Saturday, 7 August 2010
22nd Anniversary of 8888 or Burma Unfinished Revolution
22nd Anniversary of 8888 or Burma Unfinished Revolution
Please come along and support Burma
Date: Sunday, 08 August 2010
Time: 09:00 to 17:00
Venue: Room G2, Russell Square Campus
School of Oriental and African studies University of London
Thornhaugh Street Russell Square London
WC1H OXH
- Brief commemoration of 8888
- Short Video show
-Photo Exhibition
-Competition on strategy of how to breakthrough current appalling situation in Burma toward real freedom ...
For more information
Phone: 07958314687,07762094562,07727248755
Source: http://www.bdcburma.org/EventDetails.asp?msg_id=106
Friday, 6 August 2010
No sign Burma’s coming election will be free, fair
THE people of Burma, whose dictatorial junta prefers their country to be called Myanmar, has been in the grip of its military rulers since 1962.
Burma has not had an election since 1990. By a landslide Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won that election. But the junta rejected the election results and even put her and her fellow pro-democracy activists in jail.
She has been in prison or under house arrest, with ever so brief periods of temporary liberty, these past 20 years. The junta has been adding trumped up charges against her through the years. Her allies have not been much luckier.
Except China, the socialist-Buddhist Burmese military leaders’ friend and supporter, and of late India, virtually all the countries of the world have been begging the Burmese junta to free Aung San Suu Kyi, to give back the Burmese people their political and economic freedoms and allow them to exercise their basic human rights. Their pleas, and the entreaties of UN and Asean envoys, have fallen on deaf ears.
Nargis bared junta’s self-serving cruelty
Through the years, most Burma watchers—seeing Aung San Suu Kyi’s oppression and the generals’ cruelty to their own people—have come to despise the military junta. This sentiment grew in the aftermath of the catastrophic Cyclone Nargis in 2008.
Nargis destroyed much of Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta and areas of the capital Rangoon (which the generals now call Yangon), lands and people so beautiful and romantic in the stories, novels and poems of Rudyard Kipling and George Orwell. The 160-kilometer winds and heavy rains killed more than 140,000 and destroyed the crops. There was a humanitarian disaster.
The military junta did nothing to rescue the victims. And when planeloads and shiploads of aid came from the rest of mankind, the junta refused to let food, medicine and supplies to be taken by Red Cross and other aid workers to the starving, injured, and homeless Burmese people. The generals were afraid that the foreign bearers of rescue and food packages would turn out to be like Greeks in the Trojan horse.
Elections before end of 2010 a PR exercise
On Thursday, the head and co-founder a new pro-democracy party that was formed to participate in elections Burma’s dictators promised to hold before the end of the year, resigned. Phyo Min Thein, who had been imprisoned for 15 years for joining the bloody 1988 uprising, said, “I do not believe the coming elections will be free and fair.”
What he belatedly came to realize was what wiser and less optimistic pro-democracy Burmese knew at once on reading the so-called “democratic constitution” the junta had prepared for the country. The election rules released last March and the appointment of an untrustworthy set of officials to serve as election commissioners sealed the decision of Aung Sun Suu Kyi and her NLD members not to participate in the election.
What made it obvious that the coming election was nothing more than a public relations gimmick was the junta’s rule that people who have been convicted by the junta of crimes, like Aung San Suu Kyi herself, are disqualified from running for office. This was the generals’ way of making sure Suu Kyi would not ever come out again as the Burmese people’s chosen leader.
On top of these rules obviously skewed against the opposition parties, the junta also did something to make their political party the sure winner. There is in Burma a junta-approved mass-based welfare society, the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA). It has 24 to 26 million members. It is the body through which services and doles from the government get to the poor—meaning the members. The generals recently formed a political party called the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). The USDA and the USDP were merged, with the social welfare society being subsumed in the political party.
This is the junta’s way of dominating the election. This made foreign observers—the Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, various European and Asian organizations—condemn the coming elections as nothing but a farce.
“The morphing of Burma’s largest mass-based organization with the military’s political party is a brazen if predictable distortion of the electoral process,” said Elaine Pearson, acting Asia director at Human Rights Watch, last month. “The future of military rule is being shamelessly scripted and played out before our eyes.”
USDA-USDP and the Ton-ton Macout
Human Rights Watch says the military junta has long used the USDA for partisan political purposes. Since the 1990s USDA members have been marching and demonstrating throughout the country. They deliver speeches denouncing Aun San Suu Kyi and the NLD and other opposition parties. They attack the United States, the International Labor Organization and of course extol the virtues of the generals. Burma’s Senior General Tan Shwe is the USDA’s main patron. Its secretary general is U Htay Oo, a retired general who is now the minister for agriculture and irrigation.
The USDA carried out violent attacks on Aung San Suu Kyi in 1996 and 1997. It launched violent mob action against a National League for Democracy motorcade in May 2003. Scores died in that attack. During peaceful demonstrations in August and September 2007, USDA thugs intimidated the pro-democracy protestors. The USDA, now merged with the USDP, joined junta security forces that violently cracked down on Buddhist monks perceived to be anti-government in September 2007.
