တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံဆုိတာဘာလဲ?

The Voice for Justice, Equal Right, Freedom, Genuine Federal Union, Democracy and Self-determination in Burma. "Justice War Must always Win over Injustice".

တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံဆုိတာ တရားမွ်တမွဳ၊တန္တူအခြင္႔အေရး၊လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး၊စစ္မွန္ေသာဖက္ဒရယ္ျပည္ေထာင္စု။ဒီမုိကေရစီ၊ ႏွင္႔ကုိယ္ပုိင္ျပဌာန္ခြင္႔အသံမ်ားျဖစ္ပါသည္၊
"တရားတဲ့စစ္ပြဲဟာ မတရားတဲ့စစ္ပြဲကုိ အျမဲေအာင္ရမည္
"

Monday, June 30, 2008

ရန္ကုန္ျမိဴ.၊ ေရႊျပည္သာရွိ ၾက့ံဖြတ္ရုံးအတြက္ သတင္းေကာင္းျပီ၊ ေပါက္ကြဲမွဳတစ္ခုနဲ. မလုံေလာက္ေသး၊

တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံ
ရန္ကုန္ျမိဴ.၊ ေရႊျပည္သာရွိ ၾက့ံဖြတ္ရုံးအတြက္ သတင္းေကာင္းျပီ၊ ေပါက္ကြဲမွဳတစ္ခုနဲ. မလုံေလာက္ေသး၊

ဒီေန.မနက္ပုိင္းမွာ ရန္ုကုန္ျမဴိ.၊ေရႊျပည္သာမွားရွိတဲ့ ၾက့ံဖြတ္ရုံးတြင္ ေပါက္ကြဲမွဳတစ္ခုျဖစ္ပြားေၾကာင္း၊ ပ်က္စီးမွဳအတုိင္းအတာသတင္းကုိေတာ့ မလာေသးပါဘူး၊ ေနာက္မွဳလာမွာပါ။

Blast hits pro-junta office in Myanmar

41 minutes ago

An explosion at dawn Tuesday rocked the office of a government-backed social welfare group whose members have been accused in attacks against Myanmar's pro-democracy opposition, witnesses said.

The witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of official reprisal, said the blast occurred at the office of Union Solidarity and Development Association office in the northern Yangon suburb of Shwepyithar. No casualties were reported.

Residents in Shwepyithar said riot police and security officials swarmed into the area after the explosion.

No further details were immediately available, and there were no immediate claims of responsibility. The government has not blamed any group for the bombing.

The USDA, a social welfare organization which was formed 15 years ago , claims to have more than 23 million members out of a national population of 57 million. Its members often have been accused of involvement in attacks against supporters of the pro-democracy opposition.

The organization, headed by junta chairman Senior Gen. Than Shwe, is to be transformed into a political party when general elections are held in 2010. Currently, the USDA is engaged in a wide range of social activities, from organizing health treatment in rural areas to planting trees.

The last explosion in Yangon, the country's largest city, occurred in April when two bombs damaged some parked cars but caused no casualties.

The government often blames such attacks on anti-government dissident groups and separate ethnic rebels seeking autonomy.

Terrorism is rare but not unknown in Myanmar, which has been under military rule since 1962.

In 1990, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's party won a general election but was not allowed to take power by the military, which continues to tightly control the country.

Suu Kyi, who is currently under house arrest, has been in detention without trial for more than 12 of the past 18 years.

ျပည္ေထာင္စုျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအမ်ဳိးသားေကာင္စီ၏ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္

တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံ

ျပည္ေထာင္စုျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအမ်ဳိးသားေကာင္စီ၏ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္

Sunday, June 29, 2008

မုန္တုိင္းထိေဒသေတြကုိ ၾကည့္ရွဴျပီး သုံးပြင့္ဆုိင္အဖြဲ.က ပဏာမအစီရင္ခံစာ ထုတ္ျပန္

တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံ

မုန္တုိင္းထိေဒသေတြကုိ ၾကည့္ရွဴ ျပီး သုံးပြင့္ဆုိင္အဖြဲ.က ပဏာမအစီရင္ခံစာ ထုတ္ျပန္

အာဆီယံအဖြဲ.၊ကုလသမဂၢအဖြဲ.ႏွင့္ျမန္မာစစ္အစုိးရတုိ.ပူးေပါင္းျပီး မုန္တုိင္းထိေဒသမ်ားကုိ ၾကည့္ရွဴးသုံးသပ္ျပီး ဂ်ဴလုိင္လ ၂၀၊၂၁ ရက္ေန.တြင္ စကၤာပူႏုိင္ငံမွာ က်င္းပမည့္ အာဆီယံႏုိင္ငံျခားေရးရာဝန္ၾကီးမ်ားအစည္းအေဝး၌ တင္ျပႏုိင္ရန္ ပဏာမအစီရင္ခံစာကုိထုတ္ျပန္လုိက္သည္၊ ဟု ျပည္တြင္းထုတ္ Weekly Sunday ကေရးသားပါသည္။

နာဂစ္မုန္တုိင္းထိ ေဒသအတြက္အစီရင္ခံစာသည္ ရန္ကုန္တုိင္းမွာ ျမိဳ.နယ္ေပါင္း (၃၀) ျမိဳ.နယ္ႏွင့္ ဧရာဝတီျမစ္ဝကြ်န္းေပၚေဒသမွာ မုန္တုိင္းဒဏ္အျပင္းအထန္းခံခဲ့ရေသာ လပြတၲာႏွင့္ ဖ်ာပုံျမိဳ.နယ္တြင္း ေက်ရြာေပါင္း (၃၈၀)ရြာတုိ.၏အခ်က္အလက္မ်ား စုေဆာင္းခ်က္အေပၚအေျခခံျပီး ထုတ္ျပန္ထားျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္ ဟု Journal Voice သတင္းကေျပာပါသည္။

မုန္တုိင္းဒဏ္ခံခဲ့ရေသာအိမ္ေျခေပါင္း(၆၀) ရာခုိင္ႏွုန္းကုိၾကည့္ရွဴးသုံးသပ္ျခင္း ႏွင့္ လူ(၅၀) ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းေလာက္ကုိ ေတြ.ဆုံေမးျမန္ျခင္းျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့သည္ ဟု အစီရင္ခံစာမွာေဖာ္ျပပါသည္။

သုိေလွာင္ထားေသာပစၥည္းမ်ား(၄၂)ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္း လုံးဝပ်က္စီးျပီး (၁၁)ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကုိ တစ္ပိုင္တစ္စနဲ. ပုတ္သြားပါသည္။

မုန္တုိင္းထိအိမ္ေျခေပါင္း(၅၆)ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းဟာ ေစ်းးမွ အစားအေသာက္ပစၥည္းမ်ားဝယ္စားေနရျပီး (၄၅) ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကေတာ့ ျပည္တြင္းျပည္ပမွ လူသားခ်င္းစာနာေထာက္ထားအဖြဲ.မ်ားႏွင့္ အစုိးရႏွင့္ အစုိးရမဟုတ္ေသာအဖြဲ.အစည္းမ်ားမွ အကူအညီမ်ား လက္ခံေနရသည္ ဟု အစီရင္ခံစာမွာေဖာ္ျပထားပါသည္။

က်န္းမာေရးအခန္က႑မွာေတာ့၊ မုန္တုိင္းဒဏ္ခံခဲ့ရေသာလူေပါင္း (၂၂)ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းဟာ စိတ္ပုိင္းဆုိင္ရာေဝဒနာခံစားေနရျပီး (၄၅)ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကေတာ့ အေအးမိေနျခင္း၊(၃၅)ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကေတာ့ ဝမ္းပ်က္ျခင္း၊(၃၅)ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကေတာ့ ဖ်ားနာေနျခင္း၊ႏွင့္(၃၀)ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကေတာ့ ဒဏ္ရာထိခုိက္မွဳအနာမ်ားနဲ. အေရပ်ားေရာဂါျဖစ္ပြားေနျခင္း ျဖစ္ပါသည္၊ယင္ေဒသတြင္ စြန္.ပစ္ထားေသာ က်င္ၾကီး၊က်င္ငယ္မ်ားကုိလည္း စမ္းသပ္စစ္ေဆးခဲ့သည္ ဟုအစီရင္ခံစာက ေျပာပါသည္။

ထုိ.အျပင္၊ အိမ္အမုိးအကာမ်ား (၅၉) ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကလုံးဝပ်က္စီးသြားျပီး မုန္တုိင္ေနာက္ပုိင္းမွာ ႏွစ္ႏွစ္ေလာက္သာ ခံႏုိင္ေသာ ဝါအိမ္မ်ား(၆၀)ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကုိျပန္ေဆာက္ထားပါသည္။ လယ္ကြင္းေပါင္း(၄၇)ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းက ေရလႊမ္းျခင္းမွ လြတ္ေနျပီးေရလႊမ္းေနသည့္ေနရာတစ္ခ်ဳိ.လည္း စပါးစုိက္ႏုိင္ေသာအေနအထားမွာရွိေနသည္၊ ဟု ပဏာမအစီရင္ခံစာမွာ ေရးပါသည္။

ယင္ သုံးပြင့္ဆုိင္အဖြဲ.သည္ ပူးေပါင္းသုံးသပ္စစ္ေဆးေရးအတြက္ ဇြန္လ ၁၀ ရက္ေန.မွ ၂၀ ရက္ေန.အထိ ၁၀ ရက္လုံးလုံးျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ပါသည္။

