Aug 5, 2008 (DVB)–Monks who accepted a meal from the National League for Democracy during last month’s Martyrs’ Day celebration despite warnings from the authorities’ have come under pressure from local officials.
One of the monks said they had come under increased pressure since the Martyrs’ Day celebrations.
“Government officials came to our monastery before the celebration and told us not to accept meals from the NLD as their members were destructive elements to our nation who were trying to put us all in danger,” the monk said.
“But we accepted the meal anyway and now we are being pressured.”
The monk said the authorities had recently come to the monastery to collect the personal details of the monks.
“Maybe because of the 8888 anniversary, there are military trucks parked near our monasteries and we are being watched by soldiers” he said.
“If they come to arrest us, we will just go with them. It is a monk’s duty to accept meals from anyone who donates to them – even from beggars.”
Reporting by Aye Nai
Wednesday, 6 August 2008
An Olympian question of legitimacy for Burma's generals
By May Ng
5 August 2008
(Mizzima) Twenty years ago on 8 August 1988, the Burmese people rose up and ended the first chapter of military dictatorship in Burma, the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP). But after months of countrywide anti-government demonstrations, on 18 September 1988, the army staged a coup and formed the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). After suspending the 1974 constitution, SLORC promised to conduct multiparty elections in the future.
The army announced four "duties" under SLORC Declaration No.1/88 that included the "holding of a multiparty General Election." And SLORC Law No.14/89, "Pyithu Hluttaw (Assembly) Election Law," in chapter 3, section 3, stated that the "Hluttaw shall be formed with the Hluttaw representatives who have been elected." In addition, SLORC statement No. 1/90 stated that the people's representatives must make the constitution, for the army will not accept the establishment of a government with a temporary constitution.
According to the Burma Lawyers Council (BLC), on several occasions-- including 23 September 1988, 27 March 1989, 3 July 1990, September 1990 and at General Khin Nyunt's (former Secretary (1) of the SPDC) - 100th press release held on 13 July 1990-- the army repeatedly promised that: "We, soldiers, will go back to the barracks and try to serve our original primary duties, from the past to the present day." And the army also stated that, "The parties which won the election have to draw up a constitution for the future sake of the people of Burma." But the BLC said that despite these public announcements, election results from the free and fair election in 1990 were never officially recognized by the military junta.
Today, the All Burma Monks Association (ABMA), the All Burma Federation of Students' Union (ABFSU), the '88 Generation Students and elected MPs of the 1990 general election have all rejected the result of the junta's recently tightly controlled constitutional referendum, and declared that they will boycott the 2010 general election-- the most important step of the junta's own roadmap. In New York, the International Burmese Monks Organization, led by Pinann Sayadaw, has asked international political activists to raise the issue of Burma at the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly, which will open on 16 September 2008.
Since the Saffron Revolution last fall, the ABMA inside Burma is still refusing alms from the military - the religious boycott commonly referred to as the "overturning of the alms bowls" still being in effect.
For some, violence against the revered Buddhist monks in Burma last September may evoke the memory of Adolph Hitler. Hitler suggested in 1937 that the best way for the British to deal with Indian Nationalism is to just "shoot Gandhi, and if that does not reduce the Indians to submission shoot a dozen leading members of the Congress and if that does not suffice shoot 200 and so on until order is restored."
Besides Hitler, Sun-Tzu's The Art of War also sheds light on the military's conduct. For it articulates that the army is established on deception, mobilized by advantage, and changed through dividing up and consolidating the troops. Sun-Tzu continues, writing that after plundering the countryside, the army divides the wealth among the troops…and after expanding territory, divides and holds places of advantage.
This warrior-philosophy helps explain the regime's conduct against its own citizens in treating them as enemies. After which, as its own political legitimacy becomes more elusive, the military's ability to extinguish potentially explosive situations becomes extremely limited, meaning that only the use of force is left to protect its power.
Sun-Tzu, the master of war, once ordered the execution of a king's two top commanders as an example to command complete obedience from the rest of the soldiers; this method may explain how the Burmese junta keeps absolute control over its foot soldiers, who were ordered to shoot monks in September.
The junta's brutality toward its own monks has shocked the world, and clearly the Burmese army's temple of worship is not the Buddha's, but that of a warrior's - as evidenced by the grandiose statues of long gone warring rulers in the new capital.
In the 12 November 2004 issue of Constitution and Legitimacy, Milan Petrovic wrote that dictatorship usually results from illegal activities, and through a coup d'état usually carried out by the army. But Petrovic continued, saying that illegal dictatorships can be both legitimate and illegitimate; a legitimate dictatorship in the past, after restoring order and performing the most urgent reconstruction of state bodies and public services, generally gave power back to civilians; but a dictatorship can also become illegitimate if the old, civilian tyranny was only exchanged for a new, military one, as when Napoleon won unlimited power in a coup not to preserve, but to overthrow the constitutional system.
But unlike a handful of other non-democratic, but still legitimate governments throughout the world, the Burmese military government has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of its people.
In speaking of the American Constitution, Richard H. Fallen, Jr. argued in the Harvard Law Review of April 2005, that even if the Constitution had been lawfully adopted, it would not provide a morally legitimate foundation for coercive action unless coercion pursuant to it could be justified morally. The legal legitimacy of the Constitution depends much more on its present sociological acceptance than upon the legality of its formal ratification. He said that the Constitution is law not because it was lawfully ratified, as it may not have been, but because it is accepted as authoritative.
The justification of the central role of the military in the future government of Burma is the need of discipline in state affairs in a country of over 100 ethnicities, said Timo Kivimäki on 11 December 2007. His comments were based on massive comparative evidence, Paul Collier had earlier claimed that societies with many, equally powerful ethnic groups are no more war prone than homogenous societies. And thus Burma, with it's over 100 ethnic groups, is no more vulnerable and in need of discipline than any other country.
Kivimäki wrote that the fact that the future role of the ethnic armies has been planned in a secret process within the Ministry of Defense could easily be the main immediate concern, and the least unlikely trigger of war between the center and the regions.
Kivimäki continued, arguing that according to Rudolph Rummel's extensive comparative evidence, the risk of a citizen of getting killed in wars is reduced from 0.54% to 0.24% if the country is democratic, rather than authoritarian. Kivimäki suggested that on the basis of comparative evidence, Burma should demilitarize in order to achieve optimal probability for peaceful resolution to its territorial wars.
In a recent Shan Herald Agency News report; even though as many as 76,000 refugees in 2007 were forced to leave their homes for the relative safety of Thailand due to the abuses of the Burmese military, many are being sent back by Thai authorities and may end up in makeshift shelters in the jungle.
Lt. Col. Sai Aung Mya, a commander of the Shan State Army (South), recently said that he now spends most of his time protecting and developing the welfare system for people who are trying to escape military brutality, but are prevented from being recognized as refugees by the United Nations because of Thai government policies. It was clear in the case of Sai Aung Mya that as a peaceful and religious person he had taken arms against the military junta in self defense, the necessity of which became evident last fall when thousands of unarmed people were not able to protect their monks from the army's assault.
Even Aung San Suu Kyi, the winner of Nobel Peace prize, said that she will never disown students who are fighting for democracy, even though they have chosen to take up arms. She also said that nothing comes free in life and, one way or another you will have to pay for everything.
According to Thomas Carothers, the United States, and to a lesser extent other Western powers, have often talked grandly in the past several decades about their commitment to global democracy. But underneath the rhetoric is a long record of a very mixed policy and the role of outside actors in most attempted democratic transitions is relatively limited.
But the time has now come for the United States and the rest of world's democratic community to give tangible support to the people of Burma; including the victims of Cyclone Nargis and the victims of military brutality on the borders of Burma - especially because of the unwillingness of the United Nations and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to assert their utmost influence for democratic change inside Burma.
In conclusion, Carothers noted that the terrible socioeconomic conditions and weak rule of law apparent in so many developing countries is, in many cases, a legacy of decades of misrule by autocratic regimes that claimed a deep commitment to developmental goals but in fact gave greater priority to narrower, self-interested and countervailing concerns.
Even after the 8-8-08 Olympics, China's misguided support for the destructive regime in Burma will come back to haunt them. As General Aung San, the architect of Burma's Independence said, "a man sows so shall he reap and that if any individual or nation oppresses or exploits another and violates natural and social justice in that way that individual or nation shall pay for that sin against justice and humanity."
Lastly, as a young man Abraham Lincoln used to worry that no one would remember that he had lived. But like Lincoln, the heroes of Burma from 1988 to 2007 will never be forgotten.
Especially in this Olympic year, Burma's heroes will be remembered for having fought beyond their limits of endurance, in striving to leave behind a much better world than the one they have endured.
May Ng is the New York regional director of Justice for Human Rights in Burma. To view her poems about Burma, please visit: http://www.othervoicespoetry.org/vol33/ng/index.html
5 August 2008
(Mizzima) Twenty years ago on 8 August 1988, the Burmese people rose up and ended the first chapter of military dictatorship in Burma, the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP). But after months of countrywide anti-government demonstrations, on 18 September 1988, the army staged a coup and formed the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). After suspending the 1974 constitution, SLORC promised to conduct multiparty elections in the future.
The army announced four "duties" under SLORC Declaration No.1/88 that included the "holding of a multiparty General Election." And SLORC Law No.14/89, "Pyithu Hluttaw (Assembly) Election Law," in chapter 3, section 3, stated that the "Hluttaw shall be formed with the Hluttaw representatives who have been elected." In addition, SLORC statement No. 1/90 stated that the people's representatives must make the constitution, for the army will not accept the establishment of a government with a temporary constitution.
According to the Burma Lawyers Council (BLC), on several occasions-- including 23 September 1988, 27 March 1989, 3 July 1990, September 1990 and at General Khin Nyunt's (former Secretary (1) of the SPDC) - 100th press release held on 13 July 1990-- the army repeatedly promised that: "We, soldiers, will go back to the barracks and try to serve our original primary duties, from the past to the present day." And the army also stated that, "The parties which won the election have to draw up a constitution for the future sake of the people of Burma." But the BLC said that despite these public announcements, election results from the free and fair election in 1990 were never officially recognized by the military junta.
Today, the All Burma Monks Association (ABMA), the All Burma Federation of Students' Union (ABFSU), the '88 Generation Students and elected MPs of the 1990 general election have all rejected the result of the junta's recently tightly controlled constitutional referendum, and declared that they will boycott the 2010 general election-- the most important step of the junta's own roadmap. In New York, the International Burmese Monks Organization, led by Pinann Sayadaw, has asked international political activists to raise the issue of Burma at the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly, which will open on 16 September 2008.
Since the Saffron Revolution last fall, the ABMA inside Burma is still refusing alms from the military - the religious boycott commonly referred to as the "overturning of the alms bowls" still being in effect.
For some, violence against the revered Buddhist monks in Burma last September may evoke the memory of Adolph Hitler. Hitler suggested in 1937 that the best way for the British to deal with Indian Nationalism is to just "shoot Gandhi, and if that does not reduce the Indians to submission shoot a dozen leading members of the Congress and if that does not suffice shoot 200 and so on until order is restored."
Besides Hitler, Sun-Tzu's The Art of War also sheds light on the military's conduct. For it articulates that the army is established on deception, mobilized by advantage, and changed through dividing up and consolidating the troops. Sun-Tzu continues, writing that after plundering the countryside, the army divides the wealth among the troops…and after expanding territory, divides and holds places of advantage.
This warrior-philosophy helps explain the regime's conduct against its own citizens in treating them as enemies. After which, as its own political legitimacy becomes more elusive, the military's ability to extinguish potentially explosive situations becomes extremely limited, meaning that only the use of force is left to protect its power.
Sun-Tzu, the master of war, once ordered the execution of a king's two top commanders as an example to command complete obedience from the rest of the soldiers; this method may explain how the Burmese junta keeps absolute control over its foot soldiers, who were ordered to shoot monks in September.
The junta's brutality toward its own monks has shocked the world, and clearly the Burmese army's temple of worship is not the Buddha's, but that of a warrior's - as evidenced by the grandiose statues of long gone warring rulers in the new capital.
In the 12 November 2004 issue of Constitution and Legitimacy, Milan Petrovic wrote that dictatorship usually results from illegal activities, and through a coup d'état usually carried out by the army. But Petrovic continued, saying that illegal dictatorships can be both legitimate and illegitimate; a legitimate dictatorship in the past, after restoring order and performing the most urgent reconstruction of state bodies and public services, generally gave power back to civilians; but a dictatorship can also become illegitimate if the old, civilian tyranny was only exchanged for a new, military one, as when Napoleon won unlimited power in a coup not to preserve, but to overthrow the constitutional system.
But unlike a handful of other non-democratic, but still legitimate governments throughout the world, the Burmese military government has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of its people.
In speaking of the American Constitution, Richard H. Fallen, Jr. argued in the Harvard Law Review of April 2005, that even if the Constitution had been lawfully adopted, it would not provide a morally legitimate foundation for coercive action unless coercion pursuant to it could be justified morally. The legal legitimacy of the Constitution depends much more on its present sociological acceptance than upon the legality of its formal ratification. He said that the Constitution is law not because it was lawfully ratified, as it may not have been, but because it is accepted as authoritative.
The justification of the central role of the military in the future government of Burma is the need of discipline in state affairs in a country of over 100 ethnicities, said Timo Kivimäki on 11 December 2007. His comments were based on massive comparative evidence, Paul Collier had earlier claimed that societies with many, equally powerful ethnic groups are no more war prone than homogenous societies. And thus Burma, with it's over 100 ethnic groups, is no more vulnerable and in need of discipline than any other country.
Kivimäki wrote that the fact that the future role of the ethnic armies has been planned in a secret process within the Ministry of Defense could easily be the main immediate concern, and the least unlikely trigger of war between the center and the regions.
Kivimäki continued, arguing that according to Rudolph Rummel's extensive comparative evidence, the risk of a citizen of getting killed in wars is reduced from 0.54% to 0.24% if the country is democratic, rather than authoritarian. Kivimäki suggested that on the basis of comparative evidence, Burma should demilitarize in order to achieve optimal probability for peaceful resolution to its territorial wars.
In a recent Shan Herald Agency News report; even though as many as 76,000 refugees in 2007 were forced to leave their homes for the relative safety of Thailand due to the abuses of the Burmese military, many are being sent back by Thai authorities and may end up in makeshift shelters in the jungle.
Lt. Col. Sai Aung Mya, a commander of the Shan State Army (South), recently said that he now spends most of his time protecting and developing the welfare system for people who are trying to escape military brutality, but are prevented from being recognized as refugees by the United Nations because of Thai government policies. It was clear in the case of Sai Aung Mya that as a peaceful and religious person he had taken arms against the military junta in self defense, the necessity of which became evident last fall when thousands of unarmed people were not able to protect their monks from the army's assault.
Even Aung San Suu Kyi, the winner of Nobel Peace prize, said that she will never disown students who are fighting for democracy, even though they have chosen to take up arms. She also said that nothing comes free in life and, one way or another you will have to pay for everything.
According to Thomas Carothers, the United States, and to a lesser extent other Western powers, have often talked grandly in the past several decades about their commitment to global democracy. But underneath the rhetoric is a long record of a very mixed policy and the role of outside actors in most attempted democratic transitions is relatively limited.
But the time has now come for the United States and the rest of world's democratic community to give tangible support to the people of Burma; including the victims of Cyclone Nargis and the victims of military brutality on the borders of Burma - especially because of the unwillingness of the United Nations and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to assert their utmost influence for democratic change inside Burma.
In conclusion, Carothers noted that the terrible socioeconomic conditions and weak rule of law apparent in so many developing countries is, in many cases, a legacy of decades of misrule by autocratic regimes that claimed a deep commitment to developmental goals but in fact gave greater priority to narrower, self-interested and countervailing concerns.
