ၿမိဳ႕တၿမိဳ႕မွာ စတိတ္ရိႈးပြဲမလုပ္ၿဖစ္ေစဖို႔အတြက္ မီးစာတဘက္၊ ေရမႈတ္တဘက္ၿပ
ၿမဴဆြယ္သည့္ အလုပ္ က်ေနာ္တို႔မလုပ္ပါ။ လႈပ္ရွားမႈကို မူေပၚမွာ ပဲေၿပာႀကားပါမယ္။
ကိုယ့္ၿမိဳ႕မွာ မလုပ္တဲ့အတြက္ က်န္တဲ့ၿမိဳ႕က ကိစၥ ကိုယ္နဲ႔မဆိုင္သလို လုပ္မယ္ဆုိရင္
စစ္အစိုးရနဲ႔ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေဆြးေႏြးပြဲေဖာက္လုပ္တဲ့ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြနဲ႔ဘာမွမထူးဘူး။
ဟိုလိုလို ဒီလိုလို၊ ေတာ္လွန္ေရးသမားလိုလို၊ ေနရာတကာလူရာဝင္ခ်င္ေသာ
ဂီတသမားမ်ားလိုလို ဟန္ေဆာင္ေနသည့္ ေက်ာင္းသားအမည္ခံမ်ားရိွေနပါတယ္။
ထို ေတာသားအူလည္လည္မ်ားအား အေသးစိတ္ထုတ္ေဖၚေပးႀကပါ။
မူေပၚမွာပဲစကားေၿပာႀကမယ္။
ၿပတ္ၿပတ္သားသားဘယ္သူလုပ္သလဲဆိုတာ အလုပ္နဲ႔သက္ေသၿပေစခ်င္ပါတယ္။
ၿပည္ပမွာ အေပ်ာ္အပါး ကန္ထရိုက္ဆြဲလုပ္စားၿပီး ဒီမိုကေရစီအင္အားစုမ်ားႀကား
အလုပ္ရႈပ္ေအာင္၊ ေသြးကြဲေအာင္လုပ္ေနသူမည္သူမဆို ဆန္႔က်င္သြားႀကပါ။
ဆႏၵၿပပြဲသြားမည့္ မည္သူမဆို က်ေနာ့အိမ္မွာ စားေသာက္တည္းခိုႏိုင္ပါတယ္။
From: Aung Moe Win <aung_m_win@yahoo.com>
Date: 2010/8/25
Subject: [8888peoplepower] Re: ဖို႔ဒ္ဝင္းစတိတ္ရိႈး၊အားလံုးသို႔
To: 8888peoplepower@yahoogroups.com
အားလံုးသုိ႕အသိေပးခ်က္ မိတ္ေဆြမ်ားအားလံုး သတင္းေတြ ကို အခ်ိန္မွီပို႔မေပးရင္ မလိုအပ္တဲ့ ၿပႆနာေတြမ်ားႏိုင္တာေႀကာင့္ ဖို႔ဒ္ဝင္းၿမိဳ႕ကိစၥကို ရွင္းၿပရၿခင္းၿဖစ္ပါတယ္။ လြန္ခဲ့ေသာ (၄) ရက္ေလာက္ က ဖို႔ဒ္ဝင္းၿမိဳ႕တြင္ ဝိုင္းစုခိုင္သိန္းပါေသာ စတိတ္ရိႈးကို စက္တင္ဘာ (၁၈) ရက္ေန႔တြင္ က်င္းပေအာင္ပြဲခံမည္ ဆိုသည့္ ပိုစတာကို ေဇ်တဝန္ေက်ာင္းတြင္ ကပ္သြားခဲ့သည့္အတြက္ ဖို႔ဒ္ဝင္းတၿမိဳ႕လံုးရိွ ဒီမိုကေရစီအင္အားစုမ်ားပြက္ေလာရိုက္ကုန္ခဲ့ႀကပါတယ္။ ေက်ာင္းထိုင္ဆရာေတာ္မ်ားကိုေမးေသာ္လည္း သူတို႔အေနၿဖင့္မသိေႀကာင္း၊ ထိုသို႔ လာေရာက္လုပ္ကိုင္လ်င္လည္း လက္ခံမည္မဟုတ္ေႀကာင္း အေၿဖေပးခဲ့ႀကပါတယ္။ ဖို႔ဒ္ဝင္းၿမိဳ႕ ဒီမိုကေရစီအင္အားစုအတြင္းမွာ တခ်ိဳ႕က ေထာင္ကလ်င္က်ပါေစ၊ ရံုသြင္းေသာ ဘတ္ဖလိုးဘုန္းႀကီးေက်ာင္းမွ ဦးနႏၵဝံ ႏွင့္ ေက်ာ္ႏိုင္ ကို ရိုက္မည္ၿဖစ္ေႀကာင္း၊ တခ်ိဳ႕အမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ားက ဝိုင္းစုခိုင္သိန္း ကို တက္ရိုက္မည္၊ တခ်ိဳ႕ အမ်ိဳးသားမ်ားက ဝိုင္းစုခိုင္သိန္း ႏႈတ္ခမ္းကို တက္ကိုက္မည္--- စေသာ-- စေသာ ေဒါသမ်ားမ်ားေပါက္ကြဲခဲ့ႀကပါသည္။ တခ်ိဳ႕က နႏၵခိုင္သိမ္း စတိတ္ရိႈး စက္တင္ဘာ (၁၈) ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ေအာင္ပြဲခံမည္ ဟု ပိုစတာမ်ားထုတ္ သေရာ္ခဲ့ႀကပါသည္။ ထို႕ေႀကာင့္ ႀသဂတ္စ္ ( ၂၃) ရက္ေန႔ညတြင္၊ ခ်ီကာဂိုၿမိဳ႕မွ ကိုေက်ာ္သူရိွန္ (ခ) ကိုထင္ေက်ာ္ထက္မွ ဦးနႏၵဝံ သို႔ ဖံုးေခၚကာ ဖို႔ဒ္ဝင္းၿမိဳ႕တြင္ ၿဖစ္ပ်က္ေနေသာ အေနအထားကိုေၿပာၿပၿပီး " ဦးဇင္းအေနၿဖင့္ ရပ္ေစလိုေႀကာင္း၊ ၿပႆနာမ်ားတက္ၿပီး ေထာင္က်တဲ့သူက်၊ၿပီး ဦးဇင္းလည္းနာမည္ပ်က္မည္ၿဖစ္ေႀကာင္း-- မၿဖစ္သင့္ မၿဖစ္ထိုက္သည္မ်ားကို တားဆီးဖို႔ ၊ ဖ်က္သိမ္းပစ္ဖို႔" ညွိႏိႈင္းခဲ့ပါသည္။ ဦးနႏၵဝံ ကလည္း ေက်ာ္ႏိုင္အပါအဝင္၊ ကန္ထရိုက္တာမ်ားႏွင့္ညွိႏိႈင္းေဆြးေႏြးေပးပါမည္။ ၿဖစ္ေပၚလာႏိုင္သည့္အက်ိဳးဆက္မ်ားကို ေၿပာေပးပါမည္ ဟု ဂတိေပးခဲ့ပါသည္။ ေနာက္တေန႔မနက္တြင္- ဦးနႏၵဝံမွ ကိုထင္ေက်ာ္ထက္ ဆီသို႔ ဖံုးေခၚလာၿပီး၊ သူတို႔အေနၿဖင့္ ဖို႔ဒ္ဝင္းတြင္ စတိတ္ရိႈးသြင္းမည့္အစီအစဥ္ကို ဖ်က္သိမ္းလိုက္ေႀကာင္း၊ ကိုေက်ာ္ႏိုင္အေနၿဖင့္လည္း စက္တင္ဘာ (၁၈) ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ေသခ်ာခ်ိန္ကိုက္လုပ္တာမဟုတ္ေႀကာင္း၊ ရသည့္ရက္ကိုလုပ္ရၿခင္းၿဖစ္ေႀကာင္း ေၿပာဆိုခဲ့ပါသည္။ ထို႔ေႀကာင့္ စက္တင္ဘာ (၁၈) ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ဖို႔ဒ္ဝင္းၿမိဳ႕မွာ စတိတ္ရိႈးမၿဖစ္ပါ။ ထိုစကားမွာ မေန႔မနက္ကတည္းကရၿပီးေသာအေၿဖၿဖစ္ပါသည္။ ေနာက္တပတ္ ေအာလ္ဘာနီမွာ က်င္းပမည့္ ပြဲ ကိုသာလူမ်ားက ပိုမိုအာရံုစိုက္ဖို႔လိုပါသည္။ ထင္ေက်ာ္ထက္ (ခ) ေက်ာ္သူရိွန္ မဂၤလာပါကုိေရႊထီး ေနေကာင္းက်မ္းမာပါေစလုိ႔ဆုေတာင္းပါတယ္။အနည္းငယ္က်ေနာ့အေတြ႕အႀကဳံႏွင့္အႀကံဥာဏ္ေလးေျပာပါရ ေစဗ်ာ။ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔နယူးေယာက္စီတီးမွာဒီေကာင္ေတြတိတ္တိတ္ေလးၾသဂုတ္၁၄ရက္မွာလုပ္သြားတယ္လုိ႔တရားမ၀င္သတင္းအေနနဲ႕သိရတယ္။ဘယ္သူေတြနဲ႔ဘယ္မွာလုပ္တာလဲဆုိတာက်ေနာ္စုံစမ္းေနတယ္။ဘာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ဒီလုိအခ်ိန္မွာနအဖနဲ႔သူရဲ႕ေနာက္လုိက္ေတြမွန္သမွ်ကုိေနရာတုိင္းမွာထိပ္တုိက္ရင္ဆုိင္ဖုိ႔အလုိအပ္ဆုံးအခ်ိန္ကာလျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ကုိေမာင္ေမာင္စုိးတုိ႔ဆီမွာစက္တင္ဘာ(၁၈)ရက္မွာလုပ္မယ္လုိ႔သတင္းထြက္ေပမဲ့အျခားရက္ေတြကုိေျပာင္းၿပီး မျဖစ္ျဖစ္ေအာင္လုပ္သြားႏုိင္ေျခလည္းရွိတယ္။ ဘယ္လုိပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္၊ အေမရိကန္ႏုိင္ငံရဲ႕ဘယ္လုိေနရာမွာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္၊ သူတုိ႕ပြဲအတြက္ရႈတ္ရႈတ္သဲသဲႏွဲ႔ပြဲပ်က္သြားဖုိ႔ လုိအပ္တယ္။ က်ေနာ္ဂ်ပန္မွာေနခဲ႔စဥ္တုန္းက(၁၉၉၈)ဒီလုိပြဲမ်ဳိးကုိရေအာင္ဖ်က္ခဲ့ဖူးပါတယ္။သူတုိ႔ကဂ်ပန္ဆီကအကူအညီျပန္ရေအာင္ယဥ္ေက်းမႈကုိဗန္းျပၿပီးလုပ္ၾကခဲ့တာပါ၊ဂ်ပန္စီးပြားေရးသမားေတြရဲ႕နအဖဆုိေပါင္းလုပ္ၾကတဲ့ပြဲပါ။ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔လုပ္ပုံကေတာ့ရုိးရုိးေလးပါ။သူတုိ႔လႈပ္ရွားမႈေတြခုိးေၾကာင္ခုိး၀ွက္လုပ္တာေတြကုိသတင္းရေအာင္ စုံစမ္းပါတယ္။ဆႏၵျပမယ္ဆုိတာကုိတရား၀င္ေၾကျငာတယ္။ဂ်ပန္ရဲထံတရား၀င္အေၾကာင္းၾကားတယ္။ကပြဲလုပ္တဲ့ေန႔မွာကပြဲလုပ္တဲ့အေဆာက္အဦးျပင္ပမွာပိတ္ၿပီးဆႏၵျပတယ္(လူ၂၀၀ေက်ာ္ခန္႔ရွိခဲ့)။ကပြဲထဲ၀င္ၿပီးအုပ္စုတစု (၆ဦးခန္႕)ကလက္မွတ္၀ယ္ၿပီး ၀င္ဆႏၵျပၾကတယ္။ နအဖလက္ပါးေစေတြ(ျမန္မာျပည္ကပြဲအုပ္စုနဲ႕တပါတည္းလုိက္လာတဲ့ေထာက္လွမ္းေရးေတြ)ကမီးမွိတ္ၿပီး ဆႏၵျပသူေတြကုိရုိက္တယ္။ ပြဲပ်က္ေအာင္ဖ်က္သူထဲက ေဒါက္တာခင္ေမာင္ဦး ဆုိသူအေရးေပၚတင္ခဲ့ရတယ္။ ခ်က္ခ်င္းပဲက်ေနာ္ကရဲအကူအညီနဲ႔သံအမတ္ကုိအေရးယူေပးဖုိ႔ေတာင္းဆုိတယ္။ ျမန္မာစစ္သံမႈးနဲ႔က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ဂ်ပန္ရဲေရွ႕မွာအေျခအတင္ျဖစ္ၾကတယ္။ဘယ္သူရုိက္မွန္းမသိေၾကာင္းေျဗာင္လိမ္ တယ္။သံအမတ္ကုိဖုံးဆက္ခြင့္ျပဳခ်က္ယူမယ္ဆုိၿပီးထြက္ေျပးသြားခဲ့ၾကတယ္။ သံအမတ္နဲ႔ရုပ္ရွင္မင္းသားမင္းသမီးေတြ(ရန္ေအာင္တုိ႔အပါအ၀င္)ဂ်ပန္ရဲအကူအညီနဲ႔(diplomatic immunityကုိသံရုံးကသုံးတယ္) ထြက္ေျပးသြားၾကတယ္။ျမန္မာျပည္အထိခ်က္ခ်င္းျပန္သြားခဲ့ၾကတယ္။ ျပင္ပကဆႏၵျပသူေတြနဲ႔ရဲေတြအၾကားရုန္းရင္းဆန္ခတ္ရဲေတြျဖစ္ကုန္ခဲ့တယ္။ဂ်ပန္မီဒီယာေတြအားလုံးမွာခ်က္ ခ်င္းပါလာခဲ့တယ္။ က်ေနာ္ဒီျပႆနာကုိဂ်ပန္လႊတ္ေတာ္ထဲအထိျမန္မာသံရုံးကဂ်ပန္႔ဥပေဒေဘာင္အတြင္းရာဇ၀တ္မႈက်ဴးလြန္ခဲ့ တင္ျပၿပီးအေရးယူေပးရန္ေတာင္းဆုိခဲ့တယ္။ဂ်ပန္ရဲကစုံးမ္းေရးေကာ္မရွင္ဖြဲ႔စစ္တယ္။ျမန္မာသံရုံးကဂ်ပန္ႏုိင္ငံ ျခားေရးရုံးကတဆင့္(diplomatic immunity)ကုိသုံးၿပီးအစစ္ေဆးမခံဘူး။ ေနာက္ဆုံးေတာ့သံအမတ္ဗုိလ္မွဴးေအာင္နုိင္ကုိျပန္ႏွင္ထုတ္လုိက္တယ္။က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ေအာင္ျမင္ခဲ့တယ္လုိ႔ထင္ တယ္။ သူတုိ႔ပြဲပ်က္တာတကမၻာလုံးသိသြားခဲ့တယ္။ ျပည္တြင္းနအဖမီဒီယာေတြကေနမဟုတ္တာေတြေရး၀ါဒျဖန္႔ တယ္။ ျပည္တြင္းမွာရွိတဲ့မိသားစု၀င္ေတြကုိဒုကၡေပးတယ္။ အရုိက္ခံရသူ ေဒါက္တာခင္ေမာင္ဦး ကေတာ့ ရုိက္တဲ့သူကုိ အျပစ္မေပးႏုိင္ေသးတဲ့အတြက္ယခုအခ်ိန္အထိမေၾကနပ္ေသးဘူး။ ယခုလည္း ဒီရုပ္ရွင္အဖြဲ႔ အေမရိကန္ႏုိင္ငံထဲဒီလုိဆက္လုပ္ဖုိ႕ ႀကိဳးစားေနတာကုိက်ေနာ္တုိ၀ုိင္းမတားႏုိင္ရင္ က်ေနာ္ တုိ႔အားလုံးသိကၡာက်တယ္။ေဘာင္အတြင္းက မပ်က္ပ်က္ေအာင္၀ုိင္းလုပ္ၾကပါလုိ႔အႀကံျပဳအပ္ပါတယ္။ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔လည္း ပူးေပါင္းပါ၀င္ပါ့မယ္။ ေတာ္လွန္ေရးသစၥာျဖင့္ ရဲထြဋ္
| |||||||
Myanmar's Suu Kyi: Poll offenses should be exposed
AP - Thursday, August 26
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) – Myanmar's detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has urged people to expose any election law violations they come across during upcoming national polls _ even as she suggested her supporters refrain from voting.
Even though Suu Kyi's now-disbanded National League for Democracy party is boycotting the Nov. 7 election, the process should not be ignored, her lawyer Nyan Win quoted her as saying. People have the right to file police complaints if the election laws are violated, she said.
Suu Kyi made the comments on Tuesday. Nyan Win recounted them to reporters Wednesday.
"Democracy, human rights and rule of law should be considered as the political process," Suu Kyi was quoted as saying, explaining that the election by itself should not be seen as satisfying the people's political needs.
The NLD is boycotting because it found the election rules were unfair. Critics have called the vote a sham to cement the power of the military, which has tightly ruled Myanmar for a half-century.
Suu Kyi said people who had wanted to vote for the NLD could refrain from voting instead.
The government announced the election date on Aug. 13, ending months of speculation on when exactly Myanmar's first election in two decades vote would be held. Political parties were only given two weeks until Aug. 30 to submit their candidate lists. Suu Kyi said that was short notice and amounted to showing disrespect to the people.
Suu Kyi said the elections will be neither free nor fair without freedom of expression and a free press, according to Nyan Win.
The last general elections in 1990 were won overwhelming by Suu Kyi's party, but the military refused to honor the results.
*********************************************************
Myanmar parties struggle in 'sham' vote
Wed Aug 25, 12:32 am ET
PAKOKKU, Myanmar (AFP) – With undercover police lurking nearby, breakaway opposition leader Than Nyein pleaded in vain with local democracy activists to contest army-ruled Myanmar's first election in 20 years.
