Taunggyi Time (ေတာင္ႀကီးတုိင္းမ္)

ရွမ္းျပည္ေတာင္ပိုင္း ရြာ ၄၀ ေက်ာ္တြင္ ဝမ္းေရာဂါ ကူးစက္ပ်ံ႕ႏွံေန

2012-02-16T08:32:00.000-08:00

ေက်ာ္ခ | ေဖေဖၚဝါရီလ ၁၆ ရက္ ၂၀၁၂ ခုႏွစ္

ခ်င္းမိုင္ (မဇၥ်ိမ) ။ ။ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ေတာင္ပိုင္းရွိ ဖယ္ခံု၊ ပင္ေလာင္းႏွင့္ ဆီဆိုင္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္အတြင္းက ေဒသခ်င္း ထိစပ္ေနသည့္ ရြာ ၄၀ ေက်ာ္တြင္ ဝမ္းပ်က္၊ ဝမ္းေလွ်ာေရာဂါ ကူးစက္ပ်ံ႕ႏွံ႔လ်က္ရွိၿပီး ေသဆံုးမႈမ်ားလည္း ရွိေနၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

အဆိုပါၿမိဳ႕နယ္ ၃ ခုအတြင္း ဇန္နဝါရီလထဲက စတင္ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ၿပီး အသက္ ၅ ႏွစ္ေအာက္ ကေလးငယ္မ်ားတြင္ အမ်ားဆံုး ျဖစ္ပြားေနကာ အသက္ ၅၀ အထက္ လူႀကီးမ်ားလည္း ျဖစ္ပြားလ်က္ ရွိသည္။ ေဆး႐ုံမွတ္တမ္းမ်ားအရ ေဖေဖၚဝါရီ တလထဲတြင္ပင္ ေသဆံုးသူ အနည္းဆံုး ကေလး ၃ ဦး ႏွင့္ လူႀကီး ၂ ဦး ရွိေနေၾကာင္း သက္ဆိုင္ရာ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ေဆး႐ုံႀကီးမ်ားထံမွ စံုစမ္းသိရွိရသည္။

“က်ေနာ္တို႔ဆီမွာေတာ့ ဇန္နဝါရီ ၁၆ ရက္ကေန စေရာက္လာၾကတာ။ တျဖည္းျဖည္း ပိုမ်ားလာတယ္။ ကေလးေတြ အမ်ားဆံုး ျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒီမွာေတာ့ ၈ လသားအရြယ္ ကေလးတေယာက္ ဒီဝမ္းေရာဂါနဲ႔ပဲ ဆံုးသြားတယ္။ တျခားတိုက္ နယ္ ေဆး႐ုံေတြမွာလည္း လူနာေတြ ရွိေနတယ္” ဟု ဖယ္ခံုၿမိဳ႕နယ္ ေဆး႐ုံႀကီးမွ ကူးစက္ေရာဂါကု ဆရာဝန္ႀကီး တဦးက မဇၥ်ိမကို ေျပာသည္။

ဖယ္ခံု ေဆး႐ုံႀကီးတြင္ ဝမ္းေရာဂါျဖင့္ အေရးေပၚ ကုသေပးေနရသူ အသက္ ၅ ႏွစ္ေအာက္ ကေလး ၁၁ ဦး ရွိေနၿပီး မိုးၿဗဲ တိုက္နယ္ေဆး႐ုံတြင္လည္း ဝမ္းေရာဂါျဖစ္ပြားေနေသာ ကေလးမ်ားကို ကုသေပးေနရေၾကာင္း ဆရာဝန္ႀကီးကေျပာသည္။

အဆိုပါ ဝမ္းေရာဂါႏွင့္ ပါတ္သက္၍ “ကေလးေတြက အန္တယ္။ ဝမ္းသြားရင္ အရည္ဝါေတြ မ်ားမ်ားထြက္တာ ေတြ႔ရတယ္။ အခုအေျခအေနအရေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တို႔က ေသာက္သံုးေရ မသန္႔ရွင္းမႈကေန ကူးစက္မႈေတြ ျဖစ္တာလို႔ ယူဆရတာေပါ့။ ကူးစက္မႈကလည္း ျမန္တယ္လို႔ဆိုရမယ္” ဟု ဆရာဝန္ႀကီးက ဆက္ေျပာသည္။

ဖယ္ခံုၿမိဳ႕နယ္အတြင္းက မိုးၿဗဲ၊ လဲုင္းေပး၊ လဲုင္းခါး၊ ေနာင္တန္ ေက်းရြာမ်ား အပါအဝင္ ရြာေပါင္း ၁၅ ရြာခန္႔တြင္ ျဖစ္ပြားေနလ်က္ ရွိသည္။ အဆိုပါေက်းရြာမ်ားသို႔ ဖယ္ခံု ေဆး႐ုံႀကီးမွ ဆရာဝန္မ်ား၊ ေဆးဝန္ထမ္းမ်ားႏွင့္ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရး တာဝန္ရွိသူမ်ားက ကြင္းဆင္း ေဆာင္ရြက္မႈမ်ား ျပဳလုပ္ေပးေနလ်က္ရွိၿပီး ေဖေဖၚဝါရီလ ၁၅ ရက္ေန႔မွ စတင္ကာ ေရတြင္းေရကန္မ်ားကို ပိုးသတ္ေဆး ဖ်န္းျခင္းမ်ား စတင္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

ဖယ္ခုံၿမိဳ႕နယ္အတြင္း႐ွိ တိုက္နယ္ေဆး႐ုံမ်ားတြင္ ဝမ္းေရာဂါေၾကာင့္ လာေရာက္ကုသသူ မ်ားသျဖင့္ ကေလးမိဘ တခ်ဳိ႕က လိြဳင္ေကာ္ ျပည္နယ္ေဆး႐ုံႀကီး ကေလးအထူးကု ဌာနသို႔ သြားေရာက္ကုသေၾကာင္း မိုးၿဗဲရြာသား ကေလး ဖခင္တဦး က ေျပာသည္။

“က်ေနာ့္ ကေလးက ႏွစ္လပဲ ရွိေသးတာ။ ဝမ္းသြားတာ အဝါ ေရာင္ အရည္က်ဲက်ဲေတြပဲ ထြက္ေနတယ္။ ဟိုမွာလည္း ကေလးတခ်ဳိ႕ ဆံုးေတာ့ စိုးရိမ္တာနဲ႔ ဒီ လြိဳင္ေကာ္ ေဆး႐ုံႀကီးကို ခ်က္ခ်င္းလာလိုက္တာ။ ဒီမွာလည္း ကိုယ့္လို လာကုတဲ့ ကေလးေတြ ဒီအခန္းထဲမွာပဲ အေယာက္ ၅၀ ေက်ာ္ေလာက္ ရွိတယ္။ မိုးၿဗဲ တိုက္နယ္ ေဆး႐ုံမွာကလည္း အေယာက္ ၂၀ ေလာက္ပဲ ဆံ့တယ္။ ပိုက္ဆံ တတ္ႏိုင္တဲ့ လူတခ်ဳိ႕က ဒီမွာ လာကုၾကတာေလ” ဟု ဦးစိုင္းလံု က မဇၥ်ိမကို ေျပာသည္။

အလားတူ ပင္ေလာင္းၿမိဳ႕နယ္ရွိ ထီရီး၊ ထီက်စ္၊ ၿခဲဳင္း ေက်းရြာမ်ား အပါအဝင္ ရြာေပါင္း ၁၀ ရြာႏွင့္ ဆီဆိုင္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္တြင္ လည္း ၁၅ ရြာေက်ာ္ ျဖစ္ပြားေနလ်က္ရွိေၾကာင္း ဆီဆိုင္ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ေဆး႐ုံၾကီးႏွင့္ ေဒသခံမ်ားက ေျပာသည္။

“ဒီမွာေတာ့ ဝမ္းေရာဂါေရာက္လာတဲ့ ကေလးေတြ ေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားတယ္။ လသား အရြယ္ေတြ မ်ားတယ္။ လူႀကီးက ေတာ့ နည္းတယ္။ တိုက္နယ္ေဆး႐ုံေတြမွာလည္း မွ်တင္ထားပါတယ္” ဟု ဆီဆိုင္ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ ေဆး႐ုံႀကီးမွ ေဆးဝန္ထမ္း တဦးက ေျပာသည္။

ဝမ္းေရာဂါျဖင့္ ေဆး႐ုံသို႔ မေရာက္ရွိဘဲ ေက်းရြာမ်ားအတြင္းတြင္ ေသဆံုးသူမ်ားလည္း ရွိၿပီး ယခုလအတြင္း ဖယ္ခံုၿမိဳ႕နယ္ လဲုင္းခါး ေက်းရြာ၌ ကေလးငယ္ တဦး ေသဆံုးခဲ့သလို၊ ဆီဆိုင္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ထဲတြင္လည္း ကေလးငယ္ တဦးႏွင့္ အသက္ ၇၀ ေက်ာ္ အရြယ္ အဘြားအို တဦး ေသဆံုးခဲ့ေၾကာင္း ဝမ္းေရာဂါ ျဖစ္ပြားေနသည့္ ၃ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ကို လွည့္လည္ အကူအညီေပးေနသည့္ ေဒသခံ က်န္းမာေရးအဖြဲ႔တဖြ႔ဲက ေျပာသည္။

ေဖေဖၚဝါရီလ ၃ ရက္ေန႔က ပင္ေလာင္းၿမိဳ႕နယ္ ထီးရီး ေက်းရြာတြင္ အသက္ ၇ ႏွစ္အရြယ္ မိန္းကေလးတဦး ဝမ္းေလွ်ာ ေသဆံုးခဲ့ၿပီးေနာက္ ရြာထဲရွိ ကေလးငယ္မ်ားကို ဆက္တိုက္ ကူးစက္ခဲ့ၿပီး ရြာခံမ်ားက ၎တို႔ ခ်ဳိးေရအျဖစ္ သံုးေနသည့္ ဘီလူးေခ်ာင္း အထက္ရွိ တီက်စ္ေက်ာက္မီးေသြး စီမံကိန္းမွ အညစ္အေၾကးေရမ်ားေၾကာင့္ဟု ယူဆေနၾကသည္။

“အဲဒီေခ်ာင္းေရ ခ်ဳိးေတာ့ ရြာထဲက လူတခ်ဳိ႕ ယားနာေတြ ေပါက္တယ္။ အခု ဝမ္းေရာဂါကလည္း တစတစ ပိုျဖစ္လာတယ္ဆိုၿပီးေတာ့ အဲဒီ တီက်စ္ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြး စီမံကိန္းကထြက္တဲ့ အညစ္အေၾကးေရေတြကလို႔ ရြာသားေတြက ေျပာေနၾကတယ္။ အဲဒီရြာမွာ အခု ကၽြဲ၊ ႏြားေတြပါ ဝမ္းေလွ်ာ ဝမ္းပ်က္ ျဖစ္ေနတယ္” ဟု က်န္းမာေရး အကူညီေပးအဖြဲ႔ တာဝန္ရွိသူ တဦးက မဇၥ်ိမကို ေျပာသည္။

တီက်စ္ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြး စက္႐ုံသည္ ထီးရီး ေက်းရြာ၏ အထက္ ၇ မိုင္ခန္႔တြင္ရွိၿပီး ၂၀၀၅ ခုႏွစ္မွ စတင္ လည္ပတ္ ခဲ့ၿပီးေနာက္ ၎စက္႐ုံမွ ထြက္သည့္ ျပာမႈန္႔မ်ား၊ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးေရမ်ား၊ ေျမဇာ အညစ္အေၾကးမ်ားႏွင့္ အခိုးအေငြ႔မ်ားေၾကာင့္ ၂၀၁၁ ခုႏွစ္ အေစာပိုင္းက ေဒသခံ ၂၀,၀၀၀ ေက်ာ္ ယားနာမ်ား ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ေသးသည္။

ဝမ္းေရာဂါ ျဖစ္ပြားေနသည့္ ေဒသအတြင္းတြင္ သက္ဆိုင္ရာအစိုးရ တိုက္နယ္ေဆး႐ုံမ်ားမွ ေဆးဝန္ထမ္းမ်ားက ေဆးေပးေဝမႈမ်ား ျပဳလုပ္ေနၿပီး ေဆးရရွိမႈ အလွမ္းေဝးသည့္ ေနရာအခ်ဳိ႕တြင္ ႐ုိးရာေဆးမီတိုမ်ားကို မွီဝဲ အသံုးျပဳ
ေနၾကသည္ကို ေတြ႔ရွိရေၾကာင္း ထိုအဖြဲ႔ထံမွ သိရသည္။

China Should Think Beyond Business in Burma: Suu Kyi

2012-02-15T09:38:00.000-08:00

By PATRICK BOELHER | February 15, 2012 | THE IRRAWADDY

China should not only look to Burma for economic benefits, National League for Democracy chairwoman Aung San Suu Kyi told a Chinese journalist in an interview published on Friday.

“As Burma is going through difficult times, I hope that the Chinese people give us more understanding and don’t only see us as a business opportunity,” said the Nobel Laureate.

Suu Kyi did not leave the realm of diplomatic cordiality when asked what role Burma should play when juggling both India and China with renewed diplomatic efforts by the United States.

However, she insisted that the priority was embarking on a program of national reconciliation before looking harder at international relations. But Suu Kyi did not see any conflict with developing close ties to both China and the United States.

China has long been Burma's biggest investment partner throughout decades of Western economic sanctions—ploughing billions of dollars in a series of mining, power and infrastructure projects.

However, the mood has changed somewhat in recent times with the postponement of the Chinese-backed Myitsone hydropower project, angering Beijing, and warmer noises emanating from Washington in the wake of nascent democratic reforms by Naypyidaw.

Suu Kyi rejected the concept of “Asian values,” as opposed to what some observers see as overly individualistic Western values, by saying that different Asian countries have very different priorities and characteristics.

And she dismissed the idea that Western sanctions prevented the emergence of a middle class in Burma—an argument frequently heard in Chinese academic and official circles.

Instead of blaming sanctions, Suu Kyi described cronyism as a “tumor” which holds back the emergence of a middle class in Burma.

The interview with Chinese national weekly Southern People was only recently published despite being conducted last year, according to a source close to the magazine.

The Guangdong-based publication sent reporter Yang Xiao to Rangoon to interview Suu Kyi in English, but her report was later published in Chinese.

Suu Kyi was interviewed by influential Chinese language magazine Asia Weekly on Dec. 19, but refused to discuss the content of her meeting with Chinese ambassador Li Junhua earlier that same month.The hour-long discussion on Dec. 8 was Beijing's highest level meeting with a Burmese opposition figure in two decades. Suu Kyi said that she was very willing to travel to China, a country she has never visited, but has not yet received an invitation.

65TH Union Day at Vancouver, BC, Canada

2012-02-14T08:17:00.000-08:00

The community of Vancouver Burma Ethnic Nationalities led by Nai Krat Song and Saion Nammao quietly host the 65th Union Day Celebrations at the Surrey City, Centre Library on 11th Feb. It was attended by a few dedicated ethnic nationalities representatives where each group update their situation in the peripherals of Burma and Prof, Kanbawza Win, who will be celebrating his 75th birthday on Union day, delivered the keynote speech.

He highlighted the origin of Union Day of how in 1945, the Saophas (chief) of Shan States knowing that independence from Great Britain was at hand sponsored a Conference at Panglong a small town in Southern Shan States on March 1946 in order to discuss the future of the Shan States. The Kachin, Chin and Karen representatives were invited. The pre-war Prime Minister Galon U Saw represented the government and Thakin Nu represented the AFPFL. The outcome was that of a White Paper promising that no decisions would be made on the Frontier Areas without the full consent of the ethnic nationalities. This definitely proves that since that time the ethnic nationalities construe that Myanmar leaders were bad, not to be trusted as most of them were cunning and crafty. But soon the Myanmar ethnic leaders improved their relations with the ethnic nationalities and the Myanmar led by AFPFL made contact with Sama Duwa Sinwa Nawng, (Kachin), Chin leader Vamthu Mawng, and the Saopha of Hsehsaing Sao Khun Kyi etc.

Meanwhile a young leader Aung San as the Governor's Executive Council was able to convince the Shan, Kachin and Chin leaders to join with Myanmar ethnic groups to take independence. He was able to convince the ethnic leaders that he was a good Myanmar that can be trusted even though there were several bad Myanmar around. The end result was that a significant breakthrough was made at the second Panglong Conference on February 12th, 1947 now known as Union Day (jynfaxmifpkaeh). There were 23 signatories in all expressing their willingness to work with the 'interim Burmese government' in order to achieve independence speedily, and agreeing in principle to the formation of a 'Union of Burma. The Karen send representatives and but could not come in time while the Arakan, and Mon were not invited as they are treated as a conquered people by the Myanmar. The Karenni Chiefs refused to attend being itself an independent sovereign county. This proves that the ethnic nationalities of Burma or rather the Non Myanmar chose to give their trust on the good Myanmar.

The salient points of the Agreement was that the full autonomy was to be given to the ethnic nationalities and are to enjoy the rights and privileges as any other citizens of democratic Burma and have the right to self determination after. If they did not find it satisfactory Shan can secede from the Union after 10 years. This explicitly means that as a test case the fragile Union of Burma has been created.

So from this one can easily draw the conclusion that modern Burma was not owned by the Myanmar race alone. It was a home of all the ethnic nationalities and it is the people of Burma including the Myanmar and the non Myanmar that has owned the country of Burma

The first years of Burmese independence were marked by successive insurgencies by the Red Flag Communists led by Thakin Soe, (the first Myanmar not to recognize the Union of Burma), the White Flag Communists led by Thakin Than Tun (the 2nd Myanmar follow the same), and Yèbaw Hpyu (White-band PVO) led by Bo La Yaung (the third Myanmar group that refused to recognize the Union of Burma ) and of course the Mujahid now known as Rohingyas that want to take part of Arakan into East Pakistan, while Karen ask for their own State. Hence it was not the ethnic nationalities that were against the Union it was the three groups of these Myanmar and Rohingya that is against the Union of Burma. However the Majority of the ethnic nationalities especially the Shan, Chin and the Kachin soldiers rallies behind the Union government and made supreme sacrifices which explicitly shows that we ethnic nationalities loves the country more than the Myanmar.

But most of the Myanmar rulers were evil, crafty, and not trustworthy just like today while on the other hand ethnic nationalities leaders were simple and not so educated. Hence the U Nu Administration directed U Chan Htun to draw up the Unitary Constitution instead of a Federal one. The ethnic leaders knew this and so after 10 years to be exact in 1960s the ethnic brought up this matter at the Taunggyi Conference and the Shan Federal proposal was put up. The Myannmar group replied by the 1962 military coup.

Since then Burma was under one type of military administration or another under different pretext up to this day. Before 1962 there were only a few ethnic insurrections but as of today there is not a single ethnic that is not fighting against the Myanmar government. This proves that unlike former Yugoslavia one ethnic does not fight with the other but all against the central government, which clearly depicts that our struggle is not horizontal but vertical against the central government monopolize by the Military generals of the Myanmar race.

One question can be asked here. Is it only the ethnic nationalities that are fighting against the central government? No there are democracy groups headed by the Myanmar students since 7th July 1962 when I was just a fresher at the University, since then successive students, youths and from all works of life, workers, farmers, monks, all have struggle against the tyrannical Junta. So as ethnic nationalities how do we view these struggling lots? Do we see them as Myanmar when their struggle is not confine to one race only but cut across all walks of life? Many of them have sought asylum like us. In other words we will be racist if we view them as bad Myanmar? We are in Diaspora. Don’t you think that we should join hands with them as they are also in the same category as struggling against tyranny? We should respect them and show our responsibility that we are in the same boat.
Let us look other people in Diaspora e.g. the Palestinians, how are they united and how do they support their people at home, how they can organize themselves and make their plight known to the world or shall we look at the Jews, how they control the financial resources and how they can send their money back to Israel? If a Jew meets another Jew, on parting they wish “Next Year in Jerusalem”. Why can’t we take a leave out of them?
In any people there are good and bad people. The Aung San Generation like Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and well meaning Myanmar are good people. Our forefathers have trusted Aung San in as much as we trusted Daw Aung San Suu Kyi now. The bad Myanmar was and are the Burmese Generals starting from Ne Win up to the present Junta and their cronies and compradors. There are also bad ethnic nationalities and good ethnic nationalities. Those who have a cock eye and look only at the economic aspects to enrich themselves are bad ethnic nationalities while those who really work for their own struggling lot are the good ethnic nationalities. So also in the Diaspora community we must be able to differentiated the good Myanmar from the bad Myanmar now that we have been in Canada for quite sometimes. It is also our bounden duty to educate the bad Myanmar because their culture since 1962 is killing, raping and tricking other people. Until we can differentiate and chose these good Myanmar to be on our side, we cannot succeed and we are bound to be fugitives in other countries. Until and Unless we are united first among the ethnics then with the Myanmar.
Remember we are ethnic nationalities and so it is our duty to try double hard. Harder than the Myanmar compatriots. They have to struggle only for democracy and human rights, whereas we have to struggle not only for democracy, for the prevalence of human rights but also for ethnic rights and self determination. For this we must have discipline, responsibility and respect. We want to be in the Union of Burma because we want to and chose to and not by any compulsion. There must be a national self determination at all times. Even though the ethnic nationalities did not want to be the Sword of Damocles over our Myanmar brethren they have to bear in mind that we are not a colonial people in perpetuity.

As sign in the Panglong Conference of 1947 where our beloved Bogyoke Aung San, the architect of the Modern Union of Burma founded we want not only to continue it but also to enhance it with the 2nd Panglong Conference under the able leadership of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Let us be united on this Union day, let us respect ourselves and to the the like minded Myanmar and most importantly let us show our responsibility by following the disciplines laid down by our leaders.

Then Saion Namon who act as the Master of the ceremony open up the floor to the participants and Prof. Kanbawza Win answer the questions

Question - What is the current situation in Burma? Do you think that the Thein Sein Administration is genuine?

Answer - No, I don’t think that the government is genuine. It was able to separate the pro- democracy groups from the ethnic nationalities when our struggle is almost the same. Two sides of the coin you cannot take the head from the tail. The classic example is now there are still more than 800 ethnic political prisoners languishing in the Burmese jails. They have able to coax Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to work with them just to lift the sanctions and other punitive actions by the West.

Question - Yes you have highlighted us to distinguish the good Myanmar from the bad Myanmar. What do you think of the Lady?

Answer - Surely, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is in the category of the good Myanmar, a rare specimen for the ethnic nationalities to trust. She says the truth when she said. Please don’t come back to Burma for your sake and for the country’s sake. Residing inside the country she knows more than us who are in Diaspora and knows the tricks and the cunningness of the serpentine brood of the Burmese Junta.

Comment and supplement by Kyaw Thi Ha

Yes I agree with Dr Win that as ethnic nationalities of Burma or even as a Myanmar like me should be able to differentiate the good Myanmar and the bad Myanmar. I belong to a Myanmar ethnic group and am the former ABSDF student and am the representative of NLD in Diaspora and I will have to admit that there are still very much bad Myanmar e.g. our former ABSDF leaders who had successfully turn the 20,000 strong students army to 200 now calling themselves to be Ba Hu (A[k) suppose to be working for the development of the country has gone back to Burma just to find out the resources for them from Daw Suu. We have labeled them as La Oo (vO). Under the smokescreen of working for the good of the people they are really working for themselves to be someone in Burma.

Question - What do you think of future Burma?

Answer - Remember, it was the Army generals with the backing of the pocket army better known as Tatmadaw that does not recognize the Union of Burma (Pyidoungsu) and want to treat the ethnic nationalities as a colonial people. We are not the minorities because the population of all the ethnic nationalities combine together is more than the Myanmar ethnic group. We are not just a small percentage like the aborigines (first nation) of North America. Besides as said earlier our struggle is not horizontal but vertical because unlike the Balkans we ethnic do not fight with another ethnic even though the Divide and Rule policy was practiced by the government. As long as it did not recognize the Panglong Conference of 1947 I think the struggle will go on. Unless Daw Aung San Suu Kyi can successfully call the 2nd Panglong Conference and complete the work done by her father there will be no peace. The Tatmadaw will have to be replaced by the genuine Pyidaungsu Tat.

The ceremony was closed by a short extempore by the Master of the Ceremony.

The master plan for Myanmar

2012-02-12T21:47:00.000-08:00

By Bertil Lintner | Asia Times Online

BANGKOK - Myanmar is winning more foreign friends while international criticism of the current and previous government's abysmal human rights records has all but ceased. Old adversaries in the United States and European Union have scrapped - or are planning to scrap - economic sanctions against the regime, and big-time multinational companies are preparing to lunge into what many seems to believe is Asia's last investment frontier.

A nearly unanimous Western world has heaped praise on President Thein Sein's supposed moves towards "democratic reform" and "national reconciliation". But what has actually changed and what's behind the hype?

In near unison, the international community condemned the Myanmar regime for its brutal repression of Buddhist monk-led pro-democracy protests in 2007, its initial callous response to the Cyclone Nargis disaster in 2008 - when a widely condemned sham referendum on a new constitution was held in the killer storm's wake - and a blatantly rigged general election swept by military-backed candidates in November 2010.

One theory goes that the administration is locked in a power struggle between military "hardliners" and "reformers", and that the latter, at least for now, have the upper hand. Several Western countries have apparently taken the policy decision that every effort should therefore be made to support the "reformers" and recent reform signals to ensure that Myanmar doesn't return to its old repressive ways.

The EU and US have expressed public views to that effect. On January 31, EU president Herman Van Rompuy said in a statement after a summit in Brussels: "I welcome the important changes taking place in Burma/Myanmar and encourage its government to maintain its determination to continue on the path of reform." The US State Department said the day before that it was "encouraged " by Myanmar's recent reforms, "including its decision to allow opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to run in upcoming elections".

Others, however, suspect that the signs emerging from Myanmar's leadership reflects a well-orchestrated "good cop, bad-cop" routine to neutralize domestic opposition and win new foreign allies, especially among former critics in the West. Either way, Thein Sein's regime has so far skillfully played its cards in a way that few, probably even among themselves, could have foreseen. "Those in power are military men, not representatives of a democratic government. This is how they work," says a Myanmar national who has followed political developments for decades.

Well laid plans
In order to understand Myanmar's policy shift - and why the West has been so supportive - it is instructive to look back to the early 2000s. Then condemned and pressured by the international community, the ruling military junta announced in August 2003 a seven-step "Roadmap to Discipline-Flourishing Democracy." That plan called for the drafting of a new constitution, general elections, and convention of a new parliament which would "elect state leaders" charged with building "a modern, developed and democratic nation".

The "roadmap" was made public, but at the same time a confidential "master plan" which outlined ways and means to deal with both the international community, especially the US, and domestic opposition was also drawn up. The authors of that plan are not known but an internal military document written by Lt Col Aung Kyaw Hla, who is identified as a researcher at the country's prestigious Defense Services Academy, was completed and circulated in 2004.

The Burmese-language document, received and reviewed by this writer, outlines the thinking and strategy behind the master plan. It is, however, unclear whether "Aung Kyaw Hla" is a particular person, or a codename used by a military think-tank. Anecdotal evidence suggests the latter.

Entitled "A Study of Myanmar-US Relations", the main thesis of the 346-page dossier is that Myanmar's recent reliance on China as a diplomatic ally and economic patron has created a "national emergency" which threatens the country's independence.

According to the dossier, Myanmar must normalize relations with the West after implementing the roadmap and electing a government so that the regime can deal with the outside world on more acceptable terms. Evidently the internal thinking was that normalization with the West would not be possible as long as Myanmar was ruled by military juntas.

Aung Kyaw Hla goes on to argue in the master plan that although human rights are a concern in the West, the US would be willing to modify its policy to suit "strategic interests". Although the author does not specify those interests, it is clear from the thesis that he is thinking of common ground with the US vis-a-vis China. The author cites Vietnam and Indonesia under former dictator Suharto as examples of US foreign policy flexibility in weighing strategic interests against democratization.

If bilateral relations with the US were improved, the master plan suggests, Myanmar would also get access to badly needed funds from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other global financial institutions. The country would then emerge from "regionalism", where it currently depends on the goodwill and trade of its immediate neighbors, including China, and enter a new era of "globalization".

The master plan is acutely aware of the problems that must be addressed before Myanmar can lessen its reliance on China and become a trusted partner with the West. The main issue at the time of writing was the detention of pro-democracy icon Suu Kyi, who Aung Kyaw Hla wrote was a key "focal point": "Whenever she is under detention pressure increases, but when she is not, there is less pressure." While the report implies Suu Kyi's release would improve ties with the West, the plan's ultimate aim - which it spells out clearly - is to "crush" the opposition.

At the same time, the dossier identifies individuals, mostly Western academics, known for their opposition to the West's sanctions policy, and somewhat curiously suggests that "friendly" Indian diplomats could be helpful in providing background information about influential US congressmen.

The dossier concludes that the regime cannot compete with the media and non-governmental organizations run by Myanmar exiles, but if US politicians and lawmakers were invited to visit the country they could help to sway international opinion in the regime's favor. Over the years, many Americans have visited Myanmar and often left less critical of the regime than they were previously. In the end, it seems that Myanmar has successfully managed to engage the US rather than vice versa.

Institutional Sinophobia
Aung Kaw Hla's internal thesis is the first clear sign of dissatisfaction with the regime's close ties with China, which, in part, were forged because the West downgraded its relations with Myanmar after massacres of pro-democracy demonstrators in 1988 and other gross human-rights violations. More signs of a worsening relationship could be discerned in internal reports that began to circulate within the military in 2010.

China, until then praised as a dependable ally, was beginning to be viewed increasingly as the root of Myanmar's many ills, from the rape of the country's forests to rampant drug trafficking. China's close ties with the United Wa State Army, Myanmar's main drug-trafficking militia, has not go unnoticed by the authorities in Naypyidaw. Then, in September 2011, came Thein Sein's decision to suspend the China-backed US$3.6 billion joint-venture Myitsone dam project in the far north of the country.

Seen from a US perspective, encouraging Myanmar to move away from China became a priority when Naypyidaw showed that it was willing to engage with the US. Washington was also eager to undermine Myanmar's disturbing military ties with North Korea. Not surprisingly, North Korea was high on the agenda when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Myanmar last December.
The last of several recorded attempts to ship weaponry from North Korea to Myanmar took place in May and June 2011, several months after the supposedly "reformist" Thein Sein became president and after government officials had claimed that there was no military cooperation with North Korea.

On May 26, the USS McCampbell caught up with M/V Light, a Myanmar-bound North Korean cargo vessel suspected of carrying missile parts and possibly other military equipment. The US destroyer approached the ship and asked to board but the North Koreans refused. The first encounter took place in the sea south of Shanghai and a few days later closer to Singapore. The M/V Light eventually stopped and turned back to its home port in North Korea - all the way tracked by US surveillance planes and satellites.

After that incident - and incentives from the US such as easing restrictions on Naypyidaw's access to multilateral lending institutions - there has been no known attempt by North Korea to ship weapons to Myanmar. And the US is no doubt taking full advantage of Myanmar's drift away from China. "What the US is trying to do is to send every signal of support to the forces pushing for liberalization in Burma," said Robert Fitts, a former US diplomat in the region now attached to Thailand's Chulalongkorn university.

The US will soon send a new ambassador to Myanmar, representing an upgrade of diplomatic relations. On February 7, the New York Times quoted US officials as saying that the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), David Petraeus, may visit Myanmar later this year. The CIA is not exactly known for being a leading proponent and promoter of liberal values in the developing world; the agency has other priorities such as Myanmar's strategic importance to the US.

But therein lies a danger, which Aung Kyaw Hla outlined in his thesis of more than seven years ago. If Myanmar does manage to improve bilateral relations with the US, China could counteract in a way that threatens Myanmar's integrity and independence. A balanced approach is therefore needed, Aung Kyaw Hla argued, but it was not set out in the master plan how that balance may be achieved.

Well-worn routine
There are other reasons to doubt that Myanmar's new policies will work over the long term. While the international community appears to fall for the latest incarnation of the regime's well-worn good cop, bad cop routine, local and exiled mainstream opposition groups are less likely to be so gullible.

One of the supposed "good cops" in Myanmar's current nominally civilian leadership is former Maj Gen Aung Min, currently the railway minister, who has been tasked with shuttling back and forth between Myanmar and Thailand to meet with influential exiled dissidents. Some of those who have recently met him are deeply suspicious of his motives and the less conciliatory signals sent from the regime's "bad cops".

They note that Aung Min once served under Tin U, Myanmar's powerful intelligence chief until he was ousted in 1983, ostensibly for corrupt practices but more likely because he had built up a state within a state that threatened the leadership of former junta leader Gen Ne Win.

Writing in the Far Eastern Economic Review in 1983, British journalist Rodney Tasker characterized Tin U and his intelligence colleagues as "men of the world compared with other more short-sighted, dogmatic figures in the Burmese [Myanmar] leadership. They were allowed to travel abroad, talk freely to foreigners and generally look behind the rigid confines of the current regime."

But they were also known to be ruthless and extremely skilled at manipulating their enemies and adversaries. Tin U himself was trained by the CIA on the US-held Pacific island of Saipan in 1957. Aung Min somehow survived the 1983 purge and moved to join Myanmar's Infantry Battalion 21 in 1992. He was with the 66th Light Infantry Division in 2000, was elevated to Southern Commander of the Myanmar Army in 2001, and became railway minister in 2003 under the previous military junta led by Gen Than Shwe.

In today's context, solving the long-burning ethnic issue will be key to realizing the master plan's ultimate vision of keeping the military in power. One of the supposed "bad cops" in the current power configuration is Aung Thaung, another peace negotiator, who met ethnic Kachin rebel leaders in Ruili in southwestern China earlier this year. A former heavy industry minister, he is believed by many to have been one of the architects behind a 2003 mob attack on Suu Kyi and her colleagues in Depayin that left scores of her supporters dead and wounded. "The good cop" Aung Min did not attend the talks in Ruili but some analysts suggest may later step in to "rescue" the talks with a softer approach.

Whether Myanmar's many rebellious ethnic minorities will accept these well-known personalities and well-worn negotiating tactics remains to be seen. The fact that the government has consistently refused to even consider a federal structure does not bode well for reaching lasting agreements with armed groups. The 2008 constitution lays down the fundamentals for a centralized state structure where the military is a main, if not dominant, player.

Thus the recent euphoria over recent "reforms" in Myanmar may therefore be short-lived. Unless the present constitution is scrapped or widely amended, which is extremely unlikely due to the military's de facto veto power in parliament, Myanmar's ethnic issue will likely remain unsolved. And if the country becomes an arena of competition between the US and China, there will certainly be more trouble ahead - as Aung Kyaw Hla warned in his master plan now being put into practice.

Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review and author of several books on Burma/Myanmar, including Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's Struggle for Democracy (Published in 2011). He is currently a writer with Asia-Pacific Media Services.

