Secret video reveals Burma's crackdown on monks in prison

ABC Online, Australia

A hidden camera has provided a rare glimpse inside Burma's mental health system which is used to incarcerate opposition figures and politically active monks.

At one hospital where activities were filmed by a Burmese video journalist, there are hundreds of patients and not enough supplies to go around.

The head nurse says more clothes and shoes are needed.

She also acknowledges criminals are held there, confined because of their mental condition.

It appears from the footage that some of the "criminals" in the hospital are monks.

The film shows they are allowed to keep their heads shaven but are forced to give up their robes, although some defy that rule.

Many observers have long suspected that Burma's junta has confined political monks to mental institutions to treat what the regime claims is a sickness.

Bo Kyi from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in Burma told Australia Network's NewsHour that it is not known how many people were rounded up after the monk-led political uprising known as the Saffron Revolution.

The uprising was crushed by the military junta in September 2007.

"After the September revolution, some monks were sent to mental hospitals, also other activists," he said.

"The military regime regards them as the crazy men or something."

Silencing opposition

The video of monks in the mental institution appears to confirm reports that opposition groups have been receiving for years.

"Because we cannot go to mental hospitals, it's really difficult to collect information," Mr Bo said.

"But definitely we knew that monks were in hospital because of their participation in the monk struggle and the other sorts of protests."

That kind of treatment has helped the regime silence political opposition, particularly from Buddhist temples and monasteries.

Generous donations also ensure some toe the line.

But some monks will speak out.

"There will be other monks who will appear again," one said, seemingly unafraid of the risk of years in prison or a mental hospital just for speaking to a journalist.

"They won't be afraid to die.

"If there is any grime, there will be someone who will clean that grime."

Min Ko Nain Is Fighting For Suffering In Prison

A prominent activist serving a 65-year prison term in Burma is suffering from high blood pressure and needs urgent medical care, an opposition party spokesman said Thursday.

Min Ko Naing, a leader of the 88 Generation Students group that was at the forefront of a failed 1988 pro-democracy uprising, is being held in a remote prison in the country's northeast. He was arrested on Aug. 21, 2007 along with more than a dozen other activists after staging a street protest against a massive fuel price hike.

Khin Maung Swe, a spokesman for the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), said Min Ko Naing's sister told him about the activist's worsening health Wednesday.

"The family of Min Ko Naing is very concerned with his health," said Khin Maung Swe, adding that relatives hoped to visit the ailing dissident next month. "He's suffering from hypertension and needs proper medical attention."

Human rights groups believe the ruling military junta is holding roughly 65,000 prisoners, including more than 2,200 political detainees. Many are jailed in remote locations with little access to medical care.

The most prominent political prisoner is opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 14 of the past 20 years. Suu Kyi's NLD party won general elections in 1990 but the military refused to give up power and increased its repression of the country's pro-democracy movement.

"It's very inhumane to hold political prisoners in far-flung prisons," said Khin Maung Swe, a senior member of Suu Kyi's party who had been imprisoned for 15 years. "According to my experience, proper and prompt medical care is almost impossible in most prisons."

A spokesman for the junta could not be reached for immediate comment.

HOW DO YOU BELIEVE 2010 ELECTION

Although Burma's military regime has announced no election law nor declared the date of the poll it plans to hold in 2010, preparations appear to have begun in Naypyidaw.

Informed sources suggest that potential candidates for president, vice-president, commander-in-chief of the armed forces and defense minister have been chosen.

The current list may yet be modified before the election and some potential candidates in the list could be removed. All depends on the regime leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe, who still calls the shots.

Than Shwe, who is in his late 70s, and his number 2, Dep Snr-Gen Maung Aye, who is only slightly younger, will retire soon after the election. Informed sources said that they are building lavish new homes in Naypyidaw for their retirement.

However, before vacating the throne, Than Shwe will make sure he and his family can live in safely, leaving his trusted officers in high positions to ensure security.

Than Shwe has reportedly already endorsed the junta's No 3, Gen Thura Shwe Mann, joint chief-of-staff in the armed forces, to become president of post-election Burma.

According to sources close to the military elite, Shwe Mann, 61, will be nominated by the representatives of the military in the future Senate and House, to be formed after the planned 2010 election.

The military will receive 25 percent of the seats at the village, township, state, regional and district levels in the new governing body, according to the 2008 Constitution.

There will be three nominees for the presidency—one from the military contingent, one from the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (Union Assembly or Senate) and one from the members of the Pyithu Hluttaw (People's Assembly or House). The Senate and the House will then vote to choose the president.

Shwe Mann, a protégé of Than Shwe, has a reputation of being down to earth and a good listener, but he has yet to show his teeth on a broad range of social, economic and political issues. His vision of Burma’s future is unknown.

However, Shwe Mann increasingly oversees regular meetings on political and security affairs with high-ranking military officials in Rangoon and Naypyidaw—perhaps a further sign that Than Shwe will take a back seat after the election.

Shwe Mann and his wife are close to Than Shwe’s family on a personal level, undertaking shopping trips together to Singapore.

Recently, Shwe Mann was the subject of extensive news coverage focusing on his secret mission to North Korea in November.

According to the Constitution, one of the duties of the new president will be to head the National Defense and Security Council, which has the power to declare a state of emergency and nullify the Constitution.

Than Shwe's choice for one of the two proposed vice-presidents, according to informed sources, is Maj-Gen Htay Oo, the minister of agriculture and irrigation and a key leader of the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), the junta-backed mass organization.

Htay Oo recently visited Japan—displaying, according to military sources, all the qualities of a politician rather than an army officer.

The choice of the second vice-president is likely to fall to an ethnic leader. It's worth recalling that Burma’s first and second presidents were Shan and Karen.

Analysts ponder the question of who will become commander-in- chief of the armed forces.