ဘဂၤလာပင္လယ္ေအာ္ မွ ျဖစ္ေပၚလာခဲ့ေသာ နာဂစ္မုန္တုိင္းသည္ ေမလ ၂၊ရက္ေန.ႏွင့္ ၃၊ ရက္ေန.တြင္ ဧရာဝတီတုိင္း၊ရန္ကုန္တိုင္း၊ပဲခူးတုိင္း၊မြန္ျပည္နယ္ႏွင့္ကရင္ျပည္နယ္တုိ. (၅)ေနရာကုိ ရုိက္ခတ္သြားခဲ့ပါသည္။ဧရာဝတီတုိင္းနဲ. ရန္ကုန္တုိင္းေတြမွာ ပ်က္စီးဆုံးရွံးမွဳအမ်ားဆုံး ခံခဲ့ရေသာေဒသမ်ားျဖစ္ပါသည္။

မုန္တုိင္းသည္ လူေပါင္း(၈၄၅၃၇)ေယာက္ကုိ ေသေၾကေစျပီး၊(၅၃၈၃၆)ေယာက္ကုိ ေပ်ာက္ဆုံးေစျခင္း၊ႏွင့္(၁၉၃၅၉)ေယာက္ကုိ ဒဏ္ရာရရွိေစျခင္းျပဳလုပ္သြားပါသည္။


မင္းကာန္စီ ဘာသာျပန္ထားပါသည္။



www.chinaview.cn 2008-06-29 15:14:54

YANGON, June 29 (Xinhua) -- A tripartite core group involving the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Myanmar and the United Nations (U.N.) has released a preliminary cyclone impact joint assessment report in Yangon and the report is to be submitted to the ASEAN Foreign Ministerial Meeting in Singapore scheduled for July 20-21, according to a local weekly Sunday.

The cyclone Nargis impact report was compiled based on the data collected in 30 townships in Yangon division and 380 villages in Labutta and Pyapon, two severely affected townships in the Ayeyawaddy delta, the news journal Voice said.

The report said the impact assessment and findings were made on60 percent of cyclone-affected households and 50 percent through interview of them.

According to the report, 42 percent of the stored rations were totally destroyed with 11 percent being partially spoiled. And 56 percent of the Nargis households had to buy food from the market and 45 percent of them had to obtain humanitarian aid from domestic and international non-governmental organizations, Myanmar government and domestic well wishers.

In the health sector, 22 percent of the affected people had psychological stress, 45 percent catching cold, 35 percent suffering from diarrhoea, 35 percent ailing, 30 percent getting injured with others being infected with skin disease, the report said, pointing out that disposal of urine and stool was done in the open field.

Besides, 59 percent of house roofings were totally destroyed, 60 percent of bamboo housings, which are durable for two years only, were much rebuilt after disaster and 47 percent of the farms areas escaped from flooding with some of the flooded areas still cultivable, according to the preliminary report.

The tripartite core group worked for 10 days from June 11 to 20to make the joint assessment.

Cyclone Nargis, which occurred over the Bay of Bengal, hit five divisions and states -- Ayeyawaddy, Yangon, Bago, Mon and Kayin on May 2-3, of which Ayeyawaddy and Yangon inflicted the heaviest casualties and massive infrastructure damage.

The storm has killed 84,537 people and left 53,836 missing and 19,359 injured according to the latest official death toll.


Editor: Jiang Yuxia

ဘန္ေကာက္တြင္ တရားမဝင္ျမန္မာအလုပ္သမားတစ္ေထာင္ေလာက္ အဖမ္းခံရ

တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံ

ဘန္ေကာက္တြင္ တရားမဝင္ျမန္မာအလုပ္သမားတစ္ေထာင္ေလာက္ အဖမ္းခံရ


ထုိင္းႏုိင္ငံထဲသုိ.တရားမဝင္ ဝင္ေရာက္အလုပ္လုပ္ေနေသာႏုိင္ငံျခားသားမ်ားကုိ ခရုိင္ရဲမ်ားႏွင့္ အလုပ္သမားေရးရာ ဌာနဆုိင္ရာ အရာရွိမ်ား ပူးေပါင္းျပီး မေန.က ဖမ္းဆီးမွဳျပဳလုပ္ပါသည္။

ျမန္မာ၊လာအုိ၊ႏွင့္ ကေမၻာဒီယားႏုိင္ငံမ်ားမွအလုပ္သမား ၉၂၇ ေယာက္ကုိ ဖမ္းဆီးလုိက္ပါသည္။ သူတုိ.အမ်ားစုဟာ တုိင္း၊ စီမုမ္မင္ နဲ. စနမ္းဗင္နမ္ေစ်းေတြမွာ အလုပ္လုပ္ေနၾကပါသည္။

အလုပ္သမားအမ်ားစုသည္ ဟင္းသီးဟင္းရြက္နဲ.သစ္သီးဝလံမ်ားကုိ သယ္ေဆာင္ေသာလွည္းမ်ားတြန္းျခင္းနဲ.အမွဳိက္ပုံအညစ္အေၾကးမ်ားသန္.ရွင္းေပးျခင္းအလုပ္မ်ားကုိ လုပ္ေနၾကသည္ ဟု အလုပ္သမားေရးရာဌာနမွ အေထြေထြဒါရုိက္တာျဖစ္သူ ဖုိင္ရြတ္ သုစမ္းရစ္ ကေျပာျပသည္။

သူတုိ.တစ္ဝက္ေက်ာ္ေက်ာ္ေလာက္ဟာ ထုိင္းႏုိင္ငံထဲကုိ တရားမဝင္ ဝင္ေရာက္လာသူမ်ားျဖစ္ပါသည္။

ယင္ အလုပ္သမားမ်ားသည္ ေထာင္ ၅ ႏွစ္ထက္ေအာက္ နဲ. ဒဏ္ေငြ ၂၀၀၀ မွ ၁၀၀၀၀၀ တစ္သိန္းအထိ ရင္ဆုိင္ရျပီး ေနရပ္ေဒသုိ.ျပန္ပုိ.ခံရပါသည္။

အလုပ္ရွင္မ်ားအေနနဲ. လည္း အလုပ္သမားတစ္ေယာက္အတြက္ ဒဏ္ေငြ တစ္ေသာင္းမွ တစ္သိန္းအထိ အရုိက္ခံရပါလိမ္.မည္။

ယင္အလုပ္သမားမ်ားကုိ တရားဝင္အလုပ္လုပ္ႏုိင္ရန္အတြက္ အလုပ္ရွင္မ်ားအေနနဲ.မွတ္ပုံတင္လုပ္ေပးၾကပါရန္ အလုပ္သမားေရးရာဌာနက သတိေပးလုိက္ပါသည္။

အလုပ္လုိင္စင္အသစ္ ျပန္လုပ္ဖုိ. ဇြန္လ၃၀ ရက္ေန.အထိ လုပ္ႏုိင္တယ္ လုိ. သိရွိရပါသည္။

Nearly 1,000 alien workers arrested
By Manager Online 28 June 2008 18:38



AFP Photo.

June 28, 2008
Bangkok - The provincial police yesterday joined the Department of Employment to arrest alien workers who illegally entered Thailand for work.

927 Burmese, Laotian and Cambodian workers were arrested. They mostly worked at the Tai, Si Moom Muang and Sanambinnam Market.

Pairoj Suksamrit, director-general of the Department of Employment, said most of the alien workers were employed for carrying the vegetables and fruit handcarts, and taking care of the rubbish.

More than half of them illegally came to work in Thailand.

These workers face not more than five years of imprisonment and 2,000-100,000 baht of fine. They will also be repatriated.

The employers will be fined 10,000-100,000 baht per one worker.

The department warned the employers to have their alien workers register so that they could get the licences to work here legally.

Licence renewal can be made until June 30.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

ေကအန္င္းယူအား အေမရိကန္ႏုိင္ငံအေျခစုိက္ေသာ ပုဂၢလိကတစ္ခ်ဳိ.၏ စစ္ေရးအရ ေထာက္ပံ့ေလ့က်င့္ေပးေနတယ္ဆုိသည့္သတင္းအေပၚ ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္

တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံ
ေကအန္င္းယူအား အေမရိကန္ႏုိင္ငံအေျခစုိက္ေသာ ပုဂၢလိကတစ္ခ်ဳိ.၏ စစ္ေရးအရ ေထာက္ပံ့ေလ့က်င့္ေပးေနတယ္ဆုိသည့္သတင္းအေပၚ ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္



Friday, June 27, 2008

မုန္တုိင္းဒုကၡသည္မ်ားအတြက္ မြန္လူထုေတြ လွဴထားေသာ ေငြမ်ားကုိ အာဏာပုိင္မ်ား ခုိးယူျပီး စာရင္းေဖ်ာက္

တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံ
မုန္တုိင္းဒုကၡသည္မ်ားအတြက္ မြန္လူထုေတြ လွဴထားေသာ ေငြမ်ားကုိ အာဏာပုိင္မ်ား ခုိးယူျပီး စာရင္းေဖ်ာက္

(ကာအုိဝါအုိ သတင္းဌာန မွကုိးကားထားပါသည္။)

မြန္ျပည္နယ္၊ေခ်ာင္းဆုံျမိဳ.နယ္ ရွိ ရြာေပါင္း ၄၅ ရြာေလာက္ကုိ မုန္တုိင္းဒုကၡသည္မ်ားအတြက္ဆုိျပီး အာဏာပုိင္မ်ား ေငြေကာက္ခုိင္းပါသည္။ တစ္ရြာ ကုိ က်ပ္ေငြတစ္သိန္း ၁၀၀၀၀၀ စီေကာက္ခံဖုိ.အမိန္.ထုတ္ထားပါသည္။ အလွဴေငြမ်ား (၄.၅၀၀၀၀၀) က်ပ္ေလသန္း ခြဲေလာက္ေကာက္ခံရရွိျပီး ျမိဳ.နယ္အာဏာပုိင္းမ်ား လက္ထဲသုိ.ေပးအပ္ပါသည္။