ပအုိ၀္းအမ်ိဳးသားအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ PNO ပါတီ ၾကားျဖတ္ေကာက္ပြဲ၌ ကေလာၿမိဳ႕တြင္ ၀င္ၿပိဳင္

2012-02-10T11:22:00.000-08:00

By ေနာင္ခမ္းခါ | ေဖေဖၚ၀ါရီလ ၁၀ ရက္၊ ၂၀၁၂ ခုႏွစ္ | ေတာင္ႀကီးတုိင္းမ္

ပအုိ၀္းအမ်ိဳးသားအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ (PNO) ပါတီဟာ ဧၿပီလမွာ က်င္းပရန္ရွိတဲ့ ၾကားျဖတ္ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ ကေလာၿမိဳ႕နယ္မွ လွစ္လပ္ေနသည့္ ျပည္သူ႔လြတ္ေတာ္အမတ္ေနရာအတြက္ ၀င္ေရာက္ယွဥ္ၿပိဳင္မယ္လုိ႔ သိရပါတယ္။

PNO ကေတာ့ အဲဒီေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ ကေလာၿမိဳ႕နယ္အတြက္ လွစ္လပ္ေနတဲ့ ျပည္သူ႔လြတ္ေတာ္အမတ္ေနရာကုိ ၀င္ေရာက္ယွဥ္ၿပိဳင္မယ့္ ကုိယ္စားလွယ္ေလာင္းကေတာ့ ခြန္သန္းေမာင္ (ခ) ခြန္ေပါလိုင္း ကုိ ေရြးခ်ယ္ထားေၾကာင္း သိရပါတယ္။

"မနက္ျဖန္ တဘက္ခါဆို PNO စည္းရံုးေရး စဆင္းေတာ့မွာ ျဖစ္တယ္။ ေလာေလာဆယ္ေတာ့ ႀကံခိုင္ေရးပါတီက လဲြရင္ တျခားပါတီေတြက စည္းရံုးေရးဆင္းတာ မေတြ႕ရေသးဘူး” လုိ႔ ၾကားျဖတ္ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲႏွင့္ စပ္လ်ဥ္းၿပီးေတာ့ အမည္မေဖၚလုိတဲ့ ပအို၀္းအမ်ိဳးသားအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ PNO ပါတီမွ ေခါင္းေဆာင္တစ္ဦးကုိ ကုိယ္းကားၿပီးေတာ့ ဗြာသ,ရာ; ဆုိက္မွ ေဖၚျပသြားပါတယ္။

ကေလာၿမိဳ႕နယ္မွ လွစ္လပ္ေနတဲ့ ျပည္သူ႔လြတ္ေတာ္ကုိယ္စားအတြက္ အေရြးေကာက္ခံရန္ ယွဥ္ၿပိဳင္မည့္အျခားပါတီမ်ားကေတာ့ ႀကံ႕ခိုင္ေရးပါတီမွ ဦးျမ၀င္း၊ SNDP မွ စ၀္သာဦး၊ တစညပါတီမွ ဦးခင္ေမာင္လွ ျဖစ္ၿပီး NLD ပါတီကေတာ့ ေဒါက္တာ ေဒၚသန္းေငြ စတဲ့ ပါတီကုိယ္စားလွယ္မ်ား အသီးသီး၀င္ၿပိဳင္ၾကမယ္လုိ႔ ဆုိပါတယ္။

၂၀၁၁ ခုႏွစ္ ဇူလိုင္လ သန္ေခါင္စာရင္းအရ ကေလာၿမိဳ႕နယ္အတြင္း လူဦးေရ စုစုေပါင္း ၁၄၉၀၀၀ ဦးရွိသည့္အနက္ ဓႏု- ၅၄၅၂၃ ဦး၊ ဗမာ-၃၆၈၁၀ ဦး၊ ပအို၀္း-၃၀၂၉၂ ဦး၊ ေတာင္ရိုး-၂၁၀၂၆ ဦး၊ ပေလာင္-၃၂၅၀ ဦး၊ ရွမ္း-၉၃၅ ဦး ရွိသည္ဟု ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။ ကေလာၿမိဳ႕နယ္တြင္ အသက္ (၁၈)ႏွစ္အထက္ မဲေပးပိုင္ခြင့္ရွိသူ ဦးေရ ၉၂၂၅၆ ဦးရွိေၾကာင္း သန္ေခါင္စရင္းကုိ ကုိးကားၿပီးေတာ့ ဗြာသ,ရာ; ဆုိဒ္ မွ ထည့္သြင္းေဖၚျပထားပါတယ္။

ပအုိ၀္းအမ်ိဳးသားအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ PNO ပါတီ အေနျဖင့္ ၂၀၁၀ ႏုိ၀င္ဘာလ အေထြေထြေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွ ဆီဆုိင္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္၊ ပင္ေလာင္းၿမိဳ႕နယ္ ႏွင့္ ဟုိပံုးၿမိဳ႕ စတဲ့ ၃ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္မွာသာ ၀င္ေရာက္ၿပိဳင္ၿပီး ျပည္သူ႕လြတ္ေတာ္ႏွင့္ အမ်ိဳးသားလြတ္ေတာ္ ႏွစ္ရပ္စလံုးအတြက္ အမတ္ ၁၀ ေနရာ အႏုိင္ရရွိခဲ႔ပါတယ္။

၁၉၉၀ ခုႏွစ္ အေထြေထြေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာလဲ ပအုိ၀္းတုိင္းရင္းသားႏုိင္ငံေရးပါတီျဖစ္တဲ့ ျပည္ေထာင္စုပအုိ၀္းအမ်ိဳးသားအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ (ပအမဖ) ပါတီအျဖစ္ ဆီဆုိင္၊ ဟုိပံုး ႏွင့္ ပင္ေလာင္းၿမိဳ႕နယ္တုိ႔မွ အမတ္ ၃ ေနရာ အႏုိင္ရရွိခဲ့ပါတယ္။

Burmese Diplomacy between China and US

2012-02-10T11:15:00.000-08:00

By Kanbawza Win | 10 February 2012

Once a drunken American met a Burmese on a road and asked “Hey! What Ese are you?” The man was bewildered and so the American says “I mean to say are you a Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese or Vietnamese since you must end in one of the Ese?” The man replied that he is a Burmese because the Junta who change the name from Burma to Myanmar has forbid anyone using the name of Myanmarnese. Then he asked the American “By the way friend what keys are you? I mean to say, are you a Monkey or a Donkey or a Yankey?” This is exactly what the Obama administration is treating the quasi Burmese civilian administration, underestimating the cunning and the craftiness of the Burmese diplomacy.

If we go back to the contemporary history of neutrality or rather the non alignment movement, one can see the Burmese imprint there. Burma after gaining independence from Great Britain in 1948 was beset by civil ones and join the Colombo plan (conceived at the Commonwealth Conference of Foreign Affairs in Colombo in Jan 1950s) to get some resources for its armed forces but it was in 1954 Colombo Conference, the five participating countries (Burma India Ceylon Indonesia and Pakistan) pledge their neutrality in the Cold War, Jawaharlal Nehru of India, the most influential leader was backed by U Nu, Prime Minister of Burma in calling the Bandung Conference to create an atmosphere of corporation and put Asia and Africa in the world’s picture that pave the way to thee Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Bandung. As of today the movement had 120 members and 17 as observer’s countries.

In the impending Cold War between China and US, it seems that Burma will play a crucial part and obviously the ex-brass will try their level best to remain in power in the so called newly emerging Burmese democracy. In the economic sphere American preeminence, can no longer be taken for granted, nor can it be assumed that a stronger, richer China is good news for America -- as successive U.S. presidents have argued since 1978. On the contrary Americans are getting the queasy feeling that a richer, more powerful China might just mean a relatively poorer, relatively weaker America. In other words, the rise of China is not a Win-Win situation for both nations. It is a zero-sum game. Respected economists like Paul Krugman and Fred Bergsten have argued that imposing tariffs would be a legitimate U.S. response to Chinese currency policies.

China set to overtake the US as the world's largest economy, possibly as soon as 2016 according to an International Monetary Fund projection,Washington sees Beijing as already flexing its muscles, with increases in military spending and a harder-line in border disputes with a range of neighbors, including India, Japan, and Vietnam. As a result, the United States is seeking to make common cause with China's nervous neighbors including Burma and this is where the Burmese regime will try to exploit for its survival.

By taking advantage of China overplaying its hand in the South China Sea and generally unnerving most of the region, the Obama administration is smart in reconfirming the central role in Asia. The opening of a new base in Australia is a powerful symbol of America's enduring strategic presence in the region and relations with Burma has both strategic motives as well as several other implications. He is also taken a pro-democracy posture not only in Burma but also in the Middle East and Russia. Given these the political evolution of countries in these regions will have a direct bearing on the international strategic situation and on the nature of world order in the coming years.

But Beijing is likely to be the fulcrum around which Asian relations and economies revolve—a revival of the Middle Kingdom era when China was “first-among-equals” in Asia. For Burma, despite its recent attempts to reduce China's influence and forge better political and business ties with the West, China's inevitable rise to first-among-equals status in Asia will weigh heavily on its much-smaller south-western neighbour. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's opposition leader and an icon for politically-aware Westerners, has stressed her neutral view of China—an acknowledgment that Burma will continue to do much business with the Asian superpower regardless of its future relationship with the West. Hundreds of thousands Chinese migrants now live in Burma, and Chinese investors have put around US $12billion into the country. In addition, despite the Myitsone suspension, there are 25 other “mega-dam projects” underway in Burma, many of them Chinese-backed. So no matter what changes come to Burma or global politics in 2012, China will likely remain an important factor for decision-makers in Naypyidaw.

Knowing that the New Cold War will be over natural resources rather than the old one over ideas, President Obama’s long term economic goal is laudable and most importantly is that America will be self-sufficient in oil by 2030 because of growing U.S. domestic production and Canadian output, according to Julian Lee, a senior energy analyst at the Centre for Global Energy Studies .On the other hand China will be depended more and more on foreign oil. Oil from the Middle East and African crude is currently being transported in tankers via the 900km-long Malacca Strait, that connects the Indian and Pacific Oceans, is one of the world's busiest shipping channels and around 650,000 vessels pass through it every year and roughly 80% of China's annual imports of 1.5 billion barrels of oil pass through the narrow seaway. Chinese analysts and leaders have been describing the strait, as a strategic vulnerability, drawing attention to the consequences for China that if this shipping channel were to fall into the hands of "hostile powers" or pirates or terrorists. What if the US were to block China's access to the strait in the event of a China-Taiwan conflict? Hence China is constructing an oil pipe line from the Bay of Bengal that will cut through Burma direct to China .The roughly 2,000 kilometres of pipeline starting from Kyaukpyu in Western Burma will terminate at Kunming in Yunnan province at a cost of $1.5 billion the entire cost of constructing the pipelines will be borne by China.

Burma has the world's 10th-largest natural gas reserves, estimated at over 90 trillion cubic feet (tcf) in 19 onshore and three major offshore fields. Due to the proximity of Burma, and cosy relations with the tyrannical Burmese Generals, this veto-holding member of the United Nations Security Council that often prevented resolutions critical of the Junta was rewarded with the oil pipeline is expected to be completed by 2013. China's largest oil and gas company China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) will share the profit with the Burmese Generals. So from early 2013, Chinese oil tankers from the Middle East and Africa will be able to cross the Bay of Bengal to dock at Burma’s Western seaport and thee transport time will be cut by more than a week than via Malacca Strait. What more it is constructing a fast track railway along the pipeline that can reach within five hours to the Burmese shores and at any time the PLA which has a minimal electronic espionage system can be reinforced within hours and be a threat to India and the American base in Diego Garcia?

China importing 11 percent of its oil from Iran has ignored the latest American and European move for sanctions against Iran which was not backed by the United Nations. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao tour to three oil-rich Gulf monarchies has sidestepped the issue and at the Doha Conference on Jan 18th said. “Legitimate trade should be protected, otherwise the world economic order would fall into turmoil.” as it will become the globe's largest importer of oil by mid-2013. But the Chinese leaders decision to reduce the oil imports carried by tanker coincides with the Burmese Junta offering the construction of the pipeline to Kunming clearly demonstrates the Burmese diplomacy in the New Cold War as China’s top four oil suppliers—Saudi Arabia, Angola, Iran and Russia—only Russia is supplying nearly 400,000 barrels per day to China by overland pipeline while the rest has to come via the tankers which will soon be discharging their cargo in the Burmese ports. Beijing even though it parotid to adhere to its traditional policy of non-intervention into the domestic affairs of other countries and the latest vetoed the Security Council resolution on Syria on Assad regime, is still to be seen on its stand on the young and still tender Burmese democracy as it continue to fulfill its growing hydrocarbon needs in their obsession to race with the American superpower.

Now that Vice-President Xi Jinping’s is schedule to visit Washington, China openly said that the mutual trust between China and the U.S. is lagging. Washington and Beijing have been in conflict sanctions on Iranian, North Korea, Spratly Islands and most recently China’s decision to join with Russia in vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the violence in Syria, which Susan Rice called the veto “disgusting and shameful.”Burma is lining up behind all these conflicts as the regime ploys with idea of considering joining the Cobra Gold military joint exercises that will be directed to China.

In other words Burma holds the triumph card both in the energy lifeline of China and its flank defence. And definitely China cannot allow a flourishing democracy at her back door without some sort of authoritarian elements. It was here that the sordid Burmese Generals will make its presence felt and no doubt both the Non Myanmar (ethnic nationalities), and the Myanmar democracy movement led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi including the West will have to come with some sort of a compromise.

ပအို၀္း PNLO ႏွင့္ အစိုးရ အပစ္ရပ္ေရး သေဘာတူညီမႈ မရေသး

2012-02-07T06:42:00.000-08:00

By ေက်ာ္ခ | ေဖေဖၚဝါရီလ ၀၇ ရက္ ၂၀၁၂ ခုႏွစ္

ခ်င္းမိုင္ (မဇၥ်ိမ) ။ ။ ဦးေအာင္မင္း ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေသာ သမၼတကိုယ္စားလွယ္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအဖြ႔ဲႏွင့္ ပအိုးဝ္ အမ်ဳိးသား လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ PNLO အဖြဲ႔တို႔ တနဂၤေႏြေန႔က အပစ္ခတ္ ရပ္စဲေရး ေတြ႔ဆံု ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾက ေသာ္လည္း သေဘာတူညီမႈမရေသးဘဲ ရွိေနသည္။

PNLO ဘက္မွ တႏိုင္ငံလံုး အပစ္ခတ္ရပ္စဲေရး၊ ႏိုင္ငံတြင္းရွိ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအင္အားစုအားလံုး ပါဝင္ေသာ စုေပါင္းေတြ႔ဆံုမႈမ်ဳိး လုပ္ေဆာင္ေပးဖို႔ အပါအဝင္ အခ်က္ ၁၁ ခ်က္ကို ေတာင္ဆိုခဲ့ေသာ္လည္း အခ်က္အခ်ဳိ႕ကို ခ်က္ခ်င္း သေဘာတူ ဆံုးျဖတ္ေပးႏိုင္ျခင္း မရွိတာေၾကာင့္ အစိုးရ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္အဖြဲ႔အေနျဖင့္ သမၼတထံ တင္ျပရဦးမည္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

“အခ်က္အမ်ားစုကိုေတာ့ ဦးေအာင္မင္းက သူ႔အေနနဲ႔ ဘာမွေျပာစရာမရွိဘူး။ အခ်ဳိ႕အခ်က္ တခ်က္ႏွစ္ခ်က္ကေတာ့ သူ႔အေနနဲ႔ သေဘာတူေပးဖို႔ရာမွာ သမၼတဆီ ျပန္ၿပီးေတာ့ တင္ျပရဦးမွာေပါ့ေနာ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲက အဲေလာက္မွာပဲ ရွိပါေသးတယ္” ဟု PNLO ၏ အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉး ဦးခြန္ျမင့္ထြန္း က မဇၥ်ိမကို ေျပာသည္။

ဆံုးျဖတ္ရန္ အခက္ေတြ႔ေနသည့္ အခ်က္အခ်ဳိ႕ကို ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲကာလအတြင္း မေဖၚျပေသးဟု ဆိုသည္။

“ဦးေအာင္မင္းကေတာ့ ဒီေန႔ သူတို႔လုပ္ေနတဲ့ အဆင့္ သံုးဆင့္ကို ေျပာျပတာေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ ပထမ အဆင့္အေနနဲ႔ အပစ္ခတ္ ရပ္စဲေရး၊ ဒုတိယအဆင့္အေနနဲ႔ ဖြ႔ံၿဖိဳးေရးနဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံေရးလုပ္ဖို႔အဆင့္ေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ ၿပီးေတာ့မွ လႊတ္ေတာ္နဲ႔ဆိုင္တဲ့ကိစၥေတြနဲ႔ သူေျပာတာကေတာ့ ေရရွည္ႏိုင္ငံေရးမွာ လႊတ္ေတာ္ထဲမွာ ဝင္ၿပီး လုပ္ၾကေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ သူတို႔ရဲ႕သေဘာထားကိုေတာ့ အဲလိုေျပာပါတယ္” ဟု ဦးခြန္ျမင့္ထြန္း က ဆက္ေျပာသည္။

ဇန္နဝါရီလအတြင္းက PNLO ဥကၠ႒ ခြန္ဥကၠာ ႏွင့္ အစိုးရ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအဖြဲ႔ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဦးေအာင္မင္းတို႔ ထိုင္း-ျမန္မာ နယ္စပ္ တေနရာတြင္ အလြတ္သေဘာ ေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၿပီးေနာက္ ယခုကဲ့သို႔ ေနာက္ဆက္တြဲ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲျဖစ္ေျမာက္လာခဲ့ျခင္း ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲကို ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ ေျမာက္ပိုင္း ခ်င္းမိုင္ၿမိဳ႕တြင္ ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ၿပီး အစုိးရဘက္မွ မီးရထားဝန္ႀကီး ဦးေအာင္မင္းကေခါင္းေဆာင္ၿပီး PNLO က အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉး ဦးခြန္ျမင့္ထြန္း၊ တြဲဘက္ အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉး ၁ ဗိုလ္္မႉး ခြန္သူရိန္ႏွင့္ ပအိုးဝ္လူငယ္ အစည္းအ႐ုံး PYO ၏ အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉး ခြန္ခ်န္ကီ တို႔ ပါဝင္ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကသည္။

ပထမအဆင့္အျဖစ္ “က်ေနာ္တို႔ PNLO နဲ႔ အစိုးရတို႔ၾကားမွာ အပစ္ခတ္ရပ္စဲေရး ပဏာမ သေဘာတူညီမႈ ရယူမယ္။ တျပည္လံုး အတိုင္းတာနဲ႔ အပစ္ခတ္ရပ္စဲေရးကို ျပည္ေထာင္စုအစိုးရက တရားဝင္ ေၾကညာေပးဖို႔၊ တျပည္လံုး အပစ္အခတ္ ရပ္စဲတဲ့ အခ်ိန္က ေနစၿပီး ရက္ေပါင္း ၆၀ အတြင္း ျပည္ေထာင္စု အစိုးရနဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အင္အားစုေတြ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအရ ေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးဖို႔၊ အဲဒီကေန တဆင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အင္အားစုေတြ အားလံုးပါဝင္တဲ့ ေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးေရး
ျပဳလုပ္ဖို႔ဆိုၿပီး ေတာင္းဆိုတယ္” ဟု ဦးခြန္ျမင့္ထြန္း က ေျပာသည္။

ျပည္ေထာင္စုအဆင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးေဆြးေႏြးႏိုင္ရန္အတြက္ ပအိုးဝ္အမ်ဳိးသား ႏိုင္ငံေရး လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္မ်ား ေဖၚေဆာင္ႏိုင္ရန္ အတြက္ ျပည္တြင္းအျခစိုက္ ပအိုးဝ္အမ်ဳိးသားအဖြဲ႔ PNO အပါအဝင္ ပအိုးဝ္ႏိုင္ငံေရး အဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ား၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရး ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားႏွင့္ လြတ္လပ္စြာ ေဆြးေႏြးခြင့္ရရွိရန္ႏွင့္ ပအိုးဝ္ ရဟန္းသံဃာႏွင့္ လူမႈအသင္းအဖြဲ႔မ်ား ေဒသခံ လူထုမ်ားႏွင့္ ေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးပြဲမ်ား ျပဳလုပ္ခြင့္ ရွိရန္ ေတာင္းဆိုခ်က္မ်ားတြင္ ပါဝင္သည္။

အလားတူ အစိုးရသစ္လက္ထက္ ဦးခြန္ထြန္းဦး၊ ကိုမင္းကိုႏိုင္ တို႔ အပါအဝင္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားမ်ား လႊတ္ေပးမႈ အေပၚ PNLO က ႀကိဳဆိုေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ က်န္ရွိေနေသးသည့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားမ်ား အပါအဝင္ ပအိုးဝ္လက္နက္ကိုင္ တပ္ႏွင့္ ဆက္ႏြယ္ၿပီး ဖမ္းဆီးထားသူမ်ားကိုလည္း လႊတ္ေပးရန္ ႏႈတ္အားျဖင့္ တိုက္တြန္းေတာင္းဆိုခဲ့သည္ဟု ဦးခြန္ျမင့္ထြန္း အေျပာအရ သိရသည္။

PNLO ကို ႐ွမ္းျပည္လူမ်ဳိးေပါင္းစုံ ျပည္သူ႔လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး အဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ (ရလလဖ) မွ ခြဲထြက္ တည္ေထာင္ခဲ့ၿပီး ရွမ္းျပည္ေတာင္ပိုင္း ထိုင္း-ျမန္မာနယ္စပ္တြင္ အေျခစိုက္ လႈပ္ရွားေနလ်က္ ရွိသည္။ ၁၉၉၃ ခုႏွစ္ အမ်ဳိးသားညီလာခံ တြင္ ပအိုးဝ္အမ်ဳိးသားအဖြဲ႔ PNO မွ တင္သြင္းေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့သည့္ မွတ္တမ္းတြင္ ျမန္မာတႏိုင္ငံလံုးတြင္ ပအိုးဝ္လူမ်ဳိး ၂ သန္းေက်ာ္ ေနထိုင္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

တနဂၤေႏြေန႔က မီးရထားဝန္ႀကီး ဦးေအာင္မင္းက ခ်င္းမိုင္ၿမိဳ႕တြင္ပင္ လူ႔ေဘာင္သစ္ ဒီမိုကရက္တစ္ပါတီ DPNS အဖြဲ႔ႏွင့္လည္း သီးျခားေတြ႔ဆံုမႈျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ၿပီး အဖြဲ႔တာဝန္ရွိသူမ်ားႏွင့္ အလြတ္သေဘာ ေတြ႔ဆံု ေဆြးေႏြးမႈေတြ ျပဳလုပ္ ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း DPNS မွ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲတြင္ ပါဝင္သူ ဦးေဇာ္ေဇာ္ထြန္း ကေျပာသည္။

“က်ေနာ္တို႔က အခုအလြတ္သေဘာ ေဆြးေႏြးေျပာဆိုတာေလာက္ပဲ ရွိပါတယ္။ ေတာင္းဆိုခ်က္ေတြ ဘာေတြ မရွိေသးပါဘူး။ ေနာက္ထပ္ ေဆြးေႏြးဖို႔ေတာ့ ရွိပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အစိုးရအဖြဲ႔ကေရာ က်ေနာ္တို႔အေနနဲ႔ေရာ တိတိက်က် သတ္မွတ္ခ်က္ ေတာ့မရွိေသးပါဘူး။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အခ်ိန္မေရြး ျပန္ေတြ႔ႏိုင္တဲ့ လမ္းစဖြင့္တဲ့ အေနအထား
ေတာ့ ရွိပါၿပီ” ဟု ဦးေဇာ္ေဇာ္ထြန္း က မဇၥ်ိမကို ေျပာသည္။

တိုင္းျပည္ ေအးခ်မ္းေစရန္အတြက္ ျမန္မာအစိုးရသစ္အေနျဖင့္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဖၚေဆာင္မႈမ်ား အင္တိုက္အားတိုက္ျဖင့္ ဆက္လက္အေကာင္ထည္ေဖၚ ေဆာင္ရြက္ရန္၊ ႏိုင္ငံတြင္း အက်ဥ္းေထာင္မ်ားတြင္ က်န္ရွိေနေသးေသာ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားမ်ားကို အျမန္ဆုံး ျပန္လႊတ္ေပးေရးႏွင့္ ျပည္ပေရာက္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အင္အားစုမ်ား ျပန္လာလိုသူမ်ား တရားဝင္ ျပန္ႏိုင္ေစရန္ အစိုးရအေနျဖင့္ ဖန္တီးေပးရန္တို႔ကို DPNS က တိုက္တြန္းခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

Burmese Diplomacy and Repression: Why the West should not Invest or Lift Sanctions on Burma?

2012-02-05T13:46:00.000-08:00

By Kanbawza Win | February 5, 2012

Even though man is essentially an economic animal and greed always supersedes the need, great caution should be taken by the Western world regarding Burma. They should not to be too excited or hysteria about the opening of Burma as Dr Zarni describes it as hyper ballistic characterization that the country is "on the verge of great transformation." One should think twice about the investment and commercial dealing with the Junta orchestrated puppet Thein Sein administration and will have to watch it very closely the developments after the elections.

Currently the ruling hierarchy are the same butchers of 1988, except that they have discarded their uniforms for longyi (လံုခ်ည္) a Burmese sarong, and wear Goungbaung (ေခါင္းေဘာင္း) the Burmese headdress, instead of the military caps. Their de facto leader Than Shwe staying in the side lines is the same person that placed old man, Ne Win in his dotage stage, is the real architect of seizing power from the civilian administration and replaced his senior Saw Maung, the Chairman of the State Law and Order Restoration Council and later SPDC.

One may have fancies that there can be a change of hearts, as belligerent generals can become reconcilers and peace-makers and noble dissidents become realist politicians. But their actions, which speaks louder than words is an unmistakable proof of their evil mentality or techniques not to mention their strategy have not change, just like the leopard that cannot change its spots. The only aspect of change is that they are in silk attire. This is the perspective which happens to be the major dividing line between a native born Burmese and a foreign experts, as the Burmese saying goes, “A snake sees the legs of the other snake”

A classic example is that one can witness that these ex brass continue to adhere to the concept of “Lying the very concept of Truth” e.g. at first they deny that there were political prisoners, then they release the first batch of few political prisoners but being pressured they are forced to release the 2nd batch in substantial numbers but the world knows that there were more than 900 political prisoners remain detained in jails across Burma. Even though UN Special Rapporteur on Human rights in Burma Tomás Ojea Quintana urged the regime to release all remaining political prisoners, they refused to do so. Beside the current political prisoners released were under Section 401(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code which explicitly means can be rearrested and forced to serve the remainder of their original sentences any time the regime chose to do. Of course these can be construed as the internal affairs of Burma and has nothing to do with the business community. But the logical question is can you trust to do business and invest in this regime when lying the truth is their standard norms?

In January, the regime continued to promote the appearance of a reform agenda by pursuing ‘peace agreements’ with ethnic nationalities freedom fighters and armed groups. The regime’s apparent haste to produce ‘initial’ agreements is clearly aimed at removing economic sanctions and other barriers to foreign investment because this is but one of the conditions placed by the Western powers after the release of the Lady. The simple logic is that if they do not meet this condition, than there is little hope of lifting sanctions not to mention investment. So the Regime representatives signed agreements with the Shan State Army-South (SSA-S), the Chin National Front (CNF), the Karen National Union (KNU), and the Shan State Army-North (SSA-N).

However, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) sees the writings on the wall and the regime failed to reach an agreement with them. So the Burmese army, the notorious Tatmadaw continued to launch an all out war against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in Kachin State and Northern Shan State with their scorch earth policies. There was such amount of human casualties and the hue and cry of the international community was so loud that on Jan 13th President Thein Sein issued an order for Tatmadaw forces to cease hostilities against all ethnic armed groups in Burma. However, the Burmese army indirectly control by Than Shwe refused to listen and continued to mobilize troop’s reinforcements and supplies to conflict areas estimated to be over 20,000 Tatmadaw soldiers. The Kachin have adhere to the real Pyidoungsu the Genuine Union of Burma which makes the generals and the ex generals on the defensive and one can ask the Kachin of what is the raw deal put on their table is that Naypyidaw estimated that it will take three years to bring the Kachin to its knees before they launched another major war against the WA of Shan State who is much stronger.

It was in this aspect the question rises to the conscience of the Western business circles, “Is the regime genuinely seeking peace with their ethnic nationalities or just a superficial way of covering the hole with the paper and if so how can one do business with the regime who can destabilize the country at any moment and their business and investment can disappear within a moment?”

“Some people in the international community together with some political groups are crowing that they have press freedom now.” How far is it true when it prohibit not to publish any of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s call for the release of remaining political prisoners, comments made by 88 Generation Students concerning the need for the creation of student unions and the regime’s flawed policies vis-à-vis ethnic groups and News about the eviction of abbot U Pyinnya Thiha from his Rangoon monastery. On 19th January, Freedom House released its annual “Freedom in the World 2012” reported Burma as “Not Free” and Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) released its “Press Freedom Index 2011/201 2.” rated Burma as 169th out of 179 countries of the world. How can one do business with the country when reliable news including economic and statistics are absent or figures lied? And yet the Western Business community is bent on going to Burma. Why?

The regime's plan was --: through the soft-spoken President Thein Sein termed by those who see him as a sincere gentleman bent on genuine change - which Dr Zarni term it as Kyaung Ché (ေၾကာင္ေခ်း) meaning soft excreta of a cat that looks and feels soft, but equally stinky and potent. No doubt that he is successful in attempting to convince Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to adopt the evolutionary way of changing things rather than the revolutionary way which the mass desired and has used her something like a tool to get US sanctions that block any type of World Bank/ADB and IMF 'assistance' to Burma. But the underlying cause is that the Generals want to stock their ill gotten millions, if not billions of dollars in Western banks for their near and dear ones, as they have learnt a lesson of what the Chinese do to Milosevic’s money after his downfall.

When it is clear that without any serious and genuine change, the Lady will not give them a blank check as she starts talking about the changing of the Constitution and settling the ethnic nationality grievances by calling the Second Panglong Conference that tends to reveal the true picture that the Tatmadaw generals are the real culprit of the Genuine Union of Burma (Pyidaugsu) as well as against Democracy will definitely rouse up the peoples’ emotions and send cold shivers through the spines of these men is silk skirts and headdress.. Even now she is attracting thousands and thousands of people whenever she appears. Hence they said a big “No” and regime in future is going to be less inclined to continue playing 'nice nice' with the Lady. Will the West invest in such a climate?

What more proof is wanted when Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has to postpone her political trip to Mandalay, the second capital of Burma because she could not obtain permission to hold a political gathering at a football stadium , a lame excuse, if not a sour note just to show who is the real boss, Thein Sein or Than Shwe. It can be pressured by the big Chinese community in Mandalay via Beijing to rein in the lady through the puppet regime of Thein Sein. For business community of the West this episode clearly paints the picture that the regime can go back to its Orwellian rule at any moment not conducive to business dealings and investment and will have to think twice before investing.

The Western response to these developments should be somewhat similar way it responded to Yeltsin's Russia with caution. George Soros invested $500 million in Russian gas and oil sector and lost all. However if one construe "Free Market, that benefits Western investors and corporations, is good. Anything, idea, any institution that stands in the way is bad, for instance, state subsidies for basic survival necessities, public provisions of health, education, social security, electricity and other necessities. Private good, public bad. Egalitarianism bad, 'survival of the fittest is good” then they should join the band wagon like TOTAL of France, Chinese, Thai and Singapore companies, Narco barons, cronies or may come up under the humanitarian associations funded by the Nazis ancestors, the Myanmar Egress and so on.

The Junta’s love affairs with the Kachin lasted for nearly one and half decades and even then there is still no happy ending as it ends in divorce. Now the romance with another new lover Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD has just began and is not even one year yet when there are several indicators that the honeymoon is not going well as the Mandalay episode reveals . The Western business circles bent on entering Burma may knew that it is neither holistic nor conducive to wholesome morality to do business with the regime but can their obsession of profit motive and rationale be cautioned that it is still not subservience to business dealings and investment either?

