Burmese leader fears harsh military crackdown

MYANMAR
03/31/2010 16:05

Win Tin believes that Myanmar’s ruling military junta will crackdown on the National League for Democracy. He anticipates the government to outlaw the party, but is certain that the opposition will continue the struggle “to dismantle the entire military dictatorship”. Tokyo announces a freeze on aid to Myanmar until Aung San Suu Kyi’s release.

Yangon (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Myanmar’s military regime is likely to launch a new crackdown against the National League for Democracy (NLD), this according U Win Tin, a member of the party’s Central Executive Committee. “Our movements will be very much limited when we don’t have a party. If we” do move “and stand against them [the junta], they will declare our party an unlawful association,” said Win Tin who was a political prisoner between 1989 and 2008.  Meanwhile, the Japanese government has decided to freeze aid to Myanmar until Aung San Suu Kyi is released.

The NLD, which is the main opposition party, will not participate in parliamentary elections organised by the military junta for this year. Its central executive committee decided in a unanimous vote on Monday to stay away from the poll. However, if the party fails to register by 6 May, it will no longer be deemed a lawful organisation.

In the last elections held in 1990, the party had won by a landslide (82 per cent of the vote), but it was never able to take power because the military government refused to accept the result.

Win Tin (pictured), who spent 19 of his 80 years behind bars for his role in the struggle for democracy, is strongly opposed to registering the party. NLD leader and Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi is also against it.


“We are working to abolish and dismantle the entire military dictatorship,” he said. For this reason, he expects them to “come down harshly against us,” he said. 

“We cannot expel Aung San Suu Kyi” just to run in these elections, he explained. Likewise, “We do not accept the regime's unilaterally drafted constitution,” which is “designed to legalise permanent military dictatorship.”

The NLD’s decision has not met with unanimous approval at home or among junta opponents abroad.
Some are in favour, like Burmese poet Ko Lay who was “pleased with this decision,” believing that “this election will not take place”, and the Indian Parliamentarians Forum for Democracy in Burma (IPFDB), which called the NLD’s decision a bold step against the military junta.

Others are against it. The New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research said the NLD is making a mistake by staying out of the political process, since the elections could provide it with a window of opportunity.

In the meantime, Japan’s foreign minister Katsuya Okada said that Tokyo would freeze aid to Burma unless the junta released opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and allowed her to participate in elections this year.

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Burmese-leader-fears-harsh-military-crackdown-18031.html

သတင္း စီးဆင္းမႈ ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္ေရး ကက-ကြန္ ျပင္ဆင္ေန

နရီလင္းလက္ Wednesday, March 31, 2010 
 
ျပည္တြင္း သတင္း အခ်က္ အလက္မ်ား ျပည္ပ မီဒီယာမ်ားသို႔ စီးဆင္းမႈအား အဆင့္ျမင့္ နည္းပညာသံုး၍ ပိုမိုထိန္းခ်ဳပ္ႏိုင္ရန္  တပ္မေတာ္ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာ ကြန္ရက္မ်ား ညြန္ၾကားေရးမႉး႐ုံး (ကက-ကြန္) က တိုးျမႇင့္ စီစဥ္ေနေၾကာင္း နီးစပ္သူမ်ားထံမွ သိရ သည္။

ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ရွိ အင္တာနက္ ကဖီးဆိုင္တဆိုင္တြင္ အင္တာနက္ အသုံးျပဳေနသူမ်ားကို ေတြ႕ရစဥ္
သတင္း အခ်က္ အလက္မ်ား ေျခရာခံသည့္ နည္းပညာမ်ား သင္ယူရန္ ႏုိင္ငံျခားသို႔ သင္တန္း သားမ်ား ေစလႊတ္ျခင္း၊ ေခတ္မီ ဆက္သြယ္ေရး ကိရိယာမ်ား ၀ယ္ယူရန္စီစဥ္ ေနျခင္းမ်ားကို ျပဳလုပ္လ်က္ ရွိသည္ဟု ကက-ကြန္ မွ အရာရွိ တဦးက ေျပာဆို သည္။

“အဓိကက ျပည္ပ သတင္း မီဒီယာ ေတြဆီ သတင္းေတြ ေပါက္ၾကား တာကို လံုး၀ မလိုခ်င္တာေလ၊ ဒါေၾကာင့္လည္း ဆိုက္ဘာ စီးတီးကေန ကြန္နက္ရွင္ကို ေႏွးေအာင္ လုပ္လိုက္၊ လိုင္းေတြ ျဖတ္လိုက္ လုပ္ေနတာ၊ အခုကေတာ့ ပိုအဆင့္ျမင့္တဲ့ နည္းပညာေတြနဲ႔ တားဆီးဖို႔ သင္တန္း သားေတြ ေစလႊတ္ခဲ့တာ”ဟု ၎က ဆိုသည္။

ကက-ကြန္ သည္ ရတနာပုံ ဆုိက္ဘာစီးတီးတြင္ အေျချပဳ၍ သတင္းအခ်က္အလက္မ်ားအားလံုး စိစစ္ၾကည့္႐ႈေနေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။ 

“႐ုရွား ၊အိႏၵိယနဲ႔ စင္ကာပူ ႏိုင္ငံေတြကို ကက-ကြန္ မွာ တာ၀န္ေပးဖို႔ ဆိုၿပီး သင္တန္းသား အေယာက္ ၁၅၀ လႊတ္ခဲ့တယ္''ဟု ကက-ကြန္ ၀န္ထမ္းေရးရာ႒ာနမွ တာ၀န္ရွိသူတဦးက ေျပာသည္။

ယင္းသင္တန္းသားမ်ားျပန္လည္ေရာက္ရွိေနၿပီျဖစ္၍ အသုံးျပဳရန္ ေခတ္မီ ပစၥည္းကိရိယာမ်ား လိုအပ္ေနေသာေၾကာင့္ ထပ္မံ မွာယူရန္ျပင္ဆင္ေနေၾကာင္းလည္း ၎က ဆုိသည္။

ကက-ကြန္ ကဲ့သို႔  ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံရဲတပ္ဖြဲ႕ ရဲခ်ဳပ္႐ုံးလက္ေအာက္တြင္လည္း (Cyber Crime ) ဆုိက္ဘာ မူခင္းမ်ား ဌာန ဖြဲ႕စည္း ထားေၾကာင္း ယင္း႒ာနမွ ဒုရဲအုပ္ တဦးက ေျပာျပသည္။

“အဓိက လုပ္ငန္းေတြက ဆုိက္ဘာအသုံးျပဳျပီးျဖစ္လာမယ့္ မႈခင္းအႏၲရာယ္တားဆီးေရးလုိ႔ ဆုိၿပီး ေျပာထားေပမယ့္ တကယ့္ အလုပ္ကေတာ့  ဆုိက္ဘာအသုံးျပဳသူေတြဘာေတြ သံုးသြားတယ္၊ ဘယ္သူေတြနဲ႔ဆက္သြယ္တယ္ဆိုတာေတြ စိစစ္တာ၊ အင္တာနက္ သံုးတဲ့သူေတြအတြက္ကေတာ့ လုံၿခံဳစိတ္ခ်မႈမရိွတာအမွန္ပဲ''ဟု အထက္ပါ ဒုရဲအုပ္က ေျပာသည္။ 

အင္အား ၁၅၀ ခန္႔ျဖင့္ ဖြဲ႕စည္းထားျပီး ႐ုရွား ၊ အိႏၵိယ ႏွင့္စင္ကာပူ ႏုိင္ငံမ်ားတြင္  သင္တန္းတက္ေရာက္ထားၾကေၾကာင္း၊
ယင္း ဌာန၏ အၾကီးအကဲမွာ ႏုိင္ငံျဖတ္ေက်ာ္မႈခင္းမ်ားဌာန အၾကီးအကဲ ရဲမႉးၾကီး စစ္ေအး ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္းသိရသည္။

ျပင္သစ္ အေျခစိုက္ Alcatel Shanghai Bell ကုမၸဏီသည္ ျပင္ဦးလြင္ ရွိ ရတနာပံု တယ္လီပို ့တြင္ ေဆာဖ့္၀ဲ ထုတ္လုပ္မႈ လုပ္ငန္းအတြက္ စစ္အစိုးရ ႏွင့္ အက်ိဳးတူပူးေပါင္း လုပ္ကိုင္လ်က္ရွိရာ ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္ႏွစ္အတြင္း ဆက္သြယ္ေရး ပစၥည္း အေမရိကန္ ေဒၚလာ သိန္း ၆၀ ေက်ာ္ဖိုး ေရာင္းခ်ခဲ့ၿပီးေၾကာင္း ျမန္မာ့ဆက္သြယ္ေရး၀န္ႀကီးဌာနက ေျပာသည္။

Alcatel Shanghai ကုမၸဏီ၏ ရန္ကုန္ ဌာနခြဲ ကို ကမာၻေအး ဘုရားလမ္းရွိ ဆီဒိုနားဟိုတယ္ ငါးထပ္ေျမာက္တြင္ ဖြင့္လွစ္ထားၿပီး  စစ္အစိုးရ ထိပ္ပိုင္း ေခါင္းေဆာင္တခ်ိဳ႕ႏွင့္ နီးစပ္သည့္ ကုမၸဏီတခုျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

http://www.irrawaddy.org/bur/index.php/news/1-news/2911-2010-03-31-05-47-37

Genocide in Burma

By Michael Busch, March 25, 2010

Nearly 50 years after a military-led coup overthrew Burma's last democratically elected government, the Southeast Asian country has suffered some of the world's most egregious human rights abuses. For activists, Burma has become synonymous with institutionalized rape, torture, forced labor, and ethnic cleansing. In the popular imagination, however, the enormity of Burma's crisis remains obscured by indifference and the overshadowing presence of disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Darfur.

In 2006, Mother Jones editor and human rights reporter Mac McClelland volunteered as an English language teacher with a Burmese refugee organization in Mae Sot, Thailand, a small frontier town hugging the border with Burma. There she lived, worked, and partied with a small band of hard-drinking refugees who risk their lives to document the slowly grinding genocide consuming ethnic minorities in Burma. Although the government of Burma has perpetrated human rights abuses for decades, a concerted military effort targeting ethnic minorities has been underway since 2001. Since then, well over half a million ethnic Karen Burmese have been killed, conscripted into forced labor, internally displaced, and driven from the country. McClelland collects their stories of struggle and survival under a murderous regime in a wide-ranging, meticulously reported, and vividly recounted new memoir, For Us Surrender is Out of the Question.

McClelland sat down recently with Foreign Policy in Focus to discuss her new book, the reason the world continues to ignore the genocide in Burma, and why there still may be hope for victims of the world's longest-running war.

MICHAEL BUSCH: I hoped we could begin by setting the stage a bit. Can you discuss how it is that you came to work with Burmese refugees in Thailand?

MAC MCCLELLAND: It really was as lame as I describe it in the book. I was dicking around on the Internet, saw something about these Burmese refugee camps near the border in Thailand, but I couldn't find any information about why they were there. I saw that there were 100,000 Burmese refugees in Thailand, and I was like, "Huh? Really?" I had never heard that before. Of course, you know somewhere in the back of your mind that Burma sucks, that it's not exactly a place you would want to live, not exactly a bastion of democracy, but I hadn't heard that there was a refugee crisis, that there are hundreds of thousands of refugees leaving the country. I couldn't find any easily accessible information about what the hell the story was, so when I finished graduate school I was like, "I'm just gonna go and check it out."

BUSCH: Did you travel there with the intention of writing a book?

MCCLELLAND: No. I really just wanted to go and see what was going on.

BUSCH: What was the most surprising thing that you experienced while you were there?

MCCLELLAND: Well, the genocide. The genocide that I had never heard of, that most people have never heard of because people are afraid to label it a genocide. It's too complicated, too politically charged. To realize that something of that scope, at that level of horror, was happening and that it's not widely reported—despite the fact that it has been documented to death—was stunning to me. I mean, to every single thing that came out of the mouths of these guys that I was working with my response would be, "Really?!?" They would show me videos, and pictures, and I would get interviews, just endless stacks of shit, and with all of it, in every case, my response was, "No, that's news to me. No, that story doesn't exist in my media. No, I don't know what you are talking about." In retrospect, I guess it was stupid to have had faith in thinking that I would have known about this. But it is so big! You would think that somebody would have been doing something about it.