Than Shwe currently holds Burma’s most powerful position in the armed forces and analysts say he will hand this position over only to his most trusted ally.

There appear to be plenty of subordinates who could fill the shoes.
They include Lt-Gen Hla Htay Win, Maj-Gen Ko Ko, Maj-Gen Tin Ngwe and Maj-Gen Kyaw Swe. All are close to Than Shwe and Dep Snr-Gen Gen Maung Aye, the current army chief and deputy to Than Shwe.

Maj-Gen Tin Ngwe is said by analysts to be the front runner for the post of commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He recently accompanied Than Shwe when he made an official visit to Sri Lanka.

Born in Nyaung-Oo, in the central heartland of Burma, Tin Ngwe attended the Defense Services Academy Intake 22, together with Kyaw Swe, later serving as G-1 in the defense ministry. He is known to be loyal to Than Shwe and Shwe Mann.

According to the new Constitution, the commander-in-chief will control the ministries of defense, border affairs and home affairs, exercising wide executive powers.

Analysts also tip Lt-Gen Myint Swe, a Than Shwe protégé, as a possible candidate for the post of defense minister. He attended the 15th intake of the Defense Services Academy in 1971 and is currently commander of the Bureau of Special Operations 5.

LET US SUPPORT BLC PROJECT FOR ICC

The Burma Lawyers’ Council (BLC) is attending a Nov 18-26 meeting of the Assembly of State Parties to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to discuss the Burmese military government's alleged crimes against humanity, war crimes and other human rights abuses.

BLC General Secretary Aung Htoo, who is based in exile, has been attending the meetings in the Netherlands as an NGO delegate from Burma for the first time.

According to the International Criminal Court's (ICC) web site, the grouping will discuss "ICC Campaigns in Asia: Prospects and Challenges in Afghanistan, Burma and Indonesia" on Nov. 25.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Monday, Thein Oo, the chairman of the BLC, said, “We intend to cooperate with International Criminal Court and to create a network to take more action against the Burmese military junta. Moreover, we intend to share our experience of the junta’s abuses and crimes, and discuss how we can cooperate to establish a regional network.”

He added: “We expect the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC) to cooperate among state parties and put more pressure on the Burmese junta through the UN and the ICC. We especially want to lobby harder because representatives of China and other world powers will be attending."

The CICC is a network of over 2,500 nongovernment organizations which work closely with the ICC.

“Actually, we all need to practice alternative approaches to the Burmese military junta and pave ways for preventive actions,” Thein Oo said.

The director of Thailand-based rights group Human Rights Education Institute of Burma, Aung Myo Min, told The Irrawaddy on Monday: “It’s very hard to put the issue of the Burmese junta's crimes against humanity to the ICC because Burma is not yet a signatory to the ICC. But, the UN Security Council can take the junta to task about its deplorable humna rights record. The Burmese regime has commited many crimes such as the conscription of child soldiers and the systematic rape of ethnic women which should be put before the ICC.”

The Burmese military authorities issued Order 1/2009 in April, blacklisting the BLC as an unlawful association. This order came alongside a campaign of defamation in the Burmese state-run press, which denounced the BLC as an “enemy of the state,” and accusing BLC members, in particular those working with the ICC, of “violating the rule of law of Burma.”

The ICC was established in 2002 as a permanent international tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The ICC has jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute crimes which have been committed or are being committed if a given state’s judicial system is unable or unwilling to investigate and take legal action to ensure justice.

In July, the CICC called on the Security Council to press for the surrender and trial of President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan and others wanted for serious crimes committed in Darfur.

Possible Release of Suu Kyi Cheers Political Prisoners , But Not Yet

A 73-year-old mother broke into tears when she heard the message from her son, Tun Tun Oo, who is in Meik-Hitla Prison, one of thousands of political prisoners in Burmese jails.

The message was delivered by his brother, who had visited him in prison.
Tun Tun Oo told his mother not to worry about him, and "sooner or later, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will be free."

"My son preferred to talk about Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's freedom rather than his own,” she said, holding back more tears. “He’s said repeatedly that only Aung San Suu Kyi can bring better times to Burma."

After news reports appeared recently saying that the regime might release Suu Kyi, people across Burma—and in prisons—have hoped the news is true, and not just another tactic by the military government to buy time before the 2010 election.

The Associated Press news agency reported on Nov. 9, that a senior Burmese diplomat said the junta will release Suu Kyi to take part in the reorganization of her political party.

The wife of a political prisoner in Kalay Prison said, "I told my husband, and he was very happy. He didn't ask about home immediately, but he asked about more Suu Kyi news and information about the NLD. He asked me to give him details about his colleagues who are not in prison."

She said she knew her husband wanted such news, and she had prepared magazines and journals to give to him, since authorities now allow prisoners to read the news in prison.

"They don’t have access to radio, so they don't know the latest news,” she said. “He told me to bring news. He wants it more than food and medicine. He thrives on it," she said.

Similarly, a family member of political prisoner Shwe Maung, who is bedridden in Pyapon Prison with a chronic illness, told The Irrawaddy that his morale improved noticeably when he heard the news of her possible release.

"His is suffering. He can't speak much, and he can't walk, but when he heard the news, he started feeling better," said a family member.

Rangoon tea shops, popular gathering places for regular gossip and the sharing of information with friends, have been buzzing with speculation about Suu Kyi’s release, and the neighborhood where her compound is located has seen more visitors and tourists.

"Since the news came out, more people are coming to the corner of University Avenue [where Suu Kyi lives], and frequenting teashops and restaurants close to Sayar San Road," said a resident who lives on University Avenue.

A Rangoon journalist said: “Some people believe she could be freed, but it will take time, while others have suspicions that the regime is just playing on the news to please the US. Nevertheless, it is obvious everybody wants to see her free."

The Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma has estimated that there are 2,100 political prisoners in Burma.