ပအို၀္းအဖြဲ႔ PNLO အစုိးရၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးကုိယ္စားလွယ္နဲ႔ေတြ႔ဆံု

2012-02-05T13:34:00.000-08:00

By ေနာင္ခမ္းခါ | ေဖေဖၚ၀ါရီလ ၅ ရက္ ၂၀၁၂ | ေတာင္ႀကီးတုိင္မ္း

ပအို၀္းအမ်ိဳးသား လက္နက္ကုိင္ေတာ္လွန္ေရးအဖြဲ႔ ျဖစ္တဲ့ ပအုိ၀္းအမ်ိဳးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ (PNLO) က ျပည္ေထာင္စု၀န္ႀကီးဦးေအာင္မင္းဦးေဆာင္တဲ့ အစုိးရၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးကုိယ္စားလွယ္အဖြဲ႔နဲ႔ ထိုင္းႏုိင္ငံ ခ်င္းမိုင္ၿမိဳ႕မွာ ယေန႔ ေဖေဖၚ၀ါရီလ ၅ ရက္ေန႔မွာ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအတြက္ ပဏာမ ေတြ႔ဆံုခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။

ပအုိ၀္းကုိယ္စားလွယ္ႏွင့္ အစုိးရၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းကုိယ္စားမ်ား
ဓာတ္ပံု - PYO

ေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးပြဲမွာ အတြင္းေရးမွဴး ခြန္ျမင့္ထြန္း နဲ႔ အတြင္းေရးမွဴး ၁ ျဖစ္တဲ့ ဗိုလ္မွဴးႀကီးခြန္သူရိန္တို႔ ဦးေဆာင္တဲ့ ပအို၀္းအမ်ိဳးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ကုိယ္စားလွယ္မ်ားကေတာ့ အပစ္အခတ္ ရပ္ဆဲေရး၊ ပအုိ၀္းအမ်ိဳးသားမ်ား ေနထုိင္တဲ့ ေနရာေဒသေတြမွာ ဆက္ဆံေရးရံုးဖြင့္လွစ္ၿပီး လြတ္လပ္စြာ သြားလာႏုိင္ေရးႏွင့္ ပအုိ၀္းအမ်ိဳးသားႏုိင္ငံေရးလုပ္ငန္းစဥ္မ်ား ေဖၚေဆာင္ႏုိင္ဖို႔အတြက္ ပအုိ၀္းအမ်ိဳးသား လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္အပါအ၀င္ ပအုိ၀္းႏုိင္ငံေရးအဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ား ပအုိ၀္းႏုိင္ငံေရးေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား လြတ္လပ္စြာ သြားလာ ေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးႏုိင္ေရး စတဲ့အခ်က္အေတြ ေတာင္းဆုိခ်က္ေတြ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ေၾကာင္း အဖြဲ႔ေခါင္းေဆာင္ျဖစ္တဲ့ ခြန္ျမင့္ထြန္း ယခုလုိေျပာပါတယ္။

"က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ပအုိ၀္းအမ်ိဳးသားေတြ ေနထိုင္ရာ ေဒသေတြမွာ ဆက္ဆံေရး႐ံုးေတြ ဖြင့္လွစ္ထားရွိ ဖို႔ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ျပည္ေထာင္စုစနစ္ ႏုိင္ငံေရး ေဆြးေႏြးႏိုင္ဖို႔အတြက္ ပအို၀္း အမ်ိဳးသားမ်ား ႏုိင္ငံေရးလုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ေတြ ေဖာ္ေဆာင္လာဖို႔အတြက္ကို ပအို၀္းအမ်ိဳးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ PNLO အပါအ၀င္ အျခားပအို၀္းႏုိင္ငံေရး အဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြ၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြနဲ႔ လြတ္လပ္စြာ ေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးႏိုင္ဖို႔။”

ဦးခြန္ျမင့္ထြန္းမွ "အပစ္အခတ္ ရပ္စဲႏိုင္ဖို႔အတြက္ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ပဏာမ သေဘာတူညီခ်က္ကို ရယူဖို႔ ဆိုတဲ့အခ်က္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ေနာက္တစ္ခ်က္က တျပည္လံုး အတိုင္းအတာနဲ႔ အပစ္အခတ္ ရပ္စဲေရးကို ျပည္ေထာင္စု အစိုးရက တရား၀င္ ေၾကညာေပးဖုိ႔ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ တျပည္လံုး အပစ္အခတ္ ရပ္စဲၿပီးတဲ့အခ်ိန္ကေန ရပ္ေပါင္း ၆၀ အေတာအတြင္းမွာ ျပည္ေထာင္စု အစိုးရနဲ႔ တိုင္းရင္းသား အင္အားစုေတြ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအရ ေတြ႔ဆံု ေဆြးေႏြးဖို႔နဲ႔ အဲဒီကေနတဆင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အင္အားစုေတြ ပါ၀င္တဲ့ ေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးေရး ျပဳလုပ္ဖို႔ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။"

ထုိ႔အျပင္ ပအုိ၀္းအမ်ိဳးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္က အဓိကဆြးေႏြးတင္ျပတဲ့ အခ်က္ေတြထဲမွာ ေနရာအႏွံ႔အျပားမွာ ေနထုိင္တဲ့ ပအုိ၀္းတုိင္းရင္းသားမ်ားရဲ႕ တန္းတူေရးအခြင့္အေရး အာမခံခ်က္ ရရွိေရးပဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အထူးသျဖင့္ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္၊ မြန္ျပည္၊ ကရင္ျပည္နယ္၊ ပဲခူးတုိင္းႏွင့္ ကရင္နီ (ကယား) ျပည္ စတဲ့ ေနရာေဒသေတြမွာ ပ်ံ႕ႏွံေနထုိင္တဲ့ ပအုိ၀္းတုိင္းရင္းသားတုိ႔ရဲ႕ အမ်ိဳးသားတန္းတူေရးအခြင့္အေရးကုိ အေျခခံေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရပါတယ္။

ေတြ႔ဆံုပြဲမွာ ၎တုိ႔ တင္ျပေတာင္းဆုိတဲ့အခ်က္တခ်ဳိ႕ကေတာ့ ၀န္ႀကီးဦးေအာင္မင္းက သူ႔အေနျဖင့္ သေဘာတူလက္ခံလုိ႔ မရေပမယ့္ ႏုိင္ငံေတာ္သမၼတဆီမွာ တင္ျပေပးမယ္လုိ႔ ေျပာခဲ့ေၾကာင္းလဲ ခြန္ျမင့္ထြန္းက ဆုိပါတယ္။

ပအုိ၀္းအမ်ိဳးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္က ၀န္ႀကီးဦးေအာင္မင္းေခါင္းေဆာင္တဲ့ အစုိးရ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးကုိယ္စားလွယ္အဖြဲ႔နဲ႔ေတြ႔ဆံုရာမွာ သေဘာတူညီမႈ လက္မွတ္ေရးထုိးခဲ့တာေတြ မရွိခဲ့ေပမယ့္လဲ ေနာက္ထပ္ ေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးပြဲေတြ ဆက္လက္ျပဳလုပ္ဖုိ႔ သေဘာတူညီခဲ့ၾကေၾကာင္းလဲ သိရပါတယ္။

စစ္တပ္ႏွင့္ရဲ ေျမသိမ္းမည့္အစီအစဥ္ သမၼတထံ တိုင္ၾကား

2012-02-05T13:24:00.000-08:00

By သန္႔စင္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္း | February 3, 2012 | ဧရာ၀တီ

ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ ေတာင္ႀကီးၿမိဳ႕နယ္အတြင္းရွိ ရြာ ၄ ရြာမွ ေတာင္သူ ၁၅၀ ေက်ာ္၏ ၿခံေျမ ဧက ၇၀၀ ေက်ာ္အား ရဲ သင္တန္းေက်ာင္း ေဆာက္ရန္ႏွင့္ တပ္ေျမအျဖစ္ သိမ္းယူရန္စီစဥ္ေနျခင္းႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ေဒသခံမ်ားက သမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ ထံသို႔ ဇန္န၀ါရီလ ၃၀ ရက္ က စာေရးသားေပးပို႔ တိုင္ၾကားလိုက္သည္။

ဧရာ၀တီမွ လက္ခံရရွိထားသည့္ ေတာင္သူမ်ား၏ သမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ထံ ေပးပို႔ေသာစာတြင္ မိမိတို႔ အသက္ေသြးေၾကာသဖြယ္ အေရးပါေသာ ေတာင္ယာၿခံေျမမ်ား မဆံုးရႈံးေစေရးအတြက္ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္သမၼတႀကီးမွ ဥပေဒႏွင့္အညီ အကာအကြယ္ေပးရန္ ေမတၱာရပ္ခံထားသည္။

ရွမ္းျပည္ေတာင္ပိုင္း ေတာင္ႀကီးၿမိဳ႕နယ္ နမ့္ဆီး ေက်းရြာအုပ္စု ပင္ငိုေက်းရြာမွ ေတာင္ယာဧက ၆၁၀ အား တပ္ေျမအျဖစ္ သိမ္း ယူရန္ ေက်ာက္တုိင္မ်ား စိုက္ထူထားၿပီး ေနာင္ေလ ေက်းရြာအုပ္စု အတြင္းရွိ ထီေ၀ါ၊ ကန္ေလာင္း၊ ထီတယမ္ ေက်းရြာ တို႔မွ ဧက ၁၇၀ ေက်ာ္အား ရဲသင္တန္းေက်ာင္း ေဆာက္လုပ္ရန္ အလံနီမ်ား စိုက္ထားသည္။

“ပင္ငိုရြာနဲ႔ အလံနီစိုက္ခံရတဲ့ ရြာသံုးရြာက ေတာင္သူ ၁၅၀ ေက်ာ္က လက္မွတ္ထုိးၿပီး ဒီေတာင္ယာ ၿခံေျမေတြ မသိမ္းဖို႔ သမၼတဆီ စာတင္တာပါ”ဟု ကူညီေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးေနသူ ေတာင္ႀကီးၿမိဳ႕ခံ ခြန္ခမ္းေကာင္က ဧရာ၀တီကို ေျပာသည္။

သမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ထံ စာပို႔ၾကသူမ်ားမွာ ပင္ငိုေက်းရြာမွ ေတာင္သူ ၁၀၇ ဦးႏွင့္ ေနာင္ေလေက်းရြာ အုပ္စုအတြင္းရွိ ထီေ၀ါ၊ ကန္ေလာင္း၊ ထီတယမ္ ေက်းရြာတို႔မွ ေတာင္သူ ၄၄ ဦးတို႔ျဖစ္ၿပီး ယင္းေဒသတြင္ အႏိုင္ရရွိထားသည့္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု ႀကံ့ခိုင္ေရးႏွင့္ ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးေရး ပါတီ ၏ အကူအညီျဖင့္ ေနျပည္ေတာ္ သမၼတ ရံုး သို႔ ေပးပို႔ျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။

“တပ္ေျမ”ဟု ေရးထိုးထားေသာ ေက်ာက္တုိင္မ်ားကို ပင္ငိုေက်းရြာအနီးရွိ ၾကက္သြန္ျဖဴ၊ ပဲစင္းငံု၊ ဂ်ဳံ၊ စေတာ္ဘယ္ရီ စသည့္ သီးႏွံမ်ား စိုက္ပ်ဳိးထားေသာ ေတာင္ယာခင္းမ်ားတြင္ ဇန္န၀ါရီလ ၆ ရက္ေန႔က စိုက္ထူခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။

“ေျမကို တပ္ေျမလုိ႔သာ ေက်ာက္တိုင္စိုက္ထားတယ္။ ဘယ္တပ္က လုပ္တယ္ဆိုတာ မသိရဘူး။ ရြာသားတေယာက္ ျပန္ေျပာျပခ်က္ အရဆိုရင္ ၿခံစိုက္ဖို႔သြားတဲ့အခ်ိန္မွာ ေက်ာက္တုိင္က စိုက္ၿပီးသား ျဖစ္ေနတယ္။ ဘယ္သူ႔ကိုမွလည္း အသိမေပးဘူး”ဟု ခြန္ ခမ္းေကာင္က ေျပာသည္။

ထီေ၀ါ၊ ကန္ေလာင္းႏွင့္ ထီတယမ္ ေက်းရြာအနီးရွိ ေတာင္ယာၿခံေျမမ်ားအား ေနျပည္ေတာ္မွ ရဲအရာရွိမ်ား လာေရာက္ၾကည့္ရႈၿပီး အမွတ္၂၅ ရဲ သင္တန္းေက်ာင္း ေဆာက္လုပ္ရန္ဟု ဆိုကာ ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္ႏွစ္ ဒီဇင္ဘာ ၂၄ ရက္ေန႔က စတင္ကာ အလံနီမ်ား စိုက္ထူခဲ့ျခင္း ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ေဒသခံမ်ားက ဆိုသည္။

သက္ဆုိင္ရာ အာဏာပိုင္မ်ားက ေက်ာက္တုိင္မ်ား၊ အလံနီမ်ား စိုက္ထူသည့္ေန႔မွ ယေန႔အထိ သိမ္းဆည္းမည့္ ေတာင္ယာ ၿခံေျမမ်ားႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ ေဒသခံ ေတာင္သူမ်ားကို ေတြ႔ဆံု ေဆြးေႏြးျခင္း၊ အသိေပးျခင္း မရွိေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

ႏိုုင္ငံေတာ္ပိုင္အျဖစ္ သိမ္းယူရန္ ေက်ာက္တုိင္ႏွင့္ အလံနီတို႔ စိုက္ထားသျဖင့္ ေဒသခံေတာင္သူမ်ားမွာ မိမိတို႔ ၿခံေျမမ်ား ဆံုးရႈံးမည့္ အေရးကို စိုးရိမ္ ပူပန္ေနၾကသည္။

“အလံ လာစိုက္ၿပီး တလေလာက္ဆို ေျမသိမ္းေတာ့တာပဲ။ အခုက တပ္ေျမဆိုၿပီး ေက်ာက္တုိင္နဲ႔ အတည္တက် လာစိုက္ထား တယ္ ဆုိေတာ့ အကုန္လံုး လန္႔သြားတာေပါ့။ ငါတို႔လယ္ေတြကိုလည္း တပ္ေျမအျဖစ္ သိမ္းဦးမွာပဲ ဆိုၿပီး ေတာင္သူေတြက စိုးရိမ္ ေနတယ္”ဟု ခြန္ ခမ္းေကာင္က ေျပာသည္။

၎က ဆက္လက္၍“တကယ္လုိ႔သာ အဲဒီလယ္ေျမေတြကို လုပ္ခြင့္မရွိေတာ့ဘူး သိမ္းသြားတယ္ဆိုရင္ အားလံုးကေတာ့ ငတ္ဖို႔ပဲ ရွိတယ္။ တခ်ဳိ႕ကလည္း တျခားနယ္ကိုသြားၿပီး ဘိန္းစိုက္မယ္ လို႔ ေျပာေနၾကတယ္”ဟုလည္း ေျပာဆုိသည္။

ေတာင္ႀကီးၿမိဳ႕ခံ တဦးကလည္း“အရင္တုန္းကလည္း ေတာင္ယာၿခံေျမေတြ သိမ္းတာ ရွိတယ္။ အခုဟာေတြက အသစ္ထပ္ သိမ္း တာေတြေပါ့။ ပင္းပက္ စက္႐ုံ ေဆာက္တုန္းကလည္း အဲဒီ ပင္ငိုရြာက ေတာင္ယာေတြ ၿခံေျမေတြ အသိမ္းခံခဲ့ရတာပဲ”ဟု ေျပာ သည္။

၂၀၁၁ ခုႏွစ္ စက္တင္ဘာႏွင့္ ေအာက္တုိဘာ အေစာပိုင္းက ပင္းပက္ သံမဏိစက္႐ုံ အတြက္ ေဘးပတ္၀န္းက်င္ရွိ ဆိုင္ခန္းငယ္ေပါင္း၂၀ ႏွင့္ လူေနအိမ္ ၄ လံုး ေရႊ႕ေျပာင္းေပးခဲ႔ရေသာ္လည္း နစ္နာေၾကး တစံုတရာ မရရွိခဲ႔ေၾကာင္း ေဒသခံမ်ားက ေျပာဆိုၾကသည္။

Top Karen leader facing treason charge

2012-02-03T08:12:00.000-08:00

By Aye Nai | 3 February 2012 | DVB

A top Karen National Union leader appeared in court yesterday on charges of unlawful association and treason, only three weeks after the Burmese government agreed to a ceasefire with its long-time foe.

Mahn Nyein Maung was brought to a courtroom inside the compounds of Rangoon’s notorious Insein prison where hundreds of political prisoners have been tried over the years. If found guilty of treason, he faces a possible death sentence or life imprisonment.

His lawyer, Kyi Myint, said that judges yesterday heard two prosecution statements, including one from a police investigator. Both charges stem from his role in the KNU, which has been battling the Burmese government for more than six decades – originally the group was fighting for an independent state, although it now calls for a federalised Burma.

A tentative ceasefire agreement on 12 January appears not to have helped Mahn Nyein Maung’s case – the treason charges were brought only recently, after he had already been in detention for seven months on immigration charges. It was only during his time in Insein prison that police discovered he was a KNU member.

His lawyer said the main evidence used by the prosecution was documents they discovered on the internet, something he claims does not qualify as concrete proof of his guilt.

“We questioned the court over whether they would accept in a trial if we submitted material from the internet as evidence against [the government],” Kyi Myint said. “At the end of the hearing, the court decided to throw out the [internet material] as evidence – that is exceptional.”

Mahn Nyein Maung has already spent time in prison on the Coco Islands, 300 kilometres south of Rangoon in the Andaman Sea. After nearly a decade in jail on the islands, he and another prisoner managed to escape on rafts, but were apprehended on the Burmese mainland and thrown back in jail.

The government has been warned that the trial could derail fragile peace talks with the KNU, which appear to be on tenterhooks in the wake of renewed attacks by Burmese troops in Karen state last week.

Although death sentences are still awarded by courts in Burma, no one has been formally executed for a number of years. Two whistleblowers sentenced to death in January 2010 for leaking details of secretive senior-level governmental visits to North Korea and Russia remain in prison.

ေတာင္ႀကီးၿမိဳ႕နယ္မွ လယ္ဧက ၇၀၀ ေက်ာ္ကို ‘တပ္ေျမ’ မွတ္တိုင္မ်ား စိုက္သြား

2012-02-02T12:09:00.000-08:00

By မ်ဳိးသန္႔ | ေဖေဖၚ၀ါရီလ ၂ ရက္ ၊ ၂၀၁၂ | မဇၥ်ိမ

ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ေတာင္ပိုင္း ေတာင္ႀကီးၿမိဳ႕နယ္အတြင္းရွိ ပင္ငိုရြာႏွင့္ ဟိုပုန္းရြာမ်ားရွိ ေတာင္သူ လယ္သမားမ်ား၏ စိုက္ပ်ဳိးေျမဧက ၇၀၀ ေက်ာ္အတြင္း အာဏာပိုင္တို႔က အလံစိုက္ထူျခင္း၊ တပ္ေျမ အမွတ္အသား ပါ ေက်ာက္တိုင္မ်ား စိုက္ထူျခင္းတို႔ေၾကာင့္ လယ္ေျမသိမ္းယူမည္ကို ေဒသခံလယ္သမားတို႔ စိုးရိမ္ေနၾကသည္။

ေတာင္သူ လယ္သမားမ်ား၏ စိုက္ပ်ဳိးေျမဧက ၇၀၀ ေက်ာ္အတြင္းအာဏာပိုင္တို႔က

အလံစိုက္ထူျခင္း၊ တပ္ေျမ အမွတ္အသားပါ ေက်ာက္တိုင္မ်ားစိုက္ထူျခင္းတို႔ေၾကာင့္

လယ္ေျမသိမ္းယူမည္ကိုေဒသခံလယ္သမားတို႔ စိုးရိမ္ေန (Photo:: Citizen Journalist)

ဇန္နဝါရီလ ၆ ရက္ေန႔နံနက္က ပင္ငိုရြာရွိ စိုက္ပ်ဳိးေျမ ဧက ၆ဝဝ ခန္႔အတြင္း "တပ္ေျမ" အမွတ္အသား ပါရွိသည့္ ေက်ာက္တိုင္မ်ားကို ေဒသခံလယ္သမားမ်ား သတိျပဳမိရာမွ ယင္းတို႔၏ လယ္ေျမမ်ားကို စစ္တပ္မွ သိမ္းယူမည္ကို စိုးရိမ္ေနၾကျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။

ေဒသခံ လယ္သမားမ်ားကို ကူညီေပးေနသည့္ ေတာင္ႀကီးၿမိဳ႕ခံ ခြန္ခမ္းေကာင္က အဆိုပါ ေက်ာက္တိုင္ အမွတ္အသားမ်ား စိုက္ထူမႈႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ "သူတို႔ကိုယ္တိုင္ျမင္တာေတာ့ စစ္ဝတ္စံုနဲ႔ ဆိုတာပဲသိတယ္။ ဘယ္စစ္တပ္လဲ၊ ဘာလုပ္ဖို႔လဲဆိုတာလည္း မသိဘူး။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ရြာသူရြာသားေတြကလည္း ေမးျမန္း ရေကာင္းမွန္း မသိဘူး။ စစ္သားလို႔ပဲ ေျပာလို႔ရတယ္" ဟု ေဒသခံမ်ား၏ အေျပာကို မဇၩိမအား ျပန္လည္ေျပာျပသည္။

ထို႔အျပင္ ေတာင္ႀကီးၿမိဳ႕နယ္ ေနာင္ေလ ေက်းရြာအုပ္စု၊ ထီေဝၚရြာ၊ ကန္ေလာင္းရြာႏွင့္ ထီတယမ္ရြာသား မ်ားပိုင္ လယ္ေျမ ဧက ၁၇ဝ အတြင္းတြင္လည္း ရဲသင္တန္းေက်ာင္း ဖြင့္လွစ္ရန္ ေနျပည္ေတာ္ ရဲအရာရွိမ်ား လာေရာက္ကာ ၂ဝ၁၁ ခုႏွစ္ ဒီဇင္ဘာလအတြင္းက အလံနီမ်ား စိုက္ထူသြားျခင္းေၾကာင့္ လယ္ေျမ သိမ္းယူခံရမည္ကို ေဒသခံမ်ားက ပူပန္ေနသည္ဟုလည္း ခြန္ခမ္းေကာင္က မဇၩိမကို ဆက္ေျပာသည္။

အဆိုပါ ျဖစ္စဥ္မ်ားႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ ပိုင္ရွင္ေဒသခံ လယ္သမား ၁၂ဝ ေက်ာ္က ေနျပည္ေတာ္ သမၼတ႐ံုး၊ လယ္ယာ စိုက္ပ်ဳိးေရးဝန္ႀကီးဌာနႏွင့္ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ အစိုးရတို႔ထံ တနလၤာေန႔က အသနားခံစာတေစာင္ လက္မွတ္ေရးထိုး တင္ျပေတာင္းဆိုထားသည္။

ထိုစာတြင္ "က်ေနာ္၊ က်မတို႔၏ အသက္ေသြးေၾကာလို အေရးပါေသာ ဤလယ္ယာေျမမ်ားကို မဆံုး႐ႈံး ေအာင္ အကာအကြယ္ေပးပါရန္ ေမတၱာရပ္ခံ ေတာင္းခံအပ္ပါသည္" ဟု ေဖၚျပပါရွိသည္။ အဆိုပါ လယ္ယာေျမမ်ားတြင္ ဂ်ဳံ၊ ၾကက္သြန္ျဖဴ၊ ပဲစင္းငုံ၊ စေတာ္ဘယ္ရီခင္းမ်ားကို ေဒသခံ လယ္ယာသမားမ်ားက စိုက္ပ်ဳိးအသက္ေမြးေနၾကသည္။

၂ဝဝ၇ ခုႏွစ္အတြင္း ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ေတာင္ပိုင္း ေညာင္ေရႊခ႐ိုင္ ေခါင္တိုင္ရြာတြင္ ဟူပင္ဟိုတယ္မွ ေဒသခံ လယ္သမားမ်ားပိုင္ ကိုင္းၿခံေျမ ၁၈ ဧက ခန္႔ကို သိမ္းယူခဲ့ေသာျဖစ္ရပ္ ရွိခဲ့ေသးသည္။

ေတာင္သူ လယ္သမားမ်ား၏ စိုက္ပ်ဳိးေျမဧက ၇၀၀ ေက်ာ္အတြင္းအာဏာပိုင္တို႔က

အလံစိုက္ထူျခင္း၊ တပ္ေျမ အမွတ္အသားပါ ေက်ာက္တိုင္မ်ား စိုက္ထူျခင္းတို႔ေၾကာင့္

လယ္ေျမသိမ္းယူမည္ကို ေဒသခံလယ္သမားတို႔ စိုးရိမ္ေန(Photo:: Citizen Journalist)

ထိုျဖစ္ရပ္ႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ လယ္သမားမ်ားက ျပည္နယ္ ဝန္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္၊ အင္း တိုင္းရင္းသားေရးရာ ဝန္ႀကီး၊ ကမၻာ့အလုပ္သမား အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ (ILO) တို႔ထံ အသနားခံစာမ်ား တင္ျပခဲ့ေသာ္လည္း တံု႔ျပန္မႈ တစံုတရာမရွိ ေသးဘဲ လယ္သမားမ်ား ယခုအခ်ိန္ထိ သူတို႔၏ လယ္ယာေျမမ်ားကို ျပန္လည္လုပ္ပိုင္ခြင့္ မရရွိေသးဟု ထိုျဖစ္စဥ္ကို ကူညီေပးခဲ့သည့္ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ ေတာင္ႀကီးၿမိဳ႕နယ္ေန ေရွ႕ေန ေဒၚခင္မိုးမိုးက မဇၩိမကို ေျပာသည္။

လယ္ယာေျမ သိမ္းယူမႈမ်ားႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ ၂ဝ၁ဝ ခုႏွစ္ မတ္လ ၉ ရက္ေန႔တြင္က်င္းပသည့္ အမ်ဳိးသား လႊတ္ေတာ္ အတြင္း ပုဇြန္ေတာင္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ မဲဆႏၵနယ္မွ ဦးေအာင္ဇင္က "ေတာင္သူမ်ား၏ လယ္ယာေျမမ်ား ကုိ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေငြျဖင့္ သိမ္းယူျခင္း၊ စက္႐ုံ တည္ေဆာက္ရန္ သိမ္းယူျခင္း၊ လယ္ယာစီမံကိန္းႀကီးမ်ား အေကာင္အထည္ ေဖာ္ရန္ႏွင့္ လယ္ယာစီးပြားဘက္စုံသီးႏွံ ႏွစ္ရွည္ပင္စီမံကိန္းမ်ား အေကာင္အထည္ ေဖာ္ရန္ သိမ္းယူျခင္းစသည္တုိ႔ေၾကာင့္ ေတာင္သူလယ္သမားမ်ား လယ္မဲ့ယာမဲ့ဘဝ ေရာက္ခဲ့ၾကသည္ကုိ ေတြ႔ရွိေနရၿပီး ထိုျဖစ္စဥ္မ်ားကို ေျဖရွင္းေပးရန္ အစီအစဥ္ရွိမရွိ" ေမးျမန္းခဲ့ေသးသည္။

ယင္းေမးခြန္းကို ထိုစဥ္က လယ္ယာစိုက္ပ်ဳိးေရးႏွင့္ ဆည္ေျမာင္းဝန္ႀကီး ဦးေဌးဦး က "ေတာင္သူမ်ား လုပ္ကုိင္ေနေသာ လယ္ေျမမ်ားကုိ သာမန္အားျဖင့္ သိမ္းယူမႈမ်ား မရွိပါ။ သုိ႔ေသာ္ ႏုိင္ငံေတာ္အက်ဳိးအတြက္ ေဆာင္ရြက္ရေသာ လုပ္ငန္းမ်ား၊ စီမံကိန္းမ်ား ေပၚေပါက္လာပါက အနည္းဆုံး လုိအပ္ေသာ ေျမဧရိယာ ကုိသာ ရယူေစသည္" ဟု ျပန္လည္ ေျဖၾကားခဲ့ဖူးသည္။

Ethnic leader: Unless charter is amended, ethnic identity will be in peril

2012-01-31T08:57:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, 31 January 2012 | S.H.A.N

Hkun Okker, Chairman of the PaO National Liberation Organization (PNLO), speaking at the closing ceremony of the 11th batch of the Shan State Social Justice Education Programme training on Sunday, 29 January, said the identities of Burma’s multi-ethnic peoples hang in the balance as long as the country’s latest constitution which is “of the military, by the military, for the military” is not amended or jettisoned.

“Read the preamble and you will find the word ‘oneness’,” he told the 30 students graduating from the school set up by one of Shans’ foremost women activists Charm Tong. “It means the regime continues to aim for one nation, one country and one single identity and there is no room for multi-nationalities.”

He offered the newly adopted national flag as an example. “No country practicing federalism uses a one-star flag, which denotes oneness. But all the authoritarian states like Vietnam and North Korea have one-star flags.”

Hkun Okker, 66, also regarded by non-Burman ethnic peoples as one of their leading legal experts, told SHAN his PNLO delegation will be meeting U Aung Min, Naypyitaw’s peace envoy, early next month, along with at least 4 other opposition movements: Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP), Forum for Democracy in Burma (FDB), All Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF) and Democratic Party for New Society (DPNS).

That has not deterred him from giving the nominally civilian government together with other opposition movements and “some countries” a piece of his mind. “Cosmetic changes by President Thein Sein government have created confusions both at home and abroad. The policy shift by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD (National League for Democracy) has also added fuel to the flame. As a result some countries are prematurely lifting sanctions and some foreign aid agencies including the ODA (Official Development Assistance) are preparing to re-enter the country.”

He strongly criticized the ongoing peace talks and agreements emanating from them as a “quick fix” to solve what is primarily a political issue between the Burman government and the non-Burman ethnic peoples. “They are generously offering business opportunities under the name of Development or Special Economic Zones and using them as delaying tactics against meaningful political dialogue,” he charged.

“This is because they want a quiet rather than peaceful Burma before the 2013 SEA Games, the 2014 Asean Summit and the next round of elections in 2015.”

So far, Naypyitaw has successfully negotiated ceasefire agreements with 7 armed groups: United Wa State Army (UWSA), National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA), Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS), Chin National Front (CNF), Karen National Union (KNU) and Shan State Progress Party (SSPP).

As doors open, businesses face a formidable frontier

2012-01-29T09:25:00.000-08:00

Published: 29/01/2012 Bangkok Post

The civilian government is coming out of decades of isolation, but along with a wealth of opportunities investors are faced with several challenges in overcoming the rot of military rule.

As Myanmar trades political reforms in return for an end to economic sanctions, businesses big and small are queuing for access to the region's last closed economy. Entry will be dictated by political connections, financial clout, further reforms and necessity.

Chief among those necessities will be food and infrastructure _ roads, ports dams, electricity and access to clean water _ but areas like health are also in dire need of investment. Myanmar was ranked 190th among other countries in terms of its health care, the worst in the world. Access to capital and appropriate partners are the biggest stumbling blocks to development in these areas.

"Burma [Myanmar] is one of the few frontier or 'reservoir' countries left _ Cuba is another example _ that have serious economic potential due to their resources and proximity to large developed or developing markets," said Gavin Greenwood, a risk consultant with Hong Kong-based Allan & Associates.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

China, Thailand and Singapore have been active in Myanmar for a decade while Japan, South Korea, India, the US and Europe have made recent forays and are easing sanctions. According to one analyst this was akin to "kicking the tyres" to assess what's possible and profitable.

Two large ports are already under construction. China National Petroleum Corp has begun construction of a 770km oil pipeline from Myanmar's west coast to China with port facilities being built in Madeira.

That area offers access to nearby offshore oil and gas fields, existing port facilities which include a naval base, an existing airport at Kyaukpyu and deepwater and sheltered moorings for docking with an expected depth of up to 20m. Importantly, the pipeline highlights Myanmar's strategic importance, providing an alternative route for China's energy needs to the Malacca Straits.

A massive US$8.6 billion (272 billion baht) port and industrial complex is also under construction in Dawei in the south by Italian-Thai Development Co, which has a 60-year concession. The industrial park is massive, 16 times bigger than the largest of any such project already built in Thailand.

"Looking ahead 20 years from now, 2030, the economy around the Indian Ocean would be growing more than it is now given the fact there are at least two major countries located nearby _ China and India," said Somchet Thinaphong, managing director of Dawei Development Co.

"Burma and Dawei are in the middle. So this creates a uniqueness for new investments and we should immediately capitalise," he said. "There is a route which represents a regional corridor from Dawei passing through Bangkok to Vietnam. It's a strategic corridor."

More important, he says, will be Myanmar's strategic importance within Asean which is aiming to become a fully integrated economic community by 2015. The Dawei Special Economic Zone will become an Asean hub.

Essentially the goal by 2015 for the community is to have a stable, prosperous economy capable of competing with the likes of China and India with the free flow of goods, services, investments and capital _ based on a single market and production base. It's an ambition that has been incompatible with Myanmar's trajectory in recent decades and something had to give, especially considering Naypyidaw's ambitions of serving as Asean chair in 2014.

''The next big story is likely to be the new special economic zones, including along the borders with Thailand and China,'' said Morten Pedersen, a Myanmar analyst with the University of New South Wales in Australia. ''This should include agri-business, which is certainly a big priority for the government.''

He said from a developmental perspective, with foreign direct investment (FDI) increasing and broadening, a key issue in the coming years would be the quality of investment and this would also encompass human rights and environmental issues.

''It will be a long time before the Burmese government is able _ even if willing _ to exert proper supervision in this area,'' Mr Pedersen said.

FROM THE INSIDE OUT

Resource rich with a population of about 60 million, the potential size of Myanmar's economy is comparable to that of Thailand and Vietnam but the immediate transitional period is expected to create problems for an inward looking government and profit-demanding foreigners.

Nevertheless the idea of a politically correct Myanmar will no doubt tantalise business with potential opportunities thought unimaginable just six months ago.

''Burma is now entering its age of reconnaissance as companies from countries that had shunned the country's military regime for decades examine its potential as a market for their products or services or source of raw materials or low cost labour,'' Mr Greenwood said.

The list of companies lining up is a who's who of the corporate world.

Chief among Thai corporations are PTT, PTT Exploration & Production, Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding and Hemaraj Land & Development. These firms are likely to benefit from large infrastructure and border economic development projects.

Toyota and Honda have expressed an interest in locating a production base at Dawei as part of a broader strategy to reduce costs. Japan has also indicated it will help bank roll the project, although it would also like to restructure debt currently held by the country's military leaders.

Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Sumitomo, all from Japan, along with Malaysia's Petronas, American conglomerate General Electric, Danish shipping Line Maersk and Indian group Jubilant Energy are also planning to invest.

And amid the brouhaha that came with the release of political prisoners over recent months, other announcements were made by the government which fielded much less coverage.

This included the awarding of 10 on-shore oil and gas blocks, by far the biggest tenders, to companies that included Petronas, PTT Exploration & Production and Jubilant.

THE WILD WESTHowever, just like the opening of Vietnam and Laos at the end of the Cold War, Cambodia once its civil wars ended in 1998 or Thailand 30 years ago, Myanmar remains a legal and political minefield dogged by corruption. Transparency International ranks it at 180 equal with Afghanistan, one spot ahead of Somalia and two ahead of North Korea, considered the most corrupt country on Earth.

''As far as I know, rules and regulations are one of the biggest obstacles,'' said one Yangon-based political analyst who declined to be named.

''Here in Myanmar, there is no investment law, money exchange law, things like that. Nowadays, businessmen from abroad complain that there are no clear explanations for obstacles they face because there is no clear direction,'' he said.

Those laws are expected to be discussed and legislation passed by the parliament in upcoming sessions and are sorely needed for all levels of the isolated society. Copyright infringement in the arts is another major issue. Artists of all types, particularly musicians, have for years simply copied and sold works from abroad while claiming it as their own.

Banks are also keen to get involved, in particular the UK-based Standard Chartered, Bangkok Bank, Siam Commercial and Krung Thai. But the country lacks an independent central bank, nor has it fully recovered from the 2003 crisis when 20 private banks or informal financial companies went bankrupt.

The black market flourishes on the dilapidated main streets of Yangon. Mr Greenwood said another major hurdle to stepping-up low cost industrialisation to kick-start a moribund economy is Myanmar's human limitations.

Myanmar had a history of high quality English-orientated education but 50 years of military rule resulted in the closure of the best universities and schools amid fears they would harbour student resentment and protests. According to Joshua Kurlantzick of the Council on Foreign Relations this was perhaps the most destructive blow dealt to Myanmar's economic future.

Mr Greenwood was harsher in his assessment: ''The emerging population has been effectively uneducated, or even 'diseducated' _ by the regime in what may be compared to a less bloody variant of the Khmer Rouge efforts to create supine, isolated and even physically weakened peasantry,'' he said.

One possible solution touted is the return of educated exiles. But analysts doubted the release of dissidents, political reforms and the prospect that freed democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi will win a seat in parliament at the April 1 by-elections would be enough to entice those living abroad with well paid jobs to return home.

POTENTIAL AND PITFALLS

Despite the shortcomings, a business boom is already being talked up. Last November the country's industry minister declared the government was expecting an enormous inflow of foreign investment, mainly from Asia.

The price of industrial land has reportedly quadrupled in parts of Yangon on the back of a rumour mill running hot on speculation about the development of satellite cities and large construction projects.

Even up-market travel agents are starting to offer boutique services out of Bangkok. One group, Khiri Travel, is offering tours around the country in a private and, of course, luxurious jet.

At $8,500 a head a for four days and three nights, the company's general manager Edwin Briels was optimistic in describing his target market as ''high-end clients who want to be treated like millionaires'' undertaking ''one of the greatest little holidays in Asia''.

Currently, Myanmar's main income earners are a little more modest. Garments and tourism, alongside timber felling _ an abomination among environmentalists _ and mining have provided limited financial returns for a government which has already privatised much of the country's assets among the military.

While comparisons with Thailand and Vietnam are understandable, the reality is that Myanmar sits squarely behind Cambodia and Laos, which have been transformed by a decade of unprecedented growth with both countries establishing stock markets.

''Myanmar could create a stock exchange within a couple of years but first it has to pass some new enabling laws,'' said Doug Clayton, chief executive officer of Leopard Capital, an investment fund that focuses on emerging markets.

Mr Clayton has followed Myanmar's fortunes for more than two decades and said property, hotels and consumer goods usually led the foreign investment wave into transitional countries but that such investors in Myanmar faced peculiar hurdles such as sanctions, uncompetitive foreign investment regulations and a bizarre official exchange rate system.

''All this may rapidly change as Myanmar's reforms continues but this is the reality as of today,'' he said.

His sentiments were echoed by Mr Pedersen who added the economics in the early days of development of such countries was more about politics and Myanmar had the potential to become a serious regional competitor in areas like garments once sanctions are lifted.

''But this will take some significant progress in day-to-day governance, below the changes in high politics and governance approach that we are seeing at the moment,'' he said, adding that small investors were likely to see a quick rise in demand off the back of tourism.

However, he added it would take some time before an expat community was established, if at all, to support the levels of Western-style bars and restaurants seen in the other major cities around the region that often find support among the foreign donor community and NGOs.

''In fact, I am not sure this will ever happen _ the Burmese are much more self-reliant and likely to continue to limit the role of aid agencies. And that's a good thing, I think,'' Mr Pedersen said.

Either way, analysts agree that Myanmar as a development story could run for decades, the process will be long, at times arduous _ and the returns could be great for Myanmar and business alike _ if the reforms initiated by the civilian government after it came to power in November, 2010, remain on track.