BUSCH: So, why haven't they? Is it simply that Burma is home to the world's longest running war, and so doesn't constitute news? Is news fatigue a factor? Or is there something else going on that we should consider?

MCCLELLAND: Yeah, well, it seems to me that the fact that the war is so old could possibly have something to do with it. But at the same time the story is so juicy, it is so shocking, that it seems to me like something that could totally move papers. But it's also that people in this country — this is not as true in the UK — don't really know what Burma is, where Burma is, don't necessarily know what continent Burma is on.

So I think that news organizations assume that the story will be a hard sell, and they're probably right. If I were more of a conspiracy theorist I would say that the genocide in Burma is being underreported because our government doesn't want the people to know about it because then they would have to do something about it. And they don't want to do something about it because then China would get mad. But really, I think it's just a hard-to-sell story.

Of course, it could also be fatigue: people definitely had Haiti fatigue, just as they had New Orleans fatigue before that. The thing with Burma, though, is it seems like it hasn't reached that point. I just think we don't know what to do with it. Instead, we talk about the same thing over and over again, which is that there's a political prisoner [Aung San Suu Kyi] there. Couldn't we use that as a news peg to say "Oh, and by the way, there's also a genocide going on"?

BUSCH: Let's talk about your approach to reporting on the crisis in Burma. There's a wonderful tension in the book between the rigorous historical research that contextualizes the story — which feels almost academic in nature — and the vigorously informal tone you adopt that frames the narrative. First, did this mixture result from having a particular audience in mind while writing? And second, can you discuss the challenges of negotiating the slippery slope between these two elements of your style?

MCCLELLAND: I definitely did not have a particular audience in mind. To me, the number one thing was that I had the stories of these refugees which were fucking crazy. I really wanted to tell them. Period. As for the way the narrative came about, that was more the result of personality than anything else. First of all, I am a huge nerd: I love research and fact-checking and collecting information. At the same time, I write the way that I speak. When we were shopping the book proposal, a lot of people were not huge fans of that. They would be like, "Yes, this is an important subject and people should write more books about Burma. But we can never abide the scathing, obnoxious tone of this narrator!"

Since the excerpt from the book came out in the new Mother Jones, some pretty important organizations — I won't name any names — have written letters to the editor saying "What the fuck were you thinking, framing this in this way. It's totally inappropriate for a human rights story." So I guess I know, now, who is not my audience! They thought that I was undermining the importance of the situation by not being drier in talking about it. But for me, that's exactly the problem with all this information! It's presented in a way that no one would ever want to look at it. Even the videos you see have these dire voiceovers — almost always done by British people — and there's always this slow and sad piano music in the background. The moment you queue it up you say to yourself "I'm not going to watch this. It's going to be boring and/or sad."

I've read a thousand books about Burma. Even the modern ones still read like reports, like academic tracts. They're long, there's no narrative, and there are no characters. Because there are no characters, I think that makes it hard for people to read them and engage with this conflict. So, I was basically writing the book I needed when I was trying to find out what was going on. This was the book I was looking for and couldn't find.

BUSCH: Given the jaw-dropping violence and atrocities being perpetrated in Burma, and the world's seemingly indifferent response thus far, do you still hold any faith that the United Nations or other members of the international community will intervene on behalf of victims there at any point in the foreseeable future?

MCCLELLAND: I have some. We have peacekeepers on the ground in Darfur, after all, so we know we can do it. It's not like the mechanisms aren't there, that money isn't there. They are. It's just that people aren't employing them. Thank God I can point to Sudan, though, because otherwise I would probably answer no, I don't have much faith. In Burma, those villagers would be so happy to see something like that. Even just the attention would be important. They would be so happy that people knew what was happening. It would make a huge difference in their lives. So yes, I do have some faith. I recognize that it might be stupid, but if more people were talking about Burma, then the UN would be forced to address it.

BUSCH: Let's talk about U.S. foreign policy for a moment. Given the necessary political will to act on the situation in Burma, what options, if any, could the Obama administration reasonably pursue to have a positive impact there?

MCCLELLAND: First of all, our government could lead the charge for a commission of inquiry into crimes against humanity in Burma. Everyone knows that the United States is in charge, in many ways, of the UN, and certainly of the Security Council. So, if we made a big deal of Burma, showed that this is a cause that we are behind and are willing to fight for, that would make a huge difference in comparison to what we are doing now, which is nothing. If a commission of inquiry were to be put into place then all this documentation sitting around would have to be looked at. I can't imagine that people would see all that and then decide that this is not a problem. The Obama administration actually wouldn't even have to do all that much work: it wouldn't cost anything. People wouldn't have to be moved around. The president would simply have to say, "We need to do this thing, right now."

BUSCH: You make the point in the book's closing chapter that when it comes to U.S.-China relations, economic concerns trump human rights complaints that Washington might otherwise press with respect to Burma. Yet in the case of Darfur, we saw something a little different play out. Why? What are the key determinants that distinguish these two situations?

MCCLELLAND: I think civil society plays a huge part. First of all, it's about awareness: the public doesn't know about Burma, and if the public doesn't know about Burma then they aren't putting pressure on politicians to talk about it. And so they won't, because it's easier to ignore it.

The "g" word also plays a big part in this. Right now, we just have this vague idea about Burma — that there's a dictatorship or something there, that they sound really mean, and that there's a lot of censorship. This is not enough for people to get behind, to pressure the United States to stand up to China and fight them on the issue. But imagine if someone threw it out there, called it what it was, and said, "This is a genocide! These are the pictures. Here is the evidence." This is what happened in the case of Darfur. The exact same thing could happen in Southeast Asia. There's no reason why it couldn't.

BUSCH: A host of possible actions, peaceful and coercive, have been articulated to pressure the Burmese junta to respect basic human rights and prepare the way for civilian rule. At the end of the day, other options having been considered, what do you think about possibilities for military intervention in Burma? Is this going too far?

MCCLELLAND: I don't think it's going too far. In my opinion, peacekeepers are the answer. At least, they're as close to the answer as we're likely to get. The ideal solution, of course, would be that the country eventually evolves away from dictatorship and builds the necessary institutions for a democratic society and blah blah blah. In the meantime, someone needs to protect these fucking villagers in the east of Burma. It's absurd what's happening. I read exile newspapers. Every single day, there are reports of five-year-old girls being gang-raped, 4,000 new refugees pouring over the border into southern China, this sort of thing. It is so urgent. Perhaps not to you, perhaps not to me, but it is for the people who have to deal with it. The fact that this has been going on for so long, and that so few people know about it, is ridiculous.

Michael Busch, a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, is a research associate at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies and a doctoral student in international relations at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/genocide_in_burma

US blames junta for election boycott

US blames junta for election boycott thumbnail
Suu Kyi's party will now be legally abolished (Reuters)
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESS
Published: 30 March 2010

The United States on Monday blamed Burma’s junta for the opposition’s decision to boycott upcoming elections, saying the regime missed an opportunity to move forward.

State department spokesman Philip Crowley said that the situation in Burma was “disappointing” but indicated that the United States would maintain its policy of engaging the longtime US pariah.

“This is a reflection of the unwillingness of the government in Burma to take the necessary steps to open up the political process,” Crowley told reporters.

“We think this is an opportunity lost in terms of Burma’s ability to demonstrate that it is willing to contemplate a different course of action, a different relationship with its own people,” he said.

The National League For Democracy, which swept the last elections in 1990 but was never allowed to take power, decided Monday to boycott the polls that are expected later in the year.

The move came after the junta introduced a law that would have forced the party to oust democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi as its leader.

The United States has sharply criticized the law, saying that it would make the upcoming election a mockery of democracy.

But Crowley indicated that the United States would continue dialogue despite its failure to persuade the junta to change course on the election.

“I don’t know that we expected necessarily everything to be resolved in one or two or three meetings,” Crowley said.

President Barack Obama’s administration, which has made reaching out to adversaries a signature policy, last year opened talks aimed at bringing Burma out of its isolation.

A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the administration’s thinking had not changed.

“We will talk to Burma because we think it’s in our interest to talk to Burma,” the official said. “We recognize that other things we’ve done in the past had not been successful.”

The United States has maintained economic sanctions on Burma but said it would be willing to lift them eventually in return for progress.

Japan has called for the Group of Eight major industrial nations, who meet Monday in Canada, to send a strong signal to Burma on democratization.

စက္ျဖင့္ စစ္ေဆးႏိုင္သည့္ ပတ္စ္ပို႔မ်ား စတင္ထုတ္ေဝ

အီးေမးလ္ပုိ႔ရန္ ပရင့္ထုတ္ရန္ PDF ဖုိင္ရယူရန္

ရန္ကုန္ (မဇၥ်ိမ)။ ။ ႏိုင္ငံကူးလက္မွတ္ (ပတ္စ္ပို႔) အတုမ်ား ျပန္႔ႏွံ႔ေနသည္ကို တိုက္ဖ်က္ရန္အတြက္ စက္ျဖင့္ စစ္ေဆးႏိုင္ေသာ ပတ္စ္ပို႔မ်ား အစားထိုးမႈကို စစ္အစိုးရက ယမန္ေန႔တြင္ စတင္လိုက္သည္။

ကြန္ျပဴတာျဖင့္သာ စစ္ေဆးၾကည့္႐ႈႏိုင္သည့္ ဘားကုတ္မ်ား ေဖ်ာက္ထားေသာ ပတ္စ္ပို႔မ်ား ထုတ္ေဝျခင္း ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ရန္ကုန္ ပတ္စ္ပို႔႐ံုး ဝန္ထမ္းတဦးက ေျပာဆိုသည္။
myanmar-passport
ယခု စနစ္သစ္ ပတ္စ္္ပို႔စာအုပ္ ျပဳလုပ္ခမွာ ၁၉ဝဝဝ က်ပ္ႏွင့္ အြန္လိုင္း ဝန္ေဆာင္ခ ၁ဝဝဝ က်ပ္ ေပးေဆာင္ရေၾကာင္း လက္မွတ္ေလွ်ာက္ထားသူမ်ားက ေျပာဆိုၾကသည္။

စနစ္ေဟာင္း ပတ္စ္ပို႔ ေလွ်ာက္ထားစဥ္က ေဖာင္ပံုစံဝယ္ယူရာ၌ ၁၄ဝဝ က်ပ္၊ ဓာတ္ပံု႐ိုက္ရာ၌ ၃၅ဝဝ က်ပ္၊ ပတ္စ္ပို႔စာအုပ္အတြက္ ၈ဝဝဝ က်ပ္ႏွင့္ အြန္လိုင္းဝန္ေဆာင္ခ ၅ဝဝ က်ပ္ အပါအဝင္ ေဖာင္တင္ေသာ ေနရာရွိ တာဝန္က် ရဲဝန္ထမ္းအတြက္ က်ပ္ ၅ဝဝ ေပးေဆာင္ရေသးသည္။ ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ ပန္းဆိုးတန္းလမ္းရွိ ပတ္စ္ပို႔႐ံုး အရာရွိမ်ားအတြက္ လာဘ္ထိုးရသည္မ်ားရွိေနၿပီး၊ ထုိသို႔ မျပဳလုပ္ပါက ပတ္စ္ပို႔ ရရွိဖြယ္မရွိေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

အလုပ္အကိုင္ ရွာေဖြရန္ႏွင့္ ေရၾကည္ရာျမက္ႏုရာအျဖစ္ ႏိုင္ငံရပ္ျခားသို႔ ခရီးသြားလာသည့္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံသားမ်ားအေနျဖင့္ ပတ္စ္ပို႔ ေလွ်ာက္ထားသည့္အခါ ယခင္က တလ သို႔မဟုတ္ ထိုကာလထက္ ပိုမို၍ ေစာင့္ဆုိင္းၾကရေသာ္လည္း ယခုအခါ မည္မွ်ၾကာျမင့္မည္ကို မသိရွိၾကေသးပါ။

