Burma activists deliver political prisoner petition to Ban Ki-moon

အက်ဥ္းသား လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး လက္မွတ္ ၆သိန္းေက်ာ္ ကုလအတြင္းေရးမွဴးခ်ဳပ္ထံပုိ႔
2009-06-16

ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားမ်ား ကူညီေစာင့္ေရွာက္ေရး အသင္း (AAPP) နဲ႔ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ ဒီမုိကရက္တစ္ အင္အားစု (FDB) တုိ႔ ဦးေဆာင္လႈပ္ရွားခဲ့တဲ့ ျမန္မာ့ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားမ်ား လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး- ကမႝာလံုးဆုိင္ရာ လက္မွတ္ေရးထုိး ေတာင္းဆုိ လႈပ္ရွားမႈကေန စုေဆာင္းရရွိတဲ့ လက္မွတ္ေပါင္း ေျခာက္သိန္းရွစ္ေသာင္းနီးပါးကို အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု နယူူးေယာက္ၿမိဳ႕၊ ကုလသမဂၢ အတြင္းေရးမွဴးခ်ဳပ္ မစၥတာဘန္ကီမြန္းရဲ့႐ံုးမွာ ဇြန္လ ၁၅ ရက္ေန႔ မေန႔က တရားဝင္ ေပးအပ္ခဲ့တယ္လို႔ သိရပါတယ္။

ဒီလက္မွတ္စုေဆာင္းတဲ့ လႈပ္ရွားမႈကို ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့ မတ္လ ၁၃ ရက္ေန႔မွာ စတင္ခဲ့တာျဖစ္ၿပီး ထုိင္း-ျမန္မာနယ္စပ္က ျမန္မာ့ႏုိင္ငံေရးအင္အားစု ႏွစ္ရာေက်ာ္ အပါအဝင္ ႏုိင္ငံတကာ ျမန္မာ့ ဒီမုိကေရစီေရး အဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြက ႏုိင္ငံေပါင္း ၃၂ ႏိုင္ငံမွာ လႈပ္ရွားခဲ့တာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

စုေဆာင္းရရွိတဲ့ လက္မွတ္ေတြကို ဒီလႈပ္ရွားမႈရဲ့ကိုယ္စား AAPP အတြင္းေရးမွဴး ကုိတိတ္ႏုိင္၊ FDB ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရးရာ တာဝန္ခံ မခင္ဥမၼာနဲ႔ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား မိသားစုဝင္ ကိုညီညီေအာင္တုိ႔က မစၥတာ ဘန္ကီမြန္းရဲ့႐ံုးကုိ ကိုယ္တုိင္ကုိယ္က် သြားေရာက္ ေပးအပ္ခဲ့ရာမွာ ဒီလႈပ္ရွားမႈနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး မစၥတာဘန္ကီမြန္းကိုယ္တုိင္ တာဝန္ေပးအပ္ထားတဲ့ ပုဂၢိဳလ္တဦးက လက္ခံရယူခဲ့တယ္လုိ႔ သိရပါတယ္။ ဒါ့အျပင္ အဲဒီ ပုဂၢိဳလ္အပါအဝင္ အတြင္းေရးမွဴးခ်ဳပ္႐ံုး တာဝန္ရွိသူ ေလးဦးနဲ႔ တနာရီၾကာ တံခါးပိတ္ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲတခုကိုလည္း ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့တယ္လုိ႔ သိရပါတယ္။ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲမွာ ဘာေတြ ေျပာဆုိခဲ့ၾကသလဲ ဆုိတာနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး AAPP အတြင္းေရးမွဴး ကုိတိတ္ႏုိင္ကုိ RFA က ဆက္သြယ္ေမးျမန္း ခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ကုိတိတ္ႏုိင္။ ။ 'ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံနဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီးေတာ့ ကမႝာ့ မိသားစုရဲ့ စိတ္ဝင္စားမႈနဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံတကာရဲ့ အေျခအေနေတြကို၊ တံု႔ျပန္မႈေတြကို မခင္ဥမၼာကေနၿပီးေတာ့ ေျပာခဲ့တယ္။ ေနာက္တခါ ကိုညီညီေအာင္က ဒီမိသားစုေတြရဲ့ ဘဝ၊ သူ႔အေမေရာ၊ ေမာင္ႏွမ ဝမ္းကြဲ ေလးေယာက္ေရာ အက်ဥ္းေထာင္ထဲမွာ ေရာက္ေနတဲ့ အခါက်ေတာ့ သူတို႔ရဲ့ ေဆြမ်ိဳး အဝန္းအဝုိင္းေတြက ဘယ္လို ခံစားၾကရသလဲ၊ ဘယ္လို ပံ့ပိုးမႈေတြ လုပ္ခဲ့သလဲ ဆိုတဲ့ ကိစၥေတြကို ကြၧန္ေတာ္တို႔ ေျပာတယ္။ ကုလသမဂၢ အတြင္းေရးမွဴးခ်ဳပ္ ကိုယ္ႏိႈက္ကိုက သူ႔ရဲ့ ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေရး ဦးစားေပးအေနနဲ႔ လုပ္ေဆာင္သင့္တယ္ဆိုတဲ့ ကိစၥ၊ မျဖစ္မေန လုပ္ကို လုပ္ရမယ္ဆိုတဲ့ ကိစၥမ်ိဳးကို ကြၧန္ေတာ္တို႔က ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။'

