04/22/2010 14:10
AsiaNews.it - MYANMAR:Following a number of attacks, tensions rise between the Myanmar army and Kachin militias
In the northern state of Kachin, Myanmar’s military junta has strengthened its presence. Its ultimatum for the Kachin Independence Army to join the border guards expires on 28 April. Otherwise, the militia will be outlawed. Attacks against the Myitsone dam construction site have raised tensions. Sources tell AsiaNews that people “are waiting to see who will fire first”.
Myitkyina (AsiaNews) – The winds of war are picking up in Myanmar’s Kachin state, on the border of China. The series of blasts that hit the Myitsone dam construction site and the ultimatum set by Myanmar’s military junta against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) to join the Border Guard Force (BGF) have raised tensions further. Local sources tell AsiaNews that people are “waiting to see who will fire the first shot”.
Myanmar’s military rulers said that they are ready to outlaw the KIA if the militia’s leaders refuse to join the BGF. The deadline for merger is 28 April.
Meanwhile in the state capital of Myitkyina, 100 Myanmar army trucks were seen near to the KIA’s headquarters, getting ready in case of conflict.
The KIA has refused to join the BGF unless its political wing, the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), is given a clear role in Myanmar politics. The KIO wants this before this year’s parliamentary elections are held.
Sources told AsiaNews, “tensions are running high” in the affected region. The military appear ready to “outlaw the KIA if it does not join the border guards by 28 April.”
Confrontation between the sides is “likely” with people just “waiting to see who will fire the first shot.”
In Myitkyina, residents are in favour “of the KIO, the Kachin Independence Organisation”, but the latter “lacks a strong structure” to “face the Burmese military junta.”
A series of explosions that shook the Myitsone dam construction side last Saturday raised the alarm level even further.
A number of bombs exploded in rapid succession at the Asia World company office in Long Ga Zuap village, 10 kilometres south of the construction site. More bombs went off in neighbouring villages. According to unconfirmed reports, seven people, all Chinese, were killed in the attacks.
The dam is a joint project between Myanmar’s Industry Ministry, Asia World and the China Power Investment Corporation, one of the mainland’s largest state-run power producers.
Once it is completed, the dam is expected to generate 3,600 megawatts of electricity to be sold to China’s Yunnan province.
The project has led to the forced relocation of up to 15,000 residents from at least 60 villages upstream of the site.
Local sources complain that the project has caused “the destruction of a grotto with the statue of the Virgin Mary.” Kachin state has a large Christian community and many locals were “quite devoted to the holy image”.
The military junta has blamed the KIO for the attacks. The nationalist movement has denied any involvement. It did acknowledge that it is opposed to project but blamed the junta for the violence. With tensions running so high, locals expect that any incident might lead to open warfare.
AsiaNews.it - MYANMAR:Following a number of attacks, tensions rise between the Myanmar army and Kachin militias
In the northern state of Kachin, Myanmar’s military junta has strengthened its presence. Its ultimatum for the Kachin Independence Army to join the border guards expires on 28 April. Otherwise, the militia will be outlawed. Attacks against the Myitsone dam construction site have raised tensions. Sources tell AsiaNews that people “are waiting to see who will fire first”.
Myitkyina (AsiaNews) – The winds of war are picking up in Myanmar’s Kachin state, on the border of China. The series of blasts that hit the Myitsone dam construction site and the ultimatum set by Myanmar’s military junta against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) to join the Border Guard Force (BGF) have raised tensions further. Local sources tell AsiaNews that people are “waiting to see who will fire the first shot”.
Myanmar’s military rulers said that they are ready to outlaw the KIA if the militia’s leaders refuse to join the BGF. The deadline for merger is 28 April.
Meanwhile in the state capital of Myitkyina, 100 Myanmar army trucks were seen near to the KIA’s headquarters, getting ready in case of conflict.
The KIA has refused to join the BGF unless its political wing, the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), is given a clear role in Myanmar politics. The KIO wants this before this year’s parliamentary elections are held.
Sources told AsiaNews, “tensions are running high” in the affected region. The military appear ready to “outlaw the KIA if it does not join the border guards by 28 April.”
Confrontation between the sides is “likely” with people just “waiting to see who will fire the first shot.”
In Myitkyina, residents are in favour “of the KIO, the Kachin Independence Organisation”, but the latter “lacks a strong structure” to “face the Burmese military junta.”
A series of explosions that shook the Myitsone dam construction side last Saturday raised the alarm level even further.
A number of bombs exploded in rapid succession at the Asia World company office in Long Ga Zuap village, 10 kilometres south of the construction site. More bombs went off in neighbouring villages. According to unconfirmed reports, seven people, all Chinese, were killed in the attacks.
The dam is a joint project between Myanmar’s Industry Ministry, Asia World and the China Power Investment Corporation, one of the mainland’s largest state-run power producers.
Once it is completed, the dam is expected to generate 3,600 megawatts of electricity to be sold to China’s Yunnan province.
The project has led to the forced relocation of up to 15,000 residents from at least 60 villages upstream of the site.
Local sources complain that the project has caused “the destruction of a grotto with the statue of the Virgin Mary.” Kachin state has a large Christian community and many locals were “quite devoted to the holy image”.
The military junta has blamed the KIO for the attacks. The nationalist movement has denied any involvement. It did acknowledge that it is opposed to project but blamed the junta for the violence. With tensions running so high, locals expect that any incident might lead to open warfare.
******************************************************
Scoop - Myanmar: A human rights defender targeted
Thursday, 22 April 2010, 12:45 pm
Press Release: Asian Human Rights Commission
An Open Letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC)
Navi Pillay
High Commissioner for Human Rights
Dear Ms. Pillay
Myanmar: A human rights defender targeted by medical doctors
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received a copy of a letter from a human rights defender in Myanmar (Burma), a copy of which has also been addressed to you. As the letter may not have been received or its contents not communicated to you, we are taking this opportunity to raise the matter it contains with you directly, and also to discuss with you what can be done through international interventions into this type of situation.
The letter is dated 23 March 2010. It is from Ma Sandar, and her husband, Zaw Min Htun, and is addressed to Senior General Than Shwe, chairman of the State Peace and Development Council; U Aung Toe, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Myanmar; and, the minister for health, with copies to other senior officials in Myanmar, our office, and to you.
Ma Sandar, by way of background, was imprisoned from August 2008 to September 2009 because she made a complaint of corruption against authorities in Twante Township, Yangon, where she and her husband reside. She was released on completing her sentence. Less than two months later, she was subjected, together with her husband, to new fabricated criminal charges. It is that case, about which the AHRC has already issued an urgent appeal (AHRC-UAU-007-2010), which is the subject of the letter. The contents, in brief, are as follows:
1. On 12 November 2009 as a result of a vehicle accident a young woman named Ma La Yeit Choe (alias Ma Thida Win) went to the Twente Township Hospital to obtain a medical certificate for an injury. At that time there was no doctor present. She waited for two hours before Dr. Daw Hsint Hsint Thi attended to her. The doctor said that she had to do an x-ray. But because there was no electricity supply, they would have to use a generator. The cost of using the generator would be 10,000 Kyat and for medicine, 6000 Kyat; in total about USD16. The doctor said that if the accident victim and family would not pay, they could seek treatment elsewhere, and thereafter allegedly rudely ejected them from the premises.
2. As the township hospital is a public service, the family was unhappy with how they were treated and went to lodge a complaint at the local police station, which was recorded by Sub-inspector Hlaing Lin Htun, and in which they said that the doctor had failed to perform her duties. They went to the general hospital for treatment.
3. According to the doctor, when Ma Sandar and her husband went to see the accident victim at the hospital, they abused her and threatened her and her staff. The township health department head, Dr. U Kyu Khaing, opened a criminal case against Ma Sandar and Zaw Min Htun (Penal Code, sections 353/506; obscenity and criminal intimidation, each punishable with up to two years' imprisonment). Ma Sandar and her husband emphatically deny the charges.
4. Although the case is a minor one, it has since been investigated by high-ranked council officials, the Bureau of Special Investigation--which is supposed to be concerned with cases of corruption, not ordinary criminal inquiries--and the Criminal Investigation Department, which also is designated for serious crimes. Despite a lack of prima facie evidence with which to open a case, Township Judge U Aye Ko Ko has allowed the matter to go to trial.
>From the experience of the AHRC, and from our knowledge of the previous case in which Ma Sandar was entangled, it is obvious that this trial also is being arranged to secure a conviction against this human rights defender and again unjustly imprison her.
That said, the letter points to a couple of serious difficulties for us in addressing the human rights situation in Myanmar, and in other countries with similar conditions.
The first serious difficulty is one of understanding. Often, cases concerning human rights defenders are described as arising from dramatic events like protest actions or high-profile political moments. But this case shows how the authorities in Myanmar can make something out of anything. Even the most trivial occurrence, an argument over treatment for a small injury at a hospital, is an excuse and an opportunity for them to get back at a perceived troublemaker.
The same difficulty is evident from the persons involved in this case. When we think about circumstances where human rights defenders are targeted, the perpetrators who come to mind are soldiers, police, mafia figures, or others acting on behalf of people like these. But in Myanmar where five decades of military dictatorship have poisoned all institutions and social life, they are just as likely to be medical doctors or other professionals acting as proxies for state authorities.