ဒါေပမဲ့၊ လြန္ခဲ့ေသာ ႏွစ္ရက္ေလာက္က ျမန္မာ.ရုပ္ျမင္သံၾကားမွ စာရင္းေၾကညာထုတ္လႊင့္သြားသည့္အခါ ေခ်ာင္းဆုံမွအလွဴေငြမ်ား (၈၀၀၀၀၀) ရွစ္သိန္းေလာက္ကုိသာ ေၾကညာသြားပါသည္။ ျမိဳ.နယ္အာဏာပုိင္ေတြထံ ေပးအပ္ထားေသာ အလွဴေငြမ်ား နဲ. ရုပ္ျမင္သံၾကားမွာ ေၾကညာသြားတဲ့အလွဴေငြမ်ား၏ စာရင္း ကြာဟခ်က္ ရွစ္ဆေလာက္နီပါး ျဖစ္ေနသည့္အေပၚ မြန္လူထုေတြ လုံးဝေဒါသထြက္ေနၾကပါသည္။

ထုိ.ကဲ့သုိ. အလွဴေငြမ်ားကုိေမာ္လျမိဳင္ ျမိဴ.နယ္၊ ေရျမိဴ.နယ္ေတြမွာလည္းေကာက္ခုိင္းေနျပီး ေကာက္ခံတဲ့သူ၏ ျဖတ္ပုိင္းတစ္စုံတစ္ရာလည္း ေပးသြားတာမရွိဘူးလုိ. မြန္လူထုေတြေျပာေနၾကေၾကာင္း သိရွိရပါသည္။

Villagers Angry as Forced Cyclone Donations Disappear
Kaowao; June 27, 2008

The amount of money donated to aid survivors of Cyclone Nargis has been grossly understated in the local media by Burma’s military rulers. With the Junta’s claims around eight-times less than actual amounts collected in villages, the statements have angered head villagers and according to local sources the township authorities are being blamed for the ‘misunderstanding’ between the military authorities and the donors.

State-run television station MRTV broadcast the Junta’s statements over the last two days, claiming that donations from Chaung Zon Township amounted to only 800,000 Kyat. A head villager, also a member of the group organised to donate money in the wake of Nargis denied the Junta’s claims. "We collected at least 100,000 Kyat from each village in this region (Chaung Zon) and sent an amount of over 4,500,000 Kyat to township authorities. The amount broadcast on MRTV is very different from the amount we delivered, so it is likely now to provoke a quarrel between headmen and the villagers who donated."

Township authorities from Chaung Zon, Mon state ordered over 45 villages to collect at least 100,000 each in post-Nargis ‘donations’, with a deadline of June 6th.

The head villager also commented that the donated money seemed to have disappeared when placed in the hands of township or state authorities, and as such he had no response when angry villagers approached him. They had carried out their duties as requested, yet something went wrong along the way.

Authorities in Mon state ordered local authorities to collect money in every village, in amounts of at least 50,000 Kyat or 100,000 Kyat in Chaung Zon and Moulmein townships. Authorities also forced donations from villagers in Ye town, Mon state, according to the residents. "We had to pay 1000 Kyat per house in the Aung Thukha block. They didn't give us any receipt or acknowledgement for our donations," a resident from Ye town told Kaowao.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ။ တုိင္းရင္းသားပြင့္လင္းတကၠသုိလ္မွ ၂၀၀၉ စာသင္ႏွစ္အတြက္ ေက်ာင္းသားအသစ္မ်ား ဖိတ္ေခၚျခင္း

တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံ
ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ။ တုိင္းရင္းသားပြင့္လင္းတကၠသုိလ္မွ ၂၀၀၉ စာသင္ႏွစ္အတြက္ ေက်ာင္းသားအသစ္မ်ား ဖိတ္ေခၚျခင္း

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Karen Armed Rebellion in Burma Takes a New Turn: Ex-American Marines as Military Advisors/Trainers: US Watching

တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံ

Karen Armed Rebellion in Burma Takes a New Turn: Ex-American Marines as Military Advisors/Trainers: US Watching

Daya Gamage – US Bureau Asian Tribune Investigative Report – Part One

Washington, D.C. June 25 (Asiantribune.com): Along the Thailand’s western border with Burma (also known as Myanmar) is a small but active Thai frontier town Mae Sot considered the rendezvous of foreigners, with military skills, to offer their expertise to the five-decade old rebellion of the Karen ethnic group to destabilize the most undemocratic and oppressive regime in Burma.

The Karen people’s liberation struggle was intensified with the advent of General Ne Win’s military regime in 1962. And, took a new turn since the current military junta (SPDC- State Peace and Development Council) denied the nation’s democratically elected leader Aug San Suu Kyi her legitimate right to govern in the aftermath of her party’s landslide victory at the 1988 parliamentary election and put her in prolonged house arrest.

And currently, the Karen armed rebellion is taking a different shape and turn with former U.S. Marines who have expertise in combat training, counter-terrorism operations, intelligence and weapons procurement entering the scene. And this time, giving combat expertise to the Karen rebels, as learned by Asian Tribune, looks serious.Karen rebelsKaren rebels

The most significant twist is that a section of the United States Government, notably the State Department, is aware of the combat involvement of the ex-Marines but has chosen to be a distant observer but very much abreast of developments.

President Bill Clinton’s secretary of State Madeleine Albright, last week appointed a top foreign policy and national security advisor to Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama in an OP-ED piece written on June 11 The New York Times advocates intervention in Burma for a ‘regime change’.

The Asian Tribune had the rarest opportunity of an ‘up close and personal’ enlightenment of ‘Karen Country’ and the ‘battle front’ in the Karen rebellion districts.

The journey starts in that Thai frontier town of Mae Sot.

Former U.S. Marine Jack Slade was a weapons trainer, counter-terrorism expert, counter-drug personnel, military intelligence expert, and above all a seasoned Marine whose eight an a half carrier sent him to Cuba, Columbia and Ecuador in the South American region, and Tanzania and Kenya in the African Continent. He has been a weapons trainer in military camps on U.S. soil.

For security and other obvious reasons Asian Tribune decided not to disclose his real identity.KarensKarens

In mid March this year Jack Slade was sitting here in MAE SOT expecting a call from a top military leader of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) Colonel Saw Ner Dah. Another ex-Marine and Vietnam veteran 62-year old Thomas Bleming (he gave the writer the clearance to use his real name), who is now in contact with Asian Tribune US Bureau, wanted Colonel Ner Dah to contact Slade to enter the Karen territory in Burma. Incidentally, Bleming is currently exploring the feasibility of the ‘militarization’ of the KNLA, a militarization that the KNLA has never experienced.

Karen, a major ethnic group in Burma whose desire for an autonomous homeland has triggered relentless and most brutal attacks by the SPDC military junta. The Asian Tribune learned during its familiarization exercise, or call it a familiarization tour, that despite the KNLA insists their fighting cadres are holding their ground it has just 4000 fighters and weapons from the Vietnam War era and earlier and its rebels are outgunned and outmanned. The Burmese military has an estimated 500,000 in its cadre. This is where the ex-Marines of the U.S. are going to be handy with new strategy, modern weapons and a gaming plan that can outfox the military junta.

Awaiting the call from Ner Dah in MAE SOT the veteran former US Marine had already gone through the American Embassy in Bangkok. So, Jack Slade’s credentials were no secret to the officials of the embassy.

This writer who is aware of the manner in which US foreign diplomatic missions operate because of his long employment with the US State Department knows full well that the Bangkok US Mission routinely notifies in classified cables of such developments to the United States Department of State in Washington.

This confirms that both US offices in Bangkok and Washington, DC knew the intention of Jack Slade and his associates. And, Asian Tribune is aware that the State Department is knowledgeable of Bleming’s current role. Bleming is a well known talking point among American Foreign Service Officers who are either knowledgeable of the developments in Burma or are officially involved in Burmese Affairs Asian Tribunealso learned that KNLA military leader Colonel Ner Dah, despite his status being below to that of the supreme commander, had met State Department officials in Washington more than once, according to Thomas Bleming.

Despite Bleming’s on the phone instructions to meet, and introduction of Jack Slade to Colonel Saw Ner Dah, the latter, a six-year undergraduate student at the prestigious University of California, Berkley in the nineties, previously had had Slade’s credentials whetted from the officials of the American Embassy in Bangkok. Colonel Ner Dah, now a veteran fighter, did not want to take chances. Ner Dah and Slade are now in electronic contact figuring out where and how to meet.

The journey from Mae Sot was in a truck to another border town within Thailand, Umphang, accompanied by Ner Dah’s acolytes. It was about 200 miles that took little over four hours. The journey in the truck ended in Umphang awaiting the arrival of Colonel Ner Dah to enter into the Burmese territory and on to the Karen province. But there was some disruption of communication with the Colonel and Jack Slade’s party when the latter’s party had to travel further in to the jungle area but about half a mile close to the Burmese border.

After about four hours of confusion in the most rugged terrains in the Thai-Burma border finally the two parties met. Ner Dah, who is seeking to modernize his fighting cadre to oust the Burmese military junta, met a veteran ex-Marine who has all the credentials to make the Karen rebellion an invincible force in its march toward democracy, rule of law and civil liberties, and above all an autonomous homeland. The rendezvous of Jack Slade and Colonel Ner Dah was possible because of the efforts by Thomas Bleming on phone with both parties. Bleming was operating from his U.S. residence in Wyoming.