လက္မွတ္ေတြကို အခုလုိ ကုလသမဂၢ အတြင္းေရးမွဴးခ်ဳပ္ထံကို ေပးပို႔ႏိုင္ခဲ့တဲ့အတြက္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံက ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားေတြ လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးမွာ ဘယ္ေလာက္အထိ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ႏုိင္မလဲ လို႔ ေမးျမန္းၾကည့္ရာမွာ ကိုတိတ္ႏိုင္က အခုလုိ ေျပာပါတယ္။

ကုိတိတ္ႏုိင္။ ။ 'ေျခာက္သိန္းေက်ာ္ေသာ ကမႝာ့ ျပည္သူမ်ားကေနၿပီးေတာ့ သူတို႔ ခံစားခ်က္နဲ႔ ျမန္မာ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားေတြ လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး လက္မွတ္ထိုးလိုက္တယ္ ဆိုကတည္းကိုက ဘာပဲေျပာေျပာ အတိုင္းအတာ တခုအထိ ရွိပါတယ္။ ဒါက ကြၧန္ေတာ္တို႔အတြက္ မျဖစ္မေန လုပ္ေဆာင္ရမဲ့ ကိစၥလို႔ ကြၧန္ေတာ္တို႔က အဲလို ျမင္ပါတယ္။'

ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားမ်ား လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအတြက္ ေတာင္းဆိုတဲ့ လက္မွတ္ ေျခာက္သိန္းေက်ာ္ကို ကမႝာ့ ႏုိင္ငံေပါင္း ၂၂ဝ ေလာက္က လူေတြ ပါဝင္ ေရးထုိးခဲ့တယ္လုိ႔ သိရပါတယ္။ လက္မွတ္ ေတြကို AVAAZ လုိ႔ ေခၚတဲ့ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ျမႇင့္တင္လႈပ္ရွားတဲ့ အင္တာနက္စာမ်က္ႏွာကေနလည္း စုေဆာင္း ေကာက္ယူခဲ့ရာမွာ မွတ္တမ္းေတြအရ လက္မွတ္ စတင္ေကာက္ယူခ်ိန္ကတည္းက ၁ဝ စကၠန္႔ကို လူတေယာက္ႏႈန္းက် ဆႏၵျပဳ လက္မွတ္ ေရးထုိးခဲ့ၾကတယ္လုိ႔ ဆုိပါတယ္။