Even after the 8-8-08 Olympics, China's misguided support for the destructive regime in Burma will come back to haunt them. As General Aung San, the architect of Burma's Independence said, "a man sows so shall he reap and that if any individual or nation oppresses or exploits another and violates natural and social justice in that way that individual or nation shall pay for that sin against justice and humanity."
Lastly, as a young man Abraham Lincoln used to worry that no one would remember that he had lived. But like Lincoln, the heroes of Burma from 1988 to 2007 will never be forgotten.
Especially in this Olympic year, Burma's heroes will be remembered for having fought beyond their limits of endurance, in striving to leave behind a much better world than the one they have endured.
May Ng is the New York regional director of Justice for Human Rights in Burma. To view her poems about Burma, please visit: http://www.othervoicespoetry.org/vol33/ng/index.html
China urged to change Burma policy before Olympics
By Solomon
05 August 2008
New Delhi (Mizzima) - China has been urged to use its leverage on Burma's military rulers and to facilitate democratic reforms in the troubled Southeast Asian nation. The appeal was made by several Burmese activists groups along with international supporters.
Over 50 organizations including several Burmese activists groups and international campaigners in a joint statement on Monday urged the international community to stand with the people of Burma, and particularly call on China to address the problems of Burma.
"China is uniquely positioned to address Burma's problems and to facilitate democratic reform," the statement said.
Though 20 years have passed since the largest pro-democracy protests broke out in Burma, the people are still under the repression of military rulers and international community's efforts have failed to bring about tangible political changes, the statement said.
"This is why international demands for change must be matched with action, including an arms embargo and targeted financial sanctions," the statement said.
Soe Aung, a member of the 88 generation student group in exile said, it is high time the United Nations and the international community give a time-line to Burma's military rulers to implement political reforms.
"UN must give a time limit to the Burmese government to implement political reforms otherwise there will be no changes," Soe Aung said.
The joint statement, issued in the run up to Burma's historic day, when student-led nationwide protests broke out demanding democracy on August 8, 1988, said the situation in Burma and its regional impact have worsened since 1988.
Burma's ruling junta has used hundreds of millions of dollars from the country's vast oil and gas reserves to buy weapons from China, Russia and India to continue their oppression, the groups said.
The junta's misrule has led to increasing displacement, drug trafficking and other threats to human security in the region.
In 2007 alone, 76,000 people in eastern Burma, bordering Thailand, were displaced due to the junta's increased military offensive, the statement said.
But August 8, 2008, the 20th anniversary of the largest pro-democracy protests in Burma, will also mark the beginning of the Beijing Olympics. And in keeping with the Olympic spirit, China should stop supporting the brutal junta in Burma, campaigners said.
"China must stop protecting Burma at the UN Security Council," the joint statement added.
Soe Aung said, Burma's military rulers are continuing with their dilatory tactics in implementing reforms as they are certain that China and Russia are behind them and support them.
China and Russia, two veto wielding countries in the UN Security Council, in January 2007 blocked a proposed Council resolution on Burma sponsored by the United States and backed up by United Kingdom and France.
"Their [China and Russia] support is heightening the sufferings of the people of Burma and is causing a threat not only to the security of the country but also to the region," said Soe Aung.
China and Russia should use their leverage to talk to the Burmese government for political reforms, he added.
However, China and Russia are two of the few friends that Burma's military rulers have and the junta is more than willing to allow China and Russia to do business in the country while the two countries in turn supply military hardware and provide technical training.
Meanwhile, a campaign group - Free Burma Coalition-Philippines (FBC-Phils) on Tuesday reminded China of its pledge to improve its own human rights record by changing its foreign policy on Burma.
"China's pledge to improve its own human rights record should extend to its foreign policy especially to Burma, where human rights abuses are rampant," the group said.
The FBC-Phils said, as part of the aim of the Olympics is to place sports for the harmonious development of people, promotion of a peaceful society, and preservation of human dignity, the Chinese government must now replicate that in their policy on Burma.
"With just a few days remaining before the Olympics, we hope that the Chinese government realizes that another torch must be carried: the torch of freedom and democracy for the people of Burma," Egoy Bans, spokesperson of the FBC-Phils said in the statement.
"If that happens," Bans said, "the Beijing Olympics will bring victory not only for the people of Burma but also for China and the whole world. No amount of Olympic gold medals could ever match that."
05 August 2008
New Delhi (Mizzima) - China has been urged to use its leverage on Burma's military rulers and to facilitate democratic reforms in the troubled Southeast Asian nation. The appeal was made by several Burmese activists groups along with international supporters.
Over 50 organizations including several Burmese activists groups and international campaigners in a joint statement on Monday urged the international community to stand with the people of Burma, and particularly call on China to address the problems of Burma.
"China is uniquely positioned to address Burma's problems and to facilitate democratic reform," the statement said.
Though 20 years have passed since the largest pro-democracy protests broke out in Burma, the people are still under the repression of military rulers and international community's efforts have failed to bring about tangible political changes, the statement said.
"This is why international demands for change must be matched with action, including an arms embargo and targeted financial sanctions," the statement said.
Soe Aung, a member of the 88 generation student group in exile said, it is high time the United Nations and the international community give a time-line to Burma's military rulers to implement political reforms.
"UN must give a time limit to the Burmese government to implement political reforms otherwise there will be no changes," Soe Aung said.
The joint statement, issued in the run up to Burma's historic day, when student-led nationwide protests broke out demanding democracy on August 8, 1988, said the situation in Burma and its regional impact have worsened since 1988.
Burma's ruling junta has used hundreds of millions of dollars from the country's vast oil and gas reserves to buy weapons from China, Russia and India to continue their oppression, the groups said.
The junta's misrule has led to increasing displacement, drug trafficking and other threats to human security in the region.
In 2007 alone, 76,000 people in eastern Burma, bordering Thailand, were displaced due to the junta's increased military offensive, the statement said.
But August 8, 2008, the 20th anniversary of the largest pro-democracy protests in Burma, will also mark the beginning of the Beijing Olympics. And in keeping with the Olympic spirit, China should stop supporting the brutal junta in Burma, campaigners said.
"China must stop protecting Burma at the UN Security Council," the joint statement added.
Soe Aung said, Burma's military rulers are continuing with their dilatory tactics in implementing reforms as they are certain that China and Russia are behind them and support them.
China and Russia, two veto wielding countries in the UN Security Council, in January 2007 blocked a proposed Council resolution on Burma sponsored by the United States and backed up by United Kingdom and France.
"Their [China and Russia] support is heightening the sufferings of the people of Burma and is causing a threat not only to the security of the country but also to the region," said Soe Aung.
China and Russia should use their leverage to talk to the Burmese government for political reforms, he added.
However, China and Russia are two of the few friends that Burma's military rulers have and the junta is more than willing to allow China and Russia to do business in the country while the two countries in turn supply military hardware and provide technical training.
Meanwhile, a campaign group - Free Burma Coalition-Philippines (FBC-Phils) on Tuesday reminded China of its pledge to improve its own human rights record by changing its foreign policy on Burma.
"China's pledge to improve its own human rights record should extend to its foreign policy especially to Burma, where human rights abuses are rampant," the group said.
The FBC-Phils said, as part of the aim of the Olympics is to place sports for the harmonious development of people, promotion of a peaceful society, and preservation of human dignity, the Chinese government must now replicate that in their policy on Burma.
"With just a few days remaining before the Olympics, we hope that the Chinese government realizes that another torch must be carried: the torch of freedom and democracy for the people of Burma," Egoy Bans, spokesperson of the FBC-Phils said in the statement.
"If that happens," Bans said, "the Beijing Olympics will bring victory not only for the people of Burma but also for China and the whole world. No amount of Olympic gold medals could ever match that."
Detained sport editor allowed a rare meeting with family - Zaw Thet Htwe
By Phanida
Chiang Mai (Mizzima)– Sports columnist Zaw Thet Htwe, who was arrested for assisting cyclone victims in Burma's Irrawaddy delta, was finally allowed to meet his family at notorious Insein prison on Tuesday (5 Aug).
After being detained for about two months, Zaw Thet Htwe was produced before the court for the first time last Wednesday (30 Jul), but was denied meeting his family.
"We had a long chat… His health is good but he is a little thinner," said his wife, Khaing Cho Zaw Win Tin, adding she could deliver things she brought for him.
Khaing Cho Zaw Win Tin said she is privilege to meet her husband after two months as many detainees do not always enjoy the same opportunity in Burma, a country ruled by military dictators.
"We are glad to see him again after two months because some are only allowed to meet their families after three or four months. He was calm and stable when he met his daughter, who came along," she added.
After more than a month of detention, prominent comedian cum actor Zarganar, sports editor Zaw Thet Htwe and five other persons were produced before the Rangoon West District court in the Insein prison premises on July 28.
They were reportedly charged with cases under section 505(b) of the Criminal Code, which is a charge for disturbing public tranquility, and under other sections. The court reportedly fixed August 7 for the next hearing.
Defendant counsel Khin Maung Shein said, "We heard that there are at least six cases against them. We will know the details after seven days."
Reportedly, comedian Zarganar, who was arrested on June 4 for helping cyclone victims, was also allowed to meet his family on Monday. Zaw Thet Htwe was arrested on June 13.
Zaw Thet Htwe, however, was not arrested for the first time. He was earlier arrested for writing an article on corruption among the Burmese sports community and was sentenced to death on November 28, 2003.
But his sentence was later commuted to three years' imprisonment and he was released after serving his prison terms.
Similarly, Zarganar was also detained for 21 days after offering alms to the protesting monks in September 2007.
In their latest arrest, they were detained in unknown places for about a month and their families were not informed when they were first produced before the court.
Though the court had earlier fixed the date for hearing the cases of a few other activists on Tuesday, the activists were not produce before the court. Though the reason for not producing the activists is unknown, it is believe that it might be due to the UN Special Rapporteur Tomas Ojea Quintana's visit to Insein prison.
The court had earlier fixed Tuesday for the hearing of the cases of blogger Nay Phone Latt, student leader Sithu Maung, Myo Thant from Human Right Promoters and Defenders (HRPD), 2007 generation student leaders Zin Lin Aung, Thein Swe, Ye Min Oo, Ye Myat Hein and Kyi Phyu.
Khin Maung Shein said, the cases of Sithu Maung, blogger Nay Phone Latt and six others were fixed to be heard on Tuesday but they were not produce at the court as the UN Human Rights Special Rapporteur entered Insein prison, annex hall in the afternoon.
"He [Quintana] entered at about 1:30 p.m. He came out at about 2 p.m. and then again entered the main jail. We were there till 4 p.m. but he hasn't yet come out. Then we asked the court for the next hearing date and left the prison. Till that time, the Special Rapporteur was still inside the prison," he added.
Chiang Mai (Mizzima)– Sports columnist Zaw Thet Htwe, who was arrested for assisting cyclone victims in Burma's Irrawaddy delta, was finally allowed to meet his family at notorious Insein prison on Tuesday (5 Aug).
After being detained for about two months, Zaw Thet Htwe was produced before the court for the first time last Wednesday (30 Jul), but was denied meeting his family.
"We had a long chat… His health is good but he is a little thinner," said his wife, Khaing Cho Zaw Win Tin, adding she could deliver things she brought for him.
Khaing Cho Zaw Win Tin said she is privilege to meet her husband after two months as many detainees do not always enjoy the same opportunity in Burma, a country ruled by military dictators.
"We are glad to see him again after two months because some are only allowed to meet their families after three or four months. He was calm and stable when he met his daughter, who came along," she added.
After more than a month of detention, prominent comedian cum actor Zarganar, sports editor Zaw Thet Htwe and five other persons were produced before the Rangoon West District court in the Insein prison premises on July 28.
They were reportedly charged with cases under section 505(b) of the Criminal Code, which is a charge for disturbing public tranquility, and under other sections. The court reportedly fixed August 7 for the next hearing.
Defendant counsel Khin Maung Shein said, "We heard that there are at least six cases against them. We will know the details after seven days."
Reportedly, comedian Zarganar, who was arrested on June 4 for helping cyclone victims, was also allowed to meet his family on Monday. Zaw Thet Htwe was arrested on June 13.
Zaw Thet Htwe, however, was not arrested for the first time. He was earlier arrested for writing an article on corruption among the Burmese sports community and was sentenced to death on November 28, 2003.
But his sentence was later commuted to three years' imprisonment and he was released after serving his prison terms.
Similarly, Zarganar was also detained for 21 days after offering alms to the protesting monks in September 2007.
In their latest arrest, they were detained in unknown places for about a month and their families were not informed when they were first produced before the court.
Though the court had earlier fixed the date for hearing the cases of a few other activists on Tuesday, the activists were not produce before the court. Though the reason for not producing the activists is unknown, it is believe that it might be due to the UN Special Rapporteur Tomas Ojea Quintana's visit to Insein prison.
The court had earlier fixed Tuesday for the hearing of the cases of blogger Nay Phone Latt, student leader Sithu Maung, Myo Thant from Human Right Promoters and Defenders (HRPD), 2007 generation student leaders Zin Lin Aung, Thein Swe, Ye Min Oo, Ye Myat Hein and Kyi Phyu.
Khin Maung Shein said, the cases of Sithu Maung, blogger Nay Phone Latt and six others were fixed to be heard on Tuesday but they were not produce at the court as the UN Human Rights Special Rapporteur entered Insein prison, annex hall in the afternoon.
"He [Quintana] entered at about 1:30 p.m. He came out at about 2 p.m. and then again entered the main jail. We were there till 4 p.m. but he hasn't yet come out. Then we asked the court for the next hearing date and left the prison. Till that time, the Special Rapporteur was still inside the prison," he added.
Rangoon Students Launch 8.8.88 Pamphlet Campaign
By MIN LWIN
The Irrawaddy News
University students in Rangoon have launched an anti-government pamphlet and poster campaign ahead of the 20th anniversary on August 8 of the 1988 uprising.
Students at Rangoon’s Dagon University have also written to its rector and vice-rector asking them to participate in protest actions in commemoration of the uprising, an assistant lecturer told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday.
Security appeared to have been tightened in Rangoon universities, the assistant lecturer said. “It seems that the government doesn’t want another pro-democracy protest like September’s monks-led uprising.”
Former student activists said they plan to wear black on August 8 in memory of up to 3,000 protesters, including monks, who died when troops and police cracked down brutally on the mass demonstrations.
A former student activist said prayers would be held at temples and offerings of food made to the monks.
The Irrawaddy News
University students in Rangoon have launched an anti-government pamphlet and poster campaign ahead of the 20th anniversary on August 8 of the 1988 uprising.
Students at Rangoon’s Dagon University have also written to its rector and vice-rector asking them to participate in protest actions in commemoration of the uprising, an assistant lecturer told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday.
Security appeared to have been tightened in Rangoon universities, the assistant lecturer said. “It seems that the government doesn’t want another pro-democracy protest like September’s monks-led uprising.”
Former student activists said they plan to wear black on August 8 in memory of up to 3,000 protesters, including monks, who died when troops and police cracked down brutally on the mass demonstrations.
A former student activist said prayers would be held at temples and offerings of food made to the monks.
Bush Set to Meet Burmese Activists
US President George W. Bush, left, and first lady Laura Bush wave upon their arrival at a Seoul military airport in Seongnam, South Korea, the first stop on their week-long visit to Asia. (Photo: AP)By WAI MOE
The Irrawaddy News
US President George W Bush will have a private lunch with Burmese activists in exile in Bangkok on Thursday in a stopover on his way to the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.
“He will have a lunch in Bangkok with Burmese activists and hear their stories,” said Dennis Wilder, a press officer at the White House. “And then he will be interviewed by the press in Thailand that broadcast into Burma, so that he can give a message directly to the Burmese people.”
First lady Laura Bush will travel to Mae Sot, near the Thailand-Burma border, where she will visit the Mae La Refugee Camp, the largest on the border. She will also visit a refugee clinic operated by Dr Cynthia Maung, according to the White House.
