By WAI MOE Wednesday, November 30, 2011
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began her first trip to Burma by meeting President Thein Sein and other top officials in Naypyidaw on Wednesday with armed ethnic conflicts and political prisoners high on the agenda.
As the first US secretary of state to visit military dominated Burma in 56 years, Clinton was greeted by Burmese Deputy Foreign Minister Myo Myint upon her arrival in the nation's remote capital.
Official sources said Clinton will speak at length with Thein Sein at the Presidential Palace on Thursday morning, and will also meet Upper House Speaker Khin Aung Myint, Lower House Speaker Shwe Mann and Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin before her delegation flies to Rangoon.
Before traveling to Burma, Clinton told reporters in South Korea that she is cautiously optimistic about the tentative reforms shown.
“I am obviously looking to determine for myself ... what is the intention of the current government with regards to continuing reforms, both political and economic,” she said. “But obviously, we and many other nations are quite hopeful that these 'flickers of progress' ... will be ignited into a movement for change that will benefit the people of the country.”
Since Clinton’s trip could open a new chapter of improved Burma-US relations in coming years, officials in Naypyidaw have been talking up her visit.
“Clinton’s trip is a historic landmark for the two countries’ relationship. I hope for the development of this tie following her visit,” Ko Ko Hlaing, a political adviser to Thein Sein, told The Irrawaddy from Rangoon. “After the trip, the picture will be clearer and we can say what we hope to achieve more.”
However, US President Barack Obama made clear in his Burma statement on Nov.18 that three topics remain of concern—peaceful resolution of conflicts in ethnic areas, release of all political prisons and Burma’s nuclear ties with North Korea.
“Regarding these issues, the [Burmese] government will resolve them when it goes towards democratic ways. These efforts do not depend on any country’s pressure or demands,” Ko Ko Hlaing said.
Just a day before Clinton’s trip to Burma, government representatives including secretaries of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party—Aung Thaung, Thein Zaw and Railways Minister Aung Min—met a delegation from the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) led by Chairman Lanyaw Zawng Hra.
Talks took place in China’s border town of Ruli, which lies opposite the Burmese town of Muse, but no agreement was made to end the bloodshed that was sparked when a 17-year strong ceasefire was broken in June.
“The rulers of Burma always think of ethnic issues as armed conflicts and so the conclusion is a ceasefire. But actually the issue is civil war and political problems. Unless the government resolves problems politically, related conflicts can not be solved,” said Brig-Gen Gun Maw, vice chief-of-staff of the Kachin Independence Army, the military wing of the KIO.
“We hope that Clinton will reflect minority voices during her meetings in Naypyidaw,” he added.
But even though the Burmese government has held talks with ethnic groups, Gun Maw claims military operations in ethnic areas have increased at the same time.
“During operations, government troops even target civilians including women,” he said.
Amid Clinton’s landmark visit to Burma, members of the leading 88 Generation Students group sent a letter to the US secretary of state via the US embassy on Tuesday renewing their calls for peace, the release of all political prisoners and political development.
“In the letter, we welcome Clinton’s trip. We also said that there are issues to be resolved by the Burmese government, such as the release of political prisoners and peace, even though President U Thein Sein talks about clean and good government,” said group member Thein Than Tun who was released from jail in October.
Ahead of Clinton’s trip, US Senator Richard G. Lugar, the ranking Republican on the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, announced on Friday that his government has known since 2006 that the Burmese regime intended to develop nuclear weapons with North Korea’s help.
Aung Lynn Htut, a former deputy head of Burmese mission to Washington and counter intelligence officer who defected to the US in 2005, said that, “Lugar raised the issue [in the past] but Burma, then a military junta headed by Snr-Gen Than Shwe, denied the reports.
“As a regional security issue, the North Korea-Burma secret tie might be more important than human rights for Washington. So the Burmese government will have to disclose its relationship with North Korea regarding nuclear and missile programs during Clinton’s trip,” Aung Lynn Htut added.
On Thursday, Clinton will have a private dinner with Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi before holding a formal meeting with her the next day. Clinton is also scheduled to meet other key members of civil society and pro-democracy groups on Friday including a senior monk.
Following the Burmese military's brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in the summer of 1988, the US downgraded its head of mission in Burma from ambassador level to chargé d’affaires.
The US also imposed different economic sanctions against the Burmese regime in 1997, 2003, 2007 and 2008 as well as banning high level official visits to Burma.
However, in 2008 the White House and US lawmakers decided to use both sanctions and engagement to achieve change in Burma. A special representative and policy coordinator to Burma, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Derek Mitchell, was appointed on Aug. 15.
A leaked US diplomatic cable dated Feb. 9, 2009, claimed that this new tactic was bearing fruit as, “the most senior generals are looking for an escape strategy … they hate being subject to sanctions and want to be treated with the respect accorded to other world leaders.
“Senior generals are getting old and want assurances that, if they voluntarily step aside, they and their families will retain their assets and not be prosecuted,” the cable continued.
And the Burmese regime has noticeably been attempting to develop good relations with Washington in recent years, including welcoming US officials such as Derek Mitchell, Senator John McCain, Senator Jim Webb and other senior state department figures to the country.
၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္သစ္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ား
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
Burma Minorities Suffer Abuses Despite Reforms
By DENIS D. GRAY / AP WRITER Wednesday, November 30, 2011
BANGKOK — Deep in jungles far from the international spotlight, Burma’s army continues to torture and kill civilians in campaigns to stamp out some of the world's longest-running insurgencies.
Human rights groups say these ongoing atrocities against ethnic minorities serve as a reminder on the eve of a visit by the US secretary of state that the reforms recently unveiled by the country's military-backed government to worldwide applause are not benefitting everyone.
Neither the landmark visit by Hillary Rodham Clinton nor cease-fire talks are expected to soon end the plight of Burma’s numerous ethnic minorities or lead to the greater autonomy for which some have been fighting since independence from Great Britain in 1949.
Aid groups have reported atrocities that occurred as recently as last month — a village leader was killed, allegedly by soldiers, for helping a rebel group, his eyes gouged out and his 9-year-old son buried beside him in a shallow grave. The boy's tongue was cut out.
With minorities making up some 40 percent of Burma’s 56 million people and settled in some of its most resource-rich border regions, resolution of these brutal conflicts is regarded by all sides as crucial. The fighting has uprooted more than 1 million people, now refugees within their country or in neighboring Thailand and Bangladesh.
"This is the most intractable problem facing the state since independence. I would argue it is more important than 'democracy' as an issue," says David Steinberg, a Burma scholar at Washington's Georgetown University.
"Most minority groups want some form of federalism, but federalism is anathema to the military as they view it as the first step toward secession," he said.
While hopes are perhaps higher now than in decades, reports and interviews in recent days from inside the embattled areas are uniformly bleak.
"Even though there is activity (by the government) there has been no change in the ethnic areas. We continue to have widespread human rights violations and attacks on our villages," said Nan Dah Kler of the Karen Women Organization.
The spokesman for the Thailand border-based ethnic group urged that Clinton "keep these facts in the forefront of her mind as she talks to (the government)."
During her three-day visit, which begins Wednesday, Clinton is certain to bring up the issue when she meets President Thein Sein. But she will probably focus on pressing for greater democratic reforms, freeing political prisoners and giving opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi more maneuvering room in the political arena.
A sign that talks on the ethnic conflicts could at least be more forthright than earlier exchanges, is an unprecedented admission that the military may be committing human rights abuses, something blankly denied in the past.
"As you know there are no clean hands in conducting all sorts of war. There may be some sort of crimes committed by government troops similar to other armed forces of the rest of the world, including NATO troops in Afghanistan accused of killing innocent civilians," said Ko Ko Hlaing, an adviser to the president.
In an e-mail to The Associated Press he said such crimes were, however, not systematic and that violators face punishment under the law. The adviser also accused armed ethnic groups of extra-judicial executions, attacks on civilian trains and other human rights violations.
Ko Ko Hlaing said "positive signs" are emerging from preliminary peace negotiations, which he said would be carried out in three steps: with individual rebel groups, all the insurgencies and finally in Parliament.
Burma’s neighbors China and Thailand, seeking to make their frontiers safe and exploit resources of now embattled areas, are also key players. Beijing has long supported some ethnic groups by giving them outright assistance or letting them use China as a base.
Ratcheting that support up or down has given Beijing added leverage.
BANGKOK — Deep in jungles far from the international spotlight, Burma’s army continues to torture and kill civilians in campaigns to stamp out some of the world's longest-running insurgencies.
Human rights groups say these ongoing atrocities against ethnic minorities serve as a reminder on the eve of a visit by the US secretary of state that the reforms recently unveiled by the country's military-backed government to worldwide applause are not benefitting everyone.
Neither the landmark visit by Hillary Rodham Clinton nor cease-fire talks are expected to soon end the plight of Burma’s numerous ethnic minorities or lead to the greater autonomy for which some have been fighting since independence from Great Britain in 1949.
Aid groups have reported atrocities that occurred as recently as last month — a village leader was killed, allegedly by soldiers, for helping a rebel group, his eyes gouged out and his 9-year-old son buried beside him in a shallow grave. The boy's tongue was cut out.
With minorities making up some 40 percent of Burma’s 56 million people and settled in some of its most resource-rich border regions, resolution of these brutal conflicts is regarded by all sides as crucial. The fighting has uprooted more than 1 million people, now refugees within their country or in neighboring Thailand and Bangladesh.
"This is the most intractable problem facing the state since independence. I would argue it is more important than 'democracy' as an issue," says David Steinberg, a Burma scholar at Washington's Georgetown University.
"Most minority groups want some form of federalism, but federalism is anathema to the military as they view it as the first step toward secession," he said.
While hopes are perhaps higher now than in decades, reports and interviews in recent days from inside the embattled areas are uniformly bleak.
"Even though there is activity (by the government) there has been no change in the ethnic areas. We continue to have widespread human rights violations and attacks on our villages," said Nan Dah Kler of the Karen Women Organization.
The spokesman for the Thailand border-based ethnic group urged that Clinton "keep these facts in the forefront of her mind as she talks to (the government)."
During her three-day visit, which begins Wednesday, Clinton is certain to bring up the issue when she meets President Thein Sein. But she will probably focus on pressing for greater democratic reforms, freeing political prisoners and giving opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi more maneuvering room in the political arena.
A sign that talks on the ethnic conflicts could at least be more forthright than earlier exchanges, is an unprecedented admission that the military may be committing human rights abuses, something blankly denied in the past.
"As you know there are no clean hands in conducting all sorts of war. There may be some sort of crimes committed by government troops similar to other armed forces of the rest of the world, including NATO troops in Afghanistan accused of killing innocent civilians," said Ko Ko Hlaing, an adviser to the president.
In an e-mail to The Associated Press he said such crimes were, however, not systematic and that violators face punishment under the law. The adviser also accused armed ethnic groups of extra-judicial executions, attacks on civilian trains and other human rights violations.
Ko Ko Hlaing said "positive signs" are emerging from preliminary peace negotiations, which he said would be carried out in three steps: with individual rebel groups, all the insurgencies and finally in Parliament.
Burma’s neighbors China and Thailand, seeking to make their frontiers safe and exploit resources of now embattled areas, are also key players. Beijing has long supported some ethnic groups by giving them outright assistance or letting them use China as a base.
Ratcheting that support up or down has given Beijing added leverage.
Can Clinton, Suu Kyi change Burma?
Wednesday, 30 November 2011 12:46 May Ng
(Commentary) – As the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Burma in 50 years, Hillary Clinton’s trip marks a turning point, and there is high expectation that Burma may finally be coming out of the cold.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during the Special Session on Gender at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Korea on November 30, 2011. Photo: AFP
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during the Special Session on Gender at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Korea on November 30, 2011. Photo: AFP
Soon after its independence from Britain, British travel writer Norman Lewis wrote in the early 1950s that in comparison to Vietnam, Burma had remained isolated and mysterious. He wrote that “while in Vietnam the established authority was challenged by a united opposition with a single ideology, the Burmese government was opposed by two separate bands of communists, two versions of a heterogeneous organization called the People’s Voluntary Organization, in which many bandits had enrolled, 10,000 or so Seven Day Adventist Karens, and a small army of mutinous military police.”
Even today, while resisting the central government’s ethnocentric nationalism and chauvinism for decades, Burma’s various opposition groups, while they share a common goal for democracy, have never unified under a common leadership or set of principles.
Following the Saffron Revolution of 2007, the Burmese military regime was viewed negatively by the world at-large. With the fresh memory of monks’ blood on their hands, it could no longer use the blunt force of violence against Aung San Suu Kyi, as it did during the 2003 Depayin Massacre. The army finally released Suu Kyi from house arrest in 2010, but it has continued its brutal assaults on ethnic minorities in conflict areas. However, simultaneously, the new government began a concerted charm offensive on all fronts, including it pursuit of separate cease-fires with armed ethnic groups.
The military’s rapid warming up to Suu Kyi and the NLD caught many in the political opposition camp by surprise. There was no time to openly discuss or mull over the political choices made by Suu Kyi, but people trusted her instincts. However, some political factions still remain far apart in areas throughout the country.
Looking back to 1886, James George Scott wrote, “Large trading towns of Burma will be for all practical purposes absorbed by the Chinese traders, just as in Singapore... And Burma is a country that has never known, and can never know, famine except as a direct result of civil war and misrule. It is perhaps a pity that the Burmese have not more vigor about them, but, on the other hand, it would be a pity if so simple and contented and genial a people were to be spoilt by a new and sordid desire for the acquisition of wealth.”
Burma and China seemed so utterly different then, but since the 1988 crackdown in Burma and the 1989 uprising in China, the two countries have become key political and economic allies. The question is whether the United States can now move Burma from its deep embrace of China?
Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi meets with musicians in November to discuss songs to use in the campaigns of National League for Democracy candidates. Photo: Mizzima
Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi meets with musicians in November to discuss songs to use in the campaigns of National League for Democracy candidates. Photo: Mizzima
With the assassination of General Aung San, the father of Suu Kyi, after Burma’s independence from Britain, the dream of a peaceful and democratic Burma quickly faded. Distrustful of the population, the Burmese army took over political and economic control, and according to commentator Mary P. Callahan, “after cleaning house inside the army, Gen. Ne Win led the ultimate offensive against civilian parliamentary rule in March 1962.” Again in 1990, under a new name and a new set of army generals, an even more brutal military junta grabbed political power back from the election-winning National League for Democracy.
Callahan concluded that there would be no easy solutions to the problem of dissembling this security-obsessed state and replacing it with a new one that treats citizens with dignity and accountability. The removal of the handful of top generals and colonels from the government, and their replacement with fraudulently elected officials, will not transform the century-old command relationship between the state and society overnight.
Callahan also rightly noted that many ethnic minority leaders question whether a democratic government based in central Burma would really commit national resources to development programs in ethnic border areas. And as the world focuses on Suu Kyi and her political party, many minority leaders worry that their needs are not being taken into account.
The political uncertainty in Burma’s tortured history rivals that of Gorbachev and Deng Xiaoping. Surely a change of clothes from military uniforms to civilian garb cannot, at this stage, be equated with a true change of heart to embrace genuine democratic reforms in Burma.
Regardless, Clinton’s visit signifies the Americans’ willingness to invest major political capital in Burma. Clinton brings with her not only the momentum of a global outcry for freedom, but also as a leading member of the U.S. administration, she can also use her influence to help reconcile Burma’s various political factions, including the military, democracy activists, and ethnic nationalities.
As Suu Kyi says, most Burmese may not understand English, but they all know the meaning of democracy and freedom. So far, Suu Kyi seems to have set aside her differences with Thein Sein. The recent gains, including the halt of a major dam project, the symbolic release of a handful of political prisoners, and the slight relaxation of press freedoms have been attributed to their renewed relations.
Whether it is only a superficial gesture or a true commitment on the part of the current Burmese government, as Ko Myat Soe, a former student leader now living in the United States, observed, twilight is finally descending on the dictators. This is a perfect time for Clinton to go to Burma and meet with Suu Kyi.
Even though she has been released from house arrest, like all other Burmese, Suu Kyi is not yet truly free. In order to fulfill her promises and those made by her father, Burma still has to release all political prisoners and must bestow equal political rights on ethnic nationalities by laying down the groundwork for a true and democratic political process.
For Clinton, it’s a little bit of a tightrope walk right now. It requires delicate steps, one by one. But one thing is certain: it’s the twilight of the military dictators in Burma. Everyone in Burma, including the generals, wants U.S. help. Expectations are high. This is a once in a lifetime opening in which the world’s two most respected women can bring positive change to Burma.
Can history be made while the two ladies quietly sip tea together and the Burmese generals wait outside?
(Commentary) – As the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Burma in 50 years, Hillary Clinton’s trip marks a turning point, and there is high expectation that Burma may finally be coming out of the cold.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during the Special Session on Gender at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Korea on November 30, 2011. Photo: AFP
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during the Special Session on Gender at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Korea on November 30, 2011. Photo: AFP
Soon after its independence from Britain, British travel writer Norman Lewis wrote in the early 1950s that in comparison to Vietnam, Burma had remained isolated and mysterious. He wrote that “while in Vietnam the established authority was challenged by a united opposition with a single ideology, the Burmese government was opposed by two separate bands of communists, two versions of a heterogeneous organization called the People’s Voluntary Organization, in which many bandits had enrolled, 10,000 or so Seven Day Adventist Karens, and a small army of mutinous military police.”
Even today, while resisting the central government’s ethnocentric nationalism and chauvinism for decades, Burma’s various opposition groups, while they share a common goal for democracy, have never unified under a common leadership or set of principles.
Following the Saffron Revolution of 2007, the Burmese military regime was viewed negatively by the world at-large. With the fresh memory of monks’ blood on their hands, it could no longer use the blunt force of violence against Aung San Suu Kyi, as it did during the 2003 Depayin Massacre. The army finally released Suu Kyi from house arrest in 2010, but it has continued its brutal assaults on ethnic minorities in conflict areas. However, simultaneously, the new government began a concerted charm offensive on all fronts, including it pursuit of separate cease-fires with armed ethnic groups.
The military’s rapid warming up to Suu Kyi and the NLD caught many in the political opposition camp by surprise. There was no time to openly discuss or mull over the political choices made by Suu Kyi, but people trusted her instincts. However, some political factions still remain far apart in areas throughout the country.
Looking back to 1886, James George Scott wrote, “Large trading towns of Burma will be for all practical purposes absorbed by the Chinese traders, just as in Singapore... And Burma is a country that has never known, and can never know, famine except as a direct result of civil war and misrule. It is perhaps a pity that the Burmese have not more vigor about them, but, on the other hand, it would be a pity if so simple and contented and genial a people were to be spoilt by a new and sordid desire for the acquisition of wealth.”
Burma and China seemed so utterly different then, but since the 1988 crackdown in Burma and the 1989 uprising in China, the two countries have become key political and economic allies. The question is whether the United States can now move Burma from its deep embrace of China?
Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi meets with musicians in November to discuss songs to use in the campaigns of National League for Democracy candidates. Photo: Mizzima
Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi meets with musicians in November to discuss songs to use in the campaigns of National League for Democracy candidates. Photo: Mizzima
With the assassination of General Aung San, the father of Suu Kyi, after Burma’s independence from Britain, the dream of a peaceful and democratic Burma quickly faded. Distrustful of the population, the Burmese army took over political and economic control, and according to commentator Mary P. Callahan, “after cleaning house inside the army, Gen. Ne Win led the ultimate offensive against civilian parliamentary rule in March 1962.” Again in 1990, under a new name and a new set of army generals, an even more brutal military junta grabbed political power back from the election-winning National League for Democracy.
Callahan concluded that there would be no easy solutions to the problem of dissembling this security-obsessed state and replacing it with a new one that treats citizens with dignity and accountability. The removal of the handful of top generals and colonels from the government, and their replacement with fraudulently elected officials, will not transform the century-old command relationship between the state and society overnight.
Callahan also rightly noted that many ethnic minority leaders question whether a democratic government based in central Burma would really commit national resources to development programs in ethnic border areas. And as the world focuses on Suu Kyi and her political party, many minority leaders worry that their needs are not being taken into account.
The political uncertainty in Burma’s tortured history rivals that of Gorbachev and Deng Xiaoping. Surely a change of clothes from military uniforms to civilian garb cannot, at this stage, be equated with a true change of heart to embrace genuine democratic reforms in Burma.
Regardless, Clinton’s visit signifies the Americans’ willingness to invest major political capital in Burma. Clinton brings with her not only the momentum of a global outcry for freedom, but also as a leading member of the U.S. administration, she can also use her influence to help reconcile Burma’s various political factions, including the military, democracy activists, and ethnic nationalities.
As Suu Kyi says, most Burmese may not understand English, but they all know the meaning of democracy and freedom. So far, Suu Kyi seems to have set aside her differences with Thein Sein. The recent gains, including the halt of a major dam project, the symbolic release of a handful of political prisoners, and the slight relaxation of press freedoms have been attributed to their renewed relations.
Whether it is only a superficial gesture or a true commitment on the part of the current Burmese government, as Ko Myat Soe, a former student leader now living in the United States, observed, twilight is finally descending on the dictators. This is a perfect time for Clinton to go to Burma and meet with Suu Kyi.
Even though she has been released from house arrest, like all other Burmese, Suu Kyi is not yet truly free. In order to fulfill her promises and those made by her father, Burma still has to release all political prisoners and must bestow equal political rights on ethnic nationalities by laying down the groundwork for a true and democratic political process.
For Clinton, it’s a little bit of a tightrope walk right now. It requires delicate steps, one by one. But one thing is certain: it’s the twilight of the military dictators in Burma. Everyone in Burma, including the generals, wants U.S. help. Expectations are high. This is a once in a lifetime opening in which the world’s two most respected women can bring positive change to Burma.
Can history be made while the two ladies quietly sip tea together and the Burmese generals wait outside?
