ေနျပည္ေတာ္ ေလဆိပ္တြင္ အျခံအရံႏွင့္ လိုက္ပါ ပို႕ေဆာင္စဥ္ ၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္သိန္းစိန္မွာ ပို႕ေဆာင္ နဳတ္ဆက္သူမ်ား၏ ေဘးသို႔ ေရာက္ရွိေနသျဖင့္ ၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္သိန္းစိန္မွာ ၀န္ၾကီး တဦး၏ ဂုဏ္အဂၤါရပ္နွင့္ အညီ လိုက္ပါ ပို႕ေဆာင္ျခင္း မခံရဟု သတင္း ထြက္ေပၚလာျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။

ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ စစ္ေတြျမိဳ႕တြင္ ၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္ သိန္းစိန္၏ ခရီးစဥ္အား လိုက္ပါပို႕ေဆာင္ေသာ ဓါတ္ပံုအား ေၾကးမံုသတင္းစာတြင္ စက္တဘၤာလ ၂၇ ရက္ေန႕က ေဖၚျပပါရွိသည္ကို ေတြ႕ရွိျပီးေနာက္ ၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္သိန္းစိန္၏ အေနအထားႏွင့္ သူ၏ ၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္ တာ၀န္ အေပၚ လူမ်ားက ေမးခြန္းထုတ္လာခဲ့ၾကသည္ဟု အမည္မေဖၚလိုသူ လုပ္ငန္းရွင္ တဦးက ယခုကဲ့သို႕ ေျပာသည္။

“ ျမန္မာနုိင္ငံ ၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္တဦးရဲ႕ ကုလသမဂၢ ခရီးစဥ္အတြင္း ၾကိဳဆို လိုက္လံ ပို႕ေဆာင္တဲ့ ေနရာမွာ ၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္ တဦးရဲ႕ ဂုဏ္အဂၤါႏွင့္ အညီ ပို႕ေဆာင္မခံရဘဲ ပို႕ေဆာင္သူေတြရဲ႕ေဘးက တပည့္တပန္း တဦးလို လိုက္ပါေနတာကို ျမင္ရေတာ့ ၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္သိန္းစိန္ဆိုတာ ဘာမွ ပါ၀ါ အာဏာမရွိတဲ့ ၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္ၾကီးပါလား ဆိုပီး လူေတြက သေဘာ ေပါက္သြားၾကတာပါဘဲ။”

တခ်ဳိ႕လူမ်ားက ေၾကးမံုသတင္းစာတြင္ ေဖၚျပေသာ ဓါတ္ပံုကို ၾကည့္ျပီး ၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္ သိန္းစိန္သည္ တခ်ိန္ တခါက အာဏာပါဝါ အစြမ္းထက္ခဲ့ေသာ ဝန္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္ေဟာင္း ခင္ညႊန္႕ကဲ့သို႔ ေဘးဖယ္ခံရမည့္ အတိတ္ နမိတ္ အျဖစ္ တခ်ိဳ႕လူမ်ားက ေျပာဆိုေနၾကသည္ဟုလည္း သိရွိရသည္။

“ဝန္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္ တေယာက္အေနနဲ႔ကေတာ့ဗ်ာ ခုလို ပို႕ေဆာင္ နဳတ္ဆက္တဲ့ ေနရာမွာ ေရွ႕ဆံုးေနရာက မဟုတ္ရင္ေတာင္ အလယ္က ေနာက္ေနရာေလာက္မွာေတာ့ ပါသင့္တာေပါ့၊ အခုက ထီးမိုး မခံရတဲ့ အျပင္ ေဘးကိုပါ ေရာက္ေနေတာ့ ဓါတ္ပံုကို ၾကည့္ပီး လူေတြက ဝန္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္ သိန္းစိန္ရဲ႕ အေနအထားကို သေဘာေပါက္သြားၾကတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ သူဟာ နအဖထဲမွာ ဘာမွ အာဏာပါ၀ါ အစြမ္းအစ မရွိတဲ့ လူဆိုပီးေတာ့ ေၾကးမံု သတင္းစာက ျပည္သူေတြသိေအာင္ ထုတ္ေဖၚ ျပသလိုက္တာေပါ့ဗ်ာ” ဟု စစ္ေတြျမိဳ႕ခံ ေနာက္တဦးကလည္း (ရယ္လ်က္) ေျပာဆို သြားခဲ့သည္။
( နိရဥၥရာ )

Aung San Suu Kyi writes to junta on sanctions

Detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has written to the chief of the ruling junta with suggestions about how to get Western sanctions lifted, her lawyer said on Saturday.

The move represents a change of heart for the Nobel Peace Laureate, who has previously espoused punitive measures against the military regime as a way of pushing for democratic reform in the Southeast Asian nation.

"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has written a letter to Senior General Than Shwe regarding her thinking on the lifting of sanctions that have been imposed on the country," her lawyer Nyan Win told AFP.

"In the letter, she submits her thinking about what must be implemented for sanctions to be lifted," said Nyan Win, who is also the spokesman for her National League for Democracy (NLD).

Nyan Win said she wrote the letter "expecting to start a dialogue".

Nyan Win would not give further details about what the suggestions were, saying that they were waiting for the letter to be formally received by the government.

According to party sources, Suu Kyi has asked in her letter for meetings with top Western diplomats in Burma to discuss the sanctions imposed by their countries.

The move comes just days after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced plans for a major policy shift that would see Washington engaging with Burma's ruling generals.

Clinton raised the possibility of an eventual easing or lifting of sanctions if US engagement produces political changes in Burma, a statement that was welcomed by Suu Kyi earlier this week.

The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions on Burma due to its continued detention of Suu Kyi and its refusal to recognise the NLD's victory in the country's last elections in 1990.

The junta sentenced the 64-year-old Suu Kyi to an extra 18 months in detention at her lakeside home in August after an incident in which an American man swam uninvited to her house.

The move effectively ruled the 64-year-old out of elections due in 2010 that the ruling generals have promised in Burma. Burma has been under military rule since 1962, with brutal crackdowns on anti-junta protests in 1988 and 2007.

BURMA FM UNDER FIRE WITH SHOES IN NEW YOURK

88 students` leader, Moe Thee Zun, a former student leader and activist, said he, along with nearly 20 friends, laid in wait of the Burmese Foreign Minister near his guest house and flung shoes and other objects toward the car conveying Nyan Win to United Nations headquarters.

“I took off my shoes and flung them at Nyan Win, the sight of him makes me angry,” said Moe Thee Zun, who as a student leader in 1988 took to the streets in Rangoon, leading mass protests demanding democracy.

“These men should not be representing our people, whom they are brutally killing and suppressing,” he added, satisfied that he and several of his friends flung shoes and other materials at the Burmese FM.

One protester “threw his coffee and there were stains on the car, though it did not get on Nyan Win,” he added.

Both Nyan Win and Prime Minister Thein Sein, who are attending the General Assembly, are lodged in East Gates Hotel on 39th Street in New York, and are the first Burmese generals to attend the annual congregation in14 years.

On Monday, Thein Sein delivered a speech at the General Assembly, prior to which he met with Senator James Webb, a strong advocate of engagement with the military regime, to discuss US-Burma relations.

“We did not realize that Thein Sein was in a separate car. We thought he was along with Nyan Win in the same car, but later we saw him in another car,” said Moe Thee Zun.

He said, the Burmese generals should not be representing the people of Burma, as they are not the legitimate government elected by the people.

Moe Thee Zun said he and his friends are gearing up for another round of surprise attacks on the Burmese delegation when they return to their hotel in the evening.

American claims mistreatment in prison

The U.S. Embassy said Friday it has made a formal complaint to Myanmar's military government after a Myanmar-born American claimed he was mistreated in prison.

Kyaw Zaw Lwin was secretly arrested Sept. 3 on arrival at Yangon airport. Dissident groups reported his disappearance but his whereabouts were unknown until he was allowed a U.S. consular visit Sept. 20 at Myanmar's notorious Insein Prison.

The London-based human rights group Amnesty International said Thursday that "trusted sources" reported that he had suffered torture and other ill treatment in custody.

Myanmar authorities on Wednesday accused Kyaw Zaw Lwin of seeking to incite political unrest, according to reports on state radio and television. They claimed he had confessed to plotting with dissident groups outside the country, and accused him of being linked to several activists inside Myanmar who planned to set off bombs.

"The embassy early this week submitted an official complaint to the government, protesting mistreatment of the American citizen," embassy spokesman Drake Weisert said Friday. He declined to disclose details about the alleged mistreatment.

"He is a U.S. citizen and we will continue to give him consular access and provide assistance anyway we can," Weisert said. According to dissident groups, Kyaw Zaw Lwin is a resident of Maryland.

Myanmar's government does not have an official spokesman and there was no immediate official reaction to the embassy's complaint.

Amnesty International said Kyaw Zaw Lwin's torture included beatings and kicking.

"He was deprived of food for seven days and moved between different interrogation centers. He was not allowed to sleep at night and was kept awake during interrogation by the authorities," it said in a statement, adding that he had been denied medical treatment for the injuries inflicted on him.

Another American, 53-year-old John Yettaw, said he was not mistreated during the three months he spent in Insein Prison after being arrested for sneaking into the house of detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Yettaw, of Falcon, Missouri, was sentenced to seven years in prison but was released on humanitarian grounds and deported on Aug. 16.

Wednesday's official news report said Kyaw Zaw Lwin entered Myanmar to stir up protests by Buddhist monks, who earlier spearheaded pro-democracy demonstrations in 2007 that were brutally suppressed by the junta.

The report said Kyaw Zaw Lwin is a member of the dissident group the All Burma Students' Democratic Front.

Kyaw Zaw Lwin's mother is serving a five-year jail term for political activities and his sister was sentenced to 65 years in prison for her role in the 2007 pro-democracy protests, activist groups and family members said.

(This version CORRECTS throughout to say Lwin, not Lin)

POLITICAL PRISONERS NEED TO MEET ICRC

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has urged the international community to mount pressure on Burma’s ruling junta to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to resume visits to detention centres, where widespread torture and abuses have been reported.

The Hong Kong-based, Rights group, in a statement on Thursday said maximum efforts are needed to renew the mandate of the ICRC in getting access to detention centres across Burma without delay, as some detainees have been tortured during interrogation.