“The US policy on Burma is already very heavily influenced by [Burmese] activists,” said John Virgoe, the Southeast Asia director of the International Crisis Group. “I am not surprised he is interested to meet with activists.”
Nyan Win, a spokesperson of Burma’s main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, told The Irrawaddy on Monday that the party welcomed Bush’s meeting with exiled activists.
Thakin Chan Tun, a veteran politician and former Burmese ambassador to China, said, “President Bush’s meeting with Burmese activists shows how he and his wife strongly support Burma’s democracy movement.”
The US administration has strongly supported the democracy struggle in military-ruled Burma since 1988, the year thousands of demonstrators were killed by the military regime.
Bush has been under criticism by human rights activists around the world because of his decision to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.
Virgoe said the US is not very outspoken about human rights in China. “When we talk about China, of course, human rights is not on top of the [US] agenda,” he said.
During Bush’s eight years in office, the US has witnessed several important events in Burmese history. The democracy movement leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her convoy were ambushed in Depayin in Sagaing Division, northern Burma in May 2003 by thugs, backed by the junta. More than 100 people were reportedly killed. After the attack, Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest.
“The [Burmese] military authorities should release Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters immediately,” Bush said in early June 2003. “We have urged Burmese officials to release all political prisoners and to offer their people a better way of life, a life offering freedom and economic progress.”
In July 2003, Bush signed economic sanctions against the military regime. “These measures reaffirm to the people of Burma that the United States stands with them in their struggle for democracy and freedom,” Bush said.
In September 2007, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators led by Buddhist monks marched in Rangoon, the largest city in the country and many other towns, calling for a better life and national reconciliation. Burmese troops killed at least 30 people, including a Japanese photojournalist. Thousands of monks and activists were arrested.
Since the brutal crackdown in 2007, the US has put fresh “targeted sanctions” on the Burmese generals and their cronies. The new sanctions affect many state-controlled businesses and large businesses doing deals with the junta.
Deadly Cyclone Nargis hammered Burma on May 2-3, causing an estimated 134,000 deaths. The junta stalled for weeks, blocking large shipments of foreign aid and access to the affected area by foreign relief experts.
Bush sent a group of US Navy vessels, led by the aircraft carrier USS Essex, to stand by near Burma. Some aid from the vessels was shipped into the country by air, but the regime denied the massive amounts of aid the US was ready to provide to the devastated Irrawaddy delta.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, said the impact of US policies on Burma is limited. “He [George W Bush] needs to put pressure on China, India, Thailand and Asean on the Burma issue. He needs to put more pressure on countries that trade with Burma,” he added.
Myanmar Cyclone Survivors Living in `Dire Conditions,' UN Says
By Paul Tighe
(Bloomberg) -- Villagers in areas of Myanmar's Irrawaddy River Delta are living in ``dire conditions'' three months after Tropical Cyclone Nargis devastated the southern region, the United Nations said.
``We have seen significant progress being made in the affected areas,'' Daniel Baker, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Myanmar, said yesterday, according to the UN. ``Much more urgently needs to be done in remote areas where affected communities are still living in dire conditions.''
Food will need to be supplied to about 924,000 people ``on a systematic basis'' for the next nine months, the UN said. Assistance to isolated villages in the delta ``remains a challenge,'' it said.
Nargis struck the delta, Myanmar's main rice-producing region, May 2-3, causing a tidal surge that left more than 138,000 people dead or missing and 2.4 million requiring assistance. The country formerly known as Burma needs aid to ensure that farmers are able to plant crops by the end of the season this month, the UN said in July.
The region lost 85 percent of seed stocks and about 50 percent of buffalos as a result of the cyclone, the UN said yesterday. The agriculture industry is the least funded among the UN's aid programs and requires emergency support of about $51 million, it said.
Damaged Houses
Relief workers have provided shelter materials for about half of an estimated 488,000 houses damaged in the storm.
``Aid workers now have access to cyclone-affected areas,'' Baker said, adding that recovery work is being boosted by cooperation between Myanmar's military government, the UN and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a 10-member group that includes Myanmar.
International aid was slow to reach survivors because Myanmar's military, which has ruled the country since 1962, delayed permission for relief workers to visit the delta until about three weeks after the cyclone struck.
More than 780,000 hectares (1.9 million acres) of rice paddy fields were flooded, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said last month. Livestock, fishing, agriculture and forestry-based industries need to be restored, it said.
The junta has set an exchange rate that has cost the UN about $10 million in cyclone relief funds, John Holmes, the emergency relief coordinator, said last week.
UN agencies have to buy foreign exchange certificates issued by the government which are then used to purchase local currency. The UN has made losses of as much as 25 percent when converting the certificates into cash, said Holmes, who visited the country last month.
To contact the reporter on this story: Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomberg.net
(Bloomberg) -- Villagers in areas of Myanmar's Irrawaddy River Delta are living in ``dire conditions'' three months after Tropical Cyclone Nargis devastated the southern region, the United Nations said.
``We have seen significant progress being made in the affected areas,'' Daniel Baker, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Myanmar, said yesterday, according to the UN. ``Much more urgently needs to be done in remote areas where affected communities are still living in dire conditions.''
Food will need to be supplied to about 924,000 people ``on a systematic basis'' for the next nine months, the UN said. Assistance to isolated villages in the delta ``remains a challenge,'' it said.
Nargis struck the delta, Myanmar's main rice-producing region, May 2-3, causing a tidal surge that left more than 138,000 people dead or missing and 2.4 million requiring assistance. The country formerly known as Burma needs aid to ensure that farmers are able to plant crops by the end of the season this month, the UN said in July.
The region lost 85 percent of seed stocks and about 50 percent of buffalos as a result of the cyclone, the UN said yesterday. The agriculture industry is the least funded among the UN's aid programs and requires emergency support of about $51 million, it said.
Damaged Houses
Relief workers have provided shelter materials for about half of an estimated 488,000 houses damaged in the storm.
``Aid workers now have access to cyclone-affected areas,'' Baker said, adding that recovery work is being boosted by cooperation between Myanmar's military government, the UN and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a 10-member group that includes Myanmar.
International aid was slow to reach survivors because Myanmar's military, which has ruled the country since 1962, delayed permission for relief workers to visit the delta until about three weeks after the cyclone struck.
More than 780,000 hectares (1.9 million acres) of rice paddy fields were flooded, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said last month. Livestock, fishing, agriculture and forestry-based industries need to be restored, it said.
The junta has set an exchange rate that has cost the UN about $10 million in cyclone relief funds, John Holmes, the emergency relief coordinator, said last week.
UN agencies have to buy foreign exchange certificates issued by the government which are then used to purchase local currency. The UN has made losses of as much as 25 percent when converting the certificates into cash, said Holmes, who visited the country last month.
To contact the reporter on this story: Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomberg.net
Burma Without Blinkers - Editorial
Some help is arriving in the wake of Cyclone Nargis,
but for the Burmese
the real disaster is a despotic government.
but for the Burmese
the real disaster is a despotic government.
(WP) - ON THE OPPOSITE page today, we publish the views of a senior U.N. official, John Holmes, on progress in Burma since a devastating cyclone struck more than three months ago. His rather upbeat assessment comes as President Bush and first lady Laura Bush, during a visit to Thailand, are about to draw the world's attention to persistent problems in Burma (also known as Myanmar), Thailand's neighbor in Southeast Asia.
You may recall that after Cyclone Nargis swept through Burma's Irrawaddy Delta on May 2, leaving 138,000 people dead or missing, Burma's dictator, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, refused almost all offers of international aid. U.S. Navy ships loaded with tents, food and other humanitarian supplies steamed in circles offshore but were never given permission to help. After weeks of begging and pleading, Than Shwe allowed more aid workers to enter, and they have been at work since. Having traveled to Burma twice, Mr. Holmes, who is U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, reports the good news that "the overwhelming majority" of survivors "have received help, even if in many cases they still need a good deal more."
It is difficult to know the true conditions in the delta, since the regime won't let foreign journalists look and imprisons any Burmese journalists who seek to report accurately. Just this week, a popular Burmese comedian and blogger and a sports journalist were brought up on charges -- "disturbing public order" -- that could bring two years in prison because they tried to help cyclone victims and talked about their plight. Aid agencies, meanwhile, tend to play down negative news because, understandably, they want to preserve their access. Still, a joint assessment last month, including from U.N. agencies, reported that most households in the hardest-hit delta region still lacked access to clean drinking water, a situation posing a risk of disease, and that more than half had food stocks for one day or less and faced "an increasing risk of acute malnutrition."
We agree with Mr. Holmes that the United Nations did the best it could -- for the simple reason that countries with influence in Burma, such as China, Thailand and India, were more interested in preserving their commercial and military ties to the Burmese regime than in pressing it to allow its people to be helped. We also understand Mr. Holmes's desire to separate humanitarian considerations from politics.
But Burma, before and after the cyclone, was and is a humanitarian disaster because of politics: because its regime systematically impoverishes much of the population, conscripts children into forced labor, sends its army on internal campaigns of mass rape and ethnic cleansing, and persecutes monks and others who seek to help their fellow citizens. To consider such issues, or the criminal neglect of cyclone victims, as separable from politics is similar to hailing visits of U.N. human rights ambassadors as successful simply because they take place, even as the number of political prisoners -- 1,900 at latest count -- steadily rises.
So we think it is highly useful that Mr. Bush will meet with Burmese exiles tomorrow while Mrs. Bush visits a camp that houses 40,000 Burmese refugees. We hope their visit will be a reminder that by almost every measure of human misery and political repression, Burma in the past year has gone backward. Friday will mark the 20th anniversary of Burma's massacre of 3,000 democracy protesters. We hope that when Mr. Bush travels onward to Beijing, he will tell his Chinese hosts that history will not judge kindly their unstinting support of Burma's misrule in the 20 years since that black day.
Disaster Lessons
By John Holmes
(WP)-Three months have passed since Cyclone Nargis and an accompanying tidal surge swept across Myanmar's fertile Irrawaddy Delta region, claiming nearly 140,000 lives and devastating the livelihoods of many more people. All told, some 2.4 million people were seriously affected by Nargis, ranking it among the worst cyclones in Asia in the past 15 years and the worst in Myanmar's history.
I recently completed my second trip to Myanmar, where I was again sobered by the immensity of the tragedy but was also cautiously hopeful about relief efforts. In May, government reluctance to allow international aid workers into the affected region sparked a storm of international criticism.
We have made a lot of progress since then. Touring the delta by helicopter, I could see that many houses had been repaired one way or another. There was agricultural activity in the fields and commercial activity on the waterways. Schools are in session, in tents if not permanent classrooms. And hundreds of international aid staffers are now working in the delta. The promises about access made to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon when he saw Myanmar's head of state, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, in late May have essentially been kept.
Without question, the international response has helped save lives and reduce suffering. While it is impossible to be sure all survivors have been reached, I am confident that the overwhelming majority have received help, even if many still need a good deal more.
Crucially, a much-feared second wave of deaths from starvation or disease has not happened -- no small achievement, given that 75 percent of hospitals and clinics in the affected areas were destroyed. The people's resilience has been remarkable, as was the degree of help and solidarity from individual citizens and organizations in Myanmar.
Challenges remain, of course, including over issues such as aid exchange rates, and it would be unwise to gloss over them. But the main priority now is to help remote communities further and to ensure that assistance is continued systematically until all concerned can feed themselves and rebuild their lives.
So, what can we learn from this crisis?
First, no nation, rich or poor, can go it alone when confronted by a natural disaster of the magnitude of a Cyclone Nargis. It would have been much better, not least for the survivors, if the government of Myanmar had recognized the value of an international presence from the start. I encourage Myanmar's leaders to continue down the path of cooperation, including in response to other humanitarian challenges, based on the universal principle of the impartial provision of aid.
Second, we must stay focused on the goal: assisting people in crisis. From the first, the aid operation in Myanmar -- as is true everywhere we work -- had to be about helping vulnerable people in need, not about politics. In this post-Iraq age, I am concerned that humanitarians are often pressured to choose between the hammer of forced intervention and the anvil of perceived inaction. Was there a realistic alternative to the approach of persistent negotiation and dialogue that we pursued? I do not believe so. Nor have I met anyone engaged in the operations who believes that a different approach would have brought more aid to more people more quickly.
This is not to say that there can never be a role for humanitarian intervention, even in natural disasters. But it must be the last resort, when all else has been tried and the only alternative is death and suffering on a mass scale.
Third, Nargis showed us a new model of humanitarian partnership, adding the special position and capabilities of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to those of the United Nations in working effectively with the government. This may prove the most important -- and, I hope, enduring -- lesson of the cyclone response, with implications for how we respond, anywhere, in the future.
ASEAN's leadership was vital in building trust with the government and saving lives. In recent years, ASEAN members have significantly stepped up participation in the humanitarian arena. Given that eight of the 10 worst natural disasters last year occurred in Asia, this represents a lifesaving investment, where the United Nations is helping to build local capacity.
Fourth, Nargis demonstrated once again the importance of disaster risk reduction and preparedness. Simple, low-cost measures -- local evacuation plans, shelters, community early-warning systems -- have saved tens of thousands of lives in neighboring Bangladesh when it has been faced with similarly devastating cyclones. We need to help the people of Myanmar strengthen their resilience and reduce their vulnerability. Building back better, to minimize future disaster risks, is a top priority.
In coming years we can expect to see more, and more intense, weather-related natural disasters as the effects of climate change become more pronounced. We must be better prepared and must cooperate as neighbors and an international community in meeting this challenge. The need for effective global humanitarian partnerships has never been more apparent -- or more necessary.
The writer is U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.
(WP)-Three months have passed since Cyclone Nargis and an accompanying tidal surge swept across Myanmar's fertile Irrawaddy Delta region, claiming nearly 140,000 lives and devastating the livelihoods of many more people. All told, some 2.4 million people were seriously affected by Nargis, ranking it among the worst cyclones in Asia in the past 15 years and the worst in Myanmar's history.
I recently completed my second trip to Myanmar, where I was again sobered by the immensity of the tragedy but was also cautiously hopeful about relief efforts. In May, government reluctance to allow international aid workers into the affected region sparked a storm of international criticism.
We have made a lot of progress since then. Touring the delta by helicopter, I could see that many houses had been repaired one way or another. There was agricultural activity in the fields and commercial activity on the waterways. Schools are in session, in tents if not permanent classrooms. And hundreds of international aid staffers are now working in the delta. The promises about access made to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon when he saw Myanmar's head of state, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, in late May have essentially been kept.
Without question, the international response has helped save lives and reduce suffering. While it is impossible to be sure all survivors have been reached, I am confident that the overwhelming majority have received help, even if many still need a good deal more.
Crucially, a much-feared second wave of deaths from starvation or disease has not happened -- no small achievement, given that 75 percent of hospitals and clinics in the affected areas were destroyed. The people's resilience has been remarkable, as was the degree of help and solidarity from individual citizens and organizations in Myanmar.
Challenges remain, of course, including over issues such as aid exchange rates, and it would be unwise to gloss over them. But the main priority now is to help remote communities further and to ensure that assistance is continued systematically until all concerned can feed themselves and rebuild their lives.
So, what can we learn from this crisis?
First, no nation, rich or poor, can go it alone when confronted by a natural disaster of the magnitude of a Cyclone Nargis. It would have been much better, not least for the survivors, if the government of Myanmar had recognized the value of an international presence from the start. I encourage Myanmar's leaders to continue down the path of cooperation, including in response to other humanitarian challenges, based on the universal principle of the impartial provision of aid.
Second, we must stay focused on the goal: assisting people in crisis. From the first, the aid operation in Myanmar -- as is true everywhere we work -- had to be about helping vulnerable people in need, not about politics. In this post-Iraq age, I am concerned that humanitarians are often pressured to choose between the hammer of forced intervention and the anvil of perceived inaction. Was there a realistic alternative to the approach of persistent negotiation and dialogue that we pursued? I do not believe so. Nor have I met anyone engaged in the operations who believes that a different approach would have brought more aid to more people more quickly.