Doesn’t this remind one of the Ton-Ton Macout in the Duvaliers’ Haiti?
Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD loyalists are right. The election is meant to give the world the false impression that democracy has returned to Burma.
The Philippines, alone, if fellow Asean countries do not wish to take risks, must help intensify international pressure on Burma’s junta, keep on urging it to release political prisoners and enter into an honest dialogue to achieve reconciliation with the opposition. The aim is to make Burma a normal and beautiful nation again.
Source:http://www.manilatimes.net/index.php/component/content/article/83-opinion-columnist/23204-no-sign-burmas-coming-election-will-be-free-fair
The manila Times
Burma has not had an election since 1990. By a landslide Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won that election. But the junta rejected the election results and even put her and her fellow pro-democracy activists in jail.
She has been in prison or under house arrest, with ever so brief periods of temporary liberty, these past 20 years. The junta has been adding trumped up charges against her through the years. Her allies have not been much luckier.
Except China, the socialist-Buddhist Burmese military leaders’ friend and supporter, and of late India, virtually all the countries of the world have been begging the Burmese junta to free Aung San Suu Kyi, to give back the Burmese people their political and economic freedoms and allow them to exercise their basic human rights. Their pleas, and the entreaties of UN and Asean envoys, have fallen on deaf ears.
Nargis bared junta’s self-serving cruelty
Through the years, most Burma watchers—seeing Aung San Suu Kyi’s oppression and the generals’ cruelty to their own people—have come to despise the military junta. This sentiment grew in the aftermath of the catastrophic Cyclone Nargis in 2008.
Nargis destroyed much of Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta and areas of the capital Rangoon (which the generals now call Yangon), lands and people so beautiful and romantic in the stories, novels and poems of Rudyard Kipling and George Orwell. The 160-kilometer winds and heavy rains killed more than 140,000 and destroyed the crops. There was a humanitarian disaster.
The military junta did nothing to rescue the victims. And when planeloads and shiploads of aid came from the rest of mankind, the junta refused to let food, medicine and supplies to be taken by Red Cross and other aid workers to the starving, injured, and homeless Burmese people. The generals were afraid that the foreign bearers of rescue and food packages would turn out to be like Greeks in the Trojan horse.
Elections before end of 2010 a PR exercise
On Thursday, the head and co-founder a new pro-democracy party that was formed to participate in elections Burma’s dictators promised to hold before the end of the year, resigned. Phyo Min Thein, who had been imprisoned for 15 years for joining the bloody 1988 uprising, said, “I do not believe the coming elections will be free and fair.”
What he belatedly came to realize was what wiser and less optimistic pro-democracy Burmese knew at once on reading the so-called “democratic constitution” the junta had prepared for the country. The election rules released last March and the appointment of an untrustworthy set of officials to serve as election commissioners sealed the decision of Aung Sun Suu Kyi and her NLD members not to participate in the election.
What made it obvious that the coming election was nothing more than a public relations gimmick was the junta’s rule that people who have been convicted by the junta of crimes, like Aung San Suu Kyi herself, are disqualified from running for office. This was the generals’ way of making sure Suu Kyi would not ever come out again as the Burmese people’s chosen leader.
On top of these rules obviously skewed against the opposition parties, the junta also did something to make their political party the sure winner. There is in Burma a junta-approved mass-based welfare society, the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA). It has 24 to 26 million members. It is the body through which services and doles from the government get to the poor—meaning the members. The generals recently formed a political party called the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). The USDA and the USDP were merged, with the social welfare society being subsumed in the political party.
This is the junta’s way of dominating the election. This made foreign observers—the Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, various European and Asian organizations—condemn the coming elections as nothing but a farce.
“The morphing of Burma’s largest mass-based organization with the military’s political party is a brazen if predictable distortion of the electoral process,” said Elaine Pearson, acting Asia director at Human Rights Watch, last month. “The future of military rule is being shamelessly scripted and played out before our eyes.”
USDA-USDP and the Ton-ton Macout
Human Rights Watch says the military junta has long used the USDA for partisan political purposes. Since the 1990s USDA members have been marching and demonstrating throughout the country. They deliver speeches denouncing Aun San Suu Kyi and the NLD and other opposition parties. They attack the United States, the International Labor Organization and of course extol the virtues of the generals. Burma’s Senior General Tan Shwe is the USDA’s main patron. Its secretary general is U Htay Oo, a retired general who is now the minister for agriculture and irrigation.
The USDA carried out violent attacks on Aung San Suu Kyi in 1996 and 1997. It launched violent mob action against a National League for Democracy motorcade in May 2003. Scores died in that attack. During peaceful demonstrations in August and September 2007, USDA thugs intimidated the pro-democracy protestors. The USDA, now merged with the USDP, joined junta security forces that violently cracked down on Buddhist monks perceived to be anti-government in September 2007.
Doesn’t this remind one of the Ton-Ton Macout in the Duvaliers’ Haiti?
Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD loyalists are right. The election is meant to give the world the false impression that democracy has returned to Burma.