မိမိႏိုင္ငံသားမ်ားအား လက္ေရးစနစ္သံုးမွ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ ဘားကုတ္ စနစ္သံုး Smart Card ပတ္စ္ပို႔မ်ားျဖင့္ အစားထိုး လဲလွယ္ေပးရန္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ ၿမိဳ႕ျပေလေၾကာင္း ပ်ံသန္းမႈဆိုင္ရာ အဖြဲ႔အစည္း (International Civil Aviation Organization) က ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရကို ေတာင္းဆိုထားေၾကာင္း ရန္ကုန္တိုင္း ျပည္ထဲေရး၏ သတင္းရပ္ကြက္အဆိုအရ သိရသည္။

''ႏိုင္ငံကူးလက္မွတ္ေတြကို အီးစနစ္ႏွင့္ အသစ္ျပဳလုပ္ေပးတာကို ၾကိဳဆိုပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ အရင္က စနစ္မွာက်ေတာ့ စာအုပ္ရဖို႔အတြက္ တလၾကာတယ္။ အခုလို ဒီစနစ္ကို ေျပာင္းလိုက္ေတာ့ေကာ စာအုပ္ရမယ့္ အခ်ိန္က ဘယ္ေလာက္ ကာလတိုသြားမလဲ။ ဒါက အေရးၾကီးပါတယ္'' ဟု ျပည္ပခရီးသြား ကုမၸဏီတခုမွ လုပ္ငန္းအေတြ႔အၾကံဳရွိသူတဦးက ေျပာသည္။

ျမန္မာနုိင္ငံကူးလက္မွတ္ကို ျပည္ထဲေရးဝန္ၾကီးဌာနလက္ေအာက္ခံ သတင္းရဲတပ္ဖြဲ႕က ထုတ္ေပးလ်ွက္ရွိျပီး အစိုးရအရာရွိမ်ားအတြက္ အစိမ္းေရာင္ႏွင့္ က်န္သူမ်ားအတြက္ကို အနီေရာင္အျဖစ္ ခြဲျခားထုတ္ေပးလွ်က္ရွိသည္။

http://www.mizzimaburmese.com/news/inside-burma/5142-2010-03-30-11-15-13.html

NLD Says 'No' to Election


By THE IRRAWADDY Monday, March 29, 2010

Burma's main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), on Monday decided against registering for the general election this year, a party spokesman told The Irrawaddy.

“Without any objections, all the party leaders reached a consensus not to register the party and join the election because the junta's election laws are unjust,” said senior party official Khin Maung Swe who attended the meeting at the party's Rangoon headquarters. “We also agreed to call for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all other political prisoners.”

Members of the detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy gather at Rangoon's headquarters before its central committee meeting on March 29. (Photo: AP)
Party officials said that the lawyer of detained leader Suu Kyi read out a message from Suu Kyi to the party leaders at the meeting and said that “Daw Suu could not accept the party registering under the unjust laws, but she said that neither she nor anyone else owns the party. Therefore, the party members have to make the decision by themselves democratically.”

The party's 92-year-old party chairman, Aung Shwe, who recently voiced support for the party registering and taking part in the election, did not join in the meeting, but instead sent a letter stating that he would follow Suu Kyi's decision, according to the party spokesman.

Nearly 160 party representatives from across the country gathered at the party's headquarters to take part in the meeting. The discussion mainly heard the views of the party's central committee members. Reportedly, only one of them voiced the opinion that a political party “cannot be involved in politics without existing.”

“U Tin Wai from Kachin State expressed his opinion on party registration, but accepted the majority decision,” said Ohn Kyaing, a party official. The election laws prohibit parties from having members who are currently in detention, so a decision to register would have forced Suu Kyi out of the party.

About 50 party members wearing white T-shirts bearing a slogan saying “No” gathered in front of the party compound. Female party members were also reportedly holding a large green gourd presented to them by Suu Kyi last Tuesday through her lawyer. The word “No” is said to have been written on the gourd.

Although security was heightened with four riot police trucks deployed near the party headquarters, there were no reports of harassment of NLD leaders by the authorities.

Before the meeting, several township representatives and party youth leaders declared that they will stand by Suu Kyi's stance against registration, claiming that they can still struggle for democratic rights without a political party.

The party decision would appear to ensure that the NLD will cease to exist as a legal entity as of the May 7 deadline for party registration, according to the election law.

Many observers are currently speculating what will become of the party after it ceases to be a valid political entity, and what kind of action the regime will take against the NLD's leadership and its party members.

A political analyst in Rangoon, said that what the NLD does after May 7 would depend on the wit and wisdom of the party leaders at the local level.

Reuters correspondent Martin Perry said, “The boycott, however, could backfire and marginalize the NLD, possibly leading to its dissolution. Its credibility as a pro-democracy force will be questioned now it has spurned the chance to be part of a political transition that the junta itself says will be lengthy and challenging.”

Perry said that the decision of the NLD “came as a disappointment to the international community, which has long painted Suu Kyi and the NLD as the people's choice and the best hope for a democratic Myanmar [Burma].”

In Suu Kyi's statement, she said that the party will not come to an end, and she also relayed a message to the Burmese people saying that she will continue her efforts for democracy.

Last week, Suu Kyi reportedly told her lawyers that if the imprisoned former student leader Min Ko Naing could fight for democracy in Burma without a political “signpost,” she could do the same.

Charismatic Min Ko Naing and several student activists of the 88 Generation Students group were arrested in 2007 and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

The election laws bar more than 2,000 political prisoners from taking part in the election which junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe described as “the very beginning of the process of fostering democracy” in his speech on Armed Forces Day in Naypyidaw on Saturday.

No date has been announced for the upcoming election, which critics have called a sham designed to keep the military in power through the facade of an elected government.

The NLD won a landslide victory in Burma's last election in 1990, but the results were never honored by the regime. Party leader Suu Kyi is currently serving an 18-month term of house arrest. With her sentence due to expire in November, Suu Kyi would not be released before the polls expected in October.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=18143&page=2

Suu Kyi's NLD party to boycott Burma election

NLD supporters meet outside party headquarters in Rangoon on 29 March 2010
The NLD said the new election laws were "unjust"

Page last updated at 11:34 GMT, Monday, 29 March 2010 12:34 UK

Burma's main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), says it will not take part in the country's first polls in two decades.

An NLD spokesman said the party had decided not to register because of "unjust" electoral laws.

The laws recently announced by the junta required the NLD to expel its detained leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, because she has a criminal record.

Its refusal to register means the NLD will no longer be legally recognised.

No date has been set for the elections, but the military has pledged to hold them this year.

The NLD won the last elections in 1990 but was never allowed to take power.

The BBC's South East Asia correspondent, Rachel Harvey, says the party's decision to boycott the coming election, rather than ousting its charismatic leader in order to participate, was largely expected.

But the move will do nothing to ease international concern about the country's already heavily-criticised political standards, she adds.

No compromise

The NLD's decision followed a meeting of more than 100 party members in Rangoon.

NLD spokesman Nyan Win said the party had agreed that it could not participate in the elections under the new laws, which were announced in early March.

BURMA'S ELECTION
Constitution: 25% of seats in parliament reserved for the military
Constitution: More than 75% approval required for any constitutional change
Election law: Those with criminal convictions cannot take part - ruling out many activists
Election law: Members of religious orders cannot take part - ruling out monks
Election commission: Handpicked by Burma's military government

"After a vote of the committee of members, the NLD party has decided not to register as a political party because the election laws are unjust," Reuters news agency quoted him as saying.

He had earlier indicated that the decision would likely go that way.

"We will continue to exist politically by not registering," he said before the meeting. "If we register, we will only have a name void of all political essence."

If the NLD had chosen to take part, it would have implied its acceptance of the military's constitution - something it has so far refused to do.

Last week Nyan Win said Ms Suu Kyi had told him the party should "not even think" of taking part in the polls because of the nature of the election laws.

But some senior NLD leaders had argued the party risked rendering itself irrelevant if it chose not to contest the polls, even though that participation would be constrained by the military.

Aung San Suu Kyi (file image)
Aung San Suu Kyi had indicated that she opposed her party taking part

Win Tin, a veteran NLD member and one of Burma's longest serving political prisoners, described the meeting as a "life-or-death issue".

"If we don't register, we will not have a party and we will be without legs and limbs," he said before the meeting.

The new election laws have been condemned by the UN, US and UK, amongst others.

The laws state that parties cannot have any members with criminal convictions - which rules out many top NLD leaders who have been jailed because of their political activism.

The laws also ban members of religious orders and civil servants from joining political parties. Buddhist monks were the driving force behind anti-junta protests in 2007.

Critics say both the election laws and the constitution under which the elections will be held are designed to ensure that the military retains a firm grip on power in Burma.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8592365.stm

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is 100% Correct

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is 100% Correct
(The unwavering emblem of Burmese National Character)

Kanbawza Win

When it come to national character I could not stay aloof, even though my eye specialist refrain me to working too much on computer, as I have just celebrated by 73rd birthday. In my earlier essay I have highlighted of how the success of the coming unfair elections will depend on the third party participating and now the NLD is at the cross road. If one were to look back at the not so recent history of modern Burma, it starts with the concordat at Panglong Conference where the ethnic nationalities decided to throw their lot with the Myanmar/Burman to gain independence from Britain. The authentic Burmese national characteristic of Union of Burma (Pyidaungsu Thar (ျပည္ေထာင္စုသား) torch by our beloved Bogyoke Aung San was short lived as the civilian government could not solve the ethnic grievances and the end result was the military administration came into power in 1959 as a caretaker and three years later in a coup de’é tat.

ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ေဒၚစုပါ၀င္ခြင့္ မရွိရင္ ဂ်ပန္က စီးပြားေရးကူညီမႈ ရပ္ဆိုင္းမည္



28 March 2010

Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, March 9, 2010-AP
ဂ်ပန္ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး
ကတ္ဆုယာ အုိကာဒါ။
မတ္ ၉၊ ၂၀၁၀။
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္နဲ႔ တျခား ပါ၀င္ယွဥ္ၿပိဳင္ထိုက္တဲ့ သူေတြ ပါ၀င္ခြင့္ မေပးဘူးဆိုရင္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံကို ေပးေနတဲ့ အကူအညီေငြေတြ ထပ္ေပးေတာ့မွာ မဟုတ္ဘူးလို႔ ဂ်ပန္ ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး ကတ္ဆုယာ အုိကာဒါ (Katsuya Okada) က ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဂ်ပန္အစိုးရက ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရနဲ႔ ဆက္ဆံရာမွာ အကူအညီေပးမယ္၊ မေပးဘူးဆိုၿပီး ေခ်ာ့တလွည့္၊ ေျခာက္တလွည့္ ဆက္ဆံေလ့ ရွိတာမို႔ အခုလို ေျပာလိုက္တာဟာ ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့ ဩဂုတ္လကမွ အာဏာရလာတဲ့ လက္ရွိ ဂ်ပန္အစိုးရ အေနနဲ႔ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီ အေရးအတြက္ တကယ္ပဲ အေလးအနက္ထား ေျပာဆိုတယ္လို႔ ေျပာႏုိင္ပါသလား။ အေၾကာင္းစံုကို ေနာ္႐ိႈးက တင္ျပေပးထားပါတယ္။

ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ အပါအ၀င္ တျခား ပါသင့္ပါထိုက္သူေတြကို ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ ပါ၀င္ယွဥ္ၿပိဳင္ခြင့္ မေပးဘူးဆိုရင္ လက္ရွိ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံကို ေပးေနတဲ့ အကူအညီေတြကို ဆက္ေပးေတာ့မွာ မဟုတ္ဘူးလို႔ ဂ်ပန္ ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး ကတ္ဆုယာ အုိကာဒါက ဂ်ပန္ႏုိင္ငံဆိုင္ရာ ျမန္မာသံအမတ္ႀကီး ဦးလွျမင့္ အျပင္ တျခား သတင္းေထာက္ေတြကို ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့ ေသာၾကာေန႔က ေျပာခဲ့တယ္လို႔ က်ဳိတို သတင္းဌာနမွာ ေရးသားထားတာပါ။ ေနာက္အပတ္ ကေနဒါႏုိင္ငံမွာ က်င္းပမယ့္ G-8 စက္မႈအင္အားႀကီး ၈ ႏုိင္ငံ အစည္းအေ၀းမွာလည္း ျမန္မာ့အေရးကို တင္ျပ ေဆြးေႏြးသြားမယ္လို႔ ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။