This is not to say that there can never be a role for humanitarian intervention, even in natural disasters. But it must be the last resort, when all else has been tried and the only alternative is death and suffering on a mass scale.
Third, Nargis showed us a new model of humanitarian partnership, adding the special position and capabilities of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to those of the United Nations in working effectively with the government. This may prove the most important -- and, I hope, enduring -- lesson of the cyclone response, with implications for how we respond, anywhere, in the future.
ASEAN's leadership was vital in building trust with the government and saving lives. In recent years, ASEAN members have significantly stepped up participation in the humanitarian arena. Given that eight of the 10 worst natural disasters last year occurred in Asia, this represents a lifesaving investment, where the United Nations is helping to build local capacity.
Fourth, Nargis demonstrated once again the importance of disaster risk reduction and preparedness. Simple, low-cost measures -- local evacuation plans, shelters, community early-warning systems -- have saved tens of thousands of lives in neighboring Bangladesh when it has been faced with similarly devastating cyclones. We need to help the people of Myanmar strengthen their resilience and reduce their vulnerability. Building back better, to minimize future disaster risks, is a top priority.
In coming years we can expect to see more, and more intense, weather-related natural disasters as the effects of climate change become more pronounced. We must be better prepared and must cooperate as neighbors and an international community in meeting this challenge. The need for effective global humanitarian partnerships has never been more apparent -- or more necessary.
The writer is U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.
Tuesday, 5 August 2008
Bogalay authorities demand construction tax
Aug 4, 2008 (DVB)–Residents of Irrawaddy's cyclone-devastated Bogalay township have complained that local authorities have been pressuring them to pay a construction tax for repair work on their houses.
A Bogalay resident said municipal officials had told locals to apply for construction permits to repair damage caused by the cyclone and charged them between 100,000 and 200,000 kyat depending on the size of the house.
"Whenever they see a pile of bricks and sand in front of someone's house, they think they can make some money," she said.
"Our houses were damaged by the cyclone and they should not charge us for repairing them."
The resident said those who paid the tax were not given receipts by the officials.
Reporting by Naw Say Phaw
A Bogalay resident said municipal officials had told locals to apply for construction permits to repair damage caused by the cyclone and charged them between 100,000 and 200,000 kyat depending on the size of the house.
"Whenever they see a pile of bricks and sand in front of someone's house, they think they can make some money," she said.
"Our houses were damaged by the cyclone and they should not charge us for repairing them."
The resident said those who paid the tax were not given receipts by the officials.
Reporting by Naw Say Phaw
Looking toward the 2010 elections - Commentary
By Htet Win
Mizzima News
04 August 2008 - Even though the operational strength of the political opposition has been significantly impaired by the military government, they still – albeit on condition that the junta does not cheat in the polling – have a chance to win the forthcoming multiparty elections scheduled for 2010.
But the country is desperately in need of many more democratically-minded politicians to move the country forward at a manageable pace. This fact is compounded by the current detention of most leading nationalist, and opposition, politicians.
However, opposition political parties can rest assured that they would gain the majority of public support in the coming election, even if they are opposed by figures hand-picked from organizations such as the junta-inspired Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA).
"That [an opposition victory in the 2010 voting] would not be primarily because the general public likes the opposition parties, but largely because the public is so fed up with the military government and its prescriptions such as the USDA, which is led by the likes of Industry (1) Minister Aung Thaung and Information Minister Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan, who are senior executives with USDA," said a political observer and a leading businessman who maintains a close relationship with top-ranking military personnel.
But why is the public so fed up with the current state? Reasons include the government's suppression of opposition protests in late 2007 that saw 30 people killed – including some monks – and the government's negligence to the widespread devastation inflicted by last May's Cyclone Nargis – which resulted in 138,000 potential deaths and displaced an estimated 2 million others.
"Because of the late September 2007 movement, the political influence of monks has become significant – whether of conscious design or not," the observer explained.
Another major factor in the public's discontent is that the junta's power thirst has led to the country's prolonged economic hardship, causing the increased suffering of 50 million people over the course of the past three decades.
In this scenario, what the public and the political opposition need is a single, nationalist political party to replace the military government forever.
To solidify the position of nationalist politicians, domestic opponents and international pressure must be steadfastly unified in order to push the military government to release political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi. Prominent international actors in this endeavor must include ASEAN, the UN and China. The military government has no choice but to move if and when its giant neighbor – China – presses it to do so.
"In this regard, China's genuine attitude toward Myanmar's greater openness is widely expected. Still, China seems to be satisfied with Myanmar's present progress, which favors the first to exploit the country for its own economic interests," analyzed a Rangoon-based lawyer.
Yet the lawyer further cautioned that while the military government itself has not proven efficient in guiding the country in a positive direction, they are too self-centered to give space for those who – regardless of being outside or inside Burma – support the country's real progress.
Also, ASEAN, the UN, and China could encourage the junta to open a dialogue with opposition groups. Dialogue is the best way. However, because of the limited number of capable political representatives, there would be an influx of political opportunists into Burma's already unstable political environment – especially in the lead-up to the 2010 elections.
In this scenario, there could exist after the election a new government with similar traits as to the present military regime. The new government, though, would be hamstrung by the inclusion of young persons who are chiefly concerned about financial clout and not necessarily politically mature – and definitely most of whom are not nationalists but opportunists probably coming from celebrity and business circles.
The less the number of nationalist politicians that contest the election, the more those in favor of entrenching military rule win.
"The forthcoming election, the fifth step of Myanmar's political roadmap, is expected to be accomplished," said a senior pro-government figure and representative at the National Convention, which laid down the principles to a new draft constitution ensuring the military's control over any elected government.
"The military government seems to have already calculated that the formation of an inefficient government would lead to yet another military coup, although it would be rule-based this time," the National Convention representative recently said, referring to a clause that the president must transfer power to the Commander-in-Chief during a state of emergency.
If this situation is to be avoided, and the 2010 elections are to be a step in the right direction, some fundamental changes must first come to Burma.
Conditions, currently, to support a free and fair election are still not inadequate. To overcome this obstacle, local media will have to be empowered so as to permit them to inform the people of their choices and to raise awareness about how important their polls are in the removal of the military government and road to democracy.
There are now many people who keep themselves away from politics although they may be interested in politics. It is correct to say that Burmese people live in a land of fear, which the military has created. To overcome this fear, they must have the capacity to listen to the radio, to read newspapers – especially those of informed external media outlets – and to actively partake in the coming political events of the country.
Mizzima News
04 August 2008 - Even though the operational strength of the political opposition has been significantly impaired by the military government, they still – albeit on condition that the junta does not cheat in the polling – have a chance to win the forthcoming multiparty elections scheduled for 2010.
But the country is desperately in need of many more democratically-minded politicians to move the country forward at a manageable pace. This fact is compounded by the current detention of most leading nationalist, and opposition, politicians.
However, opposition political parties can rest assured that they would gain the majority of public support in the coming election, even if they are opposed by figures hand-picked from organizations such as the junta-inspired Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA).
"That [an opposition victory in the 2010 voting] would not be primarily because the general public likes the opposition parties, but largely because the public is so fed up with the military government and its prescriptions such as the USDA, which is led by the likes of Industry (1) Minister Aung Thaung and Information Minister Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan, who are senior executives with USDA," said a political observer and a leading businessman who maintains a close relationship with top-ranking military personnel.
But why is the public so fed up with the current state? Reasons include the government's suppression of opposition protests in late 2007 that saw 30 people killed – including some monks – and the government's negligence to the widespread devastation inflicted by last May's Cyclone Nargis – which resulted in 138,000 potential deaths and displaced an estimated 2 million others.
"Because of the late September 2007 movement, the political influence of monks has become significant – whether of conscious design or not," the observer explained.
Another major factor in the public's discontent is that the junta's power thirst has led to the country's prolonged economic hardship, causing the increased suffering of 50 million people over the course of the past three decades.
In this scenario, what the public and the political opposition need is a single, nationalist political party to replace the military government forever.
To solidify the position of nationalist politicians, domestic opponents and international pressure must be steadfastly unified in order to push the military government to release political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi. Prominent international actors in this endeavor must include ASEAN, the UN and China. The military government has no choice but to move if and when its giant neighbor – China – presses it to do so.
"In this regard, China's genuine attitude toward Myanmar's greater openness is widely expected. Still, China seems to be satisfied with Myanmar's present progress, which favors the first to exploit the country for its own economic interests," analyzed a Rangoon-based lawyer.
Yet the lawyer further cautioned that while the military government itself has not proven efficient in guiding the country in a positive direction, they are too self-centered to give space for those who – regardless of being outside or inside Burma – support the country's real progress.
Also, ASEAN, the UN, and China could encourage the junta to open a dialogue with opposition groups. Dialogue is the best way. However, because of the limited number of capable political representatives, there would be an influx of political opportunists into Burma's already unstable political environment – especially in the lead-up to the 2010 elections.
In this scenario, there could exist after the election a new government with similar traits as to the present military regime. The new government, though, would be hamstrung by the inclusion of young persons who are chiefly concerned about financial clout and not necessarily politically mature – and definitely most of whom are not nationalists but opportunists probably coming from celebrity and business circles.
The less the number of nationalist politicians that contest the election, the more those in favor of entrenching military rule win.
"The forthcoming election, the fifth step of Myanmar's political roadmap, is expected to be accomplished," said a senior pro-government figure and representative at the National Convention, which laid down the principles to a new draft constitution ensuring the military's control over any elected government.
"The military government seems to have already calculated that the formation of an inefficient government would lead to yet another military coup, although it would be rule-based this time," the National Convention representative recently said, referring to a clause that the president must transfer power to the Commander-in-Chief during a state of emergency.
If this situation is to be avoided, and the 2010 elections are to be a step in the right direction, some fundamental changes must first come to Burma.
Conditions, currently, to support a free and fair election are still not inadequate. To overcome this obstacle, local media will have to be empowered so as to permit them to inform the people of their choices and to raise awareness about how important their polls are in the removal of the military government and road to democracy.
There are now many people who keep themselves away from politics although they may be interested in politics. It is correct to say that Burmese people live in a land of fear, which the military has created. To overcome this fear, they must have the capacity to listen to the radio, to read newspapers – especially those of informed external media outlets – and to actively partake in the coming political events of the country.
Time for Stalling on Human Rights Over
By BO KYI
The Irrawaddy News
The United Nations Human Rights Council sent a special rapporteur, Tomas Ojea Quintana, to Burma this week to seek improvements on the human rights situation in Burma.
One might have expected that Than Shwe's junta would make some concessions on human rights prior to Quintana's trip—instead, the exact opposite has happened, as human rights abuses have increased.
The mission, only the latest in dozens of failed trips to Burma by UN envoys and rapporteurs, was off to a bad start even before it has begun.
Instead of making substantive moves on human rights, over the past two months the junta ramped up its repression of the Burmese people. Just days ago, Than Shwe's troops re-energized their scorched-earth campaign against ethnic minorities in eastern Burma, forcing hundreds of innocent villagers to flee their homes as refugees and internally displaced persons.
On July 31st, the junta announced its intention to sentence Burma's most famous comedian and social activist, Zarganar, along with the country's leading sports reporter.
About two months ago, the junta detained various members of the National League for Democracy, the political party of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi.
On July 21, student political activist Khin Maung Tint died in Burma's notorious prison gulag, in the midst of serving a 20-year sentence.
On July 25, the junta sentenced 10 Muslim student activists to prison with hard labor for participating in the September 2007 Buddhist-monk led pro-democracy uprising.
No doubt, Than Shwe's junta will try to obscure these moves during Quintana's visit. If previous behavior is any guidepost, the junta will make a series of promises to change that will subsequently be broken when Quintana leaves the country. The regime will hope for positive comments by Quintana after his trip—statements they will use to show they are making "progress" when in reality there are no lasting changes whatsoever.
If the junta is feeling generous, it may even release a few political prisoners whom they deem to be unthreatening to their grip on power.
Instead of looking toward genuine change, the junta sees visits by UN envoys as an exercise in public relations, hoping the envoys will publicly thank the regime for allowing them to visit and thereby diminishing hopes for actual change. That such trips happen at all is cited as "progress" by some countries in the UN who seek so preserve Burma’s status quo.
This pattern of obfuscation has been carried on successfully by the junta for many years. Sadly, it has enabled Than Shwe to commit massive, widespread, systematic atrocities that could someday land him in the International Criminal Court.
Among other abuses, Than Shwe has destroyed many villages like in Darfur, Sudan, forcing hundreds of thousands of innocent villagers to flee as refugees and internally displaced persons.
He has recruited more child soldiers than any other country in the world, also a crime against humanity.
His troops carry out a policy of using rape as a weapon of war against ethnic minority women.
His regime now has nearly 2,000 political prisoners in its jails.
Before more people are senselessly imprisoned or killed in Burma, we hope that Quintana delivers a strong message to Than Shwe, demanding the immediate release of all political prisoners. While in Burma, Quintana should meet with key imprisoned leaders, including Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi, Su Su Nway and Zarganar.
Quintana must call on the military regime to immediately end all attacks on ethnic minorities in the country. That Than Shwe has gotten away with such attacks for so many years is devastating to Burma’s ethnic groups, and it sets a terrible precedent for the rest of the world.
Finally, Quintana should make it clear to Than Shwe that change must come immediately—if the junta attempts to draw the envoy into a protracted game of cat and mouse on human rights implementation, the UN must seek stronger action from the Human Rights Council and UN Security Council.
The time for stalling on human rights is over.
Bo Kyi is a co-founder of the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma). He was tortured and served more than 7 years as a political prisoner in Burma.
The Irrawaddy News
The United Nations Human Rights Council sent a special rapporteur, Tomas Ojea Quintana, to Burma this week to seek improvements on the human rights situation in Burma.
One might have expected that Than Shwe's junta would make some concessions on human rights prior to Quintana's trip—instead, the exact opposite has happened, as human rights abuses have increased.
The mission, only the latest in dozens of failed trips to Burma by UN envoys and rapporteurs, was off to a bad start even before it has begun.
Instead of making substantive moves on human rights, over the past two months the junta ramped up its repression of the Burmese people. Just days ago, Than Shwe's troops re-energized their scorched-earth campaign against ethnic minorities in eastern Burma, forcing hundreds of innocent villagers to flee their homes as refugees and internally displaced persons.
On July 31st, the junta announced its intention to sentence Burma's most famous comedian and social activist, Zarganar, along with the country's leading sports reporter.
About two months ago, the junta detained various members of the National League for Democracy, the political party of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi.
On July 21, student political activist Khin Maung Tint died in Burma's notorious prison gulag, in the midst of serving a 20-year sentence.
On July 25, the junta sentenced 10 Muslim student activists to prison with hard labor for participating in the September 2007 Buddhist-monk led pro-democracy uprising.
No doubt, Than Shwe's junta will try to obscure these moves during Quintana's visit. If previous behavior is any guidepost, the junta will make a series of promises to change that will subsequently be broken when Quintana leaves the country. The regime will hope for positive comments by Quintana after his trip—statements they will use to show they are making "progress" when in reality there are no lasting changes whatsoever.
If the junta is feeling generous, it may even release a few political prisoners whom they deem to be unthreatening to their grip on power.
Instead of looking toward genuine change, the junta sees visits by UN envoys as an exercise in public relations, hoping the envoys will publicly thank the regime for allowing them to visit and thereby diminishing hopes for actual change. That such trips happen at all is cited as "progress" by some countries in the UN who seek so preserve Burma’s status quo.
This pattern of obfuscation has been carried on successfully by the junta for many years. Sadly, it has enabled Than Shwe to commit massive, widespread, systematic atrocities that could someday land him in the International Criminal Court.
Among other abuses, Than Shwe has destroyed many villages like in Darfur, Sudan, forcing hundreds of thousands of innocent villagers to flee as refugees and internally displaced persons.
He has recruited more child soldiers than any other country in the world, also a crime against humanity.