စစ္အုပ္စုထဲက ေၿပာတိုင္း အေမရိကန္ မယံု

ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္အား မၾကာမီ ေနအိမ္အက်ယ္ခ်ဳပ္မွ လႊတ္ေပးလိမ့္မည္ဆုိသည့္ ေျပာဆိုခ်က္မ်ားအေပၚ သံသယျဖစ္မိေၾကာင္း အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး ဟီလာရီကလင္တန္က ေျပာၾကားသည္။

စင္ကာပူႏိုင္ငံတြင္ လာမည့္တနဂၤေႏြေန႔၌ အေမရိကန္သမၼတ အိုဘားမားႏွင့္ အာဆီယံႏိုင္ငံမ်ားမွ ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား ေတြ႔ဆုံမည့္ အာရွ-ပစိဖိတ္ေဒသ စီးပြားေရးပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္မႈအဖြဲ႔ (ေအပက္) ညီလာခံတြင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအေနျဖင့္ အထူးတလည္ ထုတ္ျပန္ေျပာဆိုလိမ့္မည္ဟု မထင္ေၾကာင္း ဖိလစ္ပိုင္ႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ေရာက္ရိွေနသည့္ မစၥစ္ ကလင္တန္က ေျပာၾကားျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။

ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရ ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီးဌာနမွ ၫႊန္ၾကားေရးမႉးခ်ဳပ္ ဦးမင္းလြင္က ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကို စစ္အစိုးရက လႊတ္ေပးႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း၊ ထို႔ေၾကာင့္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္အေနျဖင့္ ေနာက္ႏွစ္က်င္းပမည့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲတြင္ ပါ၀င္ႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း ေအပီသတင္းဌာနသို႔ ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအေရးသည္ စိတ္ရွည္သည္းခံရန္လိုအပ္ၿပီး ေရရွည္အားထုတ္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ရမည့္ကိစၥျဖစ္သည္ဟုလည္း မစၥစ္ကလင္တန္က ABS-CBN သတင္းခ်ယ္နယ္က ျပဳလုပ္သည့္ ႏွီးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပြဲတခုတြင္ ေျပာၾကားခဲ့ေၾကာင္း က်ဳိဒိုသတင္းတြင္ ေဖာ္ျပသည္။

ထို႔အျပင္ ေရွ႕နွစ္ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ က်င္းပမည့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို အမ်ားလက္ခံႏိုင္ရန္ ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရအေနျဖင့္ အတိုက္အခံမ်ား၊ တိုင္းရင္းသားမ်ား အားလုံးပါ၀င္သည့္ ေတြ႔ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးမႈကို ျပည္တြင္း၌ စတင္လုပ္ေဆာင္ရန္ အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီးက တိုက္တြန္းထားသည္။

“က်မတို႔အေနနဲ႔ ျမန္မာစစ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြကို ေတြ႔ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးမႈေတြမွာ ပါ၀င္လာေအာင္ အားေပးတာ၊ တိုက္တြန္းတာ၊ ေဖ်ာင္းဖ်တာေတြ လုပ္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေတြဟာ ပထမဆုံးလိုအပ္ခ်က္ပါ” ဟု ၎ကေျပာသည္။

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြင္း ေျပာႏိုင္ဆိုႏိုင္ရိွသည့္ တ႐ုတ္ႏွင့္အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံတို႔ကိုလည္း ျမန္မာျပည္သူမ်ား အက်ဳိးရိွေစမည့္ ဒီမိုကေရစီျဖစ္ထြန္းေရးအတြက္ ကူညီလုပ္ေဆာင္ေပးရန္ ေျပာဆိုထားေၾကာင္း မစၥစ္ကလင္တန္က ေျပာသည္။

၎က “ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ ေခါင္းေဆာင္မႈ မွားယြင္းေနတယ္ဆိုတာ သံသယျဖစ္စရာ မရိွပါဘူး။ ေမးစရာရိွတာက သူတုိ႔ေတြ ဘယ္ေလာက္ၾကာၾကာမွားေနမလဲဆိုတာနဲ႔ ကိုယ့္ျပည္သူေတြအတြက္ လြတ္လပ္မႈနဲ႔ အခြင့္အေရး လမ္းေၾကာင္းဆီ ဦးတည္ဖို႔ သူတို႔ကို အားေပးတိုက္တြန္းႏိုင္မလား ဆိုတာပါပဲ ” ဟုေျပာသည္။

အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုအေနျဖင့္ ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရႏွင့္ တိုက္႐ိုက္ေတြ႔ဆုံမႈမ်ား စတင္လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနေသာ္လည္း ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ၌ အေျပာင္းအလဲမ်ား မျဖစ္မခ်င္း ပိတ္ဆို႔တားျမစ္မႈမ်ားကို ႐ုပ္သိမ္းရန္ အဆင္သင့္မျဖစ္ေသးေၾကာင္း မစၥစ္ကလင္တန္က ေျပာသည္။

“က်မတို႔အေနနဲ႔ လုပ္ႏိုင္စရာေတြ အမ်ားႀကီးရိွတာကို လုပ္မွာမဟုတ္ေသးပါဘူး။ ဘာလုိ႔လဲဆိုေတာ့ အခုအစိုးရကို ကူညီေထာက္ပံ့မႈ မေပးခ်င္လို႔ပါပဲ” ဟု ၎က ေျပာသည္။

ယမန္ေန႔ သတင္းစာရွင္းလင္းပြဲတြင္ မစၥစ္ကလင္တန္က ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္အား လႊတ္ေပးရန္ ထပ္မံေတာင္းဆိုခဲ့ၿပီး လြတ္လပ္ တရားမွ်တၿပီး အမ်ားလက္ခံသည့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲျပဳလုပ္ႏိုင္ေရးႏွင့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲတြင္ အားလုံးပါ၀င္ခြင့္ရမွသာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲရလဒ္ကို တရား၀င္အျဖစ္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာက ျမင္ၾကမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း မစၥစ္ကလင္တန္က ေျပာၾကားသည္။