Monday, 28 November 2011
ထင္ရွားတဲ့ နိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား တခ်ိဳ႕ ေထာင္ေျပာင္း
ကိုမင္းကုိႏိုင္၊ မနီလာသိန္းစတဲ့ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ ေက်ာင္းသား ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြနဲ႔ ရွမ္းတုိင္းရင္းသား ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဦးခြန္ထြန္းဦး အပါအ၀င္ ထင္ရွားတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားတခ်ဳိ႕ကို ဒီကေန႔ ေထာင္ေျပာင္းလိုက္တယ္လို႔ သိရပါတယ္။
အက်ဥ္းသားမိသားစုဝင္မ်ား အင္းစိန္ေထာင္ဗူးဝ၌ ေစာင့္ဆိုင္းေနၾကစဥ္ ယခင္ မွတ္တမ္းဓာတ္ပံု ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ (Photo: AAPP)
အဲဒီလို ေထာင္ေျပာင္းတဲ့ အထဲမွာ စစ္ကိုင္းတုိင္း ကေလးၿမိဳ႕ အက်ဥ္းေထာင္က ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းက် အရွင္ ဂမၻီရနဲ႔ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ ဂြၿမိဳ႕နယ္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ အမတ္ ဦးညီပု တို႔လည္း ပါ၀င္တယ္လို႔ သိရပါတယ္။
ဘယ္ေထာင္ေျပာင္းတယ္ ဆိုတာ အတိအက် မသိရေပမဲ့ ရန္ကုန္ အင္းစိန္ေထာင္ကို ေျပာင္းတယ္လို႔ ထင္ေၾကးေပးေနၾက ပါတယ္။
အရွင္ ဂမၻီရနဲ႔ ဦးညီပုတုိ႔ကို အမ်ား မျမင္ေအာင္ ေလယာဥ္နား အထိ ကားနဲ႔ ေခၚသြားတဲ့ အေၾကာင္း အရွင္ ဂမၻီရရဲ႕မယ္ေတာ္ ေဒၚေရးက ကေလးၿမိဳ႕ ေလဆိပ္ အနီးကေန အာရ္အက္ဖ္ေအကို ေျပာပါတယ္။
အခုလို အက်ဥ္းသားေတြကို ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕တာ မိဘ ေဆြမ်ိဳးေတြကို အေၾကာင္းၾကားျခင္း မရွိဘူးလို႔ သိရပါတယ္။ အာရ္အက္ဖ္ေအက လက္လွမ္းမွီသမွ် စံုစမ္းရရွိတဲ့ သတင္းေတြ အရ က်ိဳင္းတံုေထာင္က ကိုမင္းကိုႏုိင္ကို သရက္ေထာင္၊ ပူတာအိုေထာင္က ဦးခြန္ထြန္းဦးကို ေတာင္ငူေထာင္၊ ကိုစည္သူေဇယ်ကို အင္းစိန္ေထာင္ ကေန ဟသၤာတေထာင္၊ ေက်ာက္ျဖဴေထာင္က ကိုသူရိန္ေက်ာ္ကို ဖားအံေထာင္ အသီးသီး ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕လိုက္တယ္လို႔ သိရပါတယ္။
အခုလ ၁၃ ရက္က ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ အမ်ဳိးသား လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ေကာ္မရွင္ကေန နယ္ေ၀းေထာင္ေတြမွာ ယုံၾကည္ခ်က္ေၾကာင့္ အက်ဥ္းက် ခံေနရတဲ့သူေတြကို လြတ္ၿငိမ္း ခ်မ္းသာခြင့္မွာ ထည့္မေပးႏိုင္ေသးရင္ မိသားစုနဲ႔ နီးစပ္တဲ့ ေနရာေတြက ေထာင္ေတြကို ေျပာင္းေပးဖို႔ သမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ကို ေမတၱာရပ္ခံခဲ့ပါတယ္။
အက်ဥ္းသားမိသားစုဝင္မ်ား အင္းစိန္ေထာင္ဗူးဝ၌ ေစာင့္ဆိုင္းေနၾကစဥ္ ယခင္ မွတ္တမ္းဓာတ္ပံု ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ (Photo: AAPP)
အဲဒီလို ေထာင္ေျပာင္းတဲ့ အထဲမွာ စစ္ကိုင္းတုိင္း ကေလးၿမိဳ႕ အက်ဥ္းေထာင္က ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းက် အရွင္ ဂမၻီရနဲ႔ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ ဂြၿမိဳ႕နယ္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ အမတ္ ဦးညီပု တို႔လည္း ပါ၀င္တယ္လို႔ သိရပါတယ္။
ဘယ္ေထာင္ေျပာင္းတယ္ ဆိုတာ အတိအက် မသိရေပမဲ့ ရန္ကုန္ အင္းစိန္ေထာင္ကို ေျပာင္းတယ္လို႔ ထင္ေၾကးေပးေနၾက ပါတယ္။
အရွင္ ဂမၻီရနဲ႔ ဦးညီပုတုိ႔ကို အမ်ား မျမင္ေအာင္ ေလယာဥ္နား အထိ ကားနဲ႔ ေခၚသြားတဲ့ အေၾကာင္း အရွင္ ဂမၻီရရဲ႕မယ္ေတာ္ ေဒၚေရးက ကေလးၿမိဳ႕ ေလဆိပ္ အနီးကေန အာရ္အက္ဖ္ေအကို ေျပာပါတယ္။
အခုလို အက်ဥ္းသားေတြကို ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕တာ မိဘ ေဆြမ်ိဳးေတြကို အေၾကာင္းၾကားျခင္း မရွိဘူးလို႔ သိရပါတယ္။ အာရ္အက္ဖ္ေအက လက္လွမ္းမွီသမွ် စံုစမ္းရရွိတဲ့ သတင္းေတြ အရ က်ိဳင္းတံုေထာင္က ကိုမင္းကိုႏုိင္ကို သရက္ေထာင္၊ ပူတာအိုေထာင္က ဦးခြန္ထြန္းဦးကို ေတာင္ငူေထာင္၊ ကိုစည္သူေဇယ်ကို အင္းစိန္ေထာင္ ကေန ဟသၤာတေထာင္၊ ေက်ာက္ျဖဴေထာင္က ကိုသူရိန္ေက်ာ္ကို ဖားအံေထာင္ အသီးသီး ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕လိုက္တယ္လို႔ သိရပါတယ္။
အခုလ ၁၃ ရက္က ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ အမ်ဳိးသား လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ေကာ္မရွင္ကေန နယ္ေ၀းေထာင္ေတြမွာ ယုံၾကည္ခ်က္ေၾကာင့္ အက်ဥ္းက် ခံေနရတဲ့သူေတြကို လြတ္ၿငိမ္း ခ်မ္းသာခြင့္မွာ ထည့္မေပးႏိုင္ေသးရင္ မိသားစုနဲ႔ နီးစပ္တဲ့ ေနရာေတြက ေထာင္ေတြကို ေျပာင္းေပးဖို႔ သမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ကို ေမတၱာရပ္ခံခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား ကိုဒီၿငိမ္းလင္း လြတ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာခြင့္ မေမွ်ာ္လင့္
2011-11-27
မံုရြာေထာင္မွာ ေထာင္ဒဏ္ ၁၅ ႏွစ္ ခ်မွတ္ ထိန္းသိမ္းခံထားရတဲ့ ဗမာႏိုင္ငံ လံုးဆိုင္ရာ ေက်ာင္းသားသမဂၢမ်ား အဖဲြ႔ခ်ဳပ္ ၂ဝဝ၇ မ်ိဳးဆက္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ကိုဒီၿငိမ္းလင္းက အစိုးရအေနနဲ႔ သူ႔ကို ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားအျဖစ္ သတ္မွတ္ၿပီး လြတ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာ ခြင့္နဲ႔ လႊတ္ေပးမယ္ဆိုတဲ့ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ခ်က္ မရွိေၾကာင္း မိခင္ျဖစ္သူက အာအက္ဖ္ေအကို ေျပာျပပါတယ္။
RFA
ဒီမိုကေရစီ လႈပ္ရွားမႈေၾကာင့္ ႏွစ္ရွည္ေထာင္ဒဏ္မ်ား က်ခံေနရေသာ ဖခင္ ကိုေဇာ္ေဇာ္မင္း (ဝဲ) ႏွင့္ သား ေမာင္ဒီၿငိမ္းလင္း (ယာ)တို႔ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ (Image: RFA)
“လြတ္မယ္ေျပာတုိင္း ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ခ်က္ေတြ သိပ္ၿပီး မထားနဲ႔ေပါ့။ ေနာက္ အေျခအေနေတြ ဘယ္ေလာက္ပဲ အေကာင္းဘက္ကို ဦးတည္ေနေန အခ်ိန္မေရြး အဆုိးဘက္ကို ေရာက္သြားႏုိင္တယ္ေပ့ါ။ ယံုၾကည္ခ်က္ေၾကာင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား မရွိဘူးလုိ႔ သမၼတက ေျပာထားတယ္ေလ။ အဲဒါေၾကာင့္ ျပန္လြတ္ဖုိ႔ဆုိတာ လတ္တေလာ မျဖစ္ႏုိင္ေသးဘူးေပါ့”
မံုရြာေထာင္မွာ ရွိေနတဲ့ သားျဖစ္သူ ကိုဒီၿငိမ္းလင္းကို ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့ သီတင္းပတ္က ေထာင္ဝင္စာေတြ႔ခြင့္ ရခဲ့တယ္လို႔ မိခင္ျဖစ္သူ ေဒၚေဌးေဌးဝင္းက ေျပာပါတယ္။ တဆက္တည္းမွာပဲ ေတာင္ငူေထာင္မွာ ေထာင္ဒဏ္ ၆၅ ႏွစ္ ခ်မွတ္ခံထားရတဲ့ ခင္ပြန္းျဖစ္သူ ၈၈မ်ိဳးဆက္ ေက်ာင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဦးေဇာ္ေဇာ္မင္းကိုလည္း ေထာင္ဝင္စာေတြ႔ခြင့္ ရတယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က ပါတီ ျပန္မွတ္ပံုတင္ၿပီး ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြဝင္မယ့္ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ေတြအတြက္ သူ႔အေနနဲ႔ နားလည္ေထာက္ခံေၾကာင္း ဦးေဇာ္ေဇာ္မင္းက ေျပာလိုက္တယ္လို႔ ဇနီးျဖစ္သူ ေဒၚေဌးေဌးဝင္းက ေျပာပါတယ္။
ဒီအေတာအတြင္း ေထာင္ဒဏ္ ၆၅ ႏွစ္ေက်ာ္ ခ်မွတ္ခံထားရတဲ့ ကသာအက်ဥ္းေထာင္ေရာက္ ၈၈ မ်ိဳးဆက္ ေက်ာင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ ကိုအံ့ဘြယ္ေက်ာ္ရဲ႕ ဒီကေန႔ က်ေရာက္တဲ့ (၄၅) ႏွစ္ေျမာက္ ေမြးေန႔အခမ္းအနားကို မိသားစုနဲ႔အတူ ၈၈ မ်ိဳးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားေတြ စုေပါင္းက်င္းပခဲ့တယ္လို႔ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားေဟာင္း ကိုျမတ္သူက ေျပာပါတယ္။
“ကိုဘြယ္ႀကီးကို ခ်စ္တဲ့ မိသားစုေတြက လာၿပီး ကုိဘြယ္ႀကီးအတြက္ လာၿပီး အားေပးတဲ့သေဘာေပါ့။ ေမြးေန႔ရွင္ မပါတဲ့ ေမြးေန႔ပြဲေတြ က်င္းပရတာဆုိေတာ့ စိတ္လည္း မေကာင္းၾကဘူးေပါ့”
ကိုအံ့ဘြယ္ေက်ာ္ ေနအိမ္မွာက်င္းပတဲ့ ေမြးေန႔ပဲြကို ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား မိသားစုေတြလည္း တက္ေရာက္ အားေပးခဲ့တယ္လို႔ ကိုျမတ္သူက ေျပာပါတယ္။
မံုရြာေထာင္မွာ ေထာင္ဒဏ္ ၁၅ ႏွစ္ ခ်မွတ္ ထိန္းသိမ္းခံထားရတဲ့ ဗမာႏိုင္ငံ လံုးဆိုင္ရာ ေက်ာင္းသားသမဂၢမ်ား အဖဲြ႔ခ်ဳပ္ ၂ဝဝ၇ မ်ိဳးဆက္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ကိုဒီၿငိမ္းလင္းက အစိုးရအေနနဲ႔ သူ႔ကို ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားအျဖစ္ သတ္မွတ္ၿပီး လြတ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာ ခြင့္နဲ႔ လႊတ္ေပးမယ္ဆိုတဲ့ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ခ်က္ မရွိေၾကာင္း မိခင္ျဖစ္သူက အာအက္ဖ္ေအကို ေျပာျပပါတယ္။
RFA
ဒီမိုကေရစီ လႈပ္ရွားမႈေၾကာင့္ ႏွစ္ရွည္ေထာင္ဒဏ္မ်ား က်ခံေနရေသာ ဖခင္ ကိုေဇာ္ေဇာ္မင္း (ဝဲ) ႏွင့္ သား ေမာင္ဒီၿငိမ္းလင္း (ယာ)တို႔ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ (Image: RFA)
“လြတ္မယ္ေျပာတုိင္း ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ခ်က္ေတြ သိပ္ၿပီး မထားနဲ႔ေပါ့။ ေနာက္ အေျခအေနေတြ ဘယ္ေလာက္ပဲ အေကာင္းဘက္ကို ဦးတည္ေနေန အခ်ိန္မေရြး အဆုိးဘက္ကို ေရာက္သြားႏုိင္တယ္ေပ့ါ။ ယံုၾကည္ခ်က္ေၾကာင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား မရွိဘူးလုိ႔ သမၼတက ေျပာထားတယ္ေလ။ အဲဒါေၾကာင့္ ျပန္လြတ္ဖုိ႔ဆုိတာ လတ္တေလာ မျဖစ္ႏုိင္ေသးဘူးေပါ့”
မံုရြာေထာင္မွာ ရွိေနတဲ့ သားျဖစ္သူ ကိုဒီၿငိမ္းလင္းကို ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့ သီတင္းပတ္က ေထာင္ဝင္စာေတြ႔ခြင့္ ရခဲ့တယ္လို႔ မိခင္ျဖစ္သူ ေဒၚေဌးေဌးဝင္းက ေျပာပါတယ္။ တဆက္တည္းမွာပဲ ေတာင္ငူေထာင္မွာ ေထာင္ဒဏ္ ၆၅ ႏွစ္ ခ်မွတ္ခံထားရတဲ့ ခင္ပြန္းျဖစ္သူ ၈၈မ်ိဳးဆက္ ေက်ာင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဦးေဇာ္ေဇာ္မင္းကိုလည္း ေထာင္ဝင္စာေတြ႔ခြင့္ ရတယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က ပါတီ ျပန္မွတ္ပံုတင္ၿပီး ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြဝင္မယ့္ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ေတြအတြက္ သူ႔အေနနဲ႔ နားလည္ေထာက္ခံေၾကာင္း ဦးေဇာ္ေဇာ္မင္းက ေျပာလိုက္တယ္လို႔ ဇနီးျဖစ္သူ ေဒၚေဌးေဌးဝင္းက ေျပာပါတယ္။
ဒီအေတာအတြင္း ေထာင္ဒဏ္ ၆၅ ႏွစ္ေက်ာ္ ခ်မွတ္ခံထားရတဲ့ ကသာအက်ဥ္းေထာင္ေရာက္ ၈၈ မ်ိဳးဆက္ ေက်ာင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ ကိုအံ့ဘြယ္ေက်ာ္ရဲ႕ ဒီကေန႔ က်ေရာက္တဲ့ (၄၅) ႏွစ္ေျမာက္ ေမြးေန႔အခမ္းအနားကို မိသားစုနဲ႔အတူ ၈၈ မ်ိဳးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားေတြ စုေပါင္းက်င္းပခဲ့တယ္လို႔ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားေဟာင္း ကိုျမတ္သူက ေျပာပါတယ္။
“ကိုဘြယ္ႀကီးကို ခ်စ္တဲ့ မိသားစုေတြက လာၿပီး ကုိဘြယ္ႀကီးအတြက္ လာၿပီး အားေပးတဲ့သေဘာေပါ့။ ေမြးေန႔ရွင္ မပါတဲ့ ေမြးေန႔ပြဲေတြ က်င္းပရတာဆုိေတာ့ စိတ္လည္း မေကာင္းၾကဘူးေပါ့”
ကိုအံ့ဘြယ္ေက်ာ္ ေနအိမ္မွာက်င္းပတဲ့ ေမြးေန႔ပဲြကို ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား မိသားစုေတြလည္း တက္ေရာက္ အားေပးခဲ့တယ္လို႔ ကိုျမတ္သူက ေျပာပါတယ္။
Burmese MPs want to discuss sanctions, political prisoners with Clinton
Friday, 25 November 2011 15:33 Tun Tun
New Delhi (Mizzima) – Elected officials in Burma say they hope to talk about sanctions and political prisoners with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her two-day visit to Burma in December.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks as Indonesian Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo, left, listens at a signing ceremony during the East Asia Summit in Indonesia on November 19, 2011. Photo: AFP
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks as Indonesian Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo, left, listens at a signing ceremony during the East Asia Summit in Indonesia on November 19, 2011. Photo: AFP
Clinton will also meet with Upper House Speaker Khin Aung Myint, parliamentary committees and 30 leaders including ethnic representatives and independent MPs in Naypyitaw, the capital, MPs said.
“It’ll depend on the circumstances. If we have a chance, we will ask about the sanctions,” Dr. Aye Maung, the chairman of the Upper House Government's Guarantees, Pledges and Undertakings Vetting Committee, told Mizzima.
Clinton’s visit will be the first visit of a U.S. secretary of state to the country in more than 50 years. She will also meet with members of the Upper House.
“When she comes, we will talk about the sanctions. I believe she will urge the Burmese government to release all political prisoners,” said Lower House MP Khin Maung Yi of the National Democratic Force.
Because of human rights violations in Burma, the U.S. and other Western governments impose economic sanctions against Burma; on the other hand, it is also now engaged with expanding contacts with Burma, and a series of high-level administration officials have visited Burma in the past two months. Burmese MPs have said that it is important that the government release all political prisoners in order for the U.S. to lift sanctions and expand economic and military ties.
On the other hand, the government’s long-standing position has been that there are no political prisoners. However, two amnesties this year have released a large number of political prisoners, and another amnesty is expected soon.
A former political activist, Khin Maung Yi said: “The next batch of the 88-generation student activists has not been released. In the Parliament, I’m the only 88-generation student activist. We want the students including Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi to be released. It’s oblivious that the government has a responsibility to release them to relax political tensions.”
MPs also said that during Clinton’s visit, they want her to encourage the International Monetary Fund and other groups to help Burma modernize its financial institutions and to urge the government to hold free and fair elections in 2015.
New Delhi (Mizzima) – Elected officials in Burma say they hope to talk about sanctions and political prisoners with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her two-day visit to Burma in December.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks as Indonesian Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo, left, listens at a signing ceremony during the East Asia Summit in Indonesia on November 19, 2011. Photo: AFP
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks as Indonesian Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo, left, listens at a signing ceremony during the East Asia Summit in Indonesia on November 19, 2011. Photo: AFP
Clinton will also meet with Upper House Speaker Khin Aung Myint, parliamentary committees and 30 leaders including ethnic representatives and independent MPs in Naypyitaw, the capital, MPs said.
“It’ll depend on the circumstances. If we have a chance, we will ask about the sanctions,” Dr. Aye Maung, the chairman of the Upper House Government's Guarantees, Pledges and Undertakings Vetting Committee, told Mizzima.
Clinton’s visit will be the first visit of a U.S. secretary of state to the country in more than 50 years. She will also meet with members of the Upper House.
“When she comes, we will talk about the sanctions. I believe she will urge the Burmese government to release all political prisoners,” said Lower House MP Khin Maung Yi of the National Democratic Force.
Because of human rights violations in Burma, the U.S. and other Western governments impose economic sanctions against Burma; on the other hand, it is also now engaged with expanding contacts with Burma, and a series of high-level administration officials have visited Burma in the past two months. Burmese MPs have said that it is important that the government release all political prisoners in order for the U.S. to lift sanctions and expand economic and military ties.
On the other hand, the government’s long-standing position has been that there are no political prisoners. However, two amnesties this year have released a large number of political prisoners, and another amnesty is expected soon.
A former political activist, Khin Maung Yi said: “The next batch of the 88-generation student activists has not been released. In the Parliament, I’m the only 88-generation student activist. We want the students including Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi to be released. It’s oblivious that the government has a responsibility to release them to relax political tensions.”
MPs also said that during Clinton’s visit, they want her to encourage the International Monetary Fund and other groups to help Burma modernize its financial institutions and to urge the government to hold free and fair elections in 2015.