His troops carry out a policy of using rape as a weapon of war against ethnic minority women.
His regime now has nearly 2,000 political prisoners in its jails.
Before more people are senselessly imprisoned or killed in Burma, we hope that Quintana delivers a strong message to Than Shwe, demanding the immediate release of all political prisoners. While in Burma, Quintana should meet with key imprisoned leaders, including Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi, Su Su Nway and Zarganar.
Quintana must call on the military regime to immediately end all attacks on ethnic minorities in the country. That Than Shwe has gotten away with such attacks for so many years is devastating to Burma’s ethnic groups, and it sets a terrible precedent for the rest of the world.
Finally, Quintana should make it clear to Than Shwe that change must come immediately—if the junta attempts to draw the envoy into a protracted game of cat and mouse on human rights implementation, the UN must seek stronger action from the Human Rights Council and UN Security Council.
The time for stalling on human rights is over.
Bo Kyi is a co-founder of the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma). He was tortured and served more than 7 years as a political prisoner in Burma.
Drug-dealing Prisoners to Get Closer Monitoring
By SAI SILP
The Irrawaddy News
To suppress prisoners who continue to operate drug networks while behind bars, Thai authorities will establish special zones for drug-related detainees who will undergo closer monitoring.
Sompong Amornwiwat, the Thai minister of justice, told prison officials in Bangkok that the ministry plan to create special prison zones for selected drug-related detainees, who currently make up a total 60 percent of all prisoners.
About 1,000 drug detainees will be separated from other cases to prevent them from dealing drugs outside the prison and high-technology tools will be used to monitor this zone.” Sompong said, according to a report on the Thai government’s Web site.
The ministry has plans to tighten restrictions in eight high-security prison zones.
In one of the latest examples, in April, crystal methamphetamine, or Ya Ice, was discovered hidden inside the cover of a pocket book sent to Lueng Pak Lun, a Korean convicted of drug offences, in Zone 10 of the Khlong Prem Central Prison in Bangkok. Prison officials suspect the drug was ordered by mobile phone and delivered through contacts inside and outside the prison.
The Corrections Department has started blocking mobile phone signals at three maximum security prisons to cut off contact between prisoners and drug dealers on the outside, after officials found a series of attempts to contact dealers and bring drugs into the prisons.
The signal-blocking devices are at Khlong Prem Central Prison, Bang Kwang Prison and the Central Correctional Institute for Drug Addicts, which house high-profile drug traffickers. Drugs may still enter the prisons. Officials admit it is difficult to screen items sent to prisoners by mail. Narcotics have been discovered sealed inside cups of yoghurt, bottles of lotion and other items.
There have been complaints from foreign prisoners who have protested that parcels addressed to them had been rifled through. Some cases have ended in lawsuits against prison staff and wardens. Prisons normally must obtain a warrant from a court to search a prisoner’s mail.
The Justice Ministry, however, is now seeking a change in the law that would allow a prison commander to decide whether to authorize a mail search.
In early July, authorities arrested a group of drug traffickers and seized more than 170,000 methamphetamine tablets sent from Chiang Mai under the direction of detained Thai and Burmese drug dealers in Zone 10 of the Central Correctional Institute for Drug Addicts.
The Irrawaddy News
To suppress prisoners who continue to operate drug networks while behind bars, Thai authorities will establish special zones for drug-related detainees who will undergo closer monitoring.
Sompong Amornwiwat, the Thai minister of justice, told prison officials in Bangkok that the ministry plan to create special prison zones for selected drug-related detainees, who currently make up a total 60 percent of all prisoners.
About 1,000 drug detainees will be separated from other cases to prevent them from dealing drugs outside the prison and high-technology tools will be used to monitor this zone.” Sompong said, according to a report on the Thai government’s Web site.
The ministry has plans to tighten restrictions in eight high-security prison zones.
In one of the latest examples, in April, crystal methamphetamine, or Ya Ice, was discovered hidden inside the cover of a pocket book sent to Lueng Pak Lun, a Korean convicted of drug offences, in Zone 10 of the Khlong Prem Central Prison in Bangkok. Prison officials suspect the drug was ordered by mobile phone and delivered through contacts inside and outside the prison.
The Corrections Department has started blocking mobile phone signals at three maximum security prisons to cut off contact between prisoners and drug dealers on the outside, after officials found a series of attempts to contact dealers and bring drugs into the prisons.
The signal-blocking devices are at Khlong Prem Central Prison, Bang Kwang Prison and the Central Correctional Institute for Drug Addicts, which house high-profile drug traffickers. Drugs may still enter the prisons. Officials admit it is difficult to screen items sent to prisoners by mail. Narcotics have been discovered sealed inside cups of yoghurt, bottles of lotion and other items.
There have been complaints from foreign prisoners who have protested that parcels addressed to them had been rifled through. Some cases have ended in lawsuits against prison staff and wardens. Prisons normally must obtain a warrant from a court to search a prisoner’s mail.
The Justice Ministry, however, is now seeking a change in the law that would allow a prison commander to decide whether to authorize a mail search.
In early July, authorities arrested a group of drug traffickers and seized more than 170,000 methamphetamine tablets sent from Chiang Mai under the direction of detained Thai and Burmese drug dealers in Zone 10 of the Central Correctional Institute for Drug Addicts.
Quote on Unity
"if Thais and Burmese activists can join efforts towards freedom,
Burmese ethnic groups ought to practice
Unity
to reach our goal with higher strength"
-Jeg
Burmese ethnic groups ought to practice
Unity
to reach our goal with higher strength"
-Jeg
Thai, Burmese Note 8-8-8 Anniversary
By HTET AUNG
The Irrawaddy News
BANGKOK — Burmese and Thai activists in Bangkok on Sunday renewed their efforts to bring democracy to Burma at a 20-year anniversary commemoration of the 8-8-88 uprising.
“If I have to state my view, there has been no progress in Burma. But I still have a positive view,” said Dr Charnvit Kasetsiri, a historian and the former rector of Thammasat University, in a keynote speech. “The situation in Burma is serious, but it is not hopeless.”
The commemoration was co-hosted by the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Thammasat University and the Thai Action Committee for Democracy in Burma (TACDB) in collaboration with several organizations working on Burma issues.
A panel discussion, “A Two-decade Overview on Changes in Burma,” included Burmese and Thai democracy activists and scholars. Panel participants included Dr. Naruemon Thubchumpon, the director of Master of Arts in International Development Studies at Chulalongkorn University; Dr. Thaung Htun; Ajarn Pornpimon Trichot; Nang Hseng Noung of the Presidium of Women’s League of Burma (WLB); and Aung Thu Nyein, an exiled Burmese scholar.
“In the last 20 years, even though I have witnessed a sort of fluctuation in Thai policy towards Burma,” said Dr. Thaung Htun, a representative of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB), “the support of Thai academia and civil society organizations remain unchanged and it is a great encouraging sign.” However, ordinary Thai citizens need to be more aware of the Burmese issue, he said.
Regarding the NCGUB’s efforts during the coming UN General Assembly, he told The Irrawaddy, “At this moment, we haven’t seen the concrete conclusion or comment made by the UN secretary-general regarding the progress and the outcome [of the constitutional referendum]. We have a plan to advocate the background history of the referendum process and how it failed to be inclusive and to reflect the will of the people.
“We will convince all the international players [that] the key is to find a solution, and the 2010 election is not a solution for our country.”
Ajarn Pornpimon Trichot, a senior researcher at the Institute of Asian Studies at Chulalongkorn University, who visited Burma soon after Cyclone Nargis, said “Distrust is rampant in Burmese society, resulting in a difficult situation to cooperate with each other and this has been for 20 years.”
She said distrust can be overcome with more people-to-people cooperation and understanding.
“Some of the people can overcome [distrust] because a lot of them from all walks of life came out and helped people [after Cyclone Nargis] with love and compassion,” she said. “These kinds of activities [should] keep going on and on.
“In fact, the Burmese people are strong, hardworking and determined to develop their livelihood. I am surprised that the Burmese government treats their citizens as enemies.”
Other Thai academic and civil organizations involved included the Thai Allied Committee of the Burma Foundation, the Cross Cultural Foundation, the Peace Foundation and the Alternative Asean Network on Burma.
“It is very important to remind the Thai community and the world that though we haven’t seen change, we expect it will come soon,” TACDB chairperson Laddawan Tuntivityapitak told The Irrawaddy. The TACDB is one of the staunchest Thai groups in support of Burmese activists in Thailand.
Meanwhile, a group of Burma supporters have launched a Thai-English bilingual Web site www.thaifreeburma.org to inform Thai citizens on Burmese issues.
About 100 Thai and Burmese activists, academics and students attended the commemoration. After the panel discussion, participants placed white roses on a black desk in remembrance of the Burmese people killed by the military government in 1988.
The Irrawaddy News
BANGKOK — Burmese and Thai activists in Bangkok on Sunday renewed their efforts to bring democracy to Burma at a 20-year anniversary commemoration of the 8-8-88 uprising.
“If I have to state my view, there has been no progress in Burma. But I still have a positive view,” said Dr Charnvit Kasetsiri, a historian and the former rector of Thammasat University, in a keynote speech. “The situation in Burma is serious, but it is not hopeless.”
The commemoration was co-hosted by the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Thammasat University and the Thai Action Committee for Democracy in Burma (TACDB) in collaboration with several organizations working on Burma issues.
A panel discussion, “A Two-decade Overview on Changes in Burma,” included Burmese and Thai democracy activists and scholars. Panel participants included Dr. Naruemon Thubchumpon, the director of Master of Arts in International Development Studies at Chulalongkorn University; Dr. Thaung Htun; Ajarn Pornpimon Trichot; Nang Hseng Noung of the Presidium of Women’s League of Burma (WLB); and Aung Thu Nyein, an exiled Burmese scholar.
“In the last 20 years, even though I have witnessed a sort of fluctuation in Thai policy towards Burma,” said Dr. Thaung Htun, a representative of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB), “the support of Thai academia and civil society organizations remain unchanged and it is a great encouraging sign.” However, ordinary Thai citizens need to be more aware of the Burmese issue, he said.
Regarding the NCGUB’s efforts during the coming UN General Assembly, he told The Irrawaddy, “At this moment, we haven’t seen the concrete conclusion or comment made by the UN secretary-general regarding the progress and the outcome [of the constitutional referendum]. We have a plan to advocate the background history of the referendum process and how it failed to be inclusive and to reflect the will of the people.
“We will convince all the international players [that] the key is to find a solution, and the 2010 election is not a solution for our country.”
Ajarn Pornpimon Trichot, a senior researcher at the Institute of Asian Studies at Chulalongkorn University, who visited Burma soon after Cyclone Nargis, said “Distrust is rampant in Burmese society, resulting in a difficult situation to cooperate with each other and this has been for 20 years.”
She said distrust can be overcome with more people-to-people cooperation and understanding.
“Some of the people can overcome [distrust] because a lot of them from all walks of life came out and helped people [after Cyclone Nargis] with love and compassion,” she said. “These kinds of activities [should] keep going on and on.
“In fact, the Burmese people are strong, hardworking and determined to develop their livelihood. I am surprised that the Burmese government treats their citizens as enemies.”
Other Thai academic and civil organizations involved included the Thai Allied Committee of the Burma Foundation, the Cross Cultural Foundation, the Peace Foundation and the Alternative Asean Network on Burma.
“It is very important to remind the Thai community and the world that though we haven’t seen change, we expect it will come soon,” TACDB chairperson Laddawan Tuntivityapitak told The Irrawaddy. The TACDB is one of the staunchest Thai groups in support of Burmese activists in Thailand.
Meanwhile, a group of Burma supporters have launched a Thai-English bilingual Web site www.thaifreeburma.org to inform Thai citizens on Burmese issues.
About 100 Thai and Burmese activists, academics and students attended the commemoration. After the panel discussion, participants placed white roses on a black desk in remembrance of the Burmese people killed by the military government in 1988.
UN Rights Envoy Meets Burmese Buddhist Monks
RANGOON (Irrawaddy News-AP) — A United Nations envoy met senior Buddhist monks Monday at the start of a four-day mission in Burma, but it remained unclear if he would hold talks with junta officials and detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, diplomats said.
Tomas Ojea Quintana, the UN Human Rights Council investigator for Burma, met early Monday with senior members of the State Sangha Organization, the body that supervises the country's monasteries and monks, said Asian diplomats speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the envoy's itinerary.
He also met leaders of other religious groups and representatives of a government-sponsored women's group, the diplomats said. They had no details of what was discussed at any of the meetings.
Quintana has also requested talks with senior government officials, representatives of ethnic groups and political parties, according to a UN statement Sunday. The statement did not mention Suu Kyi, the opposition figure under house arrest, but all former UN human rights envoys have asked for such a meeting.
Quintana's predecessor, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, was not allowed to visit the detained opposition leader when he visited in November.
The diplomats said Quintana was expected to travel to meet government ministers in the capital, Naypyitaw, but it was not known if he would be granted a meeting with junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe.
A UN spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment Monday and the UN has not released a full itinerary of Quintana's visit.
He was expected to visit the Irrawaddy delta where a May 2-3 cyclone killed more than 84,000 people. Burma's military rulers were accused of initially preventing foreign relief workers from accessing the area, then dragging their feet on providing food, water and shelter to the estimated 2.4 million survivors.
Quintana was due to meet the Tripartite Core Group that oversees cyclone relief work later Monday, the diplomats said. The group comprises representatives of the government, UN agencies and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nation, Asean, of which Burma is a member.
Quintana's scheduled departure Thursday comes a day before the 20th anniversary of a 1988 uprising against the military junta. The government has already beefed up security, fearing pro-democracy activists could launch anti-junta protests to coincide with the anniversary.
Burma has been under military rule since 1962. The current junta came to power in 1988 after crushing a nationwide pro-democracy movement, killing as many as 3,000 people. It called elections in 1990 but refused to honor the results when Suu Kyi's party won overwhelmingly.
The junta ruled mostly unchallenged until last August when thousands of Buddhist monks joined rallies against a fuel price increase. The junta cracked down on anti-government demonstrations in September by shooting and arresting protesters, killing as many as 31 people. Dissident groups put the death toll far higher.
Tomas Ojea Quintana, the UN Human Rights Council investigator for Burma, met early Monday with senior members of the State Sangha Organization, the body that supervises the country's monasteries and monks, said Asian diplomats speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the envoy's itinerary.
He also met leaders of other religious groups and representatives of a government-sponsored women's group, the diplomats said. They had no details of what was discussed at any of the meetings.
Quintana has also requested talks with senior government officials, representatives of ethnic groups and political parties, according to a UN statement Sunday. The statement did not mention Suu Kyi, the opposition figure under house arrest, but all former UN human rights envoys have asked for such a meeting.
Quintana's predecessor, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, was not allowed to visit the detained opposition leader when he visited in November.
The diplomats said Quintana was expected to travel to meet government ministers in the capital, Naypyitaw, but it was not known if he would be granted a meeting with junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe.
A UN spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment Monday and the UN has not released a full itinerary of Quintana's visit.
He was expected to visit the Irrawaddy delta where a May 2-3 cyclone killed more than 84,000 people. Burma's military rulers were accused of initially preventing foreign relief workers from accessing the area, then dragging their feet on providing food, water and shelter to the estimated 2.4 million survivors.
Quintana was due to meet the Tripartite Core Group that oversees cyclone relief work later Monday, the diplomats said. The group comprises representatives of the government, UN agencies and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nation, Asean, of which Burma is a member.
Quintana's scheduled departure Thursday comes a day before the 20th anniversary of a 1988 uprising against the military junta. The government has already beefed up security, fearing pro-democracy activists could launch anti-junta protests to coincide with the anniversary.
Burma has been under military rule since 1962. The current junta came to power in 1988 after crushing a nationwide pro-democracy movement, killing as many as 3,000 people. It called elections in 1990 but refused to honor the results when Suu Kyi's party won overwhelmingly.