The party, led by Colonel Ner Dah, entered the Burmese territory. At a distance not very far report of gun fire by the military of the SPDC could be heard and the rebels knew how to avoid them.

The Asian Tribune exclusively documents here the current twists and turns of the Karen rebellion for independence, self-determination and democracy with active involvement of former American Marines who are well knowledgeable of how to conduct a rebellion. If the impression is that the U.S. officials both in Bangkok and Washington, D.C. are having a passive attitude of this significant development it is a gross understatement.

The Background: The Karens

The Karen, an ethnic group of Sino-Tibetan origin, is the second largest of the 135 ethnic groups that represent more than one-third of the population in Burma.

Members of these groups mainly live in the seven states around the central Burma plain, each named after the ethnic group that predominates its population. However members of these ethnic groups are also resident in the other seven divisions, populated mainly by people of the majority Burman ethnicity, that make up Burma (Also known as Myanmar).

According to official statistics, nearly 3,500,000 Karen live in Myanmar, with more than 830,000 residing in Kayin State. Among the Karen are practicing Buddhists, Christians and animists.

Karen Armed Opposition

Since Burma’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1948, armed opposition groups from different ethnic minorities have fought against the central government for independence or greater autonomy. The Karen National Union (KNU) and its armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), were formed in 1949 with the aim of independence or greater autonomy for the Karen.

While the majority of other ethnic armed groups have reached cease-fire arrangements with the Burmese military junta known as the SPDC, which has granted them certain administrative powers over their territories, the KNU has continued to fight for a political settlement. Having lost several of its key bases, the majority of the KNLA’s activities against the military in recent years have been small-scale attacks.

In January 2004 a provisional cease-fire was agreed between the KNU and the SPDC. However, low-level skirmishes continued and civilians were displaced by military operations against the KNU, particularly in northern Hpa’an District, Kayin State and Nyaunglebin District, Bago Division. KNU leaders reported that, following a visit to Rangoon (Yangon) in October 2006, nearly a year after the state police offensive against the Karen commenced, the ceasefire was formally cancelled. The SPDC stated that they were not prepared to discuss a political settlement. In December 2006, the KNU’s leader, General Saw Bo Mya, died.

The KNU was dominated in the last three decades by Bo Mya, who was president from 1976-2000. The KNU was for many years able to fund its activities by controlling black market trade across the border with Thailand. After a failed uprising of the Burmese people in 1988, the Burmese military government turned to China for help. Various economic concessions were offered to China in exchange for weapons. The Burmese Army was massively expanded and began to offer deals to groups fighting the government. The groups were offered the choice of cooperating with the military junta or being destroyed.

The KNU's effectiveness was severely diminished after the fall of its headquarters at Manerplaw near the Thai border, in 1994. At that time, a group of Buddhist soldiers in the KNLA went over to the side of the Burmese military junta. This group, known as the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), was given territory inside of Burma to rule over in exchange. They played a significant part in the capture of Manerplaw. While the DKBA claims to be fighting against anti-Buddhist discrimination inside the KNU, it is in practice the small private army of a warlord in alliance with the Burmese military junta.

Since then, the KNU and KNLA have continued to fight the Burma state military (known as Tatmadaw) by forming guerilla units and basing themselves in temporary jungle camps on the Thai-Burma border. Following its principle of no surrender, the KNU continues despite a precarious state of existence. Nonetheless, their fight continues to garner the sympathy of the international community since the KNU represent the Karen people, one of the many ethnic nationalities of Burma that are experiencing ethnic cleansing under the military junta.

In January 2007, the commander of the KNLA 7th Brigade, Brigadier-General Htain Maung, announced the formation of a separate group, the Karen National Union/Karen National Liberation Army Peace Council (KNU/KNLAPC). This followed his reported negotiations with the SPDC, that did not have the sanction of the KNU leadership - which subsequently dismissed him. In February 2007 the SPDC announced that it had arranged a peace agreement with this group, which numbered some 300 fighters. In April 2007 the KNU/KNLAPC took part in joint operations with the DKBA and the state military/police, and attacked KNLA forces close to the Burma- Thailand border.

When the Asian Tribune was talking to many who are connected with the Karen rebellion one could see a clear ideological and tactical division between the KNU and KNLA.

In January 2008, Brigadier-General Htain Maung’s son-in-law, Colonel Ler Moo, was killed in a bomb attack near the KNU/KNLAPC’s headquarters. In February 2008, Mahn Sha, General Secretary of the KNU, was shot to death at his home in Mae Sot, Thailand possibly by the agents of DKBA

Ethnic Cleansing

For over two years the Burmese army has been waging a military offensive against ethnic Karen civilians in the eastern parts of the country. The ongoing offensive includes widespread and systematic violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, according to a Amnesty International report released 5 June 2008. The report describes these violations as crimes against humanity.

The report, Crimes against humanity in eastern Myanmar, says that nearly 150,000 people have been internally displaced in Kayin State and the eastern Bago Division. Many have also been subjected to unlawful killings; enforced disappearances; the imposition of forced labor, as well as the destruction of villages, crops and food-stocks and other forms of collective punishment.

Such violations have been directed at civilians, simply on account of their Karen ethnicity or location in Karen majority areas, or in retribution for activities by the Karen National Liberation Army.

Amnesty International has said that it is concerned that the violations are the result of official State Peace and Development Council (SPDC, the Burmese government) and tatmadaw policy. The organization has called for an immediate halt to all violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by government forces and aligned militias and for UN Security Council to impose a comprehensive mandatory arms embargo on Burma.

Burmese (or Myanmar) government has unleashed a seven point ethnic policy:

1. Destroying Villages: Many villages have been totally destroyed in an attempt to ensure that the ethnic Karenni residents do not return.

2. Looting and Burning: Thousands of houses, rice barns were burned to the ground and all the valuable things were looted including were looted from the Karenni villages

3. Detentions: There are consistent refugee reports that the Burmese army are separating military-aged men from their families in a systematic pattern for porters and later killed.

4. Summary Execution: Refugees have provided accounts of summary executions in towns and villages In addition to random executions; in Arakan area some were burned alive

5. Systematic Rape: Ethnic nationalities women are reportedly being raped in increasing numbers. Authenticated accounts of systematic and organized mass rapes in Shan, Karenni areas have already reported worldwide.

6. Poisoning the Water: All the streams and wells in the Karenni areas were poisoned so that not only men but also animals that drink the water may die.

7. Violations of Medical Neutrality: The apparent goal is to effectively deny health care to ethnic nationalities and extinguish the community base health care systems.

The Asian Tribune in its investigation learned that nine battalions of Burmese soldiers had been deliberately sent to the Karenni area to implement the ethnic cleansing, while at the same time blaring out the ‘7-point road map’ to democracy.

(The Second Part of this Investigative Report will be carried tomorrow)

- Asian Tribune -


Karen Armed Rebellion in Burma Takes a New Turn: Ex-American Marines as Military Advisors/Trainers: US Watching

Daya Gamage – US Bureau Asian Tribune Investigative Report – Part Two

Washington, D.C. June 26 (Asiantribune.com): In this second installment the Asian Tribune exclusively documents here the current twists and turns of the Karen rebellion for independence, self-determination and democracy with active involvement of former American Marines who are well knowledgeable of how to conduct a rebellion. If the impression is that the U.S. officials both in Bangkok and Washington, D.C. are having a passive attitude of this significant development it is a gross understatement.

In the first installment, besides the historical struggle of the Karen rebellion, it was documented the initial rapport established between the ex-US Marines and the Karen rebel leaders. This installment gives further evidence of that emerging rapport and the conducive environment toward making the Karen rebels a formidable force to face the mighty Burmese military junta. Political changes in the United States may contribute toward the emergence of this conducive environment to allow to surface the American interests in a different form.

The Ex-US Marine-KNLA Rapport

Now, back to the developing rapport between ex-US Marines and Karen National Liberation Army.

Colonel Ner Dah, in early forties, is fluent in English obviously helped while been a six year undergraduate student in the early nineties at one of America’s prestigious universities, University of California Berkley. The Asian Tribune learned that Ner Dah has been in contact with the American Embassy in Bangkok and with several US State Department officials.

State Department officials who are engaged in the Burma Desk in Washington, and Foreign Service Officers in the American Embassy in Thailand, obviously get to know the developments within Burma through activists like Colonel Ner Dah that go on to formulate the US policy toward this South East Asian nation and the USG attitude toward the military junta.

While at dinner with him Ner Dah gives a vivid description of the brutality of the Burmese military junta toward the Karen people and the ethnic cleansing to the veteran ex-Marine Jack Slade recorded earlier in this report.

The Colonel said that while the KNU is for autonomy for the Keren ethnic entity, KNLA is for separation from Burma. But what the Asian Tribune understood after conversation with the ex-Marines is that the KNLA objective was to end the military rule in Burma and restore democratic rights to the masses of the people including the restoration of human rights to the Karen people and other ethnic entities.

However, about a third of Burma’s 47 million populations are ethnic minorities, who have a troubled historic relationship with the dominant group, the Burmans. Aug San Suu Kyi is an ethnic Burman (so are the generals of the junta) and her supporters are largely focused on the Burman homeland. Meanwhile, the Chins, Kachins, Karennis, Karens, Shans and other hill tribes have been fighting against the government. The real issue in Burma, should the regime fall, would be less about forging democracy than a compromise between the Burmans and other ethnic groups.