ထုိင္းျမန္မာနယ္စပ္မွာလည္း လက္မွတ္ေတြကို ေကာက္ယူခဲ့ရာမွာ နယ္စပ္ ဒုကၡသည္စခန္း ေတြကေန လက္မွတ္ေပါင္း ႏွစ္ေသာင္းေက်ာ္၊ ေ႐ႊ႔ေျပာင္း အလုပ္သမားေတြဆီကေန ခုႏွစ္ေသာင္း နီးပါးနဲ႔ နယ္စပ္ၿမိဳ႕ မဲေဆာက္ကေန ႏွစ္ေသာင္းေက်ာ္ ရရွိခဲ့တယ္လုိ႔ သိရပါတယ္။

အခုလုိ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားမ်ား လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအတြက္ ေတာင္းဆုိတဲ့ လက္မွတ္ထုိး လႈပ္ရွားမႈနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး နယူးေယာက္ၿမိဳ႕ ကုလသမဂၢ႐ံုးခ်ဳပ္မွာ ဒီကေန႔ ဇြန္လ ၁၆ရက္ အဂၤါေန႔မွာ သတင္းစာ ရွင္းလင္းပြဲတရပ္ ျပဳလုပ္ဖို႔ ရွိတယ္လုိ႔လည္း သိရပါတယ္။ ဒီသတင္းစာ ရွင္းလင္းပြဲကို ကုလသမဂၢ ဆုိင္ရာ ခ်က္ႏိုင္ငံ အျမဲတမ္း ကုိယ္စားလွယ္အဖြဲ႕က တာဝန္ယူ ျပဳလုပ္တာျဖစ္ၿပီး ခ်က္ႏိုင္ငံဆုိင္ရာ သံအမတ္ႀကီး Mr. Martin Palouš ၊ FDB ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရးရာတာဝန္ခံ မခင္ဥမၼာ၊ AAPP အတြင္းေရးမွဴး ကုိတိတ္ႏုိင္နဲ႔ US Campaign for Burma အဖြဲ႕ ၫႊန္ၾကားေရးမွဴး ကိုေအာင္ဒင္တုိ႔က လႈပ္ရွားမႈနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ရွင္းလင္း ေျပာၾကားမယ္လုိ႔ သိရပါတယ္။

AAPP အတြင္းေရးမွဴး ကုိတိတ္ႏုိင္ကုိ RFA မွ ေဒၚနန္းခမ္းေထြးက ဆက္သြယ္ ေမးျမန္းထားပါတယ္။


Press Release

For immediate release - Tuesday 16 June 2009

Burma activists deliver political prisoner petition to Ban Ki-moon:
"Political prisoners are the hope for democracy in Burma. Their lives are at stake."

A delegation of former political prisoners and human rights activists from Burma have formally delivered a petition to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, calling on him to make it his personal priority to secure the release of all Burma's political prisoners. Almost 680,000 signatures were collected in just ten weeks in the largest global coordinated action for Burma yet.

The delegation included Tate Naing, former political prisoner and Secretary of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma); Khin Ohmar, Foreign Affairs Secretary of the Forum for Democracy in Burma; and Nyi Nyi Aung, whose mother and two cousins are serving jail terms of up to 65 years for their pro-democracy activities.

Nyi Nyi Aung said, "I am grateful to have had the opportunity to deliver this petition to the UN. I truly believe every signature counts. To Mr. Ban Ki-moon, my message is simple: Your words show you take this issue seriously. But now I want to see what action you will take to secure the release of my family and all Burma's political prisoners."

There are currently more than 2,100 political prisoners in Burma's prisons and labour camps. Last month, National League for Democracy member Salai Hla Moe became the 140th political prisoner to die in detention since 1988. His family were only informed of his death on a routine prison visit, almost three weeks after his death. The 48 year-old activist leaves behind a wife and four children.