Friday, 25 November 2011
ႏိုင္ငံေရးႏွင့္ ယေန႔ လူငယ္က႑-၂၉.၉.၂၀၁၁ ေန႔တြင္ RFA မနက္ပိုင္း အစီအစဥ္၌ အသံလႊင့္ခ်က္ေဆာင္းပါးရွင္ - ကိုမ်ဳိးရန္ေနာင္သိန္း
ယေန႔အခ်ိန္မွာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံေရးျဖစ္ေပၚတုိးတက္မႈေတြဟာ
ျမန္ဆန္ေနပါတယ္။ ဟိုးအရင္တကည္းက ယေန႔အခ်ိန္အထိ အာဏာရွင္စနစ္ကို
ဆန္႔က်င္ၿပီး ဒီမုိကေရစီေရးတုိက္ပြဲ ၀င္ေနသူေတြအတြက္ အားတက္စရာပါ။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ဒီမုိကေရစီအသြင္ကူးေျပာင္းေရး ႀကိဳးစားရုန္းကန္မႈမွာ
ႏွစ္ေပါင္း ဆယ္စုႏွစ္ခ်ီၿပီး ေပ်ာက္ေနသူေတြလည္း ျပန္လည္ ႏိုးထလာၿပီး
အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္ရင္ၾကားေစ့ေရး အာရုဏ္ဦးမွာ ပါ၀င္လာျပန္ပါတယ္။
အဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ဳိးစံု၊ ကြန္ယက္မ်ဳိးစံုလည္း ေနရာေဒသအသီးသီးမွာ
ပံုသ႑န္အမ်ဳိးမ်ဳိးႏွင့္ ေပၚေပါက္လာၾကပါတယ္။ အားရေက်နပ္စရာပါ။
ခါေတာ္မီ ေပၚတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမားပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္။ အရင္တုန္းက ၿခံစည္းရိုး
ခြထုိင္ခဲ့ၿပီး အခုအခ်ိန္ၾကမွ အေမစု ဘက္ကလုိ႔ ေအာ္သူပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္၊
အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမုိကေရစီအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ဟာ ေန႔လား၊ညလား ဖ်က္သိမ္းခံရေလမလား
ဆိုတဲ့အခိ်န္မွာ ၾကက္ေပ်က္၊ ငွက္ေပ်ာက္ ေပ်ာက္ေနခဲ့ၾကၿပီး အခုမွ
ကိုယ္ထင္ျပလာသူေတြပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္၊ အမ်ဳိးသားေရး၊ ဒီမုိကေရစီေရးအတြက္
အားလံုးကို လက္ကမ္းႀကိဳဆို လက္တြဲရမွာပါ။
ဒီလုိအခ်ိန္ဟာ ျမန္မာျပည္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအတြက္ အေရးအႀကီးဆံုး အခ်ိန္ပါ။
ဒီမုိကေရစီ ဘက္ေတာ္သား အခ်င္းခ်င္း ေသြးခြဲမည့္သူေတြက အမ်ားႀကီးပါ။
ဒီၾကားထဲ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ ၾကားရတဲ့ သတင္းတစ္ခုက ၈၈
မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ႕ဟာ လူထုေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဒီမုိကေရစီေခါင္းေဆာင္
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကို ယွဥ္တု ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနတယ္ ဆိုတဲ့ သတင္းပါ။ လူထု
ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကိုလည္း အဲ့ဒီလုိ သတင္းပို႔ထားတယ္
ေျပာၾကားထားတယ္လို႔ သိရပါတယ္။
ဒီေနရာမွာ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားအဖြဲ႕ႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္လုိ႔ ကၽြန္ေတာ္
ေဆြးေႏြးခ်င္ပါတယ္။ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသား အဖြဲ႕ဆိုတာဟာ
ေက်ာင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားျဖစ္တဲ့ ကိုမင္းကိုႏုိင္၊ ကိုကိုႀကီး၊
ကိုေဌးၾကြယ္၊ ကိုမင္းေဇယ်ာ၊ ကိုၿပံဳးခ်ဳိတုိ႔ 2005 ခုႏွစ္မွာ
ျပန္လည္လြတ္ေျမာက္လာခဲ့ခ်ိန္မွာ 1988 ခုႏွစ္မွ အစျပဳၿပီး၊
ေပၚေပါက္ျဖစ္ထြန္းလာခဲ့တဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ဳိးဆက္ အသီးသီးျဖစ္ၾကတဲ့ 1988၊
1996၊ 1998၊ 1999၊ 2000 အစရိွတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ဳိးဆက္ေတြကို စုေပါင္းၿပီး
တစုတစည္းတည္းေသာ ေက်ာင္းသားအင္အားစုအျဖစ္ ဖြဲ႕စည္းခဲ့တဲ့ အဖြဲ႕အစည္း
ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ 1988 ခုႏွစ္ ဒီမုိကေရစီ အေရးေတာ္ပံု ကာလအတြင္းက
ေက်ာင္းသားအဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ားစြာ ေပၚထြက္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဗကသ၊ မကသ၊ ရကသ၊ အကသ၊
သံုးေရာင္ျခယ္ အစရိွသျဖင့္ ေက်ာင္းသားအဖြဲ႕စံုလွပါတယ္။ 2005
ခုႏွစ္မွာေတာ့ အဲ့ဒီ 88 ေက်ာင္းသား မ်ဳိးဆက္ေတြအျပင္၊ 96၊ 98၊ 99၊ 2000
အစရိွတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြ စုေပါင္းၿပီး “88 မွစတင္ခဲ့ေသာ
ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ဳိးဆက္မ်ား“ “Students generations since 88“
ကိုဖြဲ႕စည္းခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီ့အဖြဲ႕ကို ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ႕လုိ႔
ေခၚဆိုေလ့ရိွပါတယ္။
၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ ေက်ာင္းသားအဖြဲ႕ကို ၈၈
မ်ဳိးဆက္သစ္ေက်ာင္းသားလူငယ္မ်ားအဖြဲ႕ႏွင့္ မွားေလ့ရိွပါတယ္။ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္
ေက်ာင္းသားလူငယ္မ်ား (ျပည္ေထာင္စုျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ)ဟာ ႏုိင္ငံေရးပါတီ
တစ္ခုျဖစ္ၿပီး ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ႕ႏွင့္ လံုး၀ မသက္ဆုိင္သလုိ၊
ပတ္သက္မႈလည္း လံုး၀မရိွပါ။ ႏိုင္ငံေရးခံယူခ်က္၊ ရပ္တည္ခ်က္ျခင္းလည္း
လံုး၀ မတူညီပါဘူး။ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားအဖြဲ႕ႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ၿပီး
ေနာက္ထပ္ရႈပ္ေထြးသြားေစတဲ့ အခ်က္က ၈ ေလးလံုး အေရးေတာ္ပံုႀကီးအတြင္းမွာ
ပါ၀င္ခဲ့ၾကတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြကို ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားလုိ႔
ေခၚဆိုေနျခင္းပါပဲ။ ဟုတ္ပါတယ္။ ၈ ေလးလံုး အေရးေတာ္ပံုႀကီး အတြင္းမွာ
ပါ၀င္ခဲ့ၾကတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြဟာ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားေတြပါ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ၈
ေလးလံုး အေရးေတာ္ပံုမွာ ပါ၀င္ခဲ့ၾကတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားတုိင္းဟာ ၈၈
မွစတင္ခဲ့ေသာ ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ဳိးဆက္မ်ားအဖြဲ႕ (သုိ႔) ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္
ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ား အဖြဲ႕မွာ ပါ၀င္လႈပ္ရွားခဲ့တာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ ဒါေၾကာင့္မုိ႔
၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားတုိင္းဟာ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ား အဖြဲ႕က
မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ 96၊ 98၊ 99 မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားေတြလည္း ၈၈
မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ား အဖြဲ႕မွာ ပါ၀င္ပါတယ္။
အခုအခ်ိန္မွာ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ႕ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြျဖစ္တဲ့
ကိုမင္းကိုႏုိင္၊ ကိုကိုႀကီး၊ ကိုေဌးၾကြယ္၊ ကိုမင္းေဇယ်ာ၊ ကိုၿပံဳးခ်ဳိ၊
ကိုျမေအး အစရိွတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြ အားလံုးနီးပါးဟာ
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ အႏွံ႔အျပားမွာ ရိွေနတဲ့ အက်ဥ္းေထာင္အသီးသီးမွာ
ေရာက္ရိွေနၾကပါတယ္။ တခ်ဳိ႕ေက်ာင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြဟာလည္း
တိမ္းေရွာင္ေနၾက ရပါတယ္။
ဒါေပမယ့္ သမုိင္းအစဥ္အလာနဲ႔ စြန္႔လႊတ္မႈ ႏိုင္ငံခ်စ္စိတ္
ဒီမုိကေရစီေရးအတြက္ ဘ၀ကို ျမွပ္ႏွံတယ္ဆုိတဲ့ စိတ္ဓာတ္ကို
ကိုယ္စားျပဳထားတဲ့ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ႕ဟာ ေပ်ာက္ကြယ္
မသြားခဲ့ပါဘူး။ စစ္အစိုးရရဲ႕ ၿဖိဳခြင္း ႏွိပ္ကြပ္မႈကို
ႀကံ႕ႀကံ႕ခံခဲ့ပါတယ္။
2005 ခုႏွစ္မွာ ဖြဲ႕စည္းခဲ့တဲ့ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ႕မွာ
ပါ၀င္လႈပ္ရွားခဲ့ၾကလုိ႔ ျပစ္ဒဏ္က်ခဲ့ၾကရၿပီး ျပန္လည္ လြတ္ေျမာက္လာၾကတဲ့
ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားေဟာင္းေတြဟာ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ႕ကို
ျပန္လည္ ရွင္သန္ေစခဲ့ပါတယ္။
2011 ခုႏွစ္ ၾသဂုတ္လ ၈ ရက္ေန႔မွာ က်င္းပခဲ့တဲ့ 23 ႏွစ္ျပည့္ ၈.၈.၈၈
ႏွစ္ပတ္လည္ေန႔ အခမ္းအနားႏွင့္ ဧရာ၀တီကို ထာ၀ရရွင္သန္ေစလုိသူမ်ားရဲ႕
ဧရာ၀တီကို ထာ၀ရရွင္သန္ေစေရးအတြက္ လက္မွတ္ေရးထိုး လႈပ္ရွားမႈဟာ
ရွင္သန္ေနတဲ့ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ႕ရဲ႕ ျပယုဂ္ေတြပါ။ အဲ့ဒီ ၈၈
မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ႕ (သို႔) ၈၈ မွစတင္ခဲ့ေသာ ေက်ာင္းသား
မ်ဳိးဆက္မ်ားအဖြဲ႕ကို လက္ရိွ ဦးေဆာင္ေနသူဟာ ကိုျမတ္သူပါ။ ကိုျမတ္သူဟာ
ရန္ကုန္စက္မႈတကၠသိုလ္ ေက်ာင္းသားေဟာင္း တစ္ေယာက္ျဖစ္ၿပီး
ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား ႏွစ္ႀကိမ္ ျဖစ္ခဲ့သူျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ကိုျမတ္သူ ဦးေဆာင္ေနတဲ့ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားအဖြဲ႕ဟာ
ျမန္မာတစ္ႏိုင္ငံလံုးမွာ ရိွတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသား လူငယ္မ်ားကို
စုစည္းထားႏုိင္ၿပီး အေတြးအေခၚ အေမွ်ာ္အျမင္ရိွတဲ့ ပညာတတ္လူငယ္
ေက်ာင္းသားေတြရဲ႕ အစုအဖြဲ႕ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံေရးပညာကို စနစ္တက်ေလ့လာၿပီး
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ဒီမုိကေရစီေရး အေျပာင္းအလဲအတြက္ ႀကိဳးစားေနၾကတဲ့
လူငယ္ေတြပါ။
အခုလုိ ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး၊ အမ်ဳိးသားရင္ၾကားေစ့ေရးတုိ႔အတြက္ အေရးအႀကီးဆံုး
အခ်ိန္မွာ ဒီမုိကေရစီ အင္အားစုကို ထုိးခြဲမယ့္အႀကံႏွင့္ ၈၈
မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ႕ကို “အမ်ဳိးသားေခါင္းေဆာင္“
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကို အံတုမယ့္ အဖြဲ႕အျဖစ္ သတင္းမွားထုတ္လႊင့္မႈဟာ
အမ်ဳိးသားေရး လုပ္ႀကံမႈပါ။
ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံမွာ ဒီမုိကေရစီေရးအတြက္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ ေခါင္းေဆာင္
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမုိကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ ရိွေနပါတယ္။
သူတုိ႔ေတြကို ၀န္းရံဖုိ႔ ႏွလံုးရည္ျဖစ္တဲ့ အသိဥာဏ္ပညာ ျဖည့္ဆည္းထားတဲ့၊
လက္ရံုးရည္လုိ႔ ေခၚလုိ႔ရတဲ့ လုိအပ္ရင္ ဒီမုိကေရစီေရးအတြက္ အသက္အေသခံမယ့္၊
အဖမ္းခံမယ့္၊ အာဏာရွင္ကို အံတုမယ့္ ၈၈ မွစတင္ခဲ့ေသာ
ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ဳိးဆက္မ်ားအဖြဲ႕ ရိွေနပါတယ္။
ေက်းဇူးတင္ပါတယ္
ကၽြန္ေတာ္ မ်ဳိးရန္ေနာင္သိန္းပါ။
ဆန္႔က်င္ၿပီး ဒီမုိကေရစီေရးတုိက္ပြဲ ၀င္ေနသူေတြအတြက္ အားတက္စရာပါ။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ဒီမုိကေရစီအသြင္ကူးေျပာင္းေ
ႏွစ္ေပါင္း ဆယ္စုႏွစ္ခ်ီၿပီး ေပ်ာက္ေနသူေတြလည္း ျပန္လည္ ႏိုးထလာၿပီး
အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္ရင္ၾကားေစ့
အဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ဳိးစံု၊ ကြန္ယက္မ်ဳိးစံုလည္း ေနရာေဒသအသီးသီးမွာ
ပံုသ႑န္အမ်ဳိးမ်ဳိးႏွင့္ ေပၚေပါက္လာၾကပါတယ္။ အားရေက်နပ္စရာပါ။
ခါေတာ္မီ ေပၚတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမားပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္။ အရင္တုန္းက ၿခံစည္းရိုး
ခြထုိင္ခဲ့ၿပီး အခုအခ်ိန္ၾကမွ အေမစု ဘက္ကလုိ႔ ေအာ္သူပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္၊
အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမုိကေရစီအဖြဲ႕ခ်
ဆိုတဲ့အခိ်န္မွာ ၾကက္ေပ်က္၊ ငွက္ေပ်ာက္ ေပ်ာက္ေနခဲ့ၾကၿပီး အခုမွ
ကိုယ္ထင္ျပလာသူေတြပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ
အားလံုးကို လက္ကမ္းႀကိဳဆို လက္တြဲရမွာပါ။
ဒီလုိအခ်ိန္ဟာ ျမန္မာျပည္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအတြက္ အေရးအႀကီးဆံုး အခ်ိန္ပါ။
ဒီမုိကေရစီ ဘက္ေတာ္သား အခ်င္းခ်င္း ေသြးခြဲမည့္သူေတြက အမ်ားႀကီးပါ။
ဒီၾကားထဲ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ ၾကားရတဲ့ သတင္းတစ္ခုက ၈၈
မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကို ယွဥ္တု ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနတယ္ ဆိုတဲ့ သတင္းပါ။ လူထု
ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကိုလည္း အဲ့ဒီလုိ သတင္းပို႔ထားတယ္
ေျပာၾကားထားတယ္လို႔ သိရပါတယ္။
ဒီေနရာမွာ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားအဖြဲ႕ႏွင
ေဆြးေႏြးခ်င္ပါတယ္။ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသား အဖြဲ႕ဆိုတာဟာ
ေက်ာင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားျ
ကိုေဌးၾကြယ္၊ ကိုမင္းေဇယ်ာ၊ ကိုၿပံဳးခ်ဳိတုိ႔ 2005 ခုႏွစ္မွာ
ျပန္လည္လြတ္ေျမာက္လာခဲ့ခ်ိန
ေပၚေပါက္ျဖစ္ထြန္းလာခဲ့တဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ဳိးဆက္ အသီးသီးျဖစ္ၾကတဲ့ 1988၊
1996၊ 1998၊ 1999၊ 2000 အစရိွတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ဳိးဆက္ေတြကို စုေပါင္းၿပီး
တစုတစည္းတည္းေသာ ေက်ာင္းသားအင္အားစုအျဖစ္ ဖြဲ႕စည္းခဲ့တဲ့ အဖြဲ႕အစည္း
ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ 1988 ခုႏွစ္ ဒီမုိကေရစီ အေရးေတာ္ပံု ကာလအတြင္းက
ေက်ာင္းသားအဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ားစြ
သံုးေရာင္ျခယ္ အစရိွသျဖင့္ ေက်ာင္းသားအဖြဲ႕စံုလွပါတယ္။
ခုႏွစ္မွာေတာ့ အဲ့ဒီ 88 ေက်ာင္းသား မ်ဳိးဆက္ေတြအျပင္၊ 96၊ 98၊ 99၊ 2000
အစရိွတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြ စုေပါင္းၿပီး “88 မွစတင္ခဲ့ေသာ
ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ဳိးဆက္မ်ား“ “Students generations since 88“
ကိုဖြဲ႕စည္းခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီ့အဖြဲ႕ကို ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ
ေခၚဆိုေလ့ရိွပါတယ္။
၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ ေက်ာင္းသားအဖြဲ႕ကို ၈၈
မ်ဳိးဆက္သစ္ေက်ာင္းသားလူငယ္
ေက်ာင္းသားလူငယ္မ်ား (ျပည္ေထာင္စုျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ)
တစ္ခုျဖစ္ၿပီး ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ
ပတ္သက္မႈလည္း လံုး၀မရိွပါ။ ႏိုင္ငံေရးခံယူခ်က္၊ ရပ္တည္ခ်က္ျခင္းလည္း
လံုး၀ မတူညီပါဘူး။ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားအဖြဲ႕ႏွင
ေနာက္ထပ္ရႈပ္ေထြးသြားေစတဲ့ အခ်က္က ၈ ေလးလံုး အေရးေတာ္ပံုႀကီးအတြင္းမွာ
ပါ၀င္ခဲ့ၾကတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြကို ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားလုိ႔
ေခၚဆိုေနျခင္းပါပဲ။ ဟုတ္ပါတယ္။ ၈ ေလးလံုး အေရးေတာ္ပံုႀကီး အတြင္းမွာ
ပါ၀င္ခဲ့ၾကတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြဟာ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားေတြပါ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ၈
ေလးလံုး အေရးေတာ္ပံုမွာ ပါ၀င္ခဲ့ၾကတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားတုိင္းဟာ ၈၈
မွစတင္ခဲ့ေသာ ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ဳိးဆက္မ်ားအဖြဲ
ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ား အဖြဲ႕မွာ ပါ၀င္လႈပ္ရွားခဲ့တာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ ဒါေၾကာင့္မုိ႔
၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားတုိင္းဟာ
မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ 96၊ 98၊ 99 မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားေတြလည္း ၈၈
မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ား အဖြဲ႕မွာ ပါ၀င္ပါတယ္။
အခုအခ်ိန္မွာ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ
ကိုမင္းကိုႏုိင္၊ ကိုကိုႀကီး၊ ကိုေဌးၾကြယ္၊ ကိုမင္းေဇယ်ာ၊ ကိုၿပံဳးခ်ဳိ၊
ကိုျမေအး အစရိွတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြ အားလံုးနီးပါးဟာ
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ အႏွံ႔အျပားမွာ ရိွေနတဲ့ အက်ဥ္းေထာင္အသီးသီးမွာ
ေရာက္ရိွေနၾကပါတယ္။ တခ်ဳိ႕ေက်ာင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင
တိမ္းေရွာင္ေနၾက ရပါတယ္။
ဒါေပမယ့္ သမုိင္းအစဥ္အလာနဲ႔ စြန္႔လႊတ္မႈ ႏိုင္ငံခ်စ္စိတ္
ဒီမုိကေရစီေရးအတြက္ ဘ၀ကို ျမွပ္ႏွံတယ္ဆုိတဲ့ စိတ္ဓာတ္ကို
ကိုယ္စားျပဳထားတဲ့ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ
မသြားခဲ့ပါဘူး။ စစ္အစိုးရရဲ႕ ၿဖိဳခြင္း ႏွိပ္ကြပ္မႈကို
ႀကံ႕ႀကံ႕ခံခဲ့ပါတယ္။
2005 ခုႏွစ္မွာ ဖြဲ႕စည္းခဲ့တဲ့ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ
ပါ၀င္လႈပ္ရွားခဲ့ၾကလုိ႔ ျပစ္ဒဏ္က်ခဲ့ၾကရၿပီး ျပန္လည္ လြတ္ေျမာက္လာၾကတဲ့
ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားေဟာင္းေ
ျပန္လည္ ရွင္သန္ေစခဲ့ပါတယ္။
2011 ခုႏွစ္ ၾသဂုတ္လ ၈ ရက္ေန႔မွာ က်င္းပခဲ့တဲ့ 23 ႏွစ္ျပည့္ ၈.၈.၈၈
ႏွစ္ပတ္လည္ေန႔ အခမ္းအနားႏွင့္ ဧရာ၀တီကို ထာ၀ရရွင္သန္ေစလုိသူမ်ားရဲ႕
ဧရာ၀တီကို ထာ၀ရရွင္သန္ေစေရးအတြက္ လက္မွတ္ေရးထိုး လႈပ္ရွားမႈဟာ
ရွင္သန္ေနတဲ့ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ
မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ
မ်ဳိးဆက္မ်ားအဖြဲ႕ကို လက္ရိွ ဦးေဆာင္ေနသူဟာ ကိုျမတ္သူပါ။ ကိုျမတ္သူဟာ
ရန္ကုန္စက္မႈတကၠသိုလ္ ေက်ာင္းသားေဟာင္း တစ္ေယာက္ျဖစ္ၿပီး
ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား ႏွစ္ႀကိမ္ ျဖစ္ခဲ့သူျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ကိုျမတ္သူ ဦးေဆာင္ေနတဲ့ ၈၈ မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားအဖြဲ႕ဟာ
ျမန္မာတစ္ႏိုင္ငံလံုးမွာ ရိွတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသား လူငယ္မ်ားကို
စုစည္းထားႏုိင္ၿပီး အေတြးအေခၚ အေမွ်ာ္အျမင္ရိွတဲ့ ပညာတတ္လူငယ္
ေက်ာင္းသားေတြရဲ႕ အစုအဖြဲ႕ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံေရးပညာကို စနစ္တက်ေလ့လာၿပီး
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ဒီမုိကေရစီေရး အေျပာင္းအလဲအတြက္ ႀကိဳးစားေနၾကတဲ့
လူငယ္ေတြပါ။
အခုလုိ ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး၊ အမ်ဳိးသားရင္ၾကားေစ့ေရးတုိ႔
အခ်ိန္မွာ ဒီမုိကေရစီ အင္အားစုကို ထုိးခြဲမယ့္အႀကံႏွင့္ ၈၈
မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကို အံတုမယ့္ အဖြဲ႕အျဖစ္ သတင္းမွားထုတ္လႊင့္မႈဟာ
အမ်ဳိးသားေရး လုပ္ႀကံမႈပါ။
ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံမွာ ဒီမုိကေရစီေရးအတြက္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ ေခါင္းေဆာင္
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမုိကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ ရိွေနပါတယ္။
သူတုိ႔ေတြကို ၀န္းရံဖုိ႔ ႏွလံုးရည္ျဖစ္တဲ့ အသိဥာဏ္ပညာ ျဖည့္ဆည္းထားတဲ့၊
လက္ရံုးရည္လုိ႔ ေခၚလုိ႔ရတဲ့ လုိအပ္ရင္ ဒီမုိကေရစီေရးအတြက္ အသက္အေသခံမယ့္၊
အဖမ္းခံမယ့္၊ အာဏာရွင္ကို အံတုမယ့္ ၈၈ မွစတင္ခဲ့ေသာ
ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ဳိးဆက္မ်ားအဖြဲ
ေက်းဇူးတင္ပါတယ္
ကၽြန္ေတာ္ မ်ဳိးရန္ေနာင္သိန္းပါ။
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Clinton Must Maintain Pressure on Naypyidaw
BANGKOK—Burmese opposition figures and analysts hope that the upcoming visit by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Burma will boost reforms in the country, but caution that the Burmese government continues to violate human rights despite some positive recent signals
Speaking by telephone from Rangoon, National League for Democracy (NLD) spokesperson Ohn Kyaing said, “We welcome Secretary Clinton's visit as we hope she can address the government about releasing political prisoners, giving human rights to our people, and stopping the fighting in the ethnic regions.”