With the emergence of a new parliament under military control in the next year or so, this aspect of human rights abuse, and attacks on human rights defenders in Myanmar, is likely to become more pronounced, making understanding of the real actors and issues even more difficult for people outside the country than it already is. But this difficulty at least is surmountable, with close attention to what is happening and communication with human rights defenders there.
The second difficulty is what to do. Of course, we can bring as much pressure to bear on the authorities in Myanmar from outside as possible. Experience has shown that concerted efforts from United Nations agencies, governments abroad, human rights groups, the media and others can have an effect in some instances. Indeed, in this case it is obviously the hope of Ma Sandar and her husband, in sending a copy of their letter to you, that you or your staff take up the case with the Government of Myanmar in the hope that pressure from your office may have some effect. We share this hope and look forward to your intervention.
But no matter the amount of pressure, systemic obstacles remain. Among these, one of the most pronounced in Myanmar is the executive-controlled judiciary. In fact, from the AHRC's study over some years, we can safely say that there is no judiciary in Myanmar at all, although there are persons called judges and buildings called courts. Neither these persons nor their institutions function in any way like a judiciary, either in terms of international standards or even in terms of the domestic law.
Under these circumstances, it is pointless to make statements calling for a trial to be fair or for an independent inquiry into some violation of rights, because no institutions exist for these things to happen. That there is no prospect of fair inquiry or trial in this case and hundreds of others like it that the AHRC has studied is obvious from the letter itself. The accused have been forced to appeal to the top army officer in the country, as head of the ruling council, for some sort of relief. There is nowhere else for them to go.
In this way, requests for redress of wrongs committed are reduced to feudalism, where citizens who should have rights as human beings are obliged to supplicate some high up person to beg for mercy. The sad fact is that in the 21st-century, conditions for victims of rights abuse in Myanmar are little different than they were three or four hundred years ago. The availability of computers and email notwithstanding, profound inequality between rulers and ruled underpins all relations and transactions between state and society.
In closing, the Asian Human Rights Commission is raising the case of Ma Sandar and her husband with you in order to ensure that you are apprised of its details, to invite you to intervene so that the needless prosecution of this human rights defender might be brought to a halt and her second imprisonment averted, but also to call for a more honest dialogue about the real situation of human rights in Myanmar, and in Asia, so that we can come up with meaningful strategies to address not only the incidence of human rights abuse on a case by case basis but also so as to go deeply into the institutional arrangements that enable it.
Yours sincerely
Basil Fernando
Executive Director
Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong
(Copy of original letter from Ma Sandar and Zaw Min Htun attached)
Cc:
1. Tomas Ojea Quintana, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar
2. Gabriela Carina Knaul de Albuquerque e Silva, UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers
3. Margaret Sekaggya, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders
4. Homayoun Alizadeh, Regional Representative, OHCHR, Bangkok, Thailand
Thursday, 22 April 2010, 12:45 pm
Press Release: Asian Human Rights Commission
An Open Letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC)
Navi Pillay
High Commissioner for Human Rights
Dear Ms. Pillay
Myanmar: A human rights defender targeted by medical doctors
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received a copy of a letter from a human rights defender in Myanmar (Burma), a copy of which has also been addressed to you. As the letter may not have been received or its contents not communicated to you, we are taking this opportunity to raise the matter it contains with you directly, and also to discuss with you what can be done through international interventions into this type of situation.
The letter is dated 23 March 2010. It is from Ma Sandar, and her husband, Zaw Min Htun, and is addressed to Senior General Than Shwe, chairman of the State Peace and Development Council; U Aung Toe, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Myanmar; and, the minister for health, with copies to other senior officials in Myanmar, our office, and to you.
Ma Sandar, by way of background, was imprisoned from August 2008 to September 2009 because she made a complaint of corruption against authorities in Twante Township, Yangon, where she and her husband reside. She was released on completing her sentence. Less than two months later, she was subjected, together with her husband, to new fabricated criminal charges. It is that case, about which the AHRC has already issued an urgent appeal (AHRC-UAU-007-2010), which is the subject of the letter. The contents, in brief, are as follows:
1. On 12 November 2009 as a result of a vehicle accident a young woman named Ma La Yeit Choe (alias Ma Thida Win) went to the Twente Township Hospital to obtain a medical certificate for an injury. At that time there was no doctor present. She waited for two hours before Dr. Daw Hsint Hsint Thi attended to her. The doctor said that she had to do an x-ray. But because there was no electricity supply, they would have to use a generator. The cost of using the generator would be 10,000 Kyat and for medicine, 6000 Kyat; in total about USD16. The doctor said that if the accident victim and family would not pay, they could seek treatment elsewhere, and thereafter allegedly rudely ejected them from the premises.
2. As the township hospital is a public service, the family was unhappy with how they were treated and went to lodge a complaint at the local police station, which was recorded by Sub-inspector Hlaing Lin Htun, and in which they said that the doctor had failed to perform her duties. They went to the general hospital for treatment.
3. According to the doctor, when Ma Sandar and her husband went to see the accident victim at the hospital, they abused her and threatened her and her staff. The township health department head, Dr. U Kyu Khaing, opened a criminal case against Ma Sandar and Zaw Min Htun (Penal Code, sections 353/506; obscenity and criminal intimidation, each punishable with up to two years' imprisonment). Ma Sandar and her husband emphatically deny the charges.
4. Although the case is a minor one, it has since been investigated by high-ranked council officials, the Bureau of Special Investigation--which is supposed to be concerned with cases of corruption, not ordinary criminal inquiries--and the Criminal Investigation Department, which also is designated for serious crimes. Despite a lack of prima facie evidence with which to open a case, Township Judge U Aye Ko Ko has allowed the matter to go to trial.
>From the experience of the AHRC, and from our knowledge of the previous case in which Ma Sandar was entangled, it is obvious that this trial also is being arranged to secure a conviction against this human rights defender and again unjustly imprison her.
That said, the letter points to a couple of serious difficulties for us in addressing the human rights situation in Myanmar, and in other countries with similar conditions.
The first serious difficulty is one of understanding. Often, cases concerning human rights defenders are described as arising from dramatic events like protest actions or high-profile political moments. But this case shows how the authorities in Myanmar can make something out of anything. Even the most trivial occurrence, an argument over treatment for a small injury at a hospital, is an excuse and an opportunity for them to get back at a perceived troublemaker.
The same difficulty is evident from the persons involved in this case. When we think about circumstances where human rights defenders are targeted, the perpetrators who come to mind are soldiers, police, mafia figures, or others acting on behalf of people like these. But in Myanmar where five decades of military dictatorship have poisoned all institutions and social life, they are just as likely to be medical doctors or other professionals acting as proxies for state authorities.
With the emergence of a new parliament under military control in the next year or so, this aspect of human rights abuse, and attacks on human rights defenders in Myanmar, is likely to become more pronounced, making understanding of the real actors and issues even more difficult for people outside the country than it already is. But this difficulty at least is surmountable, with close attention to what is happening and communication with human rights defenders there.
The second difficulty is what to do. Of course, we can bring as much pressure to bear on the authorities in Myanmar from outside as possible. Experience has shown that concerted efforts from United Nations agencies, governments abroad, human rights groups, the media and others can have an effect in some instances. Indeed, in this case it is obviously the hope of Ma Sandar and her husband, in sending a copy of their letter to you, that you or your staff take up the case with the Government of Myanmar in the hope that pressure from your office may have some effect. We share this hope and look forward to your intervention.
But no matter the amount of pressure, systemic obstacles remain. Among these, one of the most pronounced in Myanmar is the executive-controlled judiciary. In fact, from the AHRC's study over some years, we can safely say that there is no judiciary in Myanmar at all, although there are persons called judges and buildings called courts. Neither these persons nor their institutions function in any way like a judiciary, either in terms of international standards or even in terms of the domestic law.
Under these circumstances, it is pointless to make statements calling for a trial to be fair or for an independent inquiry into some violation of rights, because no institutions exist for these things to happen. That there is no prospect of fair inquiry or trial in this case and hundreds of others like it that the AHRC has studied is obvious from the letter itself. The accused have been forced to appeal to the top army officer in the country, as head of the ruling council, for some sort of relief. There is nowhere else for them to go.
In this way, requests for redress of wrongs committed are reduced to feudalism, where citizens who should have rights as human beings are obliged to supplicate some high up person to beg for mercy. The sad fact is that in the 21st-century, conditions for victims of rights abuse in Myanmar are little different than they were three or four hundred years ago. The availability of computers and email notwithstanding, profound inequality between rulers and ruled underpins all relations and transactions between state and society.
In closing, the Asian Human Rights Commission is raising the case of Ma Sandar and her husband with you in order to ensure that you are apprised of its details, to invite you to intervene so that the needless prosecution of this human rights defender might be brought to a halt and her second imprisonment averted, but also to call for a more honest dialogue about the real situation of human rights in Myanmar, and in Asia, so that we can come up with meaningful strategies to address not only the incidence of human rights abuse on a case by case basis but also so as to go deeply into the institutional arrangements that enable it.