ယခုလအေစာပိုင္းတြင္ အေမရိကန္ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီးဌာနမွ အေရွ႕အာရွႏွင့္ပစိဖိတ္ေရးရာ လက္ေထာက္ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး မစၥတာ ကာ့တ္ကမ္ဘဲလ္ႏွင့္ ဒု-လက္ေထာက္ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး စေကာ့မာရွယ္တုိ႔သည္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသို႔ သြားေရာက္ခဲ့သည္။ ယင္းခရီးစဥ္သည္ ဆယ္စုႏွစ္အတြင္း အဆင့္အျမင့္ဆုံး အေမရိကန္အရာရိွမ်ား ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသို႔ သြားေရာက္ခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။

Aung San Suu Kyi has proposed

On Wednesday, Suu Kyi met with Nyan Win, the NLD spokesperson, and asked him to inform the party’s executive committee of “important” proposals. Nyan Win declined to elaborate on the nature of her proposals.
When The Irrawaddy asked Nyan Win on Friday if Suu Kyi had discussed meeting with Than Shwe to talk about economic sanctions, he said: “The sanctions would be the most suitable issue to start any high-level talks.” However, he declined to elaborate, saying, “Wait until Tuesday.”

He said the NLD central executive committee will discuss Suu Kyi’s proposals on Monday and probably issue a statement on Tuesday.

Presumably, if given her party’s consent, Suu Kyi would write a letter to Than Shwe seeking a direct meeting or make a proposal through Aung Kyi, who serves as Than Shwe’s liaison officer to Suu Kyi.

According to sources, Suu Kyi will also ask the regime to allow her to meet with NLD party leaders and to visit the homes of three executive committee members—party chairman Aung Shwe; secretary U Lwin; and Lun Tin, all of whom are in poor health.

In the past, Suu Kyi has angered the junta because of her vocal support for economic sanctions, but in recent months she has indicated that she is now open to cooperating with the regime to work for their removal. Her change of mind comes at a time when the US has initiated a new direct engagement policy with Burma and has held several exploratory discussions with high-level generals.

In August, Suu Kyi sent a letter to Than Shwe, offering to cooperate with the government and requesting to meet with Western diplomats to discuss the extent and impact of the sanctions.

Since then she met twice with liaison Aung Kyi. A short while later, she was allowed to meet with Rangoon-based diplomats from the UK, Australia and the United States in order to gather information about the impact of sanctions.

Expectations that Suu Kyi may soon be released from house arrest or given more discretionary freedom are running high in Rangoon, following a statement by Min Lwin, the director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, given to The Associated Press in Manila on Monday, in which he said, “There is a plan to release her [Suu Kyi] soon.”

Meanwhile, Suu Kyi’s lawyers filed an appeal with the Supreme Court on Friday that challenged the legality of her house arrest.

The United States said on Thursday that if Suu Kyi were not allowed to participate in Burma’s 2010 elections, the international community would not consider the election credible. US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton this week called for Suu Kyi's unconditional release to ensure the elections would be free and fair.

Women Arrested for Holding Buddhist Prayer

Rangoon special branch police have arrested Naw Ohn Hla and three other women who regularly hold Buddhist prayer services for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and charged them in a special court in Insein Prison.

They are charged with inciting activities to undermine public order under section 505 (B) of the penal code, according to attorney U Kyaw Hoe.

He said the women, who were arrested on Oct. 3, regularly held religious services for Suu Kyi on Tuesdays. They are being held in Insein Prison. The case could be heard on Monday, he said.

If found guilty, the women could be sentenced to up to two years in prison.

Special branch police said Naw Ohn Hla was carrying a copy of the Kamavaca, a Buddhist scripture recited at monastic services, he said.

The other women arrested were Ma San San Myint, Ma Cho Cho and Ma Cho Wai Lwin. The women were arrested at San-Pya Market in Thin-Gan-Gyun Township in Rangoon while on their way home from a monastery after offering food to monks.

Naw Ohn Hla, a former National League for Democracy (NLD) member, has been frequently detained by authorities for her political activism.

Her attorney said the women were simply engaged in a private Buddhist religious ceremony.

"The Kamavaca is just a religious scripture, and there’s no reason for arresting people for having it," he said.

A monk in Rangoon, told of the arrests, said it was an infringement of religious freedom.

"I feel sorry to hear this news,” he said. “It is an extreme act that shows no respect for religious freedom in our country. It is a pure violation of religious freedom. Almost every Buddhist usually keeps an image of the Buddha, some mantra or religious teaching close at hand. The act was based on prejudice and it makes the government look bad in the eyes of the international community.”

The Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma says 2, 168 political prisoners are being held in Burmese prisons.

Clinton says China should play role in Burma

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has urged China and India to push Burma toward democracy.

Clinton says "we need a broad response by the nations in the region" to the situation in Myanmar, which has been under military rule since 1962.

She is in Singapore to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings ahead of the group's summit this weekend.

She told reporters Wednesday that China has an opportunity to play an important role.

China is Burma's biggest ally, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has long been trying to persuade the Burmese junta to allow democracy.

Clinton said countries must persuade the junta to have free fair elections by 2010.

ko KYAW THU'S VIEW

Junta may free Suu Kyi for poll: Myanmar diplomat

Singapore, Nov 9 (AP) Myanmar's military-ruled government may release pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi soon so she can play a role in next year's general elections, according to a senior Myanmar diplomat.

The remarks by Min Lwin, rare for a Myanmar government official on an overseas visit were in line with vague comments in recent years by the junta that it intends to free Suu Kyi soon. But officials have given no time frame and have made no real moves to release her despite hinting they would.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi has been detained for 14 of the past 20 years, and not been able to speak publicly since she was last taken into detention in May 2003.