The ex-US Marines who have come in close contact with the KNLA are aware of this scenario.

Colonel Nar Dah becomes the tour guide to Jack Slade the following day visiting Karen villages.

Couple of weeks before the KNLA fighting cadres was in a thick battle with Burmese military in an area controlled by the Karens, and to the amazement of the KNLA the guerrilla strategy they used worked for the junta’s military to retreat abandoning a large catch of sophisticated military hardware. Asian Tribune was told that the KNLA was not surprised to note that all the military hardware the junta soldiers left behind had the Chinese trade mark.

This is how they acquire military hardware. KNLA gets a supply of arms from sources in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. But the rebels are outnumbered and outgunned.

The ex-Marine Jack Slade spent eight days with Colonel Ner Dah and his fighting cadre. The May 3 cyclone has affected 70 villages in the Irravadi Delta. The cyclone hit majority of areas e populated by those the military junta consider as enemies.

Here’s the story going around in MAE SOT in Thailand and in Burma, an amazing story that the Asian Tribune learned:

This is a typical Asian story. The Generals of Burma’s ruling SPDC about two years ago had consulted a prominent and widely respected-recognized astrologer to get a reading of the nation’s horoscope and their own. Asians do strongly believe in the placement of planets and stars, the movement of the stars and their effect on them. The astrologer has convinced the Generals that a severe calamity will visit the Irrawadi Delta region and its surroundings that included the Burmese Capital City Rangoon (Yangon). The military junta immediately took steps to move the Capital to a mountainous region far away from the region the astrologer predicted will be devastated.

Naypyidaw (pronounced nay-pee-DAW) is Burma’s new capital, built in secret by the ruling military junta and was officially unveiled in November 2005. The name denotes ‘royal capital’ in Burmese. From Rangoon (or Yangon) it is a nine hour drive.

The New York Times in a special feature about the capital carried in its June 24 edition says: “Even the most charitable observers of Myanmar’s junta portray its members as out of touch. Now they are literally out of sight: the generals live and work in a guarded zone of Naypyidaw that is off limits to all but senior officers.”

To the amazement of everyone a deadly cyclone hit the very area the astrologer predicted on May 3 this year. The interpretation of some in Burma, and also in Thailand, is that the credibility of the Generals of the military junta went up bringing support from unexpected quarters of the Burmese population.

The New York Times further states: “When the Cyclone Nargis swept through the Irrawaddy Delta last month with winds up to 155 miles per hour, it killed about 130,000 people and damaged many buildings in Yangon. But the generals and civil servants ensconced in Naypyidaw felt only a zephyr, residents say.”

The KNLA is fully aware of the psychological factor of this outcome in their struggle against the most ruthless military junta in the history of Burma.

And the American voluntary support to help the rebellion of the KNLA arrived in this atmosphere at a time the generals of the military junta who are out of touch with their own people and live and work in guarded zone in the new capital.

It has been established that the air power of the junta was greatly diminished due to the effect of the cyclone. There are absolutely no air attacks on the Karen territory or its combat positions by the junta.

The ex-marines have realized the importance of KNLA fighting cadre equipped with modern sophisticated weapons. Jack Slade was talking about providing them with night-vision goggles that will help them to successfully demobilize the junta’s military. The Burmese military lacks this vital weapon, it was learned.

Asian Tribune did not get the idea of what type of night-vision goggles Jack Slade and Tom Bleming were talking.

The battery-operated AN/PVS-7D night-vision goggles use an infrared light source to amplify existing light.

The goggles can switch from amplifying light to sensing heat for use in smoky conditions.

The range: a human-size target is visible 328 yards away in the moonlight, almost three football fields.

So, this is the Herculean task the American ex-marines and their companions already within Burma who belong to several European nationalities face in equipping the KNLA fighting cadre with sophisticated weaponry to fight the military junta. And, they are aware of China, India, and to some extent Thailand are behind the military junta for numerous reasons.

China – along with India, Thailand and, to a lesser extent, Singapore – has been put in a very uncomfortable diplomatic situation. China and India are invested in port enlargement and energy deals with Burma. Thailand’s democratic government has moved closer to the junta for the sake of logging and other business ventures. Singapore is suspected of acting as a banker for the Burmese generals. The United States, half the world away, is a passive onlooker.

But, according to the knowledge of the Asian Tribune the United States is fully aware of what’s going on in Burma, the militarization effort by ex-US Marines and an impending development of the fight between the KNLA and Burmese military that can take new turn in this six-decade struggle for democracy, rule of law, human rights and autonomy for ethnic minorities to which the successive American administrations gave a lip service support issuing statements from the White House and Congress.

Nevertheless, no United States administration can afford to get directly involved in bringing justice to the Burmese people if Iran-Contra episode is remembered.

Iran-contra affair

The tangled U.S. foreign-policy scandal known as the Iran-contra affair came to light in November 1986 when President Ronald Reagan confirmed reports that the United States had secretly sold arms to Iran. He stated that the goal was to improve relations with Iran, not to obtain release of U.S. hostages held in the Middle East by terrorists (although he later acknowledged that the arrangement had in fact turned into an arms-for-hostages swap). Outcry against dealings with a hostile Iran was widespread. On Nov. 25, 1986, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese disclosed that some of the arms profits had been diverted to aid the Nicaraguan "contra" rebels who were fighting to oust the legitimate Sandinista regime—at a time when Congress had prohibited such aid. An independent special prosecutor, former federal judge Lawrence E. Walsh, was appointed to probe the activities of persons involved in the arms sale or contra aid or both, including marine Lt. Col. Oliver North of the National Security Council (NSC) staff.

Reagan appointed a review board headed by former Republican senator John Tower. The Tower Commission's report in February 1987 criticized the president's passive management style. In a nationally televised address on March 4, Reagan accepted that judgment without serious disagreement.

Select Congressional committees conducted joint televised hearings from May to August 1987. They heard evidence that a few members of the National Security Council (NSC) staff set Iran and Nicaragua policies and carried them out with secret private operatives, that the few officials who knew about these policies lied to Congress and others, and that the Contra rebels received only a small part of the diverted money. Former national security advisor John Poindexter (currently the Deputy Secretary of the US State Department) stated that he personally authorized the diversion of money and withheld that information from the president. William J. Casey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who died in May 1987, was implicated in some testimony, but the extent of his involvement remained unclear. The congressional committees released a report on Nov. 18, 1987, saying that President Reagan bore "ultimate responsibility" for the events of the Iran-contra affair.

Barrack Obama Advisor Advocates Intervention in Burma

Nevertheless, the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright under President Clinton in an OP-ED piece in The New York Times June 11, 2008 opined “the concept of national sovereignty as an inviolable and overriding principle of global law is once again gaining ground. In such a world, the international community would recognize a responsibility to override sovereignty in emergency situation – to prevent ethnic cleansing or genocide, arrest war criminals, restores democracy or provide disaster relief when national governments were either unable or unwilling to do so.”

One needs to give special attention to Secretary Albright’s pronouncement as she was appointed as one of members of the national security team to Democratic presidential candidate Barrack Obama on June 18. Should Senator Obama enter the White House on January 20 next year undoubtedly Ms. Albright will be one of the top foreign policy advisors to the new president of the United States.

Advocating her hard-line policy toward Burmese military junta the following policy statement of Secretary Albright may bring some solace to those ex-US Marines who are in an endeavor to militarize the KNLA cadres, and one could visualize how both the Pentagon and the State Department under an Obama administration would act to restore human rights, rule of law and democracy in Burma:

“At the heart of the debate is the question of what the international system is. Is it just a collection of legal nuts and bolts cobbled together by governments to protect governments? Or is it a living framework of rules intended to make the world more humane place?

We know how the government of Myanmar would answer that question, but what we need to listen to the voice – and cry – of the Burmese people.”

Conclusion

Colonel Ner Dah is willing to accept expert military assistance to fully equip and modernize all regiments of the KNLA. There had been several attempts in the past toward achieving this goal but had not materialize. With Thomas Bleming and Jack Slade’s serious involvement in the ‘fight of the Karen rebels’ against the Burmese military junta a pattern seems to be emerging for the veteran ex-US marines and their associates to make the KNLA fighting cadre a formidable force to face the junta.

Asian Tribune understands that serious attempts are being made to get military hardware to the Karen territory. And, the veteran American Marines expect to make it happen this time.

As for the U.S. State Department: Asian Tribune is confident that the Department officers based in Bangkok and in Washington are fully aware of what’s going on and that they are closely watching the developments.

The New York Times wrote in its June 24 edition: “People in Myanmar regularly ask foreign visitors whether the United States has plans to topple the leadership. When British, French and American warships sailed to waters off the Myanmar coast in May to offer assistance to the victims of the cyclone, at least one Western embassy in Yangon received phone calls from exited residents.

The callers said, “You’re coming to save us, aren’t you?” a diplomat remembered.”

Should Senator Obama enter the White House next January taking Secretary Albright with him to occupy a foreign policy or national security position the Burmese military junta may face a somewhat different situation in the battle front with the KNLA. It is expected here in the U.S. that a Obama administration’s guiding principles will be based on liberal far left policies that will take a fresh look at rebellions in the Third World nations that have no connections whatsoever with the US War on Global Terrorism.