ပအိုဝ္း PNLO ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ေရြးၿပီး၊ ေဆြးေႏြးရက္ မသိရေသး

2012-01-27T09:16:00.000-08:00

By ကိုဝိုင္း | ဇန္နဝါရီလ ၂၇ ရက္ ၂၀၁၂ ခုႏွစ္ | မဇၥ်ိမ

ခ်င္းမိုင္ (မဇၥ်ိမ) ။ ။ ပအိုဝ္းအမ်ဳိးသား လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ PNLO က အစိုးရႏွင့္ ေဆြးေႏြးရန္ အဖြဲ႔ဝင္ ၅ ဦးပါသည့္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းအဖြဲ႔ ဖြဲ႔စည္းထားရွိေၾကာင္း ဥကၠ႒ ဗိုလ္မႉးႀကီး ခြန္ဥကၠာက ေျပာသည္။

PNLO ၏ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအဖြဲ႔တြင္ အတြင္းေရးမႉး ခြန္ျမင့္ထြန္း ဦးေဆာင္ၿပီး ဗဟိုေကာ္မတီဝင္မ်ား ျဖစ္သည့္ တြဲဘက္ အတြင္းေရးမႉး-၁ ဗိုလ္မႉးႀကီး ခြန္သူရိန္၊ ခြန္ေအာင္ေက်ာ္၊ ခြန္အိုး၊ ခြန္မ်ဳိး တို႔က အဖြဲ႔ဝင္မ်ားအျဖစ္ ပါဝင္ၾကသည္။

ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးလုပ္ငန္းမ်ားကို ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံမွ အက်ိဳးေဆာင္ေနသူ ဦးညိဳအုန္းျမင့္ က သမၼတကိုယ္စားလွယ္ ရထားဝန္ႀကီး ဦးေအာင္မင္းႏွင့္ ေဖေဖာ္ဝါရီလထဲတြင္ ေဆြးေႏြးႏိုင္ရန္ ျပင္ဆင္ထားေရး ေျပာဆိုလာေသာ္လည္း ရက္အတိအက် ကိုမူ ယခုတိုင္ မသိေသးေၾကာင္း ခြန္ဥကၠာက ေျပာသည္။

“ေတြ႔မယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ UNFC မူပါပဲ။ ႏိုင္ငံေရးေဆြးေႏြးဖို႔ အဓိကျဖစ္တယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံေရးေဆြးေႏြးမႈ အာမခံခ်က္မရွိရင္ အပစ္ခတ္ရပ္စဲေရး မရွိဘူးေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ အပစ္ရပ္စာရင္းထဲ ထည့္႐ုံေလာက္ေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တို႔မွာ စိတ္ကူးမရွိပါဘူး” ဟု မဇၥ်ိမကို ေျပာသည္။

တိုင္းရင္းသားအဖြဲ႔အစည္း ၁၁ ခုျဖင့္ စုဖြဲ႔ထားသည့္ ညီညြတ္ေသာတိုင္းရင္းစားလူမ်ဳိးမ်ား ဖက္ဒရယ္ေကာင္စီ UNFC အဖြဲ႔ဝင္မ်ားအေနျဖင့္ အစိုးရ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္မ်ားႏွင့္ တဖြဲ႔ခ်င္း ပဏာမေတြ႔ဆံုႏိုင္ၿပီး အပစ္ရပ္ လက္မွတ္ထိုးျခင္း၊
ႏုိင္ငံေရး ေဆြးေႏြးျခင္းကို UNFC တစံုလံုး အေနျဖင့္ ေဆာင္ရြက္မည္ဟု စတင္ဖြဲ႔စည္းစဥ္က သေဘာတူထားၾက သည္။

“အရင္တုန္းကေတာ့ တဖြဲ႔ခ်င္းလည္း မရပ္နဲ႔ေပါ့။ အပစ္ရပ္စကားေတာ့ ေျပာေပါ့။ လက္မွတ္ထိုးရင္ အကုန္လံုး
ေပါင္းထိုးမွာေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အခုက အပစ္ရပ္စဲတဲ့ကိစၥကို တဖြဲ႔ခ်င္း ရပ္ေနၿပီဆိုေတာ့ မတတ္ႏိုင္ေတာ့ဘူးေလဗ်ာ” ဟု သူက ဆက္ေျပာသည္။

ဇန္နဝါရီလအတြင္းက အစိုးရ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအဖြဲ႔ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဦးေအာင္မင္းႏွင့္ ထိုင္းနယ္စပ္တြင္ အလြတ္သေဘာ ပဏာမ ေတြ႔ဆံုခဲ့ဖူးသူ ခြန္ဥကၠာ က အစိုးရအေနျဖင့္ တဖြဲ႔ခ်င္း အပစ္ရပ္စဲေရး လက္မွတ္ထိုးရန္သာ အဓိက လိုခ်င္ေနၿပီး တႏိုင္ငံလံုး အပစ္ရပ္ေရးအတြက္ ေဆာင္ရြက္ခ်က္မ်ား မေတြ႔ရဟု ဆိုသည္။

“အခုဟာက တျပည္လံုး အပစ္ရပ္စဲေရးလို႔ တင္လိုက္တာ မူအားျဖင့္လက္ခံတယ္ ေျပာလိုက္တယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ဘာမွ မလုပ္ေပးဘူးေလ။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ကေတာ့ အဲဒီလို အလြယ္တကူလုပ္ဖို႔ စိတ္ကူးမရွိဘူးဗ်” ဟု သူက ဆက္ေျပာသည္။

တ႐ုတ္-ျမန္မာနယ္စပ္မွ ျမန္မာ့ႏိုင္ငံေရးေလ့လာသူ ဦးေအာင္ေက်ာ္ေဇာကမူ အစိုးရက အပစ္ ရပ္ေရး၊ ဖြံၿဖိဳးေရး၊
ႏုိင္ငံေရး ေဆြးေႏြးေရး အဆင့္ ၃ ဆင့္ျဖင့္သြားေနေၾကာင္း၊ အပစ္ရပ္ေရးတခုသာ ေဆာင္ရြက္ခဲ့ဖူးသည့္ တိုင္းရင္းသား အဖြဲ႔မ်ား၌လည္း အဖြဲ႔တြင္း အကြဲအျပဲမ်ားျဖင့္သာ ၾကံဳခဲ့ရသျဖင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအရ အေျဖရွာရန္ လိုအပ္ေၾကာင္း ေထာက္ျပ သည္။

“အစိုးရ လွမ္းတဲ့ ေျခလွမ္းက စစ္မွန္တဲ့ အမ်ဳိးသားသင့္ျမတ္ေရး မဟုတ္ဘူး။ အစိုးရက ၂ဝ၁၂ ကေန ၂ဝ၁၄ အထိ ကို ေသနတ္သံ မထြက္ဖို႔က ႏိုင္ငံတကာမ်က္ႏွာစာမွာ သူ႔အတြက္ သိပ္အေရးႀကီးတယ္။ အဓိက ေဒသဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးေရးနဲ႔ ထိန္းထားမယ္” ဟု သူက သံုးသပ္သည္။

တိုင္းရင္းသားအဖြဲ႔မ်ားအေနျဖင့္ အပစ္ရပ္စဲေရး မျဖစ္မေန လုပ္ရလွ်င္လည္း ဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးေရးအဆင့္ကို မသြားဘဲ ႏိုင္ငံေရး
ေဆြးေႏြးမႈအဆင့္ကို စုေပါင္းရပ္တည္သင့္ေၾကာင္း အၾကံျပဳၿပီး အမ်ဳိးသားညီလာခံကဲ့သို႔ ႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ မၾကာသင့္ဟုလည္း ဦးေအာင္ေက်ာ္ေဇာ က ဆိုသည္။

ဇန္နဝါရီလဆန္းပိုင္းတြင္ ျပည္နယ္အဆင့္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအဖြဲ႔ႏွင့္ ပဏာမ လက္မွတ္ထိုးခဲ့သည့္ UNFC အဖြဲ႔ဝင္ ခ်င္းအမ်ဳိးသား တပ္ဦး CNF ကမူ သူတို႔ လက္မွတ္ထိုးသည့္ စာခ်ဳပ္မွာ အပစ္ရပ္ ေရးစာခ်ဳပ္မဟုတ္ဘဲ ထာဝရ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဖာ္ေဆာင္မည့္ လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ဆိုင္ရာ သေဘာတူညီခ်က္သာ ျဖစ္ၿပီး ႏိုင္ငံေရးကိစၥမ်ားကို UNFC အပါအဝင္ က်ယ္ျပန္႔စြာ ေဆြးေႏြးသြားမည္ဟုဆိုသည္။

“အပစ္ရပ္စဲေရးစာခ်ဳပ္ မဟုတ္ဘူး။ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးကို ေဖာ္ေဆာင္မယ့္ လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ဆိုင္ရာ သေဘာတူညီခ်က္။ အဲဒီ သေဘာတူညီခ်က္ကို လုပ္တဲ့အခါမွာ ပထမအဆင့္ကေတာ့ စစ္ဖက္အပါအဝင္ ရန္ေစာင္ ရန္လိုမႈေတြကို ႏွစ္ဖက္ စလံုးက ရပ္တံ့မယ္ဆိုတာ ပါတယ္” ဟု CNF ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအဖြဲ႔ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒါက္တာေရႊခါးက ဆိုသည္။

UNFC တြင္ အေျခခံအဖြဲ႔ ၆ ဖြဲ႔ျဖစ္သည့္ ကခ်င္ KIO၊ ကရင္ KNU၊ ခ်င္း CNF၊ မြန္ NMSP၊ ကရင္္နီ KNPP၊ ရွမ္း SSPP ႏွင့္ ဆက္စပ္အဖြဲ႔ ကခ်င္ KNO၊ ပေလာင္ PSLF၊ လားဟူ LDU၊ ရခုိင္ NUPA၊ ပအုိဝ္း PNLO၊ ဝ' WNO တို႔ ၁၂ ဖြဲ႔ပါဝင္ေသာ္လည္း ယခုအခါ ကခ်င္ ႏွစ္ဖြဲ႔ေပါင္းသြားသျဖင့္ ၁၁ ဖြဲ႔ ျဖစ္သြားေၾကာင္း ဗိုလ္မႉးၾကီး ခြန္ဥကၠာက
ေျပာသည္။

Jailed Karen Leader Facing Trial Again

2012-01-27T08:57:00.000-08:00

By ZARNI MANN | Friday, January 27, 2012 | The Irrawaddy

Despite hints that he would be released as a goodwill gesture, detained Karen National Union (KNU) leader Mahn Nyein Maung is facing trial and a possible sentence of life imprisonment or execution, according to his lawyer.

“The judge informed me yesterday to prepare for the trial which will begin again this coming Thursday. They are charging him with two acts—participating in a battle against the country and ruling government, which can carry a sentence of life imprisonment or death, and having connections to an illegal organization, which can carry a sentence of two to three years,” said his lawyer Kyee Myint.

Mahn Nyein Maung, who is currently in Insein Prison, was sentenced to one year imprisonment for breaking immigration laws and possessing a fake passport, later reduced to six months and the prison term served.

“At that time the authorities don’t know who he was, but later, according to reports from various media groups, they found out he was Mahn Nyein Maung and asked him to help with peace talks with the KNU,” added Kyee Myint.

Speaking through his lawyer, Mahn Nyein Maung warned that the trial against him would impact the ongoing peace process with ethnic armed groups.

“He told me that he is worried that people would distrust the government more and this would create difficulties for peace and national reconciliation, since the ethnic groups have long had doubts about every regime of the Burmese government,” said Kyee Myint.

“He said he got a promise from the authorities who interrogated him that they will forget about the trial if he helps them in the peace talks, as he is a leader of the KNU, and gives suggestions. So he suggested to approach the KNU.”

Railways Minister Aung Min gave hints that Mhan Nyein Maung would be released as a gesture of peace two days after meeting with KNU leaders for ceasefire discussions in the second week of January. Both sides signed preliminary agreements and arranged for further talks at the meeting.

David Tharkapaw, vice-president of the KNU, said that the group is confused by the actions of the government.

“This is affecting both sides badly at the same time as we are talking and working strongly—even signing pre-agreements for peace. Since they have not released Mahn Nyein Maung and the other 69 of our detained members, we have a lot to think about and discuss,” he said.

Mahn Nyein Maung, a prominent KNU leader and central committee member of the United Nationalities Federal Council ethnic armed alliance, was arrested in July 2011 by Chinese immigration officials in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province.

He was sent back to Bangkok where he was denied entry by Thai officials. He was then deported to Burma and taken into custody.

Mahn Nyein Maung is a former underground activist inside Burma. In 1960, he was arrested and later sent to the Coco Islands, an infamous detention center for political prisoners located around 300 km off the Burmese mainland in the Indian Ocean.

Mahn Nyein Maung and two other political prisoners, Mahn Aung Kyi and Aung Ngwe, managed to escape from the island in 1970 by floating across the water clutching driftwood. However, they were rearrested when they reached the Burmese mainland. It is the only known escape from the prison, located on what is commonly referred to as “Burma's Devil's Island.”

Due to his extraordinary escape, Mahn Nyein Maung is frequently likened to the famous French prisoner Henri Charrire, nicknamed Papillon, who escaped a penal colony in French Guyana. Like Charrire, Mahn Nyein Maung published a book about his experiences inside the brutal prison at Coco Island and his subsequent escape.

IMAGINE - The Burmese Regime Swindling the European Union

2012-01-26T16:01:00.000-08:00

By Kanbawza Win | January 26, 2012

As a person who had worked at the European Union in Brussels, came as a shock to hear that the Foreign Affairs Council of the E U had adopted conclusions in favour of the current situation in Burma and is suspending the visa ban to prepare the ground for a further significant relaxation of sanctions when they are due for renewal in April.. Even though there are unprecedented causes for optimism, and changes for the better should be positively encouraged, one must harbour the benefit of doubt given the track record of Junta in lying to the international community. There have been many false dawns in the past and we are afraid that the West especially EU might tend to follow the Constructive Engagement used by the Asian countries to prolong the Junta backed administration.

One should note that the current government ministers are the same persons as in the previous Junta administration and lying and procrastination are their standard norms e.g. President Thein Sein made a speech in March 2011 which promises changes in economic and social development but it takes a year to release some political prisoners and still it did not meet the EU criteria of releasing them unconditionally. What more the catch is releasing more criminals like ex-military and ex-government prisoners e.g. the Spy Chief and his MIS team so that it can use them again in their administration as even now Khin Nyunt get $5000 per month for being a patron to a suspicious philanthropic Mya Yeik Nyo Foundation owned by business tycoon and MP Khin Shwe with a salary of $US5, 000 a month. Every Burmese see the writings on the wall of this staggering salary, in a country where a third of the population lives on less than a dollar a day.

Seeking ceasefire with some of the armed ethnic nationalities can be welcome but one recollect that the increased conflict in the past year is a direct result of the military-backed government breaking three ceasefire agreements since elections held in November 2010. [1] Why did the EU made no comment when the ceasefires were broken down, and human rights abuses by the Burmese Army have actually increased? Even now at the time of this writing an all out war against the Kachin with 48,000 soldiers, (120 battalions) [2] while the peace proposal with the Mon has broken down. It is a good aspect that the EU is finally paying more attention to ethnic issues, but talking about financial assistance for returnees is highly premature. Even the ceasefires that have been agreed are tentative, and ceasefires have frequently been broken by the Tatmadaw in the past. With the military-backed government still not engaging in an inclusive political dialogue to address the root causes of the conflict, it is likely to be some time before most refugees feels safe to return.[3] The quasi civilian regime is still using its old trick of Divide and Rule only because of increased international pressure, but has so far refused to engage in dialogue about the political root causes of the conflict, instead deferring discussions to a later date.

EU welcomes the relaxation of censorship, in a recent interview with the Washington Post, President Thein Sein refused to give guarantees on media freedom, and when asked if he would repeal censorship laws he said; ‘The media needs to take responsibility and proper actions. Media freedom will be based on the accountability they have.” [4] Burma’s media is still highly restricted and not been repealed. The regime warns that “Action will be taken” to any one that publish the true story of unfairly evicting of the abbot of the Sadhu Pariyatti Monastery in Rangoon for his outspoken views or the ethnic conflicts where the government is dishonesty dealing with them. Moreover local journals have already been prevented about irregularities—including in Kawhmu Township where Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will contest. USDP has been telling people that they will only get access to electricity and micro-credit schemes only if they vote for them.[5] There are several limits on what media can report. Does EU is aware that free and fair conduct by elections is not possible under current laws in Burma?

Everybody welcomes freedom of assembly in Burma but there are numerous conditions in place such as the location of demonstration, numbers of people, and permissions needing to be sought by various authorities as such that no legal protest will go ahead without government approval. For Example if the Monks protested again as in 2007 they could be treated much more worst. Promulgating human rights law seems hallow in view of the many caveats and security laws as they are extremely restrictive. It is a good thing that the EU welcomes legislation on trade union activity, but the first trade union was turned down because the President has not promulgated the law and flatly denied the request to creating a new student union or flies the peacock flag which symbolize Burma’s pro-democracy movement.

We are dumfounded when the EU says that it welcomes the humanitarian access and is serious about the welfare of those in the conflict zone when it still refuses to fund cross-border aid to reach those unfortunate citizens where the military-backed government does not allow access. Hypocrisy is a strong word which we dare not use but the price of EU inaction in this areas are costing thousands of lives, [6]

One could not comprehend of why the Thein Sein government is establishing Human Rights Commission, when Than Shwe the previous dictator has already established a Human Rights Commission to cover up their abuses. A classic example being on the bias report of the conditions in Insein jail and we simply could not understand why did EU fails to call for independent international monitors like the Red Cross to be allowed into Burma’s jails?

Human Rights Watch had proved that the Burmese military continues to violate international humanitarian law through the use of extrajudicial killings, torture, sexual violence, beatings, abusive forced labour, antipersonnel landmines, and pillaging of property, particularly in Kachin, Shan, and Karen States. Yesterday it was revealed that the Tatmadaw deliberately killed a pregnant woman. Burmese army units in Karen State forced convicts to work as porters in ongoing operations in combat zones, mistreating them through beatings, torture, and use as “human shields” to deter attacks or clear antipersonnel landmines. The army continues to actively recruit and use child soldiers, even as the government cooperates with the International Labour Organization on demobilizing child soldiers. Tatmadaw is recruiting child soldiers and using antipersonnel landmines around civilian areas. [7] With such glaring atrocities EU has the heart to reward the Junta backed Government as perhaps because of the numerous German firms and the French Total oil companies are calling the shots at the European Union?

EU members have spoken about three key benchmarks, the release of all political prisoners, the end of conflict, and free and fair elections. None of these benchmarks have been met.

Political prisoners have been released, but not all and most of them are still in jail. This benchmark has not been met. Independent international monitors must be allowed into Burma’s jails to make a proper assessment.
Steps are now being taken to agree ceasefire agreements, but conflict remains. This benchmark has not been met either.
Free and fair elections under Burma’s laws are not possible. NLD with its high profile and strong support can be overcome this hurdle as long as ballot counting is not rigged. However, other smaller political parties remain disadvantaged.

When Senator John McCain met President Thein Sein, he asked to allow international observers to monitor the by-election but it seems that he refused. It should be recollect that in 2010, the regime did not allow any observers, but rather sealed the country off from most international press, rigged the election and appointed ex-military leaders to the new quasi-civilian government. [8] It seems that the reforms are only a ploy to have sanctions removed, rather than a sign of genuine political change.[9]

The EU does not have the broad scale and depth of sanctions which the American has. To give away too many sanctions too soon removes what little leverage the EU has. This will more likely discourage further change, rather than encourage it, and the EU will be sidelined in its influence. The EU has flexibility to change its sanctions regime at any time, not just in April when the annual renewal takes places. There is no need for a premature rush to remove all or most sanctions in April.

It is understandable that the European Union has focus on positives and opportunities as a way of encouraging further change is understandable, but glossing over and ignores serious problems that remain tantamount to be preparing the ground for more significant sanctions to be lifted, and inconvenient truths are ignored. It is still early to see the real motivations for what is taking place as the dialogue process that will lead to real reform and reconciliation is still needed. The EU must show that it is willing to respond positively to changes when they do take place, but at the same time must start to be more realistic about the real scale and nature of what is taking place. None of the changes they refer to involve the military and military backed government relinquishing any power or control Implicit in the argument that sanctions must be relaxed to encourage further change is an acceptance that an important motivation for changes taking place is to get sanctions lifted, rather than the military-backed government having a genuine desire to see a democratic transition. We feel that it is too early to give them the attention they deserve

The 11-member National Defence and Security Council (NDSC) comprised of the inner circle of Burma’s government and military leaders, which are the real power behind Thein Sein Administration reportedly, discussed sanctions and come to the conclusion that lifting the visa ban is not their top priority. The greater concern are those that restricting the transfer of their ill gotten treasures to the Western financial institutions for the old generals’ near and dear ones because they did not trust the Chinese banks and have taken lessons on the episode of Slobodan Milošević’s wealth .

What moral leadership would EU give to the Third World countries which are bent on rewarding the Junta’s proxy at the cost of 30 million ethnic nationalities of Burma? Perhaps the economic lens of the EU on the natural and human resources of Burma is too great to count the life and limb of the poor and persecuted ethnic nationalities.

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[1] Analysis of EU Conclusion of Burma by Burma US Campaign No 17 Jan 2012
[2] Interview with Gen. Sumlut Gun Maw, the vice chief of staff of the KIA
[3]Analysis of EU Conclusion of Burma by Burma US Campaign No 17 Jan 2012
[4] Answer to Lally Weymouth, senior associate editor for The Washington Post,
[5] Irrawaddy 23-2-2012 Burma's Censors Tighten Grip Ahead of By-election
[6] Analysis of EU Conclusion of Burma by Burma US Campaign No 17 Jan 2012
[7] Human Rights Watch 23-1-2012 Burma: Promises of change, but abuses continue
[8] Irrawaddy 23-1-2011 Sanctions Debate Heated Up in Naypyidaw
[9] Hindstrom;Hana EU sanctions move triggers heated debate 25-1-2012

ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးဓါတ္အားေပးစီမံကိန္းမ်ား ရပ္ဆိုင္းေပးရန္ တိုင္းရင္းသားအဖြဲ႕မ်ားက ေတာင္းဆို

2012-01-25T11:49:00.000-08:00

By ဗိုဟိန္ (ေရႊျမစ္ခ) | Myit Makha Mediagroup on 25 Jan, 2012

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရွိ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးသံုးလွ်ပ္စစ္ဓါတ္အားေပး စက္ရံုစီမံကိန္းအားလံုး ရပ္ဆိုင္းေပးရန္အတြက္ ပအို၀္းလူငယ္အစည္းအရံုးႏွင္႔ ရွမ္းသဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္အဖြဲ႕အစည္းတို႔မွ ဇန္န၀ါရီလ(၂၄)ရက္ေန႔က ေၾကျငာခ်က္ တစ္ေစာင္ထုတ္၍ ေတာင္းဆိုခဲ႔ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

သဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ဆိုင္ရာ ဆိုးက်ဳိးမ်ားျဖစ္ေပၚလာႏိုင္သည္႔အတြက္ စီမံကိန္းအားလံုး ရပ္ဆိုင္းရန္ ပတ္၀န္းက်င္အေရးလႈပ္ရွားသည္႔ အဖြဲ႕မ်ားက ေတာင္းဆိုခဲ့ျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။

“ဘာျဖစ္လို႔ အစိုးရက ႏိုင္ငံအတြင္းက သဘာ၀ဓါတ္ေငြေတြ ထုတ္ေရာင္းၿပီးေတာ႔ ေဒသခံျပည္သူေတြကို အဆိပ္သင္႔ေစတဲ႔ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးမႈန္႔ေတြၾကားမွာ မြန္းၾကပ္ေစတာလဲ “ ဟု ပအိုင္းလူငယ္အစည္းအရံုးမွ ကိုခြန္းမ်ဳိးထိုက အဆိုပါေၾကျငာခ်က္တြင္ ထည္သြင္းေျပာၾကားခဲ႔သည္။

ပအို၀္းလူငယ္အစည္းအရံုးႏွင္႔ ရွမ္းသဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္အဖြဲ႕မ်ားမွာ နယ္စပ္အေျခစိုက္ သဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ အေရး၊ လူ႔အခြင္႔အေရးခ်ဳိးေဖာက္္မႈ မွတ္တမ္းတင္သြင္းေရးႏွင္႔ လူငယ္စြမ္းရည္ျမွင္႔တင္ေရးလုပ္ငန္းမ်ား လုပ္ ေဆာင္ေနၾကသည္႔ အဖြဲ႕မ်ားျဖစ္သည္။

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးဓါတ္အားေပးစက္ရံုေပါင္း(၇)ရံု တည္ေဆာက္ရန္ရွိသည္႔အနက္ တီက်စ္ စက္ရံု တစ္ရံု သာ လည္ပတ္ေနေၾကာင္းသိရသည္။

လက္ရွိအႀကီးဆံုး ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးလွ်ပ္စစ္ဓါတ္အားေပးစက္ရံုမွာ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ေတာင္ပိုင္းရွိ မဂၢါ၀ပ္ (၁၂၀) ထြက္ တီက်စ္ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးသံုး လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓါတ္အားေပးစက္ရံုျဖစ္ၿပီး၊ ထိုစက္ရံုမွ အဆိပ္အေတာက္ ျဖစ္ေစ ေသာဓါတ္ေငြ႔ႏွင္႔ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးျပာမႈန္တန္(၁၀၀)ေက်ာ္ကို ေန႔စဥ္ထုတ္လြင္႔လ်က္ရွိေၾကာင္း ပအို၀္းလူငယ္ အစည္းအရံုးမွ ျပဳစုထားသည္႔ အဆိပ္သင္႔တိမ္မ်ား အစီရင္ခံစာတြင္ ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။

ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္အေရွ႕ပိုင္းတြင္ အီတာလွ်ံထိုင္းကုမၸဏီမွ မဂၢါ၀ပ္(၃၆၉)ထုတ္လုပ္ေပးသည္႔ မိုင္းကုတ္ေက်ာက္ မီးေသြးသံုး လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓါတ္အားေပးစက္ရံုတစ္ခုကိုလည္း အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္လွ်က္ရွိေၾကာင္း စာတမ္းပါ အခ်က္မ်ားအရ သိရွိရသည္။

မီဒီယာမ်ားႏွင္႔ သဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္အေရး ခ်စ္ခင္သူမ်ား၏ ရပ္တန္႔ေပးရန္ ေတာင္းဆိုမႈေၾကာင္႔ ၿပီးခဲ႔သည္႔ ဇန္န၀ါရီလ (၉) ရက္ေန႔က အမွတ္(၂)လွ်ပ္စစ္စြမ္းအား၀န္ႀကီး႒ာန ၀န္ႀကီး ဦးခင္ေမာင္စိုးမွ ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ ဆိပ္ကမ္း တည္ေဆာက္ေရးစီမံကိန္းတြင္ တစ္ခုအပါအ၀င္ျဖစ္သည္႔ မဂၢါ၀ပ္(၄၀၀၀)ထြက္ရွိမည္႕ ေက်ာက္မီး ေသြးသံုး လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓါတ္အားေပး စက္ရံုတည္ေဆာက္ေရးစီမံကိန္းအား ရပ္ဆိုင္းခဲ႔သည္။

Environmentalists call for full moratorium on coal-fired power plants in Burma

2012-01-24T20:43:00.000-08:00

Press release from Pa-Oh Youth Organization and Shan Sapawa Environmental Organization

January 24, 2012

Environmentalists call for full moratorium on coal-fired power plants in Burma

Decision on Dawei coal plant only first step toward clean energy

Enivornmentalists today are calling for a full moratorium on all existing and planned coal-fired power plants in Burma following the announcement earlier this month canceling the proposed 4,000 Megawatt coal-fired power plant in Dawei.

Burma’s Minister of Electricity No.2 Khin Maung Soe announced on January 9 that the proposed 4,000 Megawatt coal-fired power plant in the Dawei Special Economic Zone would be cancelled due to the potential environmental impacts of the plant.

Burma currently has plans to construct seven coal-fired power plants across the country; two are currently operational. The largest is the 120 MW Tigyit plant in southern Shan State, which emits clouds of poisonous gases and produces over 100 tons of toxic fly ash per day. A report released last year detailed how air and water pollution in Tigyit is threatening the agriculture and health of nearly 12,000 people.

According to the Electricity Minister, the government may still build a 400 MW plant in Dawei, over three times the size of the Tigyit plant.

Another coal-fired plant by the main developer of the Dawei project, Italian-Thai Public Company Limited, is underway in eastern Shan State without public scrutiny. The Mong Kok plant will produce 369 MW and export power to Thailand.

“If the government is really concerned about the impacts of coal, it should stop all coal plants in Burma” said Khun Myo Hto of the Pa-Oh Youth Organization. “However ‘small’ a coal plant is, we know how deadly it can be for local communities.”

Burma lacks a comprehensive energy plan that addresses environmental and social impacts and local energy needs and despite chronic energy shortages, exports vast energy resources to neighboring countries. This includes the export of natural gas, which is much less polluting than coal.

“Why is the government selling off our country’s natural gas and leaving us to choke on the toxic emissions of dirty coal?” said Khun Myo Hto.

For further details about coal projects in Burma, see www.paohyouth.org/ and www.shansapawa.org

Contact: Khun Myo Hto (Pa-Oh Youth Organization)

Phone: 085 7099 026, Email: office@paohyouth.org

Contact: Sai Tueng Leng Aung (Shan Sapawa Organization)

Phone: 083 3217 985, Email: shansapawa@gmail.com

Myanmarnization of the Ethnic Nationalities: The betrayal of the Ideals of Bogyoke Aung San

2012-01-23T10:42:00.000-08:00

By Kanbawza Win | January 23, 2012

When the Panglong Agreement was signed in 1947 the Shan, Chin and Kachin want to speed up their own search for freedom together with the Myanmar brothers based on the principle of equality mutual trans and recognition and not to integrate their societies and their lands into the Myanmar Buddhist society or the Myanmar kingdom.[1] Here the concept of coming together means coming in difference and not one being merge into another.

The idea of Bogoke Aung San was to build a Union of Burma, an entirely new country through a state building and not to create a nation through nation-building. In the submission of the Union constitution to the AFPFL at Jubilee Hall on May 1947, Bogyoke Aung San himself has said,

“When we build our new Burma, shall we build it as a Union or a Unitary State? In my opinion it will not be feasible to set up a Unitary State. We must set up a Union with a properly regulated provision to set up the rights of the ethnic nationalities.”[2]

However Myanmar contemporary historians never emphasized this phrase and wish that the people of Burma especially the ethnic nationalities would forget it. Even the arch supporter of the Burmese Junta Dr Maung Maung points out that,

“The Union States should have their own separate constitutions, their own organ of states, viz parliament, government and Judiciary.”[3]

It should be recollected that on the eve on the historic Panglong Conference to be exact on 11th Frb.1947 Bogyoke Aung San said,

“The dreams of a unified and free Burma has always haunted me...We who are gathered here tonight are engaged in the pursuit of the same dream. We have in Burma many indigenous peoples, the Karen, the Kachin, the Shan, the Chin, the Burman and others. In other countries too there are many indigenous peoples, many races. Thus races do not have rigid boundaries. Religion is no barrier either for it is a matter of individual conscience...If we want the nation to prosper; we must pool our resources, manpower, wealth, skills and work together. If we are divided, the Karen, the Shan, the Kachin, the Chin, the Barman, the Mon and the Arakanese, each pulling in a different direction, the Union will be torn, and we will come to grief. Let us come and work together.”[4]

Bogyoke Aung San has a clear idea of nation building and see the writing on the wall that the old concept of one religion, one race and one language had gone obsolete.[5] He rejected the religiously orientated ethno-nationalism that misled religion with politics. He thus declared,

“Religion is a matter of individual conscience, while politics is social science. We must see to it that the individual enjoys his rights, including the rights to freedom of religious beliefs and worship. We must draw clear lines between politics and religion because the two are not the same thing. If we mix religion and politics then we offend the spirit of religion itself.”[6]

Myanmar Chauvinism
This is the essence of coming together but as everybody knows it Bogyoke Aung San and his key leaders were assassinated on 9th July 1948 and it was U Chan Htun the only proficient person whom the leaders had put their trust on him shows his Mahar Bamar (မဟာဗမာ) mentality by betraying Bogyoke Aung San and the ethnic nationalities of Burma by completely changing his vision made it a unitary state. According to U Chan Htun’s interpretation was that the Myanmar did not form their own ethnic state, instead they combine the power of the Myanmar national State with the whole sovereign state of the Union of Burma. Thus while one ethnic group; the Myanmar control the sovereign power of the Union, that is, the administrative, legislative and judiciary of the Union of Burma, the other ethnic nationalities automatically became a vassal state of the Myanmar race.[7] And this is exactly of what is happening today.

In order to control these ethnic nationalities it first set up the military base in Ba Htoo near Lawk Sauk in Southern Shan State, then it slowly expanded it to Nam Sang, Liang Khio, Mong Hsat in Shan states[8] and now they have several military bases in Chin, Kachin and Karen states. Since that time the various Burmese administrations have treated the ethnic nationalities as a colonial power instead of the Union of Burma.

The government use religion as an integration process which gives rise to the resentment of the non Buddhist especially among the ethnic nationalities. This spoil the theory of unity in diversity itself Although Buddhism has been a powerful integrative force in the traditional Myanmar society and is used to start as a rallying point against the British colonialist it was of little use in the settings of a multi cultural and multi religious context especially for a multi ethnic plural society. U Nu made an attempt to achieve homogeneity by imposing religious and cultural assimilation. In 1953 the ministry of Religious and Culture was created to promote the process of assimilation and eventually in 1961 Buddhism was declared a state religion.[9]

General Ne Win came to power in 1962 he went a step further by removing the rights and culture of the ethnic nationalities as a means of creating homogeneous unitary state. This he made it by declaring the Burmese language as the only official language to be used in the country and making Burmese as the medium of teaching in all levels of education from primary to University. No doubt the standard of education fell. He also prohibited the right for the ethnic peoples to learn their own languages. Hence national building both for U Nu and Ne Win was based on the notion of one language, one language and one religion. While U Nu opted for cultural and religious assimilation in Buddhism as a means of integration Ne Win used the national language policy and denied the rights of the ethnic nationalities as a means of creating a homogeneous society.

Hence the changing of the country’s name from Burma to Myanmar was an important step in assimilating the ethnic nationalities and it was done by force, and for the last half a century the Burmese Tatmadaw had implemented by killing the ethnic nationalities, destroying their livelihood, using rape as a weapon, waging war on ethic nationalities religion and culture by means of various persecution, destroying the identity of the ethnic nationalities.

Under the pretext of nation building, successive administrations have not only violated the basic human rights but also all categories of collective rights. Under cover of national sovereignty, the rights of self determination are rejected and in the name of national integration the right to follow different religions to practice different cultures, and to speak different languages are deprived and in the name of national assimilation the rights to uphold different identities and traditions are denied. In other words ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide has been going on for more than half a century. Either the ethnic nationalities must be integrated within the majority culture destroying their original cultural roots, or they must be denied the opportunity to enhance their cultural identity through political means. They seem to be inspired by Pakistan and Malaysia that make Muslim and Nepal that make Hindu as the state religion. Hence this is the basic philosophy of the Mahar Myanmar mentality which is the crux of the Burmese problem.

Currently there are two types of Myanmar, Democracy loving Myanmar who really believes in the Union of Burma and those Mahar Myanmar who still believe and interpret history only from their narrow nationalistic Myanmar perspective. The latter is hegemonic and myopically nationalistic believe that linear progression of Myanmar, save the colonial interlude of a century from a Buddhist kingdom originating in Pagan to today's modern nation-state are considered as a Mahar Myanmar is somewhat akin to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi theory of the superiority of the Aryan race. Hence these Mahar Myanmar did not have an ounce of the Union Spirit and is unable to accept any ethnic nationality as an equal. They construe that they are imbue with a special quality far superior than others and that they must always be leaders in every aspect of society.