A court recently sentenced the 64-year-old to an additional 18 months of house arrest for briefly sheltering an uninvited American in a trial that drew global condemnation.

HANDS SHAKING IN PRISONS

Former Burmese military intelligence officials jailed after the fall of their boss, Gen Khin Nyunt, in October 2004 are reportedly nurturing contacts, and even making friends, with political prisoners.

The imprisoned former military intelligence officials include men responsible for arresting and prosecuting dissidents,When two top military intelligence officers, Brig-Gen Thein Swe and Col Khin Aung, were admitted to Myingyun Prison, dissident prisoners debated how they should behave towards the representatives of the repressive regime.

“When the MIS [Military Intelligence Service] officers were put into the separated cell block where political prisoners are detained, we discussed whether we should not talk with them by sanctioning them or whether we should be friendly to them by helping each other in prison,” said a former political prisoner at Myingyun Prison.

“Finally, political prisoners decided to be friendly toward the MIS officers,” he said. “We are human, so we cannot take revenge against them when they are in trouble.”

Thein Swe, who was the head of the MIS international relations department, was also known for permitting the publication of the semi-official Myanmar Times weekly.

After the MIS was abolished in 2004, he was arrested along with several brigadier colleagues: Myint Aung Zaw, Hla Aung, Kyaw Han, Than Tun, Myint Zaw and Kyaw Thein. Khin Aung was a deputy with the MIS administration department.

Thein Swe and Khin Aung were among 38 Burmese military intelligence officers sentenced in April 2005 to terms of imprisonment ranging from 20 years to more than 100 years on charges including bribery and corruption.

Like political prisoners, many intelligence officers were sent to serve their sentences in remote prisons scattered far from Rangoon. Thein Shwe and Khin Aung were sent to Myingyun Prison in middle Burma, notorious for ill-treating political dissidents.

Two Aung San Suu Kyi aides—Win Htain and Khin Maung Swe—and Karen rebel leader Mann Yin Sein were jailed in Myingyun Prison.

According to family members of political prisoners held at Myingyun, two intelligence officers are now learning about meditation methods from student activists who were victims of the MIS. In exchange, the former MIS men are teaching English to the imprisoned activists.

“I thought this is quite a human story when I heard from my son about their relationship with former intelligence officers,” said a member of the family of a political prisoner in Myingyun Prison. “Those who put my son in prison were cruel. But now they are my son’s friends.”

The former spy chief Khin Nyunt is now serving a 44-year suspended sentence under house arrest.

One of his former aides, ex-Foreign Minister Win Aung, died last week in prison, where he was serving a seven-year sentence. No government officials attended his funeral on Sunday.

BIG THIEF IN BURMA (ၿမန္မာၿပည္က သခိုးၾကီး

(ေရႊသူခိုး သန္းေရႊနဲ ့ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဴပ္ႀကီးမ်ား ရင္ဘတ္ေပၚက ေရႊတံဆိပ္ေတြမ်ား)။

ယခုတေလာ ေရႊဘံုသာလမ္း (မဂိုလမ္း) မွာ ေရႊအေရာင္းအဝယ္လုပ္ၾကသူေတြ ကံဆိုးမိုးေမွာင္ၾကေနၾကပါ တယ္။ ေရႊေလာကမွာ ႏွစ္(၃၀) ေက်ာ္ အေတြ႔အၾကံဳ ရင့္က်က္ေနသူ “ဦးစိုးတင့္” ကို CID မွ လာေရာက္ဖမ္းဆီး ေခၚေဆာင္သြားခဲ့ပါတယ္။

တည္ဆဲဥပေဒအရ သူခိုးက ရဲနဲ႔ေပါင္းျပီး လက္ညႈိးထိုးျပီး ခိုးရာပါပစၥည္းကို ဒီဆိုင္မွာ ေရာင္းပါတယ္လို႔ စြပ္ဆြဲခံရရင္ အစြပ္ဆြဲခံရတဲ့ဆိုင္ဟာ ဟုတ္ဟုတ္၊ မဟုတ္ဟုတ္ သူတို႔စြပ္ဆြဲတဲ့ တန္ဘိုးအတိုင္း အေလ်ာ္ေပးရေလ့ ရွိပါတယ္။ မေလ်ာ္ဘဲ ျငင္းဆန္မယ္ဆိုရင္ ေထာင္ထဲ ေရာက္သြားႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ အဆိုးဆံုးကေတာ့ ေထာင္ထဲ မေရာက္ခင္ စစ္ေၾကာေရးကာလအတြင္း ရဲေတြရဲ႕မတရားညွင္းပန္း ႏွိပ္စက္မွဳဒဏ္ကို အေသအလဲ ခံစားၾကရတာပါဘဲ။

အဲဒါကို သိတဲ့ ဦးစိုးတင့္က မတရားစြပ္ဆြဲခံရတာျဖစ္ေပမဲ့ သူတို႔ေျပာတဲ့အတိုင္း ေလ်ာ္ေပးပါ့မယ္လို႔ ေျပာဆိုသည့္တိုင္ ျပန္လည္လႊတ္ေပးျခင္း မရွိဘဲ ထိမ္းသိမ္းထားခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီ့ေနာက္ပိုင္းမွာေတာ့ ေရႊလုပ္ငန္းရွင္ေတြ တေယာက္ျပီးတေယာက္ ေခၚယူစစ္ေဆးေနျပီး အတင္းအက်ပ္ မ်ားျပားလွတဲ့ တန္ဘိုးေတြ သတ္မွတ္ေပးျပီး ေလ်ာ္ခိုင္းေစပါတယ္။