US President Barack Obama announced on Friday that Clinton will visit Burma on Dec.1-2, the highest ranking US official to visit the country since military rule was imposed in 1962.
The visit comes after what Obama described to as "flickers of progress" in Burma—a reference to the series of reforms and policy decisions taken since the military government stood aside in March. The current nominally civilian administration under President Thein Sein, a former army general, came to power after what were widely dismissed as rigged elections in November 2010, the country's first opportunity to vote since 1990.
Since then the Burmese government has allowed a slight easing of some of the world's most draconian media laws, freed over 200 political prisoners, suspended an unpopular and exploitative US $3.6bn Chinese dam project in Kachin state in the country's north, and enacted new labour laws.
Clinton will meet Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the NLD, who on Friday gave her backing to Burma's post-election political system by confirming that her party will contest by-elections scheduled to take place over the coming months. The Clinton visit was only confirmed after President Obama spoke with Suu Kyi by telephone while en route to Bali last week, a reminder of the 1991 Nobel Peace laureate's influence over some Western policymaker views on Burma.
The Clinton visit was announced after the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) agreed to allow Burma to chair the grouping in 2014, two years ahead of schedule. To some observers, the award was premature given that Burma is scheduled to hold elections in 2015. Those polls could have been used as another crucial yardstick of reform in the country, in turn allowing Asean to use the 2016 chair as an incentive to the Burmese government to hold fair elections.
Nonetheless, Secretary Clinton's visit has raised the possibility that some of the US economic sanctions on Burma could be relaxed in the near future, a request made again recently by the Burmese government. However, given that the US has long called for free and fair elections in Burma, the implication is that any substantive sanctions amendment is unlikely prior to 2015.
NLD spokesperson Ohn Kyaing said on Monday that “our leader [Suu Kyi] has said that sanctions depend on the Burmese government.”
Prior to the 2015 elections, Naypyidaw can undertake reforms in other crucial areas. Burma holds an estimated 1,700 political prisoners, while the country's army is fighting in Karen and Kachin states, ethnic-religious minority regions along the country's long-volatile borders with Thailand and China.
Speaking in Bali, however, Thein Sein said that he “doesn’t agree with” the assessment that Burma holds political prisoners, reverting to the long-standing military regime classification that Burma only jails criminals.
In remarks reported by Democratic Voice of Burma, he said that “we punished them because they violated the law … There are a lot of people in prison for breaking the law, so if we apply the term [prisoner of conscience] to just one group, then it will be unfair on the others.”
His comments raised eyebrows in Bali, and suggested that further political prisoner releases are not a foregone conclusion in Burma.
However, more releases should be a litmus test for assessing the veracity of the Burmese government's reformist intentions, say some. Looking forward to Clinton's visit, Bo Kyi, the founder of the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), and a former prisoner of conscience in Burma, said that Clinton should ask the Burmese government to release all political prisoners. Failing that, he suggested that an amnesty for at least 500 dissidents, including Min Ko Naing and Khun Tun Oo, should be announced before her visit.
The AAPP estimates that there are around 1,700 political prisoners still locked up in Burma, but given the difficulty in getting accurate information from inside the country, the true number is hard to gauge.
Clinton could request some clarification on these numbers while in Burma, he suggests, with the International Committee of the Red Cross or the UN Special Rapporteur on Burma's human rights, Tomas Ojea Quintana, ideally placed to undertake this task.
“In order to get true numbers of political prisoners, the Burmese regime should allow the ICRC or the Special Rapporteur to do independent investigations in all 42 prisons and labor camps in Burma,” he said.
Speaking by telephone from Rangoon, National League for Democracy (NLD) spokesperson Ohn Kyaing said, “We welcome Secretary Clinton's visit as we hope she can address the government about releasing political prisoners, giving human rights to our people, and stopping the fighting in the ethnic regions.”
US President Barack Obama announced on Friday that Clinton will visit Burma on Dec.1-2, the highest ranking US official to visit the country since military rule was imposed in 1962.
The visit comes after what Obama described to as "flickers of progress" in Burma—a reference to the series of reforms and policy decisions taken since the military government stood aside in March. The current nominally civilian administration under President Thein Sein, a former army general, came to power after what were widely dismissed as rigged elections in November 2010, the country's first opportunity to vote since 1990.
Since then the Burmese government has allowed a slight easing of some of the world's most draconian media laws, freed over 200 political prisoners, suspended an unpopular and exploitative US $3.6bn Chinese dam project in Kachin state in the country's north, and enacted new labour laws.
Clinton will meet Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the NLD, who on Friday gave her backing to Burma's post-election political system by confirming that her party will contest by-elections scheduled to take place over the coming months. The Clinton visit was only confirmed after President Obama spoke with Suu Kyi by telephone while en route to Bali last week, a reminder of the 1991 Nobel Peace laureate's influence over some Western policymaker views on Burma.
The Clinton visit was announced after the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) agreed to allow Burma to chair the grouping in 2014, two years ahead of schedule. To some observers, the award was premature given that Burma is scheduled to hold elections in 2015. Those polls could have been used as another crucial yardstick of reform in the country, in turn allowing Asean to use the 2016 chair as an incentive to the Burmese government to hold fair elections.
Nonetheless, Secretary Clinton's visit has raised the possibility that some of the US economic sanctions on Burma could be relaxed in the near future, a request made again recently by the Burmese government. However, given that the US has long called for free and fair elections in Burma, the implication is that any substantive sanctions amendment is unlikely prior to 2015.
NLD spokesperson Ohn Kyaing said on Monday that “our leader [Suu Kyi] has said that sanctions depend on the Burmese government.”
Prior to the 2015 elections, Naypyidaw can undertake reforms in other crucial areas. Burma holds an estimated 1,700 political prisoners, while the country's army is fighting in Karen and Kachin states, ethnic-religious minority regions along the country's long-volatile borders with Thailand and China.
Speaking in Bali, however, Thein Sein said that he “doesn’t agree with” the assessment that Burma holds political prisoners, reverting to the long-standing military regime classification that Burma only jails criminals.
In remarks reported by Democratic Voice of Burma, he said that “we punished them because they violated the law … There are a lot of people in prison for breaking the law, so if we apply the term [prisoner of conscience] to just one group, then it will be unfair on the others.”
His comments raised eyebrows in Bali, and suggested that further political prisoner releases are not a foregone conclusion in Burma.
However, more releases should be a litmus test for assessing the veracity of the Burmese government's reformist intentions, say some. Looking forward to Clinton's visit, Bo Kyi, the founder of the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), and a former prisoner of conscience in Burma, said that Clinton should ask the Burmese government to release all political prisoners. Failing that, he suggested that an amnesty for at least 500 dissidents, including Min Ko Naing and Khun Tun Oo, should be announced before her visit.
The AAPP estimates that there are around 1,700 political prisoners still locked up in Burma, but given the difficulty in getting accurate information from inside the country, the true number is hard to gauge.
Clinton could request some clarification on these numbers while in Burma, he suggests, with the International Committee of the Red Cross or the UN Special Rapporteur on Burma's human rights, Tomas Ojea Quintana, ideally placed to undertake this task.
“In order to get true numbers of political prisoners, the Burmese regime should allow the ICRC or the Special Rapporteur to do independent investigations in all 42 prisons and labor camps in Burma,” he said.
Dissident Leader Tells Comrades Not to Sacrifice for His Freedom
By BA KAUNG Tuesday, November 22, 2011
“I don't think I will be released anytime soon. Tell my friends not to sacrifice for my freedom,” jailed political activist Min Ko Naing asked his family to communicate to his colleagues and supporters on Monday.
Min Ko Naing is a leader of the 88 Generation Students group and is considered one of Burma’s most important opposition political activists. He has been in prison for 20 of the last 23 years and is currently serving a 65-year prison sentence that began in 2007.
On Thursday, Min Ko Naing was transferred from a remote prison in Shan State, eastern Burma to Insein Prison in Rangoon. But after spending only one night in Insein, he was transferred to Thayet Prison, which is 350 km north of his hometown Rangoon.
Min Ko Naing’s sister Kyi Kyi Nyunt, who visited him in Thayet Prison on Monday, said the student leader was in good health despite a hectic journey from one prison to another.
She said that Min Ko Naing did not comment on the current political developments in Burma, including the decision by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to join the military-dominated parliamentary system, but asked her to tell his political colleagues not to risk imprisonment for the sake of his freedom.
The Burmese authorities transferred other prominent political prisoners last week as well. Buddhist monk Gambira was transferred from Kale Prison in northern Burma to Myaungmya Prison in the Irrawaddy Delta and female dissident Nilar Thein was transferred from Thayet Prison to Thayarwaddy Prison in Pegu Division.
The transfers came after the government-appointed Human Rights Commission called on President Thein Sein to grant amnesty to Burma’s remaining prisoners of conscience. The request was made public in an open letter published in Burma’s state-run newspapers on Nov. 12.
However, the letter also urged the president to transfer those prisoners who could not be released for “reasons of maintaining peace and stability” to prisons close to their families. As a result, there is now speculation that prisoners like Min Ko Naing who have now been transferred from remote prisons to prisons closer to their hometown will not be released anytime soon.
In addition, on the day Min Ko Naing was transferred to Thayet Prison, Burma’s President Thein Sein said he does not accept claims that political prisoners or prisoners of conscience exist in Burma.
“I cannot accept the notion of conscience itself. There are only those against whom we have taken actions because they had broken the existing laws,” he told a group of Burmese journalists while attending the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Bali.
In the case of Min Ko Naing, he was arrested the day after leading a peaceful march in protest of an increase in fuel prices in 2007. He was then charged with violating the countries draconian Electronics Act, which has often been used to detain political activists, and sentenced to 65 years in prison.
Thein Sein’s remark came right after Burma won its bid for the 2014 Asean chair and US President Barack Obama applauded Thein Sein for his reform efforts and announced he was sending US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Burma at the beginning of December.
The remark angered the family members of political prisoners, said Myat Thu, a political activist and a former political prisoner in Rangoon who was released from prison in May and is now organizing events to support the families of political prisoners.
“Now that Thein Sein got what he desired, he is showing his true colors,” Myat Thu said on Monday.
Asked about the landmark decision by Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy to contest elections and join the formal political arena, a decision that was based on her confidence in Thein Sein’s personal character and the reform initiatives he has initiated, Myat Thu was non-committal.
“Despite reforms, the evils continue such as continued detention of our colleagues and leaders. So we have to wait and see the developments for now,” he said.
In a government amnesty in October, around 220 political prisoners were released. At the time, the Human Rights Commission claimed this was a significant number because the country only had around 500 political prisoners in total.
But following the release, the NLD said it had compiled a list of more than 500 political prisoners who remained incarcerated.
“I don't think I will be released anytime soon. Tell my friends not to sacrifice for my freedom,” jailed political activist Min Ko Naing asked his family to communicate to his colleagues and supporters on Monday.
Min Ko Naing is a leader of the 88 Generation Students group and is considered one of Burma’s most important opposition political activists. He has been in prison for 20 of the last 23 years and is currently serving a 65-year prison sentence that began in 2007.
On Thursday, Min Ko Naing was transferred from a remote prison in Shan State, eastern Burma to Insein Prison in Rangoon. But after spending only one night in Insein, he was transferred to Thayet Prison, which is 350 km north of his hometown Rangoon.
Min Ko Naing’s sister Kyi Kyi Nyunt, who visited him in Thayet Prison on Monday, said the student leader was in good health despite a hectic journey from one prison to another.
She said that Min Ko Naing did not comment on the current political developments in Burma, including the decision by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to join the military-dominated parliamentary system, but asked her to tell his political colleagues not to risk imprisonment for the sake of his freedom.
The Burmese authorities transferred other prominent political prisoners last week as well. Buddhist monk Gambira was transferred from Kale Prison in northern Burma to Myaungmya Prison in the Irrawaddy Delta and female dissident Nilar Thein was transferred from Thayet Prison to Thayarwaddy Prison in Pegu Division.
The transfers came after the government-appointed Human Rights Commission called on President Thein Sein to grant amnesty to Burma’s remaining prisoners of conscience. The request was made public in an open letter published in Burma’s state-run newspapers on Nov. 12.
However, the letter also urged the president to transfer those prisoners who could not be released for “reasons of maintaining peace and stability” to prisons close to their families. As a result, there is now speculation that prisoners like Min Ko Naing who have now been transferred from remote prisons to prisons closer to their hometown will not be released anytime soon.
In addition, on the day Min Ko Naing was transferred to Thayet Prison, Burma’s President Thein Sein said he does not accept claims that political prisoners or prisoners of conscience exist in Burma.
“I cannot accept the notion of conscience itself. There are only those against whom we have taken actions because they had broken the existing laws,” he told a group of Burmese journalists while attending the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Bali.
In the case of Min Ko Naing, he was arrested the day after leading a peaceful march in protest of an increase in fuel prices in 2007. He was then charged with violating the countries draconian Electronics Act, which has often been used to detain political activists, and sentenced to 65 years in prison.
Thein Sein’s remark came right after Burma won its bid for the 2014 Asean chair and US President Barack Obama applauded Thein Sein for his reform efforts and announced he was sending US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Burma at the beginning of December.
The remark angered the family members of political prisoners, said Myat Thu, a political activist and a former political prisoner in Rangoon who was released from prison in May and is now organizing events to support the families of political prisoners.
“Now that Thein Sein got what he desired, he is showing his true colors,” Myat Thu said on Monday.
Asked about the landmark decision by Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy to contest elections and join the formal political arena, a decision that was based on her confidence in Thein Sein’s personal character and the reform initiatives he has initiated, Myat Thu was non-committal.
“Despite reforms, the evils continue such as continued detention of our colleagues and leaders. So we have to wait and see the developments for now,” he said.
In a government amnesty in October, around 220 political prisoners were released. At the time, the Human Rights Commission claimed this was a significant number because the country only had around 500 political prisoners in total.
But following the release, the NLD said it had compiled a list of more than 500 political prisoners who remained incarcerated.
Sunday, 20 November 2011
Now is ‘the beginning of the beginning’
Friday, 18 November 2011 20:59 Mizzima News
(Editorial) – November 18, 2011, will go down as D-Day for not only the National League for Democracy (NLD) but for all the pro-democracy opposition forces and the people of Burma. For the past 23 years, the people have fought and died for a more democratic Burma.
NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi among her supporters outside the NLD headquarters in Rangoon after the NLD voted to re-register and to reemerge as a legal political force in Burma. Photo: Mizzima
NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi among her supporters outside the NLD headquarters in Rangoon after the NLD voted to re-register and to reemerge as a legal political force in Burma. Photo: Mizzima
The Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD party took an historic step by deciding to register as a legal political party and to resume its role as the country’s most successful democratic party.
The vote by the 106 NLD central committee members was unanimous, although a small conservative minority still argues that it is too early to recognize real reform and trust the new government formed by President Thein Sein, a former general.
However, everyone agrees that Suu Kyi can play an important role in the process of moving democracy forward.
Clearly, there are signs of a thaw. The main opposition party's re-registration will speed up the pace of change, and the release of more political prisoners including the 88-generation student leaders and ethnic group leaders. It is a predictable bargaining chip between the government and the opposition. Observers say a prisoner release could come before the December visit of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Moreover, this will go down as the year Burma gained its first-ever chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), a sign the government may be ready to assume a less combative role in regional affairs and join the march toward economic integration.
Earlier, political drama surrounded the NLD’s intra-party debate over taking part in the 2010 parliamentary election. Debates within and outside the party were fierce over its decision not to re-register, which led some top party leaders to break away from the NLD to form a new political party, the National Democratic Force, which won 16 parliamentary seats in the 2010 November election. For the NLD to take part in that election, it would have had to disown its members who had served time in prison for their political beliefs, because of an election law that banned former prisoners from being members of political parties.
Nevertheless, the pace of positive change has continued, including Suu Kyi meeting President Thien Sein and having dinner with his family. That was followed by the release of more political prisoners, a slight loosening of media censorship, and a stop to the government policy requiring armed ethnic groups to join its Border Guard Force.
Serious, unresolved issues still confront Burma, such as the military campaign against Kachin ethnic armed groups and regular violations of human rights are still widespread. Hundreds of political prisoners still languish in Burma’s jails. The government must resolve these issues as soon as possible to achieve full national reconciliation.
The NLD will now field candidates in the by-election, which could be held in December. The next logical step is for opposition parties to come together to form an effective coalition that can put pressure in Parliament on the Union Solidarity and Development Party, which is a surrogate for the previous military regime.
The NLD decision was not a compromise or a U-turn by Suu Kyi and the NLD, but rather another chapter in its on-going political dream. Suu Kyi said recently this is the "beginning of the beginning."
The coming challenges include amending the undemocratic 2008 Constitution, stopping the bloodshed and human rights violations in ethnic areas and empowering the Burmese people to reignite the country’s economy. It is a dream worth fighting for in the political arena.
(Editorial) – November 18, 2011, will go down as D-Day for not only the National League for Democracy (NLD) but for all the pro-democracy opposition forces and the people of Burma. For the past 23 years, the people have fought and died for a more democratic Burma.
NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi among her supporters outside the NLD headquarters in Rangoon after the NLD voted to re-register and to reemerge as a legal political force in Burma. Photo: Mizzima
NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi among her supporters outside the NLD headquarters in Rangoon after the NLD voted to re-register and to reemerge as a legal political force in Burma. Photo: Mizzima
The Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD party took an historic step by deciding to register as a legal political party and to resume its role as the country’s most successful democratic party.
The vote by the 106 NLD central committee members was unanimous, although a small conservative minority still argues that it is too early to recognize real reform and trust the new government formed by President Thein Sein, a former general.
However, everyone agrees that Suu Kyi can play an important role in the process of moving democracy forward.
Clearly, there are signs of a thaw. The main opposition party's re-registration will speed up the pace of change, and the release of more political prisoners including the 88-generation student leaders and ethnic group leaders. It is a predictable bargaining chip between the government and the opposition. Observers say a prisoner release could come before the December visit of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Moreover, this will go down as the year Burma gained its first-ever chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), a sign the government may be ready to assume a less combative role in regional affairs and join the march toward economic integration.
Earlier, political drama surrounded the NLD’s intra-party debate over taking part in the 2010 parliamentary election. Debates within and outside the party were fierce over its decision not to re-register, which led some top party leaders to break away from the NLD to form a new political party, the National Democratic Force, which won 16 parliamentary seats in the 2010 November election. For the NLD to take part in that election, it would have had to disown its members who had served time in prison for their political beliefs, because of an election law that banned former prisoners from being members of political parties.
Nevertheless, the pace of positive change has continued, including Suu Kyi meeting President Thien Sein and having dinner with his family. That was followed by the release of more political prisoners, a slight loosening of media censorship, and a stop to the government policy requiring armed ethnic groups to join its Border Guard Force.
Serious, unresolved issues still confront Burma, such as the military campaign against Kachin ethnic armed groups and regular violations of human rights are still widespread. Hundreds of political prisoners still languish in Burma’s jails. The government must resolve these issues as soon as possible to achieve full national reconciliation.
The NLD will now field candidates in the by-election, which could be held in December. The next logical step is for opposition parties to come together to form an effective coalition that can put pressure in Parliament on the Union Solidarity and Development Party, which is a surrogate for the previous military regime.
The NLD decision was not a compromise or a U-turn by Suu Kyi and the NLD, but rather another chapter in its on-going political dream. Suu Kyi said recently this is the "beginning of the beginning."
The coming challenges include amending the undemocratic 2008 Constitution, stopping the bloodshed and human rights violations in ethnic areas and empowering the Burmese people to reignite the country’s economy. It is a dream worth fighting for in the political arena.
Burma’s NLD decision to campaign welcomed
Burma’s NLD decision to campaign welcomed
Friday, 18 November 2011 21:24 Myo Thant
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Burma’s opposition political parties including the National Unity Party [NUP], a former rival of the NLD, welcomed the NLD decision to re-register as a party and contest in the next by-election.
National Democratic Force policy leader Khin Maung Swe Photo: Mizzima
National Democratic Force policy leader Khin Maung Swe. Photo: Mizzima
Khin Maung Swe, the leader of the policy affairs committee of National Democratic Force (NDF), said recently that his party wants to cooperate with the NLD in Parliament.