On the other hand the Pyidaungsu Myanmar are those genuine Burma especially from upper Burma known as Ah Nyar of our beloved Bogyoke Aung San’s lineage that want to share equally their weal and woe with the ethnic nationalities. They are the real followers of Bogyoke Aung Sau and are desirous to build the country in a modern way, humane and want to take a place in the hall of civilized nations. They did not want to be a pariah nation.

No Tolerance
The Burmese administrations never teach the tolerance of other religion such as the minority religions adherence of Christians, Muslims, and Hindus etc. They never mentioned that some of the heroes of Pagan dynasty such as Byatwi and Byatta were Muslim brothers. Every historian on Burma will agree that in the Pagan temples all are not dedicated to Theravada type of Buddhism only but also there are temples of Mahayana type and Hindu temples dedicated to Lord Vishnu.[10] Again the Pagan temples were built by the Greeks and Roman architect whom the Burmese kings invited them and in many temples of Pagan the Christian cross were painted which shows that Christianity have reached the first Burmese dynasty. The first Church was built in Pagan and when the Irrawaddy River changed course it was swept away. The first Burmese Christian king was Natshinnaug, the famous poet and so on. This clearly indicates that tolerance of religion existed since that days and now with the Myanmarnization of the military Junta, no such minority religion or ethnic nationalities language were tolerated.

The idea that Myanmar are a superior race and that they have vanquished not only the ethnic nationalities but also the neighbouring countries were ingrain in them wittingly or unwittingly. This is exactly the Mahar Myanmar spirit. Hence, the conclusion seems to be that all the ethnic nationalities must follow their lead and like it or not must agree with them, there is no such thing as consensus or self determination. They could not comprehend the Union Spirit Not only these Mahar Myanmar believe in this approach but also propagate and interpreted in such a way that the majority of the international community who scarcely know where Burma is came to have a vague idea on this approach. Unless one is a scholar in the study of Burmese history, one could not comprehend the general outline of the Burmese problem and the current crisis.

In the Myanmar mindset they construe the other ethnic nationalities especially those who are residing on the hills such as Shan, Chin, Kachin, Karenni are wild heathen and such a categorization did not exclude their eventual incorporation into civilization by acculturations.[11] So it was not ethnic diversity but cultural practice which divided people socially not necessarily politically. The Myanmar also looks down on the Arakanese and Mon. They are not categorize as hill people as they worship the same Theravada Buddhism but the Myanmar view that these Arakanese are Mon are the conquered race and people and is not worth the political thought. What more prove is wanted when both the Arakanese and Mon were not invited to the 1947 Panglong Conference and was taken for granted as part of Myanmar. This is the essence if not crux of the Mahar Myanmar mentality.

Hence in the case of the Union of Burma, firstly it can be explained as the capture of the state by the majority Myanmar ethnic group as arising out of the impact of the introduction of the modern state system upon which the authority structure of the Myanmar society stands. This definitely, dispels and dislocated the elites and the masses of the existing system many of who belong to the ethnic nationalities. [12]

Secondly the domination of the state by one ethnic group the Myanmar ethnic group that give rises to the “Ethnocratic Tendencies” in which the state act as an agency for that community in promoting its ethnic values as the core component of the nationalist ideology.

Thirdly, ethnic struggles are explainable as the reaction to this disruptive penetration of the peripheral communities by the weak ethnocratic state. This penetration provoked the collapse of the old authority structure existing before the 2nd world war in the British era and dislocated the old societal cohesion. It was replaced by the new emergent elites with new levels and forms. This is the apex of the ethnic nationalities struggle against the Myanmar ethnic dominate state.

Does history treat dictatorships with kindness and understanding? Will the future hold sympathy, garlands and accolades for the Junta? [13] A military dictatorship is best viewed as a transitory phenomenon, in the manner that certain weeds flourish briefly when the topsoil is freshly disturbed. But there is a limit to how long topsoil is freshly disturbed, as against being cultivated. Sturdy plants inevitably displace the transient species. This order of succession of plant communities is immutable in nature. Ecosystem analogies are appropriate to understand the phenomena of the Junta, as its fate is also tied to the futures of disturbed conditions. The Junta is ruthlessly repressive on people and exploitative on resources. It has uncontrolled growth. If the Junta machine were compared to the thermodynamic phenomena, the primary characteristic would be that it is extremely energy intense. The generals rule is that the more energy intense. An occurrence is, the greater the problems of sustaining it will become, and the shorter the expected life-span will tend to be. The Junta’s phenomenon is a turbulence or conflagration that is doomed to burn out and to completely collapse on it. This is absolutely inevitable.[14]

The inviolable laws of nature remind us that the Junta will implode and it is certain to leave behind unspeakable destruction and debris. That will be the challenge for the coming up nation-builders after the quasi civilian government is gone.

Encouragement of Mahar Myanmar Mentality
Studying the contemporary history of the world, country after country, there are few examples where a single ethnic group has taken control over the state and used its powers to exercise control over others. In retrospect there has been far less national building than many analysts had expected or hoped, for the process of state building has rendered many ethnic groups devoid of power or influence. [15] The Myanmar Ethnocratic state is the current situation where the state acts as the agency of the dominant Myanmar/Burma ethnic community in term of ideologies, its policies and its resources distribution. This is because it involves three propositions.

First the Myanmar dominated ethnocratic state, is one in which recruitment to the state élite positions in the Tatmadaw, civil services and government is disproportionately and overwhelmingly from the majority Myanmar ethnic group only. Even if there is recruitment from other ethnic groups like Shan, Mon or Karen or any other ethnic race it is only after their assimilation into the dominant ethnic culture. Moreover the state elites use their positions to promote their Myanmar interest, rather than acting as either as an autonomous state bureaucracy or as representative of the socio economic class strata from where they originate.

Second, the Myanmar employs the cultural attributes and values as the core elements for the elaboration of national ideology, and the state’s choice of national symbols all derived primarily from the culture of the Myanmar ethnic majority.[16] Thus the national identity which is employed to define the multi ethnic society is neither ethnically neutral nor multiethnic but is rather a Myanmar mono ethnic. Lucien Pye wrote,

“In reflecting the communal base of political parties it tend to represent total ways of life….Nationalist movements in particular have tended to represent total ways of life because such parties are inclined to feel they have a mission to change all aspects of life within their society, even conceiving themselves as a prototype of what their entire country will become in time. Members of such movements frequently believe that their attitudes and views on all subjects will become the commonly shared attitudes and views of the entire population.” [17]

The third attribute to the Myanmar Ethnocratic state is that the state’s institutions-its constitution its laws and its political structures- serve to maintain and reinforce the monopolization of power by the ethnic segment. Thus the channels which the state provides for participation are such as to either restrict all avenues for politics or to secure the disproportionate representation of the ethnic segment.

Whatever the part played by colonial and post-colonial history and politics, it is a fact that now ethnicity is now a serious matter. The Mahar/Myanmar and some foreign scholars endeavour to prove that monarchy as an example of central authority able to unite across ethnic and cultural divides. Incidentally this is the theory which the Burmese military dictatorship tries to impose. They try to find the abstract idea of ethnic community, that commanded primary loyalty and that a Myanmar king could act as the patron of ethnic e.g. Mon princely clients, and vice versa.[18] That the vacuum of central authority, after the fall of the monarchy, was further exposed through British colonial policy of administering the regions in a fractured model, as contrasted with the central control that the Dutch used in governing colonial Indonesia.

"Not all Myanmar are Buddhists and yet all recognize and acknowledge the centrality of Theravada Buddhism for their Burman identity," Writes F.K.L. Chit Hlaing,

Regarding Christianity, Gravers conjectures that conversion implies political identification, and that Christianity is subsequently identified with modernity and the right to a homeland. Yet religion need not serve a unifying role, as a means of identification it can prove equally divisive.

The most prominent example of religion proving destructive within an ethnic group revolves around the 1994 split of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Organization from the Karen National Union. Though both groups go to lengths to state and show that both religions are represented and respected in their ranks, the truth remains that a significant number of Karen saw identification as Buddhist, or Christian, as conceivably more advantageous than maintaining a strict adherence to the precept of pan-Karen identity.

As the architects of modern Burma including several ethnic leaders were assassinated their vision of modern union of Burma on a just and equal state for every ethnic nationality residing in the Union of Burma was smashed. The vision and dream of the assassinated leaders were explicitly written in the first 1947 constitution where each ethnic state has its own constitution and have been enshrined in the right of the ethnic minorities to practise their culture. This was proven in the State flag where the five stars clustered around the larger star which represents the Myanmar ethnic group. This symbolizes the unity in diversity rather than assimilation and Buddhism was never been employed as a state ideology.However it should be remember that the development of a state structure dominated by the ethnic Myanmar personnel and values did not by itself precipitated the other ethnic rebellion. It was only when the state began to try to expand its control beyond the core areas of the colonial constituted a threat and launched vigorously couple with political centralization then it started the unrest.

Given the fundamental differences of belief, value and organization that connote pluralism, the monopoly of power by one cultural section is the essential precondition for the maintenance of the total society in its current form.[19] Until and unless the new leaders have a wide vision and stop this forced Myanmarnization then there will be little or no peace in my beloved country.

-------------------------------------
[1] David C William & Lian h Sakkhong; “Designing Federal Union in Burma. p20
[2] See Bogyoke Aung San’s speech pp 306-307
[3] U Maung Maung Burmese National Minorities 1940-1989- p170
[4] See the speeches of Aung San also reprinted by Chao Tzang and LH Sakhong in The New Panglong Initiative, Rebuilding the Union of Burma p 13
[5] See the speech of Aung San delivered on 20th Jan. 1946
[6] Speeches of Bogyoke Aung San especially on 20th Jan. 1946
[7] David C William & Lian h Sakkhong; “Designing Federal Union in Burma”. p17
[8] Pe: Tin (Shan State) In Burmese 0d'l&ocifcspfarmif. &Srf;rlWSifhjynfaxmifpkawmifa&; p 16
[9] Cady; John F -A History of Modern Burma p 636
[10] Read the Temples of Pagan in any Burmese history books
[11] Brown, David: The State and Ethnic Politics in Southeast Asia, London school of Economics p36
[12] For example displacing of all the ethnic commanders and replace with the Myanmar ethnic group
[13] La Raw Dr.Maran: The Nation-State of Burma and the Victimization of Its Co-founders in Burma Debate Nov./Dec 1996
[14] La Raw Dr.Maran: The Nation-State of Burma and the Victimization of Its Co-founders in Burma Debate Nov./Dec 1996
[15] Myron; Weiner in “Political change in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.”
[16] e.g. It change the country`s flag without telling or consent of the people.
[17] Lucian W Pye Politics, personality and nation Building: Burma search for identity. New Haven London pp 17 18 Yale University Press
[18] Smith: Christopher. Exploring Ethnicity in Mizzima News
[19] See Smith;MG “The Plural Society in the British West Indies Berkley, University of California Press p 86

Burma’s Ethnic Nationalities Grievances

2012-01-21T09:36:00.000-08:00

By KanbawzaWin | January 21, 2012

Now Bo Khin Nyunt (I just call him “Bo” meaningcaptain in Burmese because he was just a captain that used to come and stand atmy table when he was serving as PA to Col Tint Swe attached to the PrimeMinister Office when I was the Foreign Affairs Secretary to the first PrimeMinister Brigadier of Socialist Burma, Brigadier General Sein Win way back in1974-77) the former much feared spy chief and the Junta’s Prime Minister,the main architect of the illogical road to democracy has spoken that, all theethnic armed nationalities groups are very honest and truthful.

Unlike the Myanmar administrations they are not liarslike Thein Sein himself who paints the prisoners of conscience as criminals andlaunched an all out war to the Kachin while talking peace with them. This isunderstandable as “Lying the very Concept of Truth” is the normof every Myanmar administration. Now that the quasi civilian government ismaking some attempts to diffuse the situation with the dissidents both ethnicand pro democracy groups I have humble analyze the ethnic nationalities problemas follows:-

Marginalization

The most fundamental grievance of ethnic nationalities istheir lack of influence on the political process and thus on decisions thataffect their lives. Like society at large, they have been disenfranchised by astrongly centralized military state that regards them with intense suspicion.They have felt the loss of political and economic power even more acutely thanthe majority population as both the government and the officer corps areoverwhelmingly ethnic Myanmar which are widely perceived as a foreign force.Ethnic nationalities groups consider themselves discriminated against and haveopenly accused successive governments of a deliberate policy ofMyanmarnization. The ethnic nationalities are not only marginalizedeconomically, but also that their social, cultural, and religious rights arebeing suppressed.

While many ethnic groups originally fought for independence,today almost all have accepted the Union of Burma as a fact, and merely seekincreased local authority and equality within a new federal state structure.The military dictators, however, still suspect them of scheming to split thecountry and see this as justification for its repressive, often brutal policiesin ethnic dominated areas.

Since 1988, most ethnic nationality organizations haveexpressed support for democracy, seeing this as their best chance to gain avoice in national politics and press for a redress of their long-standinggrievances. The elite in the ethnic organizations are democrats by persuasionor regard democracy not an end in itself. Their main concern is to secure localpolitical and administrative authority, further development of their regions,and enjoy the right to maintain and practice their language, culture andreligion without constraints. This is a simple obsession of the ethnicnationalities of Burma

The strength of ethnic nationality organizationstraditionally has been measured in military terms. The shift in nationalpolitics since 1988 and subsequent ceasefires, however, have transferred themain struggle from the battlefield to the political and administrative arena.The primary challenge for ethnic nationality organizations today is, therefore,to build political and organizational capacity – individually, and as a group –to ensure that they are not left out of future negotiations about the future ofthe Federal Union of Burma and can continue to represent the interests of theircommunities. They also need to help rebuild their war-torn communities andeconomies and re-establish a sense of normalcy and confidence in the future.

To negotiate and eventually overcome these obstaclesrequires vision, careful balancing of objectives and strategies, andsignificant implementation capacity. First and foremost perhaps, it requires agenuine commitment to move beyond narrow agendas and build a better life forlocal communities and the country at large. Most groups, however, lack theseskills. In fact, the weaknesses and approaches of ethnic nationalities oftenmirror those of the central government and other local authorities. Many ethnicorganizations continue to be dominated by soldiers who have little knowledge ofpolitical and social affairs or experience with relevant tools for organizationand negotiation. They may have significant legitimacy rooted in the strugglefor self-determination – or, in some cases, the 1990 election – but stronghierarchies and top-down approaches mean that links to local communities oftenare weak. There is also a dearth of people in these communities at large withrelevant education and experience.

Over the past few years, some key ethnic organizationshave begun to face up to these problems and start on the difficult task ofbuilding networks in long-divided communities and training capable leaders andadministrators. Yet, much needs to be done and they are often seen strugglingagainst government repression and international indifference.

Dilemma of Changing Culture

Ethnic nationalities together with the Myanmar have livedin one way at a particular time, but there is no absolute ethnic nationalitywhich persists unchanged through time. Society changes as people makedecisions about how to adapt to constantly changing circumstances, includingtheir relations with external societies. Insofar as one can apply termsof biology to social phenomenon, such change can be seen as a natural,evolutionary process. On the surface, applying this view to Burma’s current strugglefor social justice seems to yield little productive insight. If culture,ethnicity and religion are always changing, and that perpetual flux is a normalcharacteristic of any social system, then what is the hope for resistance? Change seems to be inevitable.

History demonstrates that some cultures triumph andothers fade; civilizations wax and wane over time almost as if they are livingorganisms. This is especially true to Burma. The Myanmar race domination overthe non Myanmar races have triumph all these years and in the recorded historyof Burma the major tribes like Pyu, Kanyan and Thet races has alldisappeared and vanished because of the dominance of the Myanmar race. Even inthe last Burmese dynasty (Konebong dynasty) the Myanmar has tried to wipe outthe Mon people when by a trick king U Aung Ze Ya called the entire learned Monmonk and burnt them alive.

Contemporary history has shown that the ethnic races ofsuch as Shan, Chin and Kachin have consented to join the Union while Karen,Karenni, Mon, Arakanese are being forced to join the Union of Burma in takingindependence from Britain. But all of them were very suspicious of the Myanmarethnic and this was compounded the action of the Tatmadaw when it launched it ethnic cleansing policy.

This could, somewhat detached interpretation can even betaken further, confounding the good intentions of those Myanmar seeking touphold the value of cultural diversity and ethnics rights. If culturaladaptation is a strategy for dealing with change in the political and economicenvironment, then by opposing it do people invite hardship? Are attemptsto preserve the ethnic cultures simply bound to fail, or perhaps worse, tosucceed in ways which limit people’sadaptation, hence compound their suffering? Political, social andeconomic encroachments from all sides tell people to abandon their own ways andto accept the transitions which will align them with mainstream culture: fromsubsistence farming to cash-cropping, from the village to the city, fromminority to majority, from the margin to the center. To the extent thatthis message is oppressive, it is also pragmatic, telling people what they mustdo to survive.[1]

Of course, people resist this change vigorously, in myriadways and for various reasons. Burma’s history of ethnic conflict can be framed as astruggle to define and control the nature of social change, to distinguish Myanmarfrom a non Myanmar and assert the relative status of each. Importantevents in Burmese history such as colonization, independence, growth of anational military culture, and the advent of a modern democracy movement reveal new aspectsof this resistance. Political and military movements espousing ethnicnationalism are one form of organized, collective resistance. Flight,non-confrontational resistance and simple perseverance are examples of moreindividual or informal resistance strategies.

While none of these strategies has been particularlysuccessful in negotiating a roadmap to social change shared by center andperiphery alike, all have proved impressively resilient. Guerilla warshave dragged on for sixty years and refugees have subsisted in stateless hiatusfor decades. Despite perennial forecastsof its imminent demise, the power center has continually re-asserted itsauthority; despite the ethnic nationality’s claims to control social change, the peripheryremains independent; despite ethnic nationalities claims to utterdifferentiation, the influence of the center pervades. Therefore, not only issociety in constant flux, but equally enduring is the struggle to define andcontrol this flux through resistance and adaptation. If change isinevitable, so too is dissent, and so is the consequent struggle to control theagents and outcomes of that change.

In Burma this context of change and resistance is chieflycharacterized by ethnic nationalism. Rival claims to the control ofsocial change are phrased in terms of the differentiation, history and autonomyof competing ethnic groups. The categorization of these groups is a majorpoint of conflict. The vagaries of geographic, linguistic, cultural andhistorical criteria for defining ethnic categories are widely recognized bothwithin and outside Burma. Defining ethnicity by any of these criteria hasproved problematic not only for the academics but for other investigators ofethnicity, not to mention for the people in question. Nevertheless, the idea of ethnic nationalityis central to social conflict.

Yet, just as culture constantly changes, so doesethnicity. Political systems are an investigation of how the categoriesof ethnicity, specifically those of Kachin and Shan, are in them tools in a struggle for adaptation andresistance.

People adapt their identity as best they can to thepolitical and economic forces which create change. Ethnicity is oftenclassified by unique, exclusive cultural or hereditary traits, but there are asmany exceptions to these categories as there seem to be rules. Thesechanges are marked by shifts in physical location and the economicrelationships they connote, from lowlands to mountains, from rice paddies towidens plots, and from economic autonomy to participation in a feudalhierarchy. Therefore, ethnic identity is also the product of adaptationand resistance. This formative link between identity and resistance also marksthe nexus where social change in the anthropological sense of the term and thestruggle for social justice

The conflict raises critical questions about the nature,role and priorities of a human rights movement. How can those who wish toeffect peace in Burma reject the dangers of ethnic nationalism, while at thesame time promote successful adaptation to inevitable social change? Canone extricate the interests of ethnic nationalist structures? Moreover,how can this are done without submitting to nationalist hegemony from themainstream, especially in the face of a deliberate program of Myanmarnization?

Thus Burma’s future activists, historians, poets,artists, scientists and educators may comprise a high number of people fromethnic nationalities whose skill, intellect and access to national institutionsshould allow them to celebrate, rather than denigrate, cultural and linguisticdiversity. They should not be forced to choose between absorption by themainstream or social marginalization as minorities, but conditions must bedrawn to enable to develop and adapt their identity as equal opportunity toother citizens. Ultimately, more answers will be found by pursuing andexpanding inclusively than by mimicking the mainstream trend towards dominationand exclusion.

The present peace struggle for its treatment of ethnicityand social change is a necessity and inevitable part of society. Ethniccategories, which also change over time, are subject to debate andinterpretation, and indeed Professor Edmond Leach was ahead of his time byrecognizing that they are at best artificial and problematic. [2]

Concerning Burma, one must recognizes a fundamentaltension between the reality of social change and nationalistic attempts toarticulate and enforce an ethnic identity. This tension presents adilemma to the peace movement, which asserts that human dignity should not beseconded to the inevitability of social change, and seeks to challenge thecalculated absorption of the periphery into the mainstream of Burmesesociety. An aspect of social change is free will, the opportunity to makeautonomous choices. This autonomy represents basic human rights about whatlanguage people want to speak, what clothes they want to wear, how they want tolive and how they wish to identify themselves. Violence, repression and economic exploitation all intrusions intouniversal and inalienable human rights are what threaten human dignity andsurvival. Where an international peace movement intersects with Burma’sethnic rights struggle, it must choose its path based on what people want andneed to adapt, survive and live in dignity, rather than on a prevailingnationalist ideology. Ethnic aspirations are difficult to understand; pointingout its many complications and paradoxes makes it no easier. Nevertheless, to make the right choices the peace movement must be aware of allthe resources available to it.

The Importance ofEthnicity

On 23 May 1947, less than three months before his death, Bogyoke Aung San gave a speech whichmade his thoughts on democracy very clear. He distinguished ‘true’ from ‘sham’democracy. He said,

“Only truedemocracy can work for the real good of the people, real equality of status andopportunity for every one irrespective of class or race or religion or sex. Notevery democracy is true democracy. Some are imperfect democracies concealing indemocratic guise the dictatorship of the capitalist class. True democracy alonemust be our basis if we want to draw up our constitution with the people as thereal sovereign and the people's interest as the primary consideration.Democracy alone is the basis upon which the real progress of a nation can bebuilt.”[3]

But lamentably none of the Myanmar leaders follow hisvision. During 1948- 1958, the government under U Nu was at first runningpretty smoothly, even thought being pressurized by the Myanmar nationalists. UNu changed the Constitution. By 1961 the Saophas realized that the Union wasnot only totally under the control of the Myanmar but becoming under theMilitary; therefore, the question of “ to secede or not to secede “ came to be an issueamongst Shan leaders including U Htoon Myint who was anti- Saophas. This wasnot a crime, it was a right provided by the Constitution (The Shan State hadthe right to secede after ten years, 1958). Hence the secession issue did not arise out ofconspiracies by the Shan leaders; it originated from real grievances.

Bogyoke Aung San’s daughter, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi wasshocked to discover the military’s actions of injustice, subjugation of thepeople, the shooting of thousands of students and the heinous human rightsviolations practiced against the ethnic nationalities. She exposed that themethod used by the military in ruling the country was not what her father hadwanted. By this exposure she damaged the military regime’s legitimacy. This isone, if not the main, reason why the military generals especially Than Shwe hatedher so much and is so afraid of her

To move forward there has to be National Reconciliationof all nationalities coming together at a round table. The talk has to be builton truth, trust and transparency. In a country like Burma there has to be anunderstanding of the principle of territorial integrity and fundamental respectfor diversity, and different peoples’ wishes for freedom, equality and justice.[4] Inother words there must be a Second Panglong Conference which she hascalled.

To have a genuine democracy in Burma then dictatorshipand Tatmadaw has to be abolished forgood as it has no place in the modern and civilized world and in its place mustbe the people’s army Pyidaungsu Tat, the Federal army. In the UnitedStates is that: the whites constitute 80.1% of the United States population(2006 estimate); whereas, approximately 60 percent of the population in Burmais ethnic Myanmar and the present military regime is overwhelmingly dominatedby ethnic Myanmar.

If a black person who belongs to only 12.8% of a country'spopulation can be given a chance to become the President of the United States andleader of the free world, Burma should give an equal opportunity to potentialleaders from the ethnic groups which make about 40% of the country'spopulation. Ethnicity plays a vital role in Burma's politics.[5] It is participation and inclusiveness that make a nationstrong, and Burma is not an exception. Should Burma fail to understand thisreality, the socio-political conflicts will continue to persist even after therestoration of democracy. Barack Obama's election not only gives a new hope tomillions of Americans, but also energizes the ethnic nationalities groups ofBurma. Genuine national reconciliation and nation-building must precedethe restructuring of the state.

The neighboringcountries especially ASEAN China and India because of their selfish motivesunder the beautifully coined word of Constructive Engagement Policyhave help prolong the military administrations in Burma and only now because ofthe punitive actions of the West that the rottenness of the dictatorship wasreveal now should help Burma to be on the right road. Their selfish motiveindirectly encouraging the regime with “Containing Balkanization” in Burmacould easily lead to a resumption of localized arm conflicts again. Then asusual military-owned businesses, Junta cronies, foreign investors and traders,and ethnic drug lords and elites plunder the natural resources of the ethnicstates, local ethnic populations will continue to be denied economicopportunities and the ethnic nationalitiesstates will also see their environment further destroyed by greedy businessesand bad governance. [6]

It is now up to the leaders of the ethnic groups todecide whether they will betray the 60-year long struggle for their ethnicpeople or stand together with an effective strategy to fight for equal ethnicrights. The rest will be history.

Last but not the lease is that the architect and butcher of8888 uprising Khin Nyunt and his band of former Military Intelligence are letlose again coined by most Burmese as hell hound at large and by hisconversation we know that he want to come back into the scene. This is a verydangerous trend both for the ethnic nationalities and the prodemocracymovements as he could twist both the international community and the ethnicnationalities. He together with Than Shwe should be standing in the gallows ifreal democracy and ethnic equality is to be achieved. We still has to see howBurma is unfolding,

[1] Burma Issue Vol. 9 No 5 Ethnicity,Nationalism and Social Change Part 1 p 6

[2] The fuller, finer points of Professor Leach’s workbelong to the realm of social science, and much has been omitted andoversimplified here. Nevertheless, it is hoped that even this cursorylook might introduce an informed and articulate voice from the past to anenormous and complex struggle for social justice in the present. Read Political Systems of Highland Burma, Edmund R. Leach, Athlone Press, London, 1970.

[3] See Speeches of Aung San.

[4] S. N. Oo: Diversity and Democracy in Burma

[5] Nehginpao Kipgen : ”Obama energizes Burma's ethnic minorities” in Kuki Forum

[6] Min,Zin:Ethnicity, the Triumph Card in Irrawaddy

In exclusive interview, Burmese leader says lasting reform is coming

2012-01-20T13:06:00.000-08:00

By William Wan, January 19, 2012 | Washington Post

Burma’s president sketched a vision of gradual progress toward democracy for his isolated and authoritarian nation in his first extensive interview with a U.S. journalist, saying that the military will retain a strong role in government even as it welcomes opposition figures into parliament.

“My message is that we are on the right track to democracy,” President Thein Sein said. “Because we are on the right track, we can only move forward, and we don’t have any intention to draw back.”

The exclusive interview with Thein Sein — conducted Tuesday at his ornate presidential office in Naypyidaw by Lally Weymouth, senior associate editor for The Washington Post — offered a rare glimpse of Burma’s reclusive leadership and the soft-spoken, bespectacled former general at its head.

Thein Sein used the interview to make a direct, public case that the United States and other nations should lift long-standing economic sanctions that he said hurt the Southeast Asian nation’s 54 million people and now threaten to hold back economic progress.

He said his government already had complied with several Western demands — including freeing most political prisoners, scheduling elections in April and allowing opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, to potentially join the government as a member of parliament. He did not rule out the possibility that, someday, she might even join the cabinet.

“What is needed from the Western countries is for them to do their part,” Thein Sein said.

Long known for its bounty of natural resources such as gold, natural gas and lumber, Burma now lags far behind most of its Asian peers in poverty rates, education levels and infrastructure.

It has been ravaged by decades of civil war, corruption, brutal rule by a succession of military leaders and bloody repression of democracy activists.

Many critics of the government say they believe that sanctions played a role in spurring political reforms within Burma and its unexpectedly warm outreach to the West in recent months.

Suu Kyi, in a separate interview with Weymouth on Wednesday, said she was unconvinced that Western nations should lift sanctions. “Engage and lift sanctions when they think the time is right,” she said.

Yet Suu Kyi spoke highly of Thein Sein. “I believe he sincerely wants reform. But he is not the only one in government,” she said. “I don’t know how much support he has within the army. He himself is an army man, so I assume there must be considerable support for him in military circles. But that is just an assumption.”

Burma’s accelerating reforms have been embraced by the Obama administration. In November, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Burma, the first such visit there since the military took over the government in 1962.

Last week, Obama announced that he would appoint an ambassador to repair diplomatic ties with Burma, also known as Myanmar.

U.S. officials say they are juggling their efforts to reward Burma’s reforms even as they watch and wait for continued progress. The administration needs to consult with several members of Congress who have only recently started making trips to Burma to assess the situation. Congressional approval on sanctions will likely take time.

“We’re trying to be encouraging and prudent. It’s still early in the overall process,” said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of ongoing diplomatic talks. “The sanctions especially have been in place for decades. They’re overlapping, intricate and well established.”

As with most of those in Burma’s ruling elite, little is known about Thein Sein, including how much control he now retains over the powerful military. Even those in the United States working most closely with their Burmese counterparts say they are unclear on how decisions are made.

Thein Sein served for years as prime minister. The position was several steps below that of Senior Gen. Than Shwe, the junta’s longtime leader, but Thein Sein often traveled abroad. Some U.S. officials believe that may have exposed him to just how far Burma has been left behind in the new global economy.

In the interview, Thein Sein stopped far short of guaranteeing the nation a full slate of democratic freedoms, balking at the possibility of ending censorship of Burma’s growing press while extolling “peace and stability” as core goals of his government.

The military no longer has a formal role in the nation’s executive branch, he said, but it controls one-fourth of the seats in parliament. Of the more than 600 seats overall, 48 are up for election April 1.

“We cannot leave the military behind because we require the military’s participation in our country’s development,” he said.

Thein Sein expressed clear desire to bring desperately needed economic development to Burma. But also evident was a sense of the limitations he may be facing in pushing for change amid various factions — including hard-line military leaders, democracy activists and several ethnic minority groups that remain locked in a bloody civil war with Burma’s army.

Thein Sein acknowledged the intractable nature of the fighting, which in many cases has lasted for decades: “We will try to achieve an eternal peace in the country. However, this will require time.”
-------------
Research director Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

The Last of the Komissar

2012-01-19T08:12:00.000-08:00

By Kanbawza Win | January 19, 2012

Looking at my beloved country I recollect Mikhail SergeyevichGorbachev, the last Komissar of the Soviet Unionwho tried his level best to save the Communist system through long-necessaryreforms, as what the Burmese regime is doing now in releasing hundreds ofpolitical prisoners. It also catches two birds with a stone in placating the maximum impression on European and American diplomatsand "human rights" organizations to lift their punitive sanctionswhich they so crave in order to legalize their personal wealth. Not that I am predicting that Daw Aung San SuuKyi will be the Boris Yektsin of Burma as she has famously put it:"It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corruptsthose who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who aresubject to It." but because the system of the dictatorial regime isrotting beyond repair and is crumbling.

The Nargis Constitution following theNargis Cyclone of May 2008. exposed not only reveal the dictator's inability tocope with a natural disaster but its inability to deal with those offeringhelp, from both home and abroad that clearly proves how much the corruption hasbeen that have eaten the foundation of military dictatorship resulting morethan 100,000 unnecessary deaths, and the suffering of millions of survivors andlost of billions of dollars.

Cease fires with the ethnic nationalities must be followed up by stoppingthe ethnic cleansing policies because in modern Burma is thatthe ethnic nationalities have been residing in their specific area long beforethe Myanmar race came into Burma.[1]The Generals using their pocket army the Tatmadaw is endeavoring these “undesirable"population due to religious or ethnic discrimination, political, strategic orideological considerations, or a combination of these to satisfy their grip onpowers will soon come to an abrupt end. This forcible deportation of apopulation - is defined as a crime against humanity under the statutes of the International Criminal Court which "constitutecrimes against humanity and can be assimilated to specific war crimes.[2] Furthermore such acts could also fall withinthe meaning of the Genocide Convention." The UN General Assemblycondemned "ethnic cleansing" and racial hatred in a 1992resolution.

In 1985 Anti Slavery International (ASI) wasthe first Non Burmese organization to raise the issue of concern at the UnitedNations. In March 1987 in response to growing reports of an alarming catalogueof human rights abuses by the BSPP (Burmese Socialist Programme Party), ASIsponsored a visit to Europe of a delegationfrom the Karen National Union. This was the first time since Burma gainindependence in Jan 1948 the ethnicnationality delegation from one of “Asia most war torn countries” had enteredsuch an international forum where its delegation speak to the UN Commission onHuman Rights in Geneva.

The ethnic cleansing of the Burmese regime hasbecome a worldwide international concern and experiences of other multi ethniccountries, such as Afghanistan,Yugoslavia, Burundi, and Rwanda. It shows how desperatethese conflicts can become if left unresolved. It could easily become an allout civil war. Human rightsabuses in ethnic nationality areas are the single most important cause ofconflict-induced internal displacement in Burmaand the scale of atrocities committed by the Burmese army is unparalleledwithin Asia. Surges of attacks by the Burmesearmy since autumn 2005 have compelled thousands to flee, especially in theKaren state where 11,000 people have been reported displaced during the monthsof March and April 2006 alone.

While an increasing number of people in the country face adeteriorating humanitarian situation, Burma’s internally displaced likethe Kachins are particularly vulnerable and face acute humanitarian problems inhealth, nutrition and education. The Thailand Burma Border Consortium(TBBC) has carried out the most reliable existing survey of internaldisplacement in eastern Burma.According to this study, which covers 37 townships in the Tenasserim andeastern Pegu divisions and the Mon, Karen, Karenni and Southern Shan States,the total number of people who have been forced or obliged to flee their homesover the past decade and have not been able to return, resettle or reintegrateinto society is estimated to be at least to be half a million There are nosimilar surveys from other parts of the country, but other studies conducted byhuman rights groups have estimated that 650,000 are internally displaced in theborder areas and at least one million countrywide.[3] Between 700,000 and one million people arealso believed to have fled Burmato Thailand, India, Bangladesh,Malaysiaand other countries to escape human rights violations.[4] The large majority of the internallydisplaced, 340,000 people, are in temporary settlements in ceasefire areascontrolled by ethnic minority groups, while at least 92,000 civilians remain inhiding and another 108,000 are in relocation sites after being forcibly evictedfrom their homes by the army. [5]Army attacks to increase control over areas in eastern Karen state, close tothe Thai border, have displaced at least 11,000 people and over 15,000 peoplehave fled to refugee camps in Thailand.[6]

Human rights violations are thesingle most important reason for displacement than fighting between the Burmeseand the resistance armies. In conflict areas, the army has for decadesimplemented a so-called “Four Cuts Policy” which aims to consolidatecontrol in ethnic nationalities areas by eliminating the access of armedopposition groups to new recruits, information, supplies and financial support.In implementing this strategy, the Burmese army is accused of widespread humanrights abuses such as forced relocation, expropriation of land and livestock,extortion, forced labour, threats and intimidations, sexual abuse and otherforms of violence.[7]

As the Burmese Tatmadaw substantiallyexpanded its control over ethnic nationalities areas during the late 1990s,more than 2,800 villages have been destroyed and about one million peopleforcibly relocated to government-controlled areas.[8] In Shan state, approximately two thirds of thevillages situated in the hills were relocated to lowland areas from 1996onwards, and villages are still being destroyed.[9] People forcibly relocated by the Tatmadaw are commonly given about oneweek’s notice to leave their village and move to poorly equipped relocationsites, after which government troops loot any remaining belongings and destroybuildings and food crops to discourage return.