ေရႊကုန္သည္ေတြကို တေယာက္ျပီးတေယာက္ ေခၚယူစစ္ေဆးခ်ိန္တိုင္းမွာ ညွင္းပန္းႏွိပ္စက္ ရိုက္နွက္ခံထားရလို႔ ခပ္ေျမာ့ေျမာ့ပံုစံျဖစ္ေနတဲ့ ဦးစိုးတင့္ကို ျမင္ေအာင္ တမင္တကာ ထုတ္ျပျပီး စစ္ေဆးေနတာလို႔ အမည္မေဖၚလိုတဲ့ ေရႊကုန္သည္တဦးမွ ေျပာၾကားခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ထူးဆန္းတာကေတာ့ ေခၚယူစစ္ေဆး ေငြညွစ္ခံရသူေတြဟာ ေတာင္းသေလာက္ အေလ်ာ္ေပးႏိုင္ၾကသူေတြပါဘဲ။ ေထာင္က်ခံမယ့္သူ တေယာက္မွ မပါပါဘူး။ အထူးသျဖင့္ မတရားဖမ္းဆီးခံရသူေတြထဲမွာ ေရႊဘံုသာလမ္းရွိ ေရႊေစ်းကြက္ဥကၠဌ ဦးဝင္းျမင့္ပါဝင္ေနျပီး တန္ဘိုးၾကီးမားလွတဲ့ ေရႊေတြ အေတာင္းခံေနရေၾကာင္း ၾကားသိရပါတယ္။

တခ်ိန္တည္းမွာ ဗုဒၶဘာသာဝင္တို႔ရဲ႕ အထြဠ္အျမတ္ထားရာ ေရႊတိဂုံဘုရားမွာ ကပ္လွဴထားတဲ့ေရႊေတြကို ျပန္ခြာယူေနတာနဲ႔ ရန္ကုန္ျမိဳ႕ေနရာအေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားရွိ ဘုရားေတြက ေရႊေတြေပ်ာက္ဆံုးမွဳေၾကာင့္ဆိုတဲ့ အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္နဲ႔ ေရႊဘံုသာလမ္းေရႊကုန္သည္ေတြကို ဖမ္းဆီးစစ္ေဆးျပီး ေရႊအေလွ်ာ္ေတာင္းေနတာဟာ အေၾကာင္း ခိုင္ခိုင္လံုလံု ရွိေနပါတယ္။

အေၾကာင္းကေတာ့ ျပည္သူ႔ခ်ဥ္ဖတ္ အာဏာရွင္သန္းေရႊ မိသားစုတည္တဲ့ ၾကပ္ေျပးဘုရားမွာ လိုအပ္ေနတာေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္ပါသတဲ့။ ျပည္သူျပည္သားေတြရဲ႕ သဒၵါၾကည္ျဖဴစြာ လွဴဒါန္းမွဳ မရွိတဲ့အတြက္ လိုအပ္ေနတဲ့ေရႊေတြကို ယခုလို အၾကံအဖန္လုပ္ျပီး ရွာေဖြေနရတာလို႔ ၾကားသိရပါတယ္။

ေဗဒင္ယၾတာအရ အခ်ိန္မွီေဆာင္ရြက္ရမွာ ျဖစ္သလို သူ ႔ဘုရားကလႊဲလို႔ တျခားဘုရားကို သပၸါယ္တာ မျမင္လိုတဲ့ မိစၦာဒိဠိသန္းေရႊရဲ ႕အမိန္ ႔နဲ ႔ ဘုရားေရႊခြာတဲ့ အကုသိုလ္အမွဳၾကီးကို က်ဴးလြန္ခဲ့ၾကတာပါ။ ခြာတဲ့ေရႊ ခိုးတဲ့ေရႊေတြနဲ ႔ မလံုေလာက္ေသးတာေၾကာင့္ ေရႊကုန္သည္ေတြထံက ေရႊေတြကို ယခုလို ေအးဓါးျပတိုက္ယူေနၾကတာလို႔ စံုစမ္းသိရွိရေၾကာင္း အသိေပး တင္ျပလိုက္ရပါတယ္။

(စံုစမ္းေဖၚထုတ္တင္ျပသူ - အတြင္းသိ)။

Embezzlement of gold from Pagodas by Than Shwe.

Gold traders in Shwe-Bon-Tha Street (Mogul Street) were in miserable wretched situation for time being. It was begun as Police (CID) arrested well known and experience trader U Soe Tint, who knows all colleagues in his surroundings.

According to the Burmese law, if thief arrested say that he sold the stolen goods to so and so buyer, then police have a right to arrest the buyer without another prove. Then the buyer either repays the amount claimed by thief or otherwise end up in jail. Most of the buyer repays without argument as present day Burmese jurisdiction system is totally unreliable and corrupted with excessive torture and inhuman treatment are added up by police and government authority. Accused buyer normally sell all personal belonging plus borrowing from loan shark to settle the case.

U Soe Tint was ready to settle the case as mentioned above but he is not released in time as expected. Furthermore, many others gold traders in same surrounding followed the same path of where U Soe Tint was gone. They were accused of buying vast amount of gold from illegal channel so they have no choice but to repay. In their investigation and enquiry process, their colleague U Soe Tint was presented in the venue with handcuffed and obvious sign of badly beaten and tortured.

All traders understand the meaning of showing U Soe Tint as a signal for them to be suffered the same if not co-operated. Only strange coincident is that all accused traders are quite well to do and able to repay with none of them will ever dare to go to jail. They all unhappy for aberrantly collecting fund in that way but they have no other choice in unlawful country of present day Burma. Even one respectable Chairman U Win Myint of Shwe-Bon-Thar gold market association was included in that bizarre case.

At the same time, reliable source said that the gold from Shwe Dagon Pagoda, the most reverence and miraculous symbol for all Buddhist, was taken away together with most of the donations money. All that looted to be used in Pagoda built in Nay-Pyi-Taw by most obnoxious Than Shwe. Shwe Dagon Pagoda is not alone but all famous Pagodas around the Burma were in the same deal.