အရင္ႏွစ္ ႏို၀င္ဘာတုန္းကလည္း လက္ရွိ ဂ်ပန္၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ အာကီယုိ ဟတုိယာမ (Akio Hatoyama) က အာဏာရၿပီး ၂ လ အၾကာမွာပဲ ၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ မတုိင္မီ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္နဲ႔ ႏုိင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားေတြ အားလုံးကို ျပန္လြႊတ္ေပးမယ္ဆိုရင္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံကို အကူအညီေတြ ပိုေပးမယ္လို႔ ေျပာခဲ့ဖူးပါတယ္။ ၂၀၀၇ ခုႏွစ္ သံဃာ့လႈပ္ရွားမႈတုန္းကလည္း ဂ်ပန္ သတင္းေထာက္တဦး နအဖ စစ္သားေတြရဲ႕ ပစ္သတ္ျခင္းကုိ ခံခဲ့ရၿပီးေနာက္ ဂ်ပန္ အစိုးရက ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံကို အကူအညီ ေပးတာေတြ ရပ္ဆုိင္းမယ္ဆုိၿပီး ၿခိမ္းေျခာက္ခဲ့ဖူးပါတယ္။

ဒီေတာ့ အာဏာရ ဂ်ပန္အစိုးရ အဆက္ဆက္ အေနနဲ႔ ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့ ၁၀ ႏွစ္တာ ကာလတြင္းမွာ အခုလို ျမန္မာစစ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြနဲ႔ ဆက္ဆံတဲ့အခါမွာ အကူအညီေတြ တိုးေပးမယ္၊ မတိုးေပးေတာ့ဘူးဆိုၿပီး ေခ်ာ့တလွည့္၊ ေျခာက္တလွည့္ ေျပာလာတာကေတာ့ အဆန္းမဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ ဒါေပမဲ့ လက္ရွိ အစိုးရသစ္တြင္းမွာ ဦးေဆာင္ေနသူေတြက အရင္ကတည္းက ျမန္မာ့ဒိီမိုကေရစီ အေရးအတြက္ စိတ္အားထက္သန္သူေတြ ျဖစ္တာေၾကာင့္ ျမန္မာစစ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြနဲ႔ ဆက္ဆံတဲ့ေနရာမွာ အရင္ ဂ်ပန္အစိုးရေတြထက္ ပိုၿပီး ျပတ္ျပတ္သားသား ရွိလိမ့္မယ္လို႔ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ေၾကာင္း ဂ်ပန္ႏုိင္ငံ အေျခစိုက္ NCUB ျပည္ေထာင္စု ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ အမ်ဳိးသားေကာင္စီက ေဒါက္တာမင္းညိဳက သံုးသပ္ပါတယ္။

“အခု လက္ရွိ အစိုးရက ဒီမုိကရက္ပါတီက တက္လာတာေၾကာင့္မုိ႔ အရင္တုန္းက လစ္ဘရယ္ ဒီမုိကရက္ပါတီထက္ စာရင္ ပုိၿပီးေတာ့ ျပတ္ျပတ္သားသား ရွိလာလိမ့္မယ္လို႔ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ၿပီး ေတာင့္တေနခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဘာျဖစ္လို႔လဲဆုိေတာ့ အခု က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ေတြ လုပ္ကုိင္ေနတဲ့ ဂ်ပန္မွာရွိတဲ့ ဂ်ပန္ အလုပ္သမားသမဂၢမ်ားက ေနၿပီး အဓိက ကူညီေထာက္ပံ့တဲ့ ဒီမိုကရက္ပါတီက အာဏာရလာတာေၾကာင့္၊ ေျပာရရင္ လက္ရွိ၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ မစၥတာ ဟတုိယာမ ဆုိတာက ျမန္မာျပည္ ဒီမုိကေရစီ ရရွိေရးကို အကူအညီေပးတဲ့ အမတ္သမဂၢမ်ားမွာ သူက ဒုတိယဥကၠ႒လည္း လုပ္ခဲ့တယ္၊ ေနာက္တခါ နာယကလည္း လုပ္ခဲ့ဖူးပါတယ္။ ၿပီးေတာ့ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္နဲ႔လည္း တယ္လီဖုန္းနဲ႔ စကားေျပာဆုိခဲ့ဖူးတာ ရွိတာေၾကာင့္မုိ႔ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္နဲ႔ NLD ကုိ အျပည့္အ၀ ေထာက္ခံတဲ့ ၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ ျဖစ္တယ္။

“ၿပီးေတာ့ သူတို႔ေတြက မႏွစ္ ၾသဂုတ္လမွာ တက္လာၿပီးေနာက္ပုိင္း ျမန္မာျပည္က ၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္နဲ႔ ေတြ႕ၾကတဲ့အခ်ိန္မွာ အရင္တုန္းက ၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ေတြ ေျပာတဲ့ စကားနဲ႔စာရင္ ေတာ္ေတာ္ ျပင္းျပင္းထန္ထန္ ေျပာတယ္လို႔ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ယူဆတယ္။ ဘာျဖစ္လုိ႔လဲဆိုေတာ့ အရင္တုန္းကေတာ့ ဒီမုိကေရစီ လုပ္ပါ၊ ဒီမုိကေရစီ လုပ္တယ္ဆိုရင္ ခင္ဗ်ားတုိ႔ကုိ အကူအညီေပးမယ္၊ မလုပ္ဘူးဆုိရင္ေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ျဖတ္လိမ့္မယ္။ ျဖတ္လိမ့္မယ္လို႔ပဲ ေျပာတယ္။ မေပးႏုိင္ဘူးဆုိတာ မေျပာၾကဘူး။

“ေနာက္ၿပီးေတာ့လည္း ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ ျဖစ္တဲ့ အတြင္းေရး ကိစၥေတြကုိ သူတုိ႔မွာ ေျပာဆုိပုိင္ခြင့္ မရွိဘူး ဆိုၿပီးေတာ့၊ ေျပာရင္ေတာ့ ႏႈတ္ဆိတ္ၿပီး ေနတဲ့ ဓေလ့ရွိတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ အခု မစၥတာ ဟတုိယာမ တက္လာၿပီး ေနာက္ပုိင္းမွာ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္နဲ႔ ႏုိင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားေတြ လႊတ္ေပးဖုိ႔ ေျပာတာတင္ မကဘဲနဲ႔ နယ္မွာရွိတဲ့ NLD ႐ုံးအဖြဲ႕ေတြကို ဖြင့္ေပးဖုိ႔၊ ဒီမုိကေရစီ နည္းက်က် လုပ္ကုိင္ေပးဖို႔ ေတာင္းဆုိခဲ့တာ ေတြ႕သလို အခု ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး ျဖစ္တာလည္း သူက အရင္တုန္းက ဒီမုိကရက္ပါတီက ဥကၠ႒ေဟာင္းလည္း ျဖစ္ခဲ့ဖူးတဲ့ ပုဂၢိဳလ္ျဖစ္တယ္၊ ၿပီးေတာ့ ထင္ရွားတဲ့ ေခါင္းေဆာင္တဦးလည္း ျဖစ္တာေၾကာင့္မုိ႔ သူကလည္း ဒီမုိကေရစီနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ရင္ ပြင့္ပြင့္လင္းလင္း ျမန္မာျပည္ အေရးကို ေထာက္ခံတဲ့ပုဂၢိဳလ္ ျဖစ္ေနတာေၾကာင့္ ေျပာရရင္ေတာ့ ပုိၿပီးေတာ့ ပြင့္ပြင့္လင္းလင္း လုပ္လိမ့္မယ္လို႔ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ထင္တယ္။”

ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရရဲ႕ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဥပေဒ ထြက္မလာခင္တုန္းကလည္း လက္ရွိ၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ ဟတုိယာမက ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ထားရွိတဲ့ ဂ်ပန္အစိုးရရဲ႕ မူကို လိုအပ္ရင္ ျပန္လည္ သံုးသပ္ရလိမ့္မယ္လို႔ ေျပာခဲ့တဲ့အေၾကာင္းကိုလည္း ေဒါက္တာမင္းညိဳက ေထာက္ျပပါတယ္။

“ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဥပေဒ ထြက္မလာခင္ကေလးမွာ အဆာဟိ သတင္းစာနဲ႔ အင္တာဗ်ဴးလုပ္တဲ့ အခ်ိန္မွာ သူက ဘယ္လိုေျပာခဲ့လဲဆိုေတာ့ အားလုံးပါလို႔ မပါႏုိင္တဲ့ အေနအထားမ်ဳိး ေရာက္မယ္၊ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကို မပါႏုိင္ေအာင္ လုပ္မယ္ဆုိရင္ေတာ့ သူတုိ႔ေတြ အခုလက္ရွိ လုပ္ကုိင္ေနတဲ့ ျမန္မာျပည္အေပၚမွာ ထားခဲ့တဲ့ ေပၚလစီကုိ သူတုိ႔ စဥ္းစားရလိမ့္မယ္ဆိုၿပီး သတင္းစာထဲမွာ တရား၀င္ ပါထားတယ္။ ပါထားတာကို ေသာၾကာေန႔မွာ သူက ဒါကို ပိုၿပီးေတာ့ တရား၀င္ ေျပာလုိက္တာပဲ။”

ေဒါက္တာမင္းညိဳ ေျပာျပသြားတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံမွာ ၂၀၀၃ ခုႏွစ္ ဒီပဲယင္း အေရးအခင္းအၿပီး ဂ်ပန္အစိုးရက ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံကို ေပးေနတဲ့ စီးပြားေရး အကူအညီေတြကို ရပ္ဆုိင္းခဲ့ၿပီး လူသားခ်င္း စာနာေထာက္ထားတဲ့ အကူအညီေတြကိုပဲ ဆက္ေပးေနခဲ့တာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

http://www.voanews.com/burmese/2010-03-28-voa3.cfm

၂၀၁၀ ေ႐ြးေကာက္ပဲြ ကန္႔ကြက္သည့္ အခမ္းအနား ဂ်ပန္တြင္က်င္းပ


ခြန္ခမ္းတန္
၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္ မတ္လ(၂၈)ရက္။


ဂ်
ပန္ႏိုင္ငံရွိ ညီညြတ္ေသာတိုင္းရင္းသားမ်ားအဖြဲ႔အစည္း (AUN-Japan)မွႀကီးမွဴး၍ နအဖစစ္အုပ္စု စစ္အာဏာတည္ျမဲၿပီး တိုင္းျပည္ကို ရာသက္ပန္ စစ္ကၽြန္ျပဳမည့္ ၂၀၀၈ ခုႏွစ္ အေျခခံဥပေဒကို အတည္ျဖစ္ေစမည့္ ၂၀၁၀ ေ႐ြးေကာက္ပဲြႏွင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး ပါတီမ်ား မွတ္ပံုတင္ျခင္းဥပေဒ၊ ေ႐ြးေကာက္ပဲြ ဆိုင္ရာဥပေဒ(၅)ရပ္ႏွင့္ နည္းဥပေဒမ်ားအား ဆန္႔က်င္ ကန္႔ကြက္သည့္ အခမ္းအနားတရပ္အား တိုက်ိဳ Toshimaku ၿမိဳ ့နယ္ Minami Otsuka Da Ichi ခမ္းမ၌ ညေန ၆း၀၀ နာရီ မွ ၉း၀၀ အထိ က်င္းပျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ပါသည္။

အခမ္းအနားက်င္းပျပဳလုပ္ရျခင္း၏ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္မွာ ၂၀၀၈ အတင္းအဓမၼ အတည္ျပဳခဲ့သည့္ နာဂစ္ဥပေဒကို အတည္ျပဳမည့္ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲသည္ ျမန္မာျပည္သူ တရပ္လုံးအတြက္ အက်ိဳးမျပဳသည္သာမက တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ိဳးစုအသီးသီး၏ အမ်ိဳးသားတန္းတူေရးႏွင့္ ကိုယ္ပိုင္ျပဌာန္းခြင့္ရရွိေရးတိုကိုလည္း မ်က္ကြယ္ျပဳလိုက္ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။ တနည္းအားျဖစ္ဆိုေသာ္ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲရလဒ္သည္ နအဖစစ္အုပ္စု စစ္အာဏာတည္ျမဲၿပီး ဥပေဒအရ အခုိင္အမာ သက္ေသထူရန္သာျဖစ္သည္။