A development program, launched in 1989to promote infrastructure in the border areas, have primarily served toconsolidate military control over the ethnic nationalities population. Roadbuilding and natural resources extraction has led to easier access for themilitary and an increased threat of human rights abuses against the localpopulation. A large hydro-electric project which will lead to the building offour dams along the Salween river in Karen and Shan states, has already led toforced evictions of 60 villages along the river and threatens to displacethousands of people when implementationstarts in 2007. [10]

In Western Burma, particularly in Arakan, the Muslim Rohingya and other ethnicgroups have been displaced as a result of brutal discrimination policies,including the construction of "new villages" for trans-migrants fromcentral and northern Burma.Many of those displaced have fled to Bangladesh, where conditions ofasylum are very harsh, and where they face the prospect of forced repatriation.[11] TheSpecial Rapporteur on Human Rights in Burma has repeatedly expressedconcern about the situation. The Na Sa Ka (e p u), a border task forcebelieved to be under the direct command of the regime is said to be the mainperpetrator of abuses against the Rohingya population. Although UNHCR is presenton the ground after a mass repatriation in 1994-1995 of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh,abuses go on unabated.[12]

In urban areas, whole neighborhoods, mainly in poor areas, have been forced tomove due to “security reasons” or to make way for infrastructure projects,including roads, bridges and “urban development programs”. Hundreds ofthousands of residents of Rangoonand other towns and cities have been moved to “satellite towns” that have beenestablished in recent years.[13] A sudden move of key government ministriesfrom Rangoon toNaypyidaw reportedly also led to the forced relocation of surrounding villagesand forced labor. [14]

Anti-personnel mines are a major risk inBurma,affecting nine out of 14 states. The concentration of landmines is especiallydense along the border with Thailandand Bangladesh.Most of the land mines were laid by the Tatmadawand they lay mines close to areas of civilian activity to prevent relocatedvillagers from returning to their native villages. There is no systematiccollection of information about mine casualties, but there is evidence that Burma is amongthe countries with the highest number of casualties each year. The mine threathas been identified as one of the main impediments to any future return of IDPsand refugees.[15]

While the general humanitarian situation in the country has deteriorated overthe past years, the situation is particularly critical for internally displacedin eastern Burma. The TBBC documented the extremevulnerability of the displaced populations, among other in terms of mortalityand malnutrition rates which are significantly higher than for the rest of thepopulation. Tens of thousands are in urgent need of basic medical assistance,food aid, shelter and education, but no assistance is reaching them and surelythis is but one way of ethnic cleansing.

The large majority of people needing assistance in Burma are cut off frominternational relief. The Burmese government generally refuses to permit anyexternal involvement in its border areas and does not allow internationalorganizations[16] accessto war-affected populations.

After a period of expanded humanitarian space to some areas in eastern Burma, accesshas again been curtailed, that further restrict assistance by internationalorganizations.[17] The tight surveillance imposed by the regimehas led the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to terminategrants and Médecins Sans Frontières – France to cease its activities inside Burma. [18]Even the ICRC, which has a long-standing presence in Burma, has recently been restrictedin carrying out its work, including prison visits. [19]Cooperation with the government has been complicated further by the suddenrelocation of key ministries to Pyinmana in southern Mandalay division.[20]Inceasefire areas, relocation sites and in areas of mixed administration, themain method of minimizing threats is to comply with extortion and follow orders.[21]

The impending collapse of the Burmese military dictatorship system arepolitical and economic because of the result of the Burmese military culture and totalitarian system The poor Burmese consumers turned toimports and black market to satisfy their needs because all the needs wereswallowed up by military and there were no quality goods to balance importsexcept in extractive economy. These economic factors were linkedto political and psychological factors. "the gloomy background of theworsening market situation ... has a depressing effect on people."Their gloom deepened as a result of policy failures such as the war against theethnic nationalities and democracy movement.

Another factor was the lack ofhonest information, the secrecy and propaganda that is central to the cultureof dictatorship. As contradictions mounted as the people of Burma becamemore and more cynical about the propaganda of government-controlled media. Itwas common to hear an average Burmese say that you could find truth anywhereexcept in government news. This was exacerbated by the free press of thedissidents, the BBC, VOA and Radio Free Asia.

Secrecy anddistortion of information have disastrous economic as well as politicaleffects. Secrecy and restricted movement, the hallmarks of militarism andbureaucracy, pervaded the Burmese society as all levels of the system, frominstitutes to ministries, were isolated from each other, both by barriers tocommunication and by an attitude that one should mind one's own business. Economic indicators were routinelysuppressed or falsified to the point that when the final economic collapse wasimminent there were no published figures to indicate the points of weakness.

All of these factors accumulated on top of aprofound alienation of the Burmese people that had grown up over the years asthe country remained in the grips of the culture of war. Information wascontrolled in the form of propaganda and dissidents were sent to jail. Peopledid not feel free to discuss this, resulting that most people did notparticipate in governance. In the Burmese military dictatorshipsall citizens were deprived of the basic rights and freedoms of organization,speech, thought, press, movement, residence, conscience and religion; fulltrade union rights for all workers including the right to strike, and oneperson one vote in free and democratic elections were in non existence. Thereis no free flow of honest information. Which is against the principles of aculture of peace and development?

The Generals are desperatelygasping and no Western country should be in a hurry to reward the vehementlyhated Burmese Generals. I would agreed with David Steinberg’s comment “Weforeigners should remember how marginal we are in helping the downfall of theBurmese military dictatorship, the real heroes are the people of Burma f allethnicities” [22]

[1] TheMon has been in Burma muchearlier than the Burman/Myanmar

[2] Established pursuant to SecurityCouncil Resolution 780

[3] see HumanRights Watch, June 2005

[4] UNNS, 28October 2005

[5] Thai Burma BorderCouncil , October 2005, pp. 2, 24

[6] Reuters News,26 April 2006

[7] AmnestyInternational, Sept. 2005 and UNGA, 12 August 2005, par. 65

[8] ThaiBurma Border Consortium, October 2005, p.22

[9] SRDC,2006, p.3; S.H.A.N., 7 March 2006 SRDC, 2006, p.3; S.H.A.N., 7 March 2006

[10] KDRG,2006, p.2; TBBC, October 2005, p.20; HRW, June 2005, p. 42

[11] ForumAsia, June 2003; FIDH, 9 March 2004; AI,19 May 2004

[12] AmnestyInternational , 29-9- 2005; IPS, 6-12- 2005; Kaladan News, 16-3-2006

[13] USDOS,8 March 2006; KWN, September-October 2003

[14] UNHuman Right Commission , 7 Feb. 2006, para. 36

[15] HumanRights Watch, June 2005, p.13

[16] HumanRights Watch, June 2005, p. 60

[17] MizzimaNews, 13 February 2006

[18] COE-DMHA,20 December 2005; MSF, 20 March 2006

[19] MizzimaNews, 24 February 2006

[20] UNCommission for Human Rights , 27 February 2006, para 7

[21] TBBC,October 2005, pp.55-56

[22] Steinber;David J Myanmar: On Claiming Success in The Irrawaddy18-1-2012

Talk and Fight

2012-01-17T08:07:00.000-08:00

By Kanbawza Win | January 17, 2012

The quasi civilian administration of Burma, unveil a new technique when La Nan, the joint secretary of the KIO announced that “the KIO’s peace-building committee and the government peace-building committee agreed to meet in Ruili,” while at the same time the Burmese regime is launching an all out war of genocide against the ethnic Kachins, with airborne assault troops and chemical weapons and the fighting has reached the peak of human rights violations to the well known jade mining town of Hphakhant.

The fact that the peace parley was held in the Chinese town of Ruili also indicates that the warring parties of Burma cannot even agree to talk inside Burma because of the treacherous history of the Burmese Tatmadaw, paints a gloomy picture. What more proof is wanted when the Tatmadaw launched a new offensive on the day that President Thein Sein ordered to stop the hostilities? This clearly proves that the Tatmadaw controlled by the National Defence Security Council (NDSC), is against the very grain of Pyidoungsu , the Union of the country and Democracy is the real power behind the throne.

One can recollect that in the contemporary history of Burma several uprisings since the 70s was the people’s uprising from all works of life including the ethnic groups where they show their solidarity with the ethnic Myanmar. These clearly demonstrate that the ethnic nationalities are hands in glove with the ethnic Myanmar democracy groups. Demonstrations whether in 1988 or afterwards took place in the ethnic Myanmar dominated area as well as in all the seven ethnic nationalities states and divisions. The monks that were brutally suppressed in 2007 were not all Myanmar monks only. Many of them were non Myanmar such Arakanese, Karen, Mon, Shan and even Kachin. So it is clear that the democracy movement includes all the people of various ethnic backgrounds.

After more than half a century of civil war the international community and the world had recognized that the ethnic nationalities’ struggle for their rights is as legitimate as the struggle for democracy. It means that while the ethnic nationalities are part of the democracy movement, they also have a unique and different role to play in rebuilding Burma. This is not understood by many people both inside and outside the country. In the name of unity, the pro democracy Myanmar groups want the ethnic nationalities to have exactly the same position as the rest of the democracy movement. This is not unity but uniformity and seems to echo the Tatmadaw’s motto of ‘One blood, one voice, one command’. One cannot build unity with such a slogan especially when 40% of your population is different. It is very different from unity in diversity.

It must be remember that they regime uses Section 401 of the Criminal Procedure Code as the legal mechanism for those amnesties [1] under which the President the power to suspend a sentence, while these powers lie with the executive and not the judiciary .[2]

This also means that the former political prisoners are constantly under watch by Military Affairs Security, generally known as Military Intelligence and their informers and can be arrested anytime, which I am quite positive that once the sanctions is lifted most of the leaders will be arrested again. This also means that the regime can use the release political prisoners and those ethnic political prisoners who are still in custody as a bargaining chip with the West. Hence Sanctions must not be lifted even though it can be softened as Australia has done.

In addition to sanctions, one needs to find a way to get Burma’s neighbours to commit themselves to help bring about change in Burma. The illogical Constructive Engagement Policy initiated by Mahathir Mohammad and Lee Kwan Yew has not worked and it was only now that Burma’s neighbours have awoken up to the fact that the military’s mismanagement is causing instability in the region. It is the duty of the pro democracy groups and the ethnic nationalities to convince the neighbouring countries that if they want stability and economic development, things have to change in Burma. Even though it will not be easy to convince China, Russia and India to help bring about change in using the language of democracy or human rights, than should try to convince them to support change now because of economic factors.

Ethnic nationalities have been working since the early 1990s to develop their ideas about a state structure based on the principles of equality, federalism, democracy and human rights. They look to the future when a real new constitution-making process, on the order of 1947, will emerge that will enable them to participate and engage in full and open discussion with the leaders of the military and the peoples of Burma. Together, they hope to see a new Burma, not dominated by the Myanmar ethnic race only making it possible for the peoples of Burma to live peacefully together and solve problems by parliamentary means. In order to achieve this:-

There must be an end to social and political disunity and the threat to the integrity of the state. The various military Juntas always to remind the people that its primary purpose in taking and holding power stemmed from the "Three Causes": prevention of the disintegration of the Union, prevention of the disintegration of national unity, and perpetuation of sovereignty. The Tatmadaw leaders speak frequently of the threats to Burma posed by the rebellions of the Burma Communist Party (BCP), the ethnic nationalities, the invasion of foreign forces, the breakdown in law and order in 1988, and the interference in internal affairs by foreign governments. With the demise of the BCP, the end of the threat of foreign invasion, the reestablishment of law and order in the heartland, and the ceasefires with most of the ethnic nationalities, the military do not seem to have any excuses left. Moreover it has implemented rigged elections with an unfair constitution.
There must be recognition of the rights and interests of the several ethnic nationalities and they must approve of the constitution before it can be implemented. But as of now there is none of them. Under the two previous constitutions, the rights and interests of several ethnic nationalities, especially the smaller ones, were not clearly stated and this led to misunderstanding, discontent and revolt. In the past, the larger ethnic nationalities spoke for the smaller ones living amongst them, but for many, this was unsatisfactory. To avoid a repetition of the past, the military endeavoured to win some ethnic groups to support by granting of nominal control of local administration in their areas and allowing them to preserve their cultures and traditions.
The current Nargis Constitution must be disbanded once and for all because in practice it has none of the democratic and federal attributes and makes no mention of a federal union. Thein Sein administration has created a directed state in which elected representatives to ratify the policies, legislation and actions of the leaders. It seems to look to the Tatmadaw -led polity of Soeharto's Indonesia as one model.
The illogical phrase that the Tatmadaw must be given a lion’s share, if not a permanent role in governing the future state of Burma is the most stumbling blocks because the Tatmadaw itself is in the Generals’ pockets. If it is the Tatmadaw's real objective to create a multiparty democratic system, it is hard to see what powers and responsibilities remain for the people to exercise. If the adopted principles for the Nargis Constitution constitution are compared with the structure of the government and the powers of the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) under the 1974 constitution, it is clear that the current administration intends to recreate the earlier model. Only, this time it replaced the party with the military and has given it all powers necessary to overcome popular opposition wherever and whenever it occurs.

It is already more than six decades of struggles, the ethnic nationalities have been willing to sacrifice life and limb to achieve what they were promised in 1947. Long before the British arrived, the ethnic nationalities had lived peacefully under their own leaders, spoke their own languages, and developed and passed along their culture and traditions. Only in 1947 did the ethnic nationalities voluntarily accept the Burman/Myanmar invitation to join in forming an independent union. It was the promise of that union the ethnic nationalities sought to achieve and still desire. They stand ready today to form a union with the Myanmar/Burman provided that it is based on the principles they fought for and enunciated in the several Democratic Alliance of Burma constitutional proposals. They are ready to discuss their proposals alongside those offered from other quarters. They will accept refinement and further elaboration when they are discussed in a future constitutional assembly and will leave it to the elected representatives of the people to decide.

The United Nations General Assembly in 1994 adopted a resolution that called for a ‘Tripartite Dialogue’ to solve the problem and build a sustainable democracy. This means a dialogue among the military, democracy advocates, and the ethnic nationalities. To be candid the UNGA resolutions over sixty years of armed conflict has not brought about the desired results. It is, therefore, crucial in their view that dialogue with the Tatmadaw is achieved. But the ethnic nationalities are well aware that a dialogue in itself will not bring about change. Many ethnic armies entered into ceasefires with the military starting from 1989 in order to find a political solution. But the Tatmadaw has not kept its promises up to this day as proven their all out war against the Kachins . To bring about the desired change, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the ethnic forces will have to skilfully use the economic and social concerns of the people. They will also need the full and coordinated support of the international community.

The international community should fully support the United Nations and there should be no parallel processes to the UN effort. The UN Security Council should fully support the UN efforts and a consensus must be reached between US, Russia and China. There must be a multi-party talk along the lines of the Six Party Talks for North Korea but must include UN, India, China, Japan, EU, US, ASEAN, Russia (to ensure that it does not become a spoiler) and Burma is needed. We should note that ‘Friends of Burma’ or ‘Core Group’ to advise the UN representative and is not good enough as it excludes the current Burmese administration. Being extremely paranoid, they will see it as a conspiracy against them. They need to be included and also held accountable in an international forum.

Today, the basic problem is the same as the founding fathers of the nation faced about three quarter centuries ago: how to construct a political system wherein diverse peoples feel free and equal, able to govern themselves in their own areas, protect and preserve their languages, cultures and traditions, while at the same time give their political loyalty to the nation state.

The end game for the moment is that the regime will fight and talk simultaneously and will continue to release slowly the remaining ethnic political prisoners but once the Western Sanctions is lifted they will go back to their true colour again.

-----------------------
[1] Article (1) of Section 401 grants
[2] Article (3) gives power to cancel that suspension and order re-arrest of a person at any time without a warrant, requiring that he or she must serve the remainder of the original sentence. These powers lie with the executive and not the judiciary.

Ceasefires Won't Bring Peace

2012-01-17T07:49:00.000-08:00

By RIMOND HTOO | Tuesday, January 17, 2012

From the AFPFL government led by U Nu to the SPDC regime led by Than Shwe, successive Burmese governments have cleverly manipulated the ethnic minorities by tricking and lying to them. And it is not going to be any different with Thein Sein’s government.

Since 1961, ethnic minorities have demanded the formation of a genuine federal union where everyone will have equal rights and be treated equally, and where the self-determination of every ethnic group is guaranteed. However, these demands have been ignored by every Burmese government.

Thein Sein is the president of the country. If he wants peace for the country, he should have declared a nationwide ceasefire. He cannot just have regional officers or business people handle the peace process. Such actions will not solve the crisis. The root causes of the problem will remain. And because the ceasefire agreements are not made by the central government, there is no guarantee of their effectiveness.

A slogan of the government during the current peace process is “cooperation for development.” This reminds us of the ethnic groups who turned their arms in for peace in the early 1990s. What have they and the government done to solve ethnic issues? Nothing. The groups were told to take their demands to the National Convention and were made to attend the convention. However, no ethnic issues were discussed at the convention.

Before Thein Sein assumed power, the military regime that ruled Burma said that if anyone wanted to negotiate political issues, they should talk to the new government. Well, Thein Sein is now in power and leading a new government. Where is the process of political negotiation? Nowhere in sight. As soon as he took power, Thein Sein started bombing the Kachin and the Shan.

The current peace process looks no different from what we saw during Khin Nyunt’s time. The government made promises only to break them.

In 1995, the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) signed a ceasefire agreement with the then State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). The agreement was signed in the presence of the Karenni public and the whole people of Burma with an official ceremony. There were 16 points in the agreement between KNPP and SLORC. Two of the most crucial points were: 1) the SLORC shall not add more battalion troops in Karenni State, and 2) the SLORC shall not add or expand their military new outposts in Karenni State.

However, within just 3 months, the SLORC broke these two most crucial conditions of the ceasefire agreement and started attacking the Karenni people again. To stop the aggression from the government, the KNPP sent its delegations in 1996 and 1998 to Rangoon to talk with the government. The government’s response was outrageously irresponsible. They said: “We didn’t have any agreement between you (the KNPP) and us (SLORC). The ceremony in 1995 was just to celebrate the day you came back into the legal fold. So you stay and move within the legal fold.”

Any group that reaches an agreement with the Burmese government that doesn't include guarantees will have the same experience as the KNPP. It is crucial that the root cause of the political issue be resolved politically. Until then, Burma's problems will never be solved.

Whoever governs the country must be genuinely willing to address the demands of Burma's ethnic minorities and recognize their rights. As long as the government perceives minorities as enemies or “destructive elements,” minority issues will never be resolved.

Thein Sein is currently showing no sign of starting political dialogues with the minorities. His regime has suggested doing it later, but has set no time limit. So it is possible that no dialogue will ever take place at all.

The Karen National Union (KNU) recently signed a ceasefire agreement with the government. An 11-point peace proposal was presented. An official from Thein Sein’s government should have guaranteed the KNU that their proposal will be discussed at the Union level. Instead, the managing director of the business group Dawei Princess was making that promise. It doesn’t look like a peace deal, but rather like a business deal.

What Thein Sein should do is implement a nationwide ceasefire, solve the root cause of the six-decade-long conflicts, and reconstruct the country.

Since Burma is a multi-ethnic country, mere democracy won’t do. Burma needs a system that guarantees the rights and self-determination of every ethnic group.

There is a Burmese saying that goes: “You have died once, so you should know your coffin’s cost.” It means that you have already paid the price of past mistakes, so you should know better than to repeat them. Ethnic minorities in Burma have died many deaths. So by now they should know the coffin’s cost well.

Rimond Htoo is a senior member of the Karenni National Progressive Party.

The views expressed here are his own.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/opinion_story.php?art_id=22862&page=1

Preventing Inter-ethnic Unity & Pro Democracy Movement

2012-01-14T10:50:00.000-08:00

By Kanbawza Win | January 14, 2012

Even though there was a euphoria over the political prisoners’ release and the US reward it with the raising of the diplomatic relations to the ambassador level one has to take caution that the “Divide and Rule Policy” which the various Burmese administration inherited from the British, has been put to good use by waging an all out war against the Kachin and simultaneously inking the peace deal with Shan, Chin and Karen and the lesser resistance forces. What more it was able to wean away Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD from the pro-democracy Burmese populace and was able to lure the West to give up their punitive actions that will lead to lifting of sanctions while keeping some prisoners hush hush still under lock and key. This whole concept proves the superb diplomacy of the regime. But on the whole the people of Burma and the world are happy.

Gen Thein Sein has been widely seen as a more moderate and reform-minded but to the Kachin he is just another general whose words cannot be trusted. It has been more than a month since he made public his directive to end the army’s offensive against the Kachin but there has been no cessation of hostilities. On the contrary, more than 90 battles or clashes have taken place, with a steady surge in troop reinforcement. The ferocity is of the attack and the methods of scotch earth policy is such that it is in the category of the war of genocide and the Kachin have no choice but force to fight the war of survival.[1]

Most of the ethnic nationalities are simple people and like to live in their own way of life and at that time the time of British colonization there was no such thing as ethnic conflicts in Burma because one ethnic has been living peacefully with the other for centuries. When Britain was about to give independence to this region, the majority of the ethnic nationalities readily join the Union which was formed by an accord signed at a little town in Shan State called Panglong in 1947, one year prior to the emergence of Burma as an independent, post-colonial state (in 1948).

In this sense, both historically and conceptually, the ethnic Burma’s so-called ethnic conflict is more aptly described as a political conflict against the ruling military rather than a conflict between warring ethnic groups. The conflict is primarily a conflict between the ruling military exercising a monopolistic control of the state in Burma and the ethnic nationalities. It is a vertical conflict between the state and various ethnically defined societies. It is a conflict about how the state is to be constituted and how the relation between the constituent components of society and the state are to be ordered. It is not the case of ethnic segments feuding with and killing each other, nor is it driven by the secessionist impulses. Looking at Burma’s history since 1948, a long-standing and seriously dysfunctional relationship between the state and broader society can be observed and it has been exacerbated by four decades of monopolistic military rule.

To understand the ethnic conflict, it is essential to look into the issues of conceptual differences, constitutional crisis, national identity, majority-minority configuration and other pressing issues like human rights violations, drugs and environmental management. The successive military regimes see Burma as an existing unified nation since the reign of king Anurudha (Anawrahta) 1044 AD. As such, all other non-Myanmar - Shan, Kachin, Chin, Arakanese, Mon, Karen and Karenni - are seen as ethnic nationalities, which must be controlled and suppressed, lest they break up the country. This is what most of the international and the world understand or comprehend. Incidentally this is also what most of the chauvinist Myanmar or in Burmese better known as Mahar Bamar (မဟာဗမာ) wants to portray.[2] This is the crux of the Burmese problem.

On the other hand, some of the educated and well meaning very few Myanmar and all the non-Myanmar maintain that the Union of Burma is a newly developed territorial entity, founded by a treaty, the Panglong Accord, where independent territories merged together on equal basis to obtain independence from Britain and this is what Bogyoke Aung San, the architect of Modern Burma envisage. In this aspect it may seen that the genuine Burman/Myanmar headed by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi wants to instil the real Union Spirit but still fell short by her actions So far the NLD has not issue any statement of sympathy or solidarity with the suffering internally displaced persons. No appeals made to international organizations or governments for humanitarian assistance and moral courage seems to be lacking not only on the Kachin but also on the ethnic nationalities. The instigator of this genocide is not identified or condemned [3]and this is detrimental to the Pyidaungsu Spirit (ပင္လံုစိတ္ဓာတ္). Given such conceptual differences, the Burmese military goes about with its implementation of protecting "national sovereignty" and "national unity" at all cost. This, in turn, gives way to open conflict resulting in more suppression and gross human rights violations. The intolerance of the military and its inspiration to "racial supremacy" and to political domination and control has no limit and the climax of it could be seen by its refusal to hand over power to the winners of 1990 nation-wide election, the NLD,SNLD and other ethnic parties. [4]

The woes of Burma today are deeply rooted in the inadequate constitutional drafting of 1947. The Union Constitution was rushed through to completion without reflecting the spirit of Panglong, or Panglong Seikdat. And lamentably it was still repeated today in the current Nargis Constitution, The ethnic homelands were recognized as constituent states but all power was concentrated in the central government. Almost all the non-Myanmar and Burmese democratic opposition groups are in agreement that the ethnic conflict and reform of social, political and economic cannot be separated from one another. And the only solution and answer is to amend the 1947 Constitution according to Panglong Agreement, where equality, voluntary participation and self-determination, of the constituent states, formed the basis for the Federal Republic of the Union of Burma or rather the Genuine Union of Burma.[5] The ethnic nationalities, especially in the cases of the Karen, Kachin and WA remained such a stumbling block as the Myanmar administrations fails to honours the principles of the Panglong Agreement.[6]

Burma’s fundamental problem is not just about leadership, policy failure, dysfunctional institutions, rights abuses or fractured opposition movements. Categorically speaking, Burma is confronted with nothing less than a full-scale pathological process of internal colonization, this time by its own military. This is an evolutionary process which was set in motion since the coup of 1962 decisively established one-party military rule, where the military and the State cannot be separated. Indeed Burma has evolved into a dual-colony in which the population of more than 50 million citizens is being herded into a political space via the Orwellian “7-steps road map for democracy.” The ruling military clique backed by its 400,000-strong military will continue to make all decisions with massive societal and ecological consequences for the whole population; only this time their decisions are going to be made to sound constitutionally mandated, and in accord with the laws of the land. Further, this small group of men subscribe to an irredeemably myopic and toxic version of ethno-nationalism which refashions Burma along the old feudal lines where the majority “Myanmar and Buddhists,” as defined by these men in generals’ uniform, will be more equal in their Union of Republic of Myanmar.

Needless to say, the generals will pay lip service to ethnic unity and create nominal space for the ethnic people while pursuing “Divide and Rule” as the overarching strategy. The ruling generals have rejected the federal spirit of ethnic equality and violently opposed any struggle towards a genuine federated Union. They have declared dead the Panglong Agreement of 1947, the founding document of a modern, post-colonial Burma, wherein ethnic equality was enshrined as an inviolable pillar of multi-ethnic Burma. Hence in new colonial rule under its own military, will control, subjugated or crushed.

For those who have viewed the emerging parliamentary and formal political processes as the only space in which the people’s voices can be heard, policies debated and public welfare advanced, it is time for a serious rethinking and soul-searching. The opposition have made repeated calls for national and ethnic reconciliation as well as genuine public expressions of inter-ethnic solidarity, which is the last thing any colonial power would want and would tolerate is social and ethnic solidarity across communities, regions and classes. The colonized ethnic nationalities are to be exploited, crushed, subjugated or co-opted.

The generals, of course, don’t see themselves as “native colonialists.” They feel no need for reconciliation along ethnic or political lines with any person, organization or community. In short, they have done nothing wrong, and they can do no wrong. For they perceive themselves as the country’s sole national guardian, untainted by partisan politics. They are committed to the abstract idea of a multi-ethnic nation while trampling on the very idea in reality. And they embrace an absolutist notion of sovereignty where the military, not the people in whose name it exists, is sovereign. They love the country, but they can’t stand the people, especially the kind who refuse to go along with their design for the rest of the country. Political, defiant ethnic communities and political prisoners spring to mind. Their politics is all about resuming and completing the process of re-consolidation of the power of the ethnic Burmese majority, most specifically the soldiering class, over the rest of the ethnic nationalities –a process only interrupted by the old kingdom’s 19th century defeat by Great Britain. Sixty years after independence, the military has built its own version of local colonial rule serving as the constitutionally-mandated ruling class and where the rest of the civilian society, especially the ethnic nationalities and the majority of the Myanmar who does not goes along with the generals are classified as second class citizens.

Throughout modern history, no colonialism is ever known to have offered the colonized political processes or institutions which would undo, or even undermine, such broad colonial objectives as economic exploitation of land, labour and natural resource, political domination and subjugation of populations under colonial rule, and control over the cultural and intellectual life of colonies. Whether one has in mind the formal and classical version, which dissolved, thanks in no small part to colonialists slaughtering one another during the two 20th century world wars, or the subsequent and newer versions characteristic of the Cold War, the essence, objectives and nature of colonial rules remain virtually the same.[7]

Humanitarian assistance, developmental aid, foreign direct investment, increased trade or commerce may be needed in any systemic efforts to rebuild poverty-stricken Burma emerging from decades of war and conflicts. But they are no substitute for forging inter-ethnic and class solidarity, on which an inter-generational political resistance, armed and non-violent, depending on one’s own location, needs to be built.

The fact is the colonial state in the Union of the Republic of Myanmar stands in between public welfare and international assistance and increased foreign direct investment, which has been in the billions thanks to Burma’s economically predatory regional friends such as China, Thailand, India, Malaysia, South Korea and Singapore. Precisely because this ethno-nationalist bond between the Burmese Generals and the majority Buddhist Myanmar has been irreparably broken down, the recent call by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and ethnic nationalities leaders for reconciliation and inter-ethnic solidarity against oppression poses the greatest threat to the ruling Generals uniform or otherwise. While Burma’s issues are complex, as far as the regime’s strategy is concerned it is a simple, time-tested “Divide-and-Rule.” The only way the opposition movements in particular and multi-ethnic communities in general can defeat these native colonizers is through inter-ethnic—and inter-class—solidarity and we hope that UNFC would recruit the think tanks of Burmese Diaspora to be more effective.

Last, but not the least is that the West must give up their Sanctions which the regime so craved. The Constructive Engagement Policy of China, India and especially ASEAN has prolonged the change up to this day. It was the punitive actions of the West that made the Burmese generals relent as they are so desirous to keep their ill gotten wealth to the near and dear ones once they leave this earth. Sanctions must be maintained at all cost.

Prof. Kanbawza Win can be reached at bathannwin@gmail.com
-----------------------------------
[1]Laphai, Nang-Kai; General, You Lied in The Irrawaddy 13-1-2012
[2] Mahar Bama spirit defines the Myanmar chauvinist attitude which can be seen even in the peripherals of Burma and in Diaspora, not to mention inside the country, where the ethnic cleansing is going on with might and main. That is they want to be have a finger in every pie and they always want to be a leader in every aspect of the movement. A classic example is that to play soccer as a team with the other ethnic nationalities he is the one who not only wants to be the captain but always want to shoot the winning goal. He tends to treat the other ethnic as inferior and that only he can lead. The other ethnic must follow him
[3] Laphai, Nang-Kai; General, You Lied in The Irrawaddy 13-1-2012
[4] Sai Wan Sai in Shan-EU “Causes of Ethnic conflict and contemporary politics.”
[5] Ibid
[6] Aung; Htet A Tip of ASEAN: Ethnic: Reality beyond the Election in The Irrawaddy 25-1-2010
[7] Zarni; Dr Maun Burma Needs Inter-Ethnic and Inter-Class Solidarity in Irrawaddy 14-12-2010

Myanmar Signs Cease-Fire Deal With Karen Rebels

2012-01-12T07:26:00.000-08:00

By The Associated Press | January 12, 2012

Myanmar's government signed a cease-fire agreement Thursday with ethnic Karen rebels in a major step toward ending one of the world's longest-running insurgencies and meeting a key condition for better ties with the West.

Members of Myanmar's peace committee (left) and representatives of
the Karen National Union shake hands after signing a peace agreement
Thursday in Pa-an. Photo - Khin Maung Win/AP

The talks between officials and Karen National Union leaders were part of efforts by Myanmar's new, nominally civilian government to seek international legitimacy through democratic reforms after years of military repression.

The Karen group has been fighting for greater autonomy for more than 60 years in a guerrilla campaign in eastern jungles that dates back to before Myanmar's independence from Britain. It has been the only one of Myanmar's major ethnic groups never to have reached a peace agreement with the government.

Bringing a lasting halt to all of the country's long-running ethnic conflicts has been a crucial demand of Western governments as well as the Myanmar's pro-democracy icon and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Aung Min, head of the government's peace committee, announced the truce to reporters after talks in the Karen capital, Pa-an, but he did not immediately give any further details.

"A cease-fire agreement has been signed," Aung Min said.

For decades, Myanmar has been at odds with the ethnic groups who seek greater autonomy, but a military junta that took power in 1988 signed cease-fire agreements with many of them. Some of those pacts were strained as the central government sought to consolidate power, and combat resumed.

However, the new government that took office after November 2010 elections has embarked on reforms to try to end its international isolation and lift the political and economic sanctions imposed by Western governments because of repression under the junta.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton emphasized during her recent visit to Myanmar that bringing an end to the country's ethnic fighting was a key to improved relations with the West.

Suu Kyi underlined the demand in an interview with The Associated Press last week.

"Unless there is ethnic harmony it will be very difficult for us to build up a strong democracy," Suu Kyi said.

In recent months, the government has held talks with rebel groups to strike new peace deals or rebuild shattered cease-fires. The other groups reportedly involved in talks include the Shan, Karenni, Chin and Kachin.

The Karen have been the most enduring adversaries. Karen guerrillas were able to advance close to what was then the capital, Rangoon, in 1949. After the military seized power in 1962, the Karen struggle expanded and they eventually controlled large swaths of territory along the border with Thailand.

The group has benefited from an unusual source of strength many of its leadership were Christians and have been able to draw support from foreign donors, including in the United States.

After the government started negotiating cease-fire pacts with smaller minority groups, it was able to concentrate its force on the Karen in the early 1990s. The rebel group then went into decline, accelerated by a split in the group, as Buddhist rank-and-file members, defying the leadership, formed a breakaway group that allied itself with the government.

A BURMESE PERSPECTIVE: Why should the West Fall into Burmese Trap?

2012-01-09T08:08:00.000-08:00

By Kanbawza Win | 09 January 2012

I was contemplating, whether the Burmese regime would be able to deceive the West after tricking its own People? Lamentably I could not find the answer as it seems now. I simply could not comprehend of why the foreign dignitaries believed what their advisers and analysts say when they did not have any idea of what the psyche and rationale of the Burmese generals and its army, not to mention the generals’ thinking. It is rather bewildering to witness influential businessmen and foreign political leaders of the Western World lining up to give a courtesy call to the Burmese regime.

After the visit of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Thailand’s Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, Indonesia Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa (Chairperson of ASEAN), Japan Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba came. Now the British Foreign Secretary William Hague, have visited the country to be followed by the Danish Delegation and the French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé. Earlier, Norwegian Minister for Environment and International Development, Mr Erik Solheim, had come and all seems to fall into the Burmese Generals’ trap even though Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had warned that there is nothing to be excited about it.

It seems that the visit of Hillary Clinton is interpreted by the Western leaders as a green light to begin to lift sanctions and provide development assistance as men by nature is an economic animal. But promoting the commercial interests too much, too soon, rough riding shot over human rights and democracy is not advisable. The West should not be carried away by some cosmetic reforms and that Burma’s long-ruling military still wields enormous power despite a veneer of democracy provided by the sham elections with a dubious constitution. It would be irrational and irresponsible for the international community to consider lifting the current sanctions and allowing foreign investments return to Burma; doing so will only enrich the top tiers of the military regime and their business associates while enslaving millions of people under their oppression. This will surely lead to regional instability. Great care must be taken that these visits did not lead to a big kind of commercial deal.

I recollected of how the people used to laugh at me when I make a presentations in Europe and America some three decades ago that Burma was unique and the Generals are very cunning, cruel and tricky. The international community construed that Burma, is just like any other Third World Dictatorial Countries that is soon bound to change. That was sometime in the late 70s or early 80s when the winds of change came howling through Asia and dictators like Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos, Indonesia’s Suharto, Pakistan’s Ayub Khan, Thailand’s Thanom Kittikachorn were making their exist and the world predicted that Burma’s Ne Win would soon follow. But prove to be wrong. Now the Arab spring came smiling and the self appointed international Burma experts, political pundits, international think tanks like ICG with an economic eye are predicting that the Burmese spring is imminent, after a long winter and predicted that soon these sordid generals would soon be history. I am afraid that they will be proven wrong again.