Than Shwe’s Pagoda in Nay-Pyi-Taw was in shortage of funds as no one donates there in genuine faith of generosity. Donations collected there were from fearful people intimidated by authority to contribute by force or from opportunists expecting the favors of authority to get government’s contracts etc. People’s donations for many famous and glorious religious establishments around the Burma drive obnoxious Than Shwe into strong resentment and he is not afraid of consequences thus order his followers to destroy other people donation and embezzle the properties belong to Buddhist institutions.

Amid embezzlement of Pagodas and religious institutions, Than Shwe and gangs swindle the money from Shwe-Bon-Tha Street gold traders. That was based on the greed and occult practice advised by witchcraft call (Ya-dra). Most of the traders in Shwe-Bon-Thar Street were in horror of demolishing their families’ lifetime saving for Than Shwe’s religious belief.

(Reported by Insider).

A Victim of the Junta’s Dog-Eat-Dog World

Win Aung, a former foreign minister and one of ex-spy chief Gen Khin Nyunt’s aides, died on Wednesday morning at 1:55 a.m. local time in Rangoon’s infamous Insein Prison. He was 65.

According to prison sources in Rangoon, Win Aung died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Burmese authorities allowed Win Aung’s family to post his obituary in Thursday’s state-run newspapers.

He is survived by his wife, one daughter and two sons. His younger son, Thaung Suu Nyein, is the editor-in-chief of a leading Rangoon-based weekly, 7 Days News Journal.

Win Aung was arrested in September 2004, a month before a government crackdown on powerful Military Intelligence officers. The junta announced Win Aung and his deputy Khin Maung Win’s retirement following news that Win Aung had told senior officials at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations Ministry meeting in Jakarta in July 2004 that Burmese Prime Minister Khin Nyunt was in political trouble.

“He [Khin Nyunt] is in a dangerous position,” Win Aung was quoted as saying. “Khin Nyunt may have to flee the country. If that happens, I will have to flee with him.”

Win Aung was replaced by Maj-Gen Nyan Win, the deputy head of the military training college who was junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe’s choice.

After his arrest, Wing Aung was detained under house arrest for two years. In 2006, he was sentenced to a 7-year jail term on charges of misuse of authority. He was detained in Insein Prison until he died.

Win Aung served as Burma’s foreign minister under the military regime from 1998 to 2004. He had previously been Burmese ambassador to Germany and the United Kingdom before being recalled to Burma to take up the foreign minister position.

Win Aung led a Burmese delegation to the UN General Assembly in September 2003 a few months after a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s convoy in Depayin had led to international criticism of the regime and economic sanctions on Burma.

At the UN, he said it was “disconcerting that some countries have chosen to turn a blind eye to the reality.”

In his earlier days, Win Aung was an officer with Military Intelligence. As a major, he was close to then spy chief Brig-Gen Tin Oo, the No 2 in the country after dictator Ne Win.

Following Tin Oo’s removal, Win Aung was reappointed as a counsel-general with several Burmese consulates in Asia in the early 1980s.

Fluent in English, Win Aung was said to be media savvy with foreign journalists. Unlike current Foreign Minister Nyan Win, he was willing to give regular interviews with foreign media, including Time Magazine.

“I am a democratic person myself,” Win Aung told Time in 1999. “I would like my children and myself to live under a real democratic situation.”

He added that this sentiment was also held by junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe and other members of the junta.

Before his removal from the foreign minister post, he wrote religious and political articles under the pen name of Sithu Nyein Aye.

Burma observers generally concurred that Win Aung was one of the first senior junta officials to become a victim of the dog-eat-dog world that exists in Burma’s military hierarchy.

US ENVOY MEETS IRON LADY IN BURMA

Aung San Suu Kyi Appears With US Envoy

RANGOON (AFP) -- Detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi made a rare appearance in front of reporters at a Rangoon hotel Wednesday before holding talks with a visiting U.S. envoy.

Dressed in maroon traditional dress, the Nobel laureate smiled but said nothing as she headed into the meeting with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell.

The Nobel Laureate was driven to the hotel in central Rangoon from the lakeside mansion where she has spent most of the last two decades under house arrest.

To The Top

US envoys in historic meeting with Burma's PM

RANGOON (AFP) – The most senior US official to visit Burma for nearly a decade and a half met the military-led nation's prime minister Wednesday as Washington seeks to improve ties with the ruling junta.

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell, along with his deputy Scot Marciel, were also set to meet the detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi later in the day.

The US duo arrived in the remote administrative capital Naypyidaw on Tuesday on a two-day mission aimed at pushing a new policy of engagement by the administration of President Barack Obama.

"They are meeting now," a Burmese official told AFP on condition of anonymity after the talks with Prime Minister Thein Sein in Naypyidaw began early Wednesday.

Burma's officials said the US delegation was not expected to meet Senior General Than Shwe, the reclusive junta leader.

Campbell is the highest ranking US official to travel to Burma since Madeleine Albright went as US ambassador to the United Nations in 1995 during Bill Clinton's presidency.

The Obama administration recently shifted US policy because its longstanding approach of isolating Burma had failed to bear fruit. But Washington has said it will not ease sanctions without progress on democracy and human rights.

The visit by Campbell and Marciel is a follow-up to discussions in New York in September between US and the Burmese officials, the highest-level US contact with the regime in nearly a decade.

Campbell and Marciel at the time also raised US concerns about Burma's possible military links with nuclear-armed North Korea.

US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the current visit was a "fact-finding" mission, adding that it was the "first step, or I guess I should say the second step in the beginning of a dialogue with Burma."

Asked what Campbell discussed on Tuesday in talks with the information minister and local organisations, Kelly said: "They laid out the way we see this relationship going forward, how we should structure this dialogue, but they were mainly in a listening mode."