ထိုေၾကာင့္ ယေန ့ ၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ က်င္းပျပဳလုပ္မည့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲသည္ ယေန ့ျပည္သူမ်ား ရင္ဆိုင္ေနရေသာ အေထြေထြ အက်ပ္အတည္းမ်ားကို ေျပလည္ေျဖရွင္းႏိုင္မည့္ အေျဖမဟုတ္သည့္အတြက္ ၂၀၁၀ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲအား ရႈတ္ခ် ကန့္ကြက္သြားၾကရန္ႏွင့္ အတင္းအဓမၼက်င္းပ ျပဳလုပ္မည့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ရလဒ္ကိုလည္း ႏိူင္ငံတကာမွ အသိအမွတ္မျပဳၾကရန္ ရည္ရြယ္ က်င္းပျပဳလုပ္ရျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။


အခမ္းအနားအစီအစဥ္
္ ဂ်ပန္ႏုိင္ငံေရာက္ တုိင္းရင္းသားအဖြဲ႕အစည္းအသီးသီးတုိ႔မွ ၂၀၀၈ ခုႏွစ္ ဖြဲ႕စည္းပုံအေျခခံဥပေဒကုိ အတည္ျပဳမည့္ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲအား မိမိတုိ႔၏ အမ်ဳိးသားကုိယ္စားျပဳကာ အသီးသီးရႈေဒါင့္အမ်ဳိးမ်ဳိးျဖင့္ ေဆြးေႏြးကာ ကန္႔ကြက္သြားခဲ႔ၾကသည့္အျပင္ တက္ေရာက္လာၾကသည့္ အဖြဲ႕အစည္းအသီးသီးတုိ႔မွလည္း ကန္႔ကြက္ေျပာၾကားသြားခဲ႔ပါသည္။

တက္ေရာက္လာၾကသည့္ အဖြဲ႕အစည္းအသီးသီးတုိ႔မွလည္း မိမိတုိ႔၏ ဆႏၵသေဘာထားပါ၀င္သည့္ ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္တစ္ေစာင္ကုိ အမ်ား၏ဆႏၵသေဘာထား ရယူကာ သေဘာထားေၾကညာခ်က္ကုိ ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာသြားမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရပါသည္။ ဤအခမ္းအနားတြင္ ဂ်ပန္ႏုိင္ငံေရာက္ ျပည္ေထာင္စုဘြား တုိင္းရင္းသားအင္အားစုမ်ား စုစုေပါင္း 100 ေက်ာ္ခန္႔ တက္ေရာက္ပါ၀င္ခဲ႔ၾကပါသည္။

နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္ လက္မခံေၾကာင္း မြန္ျပည္သစ္ ထပ္မံဆုံးျဖတ္


ဝီရ/ ၂၆ မတ္ ၂ဝ၁ဝ

နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္အသြင္ေျပာင္းရန္ ျမန္မာစစ္အစုိးရက ေတာင္းဆုိထားသည့္ကိစၥကုိ မြန္ျပည္သစ္ပါတီက ယခင္ဆုံးျဖတ္ခ်က္ အတုိင္း လက္မခံဘဲ ပယ္ခ်ရန္ ထပ္မံဆုံးျဖတ္လုိက္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

မြန္ျပည္သစ္ပါတီ ေျပာေရးဆုိခြင့္ရွိသူ ႏုိင္ေျခးမြန္က “Border Guard ေျပာင္းဖုိ႔ကိစၥကုိ လက္မခံဘူးလုိ႔ အခု က်င္းပေနတဲ့ အစည္းအေဝးမွာ တညီတၫြတ္တည္း ထပ္ၿပီး အတည္ျပဳ ဆုံးျဖတ္တာျဖစ္တယ္။ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ရဲ႕ ရပ္တည္ခ်က္က ဘာမွ မေျပာင္းပါဘူး။ အခု စုံညီအစည္းအေဝးမွာ အရင္ကအတုိင္းပဲ ထပ္ဆုံးျဖတ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္” ဟု ေခတ္ၿပဳိင္သုိ႔ ေျပာၾကားသည္။

ပါတီေရွ႕လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္မ်ားအတြက္ ေရးေခ်ာင္းဖ်ားရွိ ၎တုိ႔၏ဗဟုိဌာနခ်ဳပ္၌ ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္ မတ္လ (၁၈) ရက္မွစ၍ ယေန႔အထိ ဗဟုိေကာ္မတီအစည္းအေဝး က်င္းပေနဆဲျဖစ္ၿပီး ယင္းအစည္းအေဝး ၿပီးဆုံးပါက သက္ဆုိင္ရာ စစ္အစုိးရအရာရွိထံ အေၾကာင္းၾကားသြားမည္ဟု ႏုိင္ေျခးမြန္က ေျပာသည္။

စစ္အစုိးရအေနျဖင့္ နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္ အစီအစဥ္ကုိ မျဖစ္မေန အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ပါက ရရွိထားေသာ ျပည္တြင္းၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး အေျခအေနသည္ စုိးရိမ္စရာအေနအထားသုိ႔ ေရာက္သြားႏုိင္သည္ဟု မြန္ျပည္သစ္က ေၾကညာထားသည္။

မြန္ျပည္သစ္ ဗဟုိအလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္တဦးက “ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့ မတ္ (၁၆) ရက္က က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ဒု-ဥကၠ႒နဲ႔ ရတခ (အေရွ႕ေတာင္တုိင္း စစ္ဌာနခ်ဳပ္) တုိင္းမႉး ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္သက္ႏုိင္ဝင္းတုိ႔ ေတြ႔တုန္းက နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္ကိစၥကုိ လက္မခံရင္ ပါတီရဲ႕ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ကုိ ခင္ဗ်ားတုိ႔စိတ္ႀကဳိက္ ဘယ္လုိေျပာင္းခ်င္သလဲဆုိတာ တင္ျပပါ။ ဘာလုိ႔လဲဆုိေတာ့ ဒီဗမာျပည္ေတာင္ဘက္ပုိင္းမွာ မြန္ျပည္သစ္ တဖြဲ႔တည္း ရွိတာတဲ့။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္ကိစၥဟာ ခင္ဗ်ားလက္ထဲမွာပဲ ရွိပါတယ္ဆုိၿပီး ပါတီရဲ႕တပ္ဖြဲ႔ကုိ အသြင္ေျပာင္းဖုိ႔ တုိင္းမႉးေျပာတာကုိလည္း က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ လက္မခံႏုိင္ဘူးလုိ႔ ေျပာခဲ့ၿပီးသားပါ။ ပါတီအေနနဲ႔က ႀကဳံေတြ႔လာမယ့္ အတားအဆီးအားလုံးကုိ ဒီရပ္တည္ခ်က္နဲ႔ပဲ ရင္ဆုိင္သြားမွာပါ” ဟု ေခတ္ၿပဳိင္သုိ႔ ေျပာၾကားသည္။

မြန္ျပည္သစ္ပါတီသည္ မြန္အမ်ဳိးသားမ်ားအတြက္ ဘဝအာမခံခ်က္မရွိဘဲ ပါတီႏွင့္ ၎၏တပ္ဖြဲ႔ မြန္အမ်ဳိးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး တပ္မေတာ္အား တပ္ခြဲထားျခင္း၊ ဖ်က္သိမ္းျခင္းကုိ လက္ခံလိမ့္မည္မဟုတ္ေၾကာင္း၊ ေတြ႔ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးျခင္းျဖင့္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးျပႆနာကုိ ေျဖရွင္းသြားရန္ လက္ရွိအစုိးရ၊ အနာဂတ္အစုိးရသစ္တုိ႔အား ဆက္လက္ ေတာင္းဆုိသြားမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ၎တုိ႔၏ ေနာက္ဆုံးေၾကညာခ်က္တြင္ ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။

၂၀၀၈ ဖြဲ႔စည္းပုံ အေျခခံဥပေဒကုိ ျပန္လည္သုံးသပ္ရန္၊ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားမ်ားကုိ လြတ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာခြင့္ေပးၿပီး အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရးအတြက္ ေတြ႔ဆုံေဆြးေႏြး အေျဖရွာသြားရန္ မြန္ျပည္သစ္က ျမန္မာစစ္အစုိးရအား ေတာင္းဆုိထားသည္။

စစ္အစုိးရ က်င္းပမည့္ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ ႏုိင္ေျခးမြန္က “အခု အစည္းအေဝးမွာ အေသးစိတ္ မသိရေသးပါဘူး။ အရင္က ဆုံးျဖတ္ခ်က္အတုိင္းပဲ ပါတီက ဒီေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ ဝင္ၿပဳိင္မွာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ ဒါနဲ႔ပတ္သက္ၿပီး အစည္းအေဝးမွာ ထူးထူးျခားျခား ဆုံးျဖတ္တာမ်ဳိး မရွိပါဘူး။ အရင္ကအတုိင္းပါပဲ” ဟု ေျပာၾကားသည္။

မြန္ျပည္သစ္ပါတီသည္ ၁၉၉၅ ခုႏွစ္က စစ္အစုိးရႏွင့္ အပစ္ခတ္ရပ္စဲေရး ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့သည္။

စစ္အစုိးရက ဖ်က္သိမ္းထားေသာ ၁၉၉၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ အႏုိင္ရပါတီ မြန္အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမုိကေရစီအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ကလည္း လာမည့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲတြင္ ဝင္ေရာက္ယွဥ္ၿပဳိင္မည္မဟုတ္ေၾကာင္း ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္ မတ္လ (၂၄) ရက္ေန႔က ထပ္မံအတည္ျပဳ ဆုံးျဖတ္လုိက္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

http://www.khitpyaing.org/news/March%202010/26310c.php

Fearing War, People Leave Wa Region


By SAW YAN NAING Thursday, March 25, 2010

Some businessmen and others are leaving the Panghsang area, the headquarters of the United Wa State Army (UWSA), in fear of a war between the Burmese regime and the Wa army, according to sources in the area.

The businessmen, some of whom are ethnic Wa who carry out trade in Pang Long, Hopang and along the Sino-Burmese border, are reportedly returning to their homes for security reasons.

The United Wa State Army is the strong ethnic army in northern Burma.

Aung Kyaw Zaw, an observer who follows developments along the border, said he believed the fears over war were overblown, and that he doubted there would be an outbreak of hostilities. The UWSA, reportedly with about 30,000 troops, is the largest of the ethnic armed groups.

“It is just a threat. If they [the Burmese regime] wanted to fight, the war would have already happened,” said Aung Kyaw Zaw.

A government worker in the capital, Naypyidaw, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday that some government staff in the Wa region were asked to return home this week. She said that she did not know the details of why the authorities ordered staff to leave Wa areas.

“We just collect the list of returning people and report to officials,” she said. “We were not told why they asked those in Wa areas to return home.”

Some non-governmental organization (NGO) staff were also reportedly asked to leave the Wa region, according to sources.

Many NGO and UN relief groups including the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and World Food Program (WFP) operate humanitarian assistance and development projects such as the poppy substitution program around Panghsang and in Wa regions on the Thai-Burmese border.

According to Burmese government sources, about 70,000 regime troops have reinforced existing troops in northern Shan State near areas controlled by the UWSA, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and ethnic Shan rebel bases.

Tension between the regime and cease-fire groups such as the UWSA and the KIA are high, because both groups have rejected the junta's border guard force order to transform their army and place it under the control of the junta.

Recently, the KIA moved important documents and office equipment from its headquarters in Laiza to safer locations.