Standing up to the junta is fraught with risk, and with democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi supporting a boycott, a splintered opposition is struggling to find enough people willing to stand for parliament in the November 7 vote.
"If we want to see change sooner, we have to build confidence between (the ruling generals) and us," said Than Nyein, chairman of the National Democratic Force (NDF), formed by ex-members of Suu Kyi's now-defunct party.
"We have to see them and talk," he told a group of supporters of Suu Kyi, who has said she would "never accept" her party registering for the upcoming vote because the election laws were "unjust".
Than Nyein failed to persuade his audience, who vowed to stay loyal to the Nobel Peace laureate.
"We respect you, but we have different opinions," said Hlaing Aye, who was among those elected in 1990 under Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) in a landslide opposition victory that was voided by the junta.
"We would like to maintain unity within the NLD. The important thing is to keep a family spirit among us," added Hlaing Aye, chairman of the NLD branch in the town of Pakokku in central Myanmar.
Suu Kyi's backing of a boycott has led to a split in the opposition between those who support her defiant stance and others who see the vote as the only hope for progress in the autocratic nation.
The November election has been widely condemned by activists and the West as a sham aimed at cementing army rule. One quarter of the parliamentary seats are reserved for the military whatever the outcome.
Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar's independence hero General Aung San, has spent much of the past 20 years in detention and is barred from standing in the vote because she is a serving prisoner.
As a result of her party's boycott, it has been abolished by the junta.
Adding to the reborn opposition's woes, it faces time constraints, intimidation and financial challenges -- candidates must pay a fee of about 500 dollars, the equivalent of several months' wages for most people.
Than Nyein said the NDF had so far recruited about 100 candidates, though 498 seats are available in the two-chamber national parliament, not to mention the places on offer in planned regional legislatures.
"Our priority is to nominate candidates," Than Nyein told AFP during a five-day trip around the country to search for people willing to stand, with plain-clothes police following close behind.
It has been more than two years since Myanmar's junta first announced plans to hold elections sometime in 2010, but the regime only gave the NDF permission to participate last month.
After finally announcing the date of the polls, the authorities gave parties little more than two weeks to register candidates by August 30.
So far 42 parties have been given permission to run, but many constituencies are expected to be won uncontested by the junta's main proxy party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).
"The opposition parties are facing serious barriers at the moment," said a Western diplomat in Yangon who did not want to be named.
"You've got a combination of financial and time constraints as well as unfair pressure. They're also up against the juggernaut of the USDP, which is a government party with unlimited financing as far as we can make out."
The USDP, headed by Prime Minister Thein Sein, has its roots in the Union Solidarity and Development Association, a pro-junta organisation with up to 27 million members, many of them coerced to join, according to rights groups.
At least one opposition party, The Democratic Party (Myanmar), has complained of intimidation of its members by security personnel, as well as financial difficulties.
"The election commission law has so many restrictions," said senior party member Than Than Nu, whose father was Myanmar's first prime minister after the country was liberated from British rule in 1948.
"Because the security officials pressure the people, they dare not come forward to stand," she told AFP, adding that her party expects to put forward about 100 candidates, though it had hoped for 1,000.