“The physical and mental injuries caused in this period were either not adequately treated or not treated at all during the detainees' incarceration, causing some of them lifelong damage,” AHRC said.

AHRC’s call came following the release of about 120 political prisoners, as part of the Burmese military regime’s amnesty granted to 7,114 prisoners, on humanitarian grounds. The AHRC’s statement was supported by several political prisoners, who are among those released.

Myo Yan Naung Thein, a student activist, who was arrested in September 2007 and released as part of the amnesty told Mizzima he was severely beaten while questioning and was insulted.

“I was blind folded and was taken somewhere. As soon as I reached the interrogation centre, they all started kicking me,” he said.

A former Rangoon Technological Institute (RIT) student, Myo Yan Naung Thein, was released from Sittwe Prison, and is currently unable to walk properly as a result of lack of adequate treatment in prison.

“I was kept in a closed dark room. Sometimes, the prison authorities slapped and tortured me without asking any questions. But sometimes they questioned me the whole night without giving me any food,” he recalle.

He said, he was often tied behind and was given electric shocks.

Similarly, Katty Aung, a pregnant woman arrested for her husband Tun Tun’s involvement in September 2007 protests and sentenced to 25 years in prison, said she suffered a miscarriage after being detained and suffered heart attacks, but did not receive adequate treatment.

“When I was arrested, I was pregnant. But because of low blood pressure and insufficient food, I had a miscarriage,” she said.

AHRC said cases of ill-treatment and torture in the prisons across Burma are rampant but the situation has deteriorated after a halt to ICRC’s prison visits in 2005.

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma (AAPP-B), there are at least 2200 political prisoners including Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma.

AHRC said the renewal of ICRC’s prison visits, would be “a practical and quickly-implementable step to reduce the incidence of abuse and ameliorate some of its worst consequences.”

“If then this much cannot be done, what good can be said of the release of a few thousand shattered bodies, while tens of thousands more continue to have the same type of abuses heaped upon them daily?,” asked the group.

The ICRC carried out regular visits to detainees in prisons and labour camps from 1999 to the end of 2005 but suspended it when members of the junta-backed civil organisation –the Union Solidarity and Development Association - insisted on accompanying them in their prison visits, which is against the ICRC’s internationally-recognized conditions.

At present, the ICRC continues to support family visits to detainees and works to enhance the effectiveness of the Myanmar Red Cross Society.

BUDDHIST MONKS IN BURMA STILL UNDER OPPRESSION AND PRESSURE

A report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) said around 240 monks were serving tough prison terms, while thousands have been disrobed or live under "constant surveillance" following their leading role in the 2007 demonstrations.

The protests began as small rallies against the rising cost of living but escalated into huge demonstrations led by crowds of monks that posed the biggest challenge to junta rule in nearly two decades.

The new report said the potential for a repeat of the protests is "very real" if the international community does not put pressure on the regime to enact credible political reform ahead of elections planned for 2010.

It details the arrest, beating and detention of individual monks after the 2007 uprising, in which at least 31 people were killed as security forces cracked down on protesters in the country formerly known as Burma.

The junta has since closed down health and social service programmes run by local monastic groups across the country and intensified surveillance of monasteries, according to the report.

It said many monks -- who also face repression for their important social service role after the devastation of Cyclone Nargis in 2008 -- have left their monasteries and returned to their villages or sought refuge abroad.

The cyclone killed 138,000 people and prompted international criticism of the government's slow response.

"The stories told by monks are sad and disturbing, but they exemplify the behavior of Burma's military government as it clings to power through violence, fear, and repression," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

"The monks retain a great deal of moral authority, making principled stands by monks very dangerous for a government that doesn't."

Meanwhile the rights group accused the junta of using Buddhism as a tool to gain political legitimacy -- for example by lavishing gifts on selected senior monks and monasteries.

"It would not be surprising to see monks on the streets again if social grievances are not addressed," Adams added.

On Friday Myanmar authorities freed two journalists who helped victims of last year's cyclone and released several opposition activists as part of an amnesty for more than 7,000 prisoners, according to witnesses.

Their release followed another HRW report on Wednesday that said the number of political prisoners in Myanmar had doubled to more than 2,200 in the past two years.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon welcomed the release of prisoners but urged the junta to free those still being held, including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

FORT WAYNE (IN) 88GSE TAKES DEMOSTRATION AGAINST REGIME CONSTITUTION IN BURMA

PLEASE CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE

UN chief hails release , but more for political prisoners

"The Secretary-General welcomes the release of a limited number of political prisoners as part of a larger amnesty," Ban's spokeswoman Michele Montas said.

Earlier Friday, Myanmar authorities freed two journalists who helped victims of last year's Cyclone Nargis and released several opposition activists as part of an amnesty for more than 7,000 prisoners, according to witnesses.

One of the freed journalists was Eint Khaing Oo, 28, who was arrested in 2008. This year she became the first recipient of an award set up in memory of a Japanese video reporter who was killed in monk-led protests in 2007.

The other journalist was Kyaw Kyaw Thant, who was arrested with her as they took a group of survivors of the May 2008 cyclone to the United Nations head offices in Yangon.

Nargis killed around 138,000 people and left thousands more homeless after battering southwestern Myanmar. The military regime's slow response to the disaster drew international criticism.

Ban renewed his call to Myanmar's rulers "to ensure the release of remaining political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, as a necessary step towards a credible process of national reconciliation and democratic transition."

The UN secretary general, who visited Myanmar in July, has repeatedly pressed for the release of the opposition leader and other political prisoners.

The 64-year-old Suu Kyi was found guilty in July of breaching the terms of her house arrest after John Yettaw, an eccentric US former military veteran, swam to her lakeside villa in May and stayed there for two days.

Myanmar junta leader Than Shwe commuted Suu Kyi's sentence to 18 months under house arrest, but this would still rule her out of elections due to be held next year.

Suu Kyi has been confined for 14 of the past 20 years, ever since the military regime refused to recognize her National League for Democracy's landslide victory in the last elections held in 1990.

Political change in Naypyidaw is in China's best interest ? **********Junta’s amnesty meaningless sans political prisoners: AI

PRISCILLA CLAPP
Wall Street Journal
September 17, 2009

Ms. Clapp was Charge d'Affairs for the U.S. embassy in Rangoon from 1999 to 2002.
As the People's Republic of China approaches the 60th anniversary of its founding, Beijing has been unpleasantly surprised by the sudden outbreak of unrest on its long border with Burma. It's a lesson to China about the tenuous nature of its friendship with the junta, and a reminder that political change in Burma is in Beijing's best interests.

The flare up began last month when Burmese forces attacked a recalcitrant militia in Kokang, near the Chinese border, forcing tens of thousands of refugees to flee into China's Yunnan province. A diplomatic battle soon ensued. China issued an uncharacteristically stern warning that Burma should "properly deal with its domestic issue to safeguard regional stability." Burmese military leaders hinted at Beijing support for their move against Kokang. And for the first time in history, the official Burmese press published a news item about the Dalai Lama visiting Taiwan.

The public bickering is noteworthy because China has invested heavily in its relationship with the junta. Beijing has given Burma decades of generous military assistance, built factories and infrastructure and mined Burma's wealth of resources. China is Burma's largest trading partner. On the political front, Beijing has acted as the Burmese regime's primary protector in the United Nations Security Council and other international fora to blunt the impact of Western sanctions and hostility against the military government.

The situation is likely to get worse before it gets better. Burma's military leaders are determined to clear away the remaining vestiges of their long-running insurgencies before heading into multi-party elections next year as part of the country's transition to "disciplined democracy." According to local reports, Burmese army units have already begun to move into Mongla, another autonomous former insurgent area, as well as the heavily armed and fortified northern and southern Wa areas along the Chinese and Thai borders. Tens of thousands of refugees from the northern Wa area have reportedly already fled into China, even as Kokang refugees return home.

The Burmese regime may also be egged on by its own citizens, many of whom harbor strong anti-Chinese sentiment. The junta's move against the ethnic Chinese border groups, long notorious for drug dealing and other criminal activities, has been quietly cheered by many Burmese. Chinese investment has done little to improve the lives of average Burmese and they view Beijing as propping up a hugely unpopular government.

It's clear that this is a critical moment for China in its relations with Burma. Beijing harbors a strong interest in promoting political transition in Burma to replace the long-standing military regime with a more stable and rational civilian government. Chinese frustration with Burma's inept and capricious military leaders is only thinly disguised. Beijing recognizes that the underlying causes of instability and violence will only become more acute the longer the current situation lingers.

Burma also poses a regional threat that China can't ignore. Not only does violence inside Burma spill over into China, Thailand, Bangladesh, and India, the porous border with China is rife with illegal trafficking in narcotics, contraband, and humans, and HIV/AIDS has spread from Burma into Yunnan province at an alarming rate. Burma's expanding military relationship with North Korea, rumored to include a nuclear technology component, threatens to bring a new security threat to nuclear weapons-free Southeast Asia.

Beijing could start by making overtures to various political forces inside Burma that are likely to emerge soon in a new parliamentary setting, not just the generals and their business cronies. China might also strengthen ties with other ethnic minorities, not just with ethnic Chinese groups in Burma, as well as with the political opposition and Burmese exiles.

China could also help revive the U.N. effort to encourage political dialogue and transition in Burma. If China were to support U.N. and other international efforts to promote free and fair elections in Burma in 2010, it would not only win plaudits from the international community, but would be warmly welcomed by a wide swath of the Burmese population of all ethnic races. It would be awkward for the military regime to take issue with this stance without suggesting that it had no intention of running free and fair elections.

Beijing could also send a powerful signal to both the generals and the Burmese public by holding back on arms supplies to the regime during the transition period. China is Burma's primary source of military equipment and has been seen in the past to deliberately curtail arms supplies to signal its displeasure with the regime. In light of the current unrest on the border, it might be an appropriate gesture by Beijing to refrain openly from fuelling further instability with new arms supplies and to reassure the Burmese public of its friendly intentions to support a peaceful and stable political transition.

China has been extremely patient with its badly behaved clients in Naypyitaw for more than two decades and is not likely to make an abrupt turn at this stage. But there's no doubt that it would be in the best interest of China and of the Burmese people for Beijing to start treating Burma like the regional security threat that it is.