Another hold-0ut cease-fire group, the New Mon State Party (NMSP), has also moved some departments and its stockpile of weapons to a new undisclosed base, after negotiations with the regime stalled.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=18120

တီက်စ္ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးတြင္းေၾကာင့္ ရြာသားမ်ားကို အႏၱရယ္ျပဳႏိုင္



ရွမ္းျပည္ေတာင္ပိုး ပင္ေလာင္းၿမိဳ႕နယ္မွ တီက်စ္ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးဓါတ္အားေပးစက္ရံုသည္ ေန႔စဥ္ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးျပာ တန္ေပါင္း ၁၀၀ ႏွင့္ ၁၅၀ ၾကား ထြက္ရွိသည္။ ထိုျပာမ်ားကို အိမ္ေျခ ၅၀၀ ခန္႔ရွိ တီက်စ္ရြာ၏ အနီးတြင္ စြန္႔ပစ္ထားသည္။ စက္ရံု၏ဆူညံသံံ၊ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးျပာက ေလထဲ့ လြင့္သည့္ျပသာနာ၊ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးတြင္းမွ ထြက္လာသည့္ေရသည္ ေခ်ာင္းတြင္းသို႔ စီးဆင္းလာသည့္ ျပသာနာမ်ားကို ရြာသားမ်ားက ရင္ဆိုင္ေနရသည္။

တီက်စ္ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးကို ေျမမ်က္ႏွာျပင္ အဖြင့္တူးေဖာ္မႈရွိသလို လယ္ကြင္းႏွင့္ လက္ဖက္ၿခံေနရာမ်ားတြင္ ေျမေအာက္ရွိ ေက်ာက္ေက်ာမ်ားကို လိုက္ၿပီး တူးေဖာ္သည္လည္းရွိသည္။ ထိုေၾကာင့္ ရြာသားမ်ားသည္ မိမိတို႔ၿခံမ်ားတြင္ အလုပ္လုပ္သည့္အခါ ေျမၿပိဳမည့္အႏၱာရယ္ ရင္ဆိုင္ရမည္ကို စိုးရိမ္စိတ္ျဖင့္ ေတာင္ယာကို လုပ္ေနၾကသည္္။

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ရွိေသာ ေရေႏြးေငြ႕ ဓါတ္အားေပးစက္ရံုထဲတြင္ တီက်စ္ေက်ာက္မီးေသြး ဓါတ္အားေပးစက္ရံုသည္ အႀကီးဆံုးစက္ရံုျဖစ္သည္။ မဂၢါ၀ပ္ ၆၀ ရွိေသာ တာဘိုင္ႏွစ္လံုးျဖင့္ လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓါတ္အား ၁၂၀ မဂၢါ၀ပ္ထုတ္လုပ္ေပးၿပီ ၂၀၀၅ ေဖေဖာ္၀ါရီလတြင္ စတင္ဖြင့္လွစ္ခဲ့သည္။ ယင္းဓါတ္အားေပးစက္ရံုကုိ တရုတ္ကုမၸဏီတစ္ခုျဖစ္သည့္ China National Heavy Machinery cooperation မွ တာ၀န္ယူ တည္ေဆာက္ၿပီး USD ၄၂.၉၃ သန္း ကုန္က်သည္။

စက္ရံုမွ လိုအပ္ေသာ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးကို ကေမာဇဘဏ္ႏွင့္ ရွမ္းရိုးမနဂါးကုမၸဏီက တာ၀န္ယူၿပီး စက္ရံုႏွင့္ တစ္မိုင္အကြာတြင္ ရွိေသာ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးတြင္းမွ ေန႔စဥ္ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြး တန္ခ်ိန္ ၁၇၅၀ မွ ၂၀၀၀ ၾကားထိ ထုတ္လုပ္ေနသည္။ ထိုေက်ာက္မီးေသြးသိုက္သည္ ၅၄၄ ဧက ခန္႔ရွိၿပီ ၁၉၈၉ ခုႏွစ္က စတင္ေတြ႕ရွိခဲ့သည္။ ေန႔စဥ္ ၁၇၅၀ တန္ တူးယူႏိုင္မႈကို ထြက္ပါက ၂၇ ႏွစ္စာ တူးေဖာ္ႏိုင္မည္ဟု ဆိုသည္။

မွတ္ခ်က္= ေအာက္ပါ သတင္းဌာနမ်ားက တင္ျပထားသည့္ သတင္းမ်ားမွ ေကာက္ႏုတ္ထားသည္။
Weekly eleven 9-1-2008
ျမန္မာ့အလင္းသတင္းစာ ၂၄. ၇. ၂၀၀၈
Myanmar first international weekly; April 5-11, 2004 Vol 11 No 211

http://bwarsara.blogspot.com/ မွ ကူးယူေဖၚျပသည္။

15 More Parties to Register


By KYAW THEIN KHA Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Fifteen parties have confirmed that they will register for this year's election.

The parties will join two other political organizations—the Union of Myanmar Federation of National Politics (formerly known as the Union of Myanmar National Political Force) and the 88 Generation Student Youths (Union of Myanmar)—that registered on Monday to contest the election.

Four of the parties planning to register previously belonged to the National Political Alliance (NPA), a group consisting of nine small political parties that was formed after the Burmese junta announced its election law on March 8.

Under the law, all parties must register by May 7.

Two of the four former NPA members, the Demo NLD and the Reconciliation Research and Analysis Study Group, will register together as the United Democratic Party. The new party plans to contest nationwide.

The two other former NPA members will contest the election regionally. The Nationalist NLD (which, like the Demo NLD, includes former members of the NLD) will contest in Mandalay Division and the Union of Myanmar National Force Arakan State will contest in Arakan State.

So far, nine parties have told The Irrawaddy that they will contest nationwide, while another six parties say they intend to run in their respective regions.

The following parties have registered or plan to register to contest the election nationally:

  1. Union of Myanmar Federation of National Politics (registered)
  2. 88 Generation Student Youths (Union of Myanmar) (registered)
  3. National Unity Party
  4. National Political Alliance
  5. Union Democratic Alliance
  6. Democratic Party
  7. Union Solidarity and Development Association (expected to form more than one party)
  8. United Democratic Party
  9. Peace and Diversity Party
  10. A party formed by Phyo Min Thein (the name of the party hasn't been announced yet)
  11. A party formed by self-described “Myanmar Bengalis” (the name of the party hasn't been announced)

The following parties will contest regionally:

  1. Kachin State Progressive Party
  2. The Union of Myanmar National Force Arakan State
  3. Mon National Democratic Front
  4. Karen People's Party
  5. Nationalist NLD
  6. Scientific National Politics Party, based in Maymyo (Pyin Oo Lwin)

The following parties contested in the 1990 election but have not yet registered for this year's election:

  1. National League for Democracy
  2. National Unity Party
  3. Shan National League for Democracy
  4. Union Pa-o National Organization
  5. Shan State Kokang Democratic Party
  6. Mro or Khami National Solidarity Organization
  7. Lahu National Development Party
  8. Union Karen League
  9. Kokang Democracy and Unity Party
  10. Wa National Development Party

The NLD will decide on whether to register or not on March 29, but the party's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has already stated that she is not in favor of the move. The NUP, which ran as the main junta-backed party during the 1990 election, said it has decided to contest the election and will register next week.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=18112

Suu Kyi Against NLD Joining Elections



By BA KAUNG Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Detained National League for Democracy (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi has rejected her party's participation in the polls, but she is leaving the final decision to her party, said her lawyer, Nyan Win, after meeting Suu Kyi on Tuesday.

Speaking with The Irrawaddy after his meeting with Suu Kyi, Nyan Win said “Suu Kyi would not even think of registering under these unjust [election] laws.”

He said, “She wanted party members to know that the party would have no dignity if it registers and participates in the election.”

On Monday, the NLD Spokesman Khin Maung Swe said party members handed a letter to party Chairman Aung Shwe on Monday saying NLD central executive committee members agreed that the scheduled assembly of more than 100 party leaders on March 29 would leave the final decision to register the party to Suu Kyi and Aung Shwe.

The letter said party members would not follow the initial plan to have a secret ballot on whether the party should register on March 29.

The election law prohibits parties with members currently in detention, so a decision to register would force Suu Kyi out of the party.

Last week, 92-year-old Aung Shwe, who was a Brigadier General under the former dictator Ne Win, and some party leaders expressed their willingness to register the party, while other leaders stated their preference for party dissolution—which the party would face if it does not register—rather than expelling Suu Kyi and withdrawing the party's call for a review of the regime-drafted Constitution.

On Monday, the party issued a statement saying they had requested permission from the regime to have a meeting between Suu Kyi and her party central executive committee members in order that the NLD can continue its political functions. The statement also mentioned that the regime did not respond to a similar request first made on March 17.

Leading party officials Win Tin and Khin Maung Swe disagree on the registration issue—Win Tin thinks the party should not register while Khin Maung Swe thinks it should—yet both agreed that Suu Kyi should make clear her opinion on what the party should do.

The party leadership is currently under pressure from exiled opposition members and some influential individuals inside Burma not to register.

Last weekend, the renowned Burmese journalist Ludu Sein Win chastised the party, saying it has done nothing for the public during the past 20 years.

Sein Win said if the NLD decides to register—which requires the party leadership to vow that it would protect the junta's Constitution—then the party should make a public apology saying it was wrong for the party leadership to have walked out of the junta's National Convention and issue the Shwegondaing Declaration calling for a review of the Constitution.

The National Convention was held to draft the controversial 2008 Constitution and the NLD party decided to walk out following Suu Kyi's release from house arrest in 1995.

Analysts say there is little chance for the party to repeat another landslide victory in this year's polls without the endorsement of Suu Kyi.

But, Khin Maung Swe, who supports the party contesting the election, said the party can still become a viable force in the future parliament even if it cannot get outright victory in the election.

“Even if the political space in the future parliament is very limited, it is our duty to expand the democratic channel, even if it is just a crack, a crevice or a seepage,” he said.

Former political prisoners living in Rangoon said there is a lot of confusion within the party and among the public on what the party should do.

“Daw Suu was the main decision maker when the party decided to leave the regime's National Convention,” said a former political prisoner in Rangoon who wished to conceal his identity, adding that Suu Kyi has urged the people to “respond to unjust laws with unity and courage.”

In 1990, when the NLD was divided on whether to contest the election, Suu Kyi's decision to participate broke the gridlock and resulted in the NLD gaining an unexpected landslide victory, but the junta never acknowledged the results.

If the NLD party fails to register within 60 days from March 8 when the junta's election law was announced, it will cease to exist as a legal entity according to that law.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=18105

No. 4 Steel Plant (Myingyan) of Myanmar Economic Corporation opened

Iron and steel industry being improved to ensure national
development and generate job opportunities for local people
No. 4 Steel Plant (Myingyan) of Myanmar Economic Corporation opened

NAY PYI TAW, 21 March-Secretary-1 of the State Peace and Development Council Quartermaster- General General Thiha Thura Tin Aung Myint Oo today attended opening ceremony of No. 4 Steel Plant (Myingyan) of Myanmar Economic Corporation under the Ministry of Defence in Myingyan Township, Mandalay Division. He unveiled the plaque of the newly inaugurated plant.

Also present at the ceremony were Lt-Gen Tha Aye of the Ministry of Defence, Chairman of Mandalay Division PDC Commander of Central Command Maj-Gen Tin Ngwe, ministers, deputy ministers, senior military officers of the Ministry of Defence, departmental heads, service personnel, responsible persons of the No. 4 Steel Plant (Myingyan) and Danieli Co of Italy, social organization members and local residents.

The Secretary-1 in his address said since its assumption of State duties, the Tatmadaw has been taking all necessary measures for smooth transition to democracy and market economy.

For a country, peace and development are necessary for democratic process and the market economy. So, the SPDC gives top priority to peace and stability. It has been c o n s t r u c t i n g infrastructural buildings across the nation for national development such as roads, bridges, dams, factories, health care centres and educational institutions.

In the process, cement and steel are major inputs. So, the government has been building cement plants and iron and steel industries complexes. No. (4) Steel Plant (Myingyan) will take the centre stage of the iron and steel industry by manufacturing steel billets and slabs for other plants.

Here, I would like to present a brief account of the historical background of Myanmar’s iron and steel industry.

Ywama Steel Plant in Insein Township, Yangon Division, is the first of its kind in Myanmar. It was built in 1955 according to the principle adopted at 1946 Sorrento Villa Conference in the preindependence period. In 1956, it started production of deformed bars, round bars, barbed wire, and nails.

Another iron and steel plant was built in Anisakhan, PyinOoLwin Township, in 1979. The pilot plant produced raw materials for production of steel billets and industrial ironware.

The annual output of Ywama and PyinOoLwin steel plants ranged from 5000 to 10,000 tons.

With the concept that only with iron and steel industries complex will the nation develop, the government made sustained efforts.