- Asian Tribune -

ဂ်ာမဏီႏုိင္ငံတြင္ တုိင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ဳိးမ်ား ႏွီးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပြဲ တစ္ခုက်င္းကျပီးစီး

တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံ

ဂ်ာမဏီႏုိင္ငံတြင္ တုိင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ဳိးမ်ား ႏွီးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပြဲ တစ္ခုက်င္းကျပီးစီး

Burma's Ethnic Nationalities Held Ethnic Affairs Seminar In Germany

Van Biak Thang
25 June, 2008

London, UK: Ethnic Nationalities from Burma last week held a two-day historical event called 'Union of Burma Ethnic Affairs Seminar (Europe)' in Frankfurt, Germany from 21-22 June, 2008. The event was hosted by an organising committee formed by Germany-based ethnic groups and funded by the Euro-Burma Office (EBO).
Salai Kipp Kho Lian, one of the moderators of the Organising Committee told Chinland Guardian when asked for the main purpose of the seminar: "As a significant number of ethnic nationalities from Burma has come to settle in European countries and we have heard from the youth voices for having a kind of Europe-wide ethnic organisation, we think that it is now time to form an umbrella roof or even if it is still immature to do so then we need to find out what we can do together."
"It is also important that we show our existence in Europe. We can preserve and promote ethnic cause via our culture, sports, arts, dresses and so on," added Salai Kipp Kho Lian, a Chin veteran political activist.
The seminar was attended by 54 participants from European countries including Germany, Norway, Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium and United Kingdom. The organisations, NGOs and individual present were Chin Community (Germany), Zomi Innkuan Germany, Karen National Community (Germany), Karen Community Association (UK), Minority Burma Muslim Association, Point of Peace (Norway), Chin Forum (Canada), Ethnic Nationalities Council, Euro-Burma Office, Saw Paul Sein Twa of Chiang Mai-based Karen Environmental and Social Action Network, a famous Arakanese writer U Khin Maung Kyi (UK) and other attendees belonging to ethnic groups from Burma including Arakanese, Chin and Karen.
"It is a very important event and everyone is enthusiastic about it. I believe this seminar serves as a good foundation for ethnic movements in Europe in the future," said Victor Biak Lian of Chin Forum and Chin Human Rights Organisation.
The seminar concluded with the formation of the Union of Burma Ethnic Affairs (ad-hoc) Committee (Europe) made up of delegations from all over Europe. The ad-hoc Committee is expected to be able to form a full-pledged Committee in the near future encompassing other ethnic groups of Burma residing in Europe.
"People might think this is the first time. Actually, there was once an active movement in 1994 called Europe-wide Travelling Seminar initiated by European Burmese Association (Hamburg) to promote ethnic cause in Europe. It was the result of the UN Indigenous People Year. Therefore, we can say this is the second time although it is a bit different in its scope of participation from the previous one," recalled Salai Kipp.
The next ethnic affairs seminar will be held in Brussels, Belgium in 2009.
For decades, ethnic nationalities in Burma have been suffering from the brutal atrocities, and facing "ethnic cleansing and Burmanization" and various forms of oppression including religious persecution, harsh forced labour and ruthless exploitation of people and resources imposed on by the longstanding military regime. As a result of these systematic repressive measures, many ethnic people flee their native places to settle in other countries.
In Burma, there are, according to Ethnic Nationalities Solidarity and Co-operation Committee (ENSCC), 135 races or tribes where 65 of which are all from the Chin State. The non-Burman ethnic peoples that occupy 55% of the country are supposed to make up about 40% of Burma's population.

Monday, June 23, 2008

သံဃာေတာ္မ်ား၏ ေသြးနဲ.စြန္းေနေသာ ေခြးစစ္အစုိးရတုိ.၏ လက္မ်ားနဲ. ခ်ီးေျမာက္မည့္ ဘြဲ.တစ္စုံတစ္ရာကုိ လက္မခံသင့္၊

တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံ

သံဃာေတာ္မ်ား၏ ေသြးနဲ.စြန္းေနေသာ ေခြးစစ္အစုိးရတုိ.၏ လက္မ်ားနဲ. ခ်ီးေျမာက္မည့္ ဘြဲ.တစ္စုံတစ္ရာကုိ လက္မခံသင့္၊


Ven, Weligama Gnanaratane Thera ! Your should not accept any award or title that honours by the bloody hands of the Burmese junta

ွဆရာေတာ္ ေဝလိဂမ ဂဏနာရတနိ ေထရ အား စစ္အစုိးရက အဂၢမဟာပ႑ိတ ဘြဲ.ကုိခ်ီေျမာက္မည္ လုိ. သိရိလကၤာအမ်ဳိးသားသတင္းစာမွာ ေရးပါသည္။ စစ္အစုိးရေပးမည့္ ဘြဲ.ကုိ ၾကြေရာက္ လက္ခံဖုိ. ဆရာေတာ္ကုိ စစ္အစုိးရက ပင့္ေတာ္မူပါသည္။ဒီလုိ သံဃာေတာ္ေတြကုိ သတ္ထားတဲ့လက္နဲ. ခ်ီေျမွာက္မည့္ ဘြဲတစ္စုံတစ္ရာကုိ လက္မခံသင့္ဟု သီရိလကၤာဘုန္းဘုန္းေတြကုိ က်ဳပ္တုိ.ေျပာျပရမည့္ တာဝန္ရွိသည္။ အထူးသျဖင့္ သီရိလကၤာရွိ ျမန္မာ ဘုန္းဘုန္းေတြတုိက္ပြဲဝင္သင့္ပါေၾကာင္း တပည့္ေတာ္ ေလွ်ာက္ေတာ္မူသည္ ဘုရား၊

Myanmar honours Most Ven. Weligama Gnanaratane Thera

Today (23) a function will be held at the BMICH with State patronage to felicitate the Most Venerable Weligama Gnanaratane thera on his receiving the prestigious title of Agga Maha Panditha from the Union of Myanmar(Burma).

He was invited by the Government of the Union of Myanmar to visit their country to receive this award. On this occasion, it is very appropriate to recall with gratitude the services rendered by the Maha Nayake thera to the Sasana.

The Dharmarakshita Nikaya to which the Venerable thera belongs was established by the Venerable Attudawe Siri Dharmarakhita thera who received his higher ordination in Myanmar.

Many of the most learned, pious, highly respected and well-known monks of Sri Lanka such as the Venerable Pelene Sri Vajiragnana thera, the Venerable Madihe Pannaseeha thera have been members of this Order. The Order is well-known in foreign countries.

In 1995 the Venerable Gnanaratane was appointed as the Secretary to the Sri Dharmarakshitavansa Amarapura Nikaya. He was mainly responsible for activating the Sangha Sabha (Bhikku Committee) of the Order.

He together with a few other monks and under the guidance of the Most Venerable Madihe Pannaseeha thera who was the Maha Nayake of the Nikaya at the time, was responsible for the unification of the various sects of the Order.

He is now the only surviving member of the original group of monks who took this far-sighted step to establish the Order on a very firm footing. He held the post of Secretary for 19 years and was awarded the Honorary title, ‘Vinaya Visharada Dharmakeerthi Sri’ by the Bhikku Committee in appreciation of his services. He was appointed the Anu-Nayake thera of the Nikaya in 1990.

On the demise of the late Most Venerable Madihe Pannaseeha thera, the Most Venerable Weligama Gnanaratane thera was appointed as the Maha Nayake of the Nikaye in 2003.

In addition to being the Chief Incumbent of the Ratmalane Mallikaramaya, where he resides, the Ven. Weligama Gnanaratana is also the Chief Incumbent of several other temples both in this country and in the USA. While all temples in Sri Lanka perform some social service, the Mallikaramaya is perhaps unique in having a legally registered society to do so.

Called the Sarana Padanama, it was established in 1993 with the Most Venerable Maha Nayake thera as a Patron and adviser.

It was registered under the Societies Ordinance (Reg. no. 5745) in 1997. The Maha Nayake thera continues to guide and advices the society.

Among the continuing services rendered by the Sarana Padanama are the donation of artificial limbs to members of the Armed Forces who have lost a limb on account of the continuing civil strife in the country and the organisation of medical clinics in a deprived area.

The donation of artificial limbs commenced in 1994 on the Vesak Full Moon Day and has been continued up to now on almost every Full Moon Day. By Vesak of 2008, the society had donated more than 700 artificial limbs with the support of many devotees both local and foreign.

The Sarana Padanama has been active in the time of natural disasters occurring in the country.

It has built 15 houses in a village close to the town of Galle for some of those who were affected by the tsunami of 2004.

It has helped those affected by floods, given scholarships to deserving children, assisted poor people to buy their medicines, etc.

The Sarana Padanama continues its humanitarian services.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Local Myanmar refugees display their art, and a talent for survival

တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံ

Local Myanmar refugees display their art, and a talent for survival

By CLAIRE TRAGESERီ
P-I REPORTER

Not too many artists can boast an exhibition in the Seattle Center, especially not after spending four years in a bamboo hut.

But that is exactly what Saw Kennedy did, showing four of his drawings for an event to celebrate refugees on Friday, just two weeks after arriving here from a Thai refugee camp.

Born in a small village in Myanmar, formerly Burma, Kennedy was forced to flee to Thailand to escape his country's repressive military government. He is one of about 800 refugees to move from Myanmar to the Seattle area since 2006.

The U.S. has seen a surge of Burmese refugees in the past two years, from 2,000 in 2005 to the 18,000 expected to arrive this year. More than 30,000 have resettled in the U.S. in the last two years.

This increase may seem to relate to either Cyclone Nargis, which killed at least 78,000 people in April, or the Myanmar military's crackdown on protests in September, but it isn't. Instead, the Patriot Act is to blame.