Yours sincerely
Basil Fernando
Executive Director
Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong
(Copy of original letter from Ma Sandar and Zaw Min Htun attached)
Cc:
1. Tomas Ojea Quintana, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar
2. Gabriela Carina Knaul de Albuquerque e Silva, UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers
3. Margaret Sekaggya, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders
4. Homayoun Alizadeh, Regional Representative, OHCHR, Bangkok, Thailand
******************************************************
Jane's Security News - Clouded alliance - North Korea and Myanmar's covert ties
By Bertil Lintner
22 September 2009
Concerns about military co-operation between North Korea and Myanmar have heightened since June when a North Korean freighter destined for Myanmar was suspected of carrying military cargo in violation of UN Security Council sanctions.
Bilateral co-operation between the two countries has increased, focusing on conventional military transfers. North Korean experts also appear to have been covertly assisting Myanmar in constructing an extensive tunnel network as emergency shelters for military personnel and equipment.
Allegations that Pyongyang is providing assistance to Myanmar's ruling junta in installing nuclear research reactors and uranium prospecting appear far-fetched. No evidence - satellite imagery or eyewitness - has emerged of this.
Myanmar has plenty of reasons to pursue a nuclear programme and North Korea to supply one. Naypyidaw fears external military intervention, and may perceive a deliverable nuclear weapon as an ultimate security guarantee. Pyongyang continues to desire foreign currency, and the sale of nuclear technology or expertise could be one source.
However, a deliverable nuclear arsenal remains far beyond what Myanmar can currently achieve and afford.
Whether or not in nuclear co-operation, North Korean-Myanmar relations are set to intensify. Conventional military transfers are set to continue, with Myanmar seeking to procure further equipment to aid its counter-insurgency campaigns near its borders.
By Bertil Lintner
22 September 2009
Concerns about military co-operation between North Korea and Myanmar have heightened since June when a North Korean freighter destined for Myanmar was suspected of carrying military cargo in violation of UN Security Council sanctions.
Bilateral co-operation between the two countries has increased, focusing on conventional military transfers. North Korean experts also appear to have been covertly assisting Myanmar in constructing an extensive tunnel network as emergency shelters for military personnel and equipment.
Allegations that Pyongyang is providing assistance to Myanmar's ruling junta in installing nuclear research reactors and uranium prospecting appear far-fetched. No evidence - satellite imagery or eyewitness - has emerged of this.
Myanmar has plenty of reasons to pursue a nuclear programme and North Korea to supply one. Naypyidaw fears external military intervention, and may perceive a deliverable nuclear weapon as an ultimate security guarantee. Pyongyang continues to desire foreign currency, and the sale of nuclear technology or expertise could be one source.
However, a deliverable nuclear arsenal remains far beyond what Myanmar can currently achieve and afford.
Whether or not in nuclear co-operation, North Korean-Myanmar relations are set to intensify. Conventional military transfers are set to continue, with Myanmar seeking to procure further equipment to aid its counter-insurgency campaigns near its borders.
******************************************************
The Age - Sanctions will force Burmese junta to negotiate
EVA SUNDARI
April 21, 2010
The past 20 years has seen massive foreign investments in Burma and a policy of unconditional engagement pursued by neighbouring countries, including my own, Indonesia.
This practice of unprincipled engagement, which ASEAN has been guilty of, has failed to bring positive change to my Burmese neighbours who show so much courage and hope.
The benefits of foreign investment and trade have not reached the ordinary people of Burma. Instead poverty has increased and health spending has fallen, while the human rights crisis has peaked and so has sexual violence, torture and murder of women by military forces armed with newer weapons. Burma's humanitarian crisis continues to worsen with tragic consequences. One in 10 children die before their fifth birthday, a figure that doubles in eastern Burma where the military is attacking civilians. Children are still being forcibly recruited into the armed forces despite the regime's pledges to stop. The cost of unconditional engagement has also implicated Indonesia and ASEAN in the tragedy of the Rohingya boatpeople. There has not been one single political democratic reform, and it is unlikely that Burma's scheduled 2010 election will bring about any significant change.
Income from foreign investment projects enables the military dictatorship to continue abusing human rights. These abuses, including slavery, torture, extrajudicial executions, rape, forced displacement have been well documented across Burma. The International Labour Organisations and International Tribunal into Crimes against Women in Burma have both named Burma's oil and gas industry as being linked to human rights violations.
Foreign trade and investment channels money to the military, who continue their brutal repression, and to individual generals to shore up their own financial situations and security. This leaves no reason to engage with anyone who advocates for political change; foreign investment in Burma brings no one to the negotiating table.
Last year we saw Aung San Suu Kyi successfully use existing sanctions as leverage to enter into talks with Burma's junta for the first time in nearly two years and to meet diplomats from the US, UK and Australia for the first time in six years.
Despite what has been reported in the media, Suu Kyi has not indicated any drastic change to her position on sanctions nor has she called for the lifting of existing sanctions. Not unless, of course one would think, if the regime themselves show concessions in the lifting of its arbitrary control over laws, land and citizens.
New targeted trade and investment sanctions, especially if they include Burma's oil and gas industry, will strengthen Suu Kyi's and Burma's democracy movements bargaining position.
In addition to providing Suu Kyi with more leverage, new targeted trade and investment sanctions will play a role in:
* Protecting national resources, such as oil and gas reserves, from being exploited by the military junta for their sole benefit.
* Preventing human rights violations from occurring along project sites and by denying the military regime billions in revenues; and
* Ensuring foreign companies are not complicit in or linked to the violation of human rights abuses in Burma.
A multilateral approach to sanctions against Burma already exists. The US, EU and Canada have adopted trade and investment sanctions and private companies and individuals have voluntarily enacted sanctions. The introduction of targeted trade and investments sanctions by individual countries would strengthen this multilateral approach. This is especially important given the direct channel of oil and gas profits into the military's pockets, an industry that Australia's Twinza Oil is beginning to invest in.
ASEAN has had to accept our responsibility for Burma's crisis, because we continue to contribute to the military junta's political and economic strength. By not using all available tools to bring about change in Burma, such as imposing targeted trade and investment sanctions, other nations are doing the same, and thus must join ASEAN in assuming blame for the situation in Burma.
Australia has a strong reputation as a defender of democracy and regional security. This reputation may be in jeopardy, should the necessary steps to stop Australian companies funding human rights abuses in Burma not be taken. This year is going to be a defining one for Burma. Let us work together to send a clear message to the military junta, ASEAN governments, the international community and to our brave neighbours, in the form of Burma's multi-ethnic community who are united in calls for democracy, that Australia is committed to pinpointing pressure in order to bring key players to the negotiating table.
Eva Sundari is a Member of Parliament in Indonesia and a member of Indonesia Democratic Party for Struggle (PDIP). She is ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus regional vice-president and Indonesia's National Burma Caucus chairwoman.
EVA SUNDARI
April 21, 2010
The past 20 years has seen massive foreign investments in Burma and a policy of unconditional engagement pursued by neighbouring countries, including my own, Indonesia.
This practice of unprincipled engagement, which ASEAN has been guilty of, has failed to bring positive change to my Burmese neighbours who show so much courage and hope.
The benefits of foreign investment and trade have not reached the ordinary people of Burma. Instead poverty has increased and health spending has fallen, while the human rights crisis has peaked and so has sexual violence, torture and murder of women by military forces armed with newer weapons. Burma's humanitarian crisis continues to worsen with tragic consequences. One in 10 children die before their fifth birthday, a figure that doubles in eastern Burma where the military is attacking civilians. Children are still being forcibly recruited into the armed forces despite the regime's pledges to stop. The cost of unconditional engagement has also implicated Indonesia and ASEAN in the tragedy of the Rohingya boatpeople. There has not been one single political democratic reform, and it is unlikely that Burma's scheduled 2010 election will bring about any significant change.
Income from foreign investment projects enables the military dictatorship to continue abusing human rights. These abuses, including slavery, torture, extrajudicial executions, rape, forced displacement have been well documented across Burma. The International Labour Organisations and International Tribunal into Crimes against Women in Burma have both named Burma's oil and gas industry as being linked to human rights violations.
Foreign trade and investment channels money to the military, who continue their brutal repression, and to individual generals to shore up their own financial situations and security. This leaves no reason to engage with anyone who advocates for political change; foreign investment in Burma brings no one to the negotiating table.
Last year we saw Aung San Suu Kyi successfully use existing sanctions as leverage to enter into talks with Burma's junta for the first time in nearly two years and to meet diplomats from the US, UK and Australia for the first time in six years.
Despite what has been reported in the media, Suu Kyi has not indicated any drastic change to her position on sanctions nor has she called for the lifting of existing sanctions. Not unless, of course one would think, if the regime themselves show concessions in the lifting of its arbitrary control over laws, land and citizens.
New targeted trade and investment sanctions, especially if they include Burma's oil and gas industry, will strengthen Suu Kyi's and Burma's democracy movements bargaining position.
In addition to providing Suu Kyi with more leverage, new targeted trade and investment sanctions will play a role in:
* Protecting national resources, such as oil and gas reserves, from being exploited by the military junta for their sole benefit.
* Preventing human rights violations from occurring along project sites and by denying the military regime billions in revenues; and
* Ensuring foreign companies are not complicit in or linked to the violation of human rights abuses in Burma.
A multilateral approach to sanctions against Burma already exists. The US, EU and Canada have adopted trade and investment sanctions and private companies and individuals have voluntarily enacted sanctions. The introduction of targeted trade and investments sanctions by individual countries would strengthen this multilateral approach. This is especially important given the direct channel of oil and gas profits into the military's pockets, an industry that Australia's Twinza Oil is beginning to invest in.