A former NLD central executive committee member, he said, “We are ready to cooperate. All we need is that they want to work together, too. If they want to cooperate with us, there is no reason we should refuse. Whatever Daw Suu [Aung San Suu Kyi] wants to do, we are ready to lend her a hand.”
Khin Maung Swe used a metaphor that Aung San Suu Kyi is the burning torch of Burmese politics. He said that he supported Suu Kyi because he believed that if she is in the Parliament, useful laws would be approved and enacted.
NUP spokesman Han Shwe said that the NLD registration was “the first step for national reconciliation.”
Toe Kyaw Hlaing of the 88-generation students group said the decision reflected the desire of the Burmese people.
“We believe that the NLD’s decision is based on the desires of most of the NLD members,” Toe Kyaw Hlaing said.
The NLD central committee meeting was held on Friday at NLD headquarters in Rangoon to decide whether the NLD would register or not. In the meeting, 106 central committee members from states and regions across the country unanimously decided to register, according to NLD spokesman Ohn Kyaing.
Friday, 18 November 2011 21:24 Myo Thant
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Burma’s opposition political parties including the National Unity Party [NUP], a former rival of the NLD, welcomed the NLD decision to re-register as a party and contest in the next by-election.
National Democratic Force policy leader Khin Maung Swe Photo: Mizzima
National Democratic Force policy leader Khin Maung Swe. Photo: Mizzima
Khin Maung Swe, the leader of the policy affairs committee of National Democratic Force (NDF), said recently that his party wants to cooperate with the NLD in Parliament.
A former NLD central executive committee member, he said, “We are ready to cooperate. All we need is that they want to work together, too. If they want to cooperate with us, there is no reason we should refuse. Whatever Daw Suu [Aung San Suu Kyi] wants to do, we are ready to lend her a hand.”
Khin Maung Swe used a metaphor that Aung San Suu Kyi is the burning torch of Burmese politics. He said that he supported Suu Kyi because he believed that if she is in the Parliament, useful laws would be approved and enacted.
NUP spokesman Han Shwe said that the NLD registration was “the first step for national reconciliation.”
Toe Kyaw Hlaing of the 88-generation students group said the decision reflected the desire of the Burmese people.
“We believe that the NLD’s decision is based on the desires of most of the NLD members,” Toe Kyaw Hlaing said.
The NLD central committee meeting was held on Friday at NLD headquarters in Rangoon to decide whether the NLD would register or not. In the meeting, 106 central committee members from states and regions across the country unanimously decided to register, according to NLD spokesman Ohn Kyaing.
Friday, 18 November 2011
၁၈၊၁၁၊၂၀၁၁ ရက္ေန႕ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္စုၾကည္၏ NLD ဘာေၾကာင့္ မွတ္ပံု ျပန္တင္ သလဲ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ ေနာက္ကြယ္မွ ယံုၾကည္ခ်က္။
ႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕သမိုင္းမွာ ဆယ္စုႏွစ္မွ် ၾကားရ ၾကံဳရခဲလွတဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အသီးအပြင့္ အခ်ဳိ႕ကို က်ေနာ္တို႕စျမင္လိုက္ရပါသည္။ ဒါကေတာ့ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္စုၾကည္ ဦးေဆာင္ေသာ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ မွတ္ပံုျပန္တင္မည္၊ အမတ္ေနရာ ၄၈ ေနရာအတြက္ ၾကားျဖတ္ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဝင္ျပိဳင္မည္ ဆိုတဲ႕ ၁၈၊၁၁၊၂၀၁၁ ရက္ေန႕ ဗဟိုဦးစီးအဖြဲ႕ အစည္းအေဝး ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ ေၾကာင့္ပဲျဖစ္ပါသည္။
အိုဘာမာ ႏွင့္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္စုၾကည္ မိနစ္ ၂၀ၾကာ ဖုန္းဆက္အျပီး ေနာက္တစ္ေန႕၌ ဘာလီကၽြန္း အာဆီယံထိပ္သီး ညီလာခံမွာ ဗမာႏိုင္ငံ၏ ''တိုးတက္မႈ အလင္းပြင့္မ်ား'' ဟု တင္စားထားေသာ အိုဘာမာ၏ မိန္႔ခြန္းတြင္ ဟီလာရီ ၏ လာမည္႕လ၌ ဗမာႏိုင္ငံသို႕ ခရီးစဥ္အေၾကာင္းအပါအဝင္ မီဒီယာလြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ေပးလာျခင္း၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား၂၀၀ ေက်ာ္လြတ္ေပးခဲ႕ျခင္း ႏွင့္
ႏိုင္ငံေရးရာေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးလာျခင္း တို႕ကို အိုဘာမာမွ သံုးသပ္ျပသြားခဲျပီ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။
အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ေကာ္မတီဝင္မ်ား၊ မိတ္ဖက္ပါတီမ်ား၏ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ေတာ္မ်ား ႏွင့္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္းမ်ားကပါ ျပန္လည္ မွတ္ပံုတင္မည္ကို တစ္ေပါင္းတစ္စည္းထဲ တစ္ သေဘာထားထဲ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခဲ႕ျခင္းအေပၚ ျပည္သူလူထုက ႏိုင္ငံအက်ဳိး၊ ဖြဲ႕စည္းပံု ဥပေဒ ျပဳျပင္လာႏိုင္ေရး၊ ပါတီရပ္တည္မႈ ေကာင္းမြန္လာေရး၊ ျပည္တြင္းျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး၊ တရားဥပေဒ စိုးမိုးေရး ႏွင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္သားမ်ား လြတ္ေျမာက္လာေစေရးတို႕ကို ေရွ႕ရႈျပီး လက္ခံယံုၾကည္ထားႏိုင္ၾကရပါလိမ္႕မည္။
ဤဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ကို လက္မခံႏိုင္ျခင္းရွိသူမ်ားမွလည္ သမိုင္း၏ အက်ဥ္းတန္းမႈကို လက္ေတြ႕ႏွင့္ အနာဂတ္ ထဲထိ ဆြဲယူ မကူးဆက္ေစပဲ ဒီမိုကေရစီ နည္းနာအရ လက္ခံက်င့္သံုးေနရမည္႕အေျခအေနပင္ျဖစ္ပါသည္။
ဒီစြမ္းစားမႈၾကီးထဲကမွ NLD ၏ စြမ္းပကားႏွင့္ က်ေနာ္တို႕ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္စုၾကည္၏ သိကၡာ၊ ပညာ အလဲအထပ္ မ်ားစြာကို ဆက္လက္ ယံုၾကည္ ေထာက္ခံသြားၾကရပါမည္။
အိုဘာမာ ႏွင့္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္စုၾကည္ မိနစ္ ၂၀ၾကာ ဖုန္းဆက္အျပီး ေနာက္တစ္ေန႕၌ ဘာလီကၽြန္း အာဆီယံထိပ္သီး ညီလာခံမွာ ဗမာႏိုင္ငံ၏ ''တိုးတက္မႈ အလင္းပြင့္မ်ား'' ဟု တင္စားထားေသာ အိုဘာမာ၏ မိန္႔ခြန္းတြင္ ဟီလာရီ ၏ လာမည္႕လ၌ ဗမာႏိုင္ငံသို႕ ခရီးစဥ္အေၾကာင္းအပါအဝင္ မီဒီယာလြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ေပးလာျခင္း၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား၂၀၀ ေက်ာ္လြတ္ေပးခဲ႕ျခင္း ႏွင့္
ႏိုင္ငံေရးရာေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးလာျခင္း တို႕ကို အိုဘာမာမွ သံုးသပ္ျပသြားခဲျပီ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။
အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ေကာ္မတီဝင္မ်ား၊ မိတ္ဖက္ပါတီမ်ား၏ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ေတာ္မ်ား ႏွင့္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္းမ်ားကပါ ျပန္လည္ မွတ္ပံုတင္မည္ကို တစ္ေပါင္းတစ္စည္းထဲ တစ္ သေဘာထားထဲ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခဲ႕ျခင္းအေပၚ ျပည္သူလူထုက ႏိုင္ငံအက်ဳိး၊ ဖြဲ႕စည္းပံု ဥပေဒ ျပဳျပင္လာႏိုင္ေရး၊ ပါတီရပ္တည္မႈ ေကာင္းမြန္လာေရး၊ ျပည္တြင္းျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး၊ တရားဥပေဒ စိုးမိုးေရး ႏွင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္သားမ်ား လြတ္ေျမာက္လာေစေရးတို႕ကို ေရွ႕ရႈျပီး လက္ခံယံုၾကည္ထားႏိုင္ၾကရပါလိမ္႕မည္။
ဤဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ကို လက္မခံႏိုင္ျခင္းရွိသူမ်ားမွလည္ သမိုင္း၏ အက်ဥ္းတန္းမႈကို လက္ေတြ႕ႏွင့္ အနာဂတ္ ထဲထိ ဆြဲယူ မကူးဆက္ေစပဲ ဒီမိုကေရစီ နည္းနာအရ လက္ခံက်င့္သံုးေနရမည္႕အေျခအေနပင္ျဖစ္ပါသည္။
ဒီစြမ္းစားမႈၾကီးထဲကမွ NLD ၏ စြမ္းပကားႏွင့္ က်ေနာ္တို႕ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္စုၾကည္၏ သိကၡာ၊ ပညာ အလဲအထပ္ မ်ားစြာကို ဆက္လက္ ယံုၾကည္ ေထာက္ခံသြားၾကရပါမည္။
Thursday, 17 November 2011
Suu Kyi Demands More Changes
2011-11-17
The democracy leader lauds progress in Burma on the anniversary of her release from house arrest.
Aung San Suu Kyi speaks with reporters at a press conference in Rangoon, Nov. 14, 2011.
"Looking back at the past year, I think I can say that it has been eventful, energizing, and to a certain extent encouraging," Aung San Suu Kyi told reporters at a rare press conference on Monday which marked the one-year anniversary of her release.
The Nobel laureate pointed to her recent meetings with Burmese President Thein Sein and labor minister Aung Kyi as examples of how the new government, elected in historic polls held November last year, had worked to facilitate political dialogue with opposition groups.
Since taking power from Burma’s former military junta, Thein Sein’s government has enacted a series of reforms, including easing media controls, legalizing labor unions, and suspending a controversial dam project backed by China.
But Aung San Suu Kyi cautioned that more reform was needed, including the release of political prisoners and reconciliation with the country’s armed ethnic minorities, as well as the establishment of an independent judiciary in Burma.
"An issue of great importance to all of us who are working for democracy in Burma is that of political prisoners. Some had been released over the last year, but there are still many who remain in prison," she said.
Burma’s army-backed government delayed an expected release of a second group of political prisoners on Monday after it was thought the authorities would hold an amnesty before President Thein Sein attends a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional bloc later this week on the Indonesian island of Bali.
Officials said the move was put off at short notice on Monday by the high-powered National Defense and Security Council, Agence France-Presse reported.
About a month ago, over 6,300 prisoners, including more than 200 political detainees, were released under a government amnesty program although key dissidents remain locked up, drawing criticism from international observers and opposition parties.
Western nations see a release as critical to the removal of economic sanctions imposed on the Burmese government and Aung San Suu Kyi has asked that the sanctions remain in place until reforms are introduced that directly benefit the country’s citizens.
Aung San Suu Kyi said Monday that she had nothing to report about the expected prisoner release, which some believe will come ahead of an ASEAN summit in Indonesia later this week. Burma hopes to chair the regional body in 2014.
"We do not have any specific information on who has been released if anybody has been released at all," she said.
The state-backed National Human Rights Commission called on Thein Sein Sunday to release the country’s remaining political prisoners or transfer them to jails closer to their families, sparking speculation that another amnesty was likely.
Prisoner list
Burma is estimated to hold as many as 2,000 political prisoners, according to international rights groups and nongovernment organizations.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) cited much fewer numbers on Monday, issuing a list which documents 591 political prisoners it says are still in detention—about 200 more than the figure presented by the government.
NLD spokesperson Ohn Kyaing told RFA on Monday that the list had been compiled based on three sources.
"One is political prisoners who have asked for legal help from us, and so we know they are in prison," Ohn Kyaing said.
"Then we have an NLD social support group that helps families of political prisoners negotiate prison visits. And lastly we have determined others through looking into discrepancies with the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) list."
According to the Thailand-based AAPP, 1,668 political prisoners remain in Burma’s prisons. The NLD distributed information on AAPP statistics along with its own list of political prisoners during Aung San Suu Kyi’s press conference on Monday.
“We have asked township NLD organizers to compile lists of political prisoners in their area. In some areas we received complete information, though some lists are still incomplete. Up until Nov. 7, our list includes 591 people in total."
The former junta denied for decades holding any politicians or activists in its jails.
Ethnic tensions
Aung San Suu Kyi also highlighted ongoing concerns over conflicts between the Burmese military and armed ethnic groups seeking independence in the country’s outlying border areas, particularly in Kachin State bordering China.
She said she was willing to play a part in any peace process, having urged Thein Sein and the rebel groups to agree on a ceasefire.
"What everybody is worried about at present is the lack of peace in the country, especially the fighting going on in Kachin State, which is a cause of concern and sorrow for us," she said.
"I am always ready to do my bit to bring about peace in the country."
Aung San Suu Kyi has said that national reconciliation in Burma is impossible as long as fighting continues.
In October, a group of legislators from ASEAN member states requested that any decision to designate Burma as chair of the regional grouping in 2014 be put off until the government makes concrete efforts at reconciliation with the country’s ethnic groups.
Separately on Monday, local sources said at least 10 people were killed and 27 wounded in a bomb blast in Kachin's capital, Myitkyinar, a day earlier.
The Kachin Independent Army (KIA) and the Burmese military ended a 17-year ceasefire arrangement on June 9, with each side accusing the other of instigating the fighting.
The KIA says it will not lay down arms until Burma’s newly elected government agrees to provide the group with full political power and other rights.
Rights groups have accused the Burmese military of carrying out a brutal counterinsurgency campaign in ethnic minority areas involving the rape, torture, and murder of villagers.
Reported by RFA’s Burmese service. Translated by Khin May Zaw. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
CRPP ဆက္လက္ ရပ္တည္ေရး မေရမရာ
CRPP ဆက္လက္ ရပ္တည္ေရး မေရမရာ
ကိုဝိုင္း | ၾကာသပေတးေန႔၊ ႏုိဝင္ဘာလ ၁၇ ရက္ ၂၀၁၁ ခုႏွစ္ ၁၈ နာရီ ၄၅ မိနစ္
ခ်င္းမိုင္ (မဇၥ်ိမ) ။ ။ ၾကားျဖတ္ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ နီးလာခ်ိန္တြင္ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ႏွင့္ တိုင္းရင္းသား မ်ားအၾကား ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္ရန္ ၁၉၉၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ရလဒ္အေပၚ အေျခခံ ဖြဲ႔စည္းထားသည့္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ ကိုယ္စားျပဳ ေကာ္မတီ-CRPP ဆက္လက္ ရပ္တည္ေရးမွာ မေရမရာ ျဖစ္ေနေၾကာင္း အဖြဲ႔ဝင္ တိုင္းရင္းသားပါတီ
ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားက ေျပာသည္။
CRPP ကို ႏိုင္ငံေရးအရ ဦးေဆာင္ေနသည့္ NLD ပါတီက ႏိုဝင္ဘာ ၁၈ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ပါတီမွတ္ပံု ျပန္တင္မည္ဟု ဆံုးျဖတ္ပါက “CRPP ရဲ႕ အေနအထားကလည္း ပံုစံေျပာင္းရမယ့္ သေဘာရွိတယ္။” ဟု CRPP အဖြဲ႔ဝင္တခု ျဖစ္
ေသာ မြန္အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႔မွ ဦးႏိုင္ေငြသိန္းက ေျပာသည္။
8 crpp members
၁၉၉၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ရလဒ္အေပၚ အေျခခံ ဖြဲ႔စည္းထားသည့္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ ကိုယ္စားျပဳ ေကာ္မတီ-CRPP အဖြဲ႔ဝင္မ်ား
၁၉၉၀ ျပည့္ႏွစ္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲအႏိုင္ရ
အမတ္မ်ားျဖင့္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ ေခၚယူႏိုင္
ေရး ဟူေသာ ရည္ရြယ္ ခ်က္ႏွင့္ NLD
ႏွင့္ ရွမ္း၊ မြန္၊ ရခိုင္၊ ဇိုမီး၊ ကိုးကန္႔ တိုင္းရင္းသားပါတီမ်ား၊ တသီးပုဂၢလ
အမတ္မ်ားျဖင့္ CRPP ကို ၁၉၉၈ ခု စက္တင္ဘာတြင္ ဖြဲ႔စည္း ခဲ့သည္။
ဇိုမီး အမ်ဳိးသား ကြန္ကရက္ပါတီ ဥကၠ႒ ဦးပူက်င့္ရွင္းထန္က CRPP ကို “တျခား
သင့္ေတာ္တဲ့ နာမည္ ယူၿပီးေတာ့ ေျပာင္း
ရင္ ေျပာင္းမယ္။ ဒီမဟာမိတ္ အဖြဲ႔ေတြေတာ့ ဆက္ၿပီးေတာ့ သြားမွာပါ။” ဟု ဆိုသည္။
ႏိုဝင္ဘာ ၁၅ ရက္ေန႔က NLD အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉး ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ ဦးႏိုင္ေငြသိန္း၊ ဦးပူက်င့္ရွင္းထန္၊ ရွမ္း SNLD မွ ဦးစိုင္းေရႊၾကဴး၊ ရခိုင္ပါတီမွ ဦးေအးသာေအာင္၊ CRPP အဖြဲ႔ဝင္ တသီးပုဂၢလ ဦးသိန္းေဖႏွင့္ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီ ပါတီမွ ဦးစိုးဝင္းတို႔ ေတြ႔ဆံုၾကစဥ္ကလည္း CRPP သက္တမ္း ၁၃ ႏွစ္ ေက်ာ္ အတြင္း မၿပီးေသးသည့္ လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားကို ဆက္လက္ လက္တြဲႀကိဳးစားသြားရန္ သေဘာထားေပးၾကသည္။
“မွတ္ပံုတင္တဲ့ပါတီ ရွိေကာင္းရွိမယ္၊ ေနာက္က်မွတင္တဲ့ ပါတီလည္းရွိမယ္။ မတင္တဲ့ ပါတီေတြလည္း ရွိမယ္။
ႏုိင္ငံေရး ရည္မွန္းခ်က္က အတူတူပဲေလ။ ျပည္တြင္းစစ္ရပ္ဖို႔၊ ျပည္တြင္း ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး တည္ေဆာက္ဖို႔၊ စစ္မွန္တဲ့
ျပည္ေထာင္စု ေဖာ္ေဆာင္ဖို႔၊ ၂၀၀၈ ဖြဲ႔စည္းပံု ျပင္ေရးဆိုတာ တူတယ္။” ဟု ဦးေအးသာေအာင္က ေျပာသည္။
CRPP ကို အမည္အသစ္ျဖင့္ ျပန္လည္စုဖြဲ႔မႈတခု လုပ္ရေတာ့မည္ကို တိုင္းရင္းသား ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားက တညီတည္း သေဘာတူၾကေသာ္လည္း တိက်သည့္ အေျဖကိုမူ ေျပာဆိုႏိုင္ျခင္း မရွိေသးဘဲ ျဖစ္ေနၾကသည္။
ကိုးကန္႔ပါတီက မပါေတာ့သျဖင့္ တိုင္းရင္းသားသီးသန္႔ ပါတီ ၁၁ ဖြဲ႔သာ က်န္ေတာ့သည့္ စည္းလုံးညီၫႊတ္ေသာ တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ဳိးစု ႏိုင္ငံေရးပါတီမ်ား မဟာမိတ္အဖြဲ႔ United Nationalities Alliance (UNA) ႏွင့္ NLD ပူးေပါင္း လူပ္ရွားႏိုင္မည့္ နည္းလမ္းကို ရွာေဖြရန္ ဦးႏိုင္ေငြသိန္းက စိတ္ကူးရွိေနသည္။ UNA ၌ CRPP အဖြဲ႔ဝင္ပါတီ ေလးခု ပါဝင္သည္။
“UNA နဲ႔ NLD ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္ဖို႔ ဘယ္လိုပံုစံနဲ႔ သြားမလဲဆိုတာ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ျပန္ၾကည့္ရမယ္လို႔။ CRPP ကလည္း အေျခအေန မေပးေတာ့ဘူး ျဖစ္သြားရင္ အဲဒါ ျပန္ပူးေပါင္း ဖြဲ႔စည္းေရးေပါ့။ စဥ္းစားထားတာ။” ဟု ဦးႏိုင္ေငြသိန္းက ေျပာသည္။
UNA ကို ၁၉၉ဝ ခုတြင္ ဒုတိယ မဲအမ်ားဆံုးရသည့္ ရွမ္းတိုင္းရင္းသားမ်ား ဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ SNLD က ဦးေဆာင္ ခဲ့သည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ ပါတီ ဥကၠ႒ ခြန္ထြန္းဦးႏွင့္ အတြင္းေရးမႉး စိုင္းၫြန္႔လြင္တို႔ အက်ဥ္းက်ေနရာမွ ျပန္လြတ္လာမွသာ SNLD က မွတ္ပံုျပန္တင္၊ မတင္ ေဆြးေႏြးမွာ ျဖစ္သည္။
ဦးပူက်င့္ရွင္းထန္ကမူ “UNA က ဒီေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြ မရွိဘဲနဲ႔၊ သူတို႔ လိုအင္ဆႏၵကို မသိဘဲနဲ႔ က်န္တဲ့ လူေတြကို
ေျပာဖို႔က မသင့္ေတာ္ေသးဘူး ထင္လို႔။ အစိုးရ တာဝန္ရွိ လူေတြရဲ႕ စကားအရဆို ႏွစ္မကုန္ခင္ လြတ္မယ့္ သေဘာ ရွိေနတယ္။” ဟု ေျပာသည္။
UNA ပါတီဝင္မ်ားမွာ က်န္ပါတီမ်ားမွာ ၁၉၉၂ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ မွတ္ပံုတင္ ျပန္႐ုပ္သိမ္းျခင္း၊ ၂ဝ၁ဝ ျပည့္ႏွစ္ ေရြးေကာက္ ပြဲ အတြက္ ပါတီမွတ္ပံု ျပန္မတင္ျခင္းတို႔ေၾကာင့္ တရားမဝင္ဘဲ ျဖစ္ေနသည္။
တိုင္းရင္းသားပါတီ အားလံုးသည္ ပါတီမွတ္ပံုမတင္ထားသျဖင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားကို တရားဝင္ လႈပ္ရွားႏိုင္ေရး အတြက္ အခက္အခဲျဖစ္ေနသျဖင့္ ပါတီႀကီးမ်ား ျဖစ္သည့္ NLD ႏွင့္ SNLD တို႔၏ အေျခအေနကို ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ေနၾက
ေၾကာင္း ဦးပူက်င့္ရွင္းထန္က ေျပာသည္။
ထို႔ျပင္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဥပေဒအရ မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါက အနည္းဆံုး သံုး ေနရာဝင္ၿပိဳင္ရမည္ ျဖစ္ေသာ္လည္း လစ္လပ္
ေနရာ ၄၈ ေနရာတြင္ ခ်င္းျပည္နယ္ႏွင့္ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္မ်ား မပါဝင္သျဖင့္ ဇိုမီးပါတီႏွင့္ ရခိုင္ပါတီတို႔ အခက္ေတြ႔
ေနေၾကာင္း သူက ဆိုသည္။
ကိုဝိုင္း | ၾကာသပေတးေန႔၊ ႏုိဝင္ဘာလ ၁၇ ရက္ ၂၀၁၁ ခုႏွစ္ ၁၈ နာရီ ၄၅ မိနစ္
ခ်င္းမိုင္ (မဇၥ်ိမ) ။ ။ ၾကားျဖတ္ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ နီးလာခ်ိန္တြင္ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ႏွင့္ တိုင္းရင္းသား မ်ားအၾကား ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္ရန္ ၁၉၉၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ရလဒ္အေပၚ အေျခခံ ဖြဲ႔စည္းထားသည့္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ ကိုယ္စားျပဳ ေကာ္မတီ-CRPP ဆက္လက္ ရပ္တည္ေရးမွာ မေရမရာ ျဖစ္ေနေၾကာင္း အဖြဲ႔ဝင္ တိုင္းရင္းသားပါတီ
ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားက ေျပာသည္။
CRPP ကို ႏိုင္ငံေရးအရ ဦးေဆာင္ေနသည့္ NLD ပါတီက ႏိုဝင္ဘာ ၁၈ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ပါတီမွတ္ပံု ျပန္တင္မည္ဟု ဆံုးျဖတ္ပါက “CRPP ရဲ႕ အေနအထားကလည္း ပံုစံေျပာင္းရမယ့္ သေဘာရွိတယ္။” ဟု CRPP အဖြဲ႔ဝင္တခု ျဖစ္