The junta ruled mostly unchallenged until last August when thousands of Buddhist monks joined rallies against a fuel price increase. The junta cracked down on anti-government demonstrations in September by shooting and arresting protesters, killing as many as 31 people. Dissident groups put the death toll far higher.
Activists Urge Olympic Boycott of Chinese Jade
By SAW YAN NAING
The Irrawaddy News
Burmese pro-democracy activists are calling for a boycott of jade during the Olympic Games in Beijing, claiming the event could boost demand for stones mined in Burma.
Cristina Moon, an activist for the New York-based “8-8-08 for Burma” campaign said that while her organization was pleased to know that official souvenirs would not be made of Chinese jade, “there is a growing demand for Burmese jade that will increase due to the Olympic promotion of jade. The generals will keep using their jade profits to buy weapons and crush dissent in Burma unless individuals take a stand.”
Jade sales are Burma’s third highest source of foreign income.
At least 90 percent of jadeite on sale in China comes from Burmese mines, which are controlled and operated by the Burmese regime and its business partners, according to a report titled: Blood Jade: Burmese Gemstones & the Beijing Games.
The report, released on Monday by an ethnic activists group, the All Kachin Students and Youth Union (AKSYU) and the “8-8-08 for Burma Campaign,” says the Burmese government earns about US $300 million (348 billion kyat) yearly from the export of jade, mainly to China.
Naw La, a Kachin environmentalist and member of the AKSYU, said the expansion of jade mining in Kachin State had led to land confiscation, forced relocation and environmental destruction.
“Our mountains have disappeared and our youth are dying,” he said. “The generals are letting their cronies mine away our future.”
The Irrawaddy News
Burmese pro-democracy activists are calling for a boycott of jade during the Olympic Games in Beijing, claiming the event could boost demand for stones mined in Burma.
Cristina Moon, an activist for the New York-based “8-8-08 for Burma” campaign said that while her organization was pleased to know that official souvenirs would not be made of Chinese jade, “there is a growing demand for Burmese jade that will increase due to the Olympic promotion of jade. The generals will keep using their jade profits to buy weapons and crush dissent in Burma unless individuals take a stand.”
Jade sales are Burma’s third highest source of foreign income.
At least 90 percent of jadeite on sale in China comes from Burmese mines, which are controlled and operated by the Burmese regime and its business partners, according to a report titled: Blood Jade: Burmese Gemstones & the Beijing Games.
The report, released on Monday by an ethnic activists group, the All Kachin Students and Youth Union (AKSYU) and the “8-8-08 for Burma Campaign,” says the Burmese government earns about US $300 million (348 billion kyat) yearly from the export of jade, mainly to China.
Naw La, a Kachin environmentalist and member of the AKSYU, said the expansion of jade mining in Kachin State had led to land confiscation, forced relocation and environmental destruction.
“Our mountains have disappeared and our youth are dying,” he said. “The generals are letting their cronies mine away our future.”
Security Tightens as 8.8.88 Anniversary Campaign Begins - Red Campaign
By VIOLET CHO
The Irrawaddy News
A Burmese student movement has launched a so-called “Red Campaign” ahead of the anniversary of the 1988 uprising, spraying red paint on the walls of schools and other public places in Rangoon to remind people of the event.
The campaign, organized by the student-based “Generation Wave,” despite stepped up security by police and troops.
“The army and riot police are everywhere,” said Burmese clerk who works for an international non-governmental organization in Rangoon. Security was also reportedly tightened in Mandalay.
The anniversary of the uprising and its brutal suppression falls on August 8. Up to 3,000 protesters are thought to have died in clashes with the authorities, while 2,000 arrested during and after the uprising are still in prison.
Moe Thway, a leading member of “Generation Wave” told The Irrawaddy on Monday that the movement had organized the “Red Campaign” to raise awareness among young people of the significance of August 8, 1988.
“We are doing this as evidence that we are not defeated, despite military suppression,” he said. “We young people will continue our struggle for justice and freedom for all Burmese citizens.”
The campaign kicked off as the UN Human Rights Council investigator for Burma, Tomas Ojea Quintana, arrived in Rangoon on his first mission to the country.
The Irrawaddy News
A Burmese student movement has launched a so-called “Red Campaign” ahead of the anniversary of the 1988 uprising, spraying red paint on the walls of schools and other public places in Rangoon to remind people of the event.
The campaign, organized by the student-based “Generation Wave,” despite stepped up security by police and troops.
“The army and riot police are everywhere,” said Burmese clerk who works for an international non-governmental organization in Rangoon. Security was also reportedly tightened in Mandalay.
The anniversary of the uprising and its brutal suppression falls on August 8. Up to 3,000 protesters are thought to have died in clashes with the authorities, while 2,000 arrested during and after the uprising are still in prison.
Moe Thway, a leading member of “Generation Wave” told The Irrawaddy on Monday that the movement had organized the “Red Campaign” to raise awareness among young people of the significance of August 8, 1988.
“We are doing this as evidence that we are not defeated, despite military suppression,” he said. “We young people will continue our struggle for justice and freedom for all Burmese citizens.”
The campaign kicked off as the UN Human Rights Council investigator for Burma, Tomas Ojea Quintana, arrived in Rangoon on his first mission to the country.
Cyclone Nargis response enters a new phase in relief and early recovery
Fourth Press Release of the Tripartite Core Group (TCG)
Yangon, Myanmar (Relief Web), 30 July 2008 - The Government of Myanmar organised a field trip involving more than 148 representatives of foreign missions, UN agencies, international non-governmental organisations, relief organisations and the media to the cyclone Nargis-affected areas in the Ayeyarwady Delta using six Myanmar Air Force helicopters on 29 July 2009.
‘This is to reassure that access to the disaster-affected areas continues to be unimpeded and is expanding. This is also to give first-hand information to encourage the international community to work with us to intensify the emergency relief and early recovery for the affected communities,’ explained U Kyaw Thu, Myanmar’s Deputy Foreign Minister and TCG Chairman. He also expects the field trip will bring forward and provide complementary support to the government’s 50-billion-kyat recovery programme. Other TCG members also joined the field visit.
The field trip follows the release of the Post-Nargis Joint Assessment (PONJA) Report on the sidelines of the 41st ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Singapore on 21 July and concurrently in Yangon. US$303 million is urgently needed to intensify the relief and early recovery efforts as presented in the 10th July Revised Appeal by the UN, while recovery needs are estimated at US$1 billion over the next three years as assessed in the PONJA Report.
On the ground, the TCG reported that all of the disaster-affected communities have received relief assistance at least once. Bishow Parajuli, UN Resident Coordinator and also a member of the TCG said, ‘Now, we have double challenges, one, sustaining the relief and two, advancing the support for early recovery in terms of livelihood and subsequently local level recovery on the ground. There is progress in the ongoing farming recovery activities. However there is still a lot to do and we are concerned that many farmers may be unable to catch up with the fast-ending monsoon paddy crop planting season, with their subsequent future food security concern’.
The TCG has facilitated more than 2,000 visas for humanitarian workers involved in Nargis-related tasks. Humanitarian clusters continue to deliver aid together with the line ministries and local governments.
Along that line, the TCG recently launched a Community-Based Early Recovery Pilot Project at Seik Gyi in Kungyangon Township. This TCG special project will focus on early recovery efforts, such as community infrastructure repairs including monasteries and cleaning of community dug wells; and livelihood stimulation support such as planting of betel leaves, building fishing boats and providing fishing nets for the affected communities.
During the first TCG’s visit to the village on Saturday, 26 July 2008, H.E. Bansarn Bunnag, Thailand’s Ambassador to Myanmar and senior ASEAN member of the TCG explained, ‘This project will serve as the model for an integrated relief and early recovery that we could replicate quickly in other places in the affected areas’.
* Note: The TCG is an ASEAN-led mechanism to facilitate trust, confidence and cooperation between Myanmar and the international community in the urgent post-Cyclone Nargis humanitarian relief and recovery work. The TCG started its work on 31 May 2008 and has been meeting at least once a week in a spirit of mutual understanding, trust and cooperation. It has been working closely with the National Disaster Preparedness Central Committee chaired by His Excellency Prime Minister General Thein Sein, Union of Myanmar.
The TCG comprises three members from the Myanmar Government: (Deputy Foreign Minister H.E. U Kyaw Thu who is the Chairman; Acting Director-General, Ministry of Social Welfare and Resettlement U Aung Tun Khaing; and, Deputy Director-General, Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation U Than Aye); three members from ASEAN (Thailand’s Ambassador to Myanmar H.E. Bansarn Bunnag; Dr Puji Pujiono, a senior UNDP officer seconded to the ASEAN Secretariat; and, Dr. Anish Kumar Roy, Director of Bureau for Resources Development of the ASEAN Secretariat alternating with Ms. Adelina Kamal of the ASEAN Secretariat); and three from the UN (UN Humanitarian Coordinator Mr Daniel Baker; UN Resident Coordinator Mr Bishow Parajuli; and, a rotating UN agency representative).
For further information, please contact:
Ms. Adelina Kamal
Head, Coordinating Office for the ASEAN Humanitarian Task Force
Phone No.: +951 544500 ext 417
E-mail: akamal.aseanhtf@gmail.com
Original Source: Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); Government of Myanmar; United Nations Country Team in Myanmar
Yangon, Myanmar (Relief Web), 30 July 2008 - The Government of Myanmar organised a field trip involving more than 148 representatives of foreign missions, UN agencies, international non-governmental organisations, relief organisations and the media to the cyclone Nargis-affected areas in the Ayeyarwady Delta using six Myanmar Air Force helicopters on 29 July 2009.
‘This is to reassure that access to the disaster-affected areas continues to be unimpeded and is expanding. This is also to give first-hand information to encourage the international community to work with us to intensify the emergency relief and early recovery for the affected communities,’ explained U Kyaw Thu, Myanmar’s Deputy Foreign Minister and TCG Chairman. He also expects the field trip will bring forward and provide complementary support to the government’s 50-billion-kyat recovery programme. Other TCG members also joined the field visit.
The field trip follows the release of the Post-Nargis Joint Assessment (PONJA) Report on the sidelines of the 41st ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Singapore on 21 July and concurrently in Yangon. US$303 million is urgently needed to intensify the relief and early recovery efforts as presented in the 10th July Revised Appeal by the UN, while recovery needs are estimated at US$1 billion over the next three years as assessed in the PONJA Report.
On the ground, the TCG reported that all of the disaster-affected communities have received relief assistance at least once. Bishow Parajuli, UN Resident Coordinator and also a member of the TCG said, ‘Now, we have double challenges, one, sustaining the relief and two, advancing the support for early recovery in terms of livelihood and subsequently local level recovery on the ground. There is progress in the ongoing farming recovery activities. However there is still a lot to do and we are concerned that many farmers may be unable to catch up with the fast-ending monsoon paddy crop planting season, with their subsequent future food security concern’.
The TCG has facilitated more than 2,000 visas for humanitarian workers involved in Nargis-related tasks. Humanitarian clusters continue to deliver aid together with the line ministries and local governments.
Along that line, the TCG recently launched a Community-Based Early Recovery Pilot Project at Seik Gyi in Kungyangon Township. This TCG special project will focus on early recovery efforts, such as community infrastructure repairs including monasteries and cleaning of community dug wells; and livelihood stimulation support such as planting of betel leaves, building fishing boats and providing fishing nets for the affected communities.
During the first TCG’s visit to the village on Saturday, 26 July 2008, H.E. Bansarn Bunnag, Thailand’s Ambassador to Myanmar and senior ASEAN member of the TCG explained, ‘This project will serve as the model for an integrated relief and early recovery that we could replicate quickly in other places in the affected areas’.
* Note: The TCG is an ASEAN-led mechanism to facilitate trust, confidence and cooperation between Myanmar and the international community in the urgent post-Cyclone Nargis humanitarian relief and recovery work. The TCG started its work on 31 May 2008 and has been meeting at least once a week in a spirit of mutual understanding, trust and cooperation. It has been working closely with the National Disaster Preparedness Central Committee chaired by His Excellency Prime Minister General Thein Sein, Union of Myanmar.
The TCG comprises three members from the Myanmar Government: (Deputy Foreign Minister H.E. U Kyaw Thu who is the Chairman; Acting Director-General, Ministry of Social Welfare and Resettlement U Aung Tun Khaing; and, Deputy Director-General, Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation U Than Aye); three members from ASEAN (Thailand’s Ambassador to Myanmar H.E. Bansarn Bunnag; Dr Puji Pujiono, a senior UNDP officer seconded to the ASEAN Secretariat; and, Dr. Anish Kumar Roy, Director of Bureau for Resources Development of the ASEAN Secretariat alternating with Ms. Adelina Kamal of the ASEAN Secretariat); and three from the UN (UN Humanitarian Coordinator Mr Daniel Baker; UN Resident Coordinator Mr Bishow Parajuli; and, a rotating UN agency representative).
For further information, please contact:
Ms. Adelina Kamal
Head, Coordinating Office for the ASEAN Humanitarian Task Force
Phone No.: +951 544500 ext 417
E-mail: akamal.aseanhtf@gmail.com
Original Source: Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); Government of Myanmar; United Nations Country Team in Myanmar
Burmese activists urge UN rights Rapporteur to meet detainees
New Delhi (Mizzima-Relief Web)— The UN human rights Rapporteur, during his visit to Burma should meet political prisoners, independent organizations and listen to the people in order to understand the nature of the ongoing human rights violations, a Burmese human rights activist said.
Tomas Ojea Quintana, the newly appointed UN special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in Burma, is currently on a four-day visit to Burma.
The Thailand based Human Rights Education Institute of Burma's director Aung Myo Min said, Quintana's mission cannot be a success unless he is able to meet political prisoners, talk to political parties, leaders of ethnic nationalities and listen to the peoples' voices on the ongoing human rights violations in the country.
"If he cannot meet political prisoners then his mission will not be called a success," Aung Myo Min said.
Quintana, who took over from his predecessor Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, on the first day of his mission on Sunday, met government officials including Burma's Deputy Foreign Minister Kyaw Thu, who also chairs the Tripartite Core Group formed with the UN, Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Burmese government to help Cyclone Nargis victims.
According to the UN, Quintana was briefed by Kyaw Thu on the progress made in terms of helping victims of Cyclone Nargis that lashed Burma's coastal divisions of Irrawaddy and Rangoon and left 138,000 killed or missing.
Attending meetings and following the junta's schedule would not help the Rapporteur to understand the nature of abuses that the people of Burma had faced since 1962, which significantly accelerated after the 1988 mass uprising that was brutally crushed, critics said.
Aung Myo Min said, the Rapporteur must insist on meeting political detainees including pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who have been arrested and kept in solitary confinement for the past 12 of 18 years.
"He should also raise the issue of the May referendum where there have been widespread allegations of vote rigging and intimidations," Aung Myo Min added.
Another Human Rights activist in Burma, Myint Aye, said Quintana needs to go beyond the government's schedule and look for people in the cyclone hit region, and conduct prison visits to see the real situation.
"Much will depend on whether he can insist on his own plans," Myint Aye, a member of Human Rights Defenders and Promoters Network in Burma, told Mizzima.
The HRDP, which has been actively taking initiatives to promote human rights awareness in Burma, has been on the government's targeted list with several of their members brutally beaten by government-backed thugs and detained.
"We, even human rights activists, are subject to harassment and attacks," said Myint Aye adding that they are willing to meet the visiting Rapporteur to explain the true situation that they are facing.
Meanwhile, Burma's main opposition party the National League for Democracy said it does not believe that Quintana will be able to bring about any kind of change in Burma but expects that the Rapporteur will at least discover the ongoing rights abuses.
"We hope he [Quintana] can reveal the human rights abuses in Burma as United Nation Special Rapporteur," Nyan Win, the NLD spokesperson said.
But in order to do so, he must not confine his meetings to the government's schedule but should meet civil organizations, and non-government groups.