The State Department initially considered ethnic minority groups fighting against the Myanmar government as terrorists, which meant villagers who may have provided soldiers with food or shelter were banned from U.S. refugee status. In late 2006, the State Department waived this rule for 10 Myanmar groups and began accepting some of the 140,000 refugees living in nine camps in Thailand.

Now Kennedy, 35, his wife and his 6-year-old son are settling in with a growing refugee community.

Kennedy and the other Burmese at Friday's event at the Center House wore traditional tunics from their ethnic group, the Karen. However, Kennedy also stood out with his glasses, ponytail and jeans with holes in the knees instead of the traditional sarong the others wore.

Although his actual Karen name is Eh Moo, the artist chose Saw Kennedy as a pen name after seeing "Kennedy" written on a building in Myanmar.

"When I came here, I heard it's a famous name, the name of a president, but I didn't know that before," he said.

His four drawings each showed different aspects of his former life. In one, a woman sits in a bamboo hut weaving fabric. In another, an older woman sits in the doorway of a hut. Blue, green and red necklaces cover her neck and chest and more than ten large earrings hang from each ear.

Each piece was drawn with such intricate detail that at first glance they look like black and white photographs, which to Kennedy is part of their attraction.

"I spend so long on my paintings that sometimes it's hard to let them go," he said. "They're my babies."

Kennedy originally established a gallery with his three artist brothers in Myanmar and has shown work at the Vidya Gallery in Seattle.

He also draws portraits of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Myanmar resistance leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner who has been under house arrest since 1989. However, drawings like these are illegal in Myanmar.

Kennedy escaped the country partly for the freedom to draw the suffering of his people. He worries that spies in Thailand reported this anti-government expression, making it unsafe to return to his home country.

Now living in Kent, he hopes to continue to paint, but may not have much time.

Like most other refugees, Kennedy will receive subsidized rent and $400 for four months from the government. Then he must support himself.

While his English and art skills give him an advantage, for others it is difficult to get by.

Many of the Karen men living in Kent rise at 4:30 a.m. to take a three-hour bus ride to Redmond, where they make frozen calzones in a factory for minimum wage.

Kate Earl, a caseworker with Jewish Family and Children's Services working with the refugees, said they chose this job so they could work together. She said most earn enough to support themselves after the four months are up.

"They come from such dire straits in the refugee camps that they don't take any opportunity for granted here," she said.

Earl hopes Kennedy will make money selling his artwork, priced at $400 a piece. But Kennedy said he would do any job, and only hopes to have time for English classes and, of course, his art.

"I have hope that one day, I will be able to do something that is important for me," he said. "I want to study art, because art is infinity. It has no limit."

P-I reporter Claire Trageser can be reached at 206-448-8176 or clairetrageser@seattlepi.com.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

ငါဘယ္လုိမွမႏွဳတ္ထြက္ဘူးတဲ့၊ေမ်ာက္အုိးၾကီး စမက္စြန္ထရဝစ္ ကေခါင္းမာ၊

တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံ

ငါဘယ္လုိမွမႏွဳတ္ထြက္ဘူးတဲ့၊ေမ်ာက္အုိးၾကီး စမက္စြန္ထရဝစ္ ကေခါင္းမာ၊

စစ္တပ္အာဏာျပန္သိမ္းသြားမွာကုိ လည္ ေမ်ာက္အုိးၾကီးက စုိးရိမ္၊ ကုိယ္.ကုိယ္ကုိ အာဏာစြန္.လႊတ္ရမွာကုိ လည္ စိတ္ပူး၊

Thai PM refuses to resign amid protests

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej on Saturday refused to bow to the demands of anti-government protesters who vowed to besiege his office until he resigned.

More than 20,000 demonstrators broke through a police cordon to occupy the area around Thailand's seat of government Friday and remained there through the night. But deputy government spokesman Natawut Saikau told The Associated Press that Samak would not resign.

"The demand is unreasonable," he said.

The protesters, led by the People's Alliance for Democracy movement, claim Samak's government is a proxy for former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup.

"Our stance is clear, we will continue to protest and camp out here until this puppet government of Thaksin's is out of office," said alliance spokesman Suriyasai Katasila.

Samak would explain the ongoing political tensions in Thailand to the public later Sunday, Natawut said.

The prime minister met with the armed forces chief Friday but did not disclose what was discussed, the spokesman said. "He only said that the police are continuing to be in charge of handling the protest, and that it is not yet time for the soldiers to come out."

Rumors have swept Bangkok since the protests began three weeks ago that the country's powerful military would stage another coup, something which the top brass has repeatedly denied.

Claiming victory, the demonstrators set up a stage and other facilities on surrounding streets after managing to push through police lines Friday afternoon to surge forward to a fence on two sides of the Government House compound. After some initial scuffling, police gave little resistance.

"No one got hurt," police spokesman Maj. Gen. Surapol Tuanthong told Thai television station TPBS. "There was no image of the police hurting Thai people and that's the most important thing and should satisfy our superiors on every level. The politicians will have to find their own political solution."

He was responding to a question about why police let the demonstrators occupy the streets outside Government House despite earlier vowing to block them.

Alliance leaders say they don't want to occupy the compound itself but plan to peacefully maintain a siege around it.

During the afternoon, police estimated about 22,000 people were taking part in the protest, but the number continued to grow in the evening. Alliance leaders gave far higher figures that appeared to be greatly inflated.

The alliance led mass demonstrations before the 2006 coup demanding Thaksin step down for alleged corruption and abuse of power. They now accuse Samak's government of interfering with corruption charges against the former prime minister and trying to change the constitution for its own self-interest.

Samak's People's Power Party won general elections last December. His Cabinet is packed with Thaksin's allies and critics say rehabilitating the former leader is among the government's top priorities.

ကံေကာင္းတာက ထုိင္းႏုိင္ငံမွာလြတ္ေတာ္ရွိေတာ့၊ အစုိးရဘက္ကေရာ၊ ဆႏၵႃပသည့္သူမ်ားဘက္ကပါ လက္နက္ကုိင္အၾကမ္းဖက္မွဳမလုပ္ၾကဖုိ.အထက္လြတ္ေတာ္က ေတာင္းဆုိ၊

တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံ

ကံေကာင္းတာက ထုိင္းႏုိင္ငံမွာလြတ္ေတာ္ရွိေတာ့၊ အစုိးရဘက္ကေရာ၊ ဆႏၵႃပသည့္သူမ်ားဘက္ကပါ လက္နက္ကုိင္အၾကမ္းဖက္မွဳမလုပ္ၾကဖုိ.အထက္လြတ္ေတာ္က ေတာင္းဆုိ၊

ေမ်ာက္အုိးၾကီး စမက္စြန္ထရဝစ္ ကေတာ့ အေရးေပၚအစည္းအေဝးတစ္ရပ္ ေခၚျပီး ဆႏၵသူမ်ားကုိကုိင္တြယ္ဖုိ. လုိအပ္ရင္ စစ္တပ္ သုံးရန္ျပင္ဆင္ေနပါသည္။ သန္းေရႊမွ စံနမူနာမ်ားရလာသလားမသိဘူး၊ အဓိကျပႆနာကေတာ့၊ ေမ်ာက္အုိးၾကီး အစုိးရဟာ ဝန္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္ေဟာင္း တပ္ဆင္၏ ရုပ္ေသးရုပ္အစုိးရျဖစ္ေနလုိ.ပါ။


Manager Online
Senate calls all parties not to use violence
By Manager Online 20 June 2008 17:47
AFP Photo.

June 20, 2008
Bangkok - The Upper House urged the government, policemen and People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) demonstrators not to use weapons or violence.

Mrs. Tasana Boonthong, second Deputy Senate Speaker, as well as 50 Senators jointly held a press briefing, calling for no weapon or violence use to clamp down the demonstrators.

The group also asked the protesters not to encounter the other side and give the emotional responses.

It said the soldiers should not interfere in today’s demonstration.

The Senator group gave its importance to the democratic administration and did not support a coup.

Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej was urged to revise the general debate proposed by 61Senators on June 23.

It was reported some Senators persuaded one another to observe the PAD rallies at the Government House.

Former premier Gen Chavalit Yongchaiyuth denied news that he proposed Samak resign.

Prime Minister Samak called an urgent meeting with army chief Gen Anupong Paochinda.

It was said the government might let the army handle the demonstration if the situation is not under control.

ထုိင္းႏုိင္ငံေရးအင္မတ္ရွူပ္ေထြေနျပီ၊ စကားမ်ားေသာ ေမ်ာက္အုိးၾကီး လုိ.လူသိမ်ားတဲ့ စမက္စြန္ထရဝစ္ ႏွဳတ္ထြက္ရမလုိ.

တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံ

ထုိင္းႏုိင္ငံေရးအင္မတန္ရွူပ္ေထြေနျပီ၊ စကားမ်ားေသာ ေမ်ာက္အုိးၾကီး လုိ.လူသိမ်ားတဲ့ စမက္စြန္ထရဝစ္ ႏွဳတ္ထြက္ရမလုိ.


ဒီမုိကေရစီအတြက္ျပည္သူ.မဟာမိတ္အဖြဲ.ေတြက အစုိးရေဂဟာ ဆီသုိ. ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းစြာ ခ်ီတက္ဖုိ. ဆုံးျဖတ္ထားလုိက္ျပီ၊ သူတို.၏ လုံးျခဳံေရးအေစာင့္မ်ားလည္ ပါဝင္ေနေတာ့၊ ဆႏၵႃပသူမ်ားကုိ ကာကြယ္ေစာင့္ေရွာက္ဖုိ. တစ္ဖြဲ.စီး ကုိ ဆယ္ေယာက္ျဖင့္ေစာက္ေရွာက္ခုိင္းတာပါ၊ အစုိးရေဂဟာဆီသုိ. ရတဲ့နည္းနဲ. ခ်ီတက္လုိ.ေရာက္ေအာင္ဆုိျပီး ေလွေတြလည္ ျပင္ဆင္ထားပါသည္။


Bangkok - The People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) issued its 14th statement, saying the march to the Government House would be based on peace.