ေသာ မြန္အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႔မွ ဦးႏိုင္ေငြသိန္းက ေျပာသည္။
8 crpp members
၁၉၉၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ရလဒ္အေပၚ အေျခခံ ဖြဲ႔စည္းထားသည့္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ ကိုယ္စားျပဳ ေကာ္မတီ-CRPP အဖြဲ႔ဝင္မ်ား
၁၉၉၀ ျပည့္ႏွစ္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲအႏိုင္ရ
အမတ္မ်ားျဖင့္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ ေခၚယူႏိုင္
ေရး ဟူေသာ ရည္ရြယ္ ခ်က္ႏွင့္ NLD
ႏွင့္ ရွမ္း၊ မြန္၊ ရခိုင္၊ ဇိုမီး၊ ကိုးကန္႔ တိုင္းရင္းသားပါတီမ်ား၊ တသီးပုဂၢလ
အမတ္မ်ားျဖင့္ CRPP ကို ၁၉၉၈ ခု စက္တင္ဘာတြင္ ဖြဲ႔စည္း ခဲ့သည္။
ဇိုမီး အမ်ဳိးသား ကြန္ကရက္ပါတီ ဥကၠ႒ ဦးပူက်င့္ရွင္းထန္က CRPP ကို “တျခား
သင့္ေတာ္တဲ့ နာမည္ ယူၿပီးေတာ့ ေျပာင္း
ရင္ ေျပာင္းမယ္။ ဒီမဟာမိတ္ အဖြဲ႔ေတြေတာ့ ဆက္ၿပီးေတာ့ သြားမွာပါ။” ဟု ဆိုသည္။
ႏိုဝင္ဘာ ၁၅ ရက္ေန႔က NLD အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉး ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ ဦးႏိုင္ေငြသိန္း၊ ဦးပူက်င့္ရွင္းထန္၊ ရွမ္း SNLD မွ ဦးစိုင္းေရႊၾကဴး၊ ရခိုင္ပါတီမွ ဦးေအးသာေအာင္၊ CRPP အဖြဲ႔ဝင္ တသီးပုဂၢလ ဦးသိန္းေဖႏွင့္ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီ ပါတီမွ ဦးစိုးဝင္းတို႔ ေတြ႔ဆံုၾကစဥ္ကလည္း CRPP သက္တမ္း ၁၃ ႏွစ္ ေက်ာ္ အတြင္း မၿပီးေသးသည့္ လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားကို ဆက္လက္ လက္တြဲႀကိဳးစားသြားရန္ သေဘာထားေပးၾကသည္။
“မွတ္ပံုတင္တဲ့ပါတီ ရွိေကာင္းရွိမယ္၊ ေနာက္က်မွတင္တဲ့ ပါတီလည္းရွိမယ္။ မတင္တဲ့ ပါတီေတြလည္း ရွိမယ္။
ႏုိင္ငံေရး ရည္မွန္းခ်က္က အတူတူပဲေလ။ ျပည္တြင္းစစ္ရပ္ဖို႔၊ ျပည္တြင္း ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး တည္ေဆာက္ဖို႔၊ စစ္မွန္တဲ့
ျပည္ေထာင္စု ေဖာ္ေဆာင္ဖို႔၊ ၂၀၀၈ ဖြဲ႔စည္းပံု ျပင္ေရးဆိုတာ တူတယ္။” ဟု ဦးေအးသာေအာင္က ေျပာသည္။
CRPP ကို အမည္အသစ္ျဖင့္ ျပန္လည္စုဖြဲ႔မႈတခု လုပ္ရေတာ့မည္ကို တိုင္းရင္းသား ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားက တညီတည္း သေဘာတူၾကေသာ္လည္း တိက်သည့္ အေျဖကိုမူ ေျပာဆိုႏိုင္ျခင္း မရွိေသးဘဲ ျဖစ္ေနၾကသည္။
ကိုးကန္႔ပါတီက မပါေတာ့သျဖင့္ တိုင္းရင္းသားသီးသန္႔ ပါတီ ၁၁ ဖြဲ႔သာ က်န္ေတာ့သည့္ စည္းလုံးညီၫႊတ္ေသာ တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ဳိးစု ႏိုင္ငံေရးပါတီမ်ား မဟာမိတ္အဖြဲ႔ United Nationalities Alliance (UNA) ႏွင့္ NLD ပူးေပါင္း လူပ္ရွားႏိုင္မည့္ နည္းလမ္းကို ရွာေဖြရန္ ဦးႏိုင္ေငြသိန္းက စိတ္ကူးရွိေနသည္။ UNA ၌ CRPP အဖြဲ႔ဝင္ပါတီ ေလးခု ပါဝင္သည္။
“UNA နဲ႔ NLD ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္ဖို႔ ဘယ္လိုပံုစံနဲ႔ သြားမလဲဆိုတာ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ျပန္ၾကည့္ရမယ္လို႔။ CRPP ကလည္း အေျခအေန မေပးေတာ့ဘူး ျဖစ္သြားရင္ အဲဒါ ျပန္ပူးေပါင္း ဖြဲ႔စည္းေရးေပါ့။ စဥ္းစားထားတာ။” ဟု ဦးႏိုင္ေငြသိန္းက ေျပာသည္။
UNA ကို ၁၉၉ဝ ခုတြင္ ဒုတိယ မဲအမ်ားဆံုးရသည့္ ရွမ္းတိုင္းရင္းသားမ်ား ဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ SNLD က ဦးေဆာင္ ခဲ့သည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ ပါတီ ဥကၠ႒ ခြန္ထြန္းဦးႏွင့္ အတြင္းေရးမႉး စိုင္းၫြန္႔လြင္တို႔ အက်ဥ္းက်ေနရာမွ ျပန္လြတ္လာမွသာ SNLD က မွတ္ပံုျပန္တင္၊ မတင္ ေဆြးေႏြးမွာ ျဖစ္သည္။
ဦးပူက်င့္ရွင္းထန္ကမူ “UNA က ဒီေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြ မရွိဘဲနဲ႔၊ သူတို႔ လိုအင္ဆႏၵကို မသိဘဲနဲ႔ က်န္တဲ့ လူေတြကို
ေျပာဖို႔က မသင့္ေတာ္ေသးဘူး ထင္လို႔။ အစိုးရ တာဝန္ရွိ လူေတြရဲ႕ စကားအရဆို ႏွစ္မကုန္ခင္ လြတ္မယ့္ သေဘာ ရွိေနတယ္။” ဟု ေျပာသည္။
UNA ပါတီဝင္မ်ားမွာ က်န္ပါတီမ်ားမွာ ၁၉၉၂ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ မွတ္ပံုတင္ ျပန္႐ုပ္သိမ္းျခင္း၊ ၂ဝ၁ဝ ျပည့္ႏွစ္ ေရြးေကာက္ ပြဲ အတြက္ ပါတီမွတ္ပံု ျပန္မတင္ျခင္းတို႔ေၾကာင့္ တရားမဝင္ဘဲ ျဖစ္ေနသည္။
တိုင္းရင္းသားပါတီ အားလံုးသည္ ပါတီမွတ္ပံုမတင္ထားသျဖင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားကို တရားဝင္ လႈပ္ရွားႏိုင္ေရး အတြက္ အခက္အခဲျဖစ္ေနသျဖင့္ ပါတီႀကီးမ်ား ျဖစ္သည့္ NLD ႏွင့္ SNLD တို႔၏ အေျခအေနကို ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ေနၾက
ေၾကာင္း ဦးပူက်င့္ရွင္းထန္က ေျပာသည္။
ထို႔ျပင္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဥပေဒအရ မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါက အနည္းဆံုး သံုး ေနရာဝင္ၿပိဳင္ရမည္ ျဖစ္ေသာ္လည္း လစ္လပ္
ေနရာ ၄၈ ေနရာတြင္ ခ်င္းျပည္နယ္ႏွင့္ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္မ်ား မပါဝင္သျဖင့္ ဇိုမီးပါတီႏွင့္ ရခိုင္ပါတီတို႔ အခက္ေတြ႔
ေနေၾကာင္း သူက ဆိုသည္။
Another Decision Day for Suu Kyi
Another Decision Day for Suu Kyi
Since entering Burmese politics in 1988, Aung San Suu Kyi's choices, like everything else in her life, have been severely restricted. And yet, she has had to make some of the most fateful decisions in her country's recent history. Tomorrow she will have to do the same again, as her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), decides whether to re-register as a political party.
In 1990, she endorsed the NLD's decision to contest an election held by the then ruling regime, even though she herself was under house arrest at the time and barred from running. At first, some in the party opposed her decision, saying that there was no guarantee the result would be honored.
The critics’ point made sense, and proved well-founded after the junta refused to recognize the NLD's landslide victory. But does this mean that Suu Kyi made the wrong call? Would it have been better if the party had boycotted the election?
Kyaw Zwa Moe is managing editor of the Irrawaddy magazine. He can be reached at kyawzwa@irrawaddy.org.
Looking back, it seems that contesting the election was the right thing to do, even if there were good reasons for opposing the move. Why? Because the election result was recognized by the international community, even if it was ignored by the regime, and served as a political stick with which to beat the ruling generals over the past 20 years.
At other times, however, Suu Kyi has chosen not to participate in the regime's “political process.” In 1993, when she was still under house arrest, the NLD took part in the constitution-drafting National Convention. But in November 1995, soon after her release, the party walked out of the convention in protest at the junta's efforts to maintain a stranglehold over debate.
There can be little doubt that it was Suu Kyi's input that led to this decision. But was it the right thing to do? At the time, many dissidents and NLD supporters applauded the party's walk-out as a brave and necessary move. In terms of its impact, it effectively derailed the regime's efforts to enshrine a political role for the military for the next eight years. But in the end, the junta produced the document it wanted—the 2008 Constitution, Burma's first charter since 1988.
Would it have been better for the NLD to stick it out and try to push for more democratic provisions? Given the restrictions imposed on delegates to the National Convention—most of whom were handpicked by the generals—it's unlikely that such efforts would have had much success. The only long-term effect of staying in the convention would have been to lend legitimacy to the final product—something it still lacks.
So it seems that the NLD, guided by Suu Kyi, made the right call in 1995. But what about its decision to boycott last year's election, again under Suu Kyi's influence?
This time, there was far more ambivalence than in the past about whether to play along with the regime's plans. No one seriously believed that the election would be free or fair, or that the junta would tolerate any outcome other than the one it had planned in advance. But many argued that it was necessary for the NLD to reenter the political fray after more than a decade of playing cat and mouse with the authorities that had left the party struggling for its survival.
It was only after Suu Kyi (again under house arrest) issued a statement saying that she couldn't imagine the NLD registering under the junta’s repressive electoral laws that the issue of whether to contest the election was resolved, albeit not to everyone's satisfaction (a small faction of the NLD formed a new party, called the National Democratic Force, and ran in the election).
A little over one year after the election, however, there are still some who say that the NLD should have contested it, if only to force the regime to show its repressive true colors, or—in a more unlikely scenario—to give it some say in the country's political affairs through its representation in Parliament.
A year ago, some analysts even predicted that the NLD's decision to boycott the election, and in the process forfeit its legal status as a political party, would be the final nail in the coffin of its political relevance. But the events of the past year suggest otherwise.
If anything, it has turned out that the regime—now reconstituted as a quasi-civilian government—still desperately craves the legitimacy that only the NLD can give it.
Now, at the latest turning point in this seemingly endless political saga, the NLD must once again decide whether to participate in a process that is still far from ideal—and risk giving the now ex-generals what they want and getting nothing meaningful in return.
There is every indication that this time round, Suu Kyi will steer the party toward participating in upcoming by-elections when she meets with leading members of her party from across the country tomorrow. According to party spokesperson Nyan Win, the NLD will likely register under the recently amended Political Parties Registration Law.
At a press conference held on Nov 14, Suu Kyi told reporters that the amendment of the law, which will now allow her to run for a seat in Parliament after previously excluding her and other “ex-convicts,” was a result of meetings between her and the government.
If the NLD does decide to re-register and run in the by-elections, it will be a remarkable u-turn for a party that has long staunchly opposed any involvement in the government's effort to establish a “disciplined democracy” under military control.
Not surprisingly, some NLD members have expressed opposition to the expected move and have sent petition letters to party leaders urging them to reconsider. And again, as in 1990, the dissenters have good reason for thinking as they do.
The most obvious objection is that only 40 or so seats will be contested in the by-elections, meaning that even if the NLD were to win all of them, it would still be vastly outnumbered in Parliament by the ruling military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party and military appointees.
Another concern is that, despite the recent thaw between Suu Kyi and the government, on other fronts, little has changed. The authorities are still holding large numbers of political prisoners, and the army is still waging war against ethnic armed groups, forcing thousands of refugees to flee to neighboring countries.
Under these conditions, is this really the right time for the NLD to start cooperating with the government?
As in the past, the options are extremely limited. The party can either re-register or remain officially illegal, as it has been since last year. If it takes the latter course, it may retain its moral authority, but will have to face the prospect of further pressure with little room to maneuver.
Ultimately, the decision will be made based on whether the party believes that there has been a real change in the political climate. This is a difficult judgment call, since it is easy to interpret most of the developments of the past year—the government's overtures to Suu Kyi and the NLD, its release of some political prisoners, its relaxation of controls over the media and relative tolerance of small-scale protests, and even the suspension of the unpopular Myitsone dam project—as token gestures aimed at winning international recognition.
However, there is another, more intangible factor that appears to have had a decisive influence on the party's thinking: Suu Kyi's trust in President Thein Sein's desire for reform.
Only time will tell if this trust is really warranted, but it appears that Suu Kyi, who met with the ex-general and former junta prime minister for the first time on Aug 19, believes that Thein Sein is someone with whom real dialogue is possible.
From the very beginning, Suu Kyi has said that the way forward for Burma is through dialogue. She has consistently advocated non-violent struggle and avoided any course of action that could lead to demonstrators being gunned down in the streets.
Her approach to politics has won many admirers, but also many detractors, who say that by limiting her options—i.e., ruling out violence or the threat of violence as means of achieving political ends—she has weakened her position and played into the hands of Burma's oppressors.
But as she has proven in the past, Suu Kyi is able to make do with fewer options than most politicians and still survive with her influence intact. This is a remarkable achievement in itself, but now that she seems to have found a dialogue partner she can work with, she may be able to achieve even more.
When asked by The Economist last month whether she sees herself as a president in 2015 (after the next election), she answered, “anything is possible.” Yes, in the unpredictable world of politics, and in the life of this improbable politician, it seems that nothing is impossible.
If anything, it has turned out that the regime—now reconstituted as a quasi-civilian government—still desperately craves the legitimacy that only the NLD can give it.
Now, at the latest turning point in this seemingly endless political saga, the NLD must once again decide whether to participate in a process that is still far from ideal—and risk giving the now ex-generals what they want and getting nothing meaningful in return.
There is every indication that this time round, Suu Kyi will steer the party toward participating in upcoming by-elections when she meets with leading members of her party from across the country tomorrow. According to party spokesperson Nyan Win, the NLD will likely register under the recently amended Political Parties Registration Law.
At a press conference held on Nov 14, Suu Kyi told reporters that the amendment of the law, which will now allow her to run for a seat in Parliament after previously excluding her and other “ex-convicts,” was a result of meetings between her and the government.
If the NLD does decide to re-register and run in the by-elections, it will be a remarkable u-turn for a party that has long staunchly opposed any involvement in the government's effort to establish a “disciplined democracy” under military control.
Not surprisingly, some NLD members have expressed opposition to the expected move and have sent petition letters to party leaders urging them to reconsider. And again, as in 1990, the dissenters have good reason for thinking as they do.
The most obvious objection is that only 40 or so seats will be contested in the by-elections, meaning that even if the NLD were to win all of them, it would still be vastly outnumbered in Parliament by the ruling military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party and military appointees.
Another concern is that, despite the recent thaw between Suu Kyi and the government, on other fronts, little has changed. The authorities are still holding large numbers of political prisoners, and the army is still waging war against ethnic armed groups, forcing thousands of refugees to flee to neighboring countries.
Under these conditions, is this really the right time for the NLD to start cooperating with the government?
As in the past, the options are extremely limited. The party can either re-register or remain officially illegal, as it has been since last year. If it takes the latter course, it may retain its moral authority, but will have to face the prospect of further pressure with little room to maneuver.
Ultimately, the decision will be made based on whether the party believes that there has been a real change in the political climate. This is a difficult judgment call, since it is easy to interpret most of the developments of the past year—the government's overtures to Suu Kyi and the NLD, its release of some political prisoners, its relaxation of controls over the media and relative tolerance of small-scale protests, and even the suspension of the unpopular Myitsone dam project—as token gestures aimed at winning international recognition.
However, there is another, more intangible factor that appears to have had a decisive influence on the party's thinking: Suu Kyi's trust in President Thein Sein's desire for reform.
Only time will tell if this trust is really warranted, but it appears that Suu Kyi, who met with the ex-general and former junta prime minister for the first time on Aug 19, believes that Thein Sein is someone with whom real dialogue is possible.
From the very beginning, Suu Kyi has said that the way forward for Burma is through dialogue. She has consistently advocated non-violent struggle and avoided any course of action that could lead to demonstrators being gunned down in the streets.
Her approach to politics has won many admirers, but also many detractors, who say that by limiting her options—i.e., ruling out violence or the threat of violence as means of achieving political ends—she has weakened her position and played into the hands of Burma's oppressors.
But as she has proven in the past, Suu Kyi is able to make do with fewer options than most politicians and still survive with her influence intact. This is a remarkable achievement in itself, but now that she seems to have found a dialogue partner she can work with, she may be able to achieve even more.
When asked by The Economist last month whether she sees herself as a president in 2015 (after the next election), she answered, “anything is possible.” Yes, in the unpredictable world of politics, and in the life of this improbable politician, it seems that nothing is impossible.
Since entering Burmese politics in 1988, Aung San Suu Kyi's choices, like everything else in her life, have been severely restricted. And yet, she has had to make some of the most fateful decisions in her country's recent history. Tomorrow she will have to do the same again, as her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), decides whether to re-register as a political party.
In 1990, she endorsed the NLD's decision to contest an election held by the then ruling regime, even though she herself was under house arrest at the time and barred from running. At first, some in the party opposed her decision, saying that there was no guarantee the result would be honored.
The critics’ point made sense, and proved well-founded after the junta refused to recognize the NLD's landslide victory. But does this mean that Suu Kyi made the wrong call? Would it have been better if the party had boycotted the election?
Kyaw Zwa Moe is managing editor of the Irrawaddy magazine. He can be reached at kyawzwa@irrawaddy.org.
Looking back, it seems that contesting the election was the right thing to do, even if there were good reasons for opposing the move. Why? Because the election result was recognized by the international community, even if it was ignored by the regime, and served as a political stick with which to beat the ruling generals over the past 20 years.