Of course, not every Burman/Myanmar is bad but every Burmese administration is bad and this has been authentically proven by ancient and contemporary histories of Burma. The act of deceiving or concealment or distortion of the truth with the main purpose of misleading, duplicity or fraud and cheating seems to be the standard of all the Burmese military administrations. Synonyms like deceiving, trickery, deception, craftiness, crookedness, cunning, dishonesty dissembling, dissimulation, double dealing dupery duplicity, fakery, foxiness fraud, guile wiliness all seems to fit Thein Sein’s pseudo-civilian government.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi herself has revealed that Tatmadaw, wield immense power. As things slowly revealed, Than Shwe used his National Defence Security Council (NDSC) where his proxy the Vice President and the Army Chief plays key roles in blocking the release of leading dissidents serving long sentences. In shot he is using the Tatmadaw against Democracy, Development and the Union of the country. Its sole purpose is to be in power in perpetuity. Than Shwe and his military colleagues who are the real power behind was able to trick the international community by making some cosmetic changes when it release just a mere one tenth of the 2,500 political prisoners while celebrating its independence day by launching an all out war using air force and chemicals weapons against the ethnic Kachin in their course of ethnic cleansing policy is a clear indication of their real intention.

What more prove is wanted when influential businessmen like the fugitive former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, met with the Junta supremo Than Shwe under the pretext a preparatory trip Yingluck Shinawatra’s visit to Burma. Being one of the architects of ASEAN’s Constructive Engagement Policy knew exactly who the pivotal figure behind the scenes is. His not so secret meeting with Than Shwe proves not only the “hush hush” dealing but expose the lingering presence of Than Shwe even on the diplomatic scene. That is why Daw Aung San Suu Kyi herself said that that Tatmadaw could block the reforms “I am concerned about how much support there is in the military for change, how far the military are prepared to cooperate with reform principles.” Even though there was a momentum for change one should not be prematurely over optimistic and relax for the Tatmadaw can change everything as she has indicated.

However, I was aghast when George Soros, billionaire American philanthropist, whose foundation supports grantees that provide uncensored news on Burma and activists, visited Burma. Speaking with him earlier at the Copenhagen Conference my impression that he was well advised by his Burmese advisers, the Burma Project has proven wrong again.

The world must realize that as long as the Tatmadaw is strong and control by Than Shwe and a group of Myanmar Chauvinists generals, whose greed and obsession of lording over the entire country under different pretext, there will be no peace or genuine democracy not to mention the Union of Burma with ethnic equality. In turn it became a regional and later the world problem if the nuclear program is not constraint. The natural resources like of natural gas, gems, and timber are too much attraction for these men in uniforms. Releasing a small fraction of the prisoners of conscience and tricking a few ethnic war lords to sign peace deal will not augur well in the long run.\

One of the most important aspects of the military regime is that it believes that universities education are the birth place of dissent against autocratic rule and want to kill progressive ideas. Hence since 7th July 1962, the Burmese generals have sought to subvert education in Burma to remain in power at any cost. They kill most of the universities students whenever there were a crisis, often close them and send them to remote places and at the same time indirectly encourage them in consumption of recreational drugs on campus just to veer students away from opposition politics. It had bonded the rights to education as a hostage to be always held in captivity and then they can control the country.

But the children of the Generals and those rich enough enjoy uninterrupted and quality education. At the same time Tatmadaw has established its identity as über-nationalist, superior institution solely capable to safeguard them, the new officers are expected to become knowledgeable in economic and other matters to be able to fulfill their extended political and military tasks in building a strong military force and a wealthy and technologically developed army. While the national education system suffers chronically from lack of funds they want their children to go to the West and studies and here come in the Western sanctions that prevented them from doing so.

One of the pretext if not the raison d’être in ending the Western Sanctions is to counter an increasingly heavy Chinese influence on the country as in April the European leaders will decide whether to continue the current sanctions or not. But the hidden agenda is that the old generals are desirous to transfer their ill gotten money to their near and dear ones in trustworthy Swiss and other Western Banks as China could not be trusted and this is the real reason of why they crave so much for Western Sanctions to be lifted. The young and the new powerful group of military men and their families are still eager to follow the old generals and earn huge personal wealth from international trade and the rapid development of what is one of the poorest countries in the world.

The release of all political prisoners is just one of the steps in the country's reforms, and since it fell short of expectations the United States, the European Union and other nations should seriously considered lifting the sanctions and we are hearten when State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told a news briefing. “Even one political prisoner too many, We continue to call for the release of all political prisoners, a halt to hostilities in ethnic areas, and an inclusive dialogue with ethnic minorities toward national reconciliation, space for all political parties to freely compete in April 1 by-elections, and full implementation of legislation to protect universal freedoms of expression, assembly and association,”

If this is the case then William Hague should rather invite these Burmese Generals to The Hague in Netherlands to the International Criminal Court for their crimes against humanity instead of relaxing the punitive actions.

(Prof. Kanbawza Win, the former Foreign Affairs Secretary to the Prime Minister of Burma has worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the European Institute of Asian Studies) Ed.

People Support RNDP Plan for Gas Benefits at Rally

2012-01-06T08:58:00.000-08:00

1/5/2012 | Narinjara News

Kyauk Pru:People in Kyaukpru, a town at the heart of the Shwe Gas project in Arakan State, showed their support for the RNDP's plan for sharing benefits from the gas projects between the central and regional government, said RNDP Vice-President U Tin Pe, who chaired the rally.

The rally was held by the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party, which won 34 seats from Arakan State in the last election in Burma, at the Independence Monument grounds in Kyuak Pru on 1 January, 2012.

"The Rakhine state election commission permitted only 500 people to attend the rally but over 1000 people attended the rally and showed their willingness to support our party plan to fight for sharing profits from our own gas that the government decided to sell to China,” U Tin Pe said.

The people in the rally cheered and cried out loudly to support the plan of RNDP when party leaders delivered speeches about Shwe Gas and how to fight for this by party candidates in parliament in Naypyidaw, he said.

In the rally, four RNDP party senior leaders, including party chairman Dr Aye Maung, delivered speeches on the gas project and also other issues like their activities in the upper and lower houses in Naypyidaw.

“Our party chairman Dr Aye Maung told people in rally that some of legislators from RNDP asked questions to concerned responsible ministers at the last parliament session on the Shwe Gas project but we could not get a satisfactory reply from those ministers. Because of this we arranged the rally to show how our people hope for revenues of our Shwe gas,” he said.

In the last sessions of parliament, the candidates from RNDP asked questions to government bodies on whether there is any plan to use gas from Arakan State for Arakan State’s development. The concerned ministers replied in the parliament that the government has no plans to use gas from the first quota for Arakan State.

Afterward, the Arakanese people were angered and demand the government use the gas for Arakan State's development.

According to party sources, the RNDP arranged the rally in Kyaukpru to raise their voices for Shwe Gas sharing benefits for Arakan State.

“People support our party activities for Shwe Gas and we are going to request the government to share revenues from Shwe Gas to upgrade our state development. Our state is very poor in Burma and we should get some benefits from our own gas,” U Tin Pe added.

Party leaders and the attendees at the rally vowed to fight for equal rights in Burma, not only for national resources but also for political, economic, and social rights. The rally was peacefully ended that night, but the authority did not allow some party leaders to deliver a speech instead of some who submitted their names with the election commission but were absent from the rally.

ေဒသခံအား အသိမေပးဘဲ ေျမဧက ေထာင္ေက်ာ္ သိမ္းဆည္းသြားႏိုင္ဟု လူငယ္အဖြဲ႔ကဆို

2012-01-06T08:56:00.000-08:00

ေရးသားသူ - ကူးဒူ၊ ေႏွာင္းလႈိင္ 05 ဇန္န၀ါရီလ 2012 | ကႏၱာရ၀တီတုိင္းမ္

ကရင္နီျပည္ လြိဳင္ေကာ္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ အေရွ႕ေျမာက္ဘက္ရွိ ပက်ဲရြာေဟာင္းတြင္ ဘိလပ္ေျမစက္ရံု ေဆာက္လုပ္ေရးအတြက္ ကုမၸဏီမွ ေက်းရြာေဒသခံမ်ားအား အသိေပးျခင္း မရွိဘဲေျမယာမ်ား သိမ္းဆည္းသြားႏိုင္သည္ဟု ကရင္နီလူငယ္အဖြဲ႔က ဆိုသည္။

ဘိလပ္ေျမစက္ရံု ေဆာက္လုပ္ရန္ တရုတ္ကုမၸဏီတခုမွ အစိုးရအာဏာပိုင္မ်ားထံမွ လုပ္ပိုင္ခြင့္မ်ား ရရွိထားၿပီး ခန္႔မွန္းေျခ ေျမဧက ၁၂၀၀ ခန္႔ကို သိမ္းဆည္းသြားႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း ကရင္နီအမ်ိဳးသား လူငယ္အစည္းအရံုး KNYO က ေျပာသည္။

“အဲဒီရြာမွာ အိမ္ေဟာင္း၊ ရြာေဟာင္း ျဖစ္သြားၿပီ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ကြင္းေတာ့ ရွိတယ္။ အဲဒီေနရာကို သူတုိ႔ သိမ္းၿပီး သူတုိ႔ ကုမၸဏီနဲ႔ ဆက္စပ္ၿပီး ဘိလပ္ေျမစက္ရံု ေထာင္ဖုိ႔လုပ္တယ္” ဟု KNYO ဥကၠဌ ေထြးရယ္က ေျပာသည္။

ေျမယာသိမ္းဆည္းမည့္ ေနရာသည္ ကုန္းျပင္ျမင့္ျဖစ္ၿပီး လက္ရွိ ေဒသခံမ်ားက ေတာင္ယာမ်ား လုပ္ကိုင္စားေသာက္လ်က္ရွိၾကသည္။ ပက်ဲရြာသစ္၊ ခ်ိကယ္အုပ္စုႏွင့္ ႏြားလဘုိ႔ရြာစသည့္ ေဒသခံမ်ားက ေတာင္ယာမ်ား သြားေရာက္လုပ္ကုိင္ၾကၿပီး ေျမပဲ၊ ပဲေစ့ငံု၊ ပဲပုပ္၊ ေျပာင္းဖူးႏွင့္ အဓိက စပါးတုိ႔ကို စုိက္ပ်ိဳးၾကသည္။

“ခုထက္ထိေတာ့ မသိမ္းေသးဘူး။ အစိုးရက လုိက္ၿပီးေတာ့မွ ေျမသိမ္းတယ္။ ကုမၸဏီေတြ ခ်ေပးတယ္ဆုိတာက ဒါသူတုိ႔ရဲ႕ အစိုးရ အက်ိဳးစီးပြားဆုိေပမယ့္လည္း ဒါက အဓိက နစ္နာသြားတာကေတာ့ လူထုေတြပဲေလ” ဟု ေဒသခံ တဦးက ေျပာသည္။

၂၀၀၈-၂၀၀၉ ခုႏွစ္အတြင္း စစ္အစိုးရတပ္မ်ား သိမ္းယူခဲ့ေသာ ေျမယာမ်ားမွာ ေဘာလခဲ၌ ဧက ၆၀၊ ဖရူဆို၌ ဧက ၅၀၊ ဒီးေမ့ာဆို၊ ေငြေတာင္၌ ဧက ၈၀ ႏွင့္ လြိဳင္ေကာ္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္၌ စက္မႈဇုံတို႔ ပါ၀င္ေၾကာင္း KNYO က ဆိုသည္။

၂၀၁၁ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ ဖရူဆုိၿမိဳ႕နယ္ ေလာဂ်ာ၊ မားပရိုေရွ႔ႏွင့္ ေဒါေလာခူေက်းရြာတုိ႔မွ စပါး၊ ေျပာင္းဖူး၊ ႏွမ္းႏွင့္ ေျပာင္းေကာက္ စသည့္ သီးႏွံမ်ားကို ႏွစ္စဥ္ႏွစ္တုိင္း စား၀တ္ေနေရးအတြက္ စိုက္ပ်ိဳးေနသည့္ လယ္ယာေျမ ဧက ၂၇၀၀ ကို စစ္ေလ့က်င့္ေရးကြင္း ေဆာက္လုပ္ရန္ အစိုးရမွ သိမ္းယူလုိက္ၿပီး ျဖစ္သည္။

လြဳိင္ေကာ္တြင္ ဘိလပ္ေျမစက္႐ုံေဆာက္ လုပ္ေရး ေျမအသိမ္းခံရႏုိင္

2012-01-03T07:05:00.000-08:00

ဇန္န၀ါရီလ ၃ ရက္ ၂၀၁၂။ (ေကအိုင္စီ)

ကရင္နီျပည္နယ္၊ လြိဳင္ေကာ္ၿမိဳ႕အေရွ႕ေျမာက္ဘက္တြင္ ေဒသအေျခစိုက္ စစ္တပ္ႏွင့္ ကုမၸဏီတို႔ ပူးေပါင္းၿပီး ဘိလပ္ေျမစက္႐ုံ တည္ေဆာက္ရန္အတြက္ ထိုေဒသရွိ ေျမဧကမ်ားကို သိမ္းဆည္းရန္ရွိသည္ဟု ေဒသခံမ်ားက ေျပာသည္။

အဆိုပါေဒသအေျခစိုက္ ခလရ(၂၆၁)၊ (၂၅၀)၊ ခမရ(၅၃၁)တို႔ႏွင့္ ဇြဲကုမၸဏီတို႔ ပူးေပါင္းၿပီး ပက်ဲရြာေဟာင္းတစ္ဝိုက္ရွိ ေဒသခံ ျပည္သူတို႔၏ လယ္ယာၿခံေျမဧကမ်ားကို သိမ္းဆည္းရန္ စစ္တပ္မွ ေဒသခံတို႔ကို အသိေပးထားၿပီး ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း လြဳိင္ေကာ္ေဒ သခံတစ္ဦးက ေျပာသည္။

“သိမ္းမယ္လို႔ေတာ့ အသိေပးထားၿပီးၿပီ။ ေလာေလာဆယ္မွာေတာ့ ဘာမွမလုပ္ရေသးဘူး။ ေဒသခံေတြကိုလည္း သိမ္းဖို႔ အသိ ေပးထားတာကလြဲျပီး တစံုတရာ ေျပာတာမရွိေသးဘူး။”ဟု အဆိုပါေဒသခံက ေျပာသည္။

၎ေျမဧကမ်ားသည္ ေဒသခံလူထုအတြက္ မီွခိုလုပ္ကိုင္စားေသာက္ၾကသည့္ ၿခံေျမမ်ားျဖစ္ၿပီး အနီးအနားတြင္ ပက်ဲရြာ ေဟာင္း၊ ပက်ဲ စံျပေက်းရြာ၊ ႏြားလဘို႔ရြာ၊ ဖက္တီမာရြာ စသည့္ရြာေပါင္း ၅ရြာခန္႔ ရွိသည္။

ေက်းရြာတရြာလွ်င္ အိမ္ေျခ ၈၀ေက်ာ္ရွိၿပီး ရြာသူရြာသားမ်ားမွာ ေတာင္ယာစိုက္ပ်ဳိးျခင္း၊ ေျပာင္းဖူး၊ ႏွမ္း၊ ေျမပဲ စိုက္ပ်ဳိးျခင္းျဖင့္ အသက္ေမြးဝမ္းေက်ာင္းျပဳၾကသူမ်ား ျဖစ္သည္။

“အခုတခါ သိမ္းဖို႔က ဘိလပ္ေျမစက္႐ုံေဆာက္ဖို႔တဲ့ အရင္ကလည္း အသိမ္းခံရတာရွိတယ္၊ စစ္တပ္က တပ္ရင္းေဆာက္ဖို႔ဆို ၿပီး တခါသိမ္းတယ္၊ စက္မႈဇုန္ေဆာက္မယ္ဆိုလည္းတခါ၊ ေနာက္ၿပီးေတာ့ ၾကက္ဆူစိုက္တုန္းကလည္းတခါ၊ အခုေနာက္ဆံုး သိမ္းတာေပါ့။”ဟု ကရင္နီ သတင္းႏွင့္ ျပန္ၾကားေရး တာဝန္ခံ ခူးဒယ္နီယာက ေျပာသည္။

ဘိလပ္ေျမစက္႐ုံတည္ေဆာက္ရန္အတြက္ ယခုတခါ ထပ္သိမ္းမည့္ ေျမဧကစာရင္း အတိအက်ကို မသိရေသးေသာ္လည္း ေသာင္းႏွင့္ခ်ီသည့္ ေျမဧကမ်ား ပါသြားႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း ၎က ခန္႔မွန္းေျပာဆိုသည္။

ခူးဒယ္နီယာက “ေလာေလာဆယ္ ဘာမွေတာ့ လုပ္ငန္းအေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္တာ မရွိေသးဘူး။ ေဒသခံေတြကိုေတာ့ အသိ ေပးထားတယ္။”ဟု ဆိုသည္။

ထိုေဒသအတြင္း ေနထိုင္ေနၾကသည့္ ေဒသခံျပည္သူမ်ားမွာ ေတာင္ယာေျမစိုက္ပ်ဳိးျခင္းကိုသာ အဓိက လုပ္ကိုင္စားေသာက္ ေနၾကရသည့္အတြက္ ယခုကဲ့သို႔ ၿခံေျမမ်ား အႀကိမ္ႀကိမ္ အသိမ္းခံရသည့္အေပၚ စား၀တ္ေနေရး အခက္အခဲႏွင့္ ရင္ဆိုင္ေန ၾကရသည္။

၂၀၁၁ခုႏွစ္၊ ေဖေဖာ္ဝါရီလကလည္း ပ႐ူဆိုၿမိဳ႕နယ္ အေရွ႕ေတာင္ဘက္ ၅မိုင္ခန္႔အကြာရွိ ေက်းရြာ ၉ရြာမွ စိုက္ပ်ဳိးၿခံေျမဧက ၂,၇၀၀ ဝန္းက်င္ကိုလည္း အမွတ္(၁၄) တပ္မေတာ္ တန္းျမင့္ ေလ့က်င့္ေရးေက်ာင္း တည္ေဆာက္ရန္အတြက္ဆိုကာ သိမ္း ဆည္းမႈမ်ား ရွိခဲ့သည္။

Than Shwe wants to be remember like Kim Jong IL and not Pol Pot

2012-01-02T13:38:00.000-08:00

By Kanbawza Win | January 2, 2012

The common denominator of these three men are cruelty, brutality, ruthlessness, and secrecy that had set-up a tyranny which simultaneously oppressed and starved its people to an almost unique degree to sustain their own regime. All of them have directly or indirectly killed from 1-5 to 2 million of its own citizens.

Pol Pot (actual name of birth is Saloth Sa) won the scholarship in 1949 to study radio electronics in Paris became enthralled by writings on Marxism and revolutionary socialism and forges bonds with other likeminded young Cambodians studying in the metropolis, including Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan, Khieu Ponnary, Khieu Thirith and Song Sen who are destined to become the notorious Khmer Rouge leaders. Returning from a secret trip to North Vietnam in 1967, Pol Pot takes refuge in the northeast of Cambodia where he lives with a hill tribe and was so impressed by their simple, non-material way of life, imagine itself to be a realisation of communist ideals.

Beginning on the day in 1975 when his guerrilla army marched silently into the capital, Pol Pot declares 'Year Zero' and directs a ruthless program to "purify" Cambodian society and no opposition were tolerated. Buddhist monks are defrocked and forced into labour brigades. In Phnom Penh, Pol Pot emptied the cities, pulled families apart, abolished religion and closed schools. Everyone was ordered to work, even children. The Khmer Rouge outlawed money and closed all markets. Doctors were killed, as were most people with skills and education that threatened the regime. The Khmer Rouge like the Burmese Tatmadaw (army) persecuted members of minority ethnic groups -- the Chinese, Muslim Chams, Vietnamese and Thais who had lived for generations in the country, and any other foreigners -- in an attempt to create a ''pure'' Cambodia. Non-Cambodians were forbidden to speak their native languages or to exhibit any ''foreign'' traits. The pogrom against the Cham minority was the most devastating, killing more than half of that community. The Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979, in which approximately 1.7 million people lost their lives (21% of the country's population), was one of the worst human tragedies of the last century. As in the Ottoman Empire during the Armenian genocide, in Nazi Germany, and more recently in East Timor, Guatemala, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, the Khmer Rouge regime headed by Pol Pot combined extremist ideology with ethnic animosity and a diabolical disregard for human life to produce repression, misery, and murder on a massive scale. Irrefutable evidence of "crimes against humanity, genocide, grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, homicide, torture and religious persecution." were found by the UN. But the people of Cambodia were liberated when on 15th April 1998 in a small thatched hut in the mountains of northern Cambodia Pol Pot died at the age of 73 when the government troops were closing down on him and left the nation in trauma up to this day.

Kim Jong Il was born in 1941 in Siberia, when his father Kim II-sung better known as the Great Leader was living in exile; Kim Jong IL had a reputation as a spoiled playboy who vainly wore platform shoes to appear taller. After his father's death in 1994, Kim Jong-Il managed to retain power (although he did not assume his father's titles until 1997, when he was named secretary of the Communist party) was known as a Dear Leader. Kim Il-sung’s death on July 8, 1994. marked the first hereditary transfer of power in a Marxist, Communist state as even today his son Kim Jong Un took power as the Supreme Leader to complete the hereditary communist throne of North Korea and retain the Kim family dynasty. Seven senior officials - all high-ranking party officials or military figures will be guiding North Korea during Kim Jong Un's early years in power.

During the three generations North Korea like Burma had become one of the most isolated countries in the world, with frequent famines and an economy in a shambles. Something like Burma’s Ye Kyi Aing and notorious jails of Insein and the likes, North Korea has a torture camps because Kim Jong Il needed them to terrify his destitute people into quiescence. Now, as his callow third son maneuvers to take over the world's most shuttered state, it is worth reflecting on the staggering breadth of human rights abuses in North Korea. How they were used for so long to keep the lid on the North Korean people, and why many Westerners paid so little attention. Kim's cruelty that was often overlooked partly due to the deceptive power of the images that found their way out of North Korea on TV and newspapers but mainly due to the nuclear weapons and long-range missiles that most effectively kept his government's grotesque human rights record out of the popular imagination. Thanks to missile launches and nuclear tests, Kim endlessly made sure North Korea seemed really scary. And it worked. Neighboring states and the U.S. government became obsessed with containing his primitive nuclear devices and the missiles that might one day deliver them to Seoul, Tokyo, or San Francisco. To this North Korean diplomats would periodically participate in negotiations over nukes and missiles, but when it comes to concentration camps they would throw a fit and storm out similar to what the Thein Sein administration would react when mentioned that thousands of political prisoners were still under lock and key.

Like the Tatmadaw it steals much of this relief food that has caused severe malnutrition has caused cognitive impairment for millions and speculates that, even if reform were to come, the capacity of North Koreans to revive their country has been severely set back. The North Koreas like the people of Burma are desperately hungry and obviously hungry people do not have time or energy to cause trouble. Like the Army led Burmese Socialist Programme Party Kim could not stamp out the scrappy informal back markets that sprang up to feed the desperate masses, so his security forces have brutally co-opted the markets, extorting bribes from traders and, in the absence of a living wage from the government, using the money to feed and clothe their families, similar to what the Tatmadaw is doing now. If these -market traders do not pay up, they can be sent to jail under different pretext subjected to execution, torture, and starvation.

Should the Kim dynasty continue to resist the forces of change flooding in from China, the son will need all his family's totalitarian tools in order to keep control? But, if Kim Jong Un makes some state accommodation to Chinese-led economic growth food shortages and poverty would likely ease. And there would be no need from him to perpetuate his father's extraordinary era of cruelty. Kim Jong Il was equally elusive just like the Burmese despots Snr-Gen Than Shwe and still believed to be wielding power from behind the scenes. Both of them are tyrants and extremely dangerous person who not only starved their own people but threatened the security of the Asia-Pacific region and supported each other in crimes against humanity.

The friendship between the two countries started in 1970 didn’t last long, however, because in 1983 North Korean agents snuck into Burma and attempted to assassinate visiting South Korean president Chun Doo-Hwan in Rangoon, killing several visiting South Korean ministers in the process. Burma cut diplomatic relations with North Korea. But the next administration secretly renewed the ties with North Korea as early as 1999 even though Pyongyang never apologize Burma. After the Saffron revolution Gen Thura Shwe Mann made a clandestine visit to North Korea and signed a memorandum of understanding under which North Korea agreed to build or supervise the construction of special Burmese military facilities, including tunnels and caves in which missiles, aircraft and even naval ships could be hidden. North Korea has provided Burma with Scud-type missiles, missile parts, rocket launchers, other conventional weapons and underground warfare technology. During the visit of Hillary Clinton, she asked the Burmese leadership to stop illicit military, nuclear and ballistic missile cooperation with North Korea that violates UN sanctions on Pyongyang.

Evil men, like Kim Jong Il and Than Shwe were a man of perpetual war who gloats in oppressing their own people and helped each other to do the same. The gravest international worry regarding the Burma-North Korea relationship is that Burma is attempting to develop nuclear weapons with North Korea. Kim Jong Il got a free pass from the West for his most important legacy: state-sanctioned cruelty. Burma’s cruelty over its own people under Than Shwe is the same as North Korea under Kim Jong Il that was dominated by the armed forces.

Than Shwe, pronounced (θáɴ ʃwè) in Burmese was born February 3rd.1933 in Minzu village, near Kyaukse in central Burma is a military leader and politician, who was chairman of the State Peace and Development Council from 1992 to 2011.The secret of his success is his very lack of charisma, flair, overt ambition or obvious talent, until he became the number one. He still pulls the strings from behind because control over promotions of officers and many soldiers owe their careers to him and feel indebted. In addition, he has been a skilled and ruthless manipulator, using divide-and-rule tactics to strengthen his power base and weaken his potential rivals, within and outside the armed forces as when he was officially in power.

“His human right violations have been so numerous and consistent over the past years as to suggest that they are not simply isolated or the acts of individual misbehaviour by middle and lower-rank officers but are rather the result of policy at the highest level, entailing political and legal responsibility.” was the remarked given by United Nations Special Reporter Rajsoomer Lallah, on the situation of human rights in Burma. Cold and humourless he has a “plump, sullen face”. After ordering thousands of monks to be killed in the Saffron Revolution, he went into a deep depression, and refused to eat anything except chicken rice soup. Many soldiers owe their careers to him, just as he owed his to Ne Win. Only when he had reached the very top did he assert his own power, by putting Ne Win and his family under house arrest, He has built several power bases, notably the Union Solidarity Development Association (USDA), a group of business cronies, the new capital, a new constitution and fake elections that will ensure military rule and protection for him and his family after his eventual retirement or death. An expert manipulator, who knows in playing people off each other, was not educated academically, but it will be a mistake to underestimate him or to think of him as mad or stupid. He is ruthless and brutal, but he knows what he wants and has shown a remarkable ability to get it. His very colourlessness and lack of flamboyance is the secret of his success.

The world already have mountains of evidence of the regime’s mistreatment of political prisoners, brutalization of democracy advocates, use of forced labour and child soldiers, and vicious campaigns against ethnic minorities, including systematic rape, summary executions of civilians and destruction of entire communities. Satellite images conducted by AAAS (American Associations for the Advancement of Science) proves that the destruction of twice as many villages as Darfur where 25 the locations showed evidence consistent of destroyed or damaged villages. He has conducted a systematic organized campaign to force ethnic nationality out of their homeland villages proving beyond doubt that that human-rights abuse already documented by many international organizations was absolutely correct. During these offensives, the Burma Army attacks and burns villages, rapes, tortures, and kills people, destroys their sources of livelihood, and lays landmines to prevent their return. There are more than two million displaced people who are far worst than Zimbabwe and the Darfur region of Sudan.

He has conscripted tens of thousands of child soldiers some as young as age 10 were forcibly recruited into the army making Burma the largest child army in the world. To supply these attacks the Burmese military regime illegally utilizes forced labour. The attacks themselves violate a host of international laws, ranging from murder to illegal property. If the international tribunals can act on Rwanda Sudan and Yugoslavia why can’t they do it in Burma? Is it because Burma’s is strategically situated between China and America in the impending New Cold War? As the UN research documents clearly and authoritatively suggest that the human rights abuses occurring in Burma are not isolated incidents. Failure by the UN Security Council to take action and to investigate these crimes could mean that violations of international criminal law will go unchecked. This still does not include family’s greed and corruption, his grandson’s antics the influence of astrology, the drugs trade, the nuclear programme, arms purchases, biological and chemical weapons, relations with China, Russia and North Korea, the cronies, the succession, and the Cyclone Nargis.

Than Shwe and his old generals are now more focused on how to leave their ill gotten gains to their offspring and want to leave in the guaranteed Swiss banks as their predecessor Ne Win has done. But the Western sanctions have prevented them to do so. Hence they are pressuring the Thein Sein Administration to try his level best to lift the Western sanctions. Now Than Shwe seems to be obsessed in improving his prospects in the next life, apparently in the belief that piety will protect him from the karmic consequences of his actions. He seems to be hoping that death will catch up with him before the international courts do so. But as long as Than Shwe pull the string from behind especially controlling the army and did not stop an all out war in Kachin States using chemical weapons or make political settlement with the ethnic nationalities, the world should not relent its punitive actions and drive for the UN Commission of Inquiry (CoI).

Obama administration backing of (CoI) into crimes against humanity in Burma has been greeted as a major breakthrough. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi herself has supported the move. Of course, it would be unwise to expect the establishment of a CoI into the regime’s egregious abuses over the past two decades to result in a cathartic courtroom drama anytime soon. Justice is a painstaking process, and many obstacles lie ahead. But the wheels have been set in motion, and it is up to all of us to see that they maintain their momentum. The CoI will have the power to refer the generals to the International Criminal Court to face prosecution for their crimes. Whether it exercises this power, will depend very much on the support of the international community as on the force of the evidence and hopefully will bring justice to the merciless? Meanwhile let Than Shwe dream of turning Burma into a global military power and a proud nuclear-weapons state having a vision of the people shedding crocodile tears at his demise before he joined his two comrades (Pol Pot and Kim Jong Ill.) in a hot place (hell).

ပအုိ၀္းအမ်ိဳးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ (PNLO) ၏ ၂၀၁၂ ခုႏွစ္ ႏွစ္သစ္ကူး ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္

2011-12-31T14:26:00.001-08:00

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Unlike Than Shwe, Kim Jong Il was a master of thought control

2011-12-30T14:02:00.000-08:00

By BENEDICT ROGERS | 20 December 2011 | DVB

The death of Kim Jong Il rids the world of perhaps the most brutal, reclusive and eccentric dictator of recent times. It plunges North Korea into a period of uncertainty and instability, and threatens yet more tension on the Korean Peninsula. And it is a fittingly symbolic end to the year which saw tyrants tumble.

Not since 1989 has the world seen so many dictators disappear from power in quick succession, yet in 2011, we witnessed the fall of Tunisia’s Ben-ali, Egypt’s Mubarak and Libya’s Gaddafi. We also saw the regimes in Syria and Bahrain rocked by popular uprisings which in the face of brutal suppression refused to surrender. Even in Burma, in very different circumstances, the man who ruled for almost twenty years apparently ‘retired’ and his successor embarked on a reform programme. Than Shwe’s retirement, and Thein Sein’s reforms, are still in their early phase and provoke as much caution as they do optimism, but the mere sight of Aung San Suu Kyi, whose name Than Shwe could barely bring himself to say, contesting a by-election and sitting in parliament is something few would have predicted. Within a few months, however, it is likely to become a reality.

It was a heart attack, we are told, that toppled Kim Jong Il, rather than a popular uprising, and it is unlikely that much will change in North Koreain the immediate term. But his death illustrates in a different way what all the other examples also show: that dictators are vulnerable, tyrants are fragile, and despots cannot last forever. So better to leave at a time of your choosing, rather than be forced from office by circumstances beyond your control.

North Korea and Burma are Asia’s two pariah states, ruled by two of the world’s cruelest regimes. Both are accused of crimes against humanity against their own people. Human rights activists including myself have advocated the establishment of a UN Commission of Inquiry to investigate such crimes in both countries. Both regimes are knee-deep in the drugs trade and the slave trade. Both have funds locked in offshore bank accounts.

Both are military-based regimes, with, respectively, the fourth largest army in the world and the second largest in Southeast Asia. North Korea is a nuclear power, and Burma is developing a nuclear programme with North Korea’s help.

The two regimes have run their economies into the ground, watched their people starve and manipulated international aid while the rulers live in obscene opulence. The video of Than Shwe’s daughter’s wedding, with gifts said to be worth $US50 million, would find its place in the absurdity stakes alongside the accounts of Kim Jong Il’s long train journeys accompanied by dozens of masseurs, cooks, food tasters and bottles of the finest cognac. Both regimes are sustained and protected by China.

These are the similarities, and there are others. However, there are also differences. While Than Shwe showed signs of developing a cult of personality before he left office, with his photograph displayed in government buildings and his decision to build a new capital, Naypyidaw, meaning ‘The Seat of Kings’, he never reached the same heights of near-deification that his counterpart in North Korea achieved. Even though his children have held positions in the regime, and his favoured grandson lives a gangster existence protected by his status, Than Shwe’s priority has been to protect, not promote, his family. There was no question of a Than Shwe dynasty ruling Burma, unlike North Korea.

Indeed, North Korea must be the only country in the world which claims to be communist and yet is ruled by a dynasty regarded as a deity. In its announcement of Kim Jong Il’s death, the North Korean state media showered him with epithets Than Shwe and his astrologers could only dream of: “genius of the revolution,” “supreme incarnation of the revolutionary moral obligation”, “great master of politics and illustrious commander born of Heaven”.

Perhaps the starkest difference between Burma and North Korea is in the political systems. In terms of physical brutality – torture, rape, forced labour, killings – there is not much to choose between them, and both regimes are rightly accused of violations of international human rights law. However, Kim Jong Il’s regime succeeded where Than Shwe’s failed, in one particular area: thought control. In North Korea, there is no opposition, organised or informal. There is no civil society. There are no dissidents. There is no Aung San Suu Kyi, no NLD, no 88 Generation. And if you visit North Korea, as I have done, you will discover it is impossible to find anyone who will dare to speak out, even privately. Everyone is watching everyone, all the time.

As a foreigner visiting North Korea, you can only talk to the people the regime wants you to meet. I travelled with two British Parliamentarians, Lord Alton and Baroness Cox, to meet the regime last year, to talk face to face, eye to eye, about human rights. On one or two occasions, we slipped our minders and went for a walk in the streets of Pyongyang. There was no way, however, we could have talked to the people we passed in the street about what they really think. And when we were taken to visit a school, a hospital and a university, we were told by the head teacher, the senior doctor and a professor that everything there was a gift from the Great Leader Kim Il Sung or the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. A brand new Olympic-sized university swimming pool was the brainchild of the Dear Leader, we were told, and such was his amazing generosity that he personally provided swimming trunks to every student. His picture and that of his father stared down at us from every wall in every room, and their names were referenced every three or four sentences. When we were taken to a concert, film footage of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il inspecting farms and factories was shown on a screen behind the orchestra, followed by scenes of tanks rolling across, and then missiles firing. I thought I had stepped right into the pages of George Orwell’s 1984. Each time a missile fired on the screen, the entire audience burst into applause – except for the three of us.