According to the UN, while Quintana asked to meet State officials and Heads of State institutions, he had also requested that he wanted to meet representatives of ethnic groups, political parties, religious groups, civil society, NGOs and members of Human Rights Bodies.
He has also requested for a visit Yangon and areas affected by cyclone Nargis and travel to Kayin State and Rakhine State, the UN said.
Nyan Win said, he and his group are also waiting for invitations to meet the visiting Rapporteur and are willing to explain the situation of human rights as they see it on the ground.
"So far there is no invitation to us for meeting him," Nyan Win added.
It is the UN Rapporteur's first visit to Burma after his predecessor made his last visit in November 2007. He will conclude the trip on August 7.
Tomas Ojea Quintana, the newly appointed UN special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in Burma, is currently on a four-day visit to Burma.
The Thailand based Human Rights Education Institute of Burma's director Aung Myo Min said, Quintana's mission cannot be a success unless he is able to meet political prisoners, talk to political parties, leaders of ethnic nationalities and listen to the peoples' voices on the ongoing human rights violations in the country.
"If he cannot meet political prisoners then his mission will not be called a success," Aung Myo Min said.
Quintana, who took over from his predecessor Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, on the first day of his mission on Sunday, met government officials including Burma's Deputy Foreign Minister Kyaw Thu, who also chairs the Tripartite Core Group formed with the UN, Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Burmese government to help Cyclone Nargis victims.
According to the UN, Quintana was briefed by Kyaw Thu on the progress made in terms of helping victims of Cyclone Nargis that lashed Burma's coastal divisions of Irrawaddy and Rangoon and left 138,000 killed or missing.
Attending meetings and following the junta's schedule would not help the Rapporteur to understand the nature of abuses that the people of Burma had faced since 1962, which significantly accelerated after the 1988 mass uprising that was brutally crushed, critics said.
Aung Myo Min said, the Rapporteur must insist on meeting political detainees including pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who have been arrested and kept in solitary confinement for the past 12 of 18 years.
"He should also raise the issue of the May referendum where there have been widespread allegations of vote rigging and intimidations," Aung Myo Min added.
Another Human Rights activist in Burma, Myint Aye, said Quintana needs to go beyond the government's schedule and look for people in the cyclone hit region, and conduct prison visits to see the real situation.
"Much will depend on whether he can insist on his own plans," Myint Aye, a member of Human Rights Defenders and Promoters Network in Burma, told Mizzima.
The HRDP, which has been actively taking initiatives to promote human rights awareness in Burma, has been on the government's targeted list with several of their members brutally beaten by government-backed thugs and detained.
"We, even human rights activists, are subject to harassment and attacks," said Myint Aye adding that they are willing to meet the visiting Rapporteur to explain the true situation that they are facing.
Meanwhile, Burma's main opposition party the National League for Democracy said it does not believe that Quintana will be able to bring about any kind of change in Burma but expects that the Rapporteur will at least discover the ongoing rights abuses.
"We hope he [Quintana] can reveal the human rights abuses in Burma as United Nation Special Rapporteur," Nyan Win, the NLD spokesperson said.
But in order to do so, he must not confine his meetings to the government's schedule but should meet civil organizations, and non-government groups.
According to the UN, while Quintana asked to meet State officials and Heads of State institutions, he had also requested that he wanted to meet representatives of ethnic groups, political parties, religious groups, civil society, NGOs and members of Human Rights Bodies.
He has also requested for a visit Yangon and areas affected by cyclone Nargis and travel to Kayin State and Rakhine State, the UN said.
Nyan Win said, he and his group are also waiting for invitations to meet the visiting Rapporteur and are willing to explain the situation of human rights as they see it on the ground.
"So far there is no invitation to us for meeting him," Nyan Win added.
It is the UN Rapporteur's first visit to Burma after his predecessor made his last visit in November 2007. He will conclude the trip on August 7.
Gems And Justice In Burma
02 August 2008
Gems And Justice In Burma - Download (MP3)
Gems And Justice In Burma - Listen to (MP3)
(VOA)-Despite growing international pressure for democratic reform, the military junta that has ruled Burma for decades shows no inclination of loosening its repressive grip. Hoping to get the attention of the generals where it can't be missed – in their bank accounts – the United States has tightened economic sanctions on regime leaders, its supporters and companies that are linked to them.
President George Bush approved legislation enacted by the U.S. Congress to strengthen financial sanctions against regime leaders and their supporters and to outlaw the importation of rubies and jade mined in Burma. The East Asian nation is a major supplier of the world’s jade and rubies, and the gem trade provides substantial income to the regime. After timber and oil, gems are Burma's third largest export. The trade provides crucial revenue to the military government and the generals themselves since it is believed that members of the junta own a majority interest in each of the country's mines. Many of the operations sit on land confiscated from private owners or local communities.
Some large jewelry companies around the world, worried about being associated with the junta, already have given up sales of Burmese gems. But it is also possible to mask the origin of a stone as it often changes hands many times and in many countries, before it ever reaches the U.S. as a finished necklace or ring. The new sanctions now make it harder for unscrupulous traders to circumvent the ban on trading in Burmese gems.
These new sanctions aim to increase financial pressure on the regime. At the same time, the U.S. and others continue to apply political pressure on the regime leadership to move towards democratic transition.
"On the Burmese regime, our message is: The United States believes in democracy and freedom," President Bush said.
Gems And Justice In Burma - Download (MP3)
Gems And Justice In Burma - Listen to (MP3)
(VOA)-Despite growing international pressure for democratic reform, the military junta that has ruled Burma for decades shows no inclination of loosening its repressive grip. Hoping to get the attention of the generals where it can't be missed – in their bank accounts – the United States has tightened economic sanctions on regime leaders, its supporters and companies that are linked to them.
President George Bush approved legislation enacted by the U.S. Congress to strengthen financial sanctions against regime leaders and their supporters and to outlaw the importation of rubies and jade mined in Burma. The East Asian nation is a major supplier of the world’s jade and rubies, and the gem trade provides substantial income to the regime. After timber and oil, gems are Burma's third largest export. The trade provides crucial revenue to the military government and the generals themselves since it is believed that members of the junta own a majority interest in each of the country's mines. Many of the operations sit on land confiscated from private owners or local communities.
Some large jewelry companies around the world, worried about being associated with the junta, already have given up sales of Burmese gems. But it is also possible to mask the origin of a stone as it often changes hands many times and in many countries, before it ever reaches the U.S. as a finished necklace or ring. The new sanctions now make it harder for unscrupulous traders to circumvent the ban on trading in Burmese gems.
These new sanctions aim to increase financial pressure on the regime. At the same time, the U.S. and others continue to apply political pressure on the regime leadership to move towards democratic transition.
"On the Burmese regime, our message is: The United States believes in democracy and freedom," President Bush said.
Sunday, 3 August 2008
Villagers forced to work as army porters
Aug 1, 2008 (DVB)–Government troops in Shwe Kyin township, Bago division, have been extorting money from locals in Don Zayit village and forcing them to work as porters for frontline army camps.
A local villager said troops from the State Peace and Development Council Light Infantry Battalion 589, who are based on a hill near Don Zayit village, set up a checkpoint beside a creek and demanded a fee from all passing boats and passengers.
"They have been asking for money, wood and bamboo from everyone who wants to go past the checkpoint," the villager said.
"They have also been abducting local villagers who have gone into the jungle to cut bamboo and making them work as porters to deliver rations to their frontline camp in nearby Win Phyu Taung," he said.
"They said we could choose not to go into the woods and cut bamboo if we don't want to work as porters."
The villager said the military often beat up porters if they failed to do their work satisfactorily.
"The villagers don't mind paying money or giving bamboo to them but they are afraid of being forced to work as porters for the military and now everyone has stopped going into the woods," he said.
The villager said locals had not reported the matter to senior authorities because they were afraid of repercussions from the troops.
Reporting by Naw Say Phaw
A local villager said troops from the State Peace and Development Council Light Infantry Battalion 589, who are based on a hill near Don Zayit village, set up a checkpoint beside a creek and demanded a fee from all passing boats and passengers.
"They have been asking for money, wood and bamboo from everyone who wants to go past the checkpoint," the villager said.
"They have also been abducting local villagers who have gone into the jungle to cut bamboo and making them work as porters to deliver rations to their frontline camp in nearby Win Phyu Taung," he said.
"They said we could choose not to go into the woods and cut bamboo if we don't want to work as porters."
The villager said the military often beat up porters if they failed to do their work satisfactorily.
"The villagers don't mind paying money or giving bamboo to them but they are afraid of being forced to work as porters for the military and now everyone has stopped going into the woods," he said.
The villager said locals had not reported the matter to senior authorities because they were afraid of repercussions from the troops.
Reporting by Naw Say Phaw
8888 spirit - Editorial
Mizzima News
02 August 2008
The popular 1988 uprising will be 20 years old this August. The Burmese people have not yet enjoyed the benefits of democracy though they marched through a hail of bullets armed with their resolute will to achieve democracy.
The departed souls of those who were killed on the streets while they were protesting peacefully are still drifting nowhere. Some forgetful people pretend to be saviours and are saying, "This is not good, do as I say".
Anyway the '8888 uprising' was not in vain. It highlighted the injustices existing and showed the real way out and ensured the end of 'evil'. We cannot blame anybody for not achieving victory even after 20 years. It is of great pride and glory to see the flame of the 8888 spirit still burning brightly.
The strong vitality of this spirit, under repeated attempts to extinguish it with loaded guns and bayonets is the victory of 'good'. The perpetrators wished this spirit to die but they failed.
The people were fed up and began despising the one-party dictatorial rule under the banner of the then 'Burma Socialist Programme Party' (BSPP) after suffering for a long time. The people followed the leadership of daring students and youths and expressed their will and desire until the uprising reached its climax on 8th August 1988. The ruling party BSPP finally collapsed despite its monopolistic power and backing by the junta. It is not a spontaneous development, achieved only after a lot of sacrifices by the students and people.
After that, free and fair general elections were held in May 1990 for the first time in modern Burmese history. The Burmese people got the chance of exposure to the outside world to some extent from a totally isolated situation where they were blindfolded and gagged. The current developments are the fruits of the 8888 uprising. Human history would not have developed to this stage if everyone thought, "Nothing will be achieved even if I do it", the indifferent thinking.
There are many challenges ahead. But we should not forget there will always be opportunities to cope with all these challenges by seeing the exemplary role of the 8888 uprising.
02 August 2008
The popular 1988 uprising will be 20 years old this August. The Burmese people have not yet enjoyed the benefits of democracy though they marched through a hail of bullets armed with their resolute will to achieve democracy.
The departed souls of those who were killed on the streets while they were protesting peacefully are still drifting nowhere. Some forgetful people pretend to be saviours and are saying, "This is not good, do as I say".
Anyway the '8888 uprising' was not in vain. It highlighted the injustices existing and showed the real way out and ensured the end of 'evil'. We cannot blame anybody for not achieving victory even after 20 years. It is of great pride and glory to see the flame of the 8888 spirit still burning brightly.
The strong vitality of this spirit, under repeated attempts to extinguish it with loaded guns and bayonets is the victory of 'good'. The perpetrators wished this spirit to die but they failed.
The people were fed up and began despising the one-party dictatorial rule under the banner of the then 'Burma Socialist Programme Party' (BSPP) after suffering for a long time. The people followed the leadership of daring students and youths and expressed their will and desire until the uprising reached its climax on 8th August 1988. The ruling party BSPP finally collapsed despite its monopolistic power and backing by the junta. It is not a spontaneous development, achieved only after a lot of sacrifices by the students and people.
After that, free and fair general elections were held in May 1990 for the first time in modern Burmese history. The Burmese people got the chance of exposure to the outside world to some extent from a totally isolated situation where they were blindfolded and gagged. The current developments are the fruits of the 8888 uprising. Human history would not have developed to this stage if everyone thought, "Nothing will be achieved even if I do it", the indifferent thinking.
There are many challenges ahead. But we should not forget there will always be opportunities to cope with all these challenges by seeing the exemplary role of the 8888 uprising.
Myanmar aid scheme sows new fears among cyclone survivors
BOGALAY, Myanmar (Khaleej-AFP)- Myanmar's military regime is giving desperately needed aid to cyclone survivors on credit, requiring them to pay back to the government any assistance offered, officials said.
The secretive military last week officially allowed local journalists to visit the disaster zone for the first time since Cyclone Nargis slammed into the country on May 2.
During the tour, local officials laid out their system for delivering aid to farmers in the hardest-hit parts of the Irrawaddy Delta, where entire villages were washed away by the storm that left more than 138,000 people dead or missing.
The officials insisted that government aid had allowed for farmers to plant their fields and for fishermen to return to their boats -- but insisted that the cyclone victims would have to reimburse the regime for the aid received.
"If everything is free of charge, its value is very low. If something must be paid back, then they try their best to do it. This is the system," one senior official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. (JEG's: the junta is charging the victims for our generosity and profiting from it - dandy...)
"The government will distribute everything for them through a payback system. Otherwise, controlling the aid will be very difficult," he said.
About 2.4 million people are struggling to piece together their lives after the storm, according to UN estimates.
Farmers have no choice but to accept the loans, but say they don't know how they will ever repay them.
"We have received power tillers and diesel on credit from the government. Even then, we still need more help to get bank loans so that we will have cash to hire field hands," said Kyi Win, 57, a farm owner in Sat San village outside Bogalay.
But local officials insisted that farmers were ready to start surviving on their own.
"The World Food Programme is delivering rice for villagers. Even if they stop delivering rice, villagers can feed themselves with their own income," said Zaw Myo Nyunt, a local official in Sat San.
The official assessment differs markedly with opinions expressed away from the military's ears, as well as with assessments by UN officials, who have warned that many farmers were not able to plant their crops this year.
Over the last two weeks, many farmers in the delta told AFP that as much as one-third of the region's cropland could lie idle -- simply because so many farmers died that no one is left to tend the fields.
Others who have received aid and tried to plant their fields say that as much as half the donated rice plants did not sprout, while draught cattle brought in from mountainous parts of Myanmar have not adapted to the delta's marshy lowlands.
"If the UN cannot deliver rice and stops their assistance to us, we will be in trouble. We have no income now as our employers are finding it difficult to start their farming," said Moe Wah, a 24-year-old farm worker.
"I have no job now and am relying on rice aid from the WFP. All of us need jobs urgently to resume our lives. We lost everything in the cyclone," she said.
It's not just the farmers questioning Myanmar's official aid system.
Construction companies have donated (???) more than 100 new wooden homes in Sat San and the nearby village of Kyaine Chaung Gyi, but the people living there have been given no deed to the property nor any indication of how long they will be allowed to use the homes. (JEG's: pure show only... what's in it for the junta)
The secretive military last week officially allowed local journalists to visit the disaster zone for the first time since Cyclone Nargis slammed into the country on May 2.
During the tour, local officials laid out their system for delivering aid to farmers in the hardest-hit parts of the Irrawaddy Delta, where entire villages were washed away by the storm that left more than 138,000 people dead or missing.
The officials insisted that government aid had allowed for farmers to plant their fields and for fishermen to return to their boats -- but insisted that the cyclone victims would have to reimburse the regime for the aid received.
"If everything is free of charge, its value is very low. If something must be paid back, then they try their best to do it. This is the system," one senior official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. (JEG's: the junta is charging the victims for our generosity and profiting from it - dandy...)
"The government will distribute everything for them through a payback system. Otherwise, controlling the aid will be very difficult," he said.
About 2.4 million people are struggling to piece together their lives after the storm, according to UN estimates.
Farmers have no choice but to accept the loans, but say they don't know how they will ever repay them.
"We have received power tillers and diesel on credit from the government. Even then, we still need more help to get bank loans so that we will have cash to hire field hands," said Kyi Win, 57, a farm owner in Sat San village outside Bogalay.
But local officials insisted that farmers were ready to start surviving on their own.