At other times, however, Suu Kyi has chosen not to participate in the regime's “political process.” In 1993, when she was still under house arrest, the NLD took part in the constitution-drafting National Convention. But in November 1995, soon after her release, the party walked out of the convention in protest at the junta's efforts to maintain a stranglehold over debate.
There can be little doubt that it was Suu Kyi's input that led to this decision. But was it the right thing to do? At the time, many dissidents and NLD supporters applauded the party's walk-out as a brave and necessary move. In terms of its impact, it effectively derailed the regime's efforts to enshrine a political role for the military for the next eight years. But in the end, the junta produced the document it wanted—the 2008 Constitution, Burma's first charter since 1988.
Would it have been better for the NLD to stick it out and try to push for more democratic provisions? Given the restrictions imposed on delegates to the National Convention—most of whom were handpicked by the generals—it's unlikely that such efforts would have had much success. The only long-term effect of staying in the convention would have been to lend legitimacy to the final product—something it still lacks.
So it seems that the NLD, guided by Suu Kyi, made the right call in 1995. But what about its decision to boycott last year's election, again under Suu Kyi's influence?
This time, there was far more ambivalence than in the past about whether to play along with the regime's plans. No one seriously believed that the election would be free or fair, or that the junta would tolerate any outcome other than the one it had planned in advance. But many argued that it was necessary for the NLD to reenter the political fray after more than a decade of playing cat and mouse with the authorities that had left the party struggling for its survival.
It was only after Suu Kyi (again under house arrest) issued a statement saying that she couldn't imagine the NLD registering under the junta’s repressive electoral laws that the issue of whether to contest the election was resolved, albeit not to everyone's satisfaction (a small faction of the NLD formed a new party, called the National Democratic Force, and ran in the election).
A little over one year after the election, however, there are still some who say that the NLD should have contested it, if only to force the regime to show its repressive true colors, or—in a more unlikely scenario—to give it some say in the country's political affairs through its representation in Parliament.
A year ago, some analysts even predicted that the NLD's decision to boycott the election, and in the process forfeit its legal status as a political party, would be the final nail in the coffin of its political relevance. But the events of the past year suggest otherwise.
If anything, it has turned out that the regime—now reconstituted as a quasi-civilian government—still desperately craves the legitimacy that only the NLD can give it.
Now, at the latest turning point in this seemingly endless political saga, the NLD must once again decide whether to participate in a process that is still far from ideal—and risk giving the now ex-generals what they want and getting nothing meaningful in return.
There is every indication that this time round, Suu Kyi will steer the party toward participating in upcoming by-elections when she meets with leading members of her party from across the country tomorrow. According to party spokesperson Nyan Win, the NLD will likely register under the recently amended Political Parties Registration Law.
At a press conference held on Nov 14, Suu Kyi told reporters that the amendment of the law, which will now allow her to run for a seat in Parliament after previously excluding her and other “ex-convicts,” was a result of meetings between her and the government.
If the NLD does decide to re-register and run in the by-elections, it will be a remarkable u-turn for a party that has long staunchly opposed any involvement in the government's effort to establish a “disciplined democracy” under military control.
Not surprisingly, some NLD members have expressed opposition to the expected move and have sent petition letters to party leaders urging them to reconsider. And again, as in 1990, the dissenters have good reason for thinking as they do.
The most obvious objection is that only 40 or so seats will be contested in the by-elections, meaning that even if the NLD were to win all of them, it would still be vastly outnumbered in Parliament by the ruling military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party and military appointees.
Another concern is that, despite the recent thaw between Suu Kyi and the government, on other fronts, little has changed. The authorities are still holding large numbers of political prisoners, and the army is still waging war against ethnic armed groups, forcing thousands of refugees to flee to neighboring countries.
Under these conditions, is this really the right time for the NLD to start cooperating with the government?
As in the past, the options are extremely limited. The party can either re-register or remain officially illegal, as it has been since last year. If it takes the latter course, it may retain its moral authority, but will have to face the prospect of further pressure with little room to maneuver.
Ultimately, the decision will be made based on whether the party believes that there has been a real change in the political climate. This is a difficult judgment call, since it is easy to interpret most of the developments of the past year—the government's overtures to Suu Kyi and the NLD, its release of some political prisoners, its relaxation of controls over the media and relative tolerance of small-scale protests, and even the suspension of the unpopular Myitsone dam project—as token gestures aimed at winning international recognition.
However, there is another, more intangible factor that appears to have had a decisive influence on the party's thinking: Suu Kyi's trust in President Thein Sein's desire for reform.
Only time will tell if this trust is really warranted, but it appears that Suu Kyi, who met with the ex-general and former junta prime minister for the first time on Aug 19, believes that Thein Sein is someone with whom real dialogue is possible.
From the very beginning, Suu Kyi has said that the way forward for Burma is through dialogue. She has consistently advocated non-violent struggle and avoided any course of action that could lead to demonstrators being gunned down in the streets.
Her approach to politics has won many admirers, but also many detractors, who say that by limiting her options—i.e., ruling out violence or the threat of violence as means of achieving political ends—she has weakened her position and played into the hands of Burma's oppressors.
But as she has proven in the past, Suu Kyi is able to make do with fewer options than most politicians and still survive with her influence intact. This is a remarkable achievement in itself, but now that she seems to have found a dialogue partner she can work with, she may be able to achieve even more.
When asked by The Economist last month whether she sees herself as a president in 2015 (after the next election), she answered, “anything is possible.” Yes, in the unpredictable world of politics, and in the life of this improbable politician, it seems that nothing is impossible.
If anything, it has turned out that the regime—now reconstituted as a quasi-civilian government—still desperately craves the legitimacy that only the NLD can give it.
Now, at the latest turning point in this seemingly endless political saga, the NLD must once again decide whether to participate in a process that is still far from ideal—and risk giving the now ex-generals what they want and getting nothing meaningful in return.
There is every indication that this time round, Suu Kyi will steer the party toward participating in upcoming by-elections when she meets with leading members of her party from across the country tomorrow. According to party spokesperson Nyan Win, the NLD will likely register under the recently amended Political Parties Registration Law.
At a press conference held on Nov 14, Suu Kyi told reporters that the amendment of the law, which will now allow her to run for a seat in Parliament after previously excluding her and other “ex-convicts,” was a result of meetings between her and the government.
If the NLD does decide to re-register and run in the by-elections, it will be a remarkable u-turn for a party that has long staunchly opposed any involvement in the government's effort to establish a “disciplined democracy” under military control.
Not surprisingly, some NLD members have expressed opposition to the expected move and have sent petition letters to party leaders urging them to reconsider. And again, as in 1990, the dissenters have good reason for thinking as they do.
The most obvious objection is that only 40 or so seats will be contested in the by-elections, meaning that even if the NLD were to win all of them, it would still be vastly outnumbered in Parliament by the ruling military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party and military appointees.
Another concern is that, despite the recent thaw between Suu Kyi and the government, on other fronts, little has changed. The authorities are still holding large numbers of political prisoners, and the army is still waging war against ethnic armed groups, forcing thousands of refugees to flee to neighboring countries.
Under these conditions, is this really the right time for the NLD to start cooperating with the government?
As in the past, the options are extremely limited. The party can either re-register or remain officially illegal, as it has been since last year. If it takes the latter course, it may retain its moral authority, but will have to face the prospect of further pressure with little room to maneuver.
Ultimately, the decision will be made based on whether the party believes that there has been a real change in the political climate. This is a difficult judgment call, since it is easy to interpret most of the developments of the past year—the government's overtures to Suu Kyi and the NLD, its release of some political prisoners, its relaxation of controls over the media and relative tolerance of small-scale protests, and even the suspension of the unpopular Myitsone dam project—as token gestures aimed at winning international recognition.
However, there is another, more intangible factor that appears to have had a decisive influence on the party's thinking: Suu Kyi's trust in President Thein Sein's desire for reform.
Only time will tell if this trust is really warranted, but it appears that Suu Kyi, who met with the ex-general and former junta prime minister for the first time on Aug 19, believes that Thein Sein is someone with whom real dialogue is possible.
From the very beginning, Suu Kyi has said that the way forward for Burma is through dialogue. She has consistently advocated non-violent struggle and avoided any course of action that could lead to demonstrators being gunned down in the streets.
Her approach to politics has won many admirers, but also many detractors, who say that by limiting her options—i.e., ruling out violence or the threat of violence as means of achieving political ends—she has weakened her position and played into the hands of Burma's oppressors.
But as she has proven in the past, Suu Kyi is able to make do with fewer options than most politicians and still survive with her influence intact. This is a remarkable achievement in itself, but now that she seems to have found a dialogue partner she can work with, she may be able to achieve even more.
When asked by The Economist last month whether she sees herself as a president in 2015 (after the next election), she answered, “anything is possible.” Yes, in the unpredictable world of politics, and in the life of this improbable politician, it seems that nothing is impossible.
Amnesty Still Uncertain as Prisoners Transferred
Amnesty Still Uncertain as Prisoners Transferred
Burma’s prominent dissident Min Ko Naing and other political prisoners are being transferred to different jails as prospects for a further amnesty remain in doubt, claim sources in Rangoon.
And it seems unlikely that those transferred will be included in any forthcoming release with the move considered a reaction to humanitarian calls to relocate remaining incarcerated dissidents to be closer to their relatives on the outside.
Alongside Min Ko Naing, leader of the 88 Generation Students group, other well known political prisoners reportedly being transferred include Hkun Htun Oo of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, leading monk Ashin Gambira, prominent female activist Nilar Thein of the 88 group, Pandeik Tun also of the 88 group, Nyi Pu who won a seat in the 1990 elections and labor activist Thuyein Aung.
“As far as I know from family members and prison officials, Min Ko Naing will be transferred from Kengtung to Rangoon by air,” said Thein Than Tun, a member of the 88 Generation Students group who is monitoring the situation from Rangoon.
“U Hkun Htun Oo will be transferred from Putao Prison in Kachin State [in northern Burma] to Thaungoo Prison in Pegu Region through Myitkyina and Mandalay,” he added. “Ashin Gambira and U Nyi Pu will be transferred from Kalay Prison.”
Saw Thet Tun, a former political prisoner who was released last month from Tharyawaddy Prison in Pegu Region, told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday that he heard Nilar Thein had arrived in Tharyawaddy Prison that afternoon.
Meanwhile, a diplomatic source in Rangoon who is in touch with government officials said he heard almost all inmates of the 88 Generation Students group who are serving 65-year sentences would be transferred from remote prisons.
“All those serving 65 years except Ko Mya Aye in Thaunggyi Prison will be moved to different prisons. We will have to see if it is to Insein Prison [in Rangoon],” he said.
In the months following August 2007, 37 members of the 88 Generation Students group were arrested and imprisoned for terms up to 65 years. Currently 28 members of the group including Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi and Htay Kywe remain in prison while some members were released in the May and October amnesties.
The transfer of political prisoners comes shortly after the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission wrote an open letter to President Thein Sein regarding “Prisoners of Conscience” which appeared in state-run-newspapers on Sunday. The 15-member body includes retired senior officials, diplomats, academics, doctors and lawyers and is supposed to be independent of government influence.
In the letter, the commission said it “again humbly requests the president as a reflection of his magnanimity to include those prisoners when a subsequent amnesty is granted.”
“If for reasons of maintaining peace and stability, certain prisoners cannot as yet be included in the amnesty, the commission would like to respectfully submit that consideration be made for transferring them to prisons with easy access for their family members,” the statement continued.
Following the letter, family members and friends of political prisoners hoped for further releases on Monday, as the previous Oct.12 amnesty was announced by Thein Sein the day after receiving an open letter from the commission.
“According to our list, around 160 political prisoners including 40 monks and 35 military intelligence officers who were arrested in 2004 are to be released in the coming amnesty,” said Thein Than Tun. “So it seems all political prisoners will not be released.”
“However, currently the possible future releases are not set in stone as the National Defense and Security Council [the highest authority in Burma] has not yet passed the amnesty,” he added.
Despite hopes for an amnesty, other dissident activities remain under suppression. Nay Myo Zin, a former military captain, was sentenced on Aug. 26 to 10 years imprisonment under the Electronic Act for contacting former military officers in exile through the internet. On Nov. 2, Nay Myo Zin’s appeal was rejected by the Rangoon Region Court.
His lawyer, Hla Myo Myint, told The Irrawaddy that his client was barred from getting medical care for back pain in prison which he suffered as a result of being tortured during interrogation.
Five Buddhist monks launched a protest at Maha Mya Muni Monastery in Mandalay on Tuesday calling for the immediate and unconditional release of political activists who are being detained in prisons across the country.
Burma’s prominent dissident Min Ko Naing and other political prisoners are being transferred to different jails as prospects for a further amnesty remain in doubt, claim sources in Rangoon.
And it seems unlikely that those transferred will be included in any forthcoming release with the move considered a reaction to humanitarian calls to relocate remaining incarcerated dissidents to be closer to their relatives on the outside.
Alongside Min Ko Naing, leader of the 88 Generation Students group, other well known political prisoners reportedly being transferred include Hkun Htun Oo of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, leading monk Ashin Gambira, prominent female activist Nilar Thein of the 88 group, Pandeik Tun also of the 88 group, Nyi Pu who won a seat in the 1990 elections and labor activist Thuyein Aung.
“As far as I know from family members and prison officials, Min Ko Naing will be transferred from Kengtung to Rangoon by air,” said Thein Than Tun, a member of the 88 Generation Students group who is monitoring the situation from Rangoon.
“U Hkun Htun Oo will be transferred from Putao Prison in Kachin State [in northern Burma] to Thaungoo Prison in Pegu Region through Myitkyina and Mandalay,” he added. “Ashin Gambira and U Nyi Pu will be transferred from Kalay Prison.”
Saw Thet Tun, a former political prisoner who was released last month from Tharyawaddy Prison in Pegu Region, told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday that he heard Nilar Thein had arrived in Tharyawaddy Prison that afternoon.
Meanwhile, a diplomatic source in Rangoon who is in touch with government officials said he heard almost all inmates of the 88 Generation Students group who are serving 65-year sentences would be transferred from remote prisons.
“All those serving 65 years except Ko Mya Aye in Thaunggyi Prison will be moved to different prisons. We will have to see if it is to Insein Prison [in Rangoon],” he said.
In the months following August 2007, 37 members of the 88 Generation Students group were arrested and imprisoned for terms up to 65 years. Currently 28 members of the group including Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi and Htay Kywe remain in prison while some members were released in the May and October amnesties.
The transfer of political prisoners comes shortly after the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission wrote an open letter to President Thein Sein regarding “Prisoners of Conscience” which appeared in state-run-newspapers on Sunday. The 15-member body includes retired senior officials, diplomats, academics, doctors and lawyers and is supposed to be independent of government influence.
In the letter, the commission said it “again humbly requests the president as a reflection of his magnanimity to include those prisoners when a subsequent amnesty is granted.”
“If for reasons of maintaining peace and stability, certain prisoners cannot as yet be included in the amnesty, the commission would like to respectfully submit that consideration be made for transferring them to prisons with easy access for their family members,” the statement continued.
Following the letter, family members and friends of political prisoners hoped for further releases on Monday, as the previous Oct.12 amnesty was announced by Thein Sein the day after receiving an open letter from the commission.
“According to our list, around 160 political prisoners including 40 monks and 35 military intelligence officers who were arrested in 2004 are to be released in the coming amnesty,” said Thein Than Tun. “So it seems all political prisoners will not be released.”
“However, currently the possible future releases are not set in stone as the National Defense and Security Council [the highest authority in Burma] has not yet passed the amnesty,” he added.
Despite hopes for an amnesty, other dissident activities remain under suppression. Nay Myo Zin, a former military captain, was sentenced on Aug. 26 to 10 years imprisonment under the Electronic Act for contacting former military officers in exile through the internet. On Nov. 2, Nay Myo Zin’s appeal was rejected by the Rangoon Region Court.
His lawyer, Hla Myo Myint, told The Irrawaddy that his client was barred from getting medical care for back pain in prison which he suffered as a result of being tortured during interrogation.
Five Buddhist monks launched a protest at Maha Mya Muni Monastery in Mandalay on Tuesday calling for the immediate and unconditional release of political activists who are being detained in prisons across the country.
Monday, 14 November 2011
Suu Kyi says 1990 election win ‘history'
Suu Kyi says 1990 election win ‘history’
By JOSEPH ALLCHIN
Published: 14 November 2011
Aung San Suu Kyi gestures during a news conference to mark the first anniversary of her release from house arrest in Rangoon (Reuters)
Aung San Suu Kyi addressed the media today in a frenetic press conference at the National League for Democracy’s headquarters in Rangoon to mark a year since her release from house arrest. In her opening remarks she said that the rule of law was the most crucial challenge for democratisation in Burma, but closed with comments signalling that the party will put the disregarded 1990 election win behind them as a they forge a new path.
The 66-year-old described the year since her release as “eventful, energising and encouraging,” before adding that the “door to democracy in the country is not open until we have the rule of law”, which is the most ”important” issue. Her party needs to have “faith and [be] daring” as they move forward.
“We are looking for the opening to the road democracy. We have not come to the end of our road,” she said, before adding that “there is never an end to political endeavour.”
The Nobel laureate refused to answer questions on the party’s registration, but did confirm that the party would vote on the issue on 18 November. The NLD is expected to register as a political party after registration and electoral laws were amended in favour of their ostensible role in parliament. She hinted that the NLD had requested such amendments to the government.
She continued that without the rule of law, “we can’t guarantee that there won’t be political prisoners in the future”.
Touching on the NLD’s figure for political prisoners, which she described as a “controversial” issue, Suu Kyi claimed that there are only 525 jailed activists. Groups such as the exiled Assistance Association for Political Prisoners – Burma (AAPPB) asserts a higher figure of around 1,700.
The government had their “own list,” Suu Kyi said, despite them not publicly acknowledging the existence of political prisoners. The government claims instead that only “common criminals” are behind bars. Party spokesperson Nyan Win stated that the NLD believed that around 100 of their members were behind bars.
During the year since her release, Suu Kyi had attempted to build a “network of democracy” with a variety of social services. She added that some 18 free schools for the most deprived had been developed, which she believed were well received by parents and pupils alike.
The Nobel laureate said that she and her party remained “very concerned” about the situation in the ethnic areas, particularly in Kachin state. She said her offer to mediate peace talks between ethnic armed groups and the government still stood, as it has since her release.
When asked by DVB, Suu Kyi refused to be drawn on issue of whether she supported a commission of inquiry into such matters, instead delegating responsibility to the UN’s special rapporteur for human rights, Tomas Ojea Quintana. “It is the responsibility of Mr Quintana, and we believe he should be given every assistance necessary to carry out his duties. If he believes the commission of inquiry is necessary then we should back him up.”
In the past the lawyer has voiced support for the inquiry, but more recently has welcomed legislative reforms in Naypyidaw. Suu Kyi added however that any commission of inquiry was not a “tribunal”; rather it would be a “fact-finding mission”.
Answering questions from Chinese journalists, she said that the two neighbours should look for “harmony”, as they had done for time immemorial, but asked China to consider the interests of Burma’s people.
Marking something of a break with the past, Suu Kyi stated that the party should also accept that the 1990 election results were “history” – this after the speaker of the National Parliament, Khin Aung Myint, said that he “recognised the result”. This had been one of the party’s demands in their 2009 Shwegondaing proclamation, which set out the conditions for their re-entry into parliamentary politics.
By JOSEPH ALLCHIN
Published: 14 November 2011
Aung San Suu Kyi gestures during a news conference to mark the first anniversary of her release from house arrest in Rangoon (Reuters)
Aung San Suu Kyi addressed the media today in a frenetic press conference at the National League for Democracy’s headquarters in Rangoon to mark a year since her release from house arrest. In her opening remarks she said that the rule of law was the most crucial challenge for democratisation in Burma, but closed with comments signalling that the party will put the disregarded 1990 election win behind them as a they forge a new path.
The 66-year-old described the year since her release as “eventful, energising and encouraging,” before adding that the “door to democracy in the country is not open until we have the rule of law”, which is the most ”important” issue. Her party needs to have “faith and [be] daring” as they move forward.
“We are looking for the opening to the road democracy. We have not come to the end of our road,” she said, before adding that “there is never an end to political endeavour.”
The Nobel laureate refused to answer questions on the party’s registration, but did confirm that the party would vote on the issue on 18 November. The NLD is expected to register as a political party after registration and electoral laws were amended in favour of their ostensible role in parliament. She hinted that the NLD had requested such amendments to the government.
She continued that without the rule of law, “we can’t guarantee that there won’t be political prisoners in the future”.
Touching on the NLD’s figure for political prisoners, which she described as a “controversial” issue, Suu Kyi claimed that there are only 525 jailed activists. Groups such as the exiled Assistance Association for Political Prisoners – Burma (AAPPB) asserts a higher figure of around 1,700.
The government had their “own list,” Suu Kyi said, despite them not publicly acknowledging the existence of political prisoners. The government claims instead that only “common criminals” are behind bars. Party spokesperson Nyan Win stated that the NLD believed that around 100 of their members were behind bars.
During the year since her release, Suu Kyi had attempted to build a “network of democracy” with a variety of social services. She added that some 18 free schools for the most deprived had been developed, which she believed were well received by parents and pupils alike.
The Nobel laureate said that she and her party remained “very concerned” about the situation in the ethnic areas, particularly in Kachin state. She said her offer to mediate peace talks between ethnic armed groups and the government still stood, as it has since her release.
When asked by DVB, Suu Kyi refused to be drawn on issue of whether she supported a commission of inquiry into such matters, instead delegating responsibility to the UN’s special rapporteur for human rights, Tomas Ojea Quintana. “It is the responsibility of Mr Quintana, and we believe he should be given every assistance necessary to carry out his duties. If he believes the commission of inquiry is necessary then we should back him up.”
In the past the lawyer has voiced support for the inquiry, but more recently has welcomed legislative reforms in Naypyidaw. Suu Kyi added however that any commission of inquiry was not a “tribunal”; rather it would be a “fact-finding mission”.