In Burma, in contrast, I have never met anyone who has anything good to say about Than Shwe, even within the regime. A minority is willing to speak out publicly, and risk paying a high price for doing so, but many more will speak privately, in a quiet spot, a whisper, a private room. Not so in North Korea. Even the slightest misstep or word whispered out of turn can land you in one of the country’s notorious prison camps, or execution. More than 200,000 prisoners of conscience are in North Korea’s gulags – at least one hundred times the number of political prisoners in Burma. Moreover, unlike the political prisoners in Burma, few if any of these 200,000 have been jailed for active opposition to the regime. Typically they have been imprisoned because they looked at Kim Jong Il’s picture in the wrong way, were born into a family regarded as ‘hostile’ because of past connections to South Korea, or possessed a Bible. North Korea has a policy of punishment for three generations.

Kim Jong Il’s son, Kim Jong Un, is already described as the ‘Great Successor’. But his own power-base is weak, and it is unclear whether he will be in charge or whether there will be a power struggle. The future is hard to predict, but if the situation unravels, Kim Jong Un’s fate may not be entirely secure. North Koreans who had escaped from the country had been campaigning to bring Kim Jong Il to the International Criminal Court. He died before he could be tried. At just 28, Kim Jong Un may not be so lucky.

So the lesson for Burma’s regime? In the long-run, authoritarian rule does not pay off. Whether the people rise up or ill health and old age strike, dictators who remain dictators cannot guarantee their safety or that of their families. Dictators who have succumbed to the will of the people, and either bowed out while they still had time or presided over a negotiated transition, leave office with their lives and the well-being of their families intact. Think of South Africa’s de Klerk, the Soviet Union’s Gorbachev, Indonesia’s Suharto and Habibie. Kim Jong-il’s death, therefore, should be an encouragement to Thein Sein to continue on the path of reform he appears to have started on, and to make it a reality.

Kim Jong Il wins a place in the history books alongside Hitler and Stalin, as a mass murderer and international criminal. It is ironic that he died a day after Vaclav Havel, the man who led the struggle for freedom in Czechoslovakia and who described the North Korean tyrant as “the world’s worst totalitarian dictator, who is responsible for taking millions of human lives”. The question for Thein Sein is whether he wishes to be ranked in the same category, or alongside de Klerk, Gorbachev and Habibie, as a man who ended dictatorship and helped restore his country to democracy. It is in his interests to make the right choice.

Benedict Rogers is East Asia Team Leader at Christian Solidarity Worldwide, and author of ‘Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma’s Tyrant’ (Silkworm Books, 2010).

Regime ready to meet UNFC now: PaO leader

2011-12-27T18:59:00.000-08:00

U Aung Minand Hkun Okker shaking hands

after themeeting (Photo: Hkun Okker)

Monday, December 26, 2011 | S.H.A.N

According to PaO National Liberation Organization (PNLO) president Hkun Okker, Naypyitaw’s chief negotiator U Aung Min has disclosed to him that he is ready to meet the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), the alliance of 11 armed groups, during a meeting with him in Bangkok on Friday, 23 December.

“This is a major departure from its initial ‘group-wise’ approach,” said the 65 year old PaO leader, whose PNLO is a member of the UNFC. “The policy has apparently proved a waste of time and resources with most of the groups that he had met.”

The only group that U Aung Min’s efforts have been successful so far is the Restoration Council of Shan State / Shan State Army (RCSS/SSA) led by Lt-Gen Yawdserk, whose delegation signed a ceasefire agreement with Naypyitaw appointed Shan State Government on 2 December.

U Aung Min, who is concurrently serving as Minister of Railway Transport, met the Karen National Union (KNU) in Maesot on 21 December and the New Mon State Party (NMSP) in Sangklaburi the next day. At that time he was still reportedly sticking to the group-wise approach stand. “He said the government would hold talks with dialogue only at the third stage of the 3-stage peace process,” said a Karen source.

All the meetings were moderated by Nyo Ohn Myint from the National League for Democracy-Liberated Area (NLD-LA).

The 3 stages are Ceasefire, Development and what is known as “Panglong-like Conference”.

The UNFC, formed in February, is made up of Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP), Chin National Front (CNF), Lahu Democratic Union (LDU), Palaung State Liberation Front (PSLF), Wa National Organization (WNO), National Unity Party of Arakan (NUPA), Shan State Progress Party / Shan State Army (SSPP/SSA), KNU, NMSP and PNLO.

The grouping has yet to meet and decide on its upcoming historic meeting with U Aung Min.

BURMESE PERSPECTIVE: The Regime War against Humanitarianism

2011-12-19T05:51:00.000-08:00

By Kanbawza Win | 19 December 2011 | Monday

The international community was shock and aghast when the Burmese military regime turned down the humanitarian aid offered by the international community after the Nargis Cyclone hit the country in May 2008 killing some 200,000 people and making millions homeless. The United Nations practically had to beg to deliver assistance to hundreds of thousands flood-stricken people and according to the UN figures 80,000 people needlessly died from their regime’s arrogance This episode alone proves that the Burmese Generals and the army (Tatamadaw) have no good will (cetena) to its own people. So it came to no surprise when the Burmese regime block the humanitarian aid to the Kachin refugees running away from an all out war waged by the Tatamadaw against its own people just like what President Bashar al-Assad is doing in Syria..What cruelty and inhuman gesture can be more vivid than this and yet it is hoping for the West to lift sanctions and enter into the community of civilized nations?

The current regime lacks the experience of independent struggles or Cold War politics. They are not able to stand on a nationalistic platform or non-alliance ideology and knaves in playing political theory games. The only lessons they have learnt is some effective ways to hold on to their power. The training and lectures given to them is somewhat
-We work harder than others for the sake of the country.
-We sacrifice our lives to work for the sake of the country.
-Our comrades are injured or killed by our enemies.
-The enemies who injure or killed us are supported by a part of the population.
-We must follow orders, live under the discipline of the army at all the time.
-We are soldiers serving the country 24-hours a day.

Hence from the soldier’s view, ordinary people and civil servants live more easy-going lives. They are undisciplined and have many leisure hours. They do business just to enrich themselves. The end result is that soldiers believe they have the sole right to hold state power due to their hard work and sacrifices. These basic opinions not only hinder the relationship between the people and the Tatmadaw, but also between the opposition groups and the Tatmadaw.

When the army cracks down on peaceful demonstrators and monks, they viewed them as lazy opportunists who are asking for rights without working hard and sacrificing like them. The Tatmadaw, in a way, blames the people for failing to develop the country. Although the army as a whole works hard, the people and civil servants don’t work hard. Foreigners work and think smarter than lazy Burmese people, and these are the reasons developed countries are ahead of Burma seems to be the Tatmadaw’s logic and rationale. However, when ordinary people go abroad to seek job opportunity, they see them as betraying the country and opting for a foreign one The soldiers work industriously because they receive advantages from their work. They are disciplined because they are simply reaping the advantages from performing well. The regime especially the members of the ruling party who are old soldiers did not have the slightest idea that Burma could not move forward because of the army’s heavy handed control. So declaring war on humanitarian works and obstructing both the local and international NGOs is their humanitarian works is normal for them. Obviously they admire the dictum of Mao Ze Dong:

“Crack down on the extreme minority, leave the educated to live in illusion, and label the majority of ordinary people as supporters.”

The mentality of this Burmese quasi civilian government is such that it could not comprehend that humanitarian aid is an act of philanthropy and nothing more as helping the cyclone or a war victim. The ex brass are so evil and so engrossed in the fear of losing power that they are blocked from every reasoning power. Only brute force and punitive actions can make them understand. It becomes and international duty to make these brute to understand or otherwise it will continue to commit crime against humanity. With such kind of mentality it will be very difficult to make them comprehend that that every mortal being has the right to receive humanitarian assistance and to offer it is a fundamental humanitarian principle.

Tatmadaw propaganda encourages a blind racist nationalism, full of references to protecting the race meaning the Myanmar. This implies that if the Myanmar do not oppress other nationalities then they find themselves be oppressed. For them national reconciliation means assimilation and preventing disintegration of the Union of Burma all the ethnic races must be assimilated into the Myanmar race including their language, culture and values. Hence if the Tatmadaw falls then everything will fall. The military construe that the international community, is constantly telling them to give up their hold on power and open up the way to become the real democracy and the Genuine Union of Burma. What right have they to tell us what to do?

Drugs money also makes a substantial contribution to army coffers. Official policy is to suppress opium growing. In reality, production has nearly tripled since as once can see in the UN report. Narco related companies in Rangoon pay off the army and money from this illicit trade permeates the military hierarchy. Cut off from their roots in the people and corrupted by a far more luxurious lifestyle than is available to ordinary Burmese, they became desperate. Amid the poverty, army officers maintain a privileged lifestyle, enjoying golf courses, seaside villas, Mercedes limousines and other luxuries. On retirement from the army, they are awarded lucrative jobs as directors of state-run enterprises

In recent years humanitarian agencies have been working in conflicts in Burma where the Tatmadaw have no interest in respecting international law, and where international political action to enforce this respect has been weak or ineffective. Humanitarian action was seen by the Burmese government at best as interference, or as an unfriendly act. Humanitarian personnel and assets were neither respected nor protected at all times. Payment was demanded at checkpoints, relief items stolen and aid workers threatened because of their control of resources and assets.

Humanitarian assistance in Burma especially in Kachin state where the government is waging an all out war to annihilate the Kachin Race is both needed. People are suffering because of armed conflict and not because of natural disaster or disease. By definition, therefore, part of the territory in which the NGO attempts to deliver assistance is outside of any government's control. The Geneva Conventions make clear that states and non-state actors involved in armed conflict have a responsibility to make sure that all "persons taking no active part in the hostilities" (and this includes humanitarian aid workers) are treated humanely. The UN Security Council has even passed a resolution urging "...States to ensure that crimes against such personnel [participating in humanitarian operations] do not remain unpunished. But the wild Tatmadaw would not respect the international law. The escalation in fighting in Kachin State, increased human-rights abuses against civilians, massive internal displacement and high levels of vulnerability all frustrated these attempts at participation. Increasing insecurity made it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to apply participatory approaches to relief programming. It was difficult for humanitarian agencies to obtain adequate planning information, such as needs assessments and problem analyses.

Allowing government actors to decide where humanitarians can or cannot go and allowing governments to impose military escorts as a condition for protection might well protect humanitarian workers, kills the very principles of humanitarian assistance and that is what the current Burmese regime is doing. The Tatmadaw and the generals are too naive to understand that respect and non-aggression toward humanitarian assistance is needed in the conflict areas. Humanitarian aid workers are not volunteering for martyrdom. Refusing the humanitarian aid or persecuting the aid workers and looting the aid for the solders as they often do made the Burmese Tatmadaw not a warring party but criminals. When the civilized community requested the Tatmadaw protect the humanitarian assistance they are simply requesting them to live up to their commitment to create a space in which humanitarian assistance can operate. Is that such an impossible demand?

The UN Security Council doesn't ask for that much effort on the part of states. What it does urge is that states do not allow crimes against humanitarian workers to go unpunished. Humanitarian aid organizations are not asking for so much. They are just requesting safety guarantees from Tatmadaw not to commit crimes against humanitarian assistance and workers, and if some captains do commit such crimes as they often do don't let them go unpunished. It's an essential condition to ensuring that the people needing humanitarian assistance receive it. Lynn Yoshikawa from Refugees International, an independent humanitarian advocacy organization based in Washington, DC, recently completed an assessment after visiting Myitkyina, Pa An and Moulmein said ,

“Refugees International is really worried over the security of the workers and internally displaced persons (IDPs), thousands of those are living in insufficient camps in areas where the sanctuaries are sandwiched between the Kachin freedom fighters and the Tatmadaw.”

It seems that when confronting horrible conditions and repressive Burmese governments, humanitarian organizations in Burma are faced with the decision of observing silence in order to have continued access to populations versus publically denouncing what is going on and risking expulsion. The Burmese regime is preventing aid organizations from having access to the Internally Displaced Persons camps. There is little respect for humanitarian organizations in the eyes of the Burmese and even the International Committee of the Red Cross is heavily restricted. Ultimately the best balance is for humanitarian organizations to carefully vocalize their opposition – mainly through encouraging the international community to continue pressuring the government – without a dramatic head-on confrontation that jeopardizes the humanitarian space in the country. Or otherwise the new quasi Civilian government just like the previous Junta will continue to wage war against humanitarianism.

ပအို၀္းလူမ်ဳိးမ်ားကို ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္မွ ေမာင္းထုတ္ေတာ့မည္လား

2011-12-14T10:13:00.000-08:00

SSA (S) ဆင္ႏြဲသည့္ေတာ္လွန္ေရးသည္ MTA ဆင္ႏဲြသည့္ေတာ္လွန္ေရးႏွင့္ ဆင္တူမႈမ်ား

By ရွမ္းျပည္သားေလး | ၁၄ ဒီဇင္ဘာ ၂၀၁၁ | ေတာင္ႀကီးတုိင္းမ္

၂၀၁၁ တြင္ ေပၚေပါက္လာသည့္ အစိုးရသစ္၏ လက္ထက္တြင္ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ တည္ၿငိမ္ေရးအတြက္ ျမန္မာ့တပ္မေတာ္ႏွင့္ (SSA-S) [ရွမ္းျပည္တပ္မေတာ္ (ေတာင္ပိုင္း)] အၾကား ရွမ္းႏွစ္သစ္ကူး ကာလျဖစ္ေသာ ဒီဇင္ဘာလအတြင္းတြင္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးသေဘာတူညီခ်က္ကို လက္မွတ္ေရးထိုးႏိုင္ခဲ့ၾကသည္။ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ရွိ ျပည္သူမ်ား၏ဘ၀ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းတည္ၿငိမ္သာယာေရးအတြက္ အင္မတန္မွ လိုအပ္ပါသျဖင့္ ဤလုပ္ရပ္ကို အထူးႀကိဳဆိုပါသည္။

သို႔ေသာ္လည္း သိန္းစိန္အစိုးရႏွင့္ SSA-S တို႔ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးသေဘာတူညီမႈအတြက္ ညိွႏိႈင္းေနသည့္ကာလတြင္ SSA-S ၏ ထိုးစစ္ဆင္ေရးသည္ PNO ဘက္ကို ဦးတည္လာသည္။ ၂၀၁၁ ႏို၀င္ဘာလ (၂၃)ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ရဲႏွင့္ ဗမာစစ္တပ္ကို ေတြ႕ရင္ မပစ္ပါနဲ႕ PNO ကိုေတြ႕ရင္ ပစ္” ဟု SSA-S ထိပ္ပိုင္းေခါင္းေဆာင္က အမိန္႔ေပးထားသည္ဟု သိရသည္။ ထိုအခ်ိန္မွ စၿပီး လြယ္လင္ၿမိဳ႕ ေတာင္ဘက္ မယ္စလီကုန္းရြာ အနီးတ၀ွက္တြင္ SSA-S ႏွင့္ PNO တို႔ တိုက္ပဲြ အရွိန္ျမင့္မားလာၿပီး PNO ဦးေဆာင္သည့္ ဗိုလ္မွဴးေရႊမန္းလည္း က်ဆံုးသြားခဲ့သည္။ လက္ရွိတြင္ SSA-S တပ္ဖဲြ႕သည္ ဟိုပံုးၿမိဳ႕ အေရွ႕ေျမာက္ဘက္ရွိ ေက်ာက္တန္းရြာ အနီးတ၀ွက္ႏွင့္ ထမ္းဂ်န္းရြာ၊ ဂ်အြန္ရြာ အနီးတ၀ွက္တြင္ ေရာက္ရွိေနၿပီလို႔ သိရသည္။

“လြန္ခဲ့သည့္ႏွစ္ပတ္က ေက်ာက္တန္းရြာ အေရွ႕ဘက္မွာ ရွိတဲ့ ဗမာတပ္စခန္းက ဗမာေတြ ထြက္ခြာသြားၿပီး PNO ၀င္ထိုင္ခိုင္းေတာ့ ရွမ္းစစ္တပ္(SSA-S) ၀င္ပစ္လိုက္တယ္။ ႏွစ္ဖဲြ႕စလံုးက အေသအက်မ်ားတယ္လို႔ ၾကားတယ္။ ေနာက္ၿပီး လြယ္လင္ၿမိဳ႕ကေန ေတာင္ဘက္ကို ေျခက်င္နဲ႕သြားရင္ တစ္နာရီခဲြ ခရီးရွိတဲ့ မယ္စလီကုန္းရြာ ရွိတယ္။ အဲဒီေဒသလည္း PNO ႏွင့္ ရွမ္းစစ္တပ္(SSA-S) တိုက္ပဲြျဖစ္ေတာ့ စာသင္ေက်ာင္းမွာ စာသင္ေနသည့္ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြ ထြက္ေျပးၾကေတာ့ ေက်ာင္သားတစ္ဦးကို က်ည္ဆံထိတယ္။ ေသလား ရွင္လားေတာ့ မသိရဘူး” ဟု ထိုအရပ္ကို ေရာက္ရွိေနတဲ့ ေတာင္ႀကီးၿမိဳ႕ခံတစ္ဦးက ေျပာျပသည္ကို သိရသည္။

SSA-S ကို ဦးေဆာင္ေနသည့္ ဒုတိယ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးရြက္ဆစ္သည္ ယခင္က ဘိန္းဘုရင္ခြန္ဆာ ဦးေဆာင္သည့္ MTA ၏ တပ္ရင္းမွဴးေဟာင္း တစ္ဦးျဖစ္သည္။ ၁၉၉၆ တြင္ န၀တ စစ္အစိုးရထံ ခြန္ဆာဦးေဆာင္သည့္ MTA တပ္ဖဲြ႕က လက္နက္ခ် သြားသည့္အခါ ရြက္ဆစ္လည္း ထိုလက္နက္ခ်သည့္အဖဲြ႕မွာ ပါခဲ့ပါသည္။

“ခြန္ဆာႀကီး လက္နက္ခ်သြားတဲ့အခါၾကေတာ့ အခုဒုတိယ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီး ရြက္ဆစ္က အဲဒီအခ်ိန္က ခြန္ဆာတပ္၏ တပ္ရင္းမွဴးအဆင့္ေလာက္ရွိပါလိမ့္မယ္။ ရြက္ဆစ္အဖဲြ႕ေတြလည္း လက္နက္ခ်တဲ့အထဲမွာ ပါခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီအခ်ိန္တုန္းက လက္နက္ခ်ခဲ့တဲ့ ဦးရြက္ဆစ္နဲ႕ ေထာက္လွမ္းေရး (၂၄)တပ္မွဴး ဗိုလ္မွဴးသိန္းဟန္နဲ႕ တဲတစ္တဲထဲ အတူတူအိပ္ၾကတာပါ” ဟု ေထာက္လွမ္းေရးႏွင့္ သံတမန္အရာရွိေဟာင္း ဗိုလ္မွဴးေဟာင္း ေအာင္လင္းထြဋ္က VOA အင္တာဗ်ဴးထားသည့္ တပ္မွဴးတပ္သား ေျပာစကား အပိုင္း(၂)တြင္ ျပန္လည္ေျပာျပခဲ့သည္ကို သိရသည္။

“မူလ SSA က သူတို႔ကိုယ္သူတို႔ ရွမ္းျပည္တပ္မေတာ္(ေျမာက္ပိုင္း) လို႔ မသတ္မွတ္ပါဘူး။ အဲဒီအခ်ိန္တုန္းက စစ္အစိုးရကလည္း၊ သူတို႔ကို SSA (ရွမ္းျပည္တပ္မေတာ္) လို႔ပဲ၊ သတ္မွတ္ပါ တယ္။ ေျမာက္ပိုင္းတို႔ ေတာင္ပိုင္းတို႔ ျဖစ္ေနတာက၊ သူတို႔ ရွမ္းလက္နက္ကိုင္တပ္ေတြထဲမွာပဲ၊ သတ္သတ္ မွတ္မွတ္နဲ႔ သူတို႔ဟာသူတို႔ ခဲြထားတဲ့ အေနအထားမ်ိဳးပါ။ အဲဒီအခ်ိန္တုန္းကေတာ့၊ စစ္အစိုးရအေနနဲ႔က ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေဆထင္ ဦးေဆာင္တဲ့ တပ္ကိုပဲ၊ SSA (ရွမ္းျပည္တပ္မေတာ္) လို႔၊ အသိအမွတ္ျပဳထားတာပါ။ ရြက္ဆစ္ တို႔အဖဲြ႔ကိုေတာ့၊ ခြန္ဆာႀကီး ေအာက္က ခဲြထြက္လာတဲ့ မူးယစ္ေဆး၀ါးနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ေနတဲ့ အဖဲြ႔အျဖစ္၊ ခဲြျခားၿပီး ဆက္ဆံခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ‘၀’ ဆို႔၊ ကိုးကန္႔တို႔၊ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေဆးထင္ရဲ႕ SSA (ရွမ္းျပည္တပ္မေတာ္) တို႔လို၊ သူတို႔ကိုလည္း ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအဖဲြ႔အျဖစ္ လက္ခံဖို႔၊ ရြက္ဆစ္တို႔က အႀကိမ္ႀကိမ္ ေတာင္းခံခဲ့ေပမဲ့၊ အဲဒီအခ်ိန္တုန္းက ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မႉးႀကီးသန္းေရႊရဲ႕ မူအရ၊ လမ္းစဥ္အရ၊ ရြက္ဆစ္တို႔အဖဲြ႔နဲ႔ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး မေဆြးေႏြးႏိုင္ဘူး ဆိုတဲ့၊ မွတ္ခ်က္နဲ႔၊ ျမန္မာ့တပ္မေတာ္က မေဆြးေႏြးပဲ ေနခဲ့တာပါ” ဟု ၎(ဗိုလ္မွဴးေဟာင္း ေအာင္လင္းထြဋ္)က VOA ကို ဆက္ေျပာျပခဲ့သည္။

၂၀၀၇ တြင္ ၿပိဳကဲြခဲ့ၿပီျဖစ္ေသာ န၀တ၊ နအဖ စစ္အစိုးရႏွင့္ (၂၀၀၄ တြင္) အပစ္ခတ္ရပ္ သေဘာတူရထားသည့္ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ လူမ်ဳိးေပါင္းစံု လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖဲြ႕ (ရလလဖ)၏ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေဟာင္းတစ္ဦးက ရြက္ဆစ္ႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ခုလိုျပန္ေျပာျပခဲ့သည္။ “ခြန္ဆာလက္နက္ခ်သည့္ အခန္းအနား ဗီြဒီယို မွတ္တမ္းကို ျပန္ၾကည့္မယ္ဆိုရင္ ရြက္ဆစ္က အဲထဲမွာ ပါေနတာကို ေတြ႕ရလိမ့္မယ္။ ခြန္ဆာလက္နက္ခ်တုန္းက အတူမလိုက္သြားဘဲ ေနာက္မွ စစ္အစိုးရထံ သီးျခားအလင္း၀င္သည့္ မဟာၾကာ(SSS) တို႔အဖဲြ႕က အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခြင့္ရ နယ္ေျမ ရၾကတယ္။ ရြက္ဆစ္လည္း မဟာၾကာလုပ္ပံုကိုျမင္ေတာ့ သူေတာျပန္ခိုၿပီး MTA လက္က်န္ရဲေဘာ္ေဟာင္းမ်ားကို စုးစည္းၿပီး အင္အားျပန္စုေဆာင္းတယ္။ အင္းအားေကာင္းလာတဲ့အခါေတာ့ နအဖစစ္အစိုးရထံ အႀကိမ္ႀကိမ္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးကမ္းလွမ္းခဲ့တယ္။ မဟာၾကာ (SSS) တို႔ မိုင္းလားအဖဲြ႕တို႔ နယ္ေျမအုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခြင့္ရ ပံုစံရေအာင္ အႀကိမ္ႀကိမ္ႀကိဳးစားေပမယ့္ မေအာင္ျမင္ခဲ့ဘူး။”

SSA-S အင္အားႀကီးမားေရးအတြက္ ရြက္ဆစ္က မည္သူမဆို အရြယ္ေရာက္ အမ်ဳိးသားမ်ားသည္ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္တြင္ ေနပါက စစ္မႈမထမ္းမေနရ မူကုိ ခ်မွတ္ခဲ့သည္။ SSA-S ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္ထားသည့္ နယ္ေျမအတြင္းႏွင့္ ၎၏အနီးတ၀ိုက္ရွိ နယ္ေျမခံမ်ားမွ ရြာသားမ်ားျဖစ္ေသာ ရွမ္း၊ ပအို၀္း၊ လားဟူ မိမိတို႔စိတ္ဆႏၵမပါဘဲ SSA-S က အဓမၼဖမ္းဆီးၿပီး စစ္သင္တန္းေပးကာ ၎တို႔တပ္ဖဲြ႕ကို အတင္း၀င္ေစခဲ့သည္။ ထိုလုပ္ရပ္ေၾကာင့္ အရြယ္ေရာက္ ကာလသားမ်ားသည္ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံႏွင့္ ၿမိဳ႕ႀကီးျပႀကီးမ်ားသို႔ ထြက္ေျပးတိမ္းေရွာက္သြားခဲ့ၾကသည္။

ေနာက္ပိုင္းတြင္ ရြက္ဆစ္သည္ သပ္ရပ္ေသာ စစ္၀တ္စံုအျပည့္ႏွင့္ ဆန္းသစ္ေသာ လက္နက္မ်ားျဖင့္ သပ္ဆင္ထားသည့္ ေထာင္ႏွင့္ခ်ီေသာ တပ္အင္အားကုိ ပိုင္ဆိုင္လာသည္။ သုိ႔ေသာ္လည္း ၎တို႔ လႈပ္ရွားမႈသည္ စစ္အာဏာရွင္စနစ္ကို ထိေရာက္စြာ ေတာ္လွန္ပုန္ကန္ တိုက္ပဲြစစ္ပဲြဆင္ႏဲြမႈ မရွိသေလာက္နည္းပါးၿပီး ၎တို႔ ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္နယ္ေျမ အနီးတ၀ွက္ရွိ လားဟူ၊ ပအို၀္း စသည့္လူမ်ဳိးငယ္မ်ားကိုသာ လိုက္ႏိုင္က်င့္သည္ကို ေတြ႕ရသည္။

တိုင္းရင္းသားအေရးကုိ ၾကည့္ပါက SSA-S ဦးေဆာင္သည့္ ရြက္ဆစ္သည္ ရွမ္းျပည္လြတ္လပ္ေရးဟု စကားလံုးႀကီးႀကီးျဖင့္ ေၾကြးေၾကာ္ၿပီး ဖက္ဒရယ္ျပည္ေထာင္စုစနစ္ကို ေတာင္းဆိုသည့္ တိုင္းရင္းသားတပ္ေပါင္းစုကို ေ၀းေ၀းေရွာင္ၿပီး ေနခဲ့သည္။ ရြက္ဆစ္သည္ ၎အဖဲြ႕အတြက္ အစိုးရဖြင့္ေပးမည့္ အခြင့္အေရးကိုသာ ေစာင့္ေမ်ာ္ေနသျဖင့္ တိုင္းရင္းသားအခြင့္အေရးႏွင့္ တန္းတူေရးအတြက္ တိုက္ပဲြ၀င္သူမဟုတ္သည္ကို သိသာထင္ရွားေနပါသည္။ ရြက္ဆစ္ ဆင္ႏဲြ႕သည့္ ေတာ္လွန္ေရးႏွင့္ ခြန္ဆာဆင္ႏဲြ႕သည့္ ေတာ္လွန္ေရးကို ႏႈိင္းယွဥ္လိုပါသည္။

ဒီေနရာတြင္ ခြန္ဆာ၏ ေနာက္ခံသမိုင္းေၾကာင္းကို မိတ္ဆက္ေပးလိုသည္။ ခြန္ဆာသည္ ၁၉၆၃ တြင္ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ အေရွ႕ပိုင္းတြင္ အာဏာရွင္ေဟာင္း ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးေန၀င္း၏ ကာကြယ္ေရးတပ္ (the Anti Shan United Army Unit)ႏွင့္ေထာက္လွန္းေရး အႀကီးအကဲအျဖစ္ တာ၀န္ထမ္းေဆာင္ခဲ့သည္။ ေနာက္ပိုင္းတြင္ ၎ကာကြယ္ေရးတပ္သည္ လူအင္အား ၈၀၀ နီပါးရွိလာေသာအခါ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးေန၀င္းေထာက္ပံေပးေနသည့္ လက္နက္ခဲယမ္းမ်ားကို အားမကိုးေတာ့ဘဲ ကိုယ့္ထူကိုယ့္ထရပ္တည္ၿပီး ခဲြးထြက္လိုက္သည္။ ထို႔ေနာက္ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္အေရွ႕ပိုင္း ဧရိယာေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားကို ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္ထားၿပီး ဘိန္းမူးယစ္ေဆး၀ါးကို ထုတ္လုပ္ခဲ့သည္။

၁၉၆၉ တြင္ ရန္ကုန္အစိုးရက ခြန္ဆာကုိ ေတာင္ႀကီး၌ ဖမ္းမိၿပီး မႏၱေလးေထာင္တြင္ ထိန္းသိမ္းထားခဲ့သည္။ ၁၉၇၃ တြင္ ခြန္ဆာ၏ လုပ္ေဖာ္ကိုင္ဖက္ျဖစ္ေသာ Chang Xu Chien (Fa Lun)က ေတာင္ႀကီးၿမိဳ႕ရွိ စ၀္စံထြန္းေဆးရံုတြင္ တာ၀န္ထမ္းေနသည့္ ရုရွားဆရာ၀န္ (၂)ဦးကို ျပန္ေျပးဆဲြၿပီး ေထာင္ထဲရွိ ခြန္ဆာႏွင့္ လဲလယ္ေစခဲ့သည္။ ခြန္ဆာက ေထာင္ထဲမွ လြတ္ေျမာက္လာေသာအခါ Shan United Army (SUA) ကို ျပန္ခ်ိတ္ဆက္ၿပီး ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံေျမာက္ပိုင္း ဘန္းဟင္တိုက္ရြာ (Ban Hin Taek) တြင္ ျပန္လည္ခိုေအာင္းခဲ့သည္။ ၁၉၈၂ ခု ဇႏၷ၀ါရီလတြင္ ထိုင္းစစ္တပ္က ခြန္ဆာဌာနခ်ဳပ္ရွိသည့္ Ban Hin Taek ရြာကို တက္သိမ္းႏိုင္ခဲ့သည္။ ထိုေနာက္ ၁၉၈၅ ခု ဧၿပီလတြင္ ခြန္ဆာ၏ SUA ႏွင့္ Shan United Revolutionary Army (SURA) တို႔ကို ေပါင္းၿပီး Mong Thai Army (MTA) ကိုဖဲြ႕ကာ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ အေရွ႕ေတာင္ပိုင္း ဟိုမုန္းတြင္ ဌာနခ်ဳပ္ ဖြင့္ခဲ့သည္။

ခြန္ဆာဦးေဆာင္သည့္ MTA တပ္ဖဲြ႕သည္ ဘိန္းျဖဴႏွင့္မူးယစ္ေဆး၀ါးကို အဓိကထုတ္လုပ္ၿပီး ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ေန ျပည္သူမ်ားကို စစ္မႈမထမ္းမေနရဟု ထုတ္ျပန္ခဲ့ၿပီး တပ္အင္အားတည္ေဆာက္ခဲ့သည္။ ထိုေၾကာင့္ ခြန္ဆာထိန္းခ်ဳပ္ထားသည့္ နယ္ေျမတြင္းရွိ ျပည္သူအေျမာက္အမ်ားသည္ ခြန္ဆာတပ္တြင္ စစ္မႈမထမ္းလိုၾကပါသျဖင့္ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္မွ ကယားျပည္နယ္ လြယ္ေကာ္ မိုးၿဗဲသို႔ ထြက္ေျပးတိမ္းေရွာင္ၾကသည့္ သဓကမ်ား ရွိသည္။ ထိုေနာက္ MTA တပ္သည္ စစ္အင္အား ႏွစ္ေသာင္းေက်ာ္ ရွိလာၿပီး ဟိုမုန္းတြင္ လက္နက္စက္ရံုပါ ထူေထာင္ႏိုင္ခဲ့သည္။ ခြန္ဆာသည္ ၁၉၉၃ ခုႏွစ္ ဒီဇင္ဘာလတြင္ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ လြတ္လပ္ေရး ေၾကျငာၿပီး မိမိကိုယ့္ကို ရွမ္းသမတဟု သတ္မွတ္ခဲ့သည္။ MTA တပ္အင္အားေကာင္းပါေသာ္လည္း စစ္အာဏာရွစ္စနစ္ကို ျဖဳတ္ခ်ေရး ထိုးစစ္ဆင္သည့္ တိုက္ပဲြဆင္ႏဲြ႕မႈ မရွိသေလာက္ နည္းပါးပါသည္။ ၎တို႔ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္ထားသည့္ နယ္ေျမအနီးအနားရွိ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္တြင္းရွိ တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ဳိးငယ္မ်ား၏ တပ္ဖဲြ႕မ်ားကိုသာ လုိက္ႏိုင္က်င့္သည္ကို ေတြ႕ရသည္။ ခြန္ဆာလက္နက္မခ်ခင္ အခ်ိန္တြင္ ဟိုပံုးလြင္ျပင္သို႔ ထိုးစစ္ဆင္လာၿပီး “ပအို၀္းလူမ်ဳိးမ်ားကို ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္မွ ေမာင္းထုတ္မည္” ဟု ေၾကြးေၾကာ္ခဲ့သည္။

ခြန္ဆာခ်ဳပ္ကိုင္သည့္ စစ္ယူေဖာင္းႏွင့္ လက္နက္အျပည့္သပ္ဆင္ထားသည့္ MTA မဟာတပ္အင္းအားႏွင့္ ၎တို႔ဘိန္းခ်က္လုပ္ငန္းမွ ရထားသည့္ ဓါနအင္အားမ်ားကို ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ ျပည္သူမ်ားအတြက္ မဟုတ္ေပ။ ခြန္ဆာသည္ ၁၉၉၆ ခုႏွစ္ ဇႏၷ၀ါရီလတြင္ စစ္အစိုးရထံ လက္နက္ခ် အညံခံၿပီး ၎ပိုင္ဆိုင္သည့္ ဓါနဥစၥာမ်ားကို ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕တြင္ ဗမာစစ္ဗိုလ္မ်ားႏွင့္အတူ စစ္အာဏာရွင္စနစ္ အကာအကြယ္ျဖင့္ ေသဆံုးသည့္အထိ (၂၀၀ရ ေအာက္တိုဘာတြင္ ခြန္ဆာေသဆံုး) စိမ္ယူခဲ့သည္။ စစ္အာဏာရွင္ နအဖအစိုးရလည္း ခြန္ဆာထံမွ လက္ခံရရွိထားသည့္ လက္နက္ခဲယမ္းမ်ားကို အသံုးျပဳၿပီး တိုင္းရင္းသား အခြင့္အေရး၊ တန္းတူေရးႏွင့္ ဒီမိုကေရေရး ေတာင္းဆိုေနသည့္ တိုင္းရင္းသားလက္နက္တပ္ဖဲြ႕မ်ားကို ႏွိပ္ႏွင္းေခ်မႈန္းခဲ့သည္။

ရြက္ဆစ္ဦးေဆာင္သည့္ SSA-S တပ္ဖဲြ႕သည္ သိန္းစိန္အစိုးရႏွင့္ အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္ဆဲေရး သေဘာတူရရွိၿပီးေနာက္ ဟိုပံုး၊ လြယ္လင္ တြင္ လႈပ္ရွားေနသည့္ PNO တပ္ကို ဦးတည္ဖိအားေပးတိုက္ခိုက္လာသည္ကို ေတြ႕ရသည္။ ရြက္ဆစ္သည္ ၎၏ ဆရာျဖစ္ေသာ ခြန္ဆာနည္းတူ “ပအို၀္းလူမ်ဳိးမ်ားကို ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္မွ ေမာင္းထုတ္ေတာ့မည္လား” ဟု သံသယျဖစ္ေနပါသည္။