Under strict rules, members of all parties are banned from marching, waving flags and chanting to garner support. They must apply one week in advance for permission to gather and deliver speeches outside their offices.
While few expect the NDF, or any other party, to come close to matching the NLD's 1990 landslide victory, there are signs that the party is managing to win over some Suu Kyi supporters.
Htun Sein, a 97-year-old retired military captain who fought the British alongside the Nobel Peace laureate's father, is among those planning to stand as a parliamentary candidate under the NDF.
"I have been striving for democracy in Myanmar for more than 20 years," he said at the opening of the party's office in Mandalay last week.
"I joined the NDF because we haven't achieved anything lately."
*********************************************************
ASEAN leaders warn on region's rich-poor gap
Wed Aug 25, 3:12 am ET
DANANG, Vietnam (AFP) – ASEAN leaders warned Wednesday of a widening gap between Southeast Asia's richest and poorest nations that could threaten the region's drive for a single market.
Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam have recorded high growth rates but their per capita gross domestic product remains the lowest among the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
"The danger of (a) widening development gap remains a major obstacle to ASEAN's future development, especially given the context of expanded ASEAN economic integration," Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said in opening remarks to an annual meeting of the bloc's trade and commerce ministers.
ASEAN is working towards establishing by 2015 a single market and manufacturing base of about 600 million people, a goal which was spurred by competition from China and India.
The gap between ASEAN's rich and poor members "is quite wide" and could undermine efforts to create the single market, ASEAN secretary general Surin Pitsuwan told reporters.
"A house divided by such a gap is not stable," he told reporters.
*********************************************************
Channel NewsAsia - Myanmar's Suu Kyi suggests supporters boycott Nov 7 elections
Posted: 25 August 2010 2004 hrs
YANGON: Myanmar's detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has suggested that people who want to back her disbanded party in upcoming elections refrain from voting, her lawyer said Wednesday.
Suu Kyi has heard on the news that people are asking what they should do because they would like to vote for her National League for Democracy (NLD) but the party no longer officially exists, Nyan Win said.
"She said just don't vote if people want to vote only for the NLD," he told AFP by telephone after a visit to her lakeside home on Tuesday.
"But she does not say anything about people's choice," he added.
On Tuesday Nyan Win quoted Suu Kyi as saying people should keep a close watch on the November 7 poll and speak out if the vote is not free and fair.
He withheld the latest remarks until he had discussed them with colleagues.
The 65-year-old Nobel Peace Laureate has spent most of the past 20 years in detention, and as a serving prisoner is barred from standing in the upcoming vote, which will be the military-ruled country's first in 20 years.
The NLD won a landslide victory in 1990 but the ruling military never allowed it to take office.
The party is boycotting the November poll, saying the rules are unfair. As a result, it was forcibly disbanded by the ruling generals.
So far 42 political parties have been given permission to stand in the election, which has been widely condemned by activists and the West as a charade aimed at putting a civilian face on military rule.
Among them is the National Democracy Force, created by former NLD members whose decision to participate in the vote put them at odds with Suu Kyi, who was in favour of the NLD boycotting the vote.
*********************************************************
Times & Transcript - Myanmar's detained opposition leader says public have right to report election offences
Published Wednesday August 25th, 2010
The Associated Press
YANGON, Myanmar - Myanmar's detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has urged people to expose any election law violations they come across during upcoming national polls — even as she suggested her supporters refrain from voting.
Nyan Win, spokesman of detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party, talks to journalists after a press briefing at the party's headquarters Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2010, in Yangon, Myanmar. (AP Photo/Khin Maung Win
Even though Suu Kyi's now-disbanded National League for Democracy party is boycotting the Nov. 7 election, the process should not be ignored, her lawyer Nyan Win quoted her as saying. People have the right to file police complaints if the election laws are violated, she said.
Suu Kyi made the comments on Tuesday. Nyan Win recounted them to reporters Wednesday.
"Democracy, human rights and rule of law should be considered as the political process," Suu Kyi was quoted as saying, explaining that the election by itself should not be seen as satisfying the people's political needs.
The NLD is boycotting because it found the election rules were unfair. Critics have called the vote a sham to cement the power of the military, which has tightly ruled Myanmar for a half-century.
Suu Kyi said people who had wanted to vote for the NLD could refrain from voting instead.
The government announced the election date on Aug. 13, ending months of speculation on when exactly Myanmar's first election in two decades vote would be held. Political parties were only given two weeks until Aug. 30 to submit their candidate lists. Suu Kyi said that was short notice and amounted to showing disrespect to the people.
Suu Kyi said the elections will be neither free nor fair without freedom of expression and a free press, according to Nyan Win.
The last general elections in 1990 were won overwhelming by Suu Kyi's party, but the military refused to honour the results.
*********************************************************
Washington Post.com
Letters to the Editor
Opinions: A war-crimes commission could help lead Burma to democracy
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
In his Aug. 21 op-ed, "Hold off on Burma," David I. Steinberg argued that a United Nations commission of inquiry into war crimes in Burma will only salve Western consciences and do the Burmese people no good. He worries that an inquiry "will hinder negotiations and relations" with the "new government" that will be elected later this year, so the United States should instead "hold off."
In fact, the government will not be new; the military will control 25 percent of legislative seats as well as key ministries. More ominously, the military will be constitutionally immune from civilian control and will have power to respond to threats to "national stability" however it wants. Recall that during the Saffron Revolution, the junta gunned down peacefully protesting monks as threats to national stability.
A commission of inquiry would hinder relations with the "new" government only if that government is controlled by those accused. Mr. Steinberg is really saying that we should not offend the authors of the atrocities because then they won't talk to us. But they won't talk to us now; the United States decided to support the inquiry only after the junta refused repeatedly to meet with senior diplomats to talk about reform.
A commission of inquiry would help the people of Burma in several ways. First, it would cost the junta hard-liners some political support at home and abroad, making a transition to democracy more possible. Second, an inquiry into the conduct of higher-ranking officers would make lower-ranking officers think twice before committing atrocities themselves.
Third, an inquiry might be the first step in bringing justice to the victims of the junta's atrocities -- victims who, sadly, make no appearance in Mr. Steinberg's analysis.
David Clair Williams, Bloomington, Ind.
The writer is executive director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at Indiana University.
*********************************************************
Guardian - Tiger Girls bring a touch of spice to Burma's music scene
Burma's answer to 90s British pop group the Spice Girls challenges expectations under the country's ruling military junta
Jack Davies in Rangoon
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 August 2010 19.37 BST
The four singers are just launching into the chorus when the music goes dead. The power has cut out, as it does a couple of times a day in Burma's crumbling former capital, taking with it their backing tracks, the lights and the air-conditioning. The girls sing on, undeterred by the sweltering heat of their boxy rehearsal studio or the noisy city outside.
The Spice Girls never had to deal with this – but the Spice Girls never had to have their song lyrics approved by a military board of censors, either.
The Tiger Girls are Burma's answer to the 90s British group. Each Tiger has been assigned a stage name and persona and Tricky, Chilli, Electro, Missy and Baby hope to bring to Burma some of what Posh, Scary, Sporty, Ginger and Baby foisted upon the world some 15 years ago.