ASEAN has had to accept our responsibility for Burma's crisis, because we continue to contribute to the military junta's political and economic strength. By not using all available tools to bring about change in Burma, such as imposing targeted trade and investment sanctions, other nations are doing the same, and thus must join ASEAN in assuming blame for the situation in Burma.
Australia has a strong reputation as a defender of democracy and regional security. This reputation may be in jeopardy, should the necessary steps to stop Australian companies funding human rights abuses in Burma not be taken. This year is going to be a defining one for Burma. Let us work together to send a clear message to the military junta, ASEAN governments, the international community and to our brave neighbours, in the form of Burma's multi-ethnic community who are united in calls for democracy, that Australia is committed to pinpointing pressure in order to bring key players to the negotiating table.
Eva Sundari is a Member of Parliament in Indonesia and a member of Indonesia Democratic Party for Struggle (PDIP). She is ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus regional vice-president and Indonesia's National Burma Caucus chairwoman.
******************************************************
Myanmar offers cash reward for capturing water festival bombers
English.news.cn 2010-04-22 13:09:22
YANGON, April 22 (Xinhua) -- The Myanmar authorities have announced offering of 1 million Kyats' (about 1,000 U.S. dollars) reward for providing information leading to the capture of the people involved in the April 15 water festival bomb attacks, the local Biweekly Eleven News reported Thursday.
Two people have been suspected of being terrorists who committed throwing of grenades to a water festival pandal causing the casualties.
The notices for the offer are pasted on some ward authorities' offices in four districts in Yangon, the report said.
Meanwhile, two more people died in hospital over the weekend due to serious injury, bringing the total death toll to 10 from 8 initially reported, while the injured remained at 170.
A series of bomb explosions occurred one after another in front of the water throwing pandal, named X-2-O, on Mingala Taung Nyunt township's Kandawkyi Ring Road at Kandawkyi lake park area on April 15 afternoon when hundreds of thousands of revellers were enjoying watering.
A Myanmar state newspaper Wednesday charged some anti- government organizations in exile with masterminding the recent terrorist bomb attacks in Yangon's water festival.
Without firm evidences so far, an official newspaper, the " Mirror", accused such organizations as Kayin National Union (KNU), All Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF), Kayin Youth Organization (KYO), Democratic Alliance of Burma (DAB), National League for Democracy-Liberated Area (NLD-LA), National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB) of being responsible for the bomb attacks, citing some information that these organizations held meetings in a neighboring country earlier to plot bombings during the water festival which targeted at Bago, Mandalay, Yangon and Nay Pyi Taw areas.
Under the name of "A researcher", the commentary of the paper also charged the NLD, one of the 10 old political parties in Myanmar which has boycotted the coming general election, with being involved in the incident along with its allies.
A compiled official report said that during the period of Myanmar's water festival over the past week, bomb explosions occurred in four places in the country with the first on April 14 at a toll gate in Muse check point in Shan state run by the private Asia World Company, the second on the same day at the compound of a check point in southeastern Kayin state's Kawkareik, injuring three persons, the third with a series of three bombs on April 15 at a water throwing pandal in Yangon, killing 10 people and injuring 170, and the fourth with 10 bombs on April 17 at four worksites of the Myitsone hydropower dam project in the upper reaches of the Ayeyawaddy River in northernmost Kachin state on April 17, injuring one person and destroying two temporary buildings and six motor vehicles.
Several unexploded bombs were also found at the hydropower project sites, the report added.
The authorities are carrying out urgent investigation into all the above incidents.
English.news.cn 2010-04-22 13:09:22
YANGON, April 22 (Xinhua) -- The Myanmar authorities have announced offering of 1 million Kyats' (about 1,000 U.S. dollars) reward for providing information leading to the capture of the people involved in the April 15 water festival bomb attacks, the local Biweekly Eleven News reported Thursday.
Two people have been suspected of being terrorists who committed throwing of grenades to a water festival pandal causing the casualties.
The notices for the offer are pasted on some ward authorities' offices in four districts in Yangon, the report said.
Meanwhile, two more people died in hospital over the weekend due to serious injury, bringing the total death toll to 10 from 8 initially reported, while the injured remained at 170.
A series of bomb explosions occurred one after another in front of the water throwing pandal, named X-2-O, on Mingala Taung Nyunt township's Kandawkyi Ring Road at Kandawkyi lake park area on April 15 afternoon when hundreds of thousands of revellers were enjoying watering.
A Myanmar state newspaper Wednesday charged some anti- government organizations in exile with masterminding the recent terrorist bomb attacks in Yangon's water festival.
Without firm evidences so far, an official newspaper, the " Mirror", accused such organizations as Kayin National Union (KNU), All Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF), Kayin Youth Organization (KYO), Democratic Alliance of Burma (DAB), National League for Democracy-Liberated Area (NLD-LA), National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB) of being responsible for the bomb attacks, citing some information that these organizations held meetings in a neighboring country earlier to plot bombings during the water festival which targeted at Bago, Mandalay, Yangon and Nay Pyi Taw areas.
Under the name of "A researcher", the commentary of the paper also charged the NLD, one of the 10 old political parties in Myanmar which has boycotted the coming general election, with being involved in the incident along with its allies.
A compiled official report said that during the period of Myanmar's water festival over the past week, bomb explosions occurred in four places in the country with the first on April 14 at a toll gate in Muse check point in Shan state run by the private Asia World Company, the second on the same day at the compound of a check point in southeastern Kayin state's Kawkareik, injuring three persons, the third with a series of three bombs on April 15 at a water throwing pandal in Yangon, killing 10 people and injuring 170, and the fourth with 10 bombs on April 17 at four worksites of the Myitsone hydropower dam project in the upper reaches of the Ayeyawaddy River in northernmost Kachin state on April 17, injuring one person and destroying two temporary buildings and six motor vehicles.
Several unexploded bombs were also found at the hydropower project sites, the report added.
The authorities are carrying out urgent investigation into all the above incidents.
******************************************************
Myanmar grants formation of two new political parties for election
English.news.cn 2010-04-22 22:59:48
YANGON, April 22 (Xinhua) -- The Myanmar Union Election Commission Thursday granted the formation of two new political parties for entering the coming multi-party general election, the state radio reported in a night broadcast.
The two parties are the 88 Generation Student Youths (Union of Myanmar) and the Union of Myanmar Federation of National Politics.
The two new parties are notified to register with the commission within 30 days, the report said.
A total of 16 newly-formed political parties in Myanmar have so far sought registration with the commission for contesting in the election and three out of 10 other old political parties already in legal existence since the previous 1990 general election have so far also applied for re-registration for continued existence and then for taking part in the election, the date of which has not been set.
Meanwhile, the National League for Democracy (NLD), one of the 10 old political parties in existence, has decided not to re- register for having opinions with the party registration law.
English.news.cn 2010-04-22 22:59:48
YANGON, April 22 (Xinhua) -- The Myanmar Union Election Commission Thursday granted the formation of two new political parties for entering the coming multi-party general election, the state radio reported in a night broadcast.
The two parties are the 88 Generation Student Youths (Union of Myanmar) and the Union of Myanmar Federation of National Politics.
The two new parties are notified to register with the commission within 30 days, the report said.
A total of 16 newly-formed political parties in Myanmar have so far sought registration with the commission for contesting in the election and three out of 10 other old political parties already in legal existence since the previous 1990 general election have so far also applied for re-registration for continued existence and then for taking part in the election, the date of which has not been set.
Meanwhile, the National League for Democracy (NLD), one of the 10 old political parties in existence, has decided not to re- register for having opinions with the party registration law.
******************************************************
The Nation - Drawing Your Last Breath Hungry
By Allan Nairn
June 9, 2008
Allan Nairn: If Timor-Leste's President doesn't survive the assassination attempt, his soul will get a good laugh at outlasting Suharto, who killed a third of his people.
On Thingyan, the Buddhist holiday in which people dunk each other with water, you could get a full-face full-pail drenching and be crisply sundried in minutes.
But when the storm water rose on the Irrawaddy Delta, drying out became secondary because the sun's rays were largely gone--and so was much of the land, housing and plantings.
No one really knows how many people died, but the world press has made the point that it would have been far fewer if Burma had a better government.
The point could also be made, though, that far fewer still would have died if the world had a better system of producing and allocating its wealth.
It's hard to come up with solid figures but it seems safe to estimate that the entire disposable wealth of the Irrawaddy Delta before the storm--that of its 3.5 million residents--could have been less than that of one table of diners at New York's Four Seasons Grill Room.
Actually, it's more dramatic than that.
Working with figures from Forbes magazine, the IMF, and the UNDP, it's possible to estimate that there are between 300 and 1,000 individuals whose accumulated wealth is so vast that any one of them alone could pay each person in the Irrawaddy Delta for a year--and in the case of the richest, like Warren Buffett--could do it for six decades running and still have billions left.
One could get a visualization of this notion and its implications when flying over the Netherlands. Looking down from the Royal Dutch Airline a few weeks after Irrawaddy sank, you could see another delta, a country with much land below sea level, but where long infusions of wealth-- much of it extracted from Southeast Asia by whip (see the histories of the Dutch East and West Indies Companies)--have made possible the building, behind strong dikes, by the sea, of nice, glassy homes and offices.