Campbell and Marciel were due to fly to the former capital Rangoon later Wednesday to meet Suu Kyi and members of her National League for Democracy party, a US embassy spokesman said.

Nobel Peace laureate Suu Kyi, 64, had her house arrest extended by another 18 months in August, prompting an international outcry. She has spent most of the past two decades in detention.

NLD spokesman Nyan Win has said the visit is the "start of direct engagement between the US and Myanmar government" but added that the party was not expecting any immediate "big change".

Suu Kyi will be discussed when Obama meets Southeast Asian leaders at a regional summit in Singapore in mid-November, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Tuesday, adding that Thein Sein was expected to attend.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) favours engagement but has been accused of going soft on Burma's generals.

The junta prolonged Suu Kyi's detention after she was convicted over an incident in which US national John Yettaw swam to her lakeside house. But critics say the charges were trumped up to keep her out of elections in 2010.

In August, leader Than Shwe held an unprecedented meeting with visiting US senator Jim Webb which yielded the release of Yettaw.

Thein Sein told Asian leaders at a summit in Thailand last month that the junta sees a role for Suu Kyi in fostering reconciliation ahead of the promised elections next year and could ease restrictions on her.

The junta refused to acknowledge the NLD's landslide win in the last elections, in 1990. The United States toughened sanctions after the regime cracked down on protests led by Buddhist monks in 2007.

REGIME ARRESTS MORE AND MORE

ဖမ္းဆီးခံ စာနယ္ဇင္းသမားမ်ား
မည္သည့္ေနရာ ေရာက္ေနမွန္း မသိရ
မင္းႏိုင္သူ / ၄ ႏို၀င္ဘာ ၂၀၀၉


အလကၤာ၀တ္ရည္ဂ်ာနယ္ ဒီဇုိင္နာ ကုိခန္႔မင္းထက္ကုိ အာဏာပုိင္မ်ားက ေအာက္တုိဘာ (၂၂) ရက္တြင္ ေနအိမ္မွ လာေရာက္ေခၚေဆာင္သြားၿပီးေနာက္ ရက္သတၱ (၂) ပတ္ၾကာသည္အထိ မည္သည့္ေနရာသုိ႔ ေခၚေဆာင္သြားသည္ကုိ မသိရေသးေၾကာင္း ဖခင္ျဖစ္သူ စာေရးဆရာေမာင္စိမ္းနီက ေျပာသည္။

“ည (၁၀) နာရီေလာက္မွာ လာေခၚသြားတာ။ ဘာ့ေၾကာင့္ဆုိတာလဲ ဘာမွမသိရဘူး။ သူက ကဗ်ာဆရာလည္း ျဖစ္ေနတာဆုိေတာ့ သူ႔ကဗ်ာေတြနဲ႔မ်ား ပတ္သက္သလား။ ဘာမွ ေရေရရာရာ မသိရပါဘူး။ ဘာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔က အခုခ်ိန္ထိ ဘယ္မွာ ထားမွန္းမသိရေတာ့ စိုးရိမ္တယ္” ဟု ၎က ေျပာသည္။

ကုိခန္႔မင္းထက္ကုိ သာေကတၿမဳိ႕နယ္ အမွတ္ (၃) ေနအိမ္မွ ဖမ္းဆီးေခၚေဆာင္သြားၿပီးေနာက္ (၄) ရက္အၾကာတြင္ အလကၤာ၀တ္ရည္ဂ်ာနယ္တုိက္ရွိ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာမ်ားကုိ အာဏာပိုင္မ်ားက စစ္ေဆးခဲ့ၿပီး ကြန္ပ်ဴတာဟတ္ဒစ္ကုိလည္း သိမ္းဆည္းသြားခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

၎အဖမ္းအဆီးခံရၿပီးေနာက္ (၅) ရက္အၾကာတြင္ သာေကတၿမဳိ႕နယ္ ယုဇနဥယ်ာဥ္အိမ္ရာတြင္ ရွိေနေသာ FOREIGN AFFAIR ဂ်ာနယ္မွ အယ္ဒီတာ ကုိသန္႔ဇင္စုိးႏွင့္ သတင္းေထာက္ ကုိပုိင္စုိးဦးတုိ႔ အပါအ၀င္ လူငယ္ (၈) ဦး ဖမ္းဆီးထိန္းသိမ္းခံခဲ့ရသည္။

ထုိလူငယ္ (၈) ဦးကုိလည္း မည္သည့္ေနရာတြင္ ထိန္းသိမ္းထားသည္ကုိ ယခုအခ်ိန္ထိ မသိရေသးေၾကာင္း ရန္ကုန္ သတင္းေထာက္မ်ားက ေျပာသည္။

ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားမ်ားကူညီေစာင့္ေရွာက္ေရးအသင္း၏ စာရင္းမ်ားအရ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား (၂,၀၀၀) ေက်ာ္ရွိေနဆဲျဖစ္ၿပီး ထုိအထဲတြင္ စာနယ္ဇင္းသမား (၄၀) ေက်ာ္လည္း ပါ၀င္သည္။

ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံသည္ သတင္းလြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ အဆုိး၀ါးဆုံးႏုိင္ငံမ်ားစာရင္းတြင္ အစဥ္တစုိက္ပါ၀င္ေနၿပီး နယူးေယာက္အေျခစုိက္ သတင္းေထာက္မ်ား ကာကြယ္ေစာင့္ေရွာက္ေရးေကာ္မတီ (CPJ) ကလည္း ျမန္မာစစ္အစုိးရ၏ သတင္းမီဒီယာမ်ားအေပၚ ဖိႏွိပ္ေနမႈကုိ ေအာက္တုိဘာ (၂၉) ရက္တြင္ ျပစ္တင္႐ႈတ္ခ်ထားသည္။