**************************************************
Junta’s amnesty meaningless sans political prisoners:
Following Ban’s visit, Burma’s UN Ambassador Than Swe told the Security Council that his government is preparing to release prisoners to allow them to participate in the forthcoming 2010 elections.

Burma has been persistent in its denial of having political prisoners saying all prisoners are charged with violating the existing law.

On Friday afternoon, the initial release of about 100 prisoners from Mandalay prison does not include any political prisoners.

Meanwhile, in Rangoon’s notorious Insein prison, authorities are holding a press briefing on Friday afternoon and opposition sources said they expect a few political prisoners including some prominent student activists to be among those freed.

Daughters of ex-Myanmar PMs 'to join new party'

The daughters of two former Myanmar prime ministers are aiming to join a new political party that is being set up to take part in next year's elections, organisers said Tuesday.

The planned Democratic Party is being established by a veteran politician once the ruling junta passes a party political registration law for the polls scheduled for some time in 2010.

Than Than Nu, 62, a daughter of Myanmar's late first Prime Minister U Nu, said she would be the general secretary of the party. She returned from India in 2003 after leaving the country with her parents in 1969.

"We decided to take part in the coming elections as it is a chance for us and we expect to serve the country," Than Than Nu told AFP.

Her father U Nu was Myanmar's first premier after the country won independence in 1948, serving three separate terms.

His final spell in government came when he was overthrown in 1962, starting a period of military rule that continues to this day. He died in 1995.

Nay Yee Ba Swe, a daughter of Myanmar's second prime minister Ba Swe, and Cho Cho Kyaw Nyein, a daughter a late former deputy prime minister, would also join the party, organisers said.

Ba Swe was the country's second prime minister and served from 1956 to 1957 in between U Nu's first and second terms.

The Democratic Party is also expected contain some leading businessmen as well as former student activists.

"We have no right to say anything officially about the party as we have no party registration law and election law yet," said veteran politician Thu Wai, 77, who will be the chairman of the party.

"But we took this risk as we wanted to serve the people. We will not have much time after they announce the laws," he said.

Myanmar's military government announced that it would hold elections in 2010 after approving a controversial constitution in May 2008, just days after devastating Cyclone Nargis hit the country.

Critics say the polls are a sham designed to legitimise the junta's iron grip on power.

Pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy party won a landslide in 1990 elections but was never allowed to govern, had her house arrest extended in August until after the end of 2010.

The NLD has not said whether it will participate in next year's polls.

WHY????????????????????????????????????

“ထို႔ေၾကာင့္ဤသုိ႔” ဆိုတဲ့ ေျဖရွင္းခ်က္ေတြကို နအဖ စစ္အုပ္စု ေန႔တိုင္းနီးပါး မရပ္မနား လုပ္ေပးေနရတယ္။
တရုတ္ကို ဖားရတယ္၊ ကခ်င္ကို နားခ်ရတယ္၊ ၀ ကို ကတိေပးရတယ္၊ ျပည္သူကို လိမ္ေနရတယ္။
တရုတ္ကို ဖားရတယ္၊ ကခ်င္ကို နားခ်ရတယ္၊ ၀ ကို ကတိေပးရတယ္၊ ျပည္သူကို လိမ္ေနရတယ္။
ကိုးကန္႔ကို တိုက္လိုက္တာ လြယ္ေပမယ့္ ေနာက္ပိုင္း ရွင္းရတာေတြက ပိုခက္ေနတယ္။
- နအဖ စစ္ေကာင္စီ ေၾကညာခ်က္ ၁/၂၀၀၉ ထုတ္ျပီး ရွင္းေနရတယ္။
- ကိုးကန္႔ေဒသမွာ စိတ္ၾကြေဆးျပားေတြ၊ စက္္ရံုေတြ၊ လက္နက္ေမွာင္ခိုလုပ္ငန္းေတြ ေတြ႔ရွိရေၾကာင္း (အခုမွ) ထုတ္ေျပာေနရတယ္။
ျပီးခဲ့တဲ့လ အထိက အဲဒီေဒသမွာ ဘိန္းအစားထိုးလုပ္ငန္းေတြ ေအာင္ျမင္ေနေၾကာင္း မူးယစ္ေဆး၀ါး ကင္းစင္ပေပ်ာက္ေနျပီျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း
ေဒသတည္ျငိမ္ေအးခ်မ္းေနေၾကာင္း နအဖ ေရးခဲ့ေျပာခ့ဲ့ေသးတယ္။ အခုမွ ျဗဳန္းစားၾကီး WY ေဆးျပားေတြ ဘိန္းေတြ ေဆးေျခာက္ေတြ M 21 - 22 ေတြ ဘယ္ကထြက္လာလဲ။
- အခုလို ကိုးကန္႔ေဒသမွာ မူးယစ္ေဆး၀ါးကို အသည္းအသန္တိုက္ဖ်က္ေနေပမယ့္ အိမ္နီးခ်င္းႏုိင္ငံေတြ အေနာက္ အင္အားၾကီးႏုိင္ငံေတြက
သတိမျပဳမိတာ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္မွုမလုပ္ၾကတဲ့အေပၚ နအဖ ၀မ္းနည္းေနေၾကာင္း ေလွ်ာက္ေျပာ ေလွ်ာက္ေရး လုပ္ေနရတယ္။
- တရုတ္ျပည္ထဲေျပး၀င္သြားတဲ့ လူေတြကို ျပန္ျပီးလက္ခံဖို႔နဲ႔ နယ္စပ္ေဒသမွာ တည္ျငိမ္မွဳရွိဖို႔ တရုတ္အစိုးရကို ကတိေတြေပးေနရတယ္။
တရုတ္ႏြယ္ဖြား ကိုးကန္႔ေတြအေပၚ လူမ်ဳိးတံုး စစ္ဆင္တာ မဟုတ္ေၾကာင္း တရုတ္ၾကီး ကို ရွင္းျပတာ ေရႊနားေတာ္သြင္းတာ လုပ္ေနရတယ္။
- ထြက္ေျပးသြားတဲ့ အရပ္သားေတြရဲ ႔ပိုင္ဆိုင္မွုေတြကို စစ္တပ္က ယူငင္လုယက္ေနလို႔ ေျဖရွင္းခ်က္ေတြ ထုတ္ေန ရတယ္။
ဘယ္တုန္းကဖမ္းထားမွန္းမသိ ဘယ္ကမွန္းမသိတဲ့ လူေတြက သူခိုးတံဆိပ္ ကပ္ေပးျပီး တရားခံျပ လုပ္ ေနရတယ္။
ခ်င္းေရႊေဟာ္မွာ တရားခံေတြကိုဖမ္းခ်ဳပ္ထားေၾကာင္း ယခု ေထာင္ဒဏ္ ၂ ႏွစ္စီ ခ်လိုက္ေၾကာင္း စာလံုးမဲနဲ႔ေခါင္းၾကီးသတင္းေတြ ေဖာ္ျပေနရတယ္။
- အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္ဆဲထားတာ က်ဳိးေပါက္သြားတာမဟုတ္ေၾကာင္းနဲ႔ “၀” ေတြ “ကခ်င္” ေတြအေပၚ စစ္ေရးတိုက္ခိုက္ က်ဴးေက်ာ္မွဳေတြ လုုပ္မွာမဟုတ္ေၾကာင္း
၃ ၾကိမ္ထက္မနည္း ကတိေတြေပးေနရတယ္။ (၀ နယ္ကိုေတာ့ စစ္အင္အား ၃ ေသာင္းထက္မနည္း လက္နက္ၾကီး လက္နက္ငယ္ေတြနဲ႔ ၀ိုင္းပတ္ေနရာယူထားတယ္)
- သတင္းစာထဲမွာ “ေလာက္ကိုင္မွာသာတဲ့လ” လို “ကိုးကန္႔ေဒသ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းၿမဲ - စိမ္းလန္းစိုျပည္ စည္ကားဆဲ” လုိ ေခါင္းစဥ္မ်ဳိးေတြနဲ႔
အျမီးအေမာက္မတည့္တဲ့ ေဆာင္းပါးေတြ ေရးထည့္ျပီး တႏိုင္ငံလံုးသိေအာင္ ၀ါဒျဖန္႔ေနရတယ္။
- နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္အသြင္ေျပာင္းေရးလက္မခံလို႔ အခုလို ဘိန္းျပျပီး စစ္ေရးအရ ေျဖရွင္းလိုက္တာ မဟုတ္ရ ပါေၾကာင္း
ေျမာက္ပိုင္းက အပစ္အခတ္ ရပ္ထားတဲ့အဖြဲ ႔ေတြကို လုိက္ရွင္းျပေနရတယ္။
- သူခိုးလူမိျဖစ္သြားလို႔ ဘက္စံု ရွင္း လင္းပြဲေတြ လုပ္ေနရတယ္။