A cyclone Nargis would have killed anywhere--consider the recent storms in the US midwest--but whether you survive a storm depends in important part on whether you and your ancestors were rich or poor and were able to build good infrastructure (even in the United States, see New Orleans).
So the rich world is right to flagellate the Burmese generals for holding back resources as people die (a BBC World TV interviewer yesterday called it "criminal neglect"). But it is wrong to fail to note that they do the same thing daily, on a global, far more deadly, scale.
The rich do pass out some of their spare wealth during a cyclone or other covered crisis, but on a daily basis withhold enough of it such that 850 million people routinely go hungry.
The recent food price hike has upped that statistic by perhaps 100 million, and so it is said that we are in a "food crisis" and that "the era of cheap food is over."
The world would indeed be in a food crisis if there were not enough food to feed the people. But that is not the case.
The problem is that many millions of people can't afford food. That, clearly, is not a food crisis, but rather a wealth crisis, more precisely a wealth distribution crisis that can be solved by shifts from rich to poor, and a crisis that can be kept from recurring if laws and economies are then modified to institutionalize a new, more realistic, system that doesn't happen to starve people--an objective which, one would think, is a fairly modest, and perhaps popular, goal.
In Rome there is a world summit on food and there has been a political stir over an attempt to exclude Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's liberator and despot.
The point is made correctly that Mugabe runs a failed economic system that kills many people who could have been saved if he had made different choices.
But the same could also be said of a number of others at the summit--those who run the world economy, which is certainly failed from the point of view of those who draw their last breath hungry.
UN people from the Food and Agriculture Organization and other agencies have also caused a flutter by talking about $50 billion, over many years, for various food projects, which is a tenfold increase but still less than the personal holdings of Buffett, Bill Gates and Carlos Slim (who got quite rich essentially overnight when Mexico gave him its cell phone system). It's also what the US goes though in about five months of occupying Iraq, where child malnutrition has risen in rough correlation with precision bomb drops and Iraqi democracy.
If someone's dying and you have a dollar that could save them and you withhold it, you have killed them. It's so extreme it sounds ridiculous, but it happens to be true, and will continue to be true so long as surplus coexists with bodies living on the cliff of death, or, for the luckier young ones, the cliff of mere body-stunting and underdevelopment of their brains.
The big story before the food crisis was the US Wall Street financial crisis. For some weeks sober economists were fearing 1929-style panic. But Ben Bernanke, the US Federal Reserve chairman, stepped in to save the day by essentially imagining into existence several hundreds of billions of dollars worth of money that was effectively made available to some of the world's richest institutions and people.
The coverage focused on the fact that Bernanke did this cleverly, and succeeded, but it could also have noted that this is a remarkable aspect of today's economy: while most people have to work for their money incrementally, bending in mud to plant their rice, a few can imagine it into existence in large blocks, and give it to their friends and colleagues.
By printing money, issuing bonds, making loans, creating new financial instruments and by other means, these few create notions that have the power to buy goats, or anything else one wants, and can continue doing so indefinitely so long as rich society buys the pretense.
Which is to say that though getting food to people requires rearranging some physical things, most of the task involves rearranging the notions that govern actions from people's heads.
It's simply a choice as to whether the power to conjure funds will be used to help real hungry people, and not just the juridical, imaginary persons that are investment corporations (US judicial precedent gives corporations the legal rights of persons, but it's impossible to jail them if they transgress).
And it is likewise simply a choice whether or not to save expiring people by allowing resources to be shifted from an aid ship off Burma's shore, or from the guys having drinks and lunch at the Four Seasons, table four.
By Allan Nairn
June 9, 2008
Allan Nairn: If Timor-Leste's President doesn't survive the assassination attempt, his soul will get a good laugh at outlasting Suharto, who killed a third of his people.
On Thingyan, the Buddhist holiday in which people dunk each other with water, you could get a full-face full-pail drenching and be crisply sundried in minutes.
But when the storm water rose on the Irrawaddy Delta, drying out became secondary because the sun's rays were largely gone--and so was much of the land, housing and plantings.
No one really knows how many people died, but the world press has made the point that it would have been far fewer if Burma had a better government.
The point could also be made, though, that far fewer still would have died if the world had a better system of producing and allocating its wealth.
It's hard to come up with solid figures but it seems safe to estimate that the entire disposable wealth of the Irrawaddy Delta before the storm--that of its 3.5 million residents--could have been less than that of one table of diners at New York's Four Seasons Grill Room.
Actually, it's more dramatic than that.
Working with figures from Forbes magazine, the IMF, and the UNDP, it's possible to estimate that there are between 300 and 1,000 individuals whose accumulated wealth is so vast that any one of them alone could pay each person in the Irrawaddy Delta for a year--and in the case of the richest, like Warren Buffett--could do it for six decades running and still have billions left.
One could get a visualization of this notion and its implications when flying over the Netherlands. Looking down from the Royal Dutch Airline a few weeks after Irrawaddy sank, you could see another delta, a country with much land below sea level, but where long infusions of wealth-- much of it extracted from Southeast Asia by whip (see the histories of the Dutch East and West Indies Companies)--have made possible the building, behind strong dikes, by the sea, of nice, glassy homes and offices.
A cyclone Nargis would have killed anywhere--consider the recent storms in the US midwest--but whether you survive a storm depends in important part on whether you and your ancestors were rich or poor and were able to build good infrastructure (even in the United States, see New Orleans).
So the rich world is right to flagellate the Burmese generals for holding back resources as people die (a BBC World TV interviewer yesterday called it "criminal neglect"). But it is wrong to fail to note that they do the same thing daily, on a global, far more deadly, scale.
The rich do pass out some of their spare wealth during a cyclone or other covered crisis, but on a daily basis withhold enough of it such that 850 million people routinely go hungry.
The recent food price hike has upped that statistic by perhaps 100 million, and so it is said that we are in a "food crisis" and that "the era of cheap food is over."
The world would indeed be in a food crisis if there were not enough food to feed the people. But that is not the case.
The problem is that many millions of people can't afford food. That, clearly, is not a food crisis, but rather a wealth crisis, more precisely a wealth distribution crisis that can be solved by shifts from rich to poor, and a crisis that can be kept from recurring if laws and economies are then modified to institutionalize a new, more realistic, system that doesn't happen to starve people--an objective which, one would think, is a fairly modest, and perhaps popular, goal.
In Rome there is a world summit on food and there has been a political stir over an attempt to exclude Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's liberator and despot.
The point is made correctly that Mugabe runs a failed economic system that kills many people who could have been saved if he had made different choices.
But the same could also be said of a number of others at the summit--those who run the world economy, which is certainly failed from the point of view of those who draw their last breath hungry.
UN people from the Food and Agriculture Organization and other agencies have also caused a flutter by talking about $50 billion, over many years, for various food projects, which is a tenfold increase but still less than the personal holdings of Buffett, Bill Gates and Carlos Slim (who got quite rich essentially overnight when Mexico gave him its cell phone system). It's also what the US goes though in about five months of occupying Iraq, where child malnutrition has risen in rough correlation with precision bomb drops and Iraqi democracy.
If someone's dying and you have a dollar that could save them and you withhold it, you have killed them. It's so extreme it sounds ridiculous, but it happens to be true, and will continue to be true so long as surplus coexists with bodies living on the cliff of death, or, for the luckier young ones, the cliff of mere body-stunting and underdevelopment of their brains.
The big story before the food crisis was the US Wall Street financial crisis. For some weeks sober economists were fearing 1929-style panic. But Ben Bernanke, the US Federal Reserve chairman, stepped in to save the day by essentially imagining into existence several hundreds of billions of dollars worth of money that was effectively made available to some of the world's richest institutions and people.
The coverage focused on the fact that Bernanke did this cleverly, and succeeded, but it could also have noted that this is a remarkable aspect of today's economy: while most people have to work for their money incrementally, bending in mud to plant their rice, a few can imagine it into existence in large blocks, and give it to their friends and colleagues.
By printing money, issuing bonds, making loans, creating new financial instruments and by other means, these few create notions that have the power to buy goats, or anything else one wants, and can continue doing so indefinitely so long as rich society buys the pretense.
Which is to say that though getting food to people requires rearranging some physical things, most of the task involves rearranging the notions that govern actions from people's heads.
It's simply a choice as to whether the power to conjure funds will be used to help real hungry people, and not just the juridical, imaginary persons that are investment corporations (US judicial precedent gives corporations the legal rights of persons, but it's impossible to jail them if they transgress).
And it is likewise simply a choice whether or not to save expiring people by allowing resources to be shifted from an aid ship off Burma's shore, or from the guys having drinks and lunch at the Four Seasons, table four.
******************************************************
The Irrawaddy - Wa Hosts Allies for Security Talks
By WAI MOE, Thursday, April 22, 2010
As the junta’s deadline for the Border Guard Force (BGF) plan passes on Thursday, the largest of Burma's armed ethnic groups, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), which has upward of 20,000 troops, met this week with its allies to discuss the potential threats they face in the near future, sources close to the groups told The Irrawaddy.
“The ethnic groups have learned a lesson from the failure of their Kokang allies, and are preparing a united front against any threats to the development and stability of their territories,” said a source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Since Naypyidaw first proposed transforming the various ethnic cease-fire groups into BGFs one year ago, groups such as the UWSA, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the Kokang army (officially called the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army), the Mongla-based National Democratic Alliance Army and the Shan State Army-North, have formed alliances with each other.