"The World Food Programme is delivering rice for villagers. Even if they stop delivering rice, villagers can feed themselves with their own income," said Zaw Myo Nyunt, a local official in Sat San.
The official assessment differs markedly with opinions expressed away from the military's ears, as well as with assessments by UN officials, who have warned that many farmers were not able to plant their crops this year.
Over the last two weeks, many farmers in the delta told AFP that as much as one-third of the region's cropland could lie idle -- simply because so many farmers died that no one is left to tend the fields.
Others who have received aid and tried to plant their fields say that as much as half the donated rice plants did not sprout, while draught cattle brought in from mountainous parts of Myanmar have not adapted to the delta's marshy lowlands.
"If the UN cannot deliver rice and stops their assistance to us, we will be in trouble. We have no income now as our employers are finding it difficult to start their farming," said Moe Wah, a 24-year-old farm worker.
"I have no job now and am relying on rice aid from the WFP. All of us need jobs urgently to resume our lives. We lost everything in the cyclone," she said.
It's not just the farmers questioning Myanmar's official aid system.
Construction companies have donated (???) more than 100 new wooden homes in Sat San and the nearby village of Kyaine Chaung Gyi, but the people living there have been given no deed to the property nor any indication of how long they will be allowed to use the homes. (JEG's: pure show only... what's in it for the junta)
Quote on Trust and Friendship
"In prison, you know who your real friends are;
you learn the meaning of 'friend.'
We shared everything we had:
our food and all our knowledge."
--Former Burmese political dissident
you learn the meaning of 'friend.'
We shared everything we had:
our food and all our knowledge."
--Former Burmese political dissident
Burma's Prisons a Caldron of Protest Fury
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 3, 2008
RANGOON -- The promise of Burma's future begins in its prisons.
Inside, dissidents detained by the military junta tapped out messages on water pipes and listened to them echo from one cell to the next. They spelled words by knocking on walls, each series of sounds a letter of the alphabet. Sometimes they bribed guards with cigarettes to pass along coded messages in necklaces made of pebbles and strings of plastic bags.
Former Burmese political detainees say they found countless ways to communicate, defying their isolation and a system that was designed to break their will. For many, life behind the walls instead became a rite of passage toward political maturity.
"Prison happens to be the longest-running political seminar in Burma," said a scholar and political activist who spent 15 years behind bars for writings that were deemed subversive to the junta. "You could say things there that you couldn't outside, and we observed anniversaries that we couldn't in normal life."
Human rights groups say more than 1,800 political detainees languish long-term in about 20 prisons and labor camps in Burma, also called Myanmar. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a Burmese rights group based in Thailand, has documented "endemic" torture in them. Countless more people have disappeared altogether or been locked up for shorter stints.
The International Committee of the Red Cross had been monitoring conditions in centers across the country for six years. But in late 2005, the junta cut off its observers' access. The group's last attempt to engage the junta, on June 15, has yet to receive a positive response, said Christian Brunner, ICRC's Asia region head.
In the Red Cross's absence, indignities to political and criminal detainees remain manifold, according to recently released prisoners, outside observers and a prison lawyer.
They are beaten with bamboo canes. Their flesh is torn by iron rods that are rolled up and down their shins. They are forced to crawl over broken glass or sharpened gravel; deprived of sleep or water; shackled in painful positions; trapped in cells too small for them to stand upright; and surrounded by barking dogs. Others spend years in solitary confinement.
Some have died under the strain, and some have slipped into insanity.
Yet dissidents have often emerged unbroken, hardier or more pragmatic in their beliefs and more resolute that change will come from their actions. Time behind bars can be a vindication of their struggles, they said. Once through, they feel they have nothing else to fear -- and often return straight to activism.
For some, an ordinary life is forever elusive. "I want to live out of water, but I can't get on the shore," said a member of a new clandestine opposition group, the 88 Generation Students, explaining why its founders felt compelled to turn again to politics within weeks of their release after nearly two decades in and out of prison.
Now in their 40s, most of the group's founders were first rounded up as hotheaded university students who helped steer a failed pro-democracy uprising in 1988. Bound for professions in medicine, engineering or law, many never graduated. The prisons became their university.
"In '88, our generation didn't know anything about politics," said a Rangoon teacher jailed for five years in the aftermath of the uprising. He was 21 when he was arrested. "We cared [only] about brutal repression. We saw it with our own eyes and heard it with our own ears."
Under a tarpaulin canopy at an empty tea shop one recent afternoon, he lighted his second cigarette in minutes and paused to watch the smoke mingle with a monsoon downpour.
In prison, he said, "you know who your real friends are; you learn the meaning of 'friend.' We shared everything we had: our food and all our knowledge."
He and two prison mates tore apart an old English primer, the only book that one of them had managed to have smuggled inside. They took turns reading and hiding the pieces, burying them in the soil outside their cells. From the pages he learned to speak English.
In their cells or in snatched moments in the prison yards, they could encounter a spectrum of dissidents whom they might never otherwise have met -- or had a chance to clash with. "I remember in my first months in Insein Prison, some young political prisoners came to ask me to do something for them, because the communists were waiting to 'dye them pink,' " the scholar said.
It was in jail that a Rangoon University student, now 29, said he met elected members from the opposition National League for Democracy, ethnic leaders and members of countless dissident groups. "I saw the future of Burma in the prisons," he said.
He heard them fiercely arguing and saw them give up visions they had once held, he said. The divides were revelatory. Democracy in the country would come, he concluded, only with "a proper understanding of each other. To do that, we need to improve the education. . . . We need better spirituality, better tolerance and better compassion."
To counter the hopelessness, many detainees said they relied on meditation. For others, the only cure was a chance to fight again beyond prison walls.
"You can't even see the sky. No stars. No moon. No sun, " said Win Naing, 71, who was once part of the political party of U Nu, the prime minister deposed in a 1962 military coup. For years, Win Naing has led an unspecified number of national politicians in a loose, unofficial opposition group, because, he said, a democracy requires multiple parties.
But his detention last year risked all that. "I thought I wouldn't be released for 20 or 30 years. I was almost totally hopeless," he said. "If I get released, I thought, I shouldn't get involved in politics."
After 35 days of detention in Insein, Rangoon's most notorious prison, his release came as a total surprise. And within two months, with his health largely back to normal, he had taken up his activities again.
"In Burma there is a saying: You can't stop yourself from getting up and dancing when you hear the music," he said. "When I heard the music of politics, when many came to see me . . . things changed. I changed. I thought, what the heck."
Outside the walls, behind this former capital's surface scars of broken windowpanes and mildewed buildings choked with vegetation, the wounds of the detention system reach deep into Burmese society.
One recent evening, a university lecturer sat on the concrete floor of her living room, clutching a pillow to her stomach as if to draw solace from it. She talked of being racked by "mental torture," a mix of depression and anxiety from years spent anguishing over her imprisoned husband, an opposition politician.
And a teacher said he went for weeks with no news from a close colleague who was to fly out of the country on a prestigious foreign fellowship. It turned out that for having spontaneously joined thousands in street protests last September, he was hunted down by intelligence agents who caught him two months later. The colleague later turned up at Insein. Word from his mother was that he could no longer walk.
It is a system in which a lawyer fights a largely futile battle against bureaucracy, shuttling daily back and forth from a special tribunal at the prison to defend the rights of political detainees before a judge who generally will send them to prison regardless, often on a technicality.
In his Rangoon office, he rifled through a dusty tome that dated to the British colonial era to explain the terms under which 16 prominent dissidents, including the 88 leaders, have been held without trial since their arrest last August, he said.
Asked whether he had ever secured the release of a political detainee, he thought a moment, set down his cup of tea and related the lone incident of his 27-year career: accusations against a politician client turned out to be so outlandish that a 10-year sentence was revoked.
For being caught one night with an anti-government pamphlet, the once starry-eyed Rangoon University student served seven years. He was lucky, he said. For being caught with two pamphlets, friends netted double the sentence. He described enduring beatings, hours in shackles and weeks in solitary confinement. When he was transferred to another prison far upcountry, his mother never knew where he was.
Worst of all, he said, was his hunger for ideas. To feed his mind, he said, he sometimes used a piece of broken pottery to scrawl on the cold concrete, struggling to recall parts of beloved stories by British novelist Somerset Maugham.
Or he would bribe a criminal to bring him a prison-made cheroot, a cone-shaped cigarette. Then he'd slowly unpeel its leafy layers to reveal a thumb-size square of gluey state newspaper, and with it a snippet of information from the world outside his cell.
Now he smuggles reading material -- often about democracy -- to friends still inside.
Sometimes he returns from a prison visit with a poem. A poet he befriended recently wrote about the insanity of living within its walls:
Sunday, August 3, 2008
RANGOON -- The promise of Burma's future begins in its prisons.
Inside, dissidents detained by the military junta tapped out messages on water pipes and listened to them echo from one cell to the next. They spelled words by knocking on walls, each series of sounds a letter of the alphabet. Sometimes they bribed guards with cigarettes to pass along coded messages in necklaces made of pebbles and strings of plastic bags.
Former Burmese political detainees say they found countless ways to communicate, defying their isolation and a system that was designed to break their will. For many, life behind the walls instead became a rite of passage toward political maturity.
"Prison happens to be the longest-running political seminar in Burma," said a scholar and political activist who spent 15 years behind bars for writings that were deemed subversive to the junta. "You could say things there that you couldn't outside, and we observed anniversaries that we couldn't in normal life."
Human rights groups say more than 1,800 political detainees languish long-term in about 20 prisons and labor camps in Burma, also called Myanmar. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a Burmese rights group based in Thailand, has documented "endemic" torture in them. Countless more people have disappeared altogether or been locked up for shorter stints.
The International Committee of the Red Cross had been monitoring conditions in centers across the country for six years. But in late 2005, the junta cut off its observers' access. The group's last attempt to engage the junta, on June 15, has yet to receive a positive response, said Christian Brunner, ICRC's Asia region head.
In the Red Cross's absence, indignities to political and criminal detainees remain manifold, according to recently released prisoners, outside observers and a prison lawyer.
They are beaten with bamboo canes. Their flesh is torn by iron rods that are rolled up and down their shins. They are forced to crawl over broken glass or sharpened gravel; deprived of sleep or water; shackled in painful positions; trapped in cells too small for them to stand upright; and surrounded by barking dogs. Others spend years in solitary confinement.
Some have died under the strain, and some have slipped into insanity.
Yet dissidents have often emerged unbroken, hardier or more pragmatic in their beliefs and more resolute that change will come from their actions. Time behind bars can be a vindication of their struggles, they said. Once through, they feel they have nothing else to fear -- and often return straight to activism.
For some, an ordinary life is forever elusive. "I want to live out of water, but I can't get on the shore," said a member of a new clandestine opposition group, the 88 Generation Students, explaining why its founders felt compelled to turn again to politics within weeks of their release after nearly two decades in and out of prison.
Now in their 40s, most of the group's founders were first rounded up as hotheaded university students who helped steer a failed pro-democracy uprising in 1988. Bound for professions in medicine, engineering or law, many never graduated. The prisons became their university.
"In '88, our generation didn't know anything about politics," said a Rangoon teacher jailed for five years in the aftermath of the uprising. He was 21 when he was arrested. "We cared [only] about brutal repression. We saw it with our own eyes and heard it with our own ears."
Under a tarpaulin canopy at an empty tea shop one recent afternoon, he lighted his second cigarette in minutes and paused to watch the smoke mingle with a monsoon downpour.
In prison, he said, "you know who your real friends are; you learn the meaning of 'friend.' We shared everything we had: our food and all our knowledge."
He and two prison mates tore apart an old English primer, the only book that one of them had managed to have smuggled inside. They took turns reading and hiding the pieces, burying them in the soil outside their cells. From the pages he learned to speak English.
In their cells or in snatched moments in the prison yards, they could encounter a spectrum of dissidents whom they might never otherwise have met -- or had a chance to clash with. "I remember in my first months in Insein Prison, some young political prisoners came to ask me to do something for them, because the communists were waiting to 'dye them pink,' " the scholar said.
It was in jail that a Rangoon University student, now 29, said he met elected members from the opposition National League for Democracy, ethnic leaders and members of countless dissident groups. "I saw the future of Burma in the prisons," he said.
He heard them fiercely arguing and saw them give up visions they had once held, he said. The divides were revelatory. Democracy in the country would come, he concluded, only with "a proper understanding of each other. To do that, we need to improve the education. . . . We need better spirituality, better tolerance and better compassion."
To counter the hopelessness, many detainees said they relied on meditation. For others, the only cure was a chance to fight again beyond prison walls.
"You can't even see the sky. No stars. No moon. No sun, " said Win Naing, 71, who was once part of the political party of U Nu, the prime minister deposed in a 1962 military coup. For years, Win Naing has led an unspecified number of national politicians in a loose, unofficial opposition group, because, he said, a democracy requires multiple parties.
But his detention last year risked all that. "I thought I wouldn't be released for 20 or 30 years. I was almost totally hopeless," he said. "If I get released, I thought, I shouldn't get involved in politics."
After 35 days of detention in Insein, Rangoon's most notorious prison, his release came as a total surprise. And within two months, with his health largely back to normal, he had taken up his activities again.
"In Burma there is a saying: You can't stop yourself from getting up and dancing when you hear the music," he said. "When I heard the music of politics, when many came to see me . . . things changed. I changed. I thought, what the heck."
Outside the walls, behind this former capital's surface scars of broken windowpanes and mildewed buildings choked with vegetation, the wounds of the detention system reach deep into Burmese society.
One recent evening, a university lecturer sat on the concrete floor of her living room, clutching a pillow to her stomach as if to draw solace from it. She talked of being racked by "mental torture," a mix of depression and anxiety from years spent anguishing over her imprisoned husband, an opposition politician.
And a teacher said he went for weeks with no news from a close colleague who was to fly out of the country on a prestigious foreign fellowship. It turned out that for having spontaneously joined thousands in street protests last September, he was hunted down by intelligence agents who caught him two months later. The colleague later turned up at Insein. Word from his mother was that he could no longer walk.
It is a system in which a lawyer fights a largely futile battle against bureaucracy, shuttling daily back and forth from a special tribunal at the prison to defend the rights of political detainees before a judge who generally will send them to prison regardless, often on a technicality.
In his Rangoon office, he rifled through a dusty tome that dated to the British colonial era to explain the terms under which 16 prominent dissidents, including the 88 leaders, have been held without trial since their arrest last August, he said.
Asked whether he had ever secured the release of a political detainee, he thought a moment, set down his cup of tea and related the lone incident of his 27-year career: accusations against a politician client turned out to be so outlandish that a 10-year sentence was revoked.
For being caught one night with an anti-government pamphlet, the once starry-eyed Rangoon University student served seven years. He was lucky, he said. For being caught with two pamphlets, friends netted double the sentence. He described enduring beatings, hours in shackles and weeks in solitary confinement. When he was transferred to another prison far upcountry, his mother never knew where he was.
Worst of all, he said, was his hunger for ideas. To feed his mind, he said, he sometimes used a piece of broken pottery to scrawl on the cold concrete, struggling to recall parts of beloved stories by British novelist Somerset Maugham.
Or he would bribe a criminal to bring him a prison-made cheroot, a cone-shaped cigarette. Then he'd slowly unpeel its leafy layers to reveal a thumb-size square of gluey state newspaper, and with it a snippet of information from the world outside his cell.
Now he smuggles reading material -- often about democracy -- to friends still inside.
Sometimes he returns from a prison visit with a poem. A poet he befriended recently wrote about the insanity of living within its walls:
The white color of the moonlight,
Sticking like a sword inside that very wall,
Will make the demand
For the rest of your life to be numb to thoughts,
For your sorrows to swell,
For your philosophy to be always aching.
Sticking like a sword inside that very wall,
Will make the demand
For the rest of your life to be numb to thoughts,
For your sorrows to swell,
For your philosophy to be always aching.
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