Tate Naing said, "How many more political prisoners have to die before the UN will act? I urge Mr. Ban Ki-moon to accept nothing less than the immediate and unconditional release of all Burma's political prisoners in his current negotiations with the regime. He must not allow any more delay. Political prisoners, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, are the hope for democracy and future leaders of our country. Their lives are at stake."

-ENDS-



For media interviews, please contact:

Khin Ohmar, Forum for Democracy in Burma +1-240 4812482
Tate Naing, Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma) +1 646-9205744
Aung Din, US Campaign for Burma +1 301-6020077
Ricken Patel, Executive Director of Avaaz +1 646 229 5416


NOTES TO EDITORS:

1. Press Conference 3pm Tuesday 16 June New York

Speakers: H.E. Mr. Martin Palouš, Permanent Representative of the Czaech Rep. to the UN - opening remarks.
Ms. Khin Ohmar, Free Burma's Political Prisoners Now! campaign spokesperson and Foreign Affairs Secretary of the Forum for Democracy in Burma - an umbrella organisation of Burmese political groups in exile.
Mr. Tate Naing, former political prisoner and Secretary and Co-founder of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma).
Mr. Aung Din, former political prisoner and US Campaign for Burma Executive Director and Co-founder.

When: Tuesday, June 16 2009, 3pm

Where: 777, United Nations Plaza, 2nd Floor, 44th St. & 1st Ave., New York, NY 10017

Organizer: Permanent Mission of the Czech Republic to the United Nations in New York


2. The Campaign By Numbers

• A broad-based consortium of over 200 Burma exile and solidarity groups - including Avaaz, a massive online community of activists - have participated in the campaign, in 32 countries across 5 continents.
• 677,254 people from 220 different countries and territories have signed the petition.
• One person has signed the petition every 10 seconds since the campaign launched on 13 March 2009, Burma's Human Rights Day.
• In Thai-Burma border areas, over 60 roundtable discussions about political prisoners have taken place, for migrant workers and in refugee camps.

• Over 23,000 signatures were collected from refugee camps on the Thai-Burma border.
• Over 47,000 signatures were collected from migrant workers in Southern Thailand.
• Over 23,000 signatures were collected in the Thai-Burma border town of Mae Sot.

3. Campaign Consortium

The campaign is led by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma) and Forum for Democracy in Burma. Click on this link for a full list of all endorsing organisations involved in the campaign: http://www.fbppn.net/?page_id=1750

4. Nyi Nyi Aung's Family

• His mother, 60 year-old Daw Sann Sann Tin is serving a 9-year jail term in Meikhtila prison in Mandalay division.
• His cousin, 32 year-old Thet Thet Aung, is serving a 65-year sentence in Myingyan prison in Mandalay division. Her husband Chit Ko Lin is serving an 11-year sentence in Pakkoku prison, Magwe division. They are both members of the 88 Generation Students group led by Min Ko Naing. They have three young children who are currently being cared for Nyi Nyi Aung's aunt.
• His cousin, 21 year-old Nwe Hnin Yee aka Noe Noe is a student activist serving an 11-year jail term in Ma-ubin prison in Irrawaddy division.

5. Political Prisoner Statistics

• There are currently 2,155 political prisoners in Burma.
• Since October last year, more than 350 of them have been sentenced to harsh sentences of up to 104 years in prison.
• Since November last year, more than 230 political prisoners have been transferred to jails all around the country, far from their families. This makes it hard for their families to visit, due to the distances and costs involved. It also means it is very difficult for families to provide their loved ones with essential food and medicines. For more information about the health impact of prison transfers, please read this report Burma's prisons and labour camps: silent killing fields by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma) http://www.aappb.org





Thanks N Regards,

Assistant Association for Political Prisoners (Burma)
Web: http://www.aappb.org, http://www.fbppn.net
"There can be no national reconciliation in Burma,
as long as there are political prisoners."