The PAD confirmed the march would be without weapons and there would be no seizure of the Government House.

The group said the march to the Government House was like a charity walk.

It was reported that the government’s ill-wishers would possibly mess the demonstration up.

The atmosphere of the rally ran smoothly and peacefully this morning.

The PAD’s security guard teams rehearsed taking care of the demonstrators. There are ten guards in each team.

About ten paddle boats were prepared in case they could be used to cross the Padung Krungkasem Canal to reach the Government House.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Helping Burma recover ျမန္မာျပည္ျပန္လည္တည္ေဆာက္ေရးကုိ ကူညီျခင္း

တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံ

ျမန္မာျပည္ျပန္လည္တည္ေဆာက္ေရးကုိ ကူညီျခင္း

ျမန္မာျပည္တြင္း လက္ရွိက်င္းပေနေသာ နာဂစ္ေနာက္ပုိင္း အာဆီယံပူးေပါင္းသုံးသပ္ေရးအစည္းအေဝးကုိ ကမၻာ.ဘဏ္ႏွင့္အဆီယံဖြံ.ျဖဳိးေရးဘဏ္တုိ.မွ အရာရွိမ်ား တက္ေရာက္ေနၾကတာကုိ က်ေနာ္တုိ.သိရွိရပါသည္၊ ၎ပူးေပါင္းသုံးသပ္ေရးအဖြဲ.သည္ ဇြန္လ မကုန္ခင္မွာ ပဏာမအစီရင္ခံစာ ႏွင့္ ဂ်ဴလုိင္လ အလည္ပုိင္မွာ အျပီသတ္အစီရင္ခံစာမ်ားကုိ တင္ျပလိမ္.မည္ ဆုိတာကုိလဲ က်ေနာ္တို.သိရွိထားပါသည္။

ကမၻာ.ဘဏ္ႏွင့္ အာဆီယံဘဏ္ေတြအေနနဲ. ျမန္မာျပည္မွာျဖစ္ေပၚေနေသာ လူသားခ်င္းအၾကပ္အတည္ေတြကုိ အခြင္.အေရးေကာင္းတစ္ရပ္အျဖစ္ ရွူးျမင္ျပီး ျမန္မာစစ္အစုိးရႏွင္. ပုိးျပီး ေစ့စပ္ေဆြးေႏြးလာမွာကုိ က်ေနာ္တုိ.စုိးရိမ္ပါသည္။

ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ စစ္မွန္ေသာ ဒီမိုကေရစီအစုိးရ မေပၚေပါက္မခ်င္း ကမၻာ.ဘဏ္ႏွင့္ အာဆီယံဘဏ္ေတြအေနနဲ. လူသားခ်င္းစာနာကူညီမွဳအေရးကုိသာ ဦးတည္လုပ္ေဆာင္သင့္ပါသည္၊ ထုိ.အျပင္၊ နအဖအေနနဲ. ကယ္ဆယ္ေရးလုပ္ေဆာင္ခ်က္အတြက္ ျပည္ပမွရန္ပုံေငြမ်ား ျပည့္စုံေစရန္ ႏုိင္ငံတကာအေရးေပၚပစၥည္းမ်ား အသုံျပဳရာတြင္ လုိက္နာေဆာင္ရြက္သင့္သည့္ လုိက္နာခ်က္မ်ားကုိ လုိက္နာသင့္ပါသည္။

ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအနာဂတ္ေရးတြင္ တုိက္ရုိက္ပါဝင္သူမ်ားအေနနဲ. စစ္မွန္ေသာ ႏုိင္ငံေရးျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရးအတြက္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနေသာ က်ေနာ္တုိ.၏ ျမန္မာျပည္တြင္း လွဳပ္ရွားမွဳမ်ားနဲ.ပတ္သက္ျပီး ကမၻာ.ဘဏ္ႏွင့္ အာဆီယံဘဏ္တုိ.က တစ္စုံတစ္ရာ ဆုံျဖတ္ခ်က္ခ်ျပဳလုပ္ရာမွာ ေအာက္မွာ လက္မွတ္ထုိးထားေသာ လူထုေျချပဳအဖြဲ.အစည္းမ်ားကုိ ထည့္တြက္ထားပါရန္ က်ေနာ္တုိ.ေတာင္းဆုိပါသည္။

ျမန္မာျပည္ထဲတြင္း က်ယ္က်ယ္ျပန္.ျပန္.ဆက္သြယ္ထားေသာ အဖြဲ.အစည္းမ်ား ျဖစ္သည့္အားေလ်ာ္စြာ တုိင္းရင္းသားေဒသေတြမွာျဖစ္ပ်က္ေနေသာ အေျခအေနမ်ားကုိ ေကာင္းေကာင္းသိထားျပီး ျမန္မာျပည္တြင္း လုံးျခဳံေရးအေျခအေနေၾကာင့္ ဖြင့္ဟေဖာ္ျပမရသည့္သူမ်ား၏ ေတာင္းဆုိခ်က္ႏွင့္ စုိးရိမ္ခ်က္မ်ားကုိ လဲ က်ေနာ္တုိ. အဆက္အသြယ္လုပ္ႏုိင္ပါသည္။

ပူးေပါင္းသုံးသပ္ေရးအဖြဲ.ႏွင့္ အာဆီယံလူသားခ်င္းစာနာေရးအင္းအားစုမ်ားအပါအဝင္ ကမၻာ.ဘဏ္ႏွင့္ အာဆီယံဖြံ.ျဖဳိးေရးဘဏ္မ်ား၏ လွဳပ္ရာေဆာင္ရြက္ခ်က္မ်ားကုိ က်ေနာ္တုိ.ႏွင့္အျခားတုိက္ရုိက္ပါဝင္သူမ်ား က်ယ္ျပန္.စြာ သုံးသပ္ႏုိင္ေရးအတြက္ လူသိရွင္ၾကားထုတ္ေဖာ္ေပးပါရန္ အေလအနက္ေတာင္းဆုိပါသည္။


Bangkok Post - Thursday June 19, 2008

PostBag

Helping Burma recover


We understand that the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have sent staff to join the Asean post-Nargis joint assessment that is currently taking place in Burma. We also understand that the assessment team will present a preliminary report in late June and a final report in mid-July.

We are concerned that the World Bank and the ADB may view the humanitarian crisis in Burma as an opportunity to increase engagement with Burma's military regime, the State Peace and Development Council.

Until a genuinely democratic government is installed in Burma, the World Bank and the ADB should focus only on facilitating humanitarian relief efforts. In addition, the SPDC should be obliged to use its foreign reserves to supplement external funding for relief efforts.

As stakeholders in Burma's future, we insist that the World Bank and the ADB include the undersigned and other community-based organisations which are advocating for genuine political reform, in any decision-making process regarding their activities in Burma.

As organisations with a broad range of contacts within Burma, we are well-informed about the situation in ethnic areas, and are able to communicate the requests and concerns that those inside Burma cannot express for security reasons.

We further insist that details of the World Bank and ADB's activities in Burma, including any assessment missions and details of support to the Asean Humanitarian Task Force, be made public so that they may be reviewed widely by us and all other stakeholders in Burma's recovery.

ETHNIC COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT FORUM

Together with:

1. Burma River Network;
2. Kachin Women's Association, Thailand;
3. Karen Environment and Social Action Network;
4. Nationalities Youth Forum;
5. Salween Watch Coalition; 6. Shan Women's Action Network;
7. Shan Youth Power

http://www.bangkokp
ost.com/190608_News/19Jun2008_news34.php
တုိင္းရင္းသားစည္းလုံးညီညြတ္ေရး၊ဒုိ.အေရး၊ျပည္ေထာင္စုမျပဳိကြဲေရး၊ဒုိ.အေရး၊ဗမာစစ္အစုိးရ ျဖဳတ္ခ်ေရး၊ဒုိ.အေရးေဆာင္ပါးဖတ္ရွဴရန္၊ ရခုိင္မ်ဳိးခ်စ္ပညာရွင္ေဒါက္တာေအးေက်ာ္ကြယ္လြန္သြားေၾကာင္းသတင္းကုိရခုိင္လူမ်ဳိးမ်ားသာမကက်န္ရွိသည့္တုိင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ဳိးမ်ားအတြက္လည္အမ်ားၾကီးဆုံးရွဳံးမွဳတစ္ရပ္ျဖစ္သည္၊ေဒါက္တာေအးေက်ာ္ဟာရဲရင့္ျပီးသတိၱျပည့္ဝသည့္ပညာရွင္တစ္ေယာက္ျဖစ္သည္၊ထုိ.ေၾကာင့္၊သူ.ဆုံးရွဳံးမွဳဟာအမ်ားဆုံးရွဳံးမွဳပါ၊က်န္းရစ္သူမိသားစုဝင္မ်ားနဲ.ရခုိင္ျပည္သူမ်ားနည္းတူထပ္တူထပ္မွ်ေၾကးကြဲဝမ္းနည္းပါေၾကာင္းတုိင္းရင္းသားသံမွတင္ျပလုိက္ပါသည္၊

Min Ko Naing Birth Day

Min Ko Naing Birth Day
မင္းကုိႏုိင္ေမြးေန.