Answering questions from Chinese journalists, she said that the two neighbours should look for “harmony”, as they had done for time immemorial, but asked China to consider the interests of Burma’s people.
Marking something of a break with the past, Suu Kyi stated that the party should also accept that the 1990 election results were “history” – this after the speaker of the National Parliament, Khin Aung Myint, said that he “recognised the result”. This had been one of the party’s demands in their 2009 Shwegondaing proclamation, which set out the conditions for their re-entry into parliamentary politics.
Grenade attack on orphanage in Kachin kills 10, wounds 27
Grenade attack on orphanage in Kachin kills 10, wounds 27
Monday, 14 November 2011 15:44 Phanida
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – A hand grenade thrown into an orphanage in Myitkyina in the north of Burma killed 10 people and seriously injured 27 on Sunday evening, according to residents.
A hand grenade thrown into an orphanage in Myitkyina, Kachin State, killed 10 people and seriously injured 27 on Sunday evening. Three buildings including an orphanage burned after the grenade attack. Photo: Hkra U/ Mizzima
At around 9 p.m., two people riding a motorcycle threw a parcel that contained a grenade into an orphanage owned by Dayaung Tangoon near the AG Church in Thida Ward in the capital of Kachin State.
Ten people including Dayaung Tangoon’s teenage son, Sai Kwan, one daughter and a 1-year-old grandchild were killed by the explosion.
Three buildings including the orphanage burned after the attack. Residents said they have no idea who was responsible for the bombing.
“At the back of Dayaung Tangoon’s orphanage, there is a path. Residents said that two people riding a motorcycle threw a parcel into the orphanage compound and shortly after that they heard the sound of the blast,” a neighbour said.
Dayaung Tangoon, a member of Myanmar Martial Art Federation, was traveling when the bombing occurred. More than 30 people including orphans, refugee children and martial arts students lived in the compound.
Some of the injured underwent surgery at the local hospital.
Increased police patrols have basically shut down the city after 7 p.m.
Residents said a series of earlier bomb explosions were probably intended as threats because they occurred in unpopulated areas.
The state-run newspaper New Light of Myanmar reported on Monday that two bomb blasts hit Myitkyina on Sunday evening, and authorities successfully removed one time bomb.
The newspaper said that an explosion occurred near the Sports and Physical Education Department Office in Thida Ward at 9.55 p.m., leaving a deep hole marking the explosion.
Another blast followed at 10.15 p.m. near Sumprabum Road and Sethmu junction in Tatkon Ward. There were no casualties, said the newspaper.
The newspaper also reported a time bomb was disabled: “Acting on a tip-off that a suspicious package was found near a lamppost by Aung San Road in Ayeya Ward in Myitkyina, authorities removed a time bomb in a plastic box with a diameter of 3 X 2 inches filled with TNT gunpowder set to detonate at 9 p.m.”
On Monday, Kachin State Chief Minister La John Ngan Hsai visited the injured at Myitkyina Hospital.
The Kachin Independence Organization and government troops have been fighting about 10 miles away from Myitkyina.
Monday, 14 November 2011 15:44 Phanida
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – A hand grenade thrown into an orphanage in Myitkyina in the north of Burma killed 10 people and seriously injured 27 on Sunday evening, according to residents.
A hand grenade thrown into an orphanage in Myitkyina, Kachin State, killed 10 people and seriously injured 27 on Sunday evening. Three buildings including an orphanage burned after the grenade attack. Photo: Hkra U/ Mizzima
At around 9 p.m., two people riding a motorcycle threw a parcel that contained a grenade into an orphanage owned by Dayaung Tangoon near the AG Church in Thida Ward in the capital of Kachin State.
Ten people including Dayaung Tangoon’s teenage son, Sai Kwan, one daughter and a 1-year-old grandchild were killed by the explosion.
Three buildings including the orphanage burned after the attack. Residents said they have no idea who was responsible for the bombing.
“At the back of Dayaung Tangoon’s orphanage, there is a path. Residents said that two people riding a motorcycle threw a parcel into the orphanage compound and shortly after that they heard the sound of the blast,” a neighbour said.
Dayaung Tangoon, a member of Myanmar Martial Art Federation, was traveling when the bombing occurred. More than 30 people including orphans, refugee children and martial arts students lived in the compound.
Some of the injured underwent surgery at the local hospital.
Increased police patrols have basically shut down the city after 7 p.m.
Residents said a series of earlier bomb explosions were probably intended as threats because they occurred in unpopulated areas.
The state-run newspaper New Light of Myanmar reported on Monday that two bomb blasts hit Myitkyina on Sunday evening, and authorities successfully removed one time bomb.
The newspaper said that an explosion occurred near the Sports and Physical Education Department Office in Thida Ward at 9.55 p.m., leaving a deep hole marking the explosion.
Another blast followed at 10.15 p.m. near Sumprabum Road and Sethmu junction in Tatkon Ward. There were no casualties, said the newspaper.
The newspaper also reported a time bomb was disabled: “Acting on a tip-off that a suspicious package was found near a lamppost by Aung San Road in Ayeya Ward in Myitkyina, authorities removed a time bomb in a plastic box with a diameter of 3 X 2 inches filled with TNT gunpowder set to detonate at 9 p.m.”
On Monday, Kachin State Chief Minister La John Ngan Hsai visited the injured at Myitkyina Hospital.
The Kachin Independence Organization and government troops have been fighting about 10 miles away from Myitkyina.
What will November 18 mean for the NLD and Burma?
What will November 18 mean for the NLD and Burma?
November 2011 Salai Z. T. Lian
(Commentary) – The possibility of the NLD re-registering as a legal political party is high when about 106 members of the central committee of the National League for Democracy (NLD) from 13 states and regions will meet on November 18 in Rangoon to decide the issue.
How the new Burmese government treats Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD is a measure of how its move toward democracy is progressing. Photo: Mizzima
Most young people in Burma will likely welcome the NLD if it decides to re-register, but many older Burmese might prefer the NLD to take a little bit more time to monitor and evaluate the development of Burmese politics under President Thein Sein’s government.
The fact is that there is a gap between the Burmese young and old on how they view politics, and how to deal with the government.
Regardless, the NLD needs to make policy and strategy changes since it no longer faces former dictator Than Shwe, but rather a new generation that looks more moderate and flexible than their previous boss. The NLD will choose the path that it believes is best on November 18.
The reason the government amended the Political Party Registration Law and the reason the NLD is considering to re-register are likely related to the talks between President Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi on August 19, 2011.
There are interesting questions on how the NLD will go forward after November 18? Would it re-register as a lpolitical party and enter into elections, or would it decide not to re-register and watch the development of Burma’s politics, meanwhile focusing on humanitarian work? Its decision will tell us how much trust there is between the NLD and new Burmese government.
The trust between Suu Kyi and President Thein Sein seems established after the two met on August 19. But they kept their talk confidential. There must be the reason to keep it confidential. Maybe, they made a promise to change Burma or they shared sensitive information about changing Burma. Or they agreed to meet again. Or they made a deal that promised to amend the political parties registration laws in order for the NLD to re-register or run as a political party, or about releasing political prisoners, and in return, Suu Kyi agreed not to encourage mass demonstrations, and to tell international communities including Asean members, that Burma is changing positively.
Following their meeting, Suu Kyi credited President Thein Sein, saying she thinks he really wants to bring positive changes to Burma. Also, the talks between Union Minister Aung Kyi and Suu Kyi continued. Suu Kyi is allowed to communicate with international communities. She is also allowed to do her political activity without restrictions. Media censorship has relaxed somewhat. The government granted amnesty to 6,359 prisoners including about 200 political prisoners recently. Reportedly, the government will grant amnesty again soon.
The ethnic groups are watching carefully. And, they’re wondering if the NLD re-registered and worked with Burmese government, how seriously would they work to solve ethnic issues?
The government knows what is needed to establish good relationships with international communities such as the U.N., USA and Asean. They measure Burma’s progress toward democracy based on how it deals with Suu Kyi’s NLD party. That’s why the government started talking to her.
Ex-major Sai Thein Win, who leaked information about Burma’s nuclear work, said, “The NLD should re-register as a legal political party, and contest in the national Parliament. I didn’t vote in 1990. Like me, there are many young people who didn’t vote in 1990. The NLD should register as a political party so that many people who didn’t vote in the 1990 election can vote now.
“The Burmese military will make sure former Snr-Gen Than Shwe and his family are safe and their property is protected. There is a risk if their security and property are in danger that a military coup could happen at any time because he can still influence the military.”
Many Burmese including exiles are excited about what the NLD will decide on November 18. Most Burmese people will likely continue to support the NLD whether it decides to re-register or not. Suu Kyi’s party owns the hearts of the people in Burma.
The popularity of the NLD cannot be challenged politically. They will beat anyone as long as the elections are fair and free. Even if they just work as a social organization or NGO; they will still shake up Burmese politics.
But the NLD should enter the political battles at the Union, regional and local levels and not limit its work to social activities, even though that’s also a part of politics. That’s what November 18 will mean for the NLD and for Burma.
November 2011 Salai Z. T. Lian
(Commentary) – The possibility of the NLD re-registering as a legal political party is high when about 106 members of the central committee of the National League for Democracy (NLD) from 13 states and regions will meet on November 18 in Rangoon to decide the issue.
How the new Burmese government treats Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD is a measure of how its move toward democracy is progressing. Photo: Mizzima
Most young people in Burma will likely welcome the NLD if it decides to re-register, but many older Burmese might prefer the NLD to take a little bit more time to monitor and evaluate the development of Burmese politics under President Thein Sein’s government.
The fact is that there is a gap between the Burmese young and old on how they view politics, and how to deal with the government.
Regardless, the NLD needs to make policy and strategy changes since it no longer faces former dictator Than Shwe, but rather a new generation that looks more moderate and flexible than their previous boss. The NLD will choose the path that it believes is best on November 18.
The reason the government amended the Political Party Registration Law and the reason the NLD is considering to re-register are likely related to the talks between President Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi on August 19, 2011.
There are interesting questions on how the NLD will go forward after November 18? Would it re-register as a lpolitical party and enter into elections, or would it decide not to re-register and watch the development of Burma’s politics, meanwhile focusing on humanitarian work? Its decision will tell us how much trust there is between the NLD and new Burmese government.
The trust between Suu Kyi and President Thein Sein seems established after the two met on August 19. But they kept their talk confidential. There must be the reason to keep it confidential. Maybe, they made a promise to change Burma or they shared sensitive information about changing Burma. Or they agreed to meet again. Or they made a deal that promised to amend the political parties registration laws in order for the NLD to re-register or run as a political party, or about releasing political prisoners, and in return, Suu Kyi agreed not to encourage mass demonstrations, and to tell international communities including Asean members, that Burma is changing positively.
Following their meeting, Suu Kyi credited President Thein Sein, saying she thinks he really wants to bring positive changes to Burma. Also, the talks between Union Minister Aung Kyi and Suu Kyi continued. Suu Kyi is allowed to communicate with international communities. She is also allowed to do her political activity without restrictions. Media censorship has relaxed somewhat. The government granted amnesty to 6,359 prisoners including about 200 political prisoners recently. Reportedly, the government will grant amnesty again soon.
The ethnic groups are watching carefully. And, they’re wondering if the NLD re-registered and worked with Burmese government, how seriously would they work to solve ethnic issues?
The government knows what is needed to establish good relationships with international communities such as the U.N., USA and Asean. They measure Burma’s progress toward democracy based on how it deals with Suu Kyi’s NLD party. That’s why the government started talking to her.
Ex-major Sai Thein Win, who leaked information about Burma’s nuclear work, said, “The NLD should re-register as a legal political party, and contest in the national Parliament. I didn’t vote in 1990. Like me, there are many young people who didn’t vote in 1990. The NLD should register as a political party so that many people who didn’t vote in the 1990 election can vote now.
“The Burmese military will make sure former Snr-Gen Than Shwe and his family are safe and their property is protected. There is a risk if their security and property are in danger that a military coup could happen at any time because he can still influence the military.”
Many Burmese including exiles are excited about what the NLD will decide on November 18. Most Burmese people will likely continue to support the NLD whether it decides to re-register or not. Suu Kyi’s party owns the hearts of the people in Burma.
The popularity of the NLD cannot be challenged politically. They will beat anyone as long as the elections are fair and free. Even if they just work as a social organization or NGO; they will still shake up Burmese politics.
But the NLD should enter the political battles at the Union, regional and local levels and not limit its work to social activities, even though that’s also a part of politics. That’s what November 18 will mean for the NLD and for Burma.
Seats Reserved for 88 Generation Detainees at Media Event
By WAI MOE , November , 2011
Several imprisoned leaders of the 88 Generation Students group, including Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi and Htay Kywe, have been invited to an anniversary event on Friday to be hosted by the Eleven Media Group, an influential publication in Burma, raising hopes across the country that more dissidents will be released in the near future.
Fellow member Thein Than Tun, who was released on Oct.12 in a general amnesty, told The Irrawaddy on Friday that the Eleven Media Group, publisher of Weekly Eleven News Journal and First Eleven Sport Journal, not only invited various student leaders of the 1988 uprising but also reserved seats for them.
“It is unusual that the 88 Generation leaders were invited by Eleven Media and that there will be seats set aside for them,” he said. “If they were released, they could attend. But otherwise, their family members will be allocated their seats.
“Many people expect that the 88 Generation leaders and other political prisoners could be released on Nov.11 or Nov.14,” he added.
Min Ko Naing and the 88 Generation Students group are arguably the most prominent political dissidents in Burma after Aung San Suu Kyi.
Many members of the group have spent most of the past two decades in prison. Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi were among those last arrested in August 2007 following their part in public protests against fuel price hikes that led to the nationwide Saffron Revolution.
Thirty-seven members of the group were subsequently imprisoned for up to 65 and a half years.
Currently, 28 members of the 88 Generation Students group are still detained. Several members who were sentenced to nine or 11 years were previously released in amnesties in May and October.
Despite Min Ko Naing and the other leaders' incarceration, there exists the distinct possibility that they could join a political party following amendments to the Political Parties Registration law. One article removed by parliament was: “Anyone convicted by a court of law is prohibited from joining a political party.”
“In my opinion, I think the 88 Generation Students group will register and become a legal entity,” Thein Than Tun said. “But I cannot decide alone. We all have to decide— including those who are in prison.
"But if we are to register as a political party, all political prisoners must be released first,” he stated.
By WAI MOE , November , 2011
Several imprisoned leaders of the 88 Generation Students group, including Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi and Htay Kywe, have been invited to an anniversary event on Friday to be hosted by the Eleven Media Group, an influential publication in Burma, raising hopes across the country that more dissidents will be released in the near future.
Fellow member Thein Than Tun, who was released on Oct.12 in a general amnesty, told The Irrawaddy on Friday that the Eleven Media Group, publisher of Weekly Eleven News Journal and First Eleven Sport Journal, not only invited various student leaders of the 1988 uprising but also reserved seats for them.
“It is unusual that the 88 Generation leaders were invited by Eleven Media and that there will be seats set aside for them,” he said. “If they were released, they could attend. But otherwise, their family members will be allocated their seats.
“Many people expect that the 88 Generation leaders and other political prisoners could be released on Nov.11 or Nov.14,” he added.
Min Ko Naing and the 88 Generation Students group are arguably the most prominent political dissidents in Burma after Aung San Suu Kyi.
Many members of the group have spent most of the past two decades in prison. Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi were among those last arrested in August 2007 following their part in public protests against fuel price hikes that led to the nationwide Saffron Revolution.
Thirty-seven members of the group were subsequently imprisoned for up to 65 and a half years.
Currently, 28 members of the 88 Generation Students group are still detained. Several members who were sentenced to nine or 11 years were previously released in amnesties in May and October.
Despite Min Ko Naing and the other leaders' incarceration, there exists the distinct possibility that they could join a political party following amendments to the Political Parties Registration law. One article removed by parliament was: “Anyone convicted by a court of law is prohibited from joining a political party.”
“In my opinion, I think the 88 Generation Students group will register and become a legal entity,” Thein Than Tun said. “But I cannot decide alone. We all have to decide— including those who are in prison.
"But if we are to register as a political party, all political prisoners must be released first,” he stated.
Clinton Calls for Release of Political Prisoners in Burma
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS , November 2011
HONOLULU —Burma is making real progress toward reforms but much more needs to be done, including the release of political prisoners, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday.
A recent visit by senior U.S. diplomats found “real changes taking place on the ground,” Clinton said on the sidelines of an annual Pacific Rim summit.
“It appears there are real changes taking place on the ground and we support these early efforts at reform,” she told reporters. “We want to see the people of Burma able to participate fully in the political life of their own country.”
Clinton said the US would continue to call for release of all political prisoners, an end to conflict in minority areas and greater transparency regarding Burma’s relations with North Korea.
At stake are political and economic sanctions the US and other Western countries imposed against the junta that had ruled Burma until handing over power to the current elected military-backed government in March this year.
Those sanctions were imposed for the failure of Burma’s rulers to hand over power and its poor human rights record. But the administration of US President Barack Obama has sought to engage the government, shifting away from the previous policy of shunning it.
The US could gradually ease its sanctions against Burma and allow aid from multilateral lending institutions such as the World Bank, over which it has exercised a veto.
Among the changes Washington wants to see in Burma is the inclusion of the National League for Democracy, led by democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, into the political system. Suu Kyi’s party overwhelmingly won a 1990 general election, but the army refused to hand over power, instead repressing Suu Kyi and other activists.
The junta that previously ruled Burma enacted a constitution and other laws with provisions aimed at limiting Suu Kyi’s political activities, fearing her influence.
The US special envoy to Burma, Derek Mitchell, told reporters in Rangoon on Oct.18 that the government has taken positive steps and that the US is thinking of how to actively support those reforms.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS , November 2011
HONOLULU —Burma is making real progress toward reforms but much more needs to be done, including the release of political prisoners, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday.
A recent visit by senior U.S. diplomats found “real changes taking place on the ground,” Clinton said on the sidelines of an annual Pacific Rim summit.
“It appears there are real changes taking place on the ground and we support these early efforts at reform,” she told reporters. “We want to see the people of Burma able to participate fully in the political life of their own country.”
Clinton said the US would continue to call for release of all political prisoners, an end to conflict in minority areas and greater transparency regarding Burma’s relations with North Korea.
At stake are political and economic sanctions the US and other Western countries imposed against the junta that had ruled Burma until handing over power to the current elected military-backed government in March this year.
Those sanctions were imposed for the failure of Burma’s rulers to hand over power and its poor human rights record. But the administration of US President Barack Obama has sought to engage the government, shifting away from the previous policy of shunning it.
The US could gradually ease its sanctions against Burma and allow aid from multilateral lending institutions such as the World Bank, over which it has exercised a veto.
Among the changes Washington wants to see in Burma is the inclusion of the National League for Democracy, led by democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, into the political system. Suu Kyi’s party overwhelmingly won a 1990 general election, but the army refused to hand over power, instead repressing Suu Kyi and other activists.
The junta that previously ruled Burma enacted a constitution and other laws with provisions aimed at limiting Suu Kyi’s political activities, fearing her influence.
The US special envoy to Burma, Derek Mitchell, told reporters in Rangoon on Oct.18 that the government has taken positive steps and that the US is thinking of how to actively support those reforms.
Wednesday, 9 November 2011
Families Banned from Visiting Hunger Strikers
Insein Prison authorities have banned family members from visiting the 15 political prisoners who have been on hunger strike since Oct. 26, saying the ban will last at least one month.
Ohmar, the wife of hunger striker Soe Moe Tun, said that the ban was implemented this week, and that no visits will be allowed until early December, although parcels of personal supplies will be allowed in.
Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Wednesday, Ohmar said, “We heard nothing about the hunger strikers and the prison officials won’t tell us anything. I’m worried for my husband’s health because they have been on hunger strike for a long time. I’m also worried that the officials will transfer them to prisons in remote areas.”
The 15 political prisoners say they are refusing to eat until they and all other political prisoners are afforded the same terms as criminal prisoners who are automatically given one-third off their sentences in return for good behavior.
On the day after the hunger strike started, the prison authorities stopped issuing the 15 drinking water. Then, on Oct 29, eight of the hunger strikers were placed in solitary cells usually used as kennels for guard dogs.
The UN human rights envoy for Burma, Tomás Ojea Quintana, on Tuesday expressed concern for the hunger strikers.
Bo Kyi, a former political prisoner and joint-secretary of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma (AAPP), told The Irrawaddy that the authorities usually crack down brutally on acts of disobedience such as hunger strikes.
According to the data from AAPP, about 1,600 political prisoners remain behind bars. During a recent amnesty, 6,359 prisoners were released by presidential decree—however, only about 200 of those were political dissidents; the rest were convicted criminals.
Ohmar, the wife of hunger striker Soe Moe Tun, said that the ban was implemented this week, and that no visits will be allowed until early December, although parcels of personal supplies will be allowed in.
Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Wednesday, Ohmar said, “We heard nothing about the hunger strikers and the prison officials won’t tell us anything. I’m worried for my husband’s health because they have been on hunger strike for a long time. I’m also worried that the officials will transfer them to prisons in remote areas.”
The 15 political prisoners say they are refusing to eat until they and all other political prisoners are afforded the same terms as criminal prisoners who are automatically given one-third off their sentences in return for good behavior.
On the day after the hunger strike started, the prison authorities stopped issuing the 15 drinking water. Then, on Oct 29, eight of the hunger strikers were placed in solitary cells usually used as kennels for guard dogs.
The UN human rights envoy for Burma, Tomás Ojea Quintana, on Tuesday expressed concern for the hunger strikers.
Bo Kyi, a former political prisoner and joint-secretary of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma (AAPP), told The Irrawaddy that the authorities usually crack down brutally on acts of disobedience such as hunger strikes.
According to the data from AAPP, about 1,600 political prisoners remain behind bars. During a recent amnesty, 6,359 prisoners were released by presidential decree—however, only about 200 of those were political dissidents; the rest were convicted criminals.
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