Following the Burmese army's seizure of the Kokang headquarters in Laogai, near the Chinese border, in August last year, the cease-fire groups have reportedly pledged to stand alongside one another if one group is attacked.
The Burmese army knows that with the UWSA involved, any conflict with the ethnic groups could potentially involve a lengthy and bloody campaign. A couple of days before the deadline, the UWSA sent a letter to the junta saying it rejects the BGF proposal.
According to sources, the Wa leadership reportedly said in the letter that their stance had not changed since their previous letter to Naypyidaw on April 3. It also said that the Burmese regime, or any other party, is welcome in the Wa region if they want to help create development and stability. However, anyone who “seeks to destroy” the region’s peace and development would be considered an enemy, they said.
Contrary to Naypyidaw's demands, the Wa leaders insisted that any BGF unit stationed in Wa territory must be headed by Wa commanders with Burmese army officers assigned to deputy commander positions. Furthermore, the UWSA proposed that general staff officers could be assigned from the Burmese army, but that all deputy staff officers must come from the UWSA. The Wa said it would allow six lower-ranking Burmese officers in each battalion, whereas the junta demanded 27 rank and file military personnel.
The junta rejected the Wa's terms on April 9 during a meeting between Wa leaders and a government delegation led by Lt. Col. Than Htut Thein, who is a general staff officer in the Triangle Regional Military Command, according to The Shan Herald Agency for News, which monitors affairs in Shan State.
Saengjuen Sarawin of The Shan Herald Agency for News said that both the Wa and the Burmese army are preparing for conflict. He said the Burmese have reinforced troops and military facilities in northern and southern Shan State, while the UWSA has done similarly in their own territory.
Another major ethnic cease-fire group, the KIO, based in northernmost Burma, was due to hold BGF negotiations with government officials on Thursday in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State. Burmese Prime Minister Gen Thein Sein and the chief of the Military Affairs Security, Lt-Gen Ye Myint, who is the chief negotiator with the cease-fire groups, are scheduled to attend the meeting.
The KIO is yet to announce its acceptance or rejection of the BGF proposal. The group proposed that Kachin troops join a “Union Defense Forces,” in the “spirit of Panglong,” referring to a 1947 agreement that granted the Kachin and other ethnic groups full autonomy and internal administration of frontier areas.
Kachin sources said KIO associates in Myitkyina could face retaliatory measures after the deadline passes, noting that a Kachin official was recently arrested in Myitkyina because he traveled to his family home without travel documents.
Analysts have said the BGF issue is posing a dilemma for the Burmese army as the generals’ proposal has failed to bear fruit.
Meanwhile, Chinese premier Wen Jaibao postponed his trip to Burma, Brunei and Indonesia, from April 22 to 25, due to the deathly earthquake in northwestern Qinghai Province, according to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Web site.
As the Chinese are traditionally and geographically close to the Wa, Beijing has repeatedly called for peaceful solutions on ethnic issues in Burma.
By WAI MOE, Thursday, April 22, 2010
As the junta’s deadline for the Border Guard Force (BGF) plan passes on Thursday, the largest of Burma's armed ethnic groups, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), which has upward of 20,000 troops, met this week with its allies to discuss the potential threats they face in the near future, sources close to the groups told The Irrawaddy.
“The ethnic groups have learned a lesson from the failure of their Kokang allies, and are preparing a united front against any threats to the development and stability of their territories,” said a source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Since Naypyidaw first proposed transforming the various ethnic cease-fire groups into BGFs one year ago, groups such as the UWSA, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the Kokang army (officially called the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army), the Mongla-based National Democratic Alliance Army and the Shan State Army-North, have formed alliances with each other.
Following the Burmese army's seizure of the Kokang headquarters in Laogai, near the Chinese border, in August last year, the cease-fire groups have reportedly pledged to stand alongside one another if one group is attacked.
The Burmese army knows that with the UWSA involved, any conflict with the ethnic groups could potentially involve a lengthy and bloody campaign. A couple of days before the deadline, the UWSA sent a letter to the junta saying it rejects the BGF proposal.
According to sources, the Wa leadership reportedly said in the letter that their stance had not changed since their previous letter to Naypyidaw on April 3. It also said that the Burmese regime, or any other party, is welcome in the Wa region if they want to help create development and stability. However, anyone who “seeks to destroy” the region’s peace and development would be considered an enemy, they said.
Contrary to Naypyidaw's demands, the Wa leaders insisted that any BGF unit stationed in Wa territory must be headed by Wa commanders with Burmese army officers assigned to deputy commander positions. Furthermore, the UWSA proposed that general staff officers could be assigned from the Burmese army, but that all deputy staff officers must come from the UWSA. The Wa said it would allow six lower-ranking Burmese officers in each battalion, whereas the junta demanded 27 rank and file military personnel.
The junta rejected the Wa's terms on April 9 during a meeting between Wa leaders and a government delegation led by Lt. Col. Than Htut Thein, who is a general staff officer in the Triangle Regional Military Command, according to The Shan Herald Agency for News, which monitors affairs in Shan State.
Saengjuen Sarawin of The Shan Herald Agency for News said that both the Wa and the Burmese army are preparing for conflict. He said the Burmese have reinforced troops and military facilities in northern and southern Shan State, while the UWSA has done similarly in their own territory.
Another major ethnic cease-fire group, the KIO, based in northernmost Burma, was due to hold BGF negotiations with government officials on Thursday in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State. Burmese Prime Minister Gen Thein Sein and the chief of the Military Affairs Security, Lt-Gen Ye Myint, who is the chief negotiator with the cease-fire groups, are scheduled to attend the meeting.
The KIO is yet to announce its acceptance or rejection of the BGF proposal. The group proposed that Kachin troops join a “Union Defense Forces,” in the “spirit of Panglong,” referring to a 1947 agreement that granted the Kachin and other ethnic groups full autonomy and internal administration of frontier areas.
Kachin sources said KIO associates in Myitkyina could face retaliatory measures after the deadline passes, noting that a Kachin official was recently arrested in Myitkyina because he traveled to his family home without travel documents.
Analysts have said the BGF issue is posing a dilemma for the Burmese army as the generals’ proposal has failed to bear fruit.
Meanwhile, Chinese premier Wen Jaibao postponed his trip to Burma, Brunei and Indonesia, from April 22 to 25, due to the deathly earthquake in northwestern Qinghai Province, according to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Web site.
As the Chinese are traditionally and geographically close to the Wa, Beijing has repeatedly called for peaceful solutions on ethnic issues in Burma.
******************************************************
The Irrawaddy - Five Arrested in Myitsone Dam Investigation
By KO HTWE, Thursday, April 22, 2010
The owner of a rubber plantation near the Myitsone dam project and four employees were arrested on Sunday by township police, according to the Kachin News Group (KNG). Two employees were later released.
The man was identified as Ze Lum of Chyinghkrange village.
The dam project was the site of numerous bomb explosions on Saturday, part of a series of bombings that occurred across Burma during the past week.
Lapai Naw Din, the editor of the Thailand-based KNG, said, “In fact, they are innocent; but when the Myitsone dam project was started, his rubber plantation was burned down [to make way for construction]. He asked for compensation from the company [AsiaWorld]. But they refused to give him anything.”
Myitkyina police declined to provide any information when contacted by The Irrawaddy.
Four people died and 12 people were injured in the blasts, according to reports. The majority were Chinese workers. At least three bombs reportedly exploded in front of the offices of AsiaWorld, the main Burmese contractor on the project, which is being funded by Chinese state-run company China Power Investment Corporation (CPI).
Security at the dam project has been increased dramatically, according to local residents.
Aung Wa, a Kachin source on the Sino-Burmese border, told The Irrawaddy: “Crossing the Balaminhtin-Irrawaddy River Bridge in Myitkyina, the authorities investigate everyone and all their material. Before the bombings, people could cross the bridge 24 hours a day, but now you can't cross after 7 p.m.”
Currently, about 300 Chinese workers are employed at the dam site by CPI.
The controversial dam has been criticized by human rights groups and environmentalists. About 15,000 people will be relocated due to the dam's construction.
By KO HTWE, Thursday, April 22, 2010
The owner of a rubber plantation near the Myitsone dam project and four employees were arrested on Sunday by township police, according to the Kachin News Group (KNG). Two employees were later released.
The man was identified as Ze Lum of Chyinghkrange village.
The dam project was the site of numerous bomb explosions on Saturday, part of a series of bombings that occurred across Burma during the past week.
Lapai Naw Din, the editor of the Thailand-based KNG, said, “In fact, they are innocent; but when the Myitsone dam project was started, his rubber plantation was burned down [to make way for construction]. He asked for compensation from the company [AsiaWorld]. But they refused to give him anything.”
Myitkyina police declined to provide any information when contacted by The Irrawaddy.
Four people died and 12 people were injured in the blasts, according to reports. The majority were Chinese workers. At least three bombs reportedly exploded in front of the offices of AsiaWorld, the main Burmese contractor on the project, which is being funded by Chinese state-run company China Power Investment Corporation (CPI).
Security at the dam project has been increased dramatically, according to local residents.