The group's mentor – dance tutor, singing coach, co-songwriter and manager– is Australian dancer Nicole May, who was teaching in Rangoon orphanages when she saw "a gap" in Burma's music scene: the need for a girl group.
"There is so much natural music flowing through people's veins here, but the music industry is undeveloped," she said. "Girls have more to sing about than sad love songs or tough hip-hop tracks."
A call for auditions brought forward 100 hopefuls, from whom five were chosen. As Burma's first ever all-girl band, the Tiger Girls are an unknown quantity in a country ruled by a military junta resistant to outside, especially western, influence.
At their first gigs, in Rangoon last February, audiences were stunned into silence. "On the first day, people were quiet, they did not know what to think about us, they hadn't seen anything like us before," says Htike Htike – Electro Tiger. "But by the second day, they really liked us, they were clapping and cheering and calling for more."
Musically, the Tigers are doing things their own way. The fashion in Burma is to sing "copy tracks" – western pop songs rewritten in Burmese. But the Tigers have a message for the girls of Burma, one they feel is best expressed through their own music.
They want their fans to be "confident, to be strong and bold," says Ah Moon – Baby Tiger. "Girls can do anything that they want. We have enough energy and ability to do what we want to do."
Burma's ruling military junta requires all musicians to submit lyrics to its censorship board before they can be performed or recorded. Anything political, or even vaguely anti-authoritarian, is usually outlawed, but the censors are inconsistent and unpredictable.
The Tigers' lyric "Is this Yangon (Rangoon) or is this the jungle?", judged to be about the constant electricity failures, had to be changed. They got away with the more positive: "I see you, you see me, but I'm gonna dance, because I'm free". It has since become a crowd singalong favourite.
Their short skirts, risqué dance moves and showbiz make-up are political enough. Burma expects women to be demure and subservient, May says, a stereotype that sits uncomfortably with her headstrong charges. "These girls don't need to be overtly political, just being who they are, five beautiful girls who sing, who dance and who are confident, that's a big deal in Myanmar. And if we were too political, people would be scared to like us."
The Tiger Girls have emerged at a sensitive time in Burma's history. The country holds its first election in two decades on 7 November, although the poll is expected to be rigged to consolidate military rule. Regardless, a mood for change, if short of revolution, exists across Burma.
"The country is hungry for something new, but whether it is ready for the Tiger Girls, I don't know," said May.
Jack Davies is a Guardian journalist writing under a pseudonym
*********************************************************
Scoop - No Framework To Protect Human Rights In Myanmar
Wednesday, 25 August 2010, 2:40 pm
Press Release: ALRC
HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL
Fifteenth session, Agenda Item 4, General Debate
A written statement submitted by the Asian Legal Resource Centre(ALRC), a non-governmental organisation with general consultative status
BURMA: The Absence Of Normative And Institutional Frameworks To Protect Human Rights In Myanmar
1. The Asian Legal Resource Centre has closely studied and documented the situation of human rights in Myanmar for close to a decade, throughout much of which it has also presented findings on a range of topics to the UN Commission on Human Rights, and more recently, to the Human Rights Council. The topics that it has addressed in recent submissions include the absence of minimum conditions for elections, torture, the effects of corruption on citizens' rights, the 2008 Constitution, the September 2007 uprising and aftermath, and what the ALRC has characterized as the country's "injustice system" of police, prosecutors and courts under military guidance.
2. In previous years, it could be said that the amount of knowledge about the true human rights situation in Myanmar was quite limited. For this reason, the ALRC has concentrated its efforts on research that would reveal systemic problems and obstacles for human rights arising from the persistence of military dictatorship in the country. However, in recent times it has become increasingly clear that despite a manifest increase in detailed awareness about conditions there—due not only to the work of the ALRC but also many other organizations, as well as the consistent efforts of successive Special Rapporteurs on human rights in the country--the international human rights movement has been unwilling and therefore unable to address the true extent and nature of these problems.
3. One reason for this incapacity of the international community to come to terms with the scope and nature of the human rights disaster in Myanmar is that the international framework for protection of human rights is premised upon there being domestic frameworks for the same. Although it is accepted everywhere that no domestic framework to protect human rights is perfect, the international system for protection of rights is premised upon the existence of some kind of minimum domestic framework that it functions to some extent to address those human rights problems with which it is supposed to be concerned.
4. The problem in Myanmar's case, by contrast, is that no such framework for the protection of human rights exists at all. Thus, when international agencies and monitors call for things to be done in response to human rights abuses that would be pertinent in other settings, they are in the case of Myanmar meaningless. For those state parties and individuals who are interested to do no more than mouth human rights rhetoric and do nothing in fact to address the problems, this is a source of comfort: since rhetoric is quite literally all that is possible in Myanmar's case, they cannot be blamed when nothing is done. For the rest of us, it is a source of immense frustration that should provoke exploration of new avenues for effecting change in very serious human rights situations of the sort found in Myanmar.
5. There are two frameworks with which we are here concerned: the normative framework and the institutional framework. The absence of each in the case of Myanmar can be explained as follows.
6. The Normative Framework
a. The State is not a party to most international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It has a domestic normative framework not for the protection of human rights but for their denial. The State has retained and continues to use antiquated and highly regressive colonial-era and postcolonial statutes. Since 1988, all laws have been passed as executive decrees, not through any legislative process, during which time it has issued many new laws that also reflect its concern a preoccupation with the defence of the state rather than defence of human rights.
b. As the ALRC has previously made clear to the Council, the 2008 Constitution is in terms of human rights a norm-less constitution. Under its provisions, the armed forces are placed outside of judicial authority. The military, not the judiciary, is the constitution's guardian. The judiciary is separated from other branches of government only "to the extent possible". All rights are qualified with ambiguous language that permits exemptions under circumstances of the State's choosing. For instance, the right not to be held in custody for more than 24 hours before being brought before a magistrate, which already exists in the Criminal Procedure Code, is under the new constitution delimited by an exception for "matters on precautionary measures taken for the security of the Union or prevalence of law and order, peace and tranquillity in accord with the law in the interest of the public, or the matters permitted according to an existing law" (section 376). This provision effectively legalizes arbitrary detention of the sort that is already rife in Myanmar. Other provisions that purport to guarantee rights do so only to the extent permitted by other laws, and in so far as they do not threaten the security of the state or contravene undefined standards of public morality. The constitution allows for rights to be revoked at any time and for their suspension during a state of emergency. The cumulative effect of these qualifications is to render all guarantees of rights meaningless.
7. The Institutional Framework
a. The main features of the institutional framework that deny human rights are the militarized functions of the police force, resulting in routine and systemic abuses, and the non-independence of the judiciary.
b. The police force in Myanmar is not a discrete professional civilian force but a paramilitary and intelligence agency under command of the armed forces. It shares policing functions with other parts of the state apparatus, including with executive councils at all levels that supervise and oversee other agencies, and with other local bodies, including the fire brigade and civic groups. Specialized police agencies, in particular the Special Branch, operate as proxies for military intelligence, rather than as autonomous investigators of crime. Consequently, the characteristics of policing and prosecutions in Myanmar include: routine arbitrary arrest and detention; common use of torture and other forms of cruel and inhuman treatment, and frequent deaths in custody; coerced signing of documents that have no basis in law; baseless and duplicated charges; and fabricated cases.
c. As the courts are subordinate to the executive, they can neither function in accordance with the laws that they purport to uphold nor in a manner that can defend, let alone implement human rights. In fact, the notion of the courts in Myanmar operating to protect human rights would be absurd, since it would profoundly contradict their function as defenders of the state against the intrusions of citizens and their claims. Where they do appear to be functioning to protect rights, such as in cases concerning protection of women and children, the function they are in fact performing is that of implementers of government policy.