In order to set up an iron and steel industries complex, No. (1) Steel Plant was established in K y a u k s w e k y o , Aunglan Township, Bago Division, in 1996.

In 1999, it began its production line at the annual production rate of 150,000 to 200,000 tons. No. (2) Steel Plant (Myaungdagar) in Hmawby Township, Yangon Division, was built in 1997, and commissioned in 1999. It produces 150,000 tons of steel slabs and 12,000 tons of fabrication parts a year. Now, follow-up programmes are in progress to boost its production to 30,000 tons. However, we still had to import steel billets and slabs as raw materials for the plants. No. (4) Steel Plant (Myingyan) and No. (5) Steel Plant (Pinpet) are designed to produce billets and slabs for other plants.

In order to get steel raw material before No. (5) Steel Plant (Pinpet) starts its production line of pig iron from iron ore, ship dismantling workshop (Thilawa) was built in 2000. It was operated in 2002.

Myanmar has three rich iron deposits. The first deposit is in P y i n O o L w i n (Kyadwinyay) and it holds about three million tons of iron ore. The second deposit is in Pinpet on the border between Taunggyi and Hopong townships, and it holds about 70 million tons of iron ore. The third is in K a t h a i n g t a u n g , Phakant Township, and according to the estimation, it holds about 230 million tons of iron ore.

Regarding the iron and steel industries complex under construction, pig iron from No. (5) Steel Plant (Pinpet) and scraps from the ship dismantling workshop (Thilawa) will be sent to No. (4) Steel Plant (Myingyan). No. (5) Steel Plant (Pinpet) has a target of 200,000 tons of pig iron a year. Ship dismantling workshop (Thilawa) will produce 50,000 tons of iron scraps a year.

The iron ore in Pinpet is of two types: hematite and lemonite. According to the size of the plant, iron ore can be exploited from the deposit for about 150 years. Pig iron will be produced from iron ore with the romelt process of the Russian Federation. A coal mine is in-operation in old Wanhok Village in Kehsi Mahsam Township. It holds about 37 million tons of coal, from which Pinpet Plant can get coal for 75 years.

No. (4) Steel Plant (Myingyan) produces steel billets for No. (1) Steel Plant (Kyaukswekyo), and steel slabs for No. (2) Steel Plant (Myaungdagar).

No. (1) Steel Plant (Kyaukswekyo) will also get billets from No. (4) Steel Plant (Myingyan) and No. (3) Steel Plant (Ywama), and will produce deformed bars, round bars, wire coils
and angle iron.

No. (2) Steel Plant (Myaungdagar) will produce various sizes of billets for shipbuilding, apart from steel plates, H beams, I beams, girders, and trusses.

No. (3) Steel Plant (Ywama) has boosted its annual iron production rate from less than 10,000 to 50,000 tons. It mainly produces 12-meter billets, and produces barbed wire, binding
wire, nails, sieves and chain links, oxygen, argon and nitrogen. The plant is in the process of being upgraded to produce high tensile steel bolts and nuts.

No. (4) Steel Plant (Myingyan) is to be upgraded to produce different sizes of hot roll sheets, cold roll sheets, colour sheets, and corrugated zinc sheets. It also has a plan to boost annual production of goods from 200,000 to 400,000 tons after production of pig iron from iron ore from the deposit of Kathaing mountain.

The plants will be linked with railroads for easy transport.

In conclusion, he said that all the steel plants operate as an iron and steel industries complex to produce finished products in combination for bridge and building projects. The iron and steel industry is being improved to ensure national development and generate job opportunities for local people.

The rapid development of the iron and steel sector is due to the establishment of iron and steel industries complex.

The Myanmar Economic Corporation under the Ministry of Defence is working hard to fulfil the requirement of iron and steel of the nation.

The commander, Minister for Mines Brig- Gen Ohn Myint and responsible persons formally opened the plant.

Next, the Secretary-1 cordially greeted the attendees. He then unveiled the plaque of the plant.

At the meeting room of the plant, the acting managing director of Myanmar Economic Corporation elaborated on construction of the plant, production of steel ware, buildings in the plant compound, installed machines, and organization set-up to the Secretary-1.

The Secretary-1 and the acting managing director presented commemorative gifts to Mr Mareschi Danieli Giacomo of Danieli Co.

The Secretary-1 later looked around the plant. He put his signature to first billet manufactured from the plant and so did Lt-Gen Tha Aye, the commander, the minister and officials.

The secretary-1 and party had documentary photo taken.

The Secretary-1 gave away gifts to foreign engineers who are discharging at the plant.

No. 4 Steel Plant (Myingyan) is located near Sakha Village, Myingyan Township, Mandalay Division.

The plant was constructed on 16 May 2005 to manufacture 0.2 million tons of steel billets and slabs per year which is main raw materials of steel rolling mills and steel plate mills undertaken by Myanmar Economic Corporation. Now, the plant is running at full capacity.

The plant is outfitted with scrap yard equipment, 60-ton Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) which can manufacture 900 tons of steel, 60-ton Ladle Furnace (LF), 60-ton Vaccum Degasser (VD), continues casting machine which can cast 1936 tons of steel billets per day, Thin Slab Caster (TSC) which can produce two to five million steel slabs per year, fume treatment plant, air seperation plant that can produce oxygen, nitrogen and argon gases, compressed air plant, steam boiler plant, natural gas station, lime plant, material handling system, 15 electric overhead travelling cranes, sub power station, maintenance workshop, and a laboratory.

Moreover, guesthouse, staff quarters, market, main office, security gate, mess hall, store shops, cargrage, outside car parking, canteen, and technological high school have also been constructed for employee convenience.

The plant is bound to manufacture two million steel billets and 50,000 steel slabs per year.

The Secretary-1 and party arrived Ayeyawady Bridge (Pakokku) Construction Project on Letpanchepaw bank in NyaungU Township at 1.15 pm. They were welcomed by Deputy Minister for Construction Brig- Gen Myint Thein, Chairman of Magway Division Peace and Development Council Col Phone Maw Shwe, Col Mya Tun Oo of Pakokku station and departmental officials.

Minister for Construction Maj-Gen Khin Maung Myint reported the Secretary-1 on the progress in construction of the project carried out by Special Project Construction Group (3) of
Public Works of the ministry, implementation of the project simultaneously on Letpanchepaw bank, Yelaykyun and Pakokku bank to complete the construction on schedule, facts about the bridge and 15 per cent completion of the project implemented since 15 December 2009.

Commander Maj- Gen Tin Ngwe submitted report on situation of environs of the bridge and Lt-Gen Tha Aye presented supplementary report. Minister for Rail Transportation Maj-Gen Aung Min explained the construction of approach railroad, situations of railroad of Ayeyawady Bridge (Malun), and emergence of railroad network upon completion of three strategic railroads.

The Secretary-1 called for meeting set standard and carrying out constant waterway surveillance.

The State is implementing five bridge projects over Ayayawady River in 2009-2010 fiscal year. Among them, Sinkhan, Pakokku, Malun and Nyaungdon bridges are rail-cum-road ones.

Yadana Theingha Bridge is the only motor road one. On completion of the projects, the number of Ayeyawady River spanning bridge will reach 13.

Upon completion, Ayeyawady Bridge (Pakokku) will become the longest one in Myanmar with its length of 21,886 feet.

The Secretary-1 and party arrived back here by helicopters at 4 pm.

http://www.myanmar.com/newspaper/nlm/index.html

Burma's long, hard road to democracy

Burma might need three or four more elections before it could have a working democracy, but it has to start with the first election, according to leading dissidents.

But many activists remained unconvinced, saying the general election is intended only to whitewash the entrenched military rule.

Harn Yawnghwe, executive director of Brussels-based Euro-Burma Office, said there was nothing much the outsiders could do - Asean and China strictly hold on to the non-interference principle while the US seemed to be obsessed with Afghanistan, Iran and other concerns.

But it did not mean that these countries were not involved.

“Asean will eventually accept the election, no matter what the results will be, hopefully not blatantly,” said Mr Harn, of Shan ethnic, at Chulalongkorn University’s public forum Monday on "Myanmar/Burma – Domestic Developments and International Responses."

Inside Burma, there also seemed to be very limited options, “Certainly, the military will not allow people a lot of chances and they will not bring about democracy, but people inside the country needed to maximize the chance of having its first election in two decades,” said the senior Shan dissident.

The election law has already stipulated that if political parties or politicians boycott this election, the running candidate would automatically win, no matter what.

“The ethnic groups have to participate in this election, and they are doing so. Burma might need a few more elections before we could see some working democracy,” Mr Harn said.

Aung Naing Oo, a Burmese student leader during the 1980s, said the general election would open room for newcomers, unknown faces of various minorities in political scenes, and these candidates, although most of them had military backgrounds, should not be considered in a negative light.

“Inside the limited narrow choice of work, many ethnic people inevitably join the military. But these people are not necessarily evil. They are not stupid but well-educated—so they should be better than the blatant military SPDC,” said Mr Naing Oo, who advocated engagement with the Burmese junta.

He told a strong audience this morning that election would lead to long term prospect for bottom-up democracy, “This is a step that you must take, there’s no other way. We might need another 3-4 elections before we can see some positive light,” said the Chiang Mai-based analyst.
However, Khin Omar, coordinator of Burma Partnership, said the people inside Burma needed a really inclusive, transparent process that respects the rights of all peoples of Burma, not the current restricted environment.

“The key mechanism through which the junta has guaranteed its continued grip on power is the 2008 constitution that cements their authority in the three branches of government,” said Ms Omar.

While new regional and state parliaments would provide some representation for ethnic political voices, the constitution rejected their long-standing demands for federalism. “The election may not be even held in many ethnic areas,” said the Mae Sot-based activist.

Mr Harn argued that there was no ideal situation available, “Sixty years of armed struggle could not overthrow the junta either, so we have to make most use of the opportunity.”

Mr Naing Oo said a semi-military government was better than a blunt military administration and this was a golden opportunity for both the junta and Asean to endorse each other.

“There are in fact a lot of similarities between Burma and other Asean partners.”

But Western diplomats still encouraged Burma’s neighbours, particularly Thailand, Asean, China, and India to “do something”.

Canadian ambassador Ron Hoffmann said international community’s strategies regarding Burma have remained divided, yet Burma issue was still part of the G 8 political security concern.

Canada, where the majority of the 5,000 refugee population is from Burma, is now the president of the Group of heavyweight countries (G8).

Mr Hoffmann conceded that while sanctions would still continue, the international community needed to recognise there were wide views on the ground.

“Canada’s civil society against the regime is quite strong but we are still hesitant to close the space completely,” the Canadian ambassador to Thailand said. The election might not be free and fair but there’s a painful decision to make by the people there — whether to endorse the poll or risk the status quo.

Despite the disunity in the approach to Burma, the ambassador said, there should be common space or issue. All the neighbouring countries including Thailand, Asean, China, and India should communicate with the Burmese government and greater dialogue needed to be forged and a commitment on human rights and free and fair elections was a necessity.

“Asean and China have a non-interference policy but it is time they made a tough decision. Asean, in particular, has been in real dilemma but it is increasingly emerged as a grouping with its own human rights mechanism, therefore they have a legitimate role to play on Burma,” said Mr Hoffmann.

While he urged Burma’s neighbours to “do something”, he felt the G8 and Canada needed to be agile and evaluating —“a policy stance that is changeable to the situation”.

George Kent, the US embassy political counselor, said Washington's stance has been similar to other regional players here who would like to see a dialogue between key stakeholders including opposition and ethnic groups, but since last November's visit by US senior officials to the country, there did not seem to be any positive signals.

“The election laws show unwillingness toward that ends. It’s also disappointing to see the election commission was handpicked by the regime,” said Mr Kent.

Like other Western diplomats, Mr Kent observed that Asean after expressing blunt concerns on Burma’s development at the Asean meetings in Phuket, had become silent.

Its earlier hope— a tripartite core group, a coordinating mechanism on Post-Nargis Humanitarian Assistance, which was regarded as Asean window of opportunity to work with the military regime, has been wrapped up. So the Asean hope was also dashed, said the American diplomat.