- ျမန္မာျပည္ ေတာင္ပိုင္းမွာ ကရင္ေတြကို အျပဳတ္တိုက္ဖို႔ ငါးၾကင္းဆီနဲ႔ ငါးၾကင္းေၾကာ္ေနတယ္။ ဒီေကဘီေအ ၀တ္စံု၀တ္
သစ္ခုတ္သမား အေယာင္ေဆာင္္ျပီး ကရင္ေတာ္လွန္ေရးနယ္ေျမထဲ၀င္ ကရင္ ကရင္ ျခင္း သတ္ခိုင္း ေနတယ္။
ကရင္ ကရင္ျခင္းသတ္ျပီး ျပန္လာတဲ့ ဒီေကဘီေအ တပ္မွဳးကို သံလြင္ျမစ္ထဲမွာေဖ်ာင္ခဲ့ဘူးတယ္။
- ေလာေလာဆယ္ သတင္းေပါက္ၾကားမွုျဖစ္ပြားသြားတဲ့အတြက္ ထိုးစစ္ကို ေခတၱရပ္ထားတယ္။ ကရင္အမ်ဳိးသား အစည္းအရံုးဘက္က
ထိုးစစ္ဆင္လာေတာ့မယ့္ သတင္းရလို႔ ဖာပြန္-ကမာေမာင္းလမ္းကို ျဖတ္ေတာက္ ပိတ္ဆို႔ ထားတယ္။
ဒီလမ္းက တပ္မဟာ ၅ ကို ထိုးစစ္ဆင္မယ္ဆိုရင္ အေရးပါတဲ့လမ္းျဖစ္ေနတယ္ ဒီလမ္းကေန ေထာက္ပို႔လုပ္ငန္းေတြသြားမယ္။
တိုက္မယ္ဆိုရင္ တိုက္ပြဲၾကီးေတြေတာ့ တုိက္မွာမဟုတ္။ ေျမာက္ပိုင္းအေရးက ပူပူေႏြးေႏြးရွိေသးတယ္။
ေျမာက္ပိုင္းမွာတပ္ေတြ စုပံုေအာထားရလို႔ တိုက္မွာမဟုတ္ဘူးဆိုတဲ့ အျမင္မ်ဳိးျဖစ္ေပၚ လာတဲ့ အခ်ိန္ကို နအဖ ေစာင့္ေနတယ္။
အလစ္အငိုက္မွာ တိုက္လိမ့္မယ္။
- ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ ေတာင္ပိုင္းမွာရွိတဲ့ ေတာင္ပိုင္း ၀ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ေတြကို ရန္စတာေတြလုပ္ေနတယ္။ စစ္တပ္က လားဟူ ျပည္သူ႔စစ္ ယူနီေဖာင္း၀တ္ျပီး
ကင္းလွည့္တာ ရွာေဖြစစ္ေဆးတာေတြလုပ္ေနတယ္။ ၀ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ေတြနဲ႔ ျပႆနာ တက္ ရင္ စစ္တပ္က လားဟူ ဘက္ကေန
ခ်က္ခ်င္းအားျဖည့္ေပးမယ္ေျပာျပီး ၀ ကို တိုက္ဖို႔ လားဟူကို ေျမွာက္ေပး ေန တယ္။ လားဟူ ျပည္သူ႔စစ္ တပ္ဖြဲ႔မွာ လူအင္အာ ၄၀ ၀န္းက်င္ရွိတယ္။
စစ္တပ္က ေနာက္ထပ္ လူအင္အား ၂၀ နဲ႔ လက္နက္ခဲယမ္း ေတြ ျဖည့္ ထားတယ္။
လူ ၅၀ - ၆၀ ေလာက္နဲ႔ ငါးစာ ခ်ထားတာ ငါးမွ်ားခ်ိတ္ကို ၀ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ ေတြ မျမင္ပါေစနဲ႔လို႔ နအဖ ဆုေတာင္းေနတယ္။
- ေတာင္းပိုင္း ၀ တပ္ ဖြဲ႔ဟာ ၀ ျပည္ တပ္မေတာ္ရဲ့ အသက္ေသြးေၾကာ တခုျဖစ္တယ္။ တရုတ္အစိုးရကို နအဖ က ကပ္ႏုိင္လို႔ တရုတ္ျပည္က
၀ ေတြ အေပၚ ေဆး၀ါး ရိကၡာ လက္နက္ခဲယမ္း မကူညီခဲ့ရင္ ေတာင္ပိုင္း၀ နယ္က လိုအပ္ခ်က္ေတြကို ထိုင္းနယ္ထဲကေန ျဖည့္ဆည္းႏုိင္တယ္။
ေတာင္ပိုင္း ၀ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ဟာ ၀ အမ်ဳိးသားေတြနဲ႔ ၀ တပ္မေတာ္ အတြက္ Logistics ျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ နအဖ က ေတာင္ပိုင္း၀ နယ္
ထိုင္းနယ္စပ္တေလ်ာက္ မွာ အင္အားတိုးခ်ဲ ့ခ်ထားျပီး ျဖတ္ေတာက္ဖို႔ ၾကံေနတယ္။ ထိုးစစ္အရလဲ အေရးပါတယ္။ ေတာင္ပိုင္း၀နယ္က
လွဳပ္ရွားနယ္ေျမအရ ေသးငယ္တယ္ အင္အားနည္းတယ္။ စစ္ျဖစ္ျပီဆိုတာနဲ႔ ေျမာက္ပိုင္း၀နယ္ကို စစ္ေရး အရ ျခိမ္းေျခာက္ထားမယ္၊
ေတာင္ေျမာက္အဆက္ျဖတ္မယ္၊ ေတာင္ပိုင္း၀ နယ္ကို သိမ္းမယ္ ဆိုတဲ့ စစ္ေရး ၾကံစည္ခ်က္ ရွိေနႏုိင္တယ္။
- ကိုးကန္႔ အေရးမွာ သင္ခန္းစာ ရသြားတဲ့ အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္ဆဲေရးအဖြဲ႔ေတြက ၾကိဳတင္ျပင္ဆင္မွဳေတြ လုပ္ထားၾကလို႔
ထင္သေလာက္ လြယ္ကူမွာမဟုတ္မွန္း နအဖ တြက္ခ်က္မိေနတယ္။ နအဖ အင္အားတိုးခ်ထားျပီး ဒုတ္ျပ ခဲျပ လုပ္ေနတာ
၀ လူထုက တအိမ္တေယာက္ စစ္ထဲလိုက္မယ္ဆိုတဲ့ ကတိေပးလိုက္သလို ၀ တပ္မေတာ္ စစ္ဦးစီး အဖြဲ႔ကလည္း
အသက္ေပး ကာကြယ္မယ္ဆုိတဲ့အတြက္ ေရွ႔တလွမ္းတိုးရမလား - ေနာက္ ျပန္ဆုတ္ရမလား ျဖစ္ေန တယ္။
- အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္ထားတဲ့အဖြဲ႔ေတြက ေျမြမေသ ဒုတ္မက်ဳိးလုပ္ေနတာ နအဖ အခံရခက္ေနတယ္။ နအဖ လက္ ေအာက္ခံ နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္ လုပ္တာထက္
ကခ်င့္လက္နက္ ကခ်င့္လက္ထဲမွာထားျပီး ကခ်င္ေဒသ ကိုယ္ပိုင္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးတပ္ဘဲ လုပ္မယ္ ဆိုတဲ့ ေကအုိင္အိုရဲ့ သေဘာထားနဲ႔
ေကအိုင္အို မဖ်က္ဘဲ ပါတီသစ္တခုဖြဲ႔ျပီး ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ၀ယ္မယ္ဆိုတဲ့ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ေၾကာင့္ နအဖ အငိုက္မိသြားတယ္။
ဒါကို လတ္တေလာ ေျဖရွင္းဖို႔ မရႏုိင္ ေသးဘူး။ နည္းလမ္းမေတြ႔ ေသးဘူး။ လတ္တေလာ မေျဖရွင္းႏုိင္ေပမယ့္ မူ အရ နအဖ လံုး၀ လက္မခံႏုိင္ဘူး ဆိုတာ သိသာထင္ရွားတယ္။
ကိုယ္ပိုင္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရး ကိုယ္ပိုင္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခြင့္ဆိုတဲ့ အသံုးအႏွုန္းမ်ဳိး နအဖ ေရးဆြဲ ထားတဲ့ ဖြဲ ႔စည္းပံုထဲမွာ မပါဘူး။
၆၃ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲ ေခၚတုန္းက ေန၀င္းစစ္အုပ္စုရဲ့ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ ဗိုလ္မွဴးၾကီးလွဟန္က ဗကပ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ေတြတင္တဲ့
ေတာင္းဆိုခ်က္ေတြနဲ႔ ပက္သက္ျပီး ႏွစ္လံုးထဲနဲ႔ ေဘာင္းဘီညပ္ခဲ့ဘူးတယ္။ ဗကပ ေတာင္းဆိုခဲ့တာက “တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ဳိးစုမ်ားအေပၚ စစ္ဆင္ေနမွဳ ရပ္ဆိုင္းရန္”
စစ္အုပ္စု ကိုယ္စားလွယ္က ဘာ တင္ျပလဲဆိုေတာ့ “တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ဳိးစုမ်ားအေပၚ“ လို႔ မသံုးပါနဲ႔
ဘာေၾကာင့္လဲ ဆိုေတာ့ သူတို႔နဲ႔ ဘတျပန္က်ားတျပန္ တိုက္ေနရလို႔ပါတဲ့။
အခုလည္း “ကခ်င္ေဒသ ကိုယ္ပိုင္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးတပ္” ဆိုတာနဲ႔ ပါတ္သက္ျပီး နအဖ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ ဘာေတြေျပာရမယ္ဆိုတာ စဥ္းစားေနမွာျဖစ္တယ္။
- ေရွ ႔တန္းစစ္မ်က္ႏွာမွာ ျပႆနာေသာင္းေျခာက္ေထာင္ တက္ေနခ်ိန္မွာ - စစ္ေနာက္ပိုင္း ေဒသလို႔ ေျပာလို႔ရတဲ့
ရန္ကုန္ မႏၱေလး ပဲခူး ပခုကၠဴ မံုရြာ ျမင္းျခံ စစ္ေတြ ေမာ္လျမိဳင္ျမိဳ ႔ေတြမွာ ျမိဳ႔တြင္းလွုပ္ရွားမွဳေတြျဖစ္ေပၚလာေနေတာ့ နအဖ ေနာက္ေၾကာမလံုျဖစ္ေနတယ္။
- စက္တင္ဘာေရႊ၀ါေရာင္ေတာ္လွန္ေရး တေက်ာ့ျပန္ျဖစ္လာဖို႔ တာစူေနၾကသလို၊ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး
လွဳပ္ရွားမွဳေတြကလည္း အရွိန္တက္လာေနေတာ့ စစ္ေနာက္ပိုင္းေဒသေတြမွာလည္း စစ္အင္အားေတြ တိုးခ်ထားေနရတယ္။
- ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကိုေထာင္ခ်လိုက္လို႔ အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြက နအဖ အေပၚ အေရးယူမွဳ မူလီ ထပ္ၾကပ္ လိုက္တာကို အခံရခက္ေနတယ္။
ဒါ့အျပင္ ဒီအမွဳက ဒီမွာတင္ မျပီးဘဲ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က ျပန္ျပီး ခုခံ ေခ်ပ ခြင့္ေတာင္းတာ အယူခံတင္တာ ေရွ ႔ေနေတြနဲ႔ ေတြ ႔ဆံုခြင့္ေတာင္းတာေတြက
သတင္းမီဒီယာေတြ ေပၚ တေက်ာ့ ျပန္တက္လာေတာ့ နအဖ စိုးရိမ္ေနတယ္။ အစကေတာ့ ေက်းဇူးရွင္ၾကီး ယက္ေတာ၊ ခုက် ဂ်ဳိေမႊတဲ့ ယက္ေတာ တဲ့ နအဖ စစ္အုပ္စုေျပာေနျပီ။
- နအဖ ဘက္က ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဥပေဒနဲ႔ ႏုိင္ငံေရးပါတီ ဥပေဒေတြကို ခုခ်ိန္ထိ မထုတ္ျပန္ႏုိင္ေသးတဲ့အေပၚ ေအးလြင့္တို႔ အုပ္စုေတြကပါ စိတ္မရွည္ေတာ့ဘူး။
ခပ္တည္တည္နဲ႔ဆိုင္းဘုတ္ေထာင္ ရံုးဖြင့္ျပီး စည္းရံုးေနၾကျပီ။ နအဖ ဘက္ကလည္း အနည္းဆံုးေတာ့ (ဒီခ်ဳပ္ မပါရင္ေတာင္) အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္ထားတဲ့အဖြဲ႔ေတြ
တိုင္းရင္းသားေတြ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ၀င္မွ ျဖစ္မယ္ဆိုတဲ့ လ်ာထားခ်က္ရွိေလေတာ့ ျငိမ္းအဖြဲ႔ေတြကို အရင္ျငိမ္းေအာင္လုပ္ေနရတယ္။
- အခုလို အခ်ိန္မွာ အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖဲြ႔ခ်ဳပ္က တရား၀င္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးပါတီတခုရဲ့ လြပ္လပ္စြာ စည္းရံုး လွဳပ္ရွား ခြင့္ေတြကို ခြင့္ျပဳဖုိ႔ ေတာင္းဆိုလိုက္တဲ့အခါမွာ နအဖ
အေတာ္ မေၾကမနပ္ျဖစ္သြားတယ္။ အရွဳိက္အထိုးခံလိုက္ ရတယ္။ ဒီခ်ဳပ္ဘက္က ဒီေတာင္းဆိုမွဳကို ႏိုင္ငံေရးတိုက္ကြက္တခုလို တိုးခ် ဲ႔လုပ္ကိုင္လာခဲ့ရင္ဆိုတဲ့
စိုးရိမ္ခ်က္ နအဖ မွာ ျဖစ္ေပၚေနတယ္။ ဒီခ်ဳပ္ရဲ့ေတာင္းဆိုခ်က္ကို ဆူပူမွဳေတြ လုပ္ေတာ့မယ္။ လူထုအံုၾကြမွုေတြ ျဖစ္ေတာ့ မယ္ဆိုတဲ့ အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္နဲ႔ ပယ္ခ်ဖို႔ ၾကံစည္ေနတယ္။
- အံုၾကြမွဳေတြက တကယ္ျဖစ္လာေတာ့မယ့္ အလားအလာေတြရွိေနျပီ။ ျဖစ္လာဖို႔ တာစူေနျပီ။ အခုတေခါက္ျဖစ္ လာရင္ အရင္လို ထိမ္းႏုိင္မွာမဟုတ္ဘူး။
မျဖစ္ခင္ ၾကိဳျပီး ရွင္းပစ္ဖို႔ နအဖ အမိန္႔ထုတ္ထားတယ္။ တျပည္လံုး စစ္မ်က္ႏွာျဖစ္ေနျပီ။ ေနရာတိုင္း လက္နက္ကိုင္ေတြခ်ထားရတယ္။
တျပည္လံုး လူဖမ္းပြဲေတြ လုပ္ေနတယ္။ သံဃာေတြကို ဖမ္းေနတယ္။ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြကို ဖမ္းေနတယ္။ ေလာက္ေလးဂြ တပ္ေတြ ဖြဲ႔ေနတယ္။
- နအဖ အေၾကာက္ဆံုးက ေရႊ၀ါေရာင္ေတာ္လွန္ေရးအျပီးမွာ ေခတ္စားလာတဲ့ ျမိဳ႔ျပေပ်ာက္ၾကား အယူအဆနဲ႔ ျမိဳ႔ျပ ေပ်ာက္ၾကား လွဳပ္ရွားမွဳ။
ျမိဳ႔ျပေပ်ာက္ၾကား မီးဒုတ္ ကိုင္လိမ့္မယ္။
ျမိဳ ႔ျပေပ်ာက္ၾကားရဲ ့ အဓိက ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္က ရန္သူ႔ေနာက္ေက်ာမွာ လွဳပ္ရွားတယ္။
ရန္သူ႔စစ္ေနာက္ပိုင္းေဒသေတြမွာ အဖ်က္လုပ္ငန္းေတြလုပ္တယ္။ ရန္သူ႔ ပစၥည္းေတြ ဖ်က္ဆီးပစ္တယ္။
ဂိုေထာင္ေတြ မီးတိုက္ပစ္တယ္။ ေမာ္ေတာ္ယဥ္ေတြ မီးရွဳိ ႔ပစ္တယ္။
ရန္သူ႔ သတင္း ေပးေတြ သစၥာေဖာက္ေတြကို ဆံုးမပစ္တယ္။
ျမိဳ ႔ျပယဥ္ေက်းမွဳထဲက ျမိဳ ႔ျပေပ်ာက္ၾကားေတြ ေပၚထြက္လာမွာ နအဖ အစြမ္းကုန္ ေၾကာက္ေနတယ္။
ေတြးေလေလ တစိမ့္စိမ့္ေၾကာက္ေလေလဘဲ။
(သားေဆြ)