8. This last aspect of the judiciary's operations as a non-norm enforcing institution in Myanmar has not yet been properly understood and requires much further discussion. The perception of successive governments in Myanmar that the role of the judiciary is not to protect rights but to enforce State policy is deeply entrenched. It goes back at least to the beginning of permanent military rule in 1962, and has roots in the authoritarianism of earlier periods. Under this construct, the rule of law is shorthand for the State's use of law and institutions of law to achieve whatever ends suit its purposes. Where some of these intersect with programmes for the defence of human rights they are liable to be misunderstood as expressions of support for human rights norms when in fact they are no such thing. The principle of the supremacy of law, which is integral to the defence of human rights, is entirely absent. Therefore, there is no normative basis for the building of a regime of rights as required in terms of international human rights standards.
9. Because this instrumental concept of the law as an administrative technique overrides specific qualities of the normative or institutional framework, it is impossible to attribute to specific laws or agencies the authority to implement certain human rights, and therefore impossible for international agencies to make specific demands for the defence of rights in response to particular incidents or issues. The authority of a law or institution is always delimited by a higher imperative, which means that the State party while passing laws, applying laws and establishing institutions to enforce laws does not actually feel beholden to those laws or institutions. To the extent that human rights appear to receive some form of official recognition and protection, it is entirely on a situation-specific, non-normative basis, and therefore on a non-human rights basis, since the latter is necessarily normative.
10. Consequently, there is no basis for the global human rights movement to make a human rights claim on the government of Myanmar, because there are neither the normative or institutional frameworks in which to place it. In this setting, any call from a United Nations mechanism or attempt at intervention is reduced, like those plaints of private citizens in the country itself, to an appeal for some form of mercy, placed before the powerful executive authorities for their discretion. This, of course, is not the work of human rights defence but a king of impoverished, contemporary feudalism: the very opposite of what the modern human rights movement is supposed to represent.
11. For many years, human rights defenders in Myanmar and around the world have scrupulously documented and categorized an astounding array of human rights abuses, committed across all parts of the country and against practically all types of persons. The Asian Legal Resource Centre too has been engaged in that work, as it will continue to be. But the point has clearly been reached at which it is necessary to use the knowledge accrued through this work to dig much deeper into the systemic problems, and to analyse these not just as a challenge to the government of Myanmar over its atrocious record, but as a challenge to the international human rights movement over its incapacity to respond when a state is bereft of the frameworks upon which the protection of human rights are dependent. It is clearly inadequate to continue to document abuses that spring forth daily, monthly and annually because of the absence of normative and institutional frameworks for human rights without stating the fact of this absence plainly. And it is not merely inadequate but ridiculous for the international community to continue to make calls upon the Government of Myanmar for the implementation of human rights standards in the absence of these frameworks.
12. After a decade or more of intense work on Myanmar in international human rights gatherings, and after the compilation and submission of vast quantities of information about the factual situation in the country at considerable effort and often great risk on the part of large numbers of human rights defenders in the country and abroad, it is not only disingenuous but insulting for the Council to continue to do no more than make the same carefully worded calls that are disconnected from reality and lacking in either intellectual or moral fibre. The absence of either normative or institutional frameworks for the protections of human rights in Myanmar precludes business as usual. It must be said plainly and clearly that the Council has failed utterly to address the situation of human rights in Myanmar; that the Council has been amply informed about the real situation in the country and cannot pretend that the normative and institutional frameworks for the protection of human rights exist when they do not. The question remains as to what, given these facts, the Council can do about it.
About the ALRC: The Asian Legal Resource Centre is an independent regional non-governmental organisation holding general consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. It is the sister organisation of the Asian Human Rights Commission. The Hong Kong-based group seeks to strengthen and encourage positive action on legal and human rights issues at the local and national levels throughout Asia.
*********************************************************
25/08/2010
MSN India - US-Myanmar talks practically on hold
Lalit K Jha
Washington, Aug 25 (PTI) With the Obama Administration deciding to drag Myanmar''s military junta to an international commission on war crimes, the much talked about talks between the two sides, started last year, have come to a halt for all practical purposes.
"I do not project any discussions with Burma in the near future. I can''t say there is a time to any particular date," a Senior Administration official told reporters yesterday, even as he was quick to assert that the policy of engagement is still in place.
"We will continue to engage Burma, but at the same time, we will continue to find ways to put pressure on Burma," the official said on condition of anonymity.
The reference to ''pressure'' was an apparent acknowledgement that its policy of engagement announced last year by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly has not yielded any result and in fact has increased the frustration of the international community.
The official said the US will be consulting other countries to determine their views on a commission of inquiry and see if they share the views.
Earlier in the day, the State Department spokesman reiterated that the US will back the creation of an international commission to investigate alleged war crimes by Burma''s military junta.
"We believe that a properly structured international commission of inquiry that would examine allegations of serious violations of international law in Burma would be warranted and appropriate.
"And we are examining how to best proceed on this initiative," State Department spokesman P J Crowley, said at his daily news conference.
Meanwhile, an eminent Myanmar expert, Reynaud Egreteau in an article for the East West Center said Myanmar has deftly manoeuvred its foreign policy in an environment that it found difficult to navigate 15 years ago, with only Chinese and ASEAN diplomatic options at hand.
Research Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong, Egreteau notes that for internally and externally generated reasons, New Delhi would like to foster closer relations with Myanmar, however difficult and discomfiting it may be.
"India''s decision to welcome Senior General Than Shwe, the head of the Burmese junta, in late July 2010 might have exhibited all the radiance of a reinvigorated relationship, but careful consideration of what exactly New Delhi has fostered with its eastern neighbour will reveal that Indo-Burmese relations remain uneasy," he wrote.
*********************************************************
The Irrawaddy - Border Closure Violates Spirit of Asean Free Trade
By WILLIAM BOOT - Wednesday, August 25, 2010
BANGKOK—Burma's six-week closure of its border with Thailand robs both countries of trade, jobs, goods and income, and contravenes the spirit of the new Asean rules on closer economic ties.
That's the view of Thai government officials, economic observers and administrators of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) who are charged with coaxing the 10-country group toward an economic community similar to the European Union (EU).
The closure, blocking the movement of goods and labor, has conservatively cost Thailand more than US $100 million. Taking into account lost labor, factory production and spoiled produce, the bill so far for both sides is closer to $300 million and rising by several million dollars each day.
In addition, Thailand's army has been allocated $480 million since July by the Bangkok government to cope with "our assessment of the threats in the western and northern parts of the country," the Thai Third Army commander Lt-Gen Thanongsak Apirakyothin told Thai newspapers recently.