Yet, he urged Thailand, Asean and all other players in the region that it was now more critical in expressing and sharing concerns privately and publicly with Burma that there must be some positive change and inclusive process within the country.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/asia/172392/burma-long-hard-road-to-democracy

Fact file related to Burma and the election



(Compiled by Kyaw Kha on March 18, 2010)

  • According to the 15th May, 2008 official announcement; the population of Burma is 57,504,368
  • According to the 2008 constitution; there are 27,369,957 eligible voters.
  • There are 2, 48,664 prisoners in Burma according to an announcement by the prison department.
  • There are more than 2,100 political prisoners in Burma.
  • The child population in Burma is 22 million, according to records of Save the Children.
  • There are over 500,000 Buddhist monks, according to the Ministry of Religion.
  • According to records of Myanmar Christian Council, there are 13,500 Christian fathers in Myanmar.
  • There are 12,000 Islamic religion servants, confirmed by Islamic Religious Affairs Council.
  • There are at least 2 million Burmese migrants in Thailand.
  • Both legal and illegal migrants number about 500,000 in Malaysia.
  • There are about 150,000 refugees in camps on the Thai- Burma border.
  • About 50,000 Burmese migrants are in Mizoram State, India.
  • According to an official announcement in May 2008, there are 325 Townships in Burma.

List of political parties, associations, and the number of party members

(The numbers below are from the related parties as on March 12, 2010.)

  • There are 24 million members in the USDA (Union of Solidarity and Development Association). It is going to be a National Development Party which will be supported by the military junta.
  • There are over 12 million members in the NLD (National League for Democracy).
  • Ethnic Unity Party has 3.5 million party members.
  • The Union of Myanmar National Political Force led by Aye Lwin has 150,000 party members

စုံစမ္းစစ္ေဆးေရးအဖြဲ႔ အျမန္ဖြဲ႔သင့္ေၾကာင္း လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖြဲ႔ အႀကံေပး

Agency news / ၁၇ မတ္ ၂ဝ၁ဝ

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ လူသားမ်ားအေပၚ က်ဴးလြန္သည့္ ရာဇ၀တ္မႈႏွင့္ စစ္ရာဇ၀တ္မႈ ေျမာက္ႏိုင္သည့္ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ခ်ဳိးေဖာက္မႈမ်ားကို စစ္ေဆးႏိုင္ရန္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာစုံစမ္းစစ္ေဆးေရးအဖြဲ႔ကို အခ်ိန္မဆြဲဘဲ ဖြဲ႔စည္းသြားသင့္ေၾကာင္း လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ေလ့လာေစာင့္ၾကည့္ေရးအဖြဲ႔ (Human Rights Watch) က ယမန္ေန႔က ေျပာၾကားလိုက္သည္။

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဆိုင္ရာ ကုလသမဂၢလူ႔အခြင့္အေရး အထူးကိုယ္စားလွယ္ မစၥတာကင္တားနားက ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံႏွင့္ပတ္သက္သည့္ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအစီရင္ခံစာကို မတ္လ (၁၅) ရက္တြင္ ဂ်နီဗာရိွ ကုလသမဂၢလူ႔အခြင့္အေရးေကာင္စီသို႔ တင္သြင္းရာတြင္ တင္ျပထားသည့္ အႀကံျပဳေတာင္းဆိုခ်က္ကို လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးေလ့လာေစာင့္ၾကည့္ေရးအဖြဲ႔က ေထာက္ခံလုိက္ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွ မတရားျပဳက်င့္ခံရသူမ်ားအတြက္ တရားဥပေဒစိုးမိုးမႈရိွေစရန္ ကုလသမဂၢအေနျဖင့္ စုံစမ္းစစ္ေဆးေရး ေကာ္မရွင္တရပ္ကို အခ်ိန္ဆြဲမေနဘဲ ပထမအဆင့္အေနျဖင့္ အေရးတႀကီး ဖြ႔ဲစည္းသင့္ေၾကာင္း လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ေရးအဖြဲ႔မွ အမႈေဆာင္ဒါ႐ိုက္တာ Kenneth Roth က ေျပာၾကားလုိက္သည္။

ထို႔အျပင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြင္းမွ ရာဇ၀တ္မႈေျမာက္သည့္ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးခ်ဳိးေဖာက္မႈမ်ားကို စုံစမ္းစစ္ေဆးသြားႏိုင္ရန္ ကုလသမဂၢအေနျဖင့္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ စုံစမ္းစစ္ေဆးေရးေကာ္မရွင္တရပ္ ဖြဲ႔စည္းေရးကို သေဘာတူေထာက္ခံေၾကာင္း ၾသစေၾတးလ်အစိုးရက ကုလသမဂၢလူ႔အခြင့္အေရးေကာင္စီ ၾကားနာပြဲတြင္ ေျပာၾကားလိုက္သည္။

ျမန္မာျပည္တြင္း ႏွစ္ရွည္လမ်ား ဆက္လက္ျဖစ္ပြားေနသည့္ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးခ်ဳိးေဖာက္မႈမ်ားသည္ ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရက စနစ္တက်က်ဴးလြန္သည့္အသြင္ျဖစ္ေနၿပီး လူသားမ်ားအေပၚ က်ဴးလြန္သည့္ လူသားမဆန္သည့္ ရာဇ၀တ္မႈမ်ားအျဖစ္ အက်ဳံး၀င္ႏိုင္သည္ဟု မစၥတာ ကင္တားနားက အစီရင္ခံစာတြင္ ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။

“က်ေနာ္ရဲ႕ ေလ့လာသုံးခ်က္အရ တခ်ဳိ႕လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးခ်ဳိးေဖာက္မႈေတြဟာ လူသားမဆန္တဲ့ ရာဇ၀တ္မႈေတြအျဖစ္ အက်ဳံး၀င္ႏိုင္ပါတယ္” ဟု ဂ်နီဗာရိွ ကုလသမဂၢ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးေကာင္စီသို႔ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ၏ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအေျခအေနမ်ားကို အစီရင္ခံစာတင္သြင္းအၿပီးတြင္ မစၥတာကင္တားနားက သတင္းေထာက္မ်ားကို ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။

ျဖစ္ႏိုင္ေျခရိွသည့္ လူသားမ်ားအေပၚ က်ဴးလြန္သည့္ ရာဇ၀တ္မႈမ်ားကို ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရအေနျဖင့္ အေရးယူစုံစမ္းရန္ အခ်ိန္တန္ေနၿပီျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ သုိ႔မဟုတ္ပါက အလြန္ေနာက္က်သြားလိမ့္မည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္းလည္း ၎က ေျပာၾကားသည္။

ယခုႏွစ္အတြင္း ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ၌ က်င္းပမည့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဥပေဒသစ္ႏွင့့္ပတ္သက္၍မူ ထုတ္ျပန္လုိက္သည့္ သတ္မွတ္ခ်က္ အေျခအေနမ်ားေၾကာင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ၌ျပဳလုပ္မည့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲသည္ အမ်ားက ယုံၾကည့္လက္ခံႏိုင္သည့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ မျဖစ္ႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း ၎က သုံးသပ္ေျပာဆိုသည္။

ျမန္မာစစ္အစုိးရ၏ ကုလသမဂၢဆုိင္ရာ အၿမဲတမ္းကုိယ္စားလွယ္ ဦး၀ဏၰေမာင္လြင္က မစၥတာကင္တားနား တင္သြင္းသည့္ အစီရင္ခံစာသည္ စြပ္စြဲေျပာဆိုခ်က္မ်ားသာ ျဖစ္သည္ဟု ျပန္လည္တုံ႔ျပန္ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

22ႀကိမ္ေျမာက္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံလူ႔အခြင့္အေရးေန႔ (ေက်ာင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ ကုိဖုန္းေမာ္ သတ္ျဖတ္ခံရသည့္ေန႔) ဂ်ပန္ႏုိင္ငံ တုိက်ဳိၿမဳိ႕တြင္ က်င္းပ

မတ္လ ၁၃၊ ၂၀၁၀
ခြန္သန္းေအာင္

2010 ခုႏွစ္၊ မတ္လ (13)ရက္ေန႔တြင္ က်ေရာက္ေသာ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးေန႔ (ေက်ာင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ ကုိဖုန္းေမာ္ သတ္ျဖတ္ခံရသည့္ေန႔)ကုိ ဂ်ပန္ႏုိင္ငံေရာက္ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမုိကေရစီအင္အားစုႏွင့္ တုိင္းရင္းသားအင္အားစု တုိ႔ ပူးေပါင္းၿပီး က်င္းပေသာ ခ်ီတက္ဆႏၵျပပြဲကုိ ဂ်ပန္ႏုိင္ငံ တုိက်ဳိၿမဳိ႕မွာရွိေသာ အက္ဘီးဆုဘူတာမွ ဆဲင္းဒကာယာ ပန္းၿခံအထိ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံဒီမုိကေရစီအင္အားစုႏွင့္ တုိင္းရင္းသားအင္အားစုတုိ႔အပါအ၀င္ ႏုိင္ငံျခားသား၊ ဂ်ပန္ႏုိင္ငံသားမ်ားလည္း ပါ၀င္ၿပီး လူအင္အား 1000 ေက်ာ္ ခ်ီတက္ဆႏၵျပခဲ႔ပါသည္။

၄င္းဆႏၵျပပြဲမွ ေၾကြးေက်ာ္သံမ်ားမွာ အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမုိကေရစီေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ တုိင္းရင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင္အပါအ၀င္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားအားလုံး လြတ္ေပးရန္၊
သုံးပြင့္ဆုိင္ေတြ႕ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးေရးကုိ ျပဳလုပ္ေပးရန္ႏွင့္ နအဖ ျပဳလုပ္မည့္ 2010 ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကုိ အလုိမရွိ ဟု ေၾကြးေက်ာ္ၿပီး အခမ္းအနားကုိ ညေန 4း30 နာရီခြဲတြင္ ျပီးဆုံးခဲ႔ပါသည္။

Burmese Reactors Close to Completion: Military Sources



By MIN LWIN Saturday, March 13, 2010

Burma's ruling junta has finished construction work on three nuclear reactors in the country's north and will soon be ready to put them into operation, according to military sources at the elite Defense Services Academy (DSA) in Maymyo, Mandalay Division.

Enlarge Image
A map showing the Pon Taung Pon Nya mountain range, the site of one of three nuclear reactors recently constructed by the Burmese junta.
The nuclear reactors, which the regime claims are for research purposes, are located at Kyauk Pa Htoe, a village in Thabeikkyin Township, northern Mandalay Division; Maymyo Fifty Miles, an area some 80 km from the setting of the DSA; and Pon Taung Pon Nya, a mountainous area on the border between Magwe and Sagaing divisions.

“They [military leaders] chose Pon Taung Pon Nya because it is a safe distance from highly populated cities,” said a military official in Maymyo, also known as Pyin Oo Lwin.

According to local residents, the site is about 30 km from the village of Kyaw in Gantgaw Township, situated on the Pakokkuu-Kalay railway line in Magwe Division.

“Since the project started in 2007, there have been many foreigners who look like they might be Chinese coming and going,” said a local source living in Kyaw.

“We are not allowed to go anywhere near this area built for military use,” the source added.

Although there has been confirmation that construction work on the projects has been completed, it remains unclear how soon the reactors will be ready to go online. However, a recent flurry of activity, including high-level visits by senior members of the ruling regime, suggests that the reactors will soon be ready for use, according to military sources.

The sources say that Vice Sen-Gen Maung Aye, the junta's No. 2, has made frequent trips to the DSA in Maymyo in recent months to meet with Maj-Gen Sein Win, the head of the Directorate of Defense Services Science and Technology Research, which is responsible for Burma’s nuclear program.

According to Ye Htet, a former lieutenant who defected from the Burmese military while studying for a graduate degree at the DSA, the regime has invested heavily in the project with an eye to early completion. He said the junta has sent around 60,000 military officials to Russia to study nuclear technology.

“The project is at least half finished,” said Ye Htet, who fled to Mae Sot, on the Thai-Burmese border, earlier this year.

The technology for Burma’s nuclear research project was provided by Russia’s Federal Atomic Energy Agency (RFAEA), which agreed in May 2007 to help design and build a 10-megawatt light-water reactor using 20 percent enriched uranium-235 fuel.

However, the Russian agency has since distanced itself from the Burmese nuclear program. This has led to fears that the regime has turned to North Korea for assistance in achieving its nuclear ambitions.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=18036