The Philippines, alone, if fellow Asean countries do not wish to take risks, must help intensify international pressure on Burma’s junta, keep on urging it to release political prisoners and enter into an honest dialogue to achieve reconciliation with the opposition. The aim is to make Burma a normal and beautiful nation again.
Source:http://www.manilatimes.net/index.php/component/content/article/83-opinion-columnist/23204-no-sign-burmas-coming-election-will-be-free-fair
The manila Times
Friday, 30 July 2010
U.S. Daily Press Briefing
Philip J. Crowley
Assistant Secretary
Daily Press Briefing
Washington, DC
July 29, 2010
CHINA/NORTH KOREA/BURMA
US expects China to live up to its international obligations/US wants to see China use its leverage with North Korea to encourage North Korea to move in a fundamentally different direction US has concerns about the nature of the relationship between North Korea and Burma
QUESTION: Also, do you have any comment on North Korean Foreign Minister Pak’s visit to Yangon today?
MR. CROWLEY: We have – as we’ve stated many times, we have concerns about the nature of the relationship between North Korea and Burma. We don’t see the transparency in that relationship that we’d like to see. North Korea is a serial proliferators. North Korea is engaged in significant illicit activity. Burma, like other countries around the world, has obligations, and we expect Burma to live up to those obligations.
QUESTION: But do you see North Korea indulging in nuclear proliferation with Burma, or do you see Burma has that ambition?
MR. CROWLEY: Again, there – we – it’s difficult to evaluate because of the lack of transparency in that relationship. It is something that is of concern to us, given North Korea’s historical record. And it is something that we continue to watch very carefully.
QUESTION: During your talks with the Burmese officials, has that issue been brought up with them or the –
MR. CROWLEY: Yes.
QUESTION: -- Burmese officials? Okay.
QUESTION: On Ambassador Einhorn’s trip to Asia, is he going to announce the new sanctions against North Korea while he’s in Asia, or do you expect that announcement after he comes back from the region?
MR. CROWLEY: I don’t think he’ll make any announcements while he’s out there.
Philip J. Crowley
Assistant Secretary
Daily Press Briefing Washington, DC
July 28, 2010
INDIA/BURMA
U.S. Spoke to India on the Nature of their Relationship with Burma / Hearing from Leaders in the Region
QUESTION: How do you view the visit of the senior general – Burmese Senior General Than Shwe – he is considered one of the worst dictators of the world – to India, the largest democratic country of the world?
MR. CROWLEY: Well, we recognize that India and Burma, as neighbors, they have a relationship. We have spoken to India about the nature of this relationship. We hope that India will use its leverage, its investment, to convince Burma and its leaders to improve its record regarding human rights and democracy. We think it’s important for Burma to hear not only from the United States, but also from other regional leaders, India foremost among them.
Assistant Secretary
Daily Press Briefing
Washington, DC
July 29, 2010
CHINA/NORTH KOREA/BURMA
US expects China to live up to its international obligations/US wants to see China use its leverage with North Korea to encourage North Korea to move in a fundamentally different direction US has concerns about the nature of the relationship between North Korea and Burma
QUESTION: Also, do you have any comment on North Korean Foreign Minister Pak’s visit to Yangon today?
MR. CROWLEY: We have – as we’ve stated many times, we have concerns about the nature of the relationship between North Korea and Burma. We don’t see the transparency in that relationship that we’d like to see. North Korea is a serial proliferators. North Korea is engaged in significant illicit activity. Burma, like other countries around the world, has obligations, and we expect Burma to live up to those obligations.
QUESTION: But do you see North Korea indulging in nuclear proliferation with Burma, or do you see Burma has that ambition?
MR. CROWLEY: Again, there – we – it’s difficult to evaluate because of the lack of transparency in that relationship. It is something that is of concern to us, given North Korea’s historical record. And it is something that we continue to watch very carefully.
QUESTION: During your talks with the Burmese officials, has that issue been brought up with them or the –
MR. CROWLEY: Yes.
QUESTION: -- Burmese officials? Okay.
QUESTION: On Ambassador Einhorn’s trip to Asia, is he going to announce the new sanctions against North Korea while he’s in Asia, or do you expect that announcement after he comes back from the region?
MR. CROWLEY: I don’t think he’ll make any announcements while he’s out there.
Philip J. Crowley
Assistant Secretary
Daily Press Briefing Washington, DC
July 28, 2010
INDIA/BURMA
U.S. Spoke to India on the Nature of their Relationship with Burma / Hearing from Leaders in the Region
QUESTION: How do you view the visit of the senior general – Burmese Senior General Than Shwe – he is considered one of the worst dictators of the world – to India, the largest democratic country of the world?
MR. CROWLEY: Well, we recognize that India and Burma, as neighbors, they have a relationship. We have spoken to India about the nature of this relationship. We hope that India will use its leverage, its investment, to convince Burma and its leaders to improve its record regarding human rights and democracy. We think it’s important for Burma to hear not only from the United States, but also from other regional leaders, India foremost among them.
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
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