"These are two countries which have signed all sorts of collective agreements towards achieving an Asian-style EU. It's like France suddenly and arbitrarily deciding to close its border with neighbor Spain —a preposterous idea, but it amounts to the same sort of thing," said an official in Bangkok with a European embassy.
"Border closure, territorial disputes and flagrant flouting of zero tariff agreements as part of economic protectionism are rampant throughout the Asean group and need to end if progress is ever going to be made to achieve its Asian Economic Community (AEC)," the official told The Irrawaddy this week, agreeing to speak on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
Asean leaders have set a target date of only five years to achieve the AEC dream.
The group began introducing tariff-free trade on many goods at the beginning of this year.
Ironically, the closure of the Burma-Thailand border since July 18 came only weeks after a meeting of the Thailand-Myanmar (Burma) Joint Trade Commission which agreed to expand bilateral trade.
It was the first meeting of the commission in six years.
That meeting laid plans to "ease cross-border procedures" especially at the Mae Sot-Myawaddy crossing point, according to Logistics Digest transport magazine.
The commission agreed to an outline plan to triple cross-border trade between now and the end of 2015 as part of Asean-China agreements to create north-south and east-west transport corridors through Southeast Asia. These are meant to be segments of the so-called economic growth circles for East and South Asia backed by the Asian Development Board.
Thailand's plans to start construction of a multimillion dollar highway to Burma's Andaman Sea port of Tavoy, also known as Dawei, have been put on hold.
At the start of the current border closure, the Thai government information agency MCOT said cross-border trade with Burma was worth about $4.3 billion a year.
Until the closure, Bangkok's ministry of commerce had plans to create a special economic development zone in the Mae Sot-Myawaddy area "in the near future," said MCOT.
Now, not only have goods piled up on both sides of the Mae Sot crossing point, a consequent shortages of consumer goods such as medicines and electrical appliances in Rangoon is proving highly inflationary for Burma.
Efforts by Asean to achieve economic integration are moving forward but still face hurdles, said a senior researcher in economic affairs at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, Sanchita Basu Das, in a recent study.
"Each member country has to act in harmony at both national and regional levels" in order to achieve the necessary "connectivity" for the goal of a single EU market, Das said.
Earlier this month, Asean Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan, a Thai national, said that the group on its 43rd birthday is "now taking its rightful place on the same platform among major global players for political and economic dialogue and cooperation."
But perhaps he had Burma in mind when he added: "There is yet much to be done in our own member states."
For all its 43 years of maturity, Asean still has a knack of sticking its head in the sand on Burma issues. Perhaps someone in the EU will politely point out that this is not conducive to economic integration when leaders of the two blocs meet in Brussels for their Asia-Europe Meeting on Oct 4.
*********************************************************
The Irrawaddy - 88 Generation Leaders Remain Defiant
By BA KAUNG - Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Three years since their arrests in August 2007, the imprisoned leaders of the 88 Generation Students group are unchanged in their common view that the conditions for the coming election are unacceptable, according to their family members and friends.
According to a political dissident in Rangoon, nine student leaders, including the prominent figures Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi, remain committed to the "Maubin Declaration," an accord they reached in Maubin prison in 2008 before they were transferred to different prisons across Burma.
According to the agreement, the group will not lend its support to a general election if the ruling junta does not make the process all-inclusive and does not release all political prisoners without conditions.
Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Wednesday, Ko Aung, the younger brother of Ko Ko Gyi. said, "My brother has not changed his position on that agreement since my last prison visit in February."
Both Min Ko Naing, 47, and Ko Ko Gyi, 48, had each spent nearly 15 years in jail as political prisoners until they were released in the years 2004 and 2005 respectively. The two student leaders were rearrested in 2007 for taking part in demonstrations against a hike in fuel prices and are currently serving 65-year sentences in different prisons in Shan State in northern Burma.
Another group member, Htay Kyaw, who is jailed in western Burma, also relayed a message during a family prison visit this month that the election would be "insignificant" without the participation of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. In a recent letter to a friend in Rangoon, Htay Kyaw said he was spending his time reading books on political science and economics.
Soe Tun, a 39-year-old former political prisoner and a member of the 88 Generation group, who has been in hiding since 2007, said that there is as yet no sign of jailed student leaders being freed and that the opposition parties will suffer defeats in the coming election.
"Instead, the regime will increase suppression of its political opponents," he said in a recent audio message to The Irrawaddy. However, he emphasized the importance of opposition groups not attacking pro-democracy parties contesting the election.
The regime election laws bar all political prisoners, including Suu Kyi, from the voting process. The US government recently said the election would be lacking in legitimacy without the release of political prisoners.
The Thailand-based NGO, Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in Burma (AAPP), has estimated that more than 2,000 political prisoners are currently languishing in Burmese jails.
On Tuesday, the Burmese military authorities released more than 100 people from jail, none of whom were political prisoners, said AAPP.
*********************************************************
The Irrawaddy - EIU: No Chance of Fair Election in Burma
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
In it latest report on Burma, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), an influential London-based think tank, said it sees little chance that the country's coming election will be free, fair or inclusive.
The Nov. 7 election will be held with "the objective of legitimizing the military's hold on power," but won't fundamentally alter the balance of power in Burma, the report said.
Commenting on the formation of the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), led by Prime Minister Thein Sein, ahead of the election, the EIU said: "The move appears to be part of the generals' overarching aim of cementing a role for the military in government through 'civilianized' military leaders and pro-military political parties."
The report also noted that while a number of small opposition groups have decided to contest the election, they face numerous restrictions on their campaigning activities and some have complained of official intimidation.
Although the military will remain the dominant force after the election, "underlying pressures—not least those stemming from economic hardship—could build and eventually prompt sporadic shows of public defiance," according to the report.
The junta's effort to exert full control over ethnic cease-fire groups by forcing them to become border guard forces under Burmese command could also result in fresh crises, the report said, noting that ethnic cease-fire groups see their armies as a guarantee of a degree of autonomy.
According to the EIU, a post-election reshuffle of positions within the military hierarchy, including the selection of the president and three vice presidents, will test the junta supremo Snr-Gen Than Shwe's ability to balance competing interests and maintain the unity of the military.
The report also said that the junta's relations with its regional allies would sour and that US efforts to engage with the regime would end if allegations of its nuclear weapons ambitions and ties with North Korea are substantiated.
Although Burma's economy performance will improve in 2010-11 because of investment in the energy and petroleum sectors from Thailand, China and India, the domestic economy will remain weak, the EIU said, adding that consumer price inflation will accelerate in 2010-11 after slowing sharply last year as a result of falling global fuel and food prices.
*********************************************************
NDF leader gives up on polls citing bureaucratic obstacles
Wednesday, 25 August 2010 19:44
Kyaw Kha
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – National Democratic Force party central executive committee member Khin Maung Swe announced today he is withdrawing from nationwide polls on November 7.
He and other members of the main opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party had split to form the National Democratic Force (NDF) so they could stand in this year's elections.
The junta's electoral watchdog, the Union Election Commission (UEC), told Khin Maung Swe and the NDF's vice-chairman Tin Aung Aung, central executive committee member Thar Saing and politburo member Sein Hla Oo, to file an appeal to allow them to stand, as electoral laws barred them from participating on grounds of their high treason convictions in 1990.