ေမးလ္ထဲမွ စာတစ္ေစာင္ကို ျပန္လည္ ေဖၚျပလိုက္ျခင္း ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

Police question senior opposition figure

YANGON, Myanmar - Police in Myanmar interrogated a senior member of Aung San Suu Kyi's pro-democracy party Saturday about whether he and other opposition leaders received funding from abroad.
Win Tin, 80, who was freed a year ago after 19 years in jail as the country's longest-serving political prisoner, said he was taken from his home in the morning for questioning and sent back in the evening. He is one of the most outspoken critics of the ruling military junta among senior members of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party.

He said he was asked if he and some other opposition leaders have been receiving monetary assistance from foreign countries, an allegation based on statements by some youths in custody.

"I told them that on principle we never accept financial assistance from any foreign country or organization and we never make any political agreements with any countries," said Win Tin, a longtime journalist and poet who helped found Suu Kyi's party in 1988 and became her close aide. Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is under house arrest.

Win Tin was freed last September as part of an amnesty granted to 9,002 prisoners. Human rights groups and press associations around the world had pushed for his freedom.

Soon after his release, he vowed to continue with "the unfinished task of trying to achieve democracy in Myanmar."

He wrote in a recent opinion piece in the Washington Post that "the showcase election planned by the military regime makes a mockery of the freedom sought by our people and would make military dictatorship permanent. "

The government is planning to hold elections in 2010 as part of a seven-step "roadmap to democracy" in accordance with a constitution promulgated last year. Suu Kyi's party and other critics of the government consider the charter undemocratic.

Whereabouts of US Citizen Still Unknown

Relatives of a Burmese-born US citizen who was taken into custody shortly after arriving in Rangoon last week said they have received no news about him, and are concerned about his safety.

“We are extremely worried about him,” said Ko Ko Aung, brother of Nyi Nyi Aung, who was arrested by Burmese military intelligence agents soon after landing at Rangoon’s international airport on a flight from Bangkok on September 3.

According to Ko Ko Aung, the Burmese authorities have provided no information about where Nyi Nyi Aung is being held or what he has been charged with.

“Actually, we don’t even know why he went back to Burma,” said Ko Ko Aung.

Earlier this week, US-based Radio Free Asia reported that the US State Department said it was seeking consular access to Nyi Nyi Aung.

“We have sought consular access,” State Department spokesperson Ian Kelly was quoted as saying. “As soon as we saw this report, we did go to the government in Burma and ask for additional information.”

The US embassy in Rangoon also said that it was looking into the case.

“We have reached out to [the Burmese] government to get additional information,” said an embassy spokesperson, adding that no further information was available.

Nyi Nyi Aung was a student activist during Burma’s 1988 pro-democracy uprising. He later fled to the Thai-Burmese border and was subsequently granted political asylum in the US.

In a letter sent to Collin P. Furst, the consul of the US embassy in Rangoon, Nyi Nyi Aung’s friend Kyaw Zwa Aung said that the detained activist entered Burma with a valid social visit visa obtained from the Burmese embassy in Bangkok.

Five members of Nyi Nyi Aung’s family, including his mother, are serving long prison terms for their role in the September 2007 monk-led pro-democracy uprising, dubbed the “Saffron Revolution.”

COPIED FROM IRRAWADDY NEWS

WHY YOU SHOUL JOIN 88 GENERATION STUDENTS (EXILE) WEEKEND SPECIAL

Why you should help to free Burma
(By 88 Generation Students in Exile)
SAVE BURMA NOW!
JOIN 88 GENERATION STUDENTS
IN EXILE TO FREE BURMA



1. The democratically elected government of Burma was removed from power by a military coup on March 2, 1962. A military dictatorship was established and the Burmese people lost all forms of political and social freedom.
2. It was students who first spoke out against the military dictatorship. On July 7th 1962, Rangoon University students protested against the military rule and more than 100 peaceful protesters were brutally shot and killed. The next day the Student Union building was dynamited and blown up while some student leaders were holding a meeting inside. The fact that the government took these extreme measures indicates that students and intellectuals are seen as enemies of the state because students can criticize the government and educate the people about right and wrong.
3. The military regime drew up its own constitution in 1974 which created a one party system. They set up a Burmese Socialist Program Party with the coup leader General Ne Win as the party boss. Under the new constitution, General Ne Win became President Ne Win.
4. A workers’ strike in June 1974 was crushed, resulting in16 dead. The worker leaders were sentenced to 12 years to life in prison.
5. A students’ strike occurred six months later, on December 5th, 1974. More than 100,000 students and others demonstrated for 4 days in the Rangoon Arts and Science University compound, demanding establishment of independent student organizations and an appropriate burial site for the late UN Secretary General U Thant. After four days, the government captured more than 3000 protestors and activists and ended the demonstration.
6. Another student strike occurred in June 1975 with demands for freedom and formation of independent student unions. Many students were rounded up and sentenced to six years to life.
7. The student leader Tin Mg Oo, who led strikes in 1974 and 1975, was captured on March 25, 1976. The next day students marched and demonstrated against the regime, it was known as Hmine Strike. Many students were captured including Tin Mg Oo’s younger sister, brother and parents.
8. Tin Mg Oo, who was just a sophomore at Rangoon Arts and Science University majoring in zoology, received the death sentence for leading the demonstrations. His sister and brother. who were high school students at that time, got 9 and 6 year prison terms. His parents got 5 year prison terms for being his parents. Within three months Tin Mg Oo was secretly hung in the notorious “Insein Prison”; he was 23 years old at the time of the execution. The government never admitted to the hanging and refused to account for his death.
9. In March 1988, engineering students from Rangoon Institute of Technology (RIT) quarreled with the local party boss’ son. The quarrel became a student demonstration inside the RIT compound. Riot guards shot and killed six students in the university compound; Burmese citizens were stunned.
10. On March 18, students and others marched in Rangoon to protest the shootings. Their way was blocked by security forces, and more than 500 demonstrators, including 12-year-old children, were arrested and crowded into prison vans like sardines. When the vans arrived at the prisons, 40 people were found dead of suffocation.
11. On August 8, 1988 nationwide demonstrations broke out across Burma. Millions joined the demonstrations and demanded freedom and democracy. These protests were named after the date: The four eights movement (8.8.88). The demonstrations lasted one and a half months, after which the army stepped in and killed at least 3000 unarmed demonstrators, including high school students.
12. The army called an election for May 27, 1990 and allowed the formation of political parties after 26 years of misrule.
13. On May 27, 1990, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won the election with 82% of the parliamentary seats, but the regime refused to hand over power, arguing that the country had no appropriate constitution.
14. It took 15 years, from 1993 to 2008, to draw up a new constitution. Politicians and intellectuals hand picked by the government spent 15 years drawing up a new constitution, which favored civilian rule dominated by the military. The NLD party walked out of the meetings because there was no freedom of discussion.
15. On May 30th 2003, Aung San Suu Kyi was taking a trip to upper Burma when her group was ambushed in Depeyin Township by government sponsored thugs who brutally killed more than 100 of her followers. This became known as the Depeyin Massacre. Aung San Suu Kyi luckily escaped being murdered. Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest and some of her followers who were injured were thrown into prison. No attackers were ever arrested or punished but the victims were severely punished.
16. Min Ko Naing, Min Zeyar, Ko Ko Gyi, Htay Kywe were the leaders of four eights movements. Their groups were known as 88 Generation Students in Burma for their successful protest against the regime in 1988. The Generation leaders are captured in 1989-1990. After 15 years serving in prison for peaceful protest, they were released in 2004 and 2005 separately. On November 2008, Thirteen 88 Generation Students leaders were recaptured and sentenced to 65 years prison terms with hard labor for protesting the higher gas and consumer prices. All 88 generation Students’ were sent to far away remote areas from their families.
17. In September, 2007, more than 150,000 Buddhist monks made a peaceful march to chant for peace in Burma and demand the lower consumer prices for the people. Later 100,000 people joined to shield the monks. Many monks and activists were brutally beaten by troops and sent into prisons. It was known as Saffron Revolution. The Leader monk U Gambira was sentenced to 65 years with hard labor and was forced to disrobe as a monk.
18. The deadly cyclone Nargis made landfall in Burma on May 2, 2008, killing 138,000 people and destroying villages and towns throughout the delta region. Instead of helping its own citizens, the regime blocked international aid for the surviving 500,000 victims. US and French military ships were positioned offshore, ready to help, but the regime turned them away because they feared losing political power. Consequently, many people died because they could not receive help and medicine.
19. The regime ignored the disaster, pushed for a referendum for its new 2008 constitution, and announced that 93% of the people had approved it.
20. The new constitution gave the military 25% of the parliamentary seats without a vote. The military chief of staff became the Defense Minister. The Defense Minister has the right to take over political power if he feels there is a threat to the nation. The military became independent from the government. The National Security Council has 11 members, and 6 are from the military. In addition, the constitution states that the President must have military experience, which bars civilians from becoming President.
21. For 55 million people, only four newspapers circulate in Burma. Newspapers are owned by the government, which uses them as propaganda tools to brainwash people. Television and radio stations are also run by the government.
22. Opposition political parties are allowed to form but are not allowed to organize people. Potential opposition party leaders are currently serving long prison terms. Ethnic cleansing, rape as a weapon against women, forced labor, forced relocation, and forced recruiting of child soldiers are still happening today in Burma.
23. The nuclear ambition of the Burmese generals emerged in July 2009. The generals are seeking nuclear technology from Russia and North Korea. Their target date for producing a nuclear bomb is 2025. This is a threat not only to the region but to the entire globe.

These are 23 reasons that Burmese people need your help to free Burma.
88 Generation Students (Exile)
Direct link for more information:
Tel: 607-339-6054
630-456-6517
Email:hagyaw@gmail.com
generation.8888@yahoo.com
Web: http://88gse.blogspot.com
Mail: 141 west hazel St
West Chicago IL 60185

Total, Chevron enriching Myanmar regime

Army security forces guarding a gas pipeline project backed by France's Total and US-based Chevron were linked to forced labour, killings, corruption and other violations, two reports by US-based EarthRights International said.

"Total and Chevron?s Yadana gas project has generated 4.83 billion dollars for the Burmese regime," one of the reports said, adding that the figures for the period 2000-2008 were the first ever detailed account of the revenues.

"The military elite are hiding billions of dollars of the peoples? revenue in Singapore while the country needlessly suffers under the lowest social spending in Asia," said Matthew Smith, a principal author of the reports.

The junta had kept the revenues off the national budget and stashed almost all of the money offshore with Singapore's Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) and DBS Group (DBS), the group said.

Total was recently at the centre of controversy over its lucrative dealings with the regime, following the extension in August of the house arrest of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

Total and Chevron are two of the biggest Western companies in Myanmar, both escaping wide-ranging sanctions imposed on the ruling junta by the United States and European Union.

The group meanwhile said that impact assessments of the pipeline by US-based CDA Collaborative Learning Projects, a US non-profit organisation commissioned by Total, had covered up adverse effects and abuses, the group said.

CDA "willfully participated in whitewashing Total and Chevron?s impacts in Burma and their role in forced labour, killings, and other abuses," report co-author Naing Htoo said.

၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဝင္ႏိုင္ေျခ႐ိွေသာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမားမ်ား၏ ဖုန္းနံပါတ္မ်ား

၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဝင္ႏိုင္ေျခ႐ိွေသာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမားမ်ား၏ ဖုန္းနံပါတ္မ်ား
(Phone Directory For Possible Opportunists Of 2010 Election In Burma)

အခုေဖာ္ၿပထားတဲ့ လိပ္စာေတြဟာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ သေဘာက်တဲ့ သူေတြမဟုတ္ပါ။
သေဘာမက်တာလဲမဟုတ္ပါ ။ထို႕အတူ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္ကို သေဘာက်တဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမားမ်ားမဟုတ္ပါ ။
ကၽြန္ေတာ္ႀကိဳက္တဲ့သူေတြလဲပါႏိုင္သလို ။ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္ကို ႀကိဳက္တဲ့သူေတြလဲ ပါခ်င္ပါမွာေပါ့ ။
ေဖာ္ၿပပါ လူ စာရင္းေတြဟာ ႀကိဳက္ၿခင္းမႀကိဳက္ၿခင္း အၿမင္တူၿခင္းမတူၿခင္း တစ္ဖြဲ႕တည္း ၿဖစ္ၿခင္း မၿဖစ္ၿခင္းနဲ႕ မဆိုင္ပါ ။
ၿမန္မာ့ႏိုင္ငံေရး ဧရိယာထဲမွာ တစ္နည္းနည္းနဲ႕ ပါ၀င္ပတ္သက္ၿပီး 2010 ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ၀င္မယ္လို႕ သတင္းေၿပးေနတဲ့ လူေတြ ရဲ႕ ဖုန္းနံပတ္မ်ားကို မီဒီယာ မ်ိဳးစံုနဲ႕ အမ်ားၿပည္သူက လူစစ္ဖို႕ အရည္အခ်င္းစစ္ေဆးႏိုင္ဖို႔ကို ရည္ရြယ္ၿပီး ထုတ္ၿပန္ေပး တာသာၿဖစ္ပါတယ္ ။
ဒီမွတ္တမ္းမွာ မပါဝင္တဲ့သူေတြကေတာ့ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ ဖုန္းနံပတ္မသိလို႔ပါ ။
မိတ္ေဆြတို႔က ကူညီၿပီး ကၽြန္ေတာ့္ အီးေမး ကို ထပ္မံ ေပးပို႔ပါ ။
ဒီ Directory ေလးဟာ အနာဂတ္မွာ ၿပည္သူေတြ မီဒီယာေတြ အားလံုးအတြက္ ေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမားအခ်င္းခ်င္းအတြက္ေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း အလြယ္တကူ ဆက္သြယ္လို႔ရေစပါလိမ့္မယ္ ။
လူမေရြးပါဘူး ။ ဖုန္းနံပတ္ရွိသူမည္သည့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမားကို မဆို ေဖာ္ၿပပါမယ္ ။
နာမည္ ကို အေပၚကပါလို႕ သူက ဘယ္သူ႔ထက္မွ ေခါင္းတစ္လံုးပိုၿမင့္တယ္လို႕လဲ မမွတ္ယူႀကပါနဲ႕ အရင္ေတြ႔တာ အရင္ေဖာ္ၿပလိုက္တာပါ ။
အကၡရာစဥ္အလိုက္လဲ မစီစဥ္ႏိုင္လို႔ပါ ။


ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ၀င္မည္ ဆိုသူတို႔၏ ဆက္သြယ္ရန္ ဖုန္းနံပတ္မ်ား
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35. ဦးတင္ထြန္းေမာင္ 01-540987
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ဒီလူေတြ ဟာ တစ္ဖြဲ႕တည္းေတြလည္းမဟုတ္ႀက ေနာက္ခံလဲမတူႀက အၿခားသူေတြလည္း ဖုန္းနံပတ္မရေသးလို႕ မေဖာ္ၿပႏိုင္ေသးပါ ။
သိထားတဲ့သူေတြလည္း ကူညီးၿပီးပို႔ေပးပါရန္ေမတၱာရပ္ခံပါသည္။

ေရးသားေပးပို႔သူ - ေနမ်ိဳးေဝ
THE INFORMATION IS COPIED FROM "MYOCHITMYANMAR"

Time for U.S. to Go Down in Flames for Burma and A buddhist Venerable Abbot under arrested in Rangoo airport

U Gaw Thita, an abbot belonging to the Leik Pyar Kan monastery, Nga Htat Gyi pagoda was arrested at the Rangoon airport on his way back from Taiwan.

He was arrested by intelligence personnel and police on August 29.

“He is a native of Kungyangon. He’s over 30 years old and sojourns at the Leik Pyar Kan monastery. The abbot graduated from Dhama Siriya and is a teaching monk in the monastery,” a monk who is close to the abbot said.

There are 24 buildings in the Leik Pyar Kan monastery in Nga Htat Gyi pagoda, Bahan Township, Rangoon. It is learnt that the arrested abbot has been teaching about 30 student monks.

Other monks staying in the monastery do not know his current whereabouts. U Gaw Thita was taking part in reconstruction and rehabilitation work in Cyclone Nargis hit areas.

“He went to Taiwan legally. We heard he is in custody and have been unable to contact him. Inquiries are on about him,” a lay devotee close to the abbot said.

As the second anniversary of the 2007 September Saffron Revolution draws close, security has been beefed up in major pagodas and monasteries in Rangoon since the end of last month. Police personnel are deployed at Ward level Peace and Development Council offices at night.

According to the Thai-Burma border based ‘Association of Assistance to Political prisoners’ – Burma (AAPPB), the junta arrested 158 monks after the 2007 September Saffron Revolution and they were sentenced to various terms in prison with a maximum punishment of 65 years.

Jean Geran
The American Enterprise Institute
September 7, 2009


U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said that after the Rwanda genocide she swore ‘that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required.’ She faces such a crisis again.

“If the collective suffering and human misery were to be added up, the crisis in Burma’s ethnic regions would dwarf many other mass atrocities, perhaps even Darfur.”

After six months, the Obama administration’s review of U.S. policy toward Burma still does not appear to have focused on the one measure with the best chance of inducing the regime to change: a global arms embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council. The case for Security Council action on Burma long has been compelling, but now is even stronger.

General Than Shwe and the military junta ruling Burma continue to wage a war against their own people. Recently, thousands of Burmese from the Kokang ethnic group living near Burma’s northeastern border have fled to China to escape a new military assault by the Burma army. Not only is the regime a threat to its own people, but there are growing signs that it undermines international security and stability as well. For example, the growing military relationship between Burma and North Korea likely includes North Korean support for a nascent nuclear program in Burma. Even China, long one of the junta’s most quietly consistent supporters, this week became sufficiently frustrated with the junta’s reckless rule to issue a rebuke to Burma’s generals for provoking refugee flows across the border into China’s Yunnan Province.

As the United States assumes the presidency of the UN Security Council this month, it should renew a diplomatic effort at the council, coordinated with the United Kingdom and other allies, to pass a long-overdue arms embargo of Burma. This at least would deny the ruling junta its primary tools of oppression and help stop the atrocities it commits against its own people. It will not be easy. But such a push would be an effective, multilateral, and noble centerpiece for the Obama administration’s policy toward Burma because both the justification for Security Council action and its chances for success have significantly increased.

Unfortunately, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department seem to have allowed themselves once again to be distracted by the all-too-familiar delaying tactics of the Burmese generals and by circular policy debates about sanctions, levels of engagement, and humanitarian aid. Western governments often fall into this paralyzing internal argument, and the only winners are Than Shwe and his henchmen. The short-lived outcry over Aung San Suu Kyi’s ridiculous trial and re-sentencing has died down while the debate over economic sanctions and “diplomatic engagement” has been renewed by Senator Jim Webb’s recent misguided trip to Burma. While his humanitarian mission succeeded in freeing the imprisoned American John Yettaw, Webb’s trip otherwise only served to embolden the generals and to undermine Aung San Suu Kyi and the other 2,000-plus political prisoners in Burma.

Meanwhile, the situation for Burma’s people gets worse, not better. The massive human rights abuses by the Burmese military against civilians, often women and children, in ethnic minority regions of the country continue unabated and yet seem to barely register in the international media. These abuses are so severe, pervasive, and well-documented in official UN reports and resolutions that a Harvard Law School assessment commissioned by five prominent jurists from around the world has called for the Security Council to establish a commission of inquiry into crimes against humanity in Burma. If the collective suffering and human misery were to be added up—all the victims, the destruction, the rape, the lost limbs, the child soldiers, the refugees, and those displaced over the past six decades—the crisis in Burma’s ethnic regions would dwarf many other mass atrocities, perhaps even Darfur. Yet six decades of civil war and accompanying war crimes are still neglected by this post-Rwanda, purportedly “never again” generation.

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice would lead any push on Burma at the Security Council and knows all too well the costs of not doing enough. In the Clinton administration, Rice served on the National Security Council during the Rwandan genocide. In a 2001 Atlantic Monthly article on the genocide, author Samantha Power (who, incidentally, is now the lead staff member on UN Affairs at the National Security Council) quotes Rice as saying, “I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required.” Unfortunately, the State Department’s insipid statement this week on the current military assault in Burma notes only that State is “monitoring developments carefully” and is “deeply concerned.” During the several years I worked on Burma human rights policy at the State Department, it was well known internally (almost as gallows humor) that anytime an official statement included phrases such as “monitoring developments carefully” and “deeply concerned,” the real meaning was “we are doing little to nothing.” But doing nothing should not be an option.

Of course, China remains a challenge at the Security Council, and has used its veto to block action on Burma in the past. China also remains the largest arms supplier to the Burmese regime. But Beijing’s calculations seem to be changing now that its national interests are implicated directly by thousands of refugees crossing its border. Even if the current refugee crisis abates, conflict conditions make future displacements likely. The fighting between the Burmese military and the Kokang and Wa armies is just the latest, most visible manifestation of growing unrest in ethnic regions. The regime’s planned “elections” in 2010 are being forced down the throats of all the ethnic minority groups with which the regime has maintained ceasefire agreements. Ethnic leaders from these groups who attended the tightly controlled constitution-drafting process in recent years to prepare for these supposed elections experienced the sham firsthand. Rumblings are also spreading over the Burmese military’s push to transform ceasefire groups into a border-guard force under its direct command. Up until now, most ceasefire agreements with ethnic armies allowed some level of command and control by ethnic leaders themselves. The border guard would end that, and now more than just the Kokang are threatening to take up arms again. This is very bad news for China. If China realizes that Aung San Suu Kyi is not only the best hope for democracy in Burma, but also for the border stability it prizes so highly, then Security Council action should become more palatable. Without China’s opposition, Russia would also drop its veto threat.

At the 2005 UN World Summit, world leaders first articulated the “responsibility to protect” as official UN doctrine. The power to intervene has always existed within the Security Council’s mandate, but this new language stipulated the conditions to prompt such intervention. The situation in Burma more than meets those conditions. With increasing public support, including across Asia, and with a coordinated diplomatic effort led by the United States to bring around China and Russia, a global arms embargo against the junta is possible. And for the people of Burma, it is essential

CHINA FAILS TO PREVENT REGIME IN BURMA

NEW YORK TIMES

BEIJING — China is Myanmar’s closest ally — almost its only one. It is Myanmar’s chief defender in international forums, its major weapons supplier, its largest foreign investor and a crucial backer of its ruling military junta.

But in the wake of a recent clash between Myanmar’s army and ethnic rebels, a rout that sent thousands of people streaming over the mountainous border into China, analysts have begun to question how much influence China has.

The answer may determine whether that brief battle grows into a much bigger and deadlier war.

Although it tried, analysts, journalists and other experts say, China was unable to dissuade Myanmar’s junta last month from sending thousands of troops into the nation’s northern Kokang region, where they easily routed about 1,500 armed rebels. The rebels had observed a cease-fire with Myanmar’s government for nearly 20 years.

Now news reports say that the junta has sent 7,000 troops and 20 tanks into a neighboring region known as Wa State, where a much larger rebel force, the United Wa State Army, has been observing the same cease-fire. The Wa forces, at least 20,000 strong and heavily armed, promise a fight if attacked.

“We want peace, but we are not going to lay down our weapons and surrender,” a rebel spokesman who called himself Su said by telephone on Thursday. “We will not become the second Kokang.”

The recent fighting is the result of demands by the junta that the rebels disarm and join a government-run border patrol. The ultimatum is widely seen as an effort by the military rulers to defang their opponents in advance of an election next year that they are billing as the first democratic vote in more than 20 years.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday that Myanmar, long called Burma, had “promised to restore peace and stability along the border,” and some local news reports suggest that the confrontation in Wa State may yet be defused. But there are also signs that China and Myanmar, so close for two decades, are having differences.

“I’ve spoken to Chinese Foreign Ministry people, and they’re very concerned about this hostile attitude Burma has,” said Aung Zaw, a Burmese exile who is editor of The Irrawaddy, a magazine based in Thailand. “China has given them political and diplomatic support. But when Burma wants to put a stop to its own internal matters, they don’t care about anybody else.”

That view is echoed by a number of Beijing-based political analysts and scholars, some of whom have worried publicly that China may not have enough clout to ward off a larger war that could send many more refugees pouring into China. “They don’t always heed China’s advice,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. “China has so little leverage against them because China, in some sense, depends on them.”

For decades, Myanmar has traded access to its ample natural resources and to the Indian Ocean for political support from China. This month, Chinese companies are set to start construction of a $2.5 billion oil-and-natural-gas pipeline project that would run from the ocean to Kunming, the capital of China’s neighboring province, Yunnan.

But China’s relations with Myanmar are not so straightforward. In an earlier era, the Chinese gave money and arms to ethnic groups, including the Wa and Kokang rebels, on Myanmar’s side of the border that were allied with the Burmese Communist Party. Factionalism sank the party in the 1980s, and in 1989 Myanmar’s government struck a cease-fire with the ethnic groups that has lasted until now.

While staying close to the military junta, the Chinese have also kept in close touch with the ethnic groups, leaving the border open for trade, family visits and no small amount of smuggling of arms and other contraband.

As early as June, said one Beijing analyst, the Chinese government told a ranking official in Myanmar’s government during a visit to Beijing that it wanted to avoid conflict on the border. The warning was repeated in July, when a team of officials from Myanmar traveled to Kunming to meet with Yunnan provincial leaders, according to the analyst, who refused to be identified for fear of retaliation from the Chinese government.

But some experts say they believe that the junta was nettled by China’s tacit support for the ethnic groups, many of whom are ethnic Chinese, and its refusal to close the border and cut off the groups’ economic lifeline. Other experts say the junta’s internal political calculations, geared toward a sweeping victory in the 2010 elections, trumped any diplomatic concerns.

When battles broke out in Kokang, the Chinese government reacted with unusual force, issuing a statement asking the junta to restore “regional stability.” Unconfirmed new reports suggest that a senior Chinese military official traveled to Myanmar early this week to assess the situation, and that a delegation of five officials from Myanmar traveled Monday to Kunming to meet with unidentified Chinese officials.

It is unclear whether China’s forcefulness will cause the junta to stand down. But some believe Myanmar’s government sent its own signal in this week’s edition of The Myanmar Times, a newspaper that, like all the press there, reflects the leaders’ thinking. The paper carried an article recording a visit to Taiwan by the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader whom Beijing accuses of trying to foment rebellion against the Chinese government.

The Asia Times, which first reported on the article, said it was the first time in at least 20 years that the Dalai Lama’s name had appeared in Myanmar’s press.

Burma death toll reaches 500

Burma death toll reaches 500

The Australian

As many as 500 people may have been killed in the first flair up of violence between the Burma's ruling military junta and the Kokang ethnic minority - hundreds more than official estimates - with Chinese people who fled last week unable to adopted country facing the loss of their livlihooods as attacks against Chinese people rise.

The situation in the Burmese northern Shan state remains incredibly volatile with thousands of Burmese troops streaming into the area with large numbers stationed at the border of Wa territory, the region’s best armed minority which boasts as many as 30,000 armed troops and who are regularly named as the area’s biggest drug producers.

The Burmese are focusing a possible attack on the United Wa Army on the town of Nandeng, which has a population of about 10,000 and is only 30 minutes drive from the Chinese border town of Qingshuihe that serves as the primary crossing point for the Wa.

While Burma has officially said that 36 of their soldiers were killed with one Chinese casualty after stray arms fire cross the border the fatalities list is more than ten times higher with 500 Kokang soldiers and civilians killed, according to sources in the ethnic army who spoke to The Australian via mobile phone from inside Burma. Amongst these are believed to be a number of Chinese nationals living in Burma.

Citizens of China who remain stranded in the remote border town of Nansan in Yunnan province, have called on the Chinese government for humanitarian aid and for the international community to step in.

Attacks on the Chinese inside Burma during the conflict and raiding their property in the aftermath by soldiers represented an escalation of long standing prejudice in Burma from the country’s ruling ethnic Burmese against people from the region’s re-emergent super power.

The majority of Burmese nationals, including the largely ethnic Chinese Kokang, has returned to the country but thousands of Chinese have been left stranded in China. Business people have long been resented in Burma – as in other south east countries - for controlling much of the small to medium business sector as well, in Burma’s case, as a raft of banks.

The booming amount of Chinese investment which has seen billions of dollars for infrastrcutrure and resources tipped into the country over the past decade has only re-inforced the viewsa of ordinary people in Burma including regular soldiers.

Long Lianxiao, a 30 year-old business women from Hunan province who runs a garment shop with her younger sister in Kokang, fled the battle fires across the border with one suitcase and and one cook.

To The Top

China says Burma promises border stability

NANSAN, China (AP) – Burma has pledged to restore peace to a border area where its troops battled ethnic rebels, in fighting that sent more than 30,000 refugees fleeing into China, Beijing said Tuesday.

The comments by China's Foreign Ministry came as authorities pulled down tent camps after thousands of the refugees went home Monday. The number leaving appeared to fall sharply Tuesday.

While the deadly fighting reportedly has ended in northern Kokang region, monitoring groups have warned it could resume.

Burma's ruling junta thanked China for caring for its citizens during the crisis, China Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a regularly scheduled news conference in Beijing.

"Myanmar also promised to restore peace and stability along the border," Jiang said.

Burma's border regions have for decades been the scene of fighting between ethnic armies and the ruling military, conflicts that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Burma is largely estranged from the West, but China, with its policy of noninterference in the politics of its allies, has maintained close economic and diplomatic ties with the junta. Large numbers of Chinese citizens have migrated to Burma for business and major state companies are big investors in the country's oil and gas industries.

The crisis, however, prompted a rare request from Beijing that Burma calm the situation.

Last week's fighting broke out after hundreds of Myanmar soldiers moved into Kokang to pressure wary rebels to give up their arms and become border guards. The junta wants stability with its several armed ethnic groups before next year's national elections, the first in nearly 20 years.

The junta said the three days of fighting killed 26 government soldiers and at least eight rebels.

Chinese authorities housed the refugees in makeshift camps in Yunnan province, and about 4,000 returned home on Monday. But many thousands remained, and it was not clear whether they intended to stay. Some camped in unfinished buildings, their laundry hanging from the frameless windows.

"Chinese people don't really want to stay over there anymore," said Zhang Suzhen, a Chinese citizen heading back to Kokang to look after her shop.

"Some of the people have lost everything they own," she said.

Officials in Yunnan refused to release updated information on the status of the refugees and ordered foreign journalists to leave the area.

The Foreign Ministry's Jiang said China was providing "necessary humanitarian assistance" to the refugees, but gave no figures on numbers remaining or a schedule for closing the camps.

She repeated an earlier statement that Burma had apologized for the death of one Chinese national from three artillery shells fired into Chinese territory.

"After what happened, China and Myanmar have kept in close communications," Jiang said.

Aung Din, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Burma, said the Burmese forces were continuing to pour into the northeast, as a prelude to more fighting.

Despite its policy of nonintervention, China may try to persuade Burma to hold its fire to ensure border stability ahead of the Oct. 1 celebrations of the 60th anniversary of communist China, said Lai-Ha Chan, a researcher on China at Australia's University of Technology, Sydney.

Chan said more serious political steps are unlikely, adding, "Myanmar still holds ideological and material value for China."

NORTH KOREA SMUGGLE- WEAPONARY SHIP NABBED BY UAE

အီရန္ႏိုင္ငံအတြက္ လက္နက္မ်ား တင္ေဆာင္လာသည့္ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယား ကုန္တင္သေဘၤာတစ္စင္းကို အာရပ္ေစာ္ဘြားမ်ားႏိုင္ငံ (UAE)မွ ၾကားျဖတ္ဖမ္းဆီးထားလိုက္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။ ယြန္ဟပ္သတင္းဌာနက UAEအစိုးရသည္ ကုလသမဂၢမွ တားျမစ္ကန္႔သတ္ထားသည့္ လက္နက္မ်ား သယ္ေဆာင္လာမႈေၾကာင့္ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယား ေရယာဥ္ကို ဖမ္းဆီးခဲ့ျခင္းဟု ဩဂုတ္လ (၂၉)ရက္ေန႔က ေၾကညာခဲ့သည္။ ေတာင္ကိုရီးယား အာဏာပိုင္မ်ားကမူ ယခုသတင္းအတြက္ အေသးစိတ္ မွတ္ခ်က္မေပးလိုေၾကာင္း ျငင္းဆန္ထားသည္။
UAE၏ ဖမ္းဆီးမႈသည္ အႏုျမဴဗံုး စမ္းသပ္ေဖာက္ခြဲမႈႏွင့္ ဒံုးက်ည္စမ္းသပ္ ပစ္လႊတ္မႈမ်ား အပါအ၀င္ ထင္ရာစိုင္း လုပ္ေဆာင္ခ်က္မ်ားေၾကာင့္ ကမာၻ႕ႏိုင္ငံမ်ားႏွင့္ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားၾကား တင္းမာမႈ အျမင့္မားဆံုး ျဖစ္ေနခ်ိန္တြင္ ျပဳလုပ္လိုက္ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။ ေတာင္ကိုရီးယား ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရး ၀န္ႀကီးဌာန တာ၀န္ခံ ပုဂၢိဳလ္တစ္ဦးက “ကုလသမဂၢရဲ႕ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈဆိုင္ရာ ေကာ္မတီက ေရယာဥ္ဖမ္းဆီးထားတာနဲ႔ ပတ္သတ္ၿပီး ေၾကညာခ်က္ မထုတ္ေသးသ၍ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ ဘာမွတ္ခ်က္မွ ေပးမွာမဟုတ္ပါဘူး”ဟု ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။ “UAEအစိုးရက ကုလသမဂၢ လံုၿခံဳေရးေကာင္စီရဲ႕ လက္ေအာက္ခံ ပိတ္ဆို႔ေရးေကာ္မတီက အီရန္ဘက္ကို ဦးတည္ၿပီး ခုတ္ေမာင္းသြားတဲ့ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယား သေဘၤာကို တားထားဖို႔ ေမတၱာရပ္ခံတာကို ေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးခဲ့ရံုပါ”ဟုလည္း ကုလသမဂၢမွ ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။ ကုလသမဂၢသည္ (၂၀၀၆)ခုႏွစ္ကတႀကိမ္၊ ယခုႏွစ္ ေမလအတြင္းကတႀကိမ္ ႏ်ဴကလီးယားဗံုး စမ္းသပ္ေဖာက္ခဲြမႈမ်ား ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ေသာ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားအား တားဆီးပိတ္ဆို႔မႈမ်ား ျပဳလုပ္ထားၿပီး ပင္လယ္ရပ္ျခား တိုင္းျပည္မ်ားသို႔ လက္နက္မ်ား တင္ပို႔မႈမရွိေစရန္ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယား ေရယာဥ္မ်ားကို တားျမစ္စစ္ေဆးရန္ ညႊန္ၾကားထားသည္။ ပိတ္ဆို႔ေရး ေကာ္မတီသည္ ယခုေရယာဥ္ကိစၥႏွင့္ ပတ္သတ္ၿပီး ေဆြးေႏြးျခင္းတစ္ခုအား မၾကာမီ ျပဳလုပ္သြားမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သတင္းရရွိသည္။