Aung Wa, a Kachin source on the Sino-Burmese border, told The Irrawaddy: “Crossing the Balaminhtin-Irrawaddy River Bridge in Myitkyina, the authorities investigate everyone and all their material. Before the bombings, people could cross the bridge 24 hours a day, but now you can't cross after 7 p.m.”
Currently, about 300 Chinese workers are employed at the dam site by CPI.
The controversial dam has been criticized by human rights groups and environmentalists. About 15,000 people will be relocated due to the dam's construction.
******************************************************
DVB News - Irrawaddy water shortage fuelling disease
By AYE NAI
Published: 22 April 2010
A worsening shortage of clean, drinkable water in Burma’s southern regions is fuelling the spread of waterborne diseases, locals complain.
Much of the problem stems from cyclone Nargis in May 2008, which devastated swathes of land in the Irrawaddy delta and polluted water supplies. Nearly two years on, and the problem is persisting.
“Water in the main lake in the town which we have been drinking out of is not in a very good condition,” said a local in Bogalay town in the Irrawaddy division. “In recent years when a maintenance work was done at the lake, we found out the water’s colour had turned bright red – it wasn’t good to drink anymore.
“Now the hot, sunny weather is making the situation worse,” he added. “The lakes are drying out and we have to refill them with water from the river for drinking.”
As a result, people are being forced to buy water at 1000 kyat ($US1) per barrel; a hefty price in Burma’s poor rural regions. The local said that residents had also run out of water-purification tablets given by aid agencies.
“I was at a hospital the other day and saw some people suffering from diarrhoea and stomach pains, but they are not a big number and no life has been lost yet.”
A resident of the nearby Laputta town said that that although the water shortage hadn’t reached the urban areas, villages in close proximity to Laputta were being affected as sea water had encroached on the rivers.
But another Irrawaddy native said that water shortages were common at this time of year, as were the resultant liver diseases that increase in number.
A township-level health official at a hospital in Wakema town also said that it was a common phenomenon but that education workshops were being offered to affected locals.
“We are educating people to use clean water and to boil water before drinking as well as putting chlorine in the lakes,” he said.
A local NGO in Irrawaddy capital, Bassein, said that there is no significant water shortage problem, but complained that a clean water programme it was running there has been stopped after the UN children’s agency withdrew funding.
“We have stopped our summer water supply programme as we have no funder now. Last year, the agency funded the programme but this year there is no one so we couldn’t continue it.”
By AYE NAI
Published: 22 April 2010
A worsening shortage of clean, drinkable water in Burma’s southern regions is fuelling the spread of waterborne diseases, locals complain.
Much of the problem stems from cyclone Nargis in May 2008, which devastated swathes of land in the Irrawaddy delta and polluted water supplies. Nearly two years on, and the problem is persisting.
“Water in the main lake in the town which we have been drinking out of is not in a very good condition,” said a local in Bogalay town in the Irrawaddy division. “In recent years when a maintenance work was done at the lake, we found out the water’s colour had turned bright red – it wasn’t good to drink anymore.
“Now the hot, sunny weather is making the situation worse,” he added. “The lakes are drying out and we have to refill them with water from the river for drinking.”
As a result, people are being forced to buy water at 1000 kyat ($US1) per barrel; a hefty price in Burma’s poor rural regions. The local said that residents had also run out of water-purification tablets given by aid agencies.
“I was at a hospital the other day and saw some people suffering from diarrhoea and stomach pains, but they are not a big number and no life has been lost yet.”
A resident of the nearby Laputta town said that that although the water shortage hadn’t reached the urban areas, villages in close proximity to Laputta were being affected as sea water had encroached on the rivers.
But another Irrawaddy native said that water shortages were common at this time of year, as were the resultant liver diseases that increase in number.
A township-level health official at a hospital in Wakema town also said that it was a common phenomenon but that education workshops were being offered to affected locals.
“We are educating people to use clean water and to boil water before drinking as well as putting chlorine in the lakes,” he said.
A local NGO in Irrawaddy capital, Bassein, said that there is no significant water shortage problem, but complained that a clean water programme it was running there has been stopped after the UN children’s agency withdrew funding.
“We have stopped our summer water supply programme as we have no funder now. Last year, the agency funded the programme but this year there is no one so we couldn’t continue it.”
******************************************************
US rep says China ‘stealing Burma’
By FRANCIS WADE
Published: 22 April 2010
Burma is becoming a “subservient province of Beijing” and risks being lost to its bigger neighbour “for generations to come”, a US congressman has said.
Speaking in fiery tones before the House of Representatives on Tuesday, California representative Dana Rohrabacher warned that the pariah Southeast Asian state was the victim of a “Chinese power grab”.
“China is literally stealing Burma from its own people, and it is accomplishing this monumental crime with the assistance of Burmese government officials whose lust for power is greater than any loyalty to their own national homeland,” he said.
He added that “the patriots and freedom-loving people of Burma will either join against tyranny and foreign domination, or their country will be lost for generations to come.”
Chinese presence is indeed growing in Burma as Beijing looks to tap the country’s vast natural gas reserves, as well as secure an overland pipeline route to Yunnan province for Middle Eastern oil being offloaded in the Bay of Bengal.
Bilateral trade between the two countries reached $US264 million in February this year alone, up 92 percent year on year, according to the Xinhua news agency. Of that, $US215 million was Chinese exports to Burma.
Last month however a leading US senator acknowledged that it was strict Western sanctions promoted by Washington that had pushed Burma closer to China.
The US has long been concerned with growing Chinese influence in Southeast Asia, a region that US presence in has waned in recent decades as efforts have been concentrated on the Middle East and Latin America. Moreover, the US has vehemently opposed the current military government in Burma, which receives its strongest backing from Beijing.
Washington has however had a tempestuous relationship with Burma: in the 1950s, president Eisenhower installed and armed Chinese nationalists in Burma to carry out cross-border operations into Mao-ruled China, despite the protests of the U Nu administration in Burma, its first civilian government after British rule ended.
Several analysts, including the leading Southeast Asia scholar George Kahin, have said that the huge surplus of arms in Burma that resulted from this initiative, coupled with a need to bolster the army in lieu of possible retaliation from China, was a key factor in fomenting military rule in Burma.
But the adamantly nationalist ruling generals in Burma are also known to be concerned about over-dependence on China, and thus China’s leverage in the country. China meanwhile has expressed concern that instability in Burma, particularly along the China-Burma border, could jeopardise business interests there.
“Burma is not completely dependent on China but dependent enough; they’ve lost their economic independence,” said regional expert Bertil Lintner. “They’re in the clutches of China; there’s nothing they can do about them.”
Chinese imports, particularly in textiles and heavy machinery, dominate Burma’s domestic market, but beyond beyond the economic ties there is also a strategic element to the close cooperation between the two countries.
“It’s more than a relationship of convenience – it’s a military relationship,” Lintner said. “There are Burmese officers who have undergone military training in Kunming [in southern China].”
By FRANCIS WADE
Published: 22 April 2010
Burma is becoming a “subservient province of Beijing” and risks being lost to its bigger neighbour “for generations to come”, a US congressman has said.
Speaking in fiery tones before the House of Representatives on Tuesday, California representative Dana Rohrabacher warned that the pariah Southeast Asian state was the victim of a “Chinese power grab”.
“China is literally stealing Burma from its own people, and it is accomplishing this monumental crime with the assistance of Burmese government officials whose lust for power is greater than any loyalty to their own national homeland,” he said.
He added that “the patriots and freedom-loving people of Burma will either join against tyranny and foreign domination, or their country will be lost for generations to come.”
Chinese presence is indeed growing in Burma as Beijing looks to tap the country’s vast natural gas reserves, as well as secure an overland pipeline route to Yunnan province for Middle Eastern oil being offloaded in the Bay of Bengal.
Bilateral trade between the two countries reached $US264 million in February this year alone, up 92 percent year on year, according to the Xinhua news agency. Of that, $US215 million was Chinese exports to Burma.
Last month however a leading US senator acknowledged that it was strict Western sanctions promoted by Washington that had pushed Burma closer to China.
The US has long been concerned with growing Chinese influence in Southeast Asia, a region that US presence in has waned in recent decades as efforts have been concentrated on the Middle East and Latin America. Moreover, the US has vehemently opposed the current military government in Burma, which receives its strongest backing from Beijing.
Washington has however had a tempestuous relationship with Burma: in the 1950s, president Eisenhower installed and armed Chinese nationalists in Burma to carry out cross-border operations into Mao-ruled China, despite the protests of the U Nu administration in Burma, its first civilian government after British rule ended.
Several analysts, including the leading Southeast Asia scholar George Kahin, have said that the huge surplus of arms in Burma that resulted from this initiative, coupled with a need to bolster the army in lieu of possible retaliation from China, was a key factor in fomenting military rule in Burma.
But the adamantly nationalist ruling generals in Burma are also known to be concerned about over-dependence on China, and thus China’s leverage in the country. China meanwhile has expressed concern that instability in Burma, particularly along the China-Burma border, could jeopardise business interests there.
“Burma is not completely dependent on China but dependent enough; they’ve lost their economic independence,” said regional expert Bertil Lintner. “They’re in the clutches of China; there’s nothing they can do about them.”
Chinese imports, particularly in textiles and heavy machinery, dominate Burma’s domestic market, but beyond beyond the economic ties there is also a strategic element to the close cooperation between the two countries.
“It’s more than a relationship of convenience – it’s a military relationship,” Lintner said. “There are Burmese officers who have undergone military training in Kunming [in southern China].”
******************************************************
NLD Youth rolls out human rights aims
Thursday, 22 April 2010 10:22 Khai Suu
New Delhi (Mizzima) – Human rights issues will be the focus of National League for Democracy (Youth) activities once the party ceases to exist as a legal entity, a party spokesman said yesterday.
Electoral law provisions published last month by the military regime were causing the party to expire, – Rangoon Division Hlaing Tharyar Township National League for Democracy (NLD) Youth information department joint chief Khai Soe said.
“After the NLD took the decision not to stand for election, our party programmes and activities will be more clearly directed on human rights issues and activities … Because we think, under the 2008 constitution, the human rights situation will worsen before and after the election”, Khai Soe told Mizzima.
“I have experience in this issue as I am the former political prisoner. I fully comprehend the dangers that lie ahead … But we cannot be afraid …” he said. “We must face this situation and do what we should. We will work on these activities for the development of rights in Burma and to put our work back on a democratic track.”
The policy will be put to work within the legal framework by starting in Pegu, Irrawaddy and Magwe divisions, he said. Among the activities, the group will expose oppression by local authorities, land-grabbing, extrajudicial killings, forced recruitment of child soldiers and forced voting in the forthcoming elections.
“We will support the families of political prisoners by visiting their homes for counselling. And we will encourage them and discuss with them their right to choose whether or not to vote and that no force should be exerted. We will tell them to inform us when they experience these kinds of oppression and we will convey these violations to the people who deserved to be informed”, Khai Soe said.
He also said that he will start this activity alone but that he has many supporters. He has to fill the vacuum left by rights activist Suu Suu New, who is serving a prison sentence for her work.
Khai Soe was sentenced to a seven-year jail term in 1998 by the Insein Special Tribunal after being charged under sections 5(j) of the 1950 Emergency Provisions Act and 17(1) of the 1908 Unlawful Associations Act.
(Section 5(j): to affect the morality or conduct of the public or a group of people in a way that would undermine the security of the Union or the restoration of law and order; Section 17(1): Whoever is member of an unlawful association, or takes part in meetings of any such association, or contributes or receives or solicits any contribution for the purpose of any such association, or in any way assists the operations of any such association, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term [which shall not be less two years and more than three years and shall also be liable to fine].)
After his release from prison, he has engaged in social work and became an NLD member in 2007. “I gave vocational training to children in abject poverty and school dropouts by finding donors. And also I provided training in hairdressing to young prostitutes who had been pushed into the flesh trade because of economic hardship and poverty. I organised them to get back on track,” he said.
Thursday, 22 April 2010 10:22 Khai Suu
New Delhi (Mizzima) – Human rights issues will be the focus of National League for Democracy (Youth) activities once the party ceases to exist as a legal entity, a party spokesman said yesterday.
Electoral law provisions published last month by the military regime were causing the party to expire, – Rangoon Division Hlaing Tharyar Township National League for Democracy (NLD) Youth information department joint chief Khai Soe said.
“After the NLD took the decision not to stand for election, our party programmes and activities will be more clearly directed on human rights issues and activities … Because we think, under the 2008 constitution, the human rights situation will worsen before and after the election”, Khai Soe told Mizzima.
“I have experience in this issue as I am the former political prisoner. I fully comprehend the dangers that lie ahead … But we cannot be afraid …” he said. “We must face this situation and do what we should. We will work on these activities for the development of rights in Burma and to put our work back on a democratic track.”
The policy will be put to work within the legal framework by starting in Pegu, Irrawaddy and Magwe divisions, he said. Among the activities, the group will expose oppression by local authorities, land-grabbing, extrajudicial killings, forced recruitment of child soldiers and forced voting in the forthcoming elections.
“We will support the families of political prisoners by visiting their homes for counselling. And we will encourage them and discuss with them their right to choose whether or not to vote and that no force should be exerted. We will tell them to inform us when they experience these kinds of oppression and we will convey these violations to the people who deserved to be informed”, Khai Soe said.
He also said that he will start this activity alone but that he has many supporters. He has to fill the vacuum left by rights activist Suu Suu New, who is serving a prison sentence for her work.
Khai Soe was sentenced to a seven-year jail term in 1998 by the Insein Special Tribunal after being charged under sections 5(j) of the 1950 Emergency Provisions Act and 17(1) of the 1908 Unlawful Associations Act.
(Section 5(j): to affect the morality or conduct of the public or a group of people in a way that would undermine the security of the Union or the restoration of law and order; Section 17(1): Whoever is member of an unlawful association, or takes part in meetings of any such association, or contributes or receives or solicits any contribution for the purpose of any such association, or in any way assists the operations of any such association, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term [which shall not be less two years and more than three years and shall also be liable to fine].)
After his release from prison, he has engaged in social work and became an NLD member in 2007. “I gave vocational training to children in abject poverty and school dropouts by finding donors. And also I provided training in hairdressing to young prostitutes who had been pushed into the flesh trade because of economic hardship and poverty. I organised them to get back on track,” he said.
******************************************************
Don’t use force to resolve crisis, KIO warns junta
Thursday, 22 April 2010 14:01 Salai Han Thar San
New Delhi (Mizzima) – Kachin Independence Organisation has warned the Burmese junta against using military might to suppress ethnic armed groups under ceasefire, refusing to bring its armed wing into the regime’s Border Guard Force (BGF).
The warning came from the Kachin Independence Organisation’s (KIO) joint general secretary, Colonel Sin Wah. “If they use military means to suppress us on the BGF issue, it will not be good for us, them or the people,” he told Mizzima.
KIO leaders had met junta brass 15 times during the past year on the thorny issue of conversion of its armed wing, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), into the BGF, but the stalemate remains unresolved.
The junta first proposed last April the putting ethnic armed groups under ceasefire into the BGF, to be controlled by Burmese officers. The KIO rejected the idea but said it would accept placement of Kachin battalions in the federal army.
“It depends on the government’s attitude. We do not wish to jeopardise the current peaceful situation,” Colonel Sin Wah said.
In its biggest military build-up of the past 16 years, the military regime sent about 100 army trucks to Myitkyina, the headquarters of the junta’s northern command. This included 26 artillery tow trucks.
The KIO has a 20,000-strong force with a regular army of 8,000 troops. Given the mounting tension they are imparting short-term emergency military training to some local residents and former servicemen.
In its third ultimatum on the BGF issue, the junta told the United Wa State Army and the Shan State Army (North) to respond by April 22.
The KIO held a debriefing session last Thursday at the Manau ground in Laiza, which was attended by Kachin people and grass-roots staff. KIO Vice-Chief of Staff Major General Guan Maw and General Secretary Dr. La Ja clarified the outfit’s political stance and the contentious BGF issue.
The next day a series of bombs exploded at the Asia World office building on the Myitsone hydropower project site in Kachin State. The junta asked the KIA whether it had had a hand in the blasts, which the latter denied.
BGF battalions comprise 326 soldiers each, commanded by a total of 30 officers and other ranks from the Burmese Army. The regime will provide the salaries. The New Democratic Army – Kachin, Karenni Nationalities People’s Liberation Front and the Kokang group have accepted the proposal and their armies have joined the BGF.
Thursday, 22 April 2010 14:01 Salai Han Thar San
New Delhi (Mizzima) – Kachin Independence Organisation has warned the Burmese junta against using military might to suppress ethnic armed groups under ceasefire, refusing to bring its armed wing into the regime’s Border Guard Force (BGF).
The warning came from the Kachin Independence Organisation’s (KIO) joint general secretary, Colonel Sin Wah. “If they use military means to suppress us on the BGF issue, it will not be good for us, them or the people,” he told Mizzima.
KIO leaders had met junta brass 15 times during the past year on the thorny issue of conversion of its armed wing, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), into the BGF, but the stalemate remains unresolved.
The junta first proposed last April the putting ethnic armed groups under ceasefire into the BGF, to be controlled by Burmese officers. The KIO rejected the idea but said it would accept placement of Kachin battalions in the federal army.
“It depends on the government’s attitude. We do not wish to jeopardise the current peaceful situation,” Colonel Sin Wah said.
In its biggest military build-up of the past 16 years, the military regime sent about 100 army trucks to Myitkyina, the headquarters of the junta’s northern command. This included 26 artillery tow trucks.
The KIO has a 20,000-strong force with a regular army of 8,000 troops. Given the mounting tension they are imparting short-term emergency military training to some local residents and former servicemen.
In its third ultimatum on the BGF issue, the junta told the United Wa State Army and the Shan State Army (North) to respond by April 22.
The KIO held a debriefing session last Thursday at the Manau ground in Laiza, which was attended by Kachin people and grass-roots staff. KIO Vice-Chief of Staff Major General Guan Maw and General Secretary Dr. La Ja clarified the outfit’s political stance and the contentious BGF issue.
The next day a series of bombs exploded at the Asia World office building on the Myitsone hydropower project site in Kachin State. The junta asked the KIA whether it had had a hand in the blasts, which the latter denied.
BGF battalions comprise 326 soldiers each, commanded by a total of 30 officers and other ranks from the Burmese Army. The regime will provide the salaries. The New Democratic Army – Kachin, Karenni Nationalities People’s Liberation Front and the Kokang group have accepted the proposal and their armies have joined the BGF.
No comments:
Post a Comment