Though they had already filed such petitions they said they were instructed to file again, so Khin Maung Swe believed this suggested the junta would block any of their efforts to be elected.
"I have submitted this petition to them. Now they've [the UEC staff] asked me to file it again as a personal appeal. They will not give me permission to contest in this election even though I submitted this petition again as they said. So I will not file this petition again and will not contest in this election," Khin Maung Swe told Mizzima.
"They've imposed restrictions on me for this election. They have permitted registration of our party so they should also allow its leaders to participate … It is logical and natural," he said.
It is not yet known whether the three other leaders will resubmit their petitions.
Other politicians who have turned their backs on the upcoming election, denouncing it as neither free nor fair, include Union Democratic Party chairman Phyo Min Thein.
*********************************************************
Parents forced into USDP in return for polio shots
Wednesday, 25 August 2010 02:09
Mizzima News
Rangoon (Mizzima) – Parents of children vaccinated against polio in the former Burmese capital have been pressured into joining the main junta-backed political party, they said.
From early this month, local authorities, health department staff and Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) members have run a vaccination programme for children under five at in the offices of township peace and development councils in Rangoon during which parents were coerced into signing forms to join the USDP.
A mother from Tamway Township said: "After my child received the vaccination, they [USDP members] gave me an application form to be a Union Solidarity and Development Party member. I told them I didn't want to join but they insisted I sign the form so, finally, I had to."
Moreover, parents from Thingangyun, Mingala Taungnyunt, the southern and eastern parts of New Dagon, Shwepyithar and North Okkapala townships also said they were forced to join the junta-backed party in the same manner.
Also, the peace and development council of ward three in Kyauktada Township had been coercing people to join the USDP, a resident said.
"We already knew what the USDP is because it's opened party offices and members have been collecting party memberships," the resident said. "They're building the party using any possible means but I can't join it. If I do, they'll get my vote and I won't let that happen."
Rangoon has 45 townships and a population of six million.
*********************************************************
DVB News - Int'l rights framework 'meaningless' for Burma
By FRANCIS WADE
Published: 25 August 2010
Calls from international rights groups and monitors for a response to abuses in Burma are "meaningless" because there is no framework within the country to listen to these, an Asian legal group warns.
The international community has been "unwilling" and incapable of promoting change in military-ruled Burma, the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) said in a far-reaching report that documents the "absence of minimum conditions" for torture, corruption and elections this year, as well as the country's "injustice system" of police, prosecutors and courts under military guidance.
Earlier this month the US gave its backing to a UN commission of enquiry to investigate possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Burma, a call that has been echoed by a number of governments and senior UN officials.
Basil Fernando, executive director of ALRC, said that while "there is no domestic mechanism for any kind of inquiry," it is precisely this absence – "more than any other reason" – that justifies such an inquiry.
"When you don't have these mechanisms, you are living in a kind of zoo – it's not a human place, the state cannot do any kind of investigation," he told DVB.
"So the only option left is to ensure that some kind of process begins from outside, and to bring some people to justice outside. What you need in a country like that is an opening for the future; otherwise it'll stay closed forever."
Burma's military dictatorship has ruled the country in various guises since a coup in 1962 that toppled the government of U Nu, Burma's first civilian prime minister since British rule ended in 1948. Little appears to move the current junta chief, Than Shwe, although he is said to be fearful of an International Criminal Court (ICC) indictment that the UN investigation could bring.
But Burma's placement on the international community's priority list has long been questionable, with the domestic crises apparently paling in significance to alleged international threats posed by North Korea, Iran, and so on.
The ALRC report criticised the international community for being "unwilling and therefore unable to address the true extent and nature of these problems" in Burma.
"In order to do anything, you must first of all begin at least to admit the problems: openly say that there is nothing inside [Burma]. If you say otherwise, you are making and wrong and misleading statement…which will never transform into action," Fernando said.
The constant mouthing of human rights rhetoric that is devoid of substantial action "is a source of immense frustration that should provoke exploration of new avenues for effecting change in very serious human rights situations of the sort found in Myanmar [Burma]", the report continued.
Critics of the UN commission of inquiry argue however that any sort of investigation now would be premature, given the elections due to be held on 7 November that the current junta claims will mark the transition to civilian rule.
But with a quarter of parliamentary seats already awarded to military officials, and apparent favouring of the main junta-backed party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) in the run-up to elections, the chances of any real civilian government coming to power appear slim.
*********************************************************
DVB News - UN aid has 'limited impact' in Burma
By GAYATRI LAKSHMIBAI
Published: 25 August 2010
UN aid efforts in Burma are "unsatisfactory" and "with modest or limited impact", a report released by an internal UN Development Programme watchdog has warned.
The study, carried out by the Independent Assessment Mission (IAM) and based on surveys conducted in a control group of villages, finds that there is only a "modest or limited" difference between the villages that receive the Human Development Initiative (HDI) support and the non-HDI villages. This difference is particularly starker in the fields of education and health – two important developmental concerns for Burma.
"Sadly, I am not surprised by it [the report's findings], but I have to say that it is more a reflection of the restrictions put in place by authorities than the failure of international efforts to expand humanitarian space," David Mathieson, senior researcher with Human Rights Watch (HRW), told DVB.
"At a ground level, they [UNDP] are actually implementing projects and going through the long, hard grind but at a national level, policy makers just don't want to make decisions."
The HDI, which arrived in Burma in 1994, aims to bring change in areas of basic health, training and education, HIV/AIDS, the environment and food security.
The IAM report is especially critical of the Integrated Community Development Project (ICDP), Community Development in Remote Townships (CDRT) Project and the Early Recovery (ER) Project, concluding their performance as "unsatisfactory" and denouncing "the idea of continuation of these projects beyond 2011 in their current form."
The findings of the independent team suggest that the problem with these projects lies in their design rather than management. It says: "The proposed measures, even if implemented, will fall far short of the change of approach and revision of programme design that is needed."
Aid agencies have long complained about the difficulties of working with corrupt officials at the local level and the authoritarian regime on the national level.
"The complexity of the working environment within the country is difficult to comprehend," Mathieson says. "There are too many regional variations – geographic and ethnic. Also, in places around urban areas, maybe authorities don't see having foreign aid workers as much of a security issue but in border areas there are far more restrictions."
One of the main reasons cited for the failure of the programmes is the broad scope of activities falling under the purview of the UNDP, leading to excessive diversion of limited funds. The lack of other aid efforts in the region is a contributing factor for the HDI's involvement in a wide array of issues. Changes in environmental and political conditions during the last couple of years are added reasons behind the poor results.
The report, with its negative findings, could add to the already existing donor fatigue. The poor performance of UNDP raises questions about its presence in Burma and the viability of its projects. If the HDI does discontinue its activities in the 60 designated townships, what alternative model of development could bring a welcome change?
Mathieson doesn't think the report "should add to donor fatigue." In fact, he hopes that it raises awareness about the difficulties involved in working inside Burma. "There's no way that the international community should be walking away from this, either in terms of funding or scaling of the project. If anything, this report should encourage aid workers and agencies to think of more adaptable ways of functioning," he added.
The team, however, lauded the achievement of self-help groups (SRGs) and micro-finance (MF) projects which were implemented with the aim of empowering women.
*********************************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment