By SUTIN WANNABOVORN
A Thai anti-graft body set up to investigate ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra announced Monday it will seek to prosecute the ousted leader in connection with a government loan to Myanmar for communications satellite services.
The Assets Examination Committee, established after Thaksin was deposed by a September 2006 military coup, said it determined the 2004 loan by the state-controlled Export-Import Bank of Thailand was meant to benefit the Shin Satellite company, which was owned by Thaksin's family.
Thaksin was prime minister at the time the loan -- on terms more favorable to the borrower than available commercially -- was approved.
The case is the fourth against Thaksin forwarded to state prosecutors, though none has yet come to trial. Thaksin has said he is innocent of any wrongdoing.
The committee's charges against Thaksin in the Myanmar loan case cover both conflict of interest and abuse of his official powers, said committee spokesman Sak Korsaengruang.
He said the committee will forward the case to the attorney general for review, and make formal charges in court within 14 days.
Sak said if Thaksin is found guilty, he could face up to 10 years in jail.
The committee said Thaksin used his power as prime minister to instruct the state Export-Import Bank to extend the $127 million loan.
The 12-year loan provides a credit line for government construction and telecommunications projects that use Thai suppliers. It allows a five-year deferral of repayment of principal, with a 3 percent annual interest rate.
The loan was suspended after the coup, but the Thai government of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, a Thaksin ally, decided this month to release the remainder of the funds.
The committee found Thaksin promised Myanmar's military leaders the loan during "unofficial" negotiations, and increased the total and reduced the interest rate without Cabinet approval.
The committee said it believed the loan was to the bank's disadvantage.
The loan came through about a week after Shin Satellite, a subsidiary of Shin Corp. -- then owned by Thaksin's family -- won the right to establish a broadband project in Myanmar.
Thaksin's main lawyer, Pichit Chuenban, said he could not comment on the charges since his client had not yet assigned him the case.
Monday, March 31, 2008
ပုပၸါးလိပ္ျပာမ်ား မ်ဳိးတုန္းေပ်ာက္ကြယ္
ၾကည္ေ၀ | မတ္ ၃၁၊ ၂၀၀၈
ပထမဆံုးအျဖစ္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ က်ားမ်ား ဆံုးရံႈးခဲ့ရသည္။ ထို႔ေနာက္ ျမစ္မ်ားအတြင္းရိွ ငါးမ်ား ေပ်ာက္ကြယ္မ်ဳိးတုန္း ၾကရၿပီး၊ အင္းေလးကန္ေရျပင္လည္း ညစ္ေထးလာခဲ့သည္။ ယခုအခ်ိန္တြင္မူ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြင္းရိွ လိပ္ျပာမ်ားပါ မ်ဳိးတုန္း ေပ်ာက္ကြယ္ေနၿပီကို ျမင္ေတြ႔ေနၾကရသည္။
မႏၱေလးတိုင္း၊ ျမင္းျခံခရိုင္အတြင္းရိွ ပုပၸါးေတာင္သည္ နတ္တို႔ ေပ်ာ္စံရာေျမႏွင့္ ႏိုင္ငံသိ ထင္ရွားေသာ ဘုရားဖူးလည္စရာ ေတာင္တခုလည္း ျဖစ္သည္။ ပုပၸါးေတာင္သည္ မီးေတာင္ေသ တခုျဖစ္ၿပီး၊ လူသိနည္းလွေသာ အခ်က္မွာ ရွားပါးလွပသည့္ ေရႊငွက္ေတာင္ (ဇီ၀ေဗဒအေခၚ Taoides aceacus) အမည္ရွိ လိပ္ျပာမ်ား အပါအ၀င္ ကမၻာတြင္ အရွားပါးဆံုးေသာ လိပ္ျပာမ်ဳိးစိတ္အခ်ဳိ႔၏ ကြန္းခိုရာ ေနရာတခုလည္း ျဖစ္သည္။
၁၉၈၂ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ ျမန္မာ့သစ္ေတာ၀န္ႀကီးဌာန၏ အစီရင္ခံစာတခုတြင္ ပုပၸါးေတာင္၌ ရိွေနေသာ လိပ္ျပာအမ်ဳိးေပါင္း ၁၀၀ ခန္႔ကို မွတ္တမ္းတင္ႏိုင္ခဲ့သည္။ ပုပၸါးေတာင္၏ ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ႏွင့္ သားငွက္ တိရစၦာန္ ထိန္းသိမ္းေရးဌာနက ၂၀၀၀ ခုႏွစ္ တြင္ စစ္တမ္းေကာက္ယူခ်က္အရ အမ်ဳိး ၆၀ အထိ က်ဆင္းသြားခဲ့သည္ဟု ဆိုသည္။ ၇ ႏွစ္ၾကာေသာအခါ သုေတသီမ်ား က လိပ္ျပာ ၃၂ မ်ဳိး ကိုသာ ေတြ႔ရိွခဲ့ရၿပီး ရွားပါးလွသည့္ ေရႊငွတ္ေတာင္လိပ္ျပာမ်ဳိးသည္လည္း မ်ဳိးတုန္းေပ်ာက္ကြယ္သြား ခဲ့ၿပီ ျဖစ္သည္။
သစ္ေတာျပဳန္းတီ္းျခင္းႏွင့္ ရာသီဥတု အေျပာင္းအလဲမ်ားေၾကာင့္ လိပ္ျပာမ်ဳိးစိတ္ေပါင္း ၇၀ ခန္႔ ဆံုရံႈးခဲ့ရသည္ဟု ဆိုသည္။
ေျမၾသဇာေကာင္းလွေသာ မီးေတာင္ ေခ်ာ္ျပာမ်ားေပၚတြင္ ေပါက္ေနေသာ ပုပၸါးေတာင္၏ ထူထဲလွေသာ သစ္ေတာမ်ားႏွင့္ မ်ားျပားလွေသာ ေတာင္ေပၚစိမ့္စမ္းမ်ားသည္ တခ်ိန္တခါက လိပ္ျပာမ်ားအတြက္ အေကာင္းဆံုး ကြန္းခိုရာ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ၿပီး ကမၻာ့ အရွားပါးဆံုး လိပ္ျပာ ၁၀ မ်ဳိးအနက္ ၉ မ်ိဳးကို ပုပၸါးေတာင္ေဒသ၌ ေတြ႔ရွိခဲ့ၾကရသည္။ ဤလိပ္ျပာမ်ား ေပ်ာက္ဆံုး ကြယ္ ေပ်ာက္သြားရျခင္းက ေတာျပဳန္းျခင္း၏ ဆိုးက်ဳိး သက္ေရာက္မႈမ်ားကို ေနာက္ထပ္သာဓက တခုအျဖစ္ ျပသေနသည္။ “သစ္ပင္သစ္ေတာ ရွင္သန္ပ်ံ႕ႏွံ႔မႈအတြက္ ၀တ္မႈံကူးေပးဖို႔ အေရးပါတဲ့ လိပ္ျပာမ်ဳိးစိတ္ေတြ ခုလို ေပ်ာက္ဆံုးကုန္ရတယ္ ဆိုတာ သစ္ပင္ သစ္ေတာေတြအတြက္ အႀကီးမားဆံုး ဆံုးရႈးံမႈႀကီး တခုပါပဲ” ရန္ကုန္အေျခစိုက္ သဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ ထိန္းသိမ္းေရး ပညာရွင္တဦးက ဆိုပါသည္။
လြန္ခဲ့ေသာ ႏွစ္ ၂၀ အတြင္း စစ္အစိုးရသည္ သစ္ကုမၸဏီမ်ားအား သစ္ေတာအကြက္လိုက္ ခုတ္ယူခြင့္ျပဳျခင္းႏွင့္ တရား မ၀င္ သစ္ခုတ္လွဲမႈမ်ားေၾကာင့္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ၏ သစ္ေတာ ၂၈ % ေက်ာ္ကို ဆံုးရံႈးခဲ့ရပါသည္။ သစ္ေတာမ်ား တရၾကမ္းဖ်က္ ဆီးခုတ္လွဲခဲ့ေသာေၾကာင့္ လိပ္ျပာမ်ား မ်ိဳးျပဳန္းမည့္အေရး ရင္ဆိုင္ၾကံဳေတြ႔ေနၾကရၿပီ ျဖစ္သည္။
သစ္ေတာမ်ားျပဳန္းတီးေနေသာ္လည္း စစ္အစိုးရက ပုပၸါးေတာင္၏ ဧက ၃၁, ၀၀၀ ေက်ာ္ကို ေဘးမဲ့သစ္ေတာအျဖစ္ စာ ရြက္ေပၚတြင္ သတ္မွတ္ထားဆဲ ရွိသည္။ ၁၉၈၂ သစ္ေတာ၀န္ႀကီးဌာန၏ စာရင္းမ်ားအရ ပုပၸါးေတာင္ေဒသတြင္ သစ္ပင္ အမ်ဳိးအစား ၃၀၀၊ သစ္ခြ အမ်ိဳးအစား ၅၂ မ်ဳိးႏွင့္ အျခား ရွားပါး ပရေဆးပင္ အမ်ဳိးကြဲေပါင္း ၁၂၀ ေက်ာ္ ရိွေၾကာင္း စာရင္း ျပဳစုထားခဲ့သည္။ ႏို႔တိုက္သတၱ၀ါ ၁၀ မ်ဳိးႏွင့္ ငွက္အမ်ဳိးစိတ္ေပါင္း ၁၃၀ ေက်ာ္ ဤေတာင္ေပၚတြင္ အေျခခ် ေနထိုင္ခဲ့ၾကဖူး သည္။
တခ်ိန္တခါက ပုပၸါးေတာင္၏ ေတာင္ေစာင္းမ်ားတြင္ ရစ္ေခြစီးဆင္းေနခဲ့ေသာ ေရထြက္စမ္းေပါင္း ၃၆ စင္းရွိခဲ့ၿပီး၊ ယေန႔ ကာလတြင္ အမ်ားစုမွာ ခမ္းေျခာက္ကုန္ကာ ၂ စင္းသာ က်န္ရွိေတာ့သည္။
ဤကဲ့သို႔ ပံုစံမ်ဳိးသာ ဆက္ျဖစ္မည္ဆိုပါက တစျပင္ျဖစ္ေနေသာ ပုပၸါးေတာင္တြင္ နတ္မင္းမ်ားသာ မင္းမူက်န္ရစ္ေနရဖြယ္ ရွိပါေတာ့သည္။
ပထမဆံုးအျဖစ္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ က်ားမ်ား ဆံုးရံႈးခဲ့ရသည္။ ထို႔ေနာက္ ျမစ္မ်ားအတြင္းရိွ ငါးမ်ား ေပ်ာက္ကြယ္မ်ဳိးတုန္း ၾကရၿပီး၊ အင္းေလးကန္ေရျပင္လည္း ညစ္ေထးလာခဲ့သည္။ ယခုအခ်ိန္တြင္မူ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြင္းရိွ လိပ္ျပာမ်ားပါ မ်ဳိးတုန္း ေပ်ာက္ကြယ္ေနၿပီကို ျမင္ေတြ႔ေနၾကရသည္။ မႏၱေလးတိုင္း၊ ျမင္းျခံခရိုင္အတြင္းရိွ ပုပၸါးေတာင္သည္ နတ္တို႔ ေပ်ာ္စံရာေျမႏွင့္ ႏိုင္ငံသိ ထင္ရွားေသာ ဘုရားဖူးလည္စရာ ေတာင္တခုလည္း ျဖစ္သည္။ ပုပၸါးေတာင္သည္ မီးေတာင္ေသ တခုျဖစ္ၿပီး၊ လူသိနည္းလွေသာ အခ်က္မွာ ရွားပါးလွပသည့္ ေရႊငွက္ေတာင္ (ဇီ၀ေဗဒအေခၚ Taoides aceacus) အမည္ရွိ လိပ္ျပာမ်ား အပါအ၀င္ ကမၻာတြင္ အရွားပါးဆံုးေသာ လိပ္ျပာမ်ဳိးစိတ္အခ်ဳိ႔၏ ကြန္းခိုရာ ေနရာတခုလည္း ျဖစ္သည္။
၁၉၈၂ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ ျမန္မာ့သစ္ေတာ၀န္ႀကီးဌာန၏ အစီရင္ခံစာတခုတြင္ ပုပၸါးေတာင္၌ ရိွေနေသာ လိပ္ျပာအမ်ဳိးေပါင္း ၁၀၀ ခန္႔ကို မွတ္တမ္းတင္ႏိုင္ခဲ့သည္။ ပုပၸါးေတာင္၏ ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ႏွင့္ သားငွက္ တိရစၦာန္ ထိန္းသိမ္းေရးဌာနက ၂၀၀၀ ခုႏွစ္ တြင္ စစ္တမ္းေကာက္ယူခ်က္အရ အမ်ဳိး ၆၀ အထိ က်ဆင္းသြားခဲ့သည္ဟု ဆိုသည္။ ၇ ႏွစ္ၾကာေသာအခါ သုေတသီမ်ား က လိပ္ျပာ ၃၂ မ်ဳိး ကိုသာ ေတြ႔ရိွခဲ့ရၿပီး ရွားပါးလွသည့္ ေရႊငွတ္ေတာင္လိပ္ျပာမ်ဳိးသည္လည္း မ်ဳိးတုန္းေပ်ာက္ကြယ္သြား ခဲ့ၿပီ ျဖစ္သည္။
သစ္ေတာျပဳန္းတီ္းျခင္းႏွင့္ ရာသီဥတု အေျပာင္းအလဲမ်ားေၾကာင့္ လိပ္ျပာမ်ဳိးစိတ္ေပါင္း ၇၀ ခန္႔ ဆံုရံႈးခဲ့ရသည္ဟု ဆိုသည္။
ေျမၾသဇာေကာင္းလွေသာ မီးေတာင္ ေခ်ာ္ျပာမ်ားေပၚတြင္ ေပါက္ေနေသာ ပုပၸါးေတာင္၏ ထူထဲလွေသာ သစ္ေတာမ်ားႏွင့္ မ်ားျပားလွေသာ ေတာင္ေပၚစိမ့္စမ္းမ်ားသည္ တခ်ိန္တခါက လိပ္ျပာမ်ားအတြက္ အေကာင္းဆံုး ကြန္းခိုရာ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ၿပီး ကမၻာ့ အရွားပါးဆံုး လိပ္ျပာ ၁၀ မ်ဳိးအနက္ ၉ မ်ိဳးကို ပုပၸါးေတာင္ေဒသ၌ ေတြ႔ရွိခဲ့ၾကရသည္။ ဤလိပ္ျပာမ်ား ေပ်ာက္ဆံုး ကြယ္ ေပ်ာက္သြားရျခင္းက ေတာျပဳန္းျခင္း၏ ဆိုးက်ဳိး သက္ေရာက္မႈမ်ားကို ေနာက္ထပ္သာဓက တခုအျဖစ္ ျပသေနသည္။ “သစ္ပင္သစ္ေတာ ရွင္သန္ပ်ံ႕ႏွံ႔မႈအတြက္ ၀တ္မႈံကူးေပးဖို႔ အေရးပါတဲ့ လိပ္ျပာမ်ဳိးစိတ္ေတြ ခုလို ေပ်ာက္ဆံုးကုန္ရတယ္ ဆိုတာ သစ္ပင္ သစ္ေတာေတြအတြက္ အႀကီးမားဆံုး ဆံုးရႈးံမႈႀကီး တခုပါပဲ” ရန္ကုန္အေျခစိုက္ သဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ ထိန္းသိမ္းေရး ပညာရွင္တဦးက ဆိုပါသည္။
လြန္ခဲ့ေသာ ႏွစ္ ၂၀ အတြင္း စစ္အစိုးရသည္ သစ္ကုမၸဏီမ်ားအား သစ္ေတာအကြက္လိုက္ ခုတ္ယူခြင့္ျပဳျခင္းႏွင့္ တရား မ၀င္ သစ္ခုတ္လွဲမႈမ်ားေၾကာင့္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ၏ သစ္ေတာ ၂၈ % ေက်ာ္ကို ဆံုးရံႈးခဲ့ရပါသည္။ သစ္ေတာမ်ား တရၾကမ္းဖ်က္ ဆီးခုတ္လွဲခဲ့ေသာေၾကာင့္ လိပ္ျပာမ်ား မ်ိဳးျပဳန္းမည့္အေရး ရင္ဆိုင္ၾကံဳေတြ႔ေနၾကရၿပီ ျဖစ္သည္။
သစ္ေတာမ်ားျပဳန္းတီးေနေသာ္လည္း စစ္အစိုးရက ပုပၸါးေတာင္၏ ဧက ၃၁, ၀၀၀ ေက်ာ္ကို ေဘးမဲ့သစ္ေတာအျဖစ္ စာ ရြက္ေပၚတြင္ သတ္မွတ္ထားဆဲ ရွိသည္။ ၁၉၈၂ သစ္ေတာ၀န္ႀကီးဌာန၏ စာရင္းမ်ားအရ ပုပၸါးေတာင္ေဒသတြင္ သစ္ပင္ အမ်ဳိးအစား ၃၀၀၊ သစ္ခြ အမ်ိဳးအစား ၅၂ မ်ဳိးႏွင့္ အျခား ရွားပါး ပရေဆးပင္ အမ်ဳိးကြဲေပါင္း ၁၂၀ ေက်ာ္ ရိွေၾကာင္း စာရင္း ျပဳစုထားခဲ့သည္။ ႏို႔တိုက္သတၱ၀ါ ၁၀ မ်ဳိးႏွင့္ ငွက္အမ်ဳိးစိတ္ေပါင္း ၁၃၀ ေက်ာ္ ဤေတာင္ေပၚတြင္ အေျခခ် ေနထိုင္ခဲ့ၾကဖူး သည္။
တခ်ိန္တခါက ပုပၸါးေတာင္၏ ေတာင္ေစာင္းမ်ားတြင္ ရစ္ေခြစီးဆင္းေနခဲ့ေသာ ေရထြက္စမ္းေပါင္း ၃၆ စင္းရွိခဲ့ၿပီး၊ ယေန႔ ကာလတြင္ အမ်ားစုမွာ ခမ္းေျခာက္ကုန္ကာ ၂ စင္းသာ က်န္ရွိေတာ့သည္။
ဤကဲ့သို႔ ပံုစံမ်ဳိးသာ ဆက္ျဖစ္မည္ဆိုပါက တစျပင္ျဖစ္ေနေသာ ပုပၸါးေတာင္တြင္ နတ္မင္းမ်ားသာ မင္းမူက်န္ရစ္ေနရဖြယ္ ရွိပါေတာ့သည္။
ဂ်ပန္ အိုင္တီ ကုမၸဏီ ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံမည္
ဧရာဝတီ | မတ္ ၃၁ ၊ ၂၀၀၈
ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္ ဂ်ပန္ နာမည္ၾကီး ဒုိင္အာခ်ီ ( DAIICHI COMPUTER RESOURCE CO.,LTD ) အိုင္တီကြန္ပ်ဴတာ ကုမၸဏီၾကီးက အေမရိကန္ေဒၚလာ သုံးသန္းေက်ာ္ ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ရန္ကုန္ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာလုပ္ငန္းရွင္ အသိုင္းအဝန္းႏွင့္ စီးပြားေရးႏွင့္ ကူးသန္းေရာင္း၀ယ္ေရး ၀န္ၾကီးဌာနတို႔မွ စုံစမ္းသိရွိရသည္။
ကြန္ပ်ဴတာဟတ္၀ဲ(Hardware) အစိတ္အပိုင္းမ်ားထုတ္လုပ္သည့္စက္ရုံ တည္ေထာင္ျခင္း၊ ေဆာ့ဖ္၀ဲ( Software ) ဆိုင္ရာသင္တန္းေက်ာင္းမ်ား တည္ေထာင္ျခင္း ၊ စီးပြားေရးလုပ္ငန္းမ်ားႏွင့္ စက္မႈလက္မႈလုပ္ငန္းမ်ား အတြက္ ေဆာ့ဖ္၀ဲမ်ားတီထြင္ေရးဆြဲျပီး အာရွေဒသတြင္းေစ်းကြက္မ်ားသို႔တင္ပို႔ေရာင္းခ်ျခင္းႏွင့္ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာ အိုင္တီနည္း ပညာႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္ေသာလုပ္ငန္းမ်ား အၾကီးအက်ယ္လုပ္ကိုင္မည့္အဆုိပါကုမၸဏီမွာ အေရွ႕ေတာင္အာရွေဒသ ေစ်းကြက္ခ်ဲ႕ထြင္သည့္အေနျဖင့္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္လာေရာက္ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ရန္ကုန္ကြန္ပ်ဴတာ လုပ္ငန္းရွင္ အသိုင္းအ၀ုိင္းက ္ေျပာဆိုသည္။
“ဒီလို ဂ်ပန္နာမည္ၾကီးကုမၸဏီတခုက ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံမွာလာျပီးရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံတာ ဆိုေတာ့ ျမန္မာ့အိုင္တီ ေလာက အတြက္ေတာ့ဖြံ႕ျဖိဳးတိုးတက္မယ့္ အလားအလာ ေကာင္းေတြရွိလာျပီလို႔ ေျပာရမွာပဲ” ဟု မႏၲေလး ကြန္ပ်ဴတာ လုပ္ငန္းရွင္တဦးက ေျပာသည္။
အဆိုပါ ဂ်ပန္ကုမၸဏီက ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာအစိတ္အပိုင္းမ်ားထုတ္လုပ္သည့္ စက္ရုံၾကီးတခု ရန္ကုန္ျမိဳ႕ တြင္ တည္ေဆာက္ရန္ အေသးစိတ္ေလ့လာမႈမ်ားျပဳလုုပ္ေနေၾကာင္းလည္း သိရသည္။
“ဒီမွာက အလုပ္သမားခ ေစ်းေပါတယ္၊ ေျမယာငွားရမ္းခကလည္း တျခားႏုိင္ငံေတြနဲ႔ယွဥ္ရင္ ေစ်းနည္းတယ္၊ ျပီးေတာ့ ျမန္မာေတြက သင္ေပးရင္သင္ေပးသေလာက္ လုပ္ႏုိင္တယ္၊ အစိုးရကလည္း ႏုိင္ငံျခားရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံ မႈ ေတြလာဖို႔ ဥပေဒ စည္းမ်ဥ္းေတြ အရမ္းေလွ်ာ့ခ်ေပးေနေတာ့ ႏုိင္ငံေရးကို မၾကည့္ဘဲ စီးပြားျဖစ္ဖို႔ အျမတ္ရဖို႔ စဥ္းစားတဲ့ ႏုိင္ငံျခားကုမၸဏီေတြအတြက္ လက္မလႊတ္သင့္တဲ့ ႏုိင္ငံတခုပါပဲ”ဟု စီးပြားေရးႏွင့္ကူးသန္းေရာင္း ၀ယ္ေရး၀န္ၾကီးဌာန အရာရွိတဦးက ဆိုသည္။
ထုိ႔ျပင္ အဆိုပါကုမၸဏီက ျမန္မာအုိင္တီေဆာ့ဖ္၀ဲပညာရွင္မ်ားကို ေလ့က်င့္သင္ၾကားေပးျပီး ဂ်ပန္ရွိ အုိင္တီ ႏွင့္ေဆာ့ဖ္၀ဲကုမဏီမ်ားထံသို႔ေစလႊတ္မည့္ အစီအစဥ္မ်ားရွိျခင္းေၾကာင့္ ျမန္မာလူငယ္ကြန္ပ်ဴတာပညာရွင္မ်ားက အထူးစိတ္၀င္စားေနၾကေၾကာင္း ေကအမ္ဒီ ( KMD ) ကုမၸဏီမွ ေဆာ့ဖ္၀ဲ ပညာရွင္ လူငယ္တဦးက ေျပာသည္။
“က်ေနာ္ ဂ်ပန္စာကို ေလ့လာေနတယ္၊ အဲဒီကုမၸဏီက အလုပ္ေခၚရင္ အဆင္သင့္ျဖစ္ေနေအာင္လုိ႔ပါ၊ တျခား ေဆာ့ဖ္၀ဲပညာရွင္ေတြလည္း အဲဒီကုမၸဏီသတင္းကို ၾကားကတည္းက ဂ်ပန္စာ သင္ေနၾကတယ္၊ ဂ်ပန္မွာ ေဆာ့ဖ္၀ဲပညာရွင္အျဖစ္အလုပ္လုပ္ႏုိင္ဖို႔ဆိုတာ က်ေနာ္ အရမ္းေမွ်ာ္လင့္ေနတဲ့ အိမ္မက္ၾကီးတခုပဲ” ဟု အဆိုပါလူငယ္က ေျပာသည္။
သို႔ရာတြင္ ရန္ကုန္ရွိ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာလုပ္ငန္းရွင္တဦးကမူ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္လာေရာက္ ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံသည့္ ဂ်ပန္ ကုမၸဏီ အေနျဖင့္ မၾကာမီရင္းႏွီျမႇဳပ္ႏွွံမႈမ်ားျပန္လည္းရုပ္သိမ္းသြားမည္ ဟုထင္ေၾကာင္း ၊ အိုင္တီကြန္ပ်ဳတာ ကုမၸဏီမ်ားအတြက္ အင္တာနက္အြန္လိုင္းျမန္ဆန္မႈမွာ လြန္စြာအေရးၾကီးေၾကာင္း၊ စစ္အစိုးရအုပ္ခ်ဴပ္ေသာ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္ အင္တာနက္ျမန္ႏႈန္းမ်ားကိုထိန္းခ်ဴပ္ ေႏွးေကြးထားျပီး ရက္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာၾကာသည့္တိုင္ ျဖတ္ ေတာက္မႈမ်ားရွိသည့္အတြက္ ဂ်ပန္ကုမၸဏီအေနျဖင့္ ေရရွည္အလုပ္လုပ္ႏုိင္ရန္မလြယ္ေၾကာင္း၊ လက္ရွိျပည္တြင္း ျမန္မာကုမၸဏီမ်ားပင္ အင္တာနက္ျမန္ႏႈန္းေႏွးေကြးျခင္းႏွင့္ ျဖတ္ေတာက္ျခင္းတို႔ေၾကာင့္ လုပ္ငန္းရပ္ဆိုင္းမႈမ်ား ရွိေနေၾကာင္း သုံးသပ္ေျပာဆိုသည္။
“အစိုးရက စိတ္မထင္ရင္မထင္သလို အင္တာနက္ေႏွးလုိက္၊ ျဖတ္လိုက္လုပ္ေနတာ ဒီအင္တာနက္အေျခခံတဲ့ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာကုမၸဏီေတြအတြက္ အရမ္းဒုကၡေရာက္တယ္၊၂၀၀၇ စက္တင္ဘာ တုန္းကဆိုရင္ အင္တာနက္ ေတြ ျဖတ္ထားေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တို႔လုပ္ငန္းေတြအားလုံး ရပ္ပစ္လုိက္ရတယ္၊ ရက္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာၾကာေအာင္ လုပ္ငန္းရပ္ လုိက္ရေတာ့ က်ေနာ္ကုမၸဏီဆိုရင္ အပ္ထားတဲ့အလုပ္ေတြမျပီးလို႔ က်ပ္ သိန္းတရာေက်ာ္ေလာက္ ရႈံးတယ္၊ အခုလည္း အင္တာနက္က ေႏွးေနတုန္းပဲ” ဟုအဆိုပါ လုပ္ငန္းရွင္ကဆိုသည္။
အဆိုပါ ဒုိင္အာခ်ီ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာကုမၸဏီသည္ ၁၉၆၉ ခု ႏွစ္ ဒီဇင္ဘာအတြင္းက စတင္တည္ေထာင္ခဲ့ၿပီး ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံ နာဂုိယာၿမိဳ႕အေျခစိုက္ျဖစ္သည္။
ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္ ႏုိင္ငံျခားရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံမႈမ်ားမျပဳလုပ္ႏုိင္ရန္ အီးယူဥေရာပသမဂၢအဖြဲ႕ႏွင့္ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္ စုက ျပင္းထန္ေသာ စီးပြားေရးပိတ္ဆို႔မႈမ်ားျပဳလုပ္ထားေသာ္လည္း ဂ်ပန္စီးပြားေရးကုမၸဏီအမ်ားစုမွာ လုပ္အား ခသက္သာျပီး ေျမယာအရင္းအႏွီးေစ်းေပါသည့္အတြက္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံမႈမ်ားျပဳလုပ္ရန္ ေလ့လာ ေနေၾကာင္း ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံဆိုင္ရာ ဂ်ပန္ကုန္သြယ္ေရးအဖြဲ႕( Japan External Trade Organization ) မန္ေနးဂ်င္း ဒါရုိက္ တာ မစၥတာအီတာရုိ ကိုဂ်ီးမား ( Mr.Eitaro Kojima) က ေျပာၾကားေၾကာင္း ျပည္တြင္းအပတ္စဥ္ထုတ္သတင္း ဂ်ာနယ္မ်ားတြင္ ေဖာ္ျပသည္။
အထူးသျဖင့္ျမန္မာႏုိင္သုိ႔ တရုတ္ႏုိင္ငံမွ ဂ်ပန္အထည္ခ်ဴပ္စက္ရုံမ်ား ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕လုပ္ကိုင္ရန္ အစီအစဥ္မ်ားရွိ သည္ဟု မစၥတာ ကုိဂ်ီးမားက ေျပာဆိုေၾကာင္း သတင္းဂ်ာနယ္မ်ားက ဆိုသည္။
ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္ ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံေနသည့္ ဂ်ပန္စီးပြားေရးကုမၸဏီစုစုေပါင္း ေျခာက္ဆယ္ရွိေၾကာင္း ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံကုန္ သည္ၾကီးမ်ားအသင္းမွ အမႈေဆာင္တဦးက ေျပာသည္။
၂၀၀၇ ခုႏွစ္သံဃာေတာ္မ်ား ဦးေဆာင္ေသာ စက္တင္ဘာလူထုလႈပ္ရွားမႈမ်ားကို သတင္းရယူခဲ့ေသာ ဂ်ပန္ႏုိင္ငံ သား ဓာတ္ပုံသတင္းေထာက္ မစၥတာ နာဂါအိကန္ဂ်ိ စစ္အစိုးရ၏အၾကမ္းဖက္ပစ္ခတ္မႈေၾကာင့္ ေသဆုံးသြားခဲ့ရ သည့္အတြက္ ဂ်ပန္အစိုးရကျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရသို႔ေပးမည့္ အေမရိကန္ေဒၚလာ ၄ . ၇ သန္းတန္ အကူအညီတခု ကိုသာ ရပ္ဆိုင္းခဲ့သည္မွအပ တစုံတရာအေရးယူေဆာင္ရြက္ခဲ့ျခင္းမရွိေပ။
ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္ ဂ်ပန္ နာမည္ၾကီး ဒုိင္အာခ်ီ ( DAIICHI COMPUTER RESOURCE CO.,LTD ) အိုင္တီကြန္ပ်ဴတာ ကုမၸဏီၾကီးက အေမရိကန္ေဒၚလာ သုံးသန္းေက်ာ္ ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ရန္ကုန္ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာလုပ္ငန္းရွင္ အသိုင္းအဝန္းႏွင့္ စီးပြားေရးႏွင့္ ကူးသန္းေရာင္း၀ယ္ေရး ၀န္ၾကီးဌာနတို႔မွ စုံစမ္းသိရွိရသည္။
ကြန္ပ်ဴတာဟတ္၀ဲ(Hardware) အစိတ္အပိုင္းမ်ားထုတ္လုပ္သည့္စက္ရုံ တည္ေထာင္ျခင္း၊ ေဆာ့ဖ္၀ဲ( Software ) ဆိုင္ရာသင္တန္းေက်ာင္းမ်ား တည္ေထာင္ျခင္း ၊ စီးပြားေရးလုပ္ငန္းမ်ားႏွင့္ စက္မႈလက္မႈလုပ္ငန္းမ်ား အတြက္ ေဆာ့ဖ္၀ဲမ်ားတီထြင္ေရးဆြဲျပီး အာရွေဒသတြင္းေစ်းကြက္မ်ားသို႔တင္ပို႔ေရာင္းခ်ျခင္းႏွင့္ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာ အိုင္တီနည္း ပညာႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္ေသာလုပ္ငန္းမ်ား အၾကီးအက်ယ္လုပ္ကိုင္မည့္အဆုိပါကုမၸဏီမွာ အေရွ႕ေတာင္အာရွေဒသ ေစ်းကြက္ခ်ဲ႕ထြင္သည့္အေနျဖင့္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္လာေရာက္ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ရန္ကုန္ကြန္ပ်ဴတာ လုပ္ငန္းရွင္ အသိုင္းအ၀ုိင္းက ္ေျပာဆိုသည္။
“ဒီလို ဂ်ပန္နာမည္ၾကီးကုမၸဏီတခုက ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံမွာလာျပီးရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံတာ ဆိုေတာ့ ျမန္မာ့အိုင္တီ ေလာက အတြက္ေတာ့ဖြံ႕ျဖိဳးတိုးတက္မယ့္ အလားအလာ ေကာင္းေတြရွိလာျပီလို႔ ေျပာရမွာပဲ” ဟု မႏၲေလး ကြန္ပ်ဴတာ လုပ္ငန္းရွင္တဦးက ေျပာသည္။
အဆိုပါ ဂ်ပန္ကုမၸဏီက ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာအစိတ္အပိုင္းမ်ားထုတ္လုပ္သည့္ စက္ရုံၾကီးတခု ရန္ကုန္ျမိဳ႕ တြင္ တည္ေဆာက္ရန္ အေသးစိတ္ေလ့လာမႈမ်ားျပဳလုုပ္ေနေၾကာင္းလည္း သိရသည္။
“ဒီမွာက အလုပ္သမားခ ေစ်းေပါတယ္၊ ေျမယာငွားရမ္းခကလည္း တျခားႏုိင္ငံေတြနဲ႔ယွဥ္ရင္ ေစ်းနည္းတယ္၊ ျပီးေတာ့ ျမန္မာေတြက သင္ေပးရင္သင္ေပးသေလာက္ လုပ္ႏုိင္တယ္၊ အစိုးရကလည္း ႏုိင္ငံျခားရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံ မႈ ေတြလာဖို႔ ဥပေဒ စည္းမ်ဥ္းေတြ အရမ္းေလွ်ာ့ခ်ေပးေနေတာ့ ႏုိင္ငံေရးကို မၾကည့္ဘဲ စီးပြားျဖစ္ဖို႔ အျမတ္ရဖို႔ စဥ္းစားတဲ့ ႏုိင္ငံျခားကုမၸဏီေတြအတြက္ လက္မလႊတ္သင့္တဲ့ ႏုိင္ငံတခုပါပဲ”ဟု စီးပြားေရးႏွင့္ကူးသန္းေရာင္း ၀ယ္ေရး၀န္ၾကီးဌာန အရာရွိတဦးက ဆိုသည္။
ထုိ႔ျပင္ အဆိုပါကုမၸဏီက ျမန္မာအုိင္တီေဆာ့ဖ္၀ဲပညာရွင္မ်ားကို ေလ့က်င့္သင္ၾကားေပးျပီး ဂ်ပန္ရွိ အုိင္တီ ႏွင့္ေဆာ့ဖ္၀ဲကုမဏီမ်ားထံသို႔ေစလႊတ္မည့္ အစီအစဥ္မ်ားရွိျခင္းေၾကာင့္ ျမန္မာလူငယ္ကြန္ပ်ဴတာပညာရွင္မ်ားက အထူးစိတ္၀င္စားေနၾကေၾကာင္း ေကအမ္ဒီ ( KMD ) ကုမၸဏီမွ ေဆာ့ဖ္၀ဲ ပညာရွင္ လူငယ္တဦးက ေျပာသည္။
“က်ေနာ္ ဂ်ပန္စာကို ေလ့လာေနတယ္၊ အဲဒီကုမၸဏီက အလုပ္ေခၚရင္ အဆင္သင့္ျဖစ္ေနေအာင္လုိ႔ပါ၊ တျခား ေဆာ့ဖ္၀ဲပညာရွင္ေတြလည္း အဲဒီကုမၸဏီသတင္းကို ၾကားကတည္းက ဂ်ပန္စာ သင္ေနၾကတယ္၊ ဂ်ပန္မွာ ေဆာ့ဖ္၀ဲပညာရွင္အျဖစ္အလုပ္လုပ္ႏုိင္ဖို႔ဆိုတာ က်ေနာ္ အရမ္းေမွ်ာ္လင့္ေနတဲ့ အိမ္မက္ၾကီးတခုပဲ” ဟု အဆိုပါလူငယ္က ေျပာသည္။
သို႔ရာတြင္ ရန္ကုန္ရွိ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာလုပ္ငန္းရွင္တဦးကမူ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္လာေရာက္ ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံသည့္ ဂ်ပန္ ကုမၸဏီ အေနျဖင့္ မၾကာမီရင္းႏွီျမႇဳပ္ႏွွံမႈမ်ားျပန္လည္းရုပ္သိမ္းသြားမည္ ဟုထင္ေၾကာင္း ၊ အိုင္တီကြန္ပ်ဳတာ ကုမၸဏီမ်ားအတြက္ အင္တာနက္အြန္လိုင္းျမန္ဆန္မႈမွာ လြန္စြာအေရးၾကီးေၾကာင္း၊ စစ္အစိုးရအုပ္ခ်ဴပ္ေသာ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္ အင္တာနက္ျမန္ႏႈန္းမ်ားကိုထိန္းခ်ဴပ္ ေႏွးေကြးထားျပီး ရက္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာၾကာသည့္တိုင္ ျဖတ္ ေတာက္မႈမ်ားရွိသည့္အတြက္ ဂ်ပန္ကုမၸဏီအေနျဖင့္ ေရရွည္အလုပ္လုပ္ႏုိင္ရန္မလြယ္ေၾကာင္း၊ လက္ရွိျပည္တြင္း ျမန္မာကုမၸဏီမ်ားပင္ အင္တာနက္ျမန္ႏႈန္းေႏွးေကြးျခင္းႏွင့္ ျဖတ္ေတာက္ျခင္းတို႔ေၾကာင့္ လုပ္ငန္းရပ္ဆိုင္းမႈမ်ား ရွိေနေၾကာင္း သုံးသပ္ေျပာဆိုသည္။
“အစိုးရက စိတ္မထင္ရင္မထင္သလို အင္တာနက္ေႏွးလုိက္၊ ျဖတ္လိုက္လုပ္ေနတာ ဒီအင္တာနက္အေျခခံတဲ့ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာကုမၸဏီေတြအတြက္ အရမ္းဒုကၡေရာက္တယ္၊၂၀၀၇ စက္တင္ဘာ တုန္းကဆိုရင္ အင္တာနက္ ေတြ ျဖတ္ထားေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တို႔လုပ္ငန္းေတြအားလုံး ရပ္ပစ္လုိက္ရတယ္၊ ရက္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာၾကာေအာင္ လုပ္ငန္းရပ္ လုိက္ရေတာ့ က်ေနာ္ကုမၸဏီဆိုရင္ အပ္ထားတဲ့အလုပ္ေတြမျပီးလို႔ က်ပ္ သိန္းတရာေက်ာ္ေလာက္ ရႈံးတယ္၊ အခုလည္း အင္တာနက္က ေႏွးေနတုန္းပဲ” ဟုအဆိုပါ လုပ္ငန္းရွင္ကဆိုသည္။
အဆိုပါ ဒုိင္အာခ်ီ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာကုမၸဏီသည္ ၁၉၆၉ ခု ႏွစ္ ဒီဇင္ဘာအတြင္းက စတင္တည္ေထာင္ခဲ့ၿပီး ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံ နာဂုိယာၿမိဳ႕အေျခစိုက္ျဖစ္သည္။
ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္ ႏုိင္ငံျခားရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံမႈမ်ားမျပဳလုပ္ႏုိင္ရန္ အီးယူဥေရာပသမဂၢအဖြဲ႕ႏွင့္ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္ စုက ျပင္းထန္ေသာ စီးပြားေရးပိတ္ဆို႔မႈမ်ားျပဳလုပ္ထားေသာ္လည္း ဂ်ပန္စီးပြားေရးကုမၸဏီအမ်ားစုမွာ လုပ္အား ခသက္သာျပီး ေျမယာအရင္းအႏွီးေစ်းေပါသည့္အတြက္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံမႈမ်ားျပဳလုပ္ရန္ ေလ့လာ ေနေၾကာင္း ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံဆိုင္ရာ ဂ်ပန္ကုန္သြယ္ေရးအဖြဲ႕( Japan External Trade Organization ) မန္ေနးဂ်င္း ဒါရုိက္ တာ မစၥတာအီတာရုိ ကိုဂ်ီးမား ( Mr.Eitaro Kojima) က ေျပာၾကားေၾကာင္း ျပည္တြင္းအပတ္စဥ္ထုတ္သတင္း ဂ်ာနယ္မ်ားတြင္ ေဖာ္ျပသည္။
အထူးသျဖင့္ျမန္မာႏုိင္သုိ႔ တရုတ္ႏုိင္ငံမွ ဂ်ပန္အထည္ခ်ဴပ္စက္ရုံမ်ား ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕လုပ္ကိုင္ရန္ အစီအစဥ္မ်ားရွိ သည္ဟု မစၥတာ ကုိဂ်ီးမားက ေျပာဆိုေၾကာင္း သတင္းဂ်ာနယ္မ်ားက ဆိုသည္။
ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္ ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံေနသည့္ ဂ်ပန္စီးပြားေရးကုမၸဏီစုစုေပါင္း ေျခာက္ဆယ္ရွိေၾကာင္း ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံကုန္ သည္ၾကီးမ်ားအသင္းမွ အမႈေဆာင္တဦးက ေျပာသည္။
၂၀၀၇ ခုႏွစ္သံဃာေတာ္မ်ား ဦးေဆာင္ေသာ စက္တင္ဘာလူထုလႈပ္ရွားမႈမ်ားကို သတင္းရယူခဲ့ေသာ ဂ်ပန္ႏုိင္ငံ သား ဓာတ္ပုံသတင္းေထာက္ မစၥတာ နာဂါအိကန္ဂ်ိ စစ္အစိုးရ၏အၾကမ္းဖက္ပစ္ခတ္မႈေၾကာင့္ ေသဆုံးသြားခဲ့ရ သည့္အတြက္ ဂ်ပန္အစိုးရကျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရသို႔ေပးမည့္ အေမရိကန္ေဒၚလာ ၄ . ၇ သန္းတန္ အကူအညီတခု ကိုသာ ရပ္ဆိုင္းခဲ့သည္မွအပ တစုံတရာအေရးယူေဆာင္ရြက္ခဲ့ျခင္းမရွိေပ။
India, Myanmar to deepen energy, communication ties during junta leaders
31 (KUNA) -- India and Myanmar are expected to sign an agreement on Kaladan Multi-Modal Transport Project and strengthen energy ties when the military juntas second most important man Vice Senior General Maung Aye pays a visit to Delhi later this week. During his visit, Gen Aye would hold discussions with the Indian leadership on economic cooperation and border trade, connectivity, security and energy issues, a source in the Indian External Affairs Ministry told KUNA here Monday.
Kaladan Multi-Modal Transport Project is estimated to cost 100 million usd. It will connect India to Southeast Asia and provide an alternative route for transport of goods to the country's Northeast. It is meant to link Sittwe port in Myanmar via Paletwa to Mizoram, a state in Northeast India by road and inland water. The project is expected to be completed by 2010.
"Kaladan project has been the centre-piece of the diplomatic and strategic edifice that India is building with Myanmar over the past few years," the source pointed out.
The Project will provide an alternative route to Indias Northeastern states from mainland, bypassing Bangladesh which is yet to grant transit rights to India. Following six rounds of talks since 2003, India and Myanmar have agreed on the Draft Framework Agreement on the Project, Draft Protocol on Facilitation of Transit Transport, Draft Protocol on Financial Arrangements and Draft Protocol on Joint Maintenance and Administration, the source informed. According to the Protocol on Financial Arrangements, Myanmar would contribute ten million usd and free land for the project while India will provide the balance amount and extra if any, the source said. Earlier this month, India and Myanmar held their 14th round of annual Home Secretary level talks here to discuss various institutional mechanisms to strengthen security cooperation. At the four-day meeting, various issues of mutual concern including cross-border terrorism, smuggling of arms and narcotic drugs, effective border management, border trade and cross-border projects were discussed. "Myanmar is a close and friendly neighbour, with whom India shares a border of more than 1,600 km. We hope that Myanmars on-going national reconciliation and political reform process and the recognition of the need to expedite the process will make it more inclusive so as to ensure peaceful and stable democratisation. India is extending all help to the UN in this regard as well, " the source pointed out. India's Myanmar policy is based on four factors -- the increasing engagement between China and Myanmar particularly in the field of defence, the presence of Indian insurgent groups there, abundance of hydrocarbons in Myanmar and the country being India's gateway to Southeast Asia. Number of insurgent groups from India's Northeast operate from hideouts in Eastern Myanmar and India has been working with the Myanmarese junta to combat these rebels. (end) dr.bz.
Kaladan Multi-Modal Transport Project is estimated to cost 100 million usd. It will connect India to Southeast Asia and provide an alternative route for transport of goods to the country's Northeast. It is meant to link Sittwe port in Myanmar via Paletwa to Mizoram, a state in Northeast India by road and inland water. The project is expected to be completed by 2010.
"Kaladan project has been the centre-piece of the diplomatic and strategic edifice that India is building with Myanmar over the past few years," the source pointed out.
The Project will provide an alternative route to Indias Northeastern states from mainland, bypassing Bangladesh which is yet to grant transit rights to India. Following six rounds of talks since 2003, India and Myanmar have agreed on the Draft Framework Agreement on the Project, Draft Protocol on Facilitation of Transit Transport, Draft Protocol on Financial Arrangements and Draft Protocol on Joint Maintenance and Administration, the source informed. According to the Protocol on Financial Arrangements, Myanmar would contribute ten million usd and free land for the project while India will provide the balance amount and extra if any, the source said. Earlier this month, India and Myanmar held their 14th round of annual Home Secretary level talks here to discuss various institutional mechanisms to strengthen security cooperation. At the four-day meeting, various issues of mutual concern including cross-border terrorism, smuggling of arms and narcotic drugs, effective border management, border trade and cross-border projects were discussed. "Myanmar is a close and friendly neighbour, with whom India shares a border of more than 1,600 km. We hope that Myanmars on-going national reconciliation and political reform process and the recognition of the need to expedite the process will make it more inclusive so as to ensure peaceful and stable democratisation. India is extending all help to the UN in this regard as well, " the source pointed out. India's Myanmar policy is based on four factors -- the increasing engagement between China and Myanmar particularly in the field of defence, the presence of Indian insurgent groups there, abundance of hydrocarbons in Myanmar and the country being India's gateway to Southeast Asia. Number of insurgent groups from India's Northeast operate from hideouts in Eastern Myanmar and India has been working with the Myanmarese junta to combat these rebels. (end) dr.bz.
Thai anti-graft body wants ex-Prime Minister Thaksin prosecuted for loan to Myanmar
The Associated Press
A Thai anti-graft body set up to investigate ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra announced Monday it will seek to prosecute the ousted leader in connection with a government loan to Myanmar for communications satellite services.
The Assets Examination Committee, established after Thaksin was deposed by a September 2006 military coup, said it determined the 2004 loan by the state-controlled Export-Import Bank of Thailand was meant to benefit Shin Satellite company, which was owned by Thaksin's family.
Thaksin was prime minister at the time the loan — on terms more favorable to the borrower than available commercially — was approved.
The case is the fourth against Thaksin forwarded to state prosecutors, though none has yet come to trial. Thaksin has said he is innocent of any wrongdoing.
The committee's charges against Thaksin in the Myanmar loan case cover both conflict of interest and abuse of his official powers, said committee spokesman Sak Korsaengruang.
He said the committee will forward the case to the attorney general for review, and make formal charges in court within 14 days.
Sak said if Thaksin is found guilty, he could face up to 10 years in jail.
The committee said Thaksin used his power as prime minister to instruct the state Export-Import Bank to extend the 4 billion baht (US$127 million; €80 million) loan.
The 12-year loan provides a credit line for government construction and telecommunications projects that use Thai suppliers. It allows a five-year deferral on repayment of principal, with a 3 percent annual interest rate.
The loan was suspended after the coup, but the Thai government of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, a Thaksin ally, decided this month to release the remainder of the funds.
The committee found that Thaksin promised Myanmar's military leaders the loan during "unofficial" negotiations, and increased the total and reduced the interest rate without Cabinet approval.
The committee said it believed the loan was to the bank's disadvantage.
The loan came through about a week after Shin Satellite, a subsidiary of Shin Corp. — then owned by Thaksin's family — won the right to establish a broadband project in Myanmar.
Thaksin's main lawyer, Pichit Chuenban, said he could not comment on the charges since his client had not yet assigned him the case
A Thai anti-graft body set up to investigate ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra announced Monday it will seek to prosecute the ousted leader in connection with a government loan to Myanmar for communications satellite services.
The Assets Examination Committee, established after Thaksin was deposed by a September 2006 military coup, said it determined the 2004 loan by the state-controlled Export-Import Bank of Thailand was meant to benefit Shin Satellite company, which was owned by Thaksin's family.
Thaksin was prime minister at the time the loan — on terms more favorable to the borrower than available commercially — was approved.
The case is the fourth against Thaksin forwarded to state prosecutors, though none has yet come to trial. Thaksin has said he is innocent of any wrongdoing.
The committee's charges against Thaksin in the Myanmar loan case cover both conflict of interest and abuse of his official powers, said committee spokesman Sak Korsaengruang.
He said the committee will forward the case to the attorney general for review, and make formal charges in court within 14 days.
Sak said if Thaksin is found guilty, he could face up to 10 years in jail.
The committee said Thaksin used his power as prime minister to instruct the state Export-Import Bank to extend the 4 billion baht (US$127 million; €80 million) loan.
The 12-year loan provides a credit line for government construction and telecommunications projects that use Thai suppliers. It allows a five-year deferral on repayment of principal, with a 3 percent annual interest rate.
The loan was suspended after the coup, but the Thai government of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, a Thaksin ally, decided this month to release the remainder of the funds.
The committee found that Thaksin promised Myanmar's military leaders the loan during "unofficial" negotiations, and increased the total and reduced the interest rate without Cabinet approval.
The committee said it believed the loan was to the bank's disadvantage.
The loan came through about a week after Shin Satellite, a subsidiary of Shin Corp. — then owned by Thaksin's family — won the right to establish a broadband project in Myanmar.
Thaksin's main lawyer, Pichit Chuenban, said he could not comment on the charges since his client had not yet assigned him the case
Proposed Myanmar charter bars Suu Kyi from office
By Aung Hla Tun
YANGON (Reuters) - Detained Nobel laureate and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will not be allowed to stand for election in army-ruled Myanmar because she was once married to a foreigner, its proposed new constitution says.
A copy of the charter obtained by Reuters on Monday confirmed that a "person who is entitled to rights and privileges of a foreign government, or a citizen of a foreign country" cannot run for office.
Suu Kyi, 62, was married to British academic Michael Aris from 1972 until his death in 1999, and as such was entitled to hold a British passport.
However, rather than being an invention of the former Burma's military junta to keep their nemesis at bay, the clause has simply been copied across from Myanmar's two previous constitutions of 1947 and 1974, experts said.
The proposed charter, a key step in the generals seven-point "roadmap to democracy", goes to a referendum some time in May and has left opponents of the junta in a quandary, unsure whether to vote "Yes" or "No".
Integral to the "discipline-flourishing democracy" advocated by the generals is a proviso that 25 percent of seats in parliament are reserved for the military.
The commander-in-chief of the armed forces will also be the most powerful person in the country, with the right to suspend the constitution at will.
However, the charter also enshrines many rights that have been absent for nearly the last two decades.
Under the proposed charter, the southeast Asian nation's 53 million people will be allowed to form political parties and unions and freedom of the press and religion will be protected.
Myanmar's myriad ethnic groups, many of whom have waged years of guerrilla war since independence from Britain in 1948, will also be accorded the specific right to promote their own languages and cultures.
While some people are refusing to approve any constitution spawned by a reviled military regime, others say it is better to have a bad constitution than none at all.
"We can't expect it perfect at the initial state and we should not delay till it is perfect," one lawyer who asked not to be identified said. "There will be freedom of expression, press, association, procession and so on that we haven't got now."
Information Minister Kyaw Hsan said last week the charter would be open to incremental change after multi-party elections slated for 2010.
YANGON (Reuters) - Detained Nobel laureate and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will not be allowed to stand for election in army-ruled Myanmar because she was once married to a foreigner, its proposed new constitution says.
A copy of the charter obtained by Reuters on Monday confirmed that a "person who is entitled to rights and privileges of a foreign government, or a citizen of a foreign country" cannot run for office.
Suu Kyi, 62, was married to British academic Michael Aris from 1972 until his death in 1999, and as such was entitled to hold a British passport.
However, rather than being an invention of the former Burma's military junta to keep their nemesis at bay, the clause has simply been copied across from Myanmar's two previous constitutions of 1947 and 1974, experts said.
The proposed charter, a key step in the generals seven-point "roadmap to democracy", goes to a referendum some time in May and has left opponents of the junta in a quandary, unsure whether to vote "Yes" or "No".
Integral to the "discipline-flourishing democracy" advocated by the generals is a proviso that 25 percent of seats in parliament are reserved for the military.
The commander-in-chief of the armed forces will also be the most powerful person in the country, with the right to suspend the constitution at will.
However, the charter also enshrines many rights that have been absent for nearly the last two decades.
Under the proposed charter, the southeast Asian nation's 53 million people will be allowed to form political parties and unions and freedom of the press and religion will be protected.
Myanmar's myriad ethnic groups, many of whom have waged years of guerrilla war since independence from Britain in 1948, will also be accorded the specific right to promote their own languages and cultures.
While some people are refusing to approve any constitution spawned by a reviled military regime, others say it is better to have a bad constitution than none at all.
"We can't expect it perfect at the initial state and we should not delay till it is perfect," one lawyer who asked not to be identified said. "There will be freedom of expression, press, association, procession and so on that we haven't got now."
Information Minister Kyaw Hsan said last week the charter would be open to incremental change after multi-party elections slated for 2010.
ဘဂၤလာေဒ့ခ်္ႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ခရီးရွည္ခ်ီတက္သူမ်ား ခရီးတ၀က္ ေရာက္ရွိလာျပီ
Narinjara News
ေမာင္ေအး(နိရဥၥရာ) ဘဂၤလာေဒ့ခ်္ႏိုင္ငံတြင္ စစ္အစိုးရမွၾကီးမႈး က်င္းပမည့္ လူထု ဆႏၵခံယူပြဲကို ဆန္႕က်င္ ကန္႕ ကြက္သည့္ အေနျဖင့္ ခရီးရွည္ခ်ီတက္လမ္းေရွာက္ ဆႏၵျပသူမ်ား ယခုအခါ ကီလိုမီတာ ၁၅၀ ကို ေက်ာ္လြန္လာျပီ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။
“ဦးဇင္းတို႕ စထြက္တဲ့ေန႕မွာ ရဟန္းေတာ္ ၆-ပါး လူ၇-ေယာက္ စုစုေပါင္း တဆယ့္သံုး ေယာက္ျဖစ္တယ္။ မေန႕ကတေယာက္ ထပ္တိုးလာေတာ့ အခုတဆယ့္ ေလးေယာက္ျဖစ္ လာျပီ ေနာက္ထပ္လည္း စစ္တေကာင္းျမိဳ႕ကိုေရာက္ရင္ ေနာက္ထပ္ တိုးလာမဲ့ အေျခအေန ရွိပါတယ္။ ေဒသခံေတြကလည္း ေရာက္တဲ့ ေနရာမွာ အဆင္ေျပသလို အားေပး ၾကပါတယ္။”ဟု ခရီးေလွ်ာက္ရာတြင္ ပါ၀င္သည့္ သံဃာ့ဦးေသွ်ာင္အဖြဲ႕မွ ဆရာေတာ္ သီလ၀ံသမွ ေျပာသည္။
အဆိုပါ လမ္းေလွ်ာက္အဖြဲ႕မွာ မိုင္ႏွစ္ရာေက်ာ္ခရီးကို ေလွ်ာက္ေနၾကျခင္းျဖစ္ကာ ယခုအခါ ၁၄၇-ကီလိုမီတာကို ေက်ာ္လြန္လာျပီး ယေန႕“ဖဲနီâ€ျမစ္ကို ေက်ာ္ျဖတ္ႏိုင္မည္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။
လမ္းေလွ်ာက္သည့္ အဖြဲ႕မွာ ေဒသခံျပည္သူမ်ားႏွင့္ တျခားလူပုဂၢိဳလ္မ်ားအပါအ၀င္ အဖြဲ႕စည္း အသီးသီးမွ အားေပးေထာက္ခံမႈကို ရရွိေနေသာ္လည္း ယခုအခါ လမ္းခရီးတြင္ စားေသာက္ ေရးအတြက္ ေငြေၾကးမလံုေလာက္မႈႏွင့္ ရင္ဆို္င္ေနၾကရသည္။
“ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕စထြက္တဲ့ေန႕မွာ နိရဥၥရာသတင္းဌာန အယ္ဒီတာ ဦးခိုင္ျမတ္ေက်ာ္က အေမ ရိကန္ေဒၚလာ ၁၀၀-နဲ႕ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံေရာက္ ကိုေက်ာ္ေက်ာ္မွ ကူညီတဲ့ေဒၚလာ၂၀၀-နဲ႕ဒီခရီးကို စတင္ခဲ့တာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အခု လူေတြလည္း ေနာက္ထပ္ တိုးလာတယ္။ ေနာက္ထပ္လည္း စစ္တေကာင္း ေရာက္ရင္ အဲဒီမွာကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕နဲ႕ ပူးေပါင္းမဲ့သူေတြလည္း ရွိတယ္ဆိုေတာ့ လူက ပိုမ်ားလာမယ္။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕မွာလည္း ေငြေၾကးက မလံုမေလာက္ျဖစ္ေနတယ္၊ ဘာဘဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ ျပီးဆံုး ေအာင္ျမင္ေအာင္ထိ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕ ဒီခရီးကို ဆက္ေရွာက္မယ္”ဟု ခရီးစဥ္တြင္း စား၀တ္ေန ေရး တာ၀န္ယူစီစဥ္ေပးသူ ကိုေဇာ္လင္းမွေျပာသည္။
လမ္းေလွ်ာက္သူမ်ားမွာ မတ္လ ၂၇-ရက္ေန႕ နံနက္ကိုးနာရီတြင္ ဒကၠားတကၠသိုလ္ အတြင္းရွီ ခ်ာေဟးမီနာမွ စတင္ျခင္း ျဖစ္ျပီး ယေန႕ဆိုလွ်င္ ငါးရက္ေျမာက္ခရီးသို႕ ေရာက္ရွိလာျပီး လမ္းေလွ်ာက္သူမ်ားမွာ က်န္းက်န္း မာမာျဖင့္ ရွိေနေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။
ေမာင္ေအး(နိရဥၥရာ) ဘဂၤလာေဒ့ခ်္ႏိုင္ငံတြင္ စစ္အစိုးရမွၾကီးမႈး က်င္းပမည့္ လူထု ဆႏၵခံယူပြဲကို ဆန္႕က်င္ ကန္႕ ကြက္သည့္ အေနျဖင့္ ခရီးရွည္ခ်ီတက္လမ္းေရွာက္ ဆႏၵျပသူမ်ား ယခုအခါ ကီလိုမီတာ ၁၅၀ ကို ေက်ာ္လြန္လာျပီ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။
“ဦးဇင္းတို႕ စထြက္တဲ့ေန႕မွာ ရဟန္းေတာ္ ၆-ပါး လူ၇-ေယာက္ စုစုေပါင္း တဆယ့္သံုး ေယာက္ျဖစ္တယ္။ မေန႕ကတေယာက္ ထပ္တိုးလာေတာ့ အခုတဆယ့္ ေလးေယာက္ျဖစ္ လာျပီ ေနာက္ထပ္လည္း စစ္တေကာင္းျမိဳ႕ကိုေရာက္ရင္ ေနာက္ထပ္ တိုးလာမဲ့ အေျခအေန ရွိပါတယ္။ ေဒသခံေတြကလည္း ေရာက္တဲ့ ေနရာမွာ အဆင္ေျပသလို အားေပး ၾကပါတယ္။”ဟု ခရီးေလွ်ာက္ရာတြင္ ပါ၀င္သည့္ သံဃာ့ဦးေသွ်ာင္အဖြဲ႕မွ ဆရာေတာ္ သီလ၀ံသမွ ေျပာသည္။
အဆိုပါ လမ္းေလွ်ာက္အဖြဲ႕မွာ မိုင္ႏွစ္ရာေက်ာ္ခရီးကို ေလွ်ာက္ေနၾကျခင္းျဖစ္ကာ ယခုအခါ ၁၄၇-ကီလိုမီတာကို ေက်ာ္လြန္လာျပီး ယေန႕“ဖဲနီâ€ျမစ္ကို ေက်ာ္ျဖတ္ႏိုင္မည္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။
လမ္းေလွ်ာက္သည့္ အဖြဲ႕မွာ ေဒသခံျပည္သူမ်ားႏွင့္ တျခားလူပုဂၢိဳလ္မ်ားအပါအ၀င္ အဖြဲ႕စည္း အသီးသီးမွ အားေပးေထာက္ခံမႈကို ရရွိေနေသာ္လည္း ယခုအခါ လမ္းခရီးတြင္ စားေသာက္ ေရးအတြက္ ေငြေၾကးမလံုေလာက္မႈႏွင့္ ရင္ဆို္င္ေနၾကရသည္။
“ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕စထြက္တဲ့ေန႕မွာ နိရဥၥရာသတင္းဌာန အယ္ဒီတာ ဦးခိုင္ျမတ္ေက်ာ္က အေမ ရိကန္ေဒၚလာ ၁၀၀-နဲ႕ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံေရာက္ ကိုေက်ာ္ေက်ာ္မွ ကူညီတဲ့ေဒၚလာ၂၀၀-နဲ႕ဒီခရီးကို စတင္ခဲ့တာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အခု လူေတြလည္း ေနာက္ထပ္ တိုးလာတယ္။ ေနာက္ထပ္လည္း စစ္တေကာင္း ေရာက္ရင္ အဲဒီမွာကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕နဲ႕ ပူးေပါင္းမဲ့သူေတြလည္း ရွိတယ္ဆိုေတာ့ လူက ပိုမ်ားလာမယ္။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕မွာလည္း ေငြေၾကးက မလံုမေလာက္ျဖစ္ေနတယ္၊ ဘာဘဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ ျပီးဆံုး ေအာင္ျမင္ေအာင္ထိ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕ ဒီခရီးကို ဆက္ေရွာက္မယ္”ဟု ခရီးစဥ္တြင္း စား၀တ္ေန ေရး တာ၀န္ယူစီစဥ္ေပးသူ ကိုေဇာ္လင္းမွေျပာသည္။
လမ္းေလွ်ာက္သူမ်ားမွာ မတ္လ ၂၇-ရက္ေန႕ နံနက္ကိုးနာရီတြင္ ဒကၠားတကၠသိုလ္ အတြင္းရွီ ခ်ာေဟးမီနာမွ စတင္ျခင္း ျဖစ္ျပီး ယေန႕ဆိုလွ်င္ ငါးရက္ေျမာက္ခရီးသို႕ ေရာက္ရွိလာျပီး လမ္းေလွ်ာက္သူမ်ားမွာ က်န္းက်န္း မာမာျဖင့္ ရွိေနေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။
Thailand’s Burma Loan to Come under Scrutiny
By WILLIAM BOOT / BANGKOK
Thailand’s bureaucracy was thrown into confusion on Monday by a decision by the state Assets Scrutiny Committee (ASC) to re-examine the US $125 million loan to Burma approved by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
The loan was suspended after Thaksin was ousted in a military coup in September 2006.
But less than two weeks ago, the new Thai Foreign Minister, Noppadon Pattama, insisted that Thailand’s Export-Import Bank was at liberty to hand over to the Burmese junta any of the remaining loan still outstanding.
The loan was suspended on the grounds that its main purpose was to enable Burma’s military junta to buy communications equipment directly linked with Shin Satellite, which was owned by Thaksin’s family at the time.
An ASC investigation sub-committee, announcing on Monday it was still examining the case, said it was considering whether to forward to the attorney-general a recommendation of prosecution against Thaksin for alleged misuse of state funds.
It is also unclear just how much of the US $125 million was advanced to Burma before Thaksin’s dismissal and the suspension of the loan.
Noppadon said only 25 percent, or about $31 million, had been handed to Burma. But Bangkok media reports last year quoted ASC officials as saying only about $10 million was outstanding.
Reports are also hazy, say observers, on the exact size of the final loan agreement. Most reports have said it was between 1 billion and 4 billion baht ($30.3 million and $132 million).
In mid March, Noppadon, formerly Thaksin’s lawyer, said “political wrangles” in Thailand should not get in the way of improving relations with Burma. “Thailand’s internal problems have no effect on the right of Burma to get the money,” he said.
However, news that the ASC is after all re-examining the loan case coincides with Thaksin’s surprise return to Thailand.
He arrived in Bangkok unexpectedly on Sunday from Britain where he had returned to oversee his English Premiership football club Manchester City, after earlier voluntarily returning from self- imposed exile.
The former PM’s return to Thailand earlier than scheduled was not related to his defense in court to fight land deal charges, Thaksin’s spokesman Phongthep Thepkanchana was quoted by the official Thai News Agency as saying.
Thaksin is scheduled to appear at a court hearing on April 29 in the land deal case, in which his wife Pojaman is also a defendant.
The ASC was also due to consider a request to end a freeze on assets in the name of Pinthongta Shinawatra, one of Thaksin's daughters, to the value of about $60 million.
Thailand’s bureaucracy was thrown into confusion on Monday by a decision by the state Assets Scrutiny Committee (ASC) to re-examine the US $125 million loan to Burma approved by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
The loan was suspended after Thaksin was ousted in a military coup in September 2006.
But less than two weeks ago, the new Thai Foreign Minister, Noppadon Pattama, insisted that Thailand’s Export-Import Bank was at liberty to hand over to the Burmese junta any of the remaining loan still outstanding.
The loan was suspended on the grounds that its main purpose was to enable Burma’s military junta to buy communications equipment directly linked with Shin Satellite, which was owned by Thaksin’s family at the time.
An ASC investigation sub-committee, announcing on Monday it was still examining the case, said it was considering whether to forward to the attorney-general a recommendation of prosecution against Thaksin for alleged misuse of state funds.
It is also unclear just how much of the US $125 million was advanced to Burma before Thaksin’s dismissal and the suspension of the loan.
Noppadon said only 25 percent, or about $31 million, had been handed to Burma. But Bangkok media reports last year quoted ASC officials as saying only about $10 million was outstanding.
Reports are also hazy, say observers, on the exact size of the final loan agreement. Most reports have said it was between 1 billion and 4 billion baht ($30.3 million and $132 million).
In mid March, Noppadon, formerly Thaksin’s lawyer, said “political wrangles” in Thailand should not get in the way of improving relations with Burma. “Thailand’s internal problems have no effect on the right of Burma to get the money,” he said.
However, news that the ASC is after all re-examining the loan case coincides with Thaksin’s surprise return to Thailand.
He arrived in Bangkok unexpectedly on Sunday from Britain where he had returned to oversee his English Premiership football club Manchester City, after earlier voluntarily returning from self- imposed exile.
The former PM’s return to Thailand earlier than scheduled was not related to his defense in court to fight land deal charges, Thaksin’s spokesman Phongthep Thepkanchana was quoted by the official Thai News Agency as saying.
Thaksin is scheduled to appear at a court hearing on April 29 in the land deal case, in which his wife Pojaman is also a defendant.
The ASC was also due to consider a request to end a freeze on assets in the name of Pinthongta Shinawatra, one of Thaksin's daughters, to the value of about $60 million.
ဆႏၵခံယူပြဲလုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ေျပာင္းရန္ အေမရိကန္သမၼတက တ႐ုတ္သမၼတအား တုိက္တြန္းေျပာဆို
ဉာဏ္ေမာင္
ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအတြင္း စစ္အစိုးရမွ ျပဳလုပ္မည့္ဆႏၵခံယူပြဲလုပ္ငန္းစဥ္အား ေျပာင္းလဲရန္ လုိအပ္ ေၾကာင္း အေမရိကန္သမၼတ ဘုရွ္က တ႐ုတ္သမၼတကို ေျပာဆိုေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့သည္။
သမၼတႏွစ္ဦးအၾကား တယ္လီဖုန္းျဖင့္ ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္ (၂၆)ရက္ေန႔က ဆက္သြယ္ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့စဥ္ ေျပာဆုိခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္ၿပီး ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားအေရးႏွင့္ တိုင္၀မ္အေရးတို႔ကိုလည္း ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့သည္ဟု ဆုိသည္။
သမၼတဘုရွ္က ေျပာဆိုရာတြင္ ျမန္မာစစ္အစုိးရအေနျဖင့္ တုိင္းရင္းသားမ်ားႏွင့္ ဒီမိုကေရစီ အင္အားစုမ်ားမပါေသာ အေျခခံဥပေဒကို ဆႏၵခံယူပြဲျပဳလုပ္ရန္စီစဥ္ေနျခင္းျဖစ္ၿပီး ျမန္မာ ျပည္သူမ်ားႏွင့္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာအသိုင္းအ၀ုိင္းမွ ယုံၾကည့္မႈရရန္ ဆႏၵခံယူပြဲအစီအစဥ္အား ျပဳျပင္ ေျပာင္းလဲရန္လုိအပ္ေၾကာင္း တ႐ုတ္သမၼတ ဟူဂ်င္ေတာင္အား ေျပာဆိုခဲ့သည္။
ႏွစ္ႏုိင္ငံသမၼတႏွစ္ဦး ေျပာဆိုခ်က္ကို အေမရိကန္ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီးဌာနမွ ယေန႔ ေန႔စြဲျဖင့္ ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကာညာခဲ့ၿပီး တိဘက္အေရးႏွင့္ပတ္သက္၍ တ႐ုတ္အစိုးရအေနျဖင့္ ဘုန္းေတာ္ႀကီး ဒလိုင္းလားမား၏ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္အဖြဲ႔ႏွင့္ ေတြ႔ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးရန္၊ သံတမန္ႏွင့္ သတင္းသမားမ်ား အား အခင္းျဖစ္ရာ တိဘက္ေဒသသို႔ သြားေရာက္ခြင့္ျပဳရန္တို႔ကို ေျပာဆိုခဲ့သည္။
ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားကိစၥရပ္တြင္လည္း သမၼတႏွစ္ဦးသည္ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားအစိုးရအေနျဖင့္ ႏွ်ဴကလီးယား လက္နက္အားလံုး ဖ်က္သိမ္းေရးကို မွန္မွန္ကန္ကန္ ေၾကညာရန္၊ ႏွ်ဴကလီးယား ႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ေသာ ဆက္စပ္လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားအပါအဝင္ သေဘာတူညီခ်က္ရရွိရန္ (၆)ႏိုင္ငံအုပ္စု အတြက္ ပိုမိုနီးကပ္စြာ ဆက္လက္ေဆာင္ရြက္ရန္တို႔ကို ႏွစ္ဘက္အၾကား ကတိေပးေျပာဆိုၾက သည္။
တိဘက္ဘုန္းေတာ္ႀကီးမ်ားအား တ႐ုတ္လံုၿခံဳေရးတပ္ဖြဲ႔မ်ားက ႏွိမ္နင္းပံုသည္ ျမန္မာျပည္တြင္ လြန္ခ့ဲေသာႏွစ္ စက္တင္ဘာလက ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းစြာဆႏၵျပမႈကို ျမန္မာစစ္တပ္က အၾကမ္းဖက္ႏွိမ္နင္း မႈေၾကာင့္ လူ(၃၁)ဦးေသဆံုးခ့ဲပံုႏွင့္ ပံုသ႑ာန္တူသည္ဟု သံဃာ့တပ္ေပါင္းစု ဥကၠဌ ဦးပညာ ေဇာတက ေျပာဆိုသည္။
တ႐ုတ္အစိုးရအာေဘာ္ျဖစ္ေသာ ဆင္ဟြာသတင္းဌာနအဆိုအရ လာဆာတြင္ လူ (၁၃)ဦးသာ ေသဆံုးသည္ဟု ေၾကညာခ့ဲၿပီး ေသာႀကၤာေန႔က အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈေၾကာင့္ လံုၿခံဳေရးတပ္ဖြဲ႔ဝင္မ်ားစြာ ဒဏ္ရာရခ့ဲၿပီး အခ်ဳိ႕အိမ္ႏွင့္ ေစ်းဆုိင္မ်ားကို ဖ်က္ဆီးခဲ့သည္ဟုဆုိသည္။
သို႔ေသာ္ အိႏၵိယႏုိင္ငံေျမာက္ပိုင္း ဓမၼစာလရွိ ျပည္ပေရာက္ တိဘက္အစိုးရကမူ တိဘက္ျပည္ၿမိဳ႕ ေတာ္ လာဆာတြင္ တ႐ုတ္လုံၿခံဳေရးတပ္ဖြဲ႔မ်ား၏ ႏွိမ္နင္းမႈေၾကာင့္ လူ (၈၀)ထက္မနည္း ေသ ဆုံးခဲ့သည္ဟု ယမန္ေန႔ကေျပာ ဆိုခဲ့သည္။
ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအတြင္း စစ္အစိုးရမွ ျပဳလုပ္မည့္ဆႏၵခံယူပြဲလုပ္ငန္းစဥ္အား ေျပာင္းလဲရန္ လုိအပ္ ေၾကာင္း အေမရိကန္သမၼတ ဘုရွ္က တ႐ုတ္သမၼတကို ေျပာဆိုေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့သည္။
သမၼတႏွစ္ဦးအၾကား တယ္လီဖုန္းျဖင့္ ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္ (၂၆)ရက္ေန႔က ဆက္သြယ္ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့စဥ္ ေျပာဆုိခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္ၿပီး ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားအေရးႏွင့္ တိုင္၀မ္အေရးတို႔ကိုလည္း ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့သည္ဟု ဆုိသည္။
သမၼတဘုရွ္က ေျပာဆိုရာတြင္ ျမန္မာစစ္အစုိးရအေနျဖင့္ တုိင္းရင္းသားမ်ားႏွင့္ ဒီမိုကေရစီ အင္အားစုမ်ားမပါေသာ အေျခခံဥပေဒကို ဆႏၵခံယူပြဲျပဳလုပ္ရန္စီစဥ္ေနျခင္းျဖစ္ၿပီး ျမန္မာ ျပည္သူမ်ားႏွင့္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာအသိုင္းအ၀ုိင္းမွ ယုံၾကည့္မႈရရန္ ဆႏၵခံယူပြဲအစီအစဥ္အား ျပဳျပင္ ေျပာင္းလဲရန္လုိအပ္ေၾကာင္း တ႐ုတ္သမၼတ ဟူဂ်င္ေတာင္အား ေျပာဆိုခဲ့သည္။
ႏွစ္ႏုိင္ငံသမၼတႏွစ္ဦး ေျပာဆိုခ်က္ကို အေမရိကန္ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီးဌာနမွ ယေန႔ ေန႔စြဲျဖင့္ ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကာညာခဲ့ၿပီး တိဘက္အေရးႏွင့္ပတ္သက္၍ တ႐ုတ္အစိုးရအေနျဖင့္ ဘုန္းေတာ္ႀကီး ဒလိုင္းလားမား၏ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္အဖြဲ႔ႏွင့္ ေတြ႔ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးရန္၊ သံတမန္ႏွင့္ သတင္းသမားမ်ား အား အခင္းျဖစ္ရာ တိဘက္ေဒသသို႔ သြားေရာက္ခြင့္ျပဳရန္တို႔ကို ေျပာဆိုခဲ့သည္။
ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားကိစၥရပ္တြင္လည္း သမၼတႏွစ္ဦးသည္ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားအစိုးရအေနျဖင့္ ႏွ်ဴကလီးယား လက္နက္အားလံုး ဖ်က္သိမ္းေရးကို မွန္မွန္ကန္ကန္ ေၾကညာရန္၊ ႏွ်ဴကလီးယား ႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ေသာ ဆက္စပ္လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားအပါအဝင္ သေဘာတူညီခ်က္ရရွိရန္ (၆)ႏိုင္ငံအုပ္စု အတြက္ ပိုမိုနီးကပ္စြာ ဆက္လက္ေဆာင္ရြက္ရန္တို႔ကို ႏွစ္ဘက္အၾကား ကတိေပးေျပာဆိုၾက သည္။
တိဘက္ဘုန္းေတာ္ႀကီးမ်ားအား တ႐ုတ္လံုၿခံဳေရးတပ္ဖြဲ႔မ်ားက ႏွိမ္နင္းပံုသည္ ျမန္မာျပည္တြင္ လြန္ခ့ဲေသာႏွစ္ စက္တင္ဘာလက ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းစြာဆႏၵျပမႈကို ျမန္မာစစ္တပ္က အၾကမ္းဖက္ႏွိမ္နင္း မႈေၾကာင့္ လူ(၃၁)ဦးေသဆံုးခ့ဲပံုႏွင့္ ပံုသ႑ာန္တူသည္ဟု သံဃာ့တပ္ေပါင္းစု ဥကၠဌ ဦးပညာ ေဇာတက ေျပာဆိုသည္။
တ႐ုတ္အစိုးရအာေဘာ္ျဖစ္ေသာ ဆင္ဟြာသတင္းဌာနအဆိုအရ လာဆာတြင္ လူ (၁၃)ဦးသာ ေသဆံုးသည္ဟု ေၾကညာခ့ဲၿပီး ေသာႀကၤာေန႔က အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈေၾကာင့္ လံုၿခံဳေရးတပ္ဖြဲ႔ဝင္မ်ားစြာ ဒဏ္ရာရခ့ဲၿပီး အခ်ဳိ႕အိမ္ႏွင့္ ေစ်းဆုိင္မ်ားကို ဖ်က္ဆီးခဲ့သည္ဟုဆုိသည္။
သို႔ေသာ္ အိႏၵိယႏုိင္ငံေျမာက္ပိုင္း ဓမၼစာလရွိ ျပည္ပေရာက္ တိဘက္အစိုးရကမူ တိဘက္ျပည္ၿမိဳ႕ ေတာ္ လာဆာတြင္ တ႐ုတ္လုံၿခံဳေရးတပ္ဖြဲ႔မ်ား၏ ႏွိမ္နင္းမႈေၾကာင့္ လူ (၈၀)ထက္မနည္း ေသ ဆုံးခဲ့သည္ဟု ယမန္ေန႔ကေျပာ ဆိုခဲ့သည္။
ေမာင္ေတာျမိဳ႕တြင္ မူဆလင္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ၁၀ ဦး ဖမ္းဆီိးခံရ
Narinjara News
ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ ေမာင္ေတာျမိဳ႕တြင္ မူဆလင္ဘာသာ၀င္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ၁၀-ဦးကို ယမန္ေန႕က ဖမ္းဆီးလိုက္ေၾကာင္း သတင္းရရွိသည္။
ဖမ္းဆီးခံရသူမ်ားထဲတြင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမူဆလင္ေရးရာအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ ေမာင္ေတာခရိုင္ဥကၠဌ ေရွ႕ေန သန္းထြန္းေခၚ မူဟာမတ္ေဆာ္လိမ္ႏွင့္ စိန္သံုးလံုးေရႊဆိုင္ပိုင္ရွင္ ေရႊဇားရပ္ကြက္မွ ဦးနီရာ မတ္တို႕ ပါ၀င္ေၾကာင္းသိရွိရသည္။
ျဖစ္ပြားပံု အေသးစိတ္ႏွင့္ပတ္သတ္ျပီး မ်က္ျမင္တဦးအေျပာအရ ဦးသန္းထြန္းအပါအ၀င္ မူဆလင္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ၁၀-ဦးခန္႕မွာ တနဂၤေႏြေန႕ နံနက္ ၁၀-နာရီက ဦးသန္းထြန္း အလုပ္ လုပ္ကိုင္ေသာ ေရွ႕ေနရံုးခန္းတြင္ အစည္းအေ၀းလုပ္ေနစဥ္ ဘူးသီးေတာင္ဗ်ဴဟာမွ ဗ်ဴဟာ မွဴးႏွင့္ ေမာင္ေတာခရိုင္ ဥကၠဌတို႕ ပါ၀င္ေသာ အဖြဲ႕တဖြဲ႕မွ ေရာက္ရွိလာျပီး ဖမ္းဆီးလိုက္ျခင္း ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။
ဗ်ဴဟာမွဴးႏွင့္အဖြဲ႕မွာ ဦးသန္းထြန္းအခန္းအား ငါးနာရီနီးပါးခန္႕ ရွာေဖြေမႊေႏွာက္ျပီး ဖမ္းဆီးခံရသူအားလံုးကို ညေနေလးနာရီတြင္ ဘူးသီးေတာင္ဗ်ဴဟာသို႕ ေခၚယူသြားေၾကာင္း သတင္းရရွိသည္။
ေမာင္ေတာတြင္သူတို႕ဖမ္းဆီးခံရျခင္းႏွင့္ ပတ္သတ္ျပီး သတင္းျဖစ္ေပၚေနသည္မွာ ႏိုင္ငံေရး ႏွင့္ ဆက္ႏြယ္ပတ္သတ္ေနသျဖင့္ ယခုကဲ့သို႕ ဖမ္းဆီးျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ေျပာဆို ေနၾကသည္ဟု သိရွိရသည္။
သို႕ေသာ္လည္း သူတို႕အား မည္သည့္အတြက္ေၾကာင္း စစ္အာဏာပိုင္မ်ားမွ ဖမ္းဆီးျခင္းကို မည္သူတဦးတေယာက္မွ အေသးစိတ္မေျပာႏိုင္ေသးေၾကာင္း ေမာင္ေတာမွ ေပးပို႕ေသာ သတင္းတရပ္တြင္ ေဖာ္ျပသည္။
ယခုကဲ့သို႕ မူဆလင္ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား ဖမ္းဆီးခံရသျဖင့္ တျခားမူဆလင္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား မွာလည္း ဖမ္းဆီးခံရမည္ကို စိုးရိမ္၍ ထြက္ေျပးတိမ္းေရွာင္ေနေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ ထြက္ေျပးသူမ်ား အထဲတြင္ မူဆလင္ဆရာ၀န္တဦးျဖစ္သူ ေဒါက္တာ ထြန္းေအာင္လည္းပါ၀င္ေၾကာင္း သိရွိ ရသည္။
ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ ေမာင္ေတာျမိဳ႕တြင္ မူဆလင္ဘာသာ၀င္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ၁၀-ဦးကို ယမန္ေန႕က ဖမ္းဆီးလိုက္ေၾကာင္း သတင္းရရွိသည္။
ဖမ္းဆီးခံရသူမ်ားထဲတြင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမူဆလင္ေရးရာအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ ေမာင္ေတာခရိုင္ဥကၠဌ ေရွ႕ေန သန္းထြန္းေခၚ မူဟာမတ္ေဆာ္လိမ္ႏွင့္ စိန္သံုးလံုးေရႊဆိုင္ပိုင္ရွင္ ေရႊဇားရပ္ကြက္မွ ဦးနီရာ မတ္တို႕ ပါ၀င္ေၾကာင္းသိရွိရသည္။
ျဖစ္ပြားပံု အေသးစိတ္ႏွင့္ပတ္သတ္ျပီး မ်က္ျမင္တဦးအေျပာအရ ဦးသန္းထြန္းအပါအ၀င္ မူဆလင္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ၁၀-ဦးခန္႕မွာ တနဂၤေႏြေန႕ နံနက္ ၁၀-နာရီက ဦးသန္းထြန္း အလုပ္ လုပ္ကိုင္ေသာ ေရွ႕ေနရံုးခန္းတြင္ အစည္းအေ၀းလုပ္ေနစဥ္ ဘူးသီးေတာင္ဗ်ဴဟာမွ ဗ်ဴဟာ မွဴးႏွင့္ ေမာင္ေတာခရိုင္ ဥကၠဌတို႕ ပါ၀င္ေသာ အဖြဲ႕တဖြဲ႕မွ ေရာက္ရွိလာျပီး ဖမ္းဆီးလိုက္ျခင္း ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။
ဗ်ဴဟာမွဴးႏွင့္အဖြဲ႕မွာ ဦးသန္းထြန္းအခန္းအား ငါးနာရီနီးပါးခန္႕ ရွာေဖြေမႊေႏွာက္ျပီး ဖမ္းဆီးခံရသူအားလံုးကို ညေနေလးနာရီတြင္ ဘူးသီးေတာင္ဗ်ဴဟာသို႕ ေခၚယူသြားေၾကာင္း သတင္းရရွိသည္။
ေမာင္ေတာတြင္သူတို႕ဖမ္းဆီးခံရျခင္းႏွင့္ ပတ္သတ္ျပီး သတင္းျဖစ္ေပၚေနသည္မွာ ႏိုင္ငံေရး ႏွင့္ ဆက္ႏြယ္ပတ္သတ္ေနသျဖင့္ ယခုကဲ့သို႕ ဖမ္းဆီးျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ေျပာဆို ေနၾကသည္ဟု သိရွိရသည္။
သို႕ေသာ္လည္း သူတို႕အား မည္သည့္အတြက္ေၾကာင္း စစ္အာဏာပိုင္မ်ားမွ ဖမ္းဆီးျခင္းကို မည္သူတဦးတေယာက္မွ အေသးစိတ္မေျပာႏိုင္ေသးေၾကာင္း ေမာင္ေတာမွ ေပးပို႕ေသာ သတင္းတရပ္တြင္ ေဖာ္ျပသည္။
ယခုကဲ့သို႕ မူဆလင္ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား ဖမ္းဆီးခံရသျဖင့္ တျခားမူဆလင္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား မွာလည္း ဖမ္းဆီးခံရမည္ကို စိုးရိမ္၍ ထြက္ေျပးတိမ္းေရွာင္ေနေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ ထြက္ေျပးသူမ်ား အထဲတြင္ မူဆလင္ဆရာ၀န္တဦးျဖစ္သူ ေဒါက္တာ ထြန္းေအာင္လည္းပါ၀င္ေၾကာင္း သိရွိ ရသည္။
Smog in northern air is Thai problem alone
MICK SHIPPEN
"An additional problem is that national borders get in the way, with man-made burn-offs also occurring in Burma's Shan State and in Laos," says your editorial, "Burning issue plagues North" on March 29.
Having recently returned from a 1,500km motorcycle trip in northern Laos, half of it off road on dirt tracks in the mountains, I can assure you the toxic soup that passes for air in Chiang Mai is an entirely Thai-made problem.
I did not see so much as a wisp of smoke in northern Laos or along the Burmese border. The air is clear and there is no haze until one is south of Chiang Rai.
As someone who lived and worked in Chiang Mai for six years before moving to Bangkok for the vastly improved air quality (oh yes), I assure you there is nothing even remotely encouraging in the health and forestry authorities' promised campaign to urge villagers not to burn off forests, rubbish or grass. We hear the same hot air from them every year.
Villagers continue their nightly burning of leaves and plastic, as local government officials and racketeers continue to pocket the cash from refuse contracts, ensuring that the rubbish is dumped in fields and burnt instead of going into landfill sites.
Meanwhile, thousands of heavily polluting empty songtaews continue to drive around all day, and the dust from the current frenzy of construction fills the air.
The result is that Chiang Mai has the highest rates of lung disease in the country. No amount of spineless local councillors commissioning yet another report into the cause of air pollution, analysing another air sample, waffling on about traditional lifestyles, handing out masks or pointing a barely visible finger through the smog toward Laos or Burma is going to solve the problem.
The solutions are clear, easily identified and easily solved. Start by getting rid of the incompetent buffoons who have mismanaged Chiang Mai for the past decade.
I do not know how anyone can reside in Chiang Mai today. The putrid air makes it one of the most unliveable cities in Thailand. I hung on until bronchitis brought on by nightly burning of waste in our village forced my reluctant retreat.
With its rich culture, beautiful scenery and easy-going people, Chiang Mai had so much going for it.
Unfortunately, self-interest, apathy and ignorance have taken a heavy toll on the city. That's a shame, because I miss it desperately and would love to move back, but not until I can do so without wheezing.
"An additional problem is that national borders get in the way, with man-made burn-offs also occurring in Burma's Shan State and in Laos," says your editorial, "Burning issue plagues North" on March 29.
Having recently returned from a 1,500km motorcycle trip in northern Laos, half of it off road on dirt tracks in the mountains, I can assure you the toxic soup that passes for air in Chiang Mai is an entirely Thai-made problem.
I did not see so much as a wisp of smoke in northern Laos or along the Burmese border. The air is clear and there is no haze until one is south of Chiang Rai.
As someone who lived and worked in Chiang Mai for six years before moving to Bangkok for the vastly improved air quality (oh yes), I assure you there is nothing even remotely encouraging in the health and forestry authorities' promised campaign to urge villagers not to burn off forests, rubbish or grass. We hear the same hot air from them every year.
Villagers continue their nightly burning of leaves and plastic, as local government officials and racketeers continue to pocket the cash from refuse contracts, ensuring that the rubbish is dumped in fields and burnt instead of going into landfill sites.
Meanwhile, thousands of heavily polluting empty songtaews continue to drive around all day, and the dust from the current frenzy of construction fills the air.
The result is that Chiang Mai has the highest rates of lung disease in the country. No amount of spineless local councillors commissioning yet another report into the cause of air pollution, analysing another air sample, waffling on about traditional lifestyles, handing out masks or pointing a barely visible finger through the smog toward Laos or Burma is going to solve the problem.
The solutions are clear, easily identified and easily solved. Start by getting rid of the incompetent buffoons who have mismanaged Chiang Mai for the past decade.
I do not know how anyone can reside in Chiang Mai today. The putrid air makes it one of the most unliveable cities in Thailand. I hung on until bronchitis brought on by nightly burning of waste in our village forced my reluctant retreat.
With its rich culture, beautiful scenery and easy-going people, Chiang Mai had so much going for it.
Unfortunately, self-interest, apathy and ignorance have taken a heavy toll on the city. That's a shame, because I miss it desperately and would love to move back, but not until I can do so without wheezing.
ASC to consider controversial loan to Burma
(BangkokPost.com) - The Assets Scrutiny Committee (ASC) will deliberate on the legality of Export-Import Bank of Thailand's (EXIM) decision to grant loans worth 4 billion baht to Burma while Mr Thaksin Shinawatra was still the prime minister.
If ASC members agree that the deal had been passed purely for personal gain after today's meeting, the committee will forward the case to the supreme court within 14 days.
Later on Monday afternoon, the ASC will consider lifting a freeze order on assets belonging to Pinthongta Shinawatra's, one of Mr Thaksin's daughters, worth 2 billion baht.
Documents will also be presented to those responsible for the case against Bangkok governor Apirak Kosayodhin and his alleged involvement in the fire engines and boats procurement scandal.
If ASC members agree that the deal had been passed purely for personal gain after today's meeting, the committee will forward the case to the supreme court within 14 days.
Later on Monday afternoon, the ASC will consider lifting a freeze order on assets belonging to Pinthongta Shinawatra's, one of Mr Thaksin's daughters, worth 2 billion baht.
Documents will also be presented to those responsible for the case against Bangkok governor Apirak Kosayodhin and his alleged involvement in the fire engines and boats procurement scandal.
Myanmar's draft constitution cements military role in parliament
(AP)
Myanmar's draft constitution ensures that pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi cannot make a political comeback and guarantees a strong military presence in parliament, according to a copy of the proposed charter obtained Monday.
The draft constitution was completed in February but has not been made public. A copy of the 457-article, 194-page proposed charter was obtained by The Associated Press. The draft charter allots 25% of seats in both houses of parliament to the military.
Myanmar's draft constitution ensures that pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi cannot make a political comeback and guarantees a strong military presence in parliament, according to a copy of the proposed charter obtained Monday.
The draft constitution was completed in February but has not been made public. A copy of the 457-article, 194-page proposed charter was obtained by The Associated Press. The draft charter allots 25% of seats in both houses of parliament to the military.
Junta Split May Hasten Civilian Rule
Analysis by Larry Jagan
BANGKOK, Mar 31 (IPS) - By promising to hand over power to a civilian government within two years, Burma’s top general has sparked speculation on the future of the junta that has ruled this country since a military coup in 1962.
"As the new constitution has already been drafted, it will be put to a national referendum in forthcoming May, and subsequently multi-party general elections will follow in 2010 in line with the provisions of the constitution," Gen. Than Shwe told more than 13,000 soldiers, diplomats and other dignitaries assembled at the military parade for Armed Forces Day on Mar. 27.
But Than Shwe failed to announce a date for the ballot or reveal when the public would be allowed to see the final version of the charter, which has taken more than 14 years to draft. Criticising the constitution is illegal and punishable by a maximum of 20 years on jail.
Armed Forces Day, held in the new capital Nay Pyi Daw, commemorates the establishment of the national army in 1945, under the independence hero General Aung San, the assassinated father of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi..
Before addressing the crowd, Than Shwe reviewed the parade standing in the back of a new limousine, especially imported for the occasion.
This is likely to be Than Shwe’s last Army Day as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, according to Burmese military sources at the ceremony. His health is reportedly deteriorating rapidly. He is often short of breath and increasingly forgetful. He is known to suffer from diabetes and hypertension; his kidneys are failing and he suffers from acute coronary problems.
There was little evidence though of his medical problems during his 15-minute speech, although his voice seemed weaker than usual, according to diplomats who attended the occasion. It was also shorter than usual, which may also reflect the general’s ailments.
Than Shwe’s speech was as hard-line as usual, calling on the soldiers to join hands with the people and crush what he called "internal and external destructive elements trying to sabotage the stability of the state". He made no reference to the mass anti-government protests led by Buddhist monks last September.
"The Tatmadaw (Burmese military) is on an historic mission, to perform this important national duty of transforming the era and the system of government in a smooth and systematic way," he concluded.
But underneath this show of unity is the start of a new battle for Burma's future. This time it is not between the monks and the military, as it was last year, but between two factions in the army.In the past few months a major rift has emerged within Burma's military government over the country's political future.
At the centre of the conflict are concerns over who should control the roadmap -- Burma's plans for political change.The confrontation is now beginning to take shape -- between those who currently control Burma's government administration and the country's economic wealth, and those who now prefer to see themselves as the nation's guardians and wish to protect the country from unscrupulous officials.
The junta is no longer as cohesive and united as it was, as two major camps have clearly emerged. On one side there are the ministers and some members of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) who have major business interests and are associated with Gen Than Shwe's brainchild, the mass community-based Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA).On the other side are the top ranking generals -- loosely grouped around the second in command, Gen. Maung Aye -- who want a professional army and see its main role as protector of the people.They have become increasingly dismayed at the corruption within government and understand that it is undermining the army's future role in the country.
But the 'real' army, as these officers under Gen Maung Aye describe themselves, is going to have to act quickly if it is to remain a force to be reckoned with.The planned referendum for May and the election in two years' time will radically change the country's political landscape.The USDA, which is organising both the referendum and the elections, will significantly increase its power and control over the country's new emerging political process.
Senior members of the army are increasingly resentful of the growing dominance of the USDA and the likely curtailment of the army's authority after the May referendum. ''It will bring an abrupt end to the army's absolute power,'' said Win Min, an Burmese independent government academic based at Chiang Mai University. Key ministers and members of the SPDC have amassed huge personal fortunes from smuggling and kickbacks. Everyone seems powerless to stop them at present, according to Burmese government sources.
''They are known as 'the Nazis' within the top ranks of the army,'' according to a Burmese businessman with close links to the military hierarchy. ''They have the money and they have their own militia.''There are many within the army who view these developments with increasing concern. There is mounting resentment and frustration amongst the junior officers in Nay Pyi Daw.
Many of the junior officers are divisional commanders in the late forties and early fifties. These are the army's ''Young Turks'', who are alarmed at the way in which the USDA is growing in influence at the expense of the army. ''They are watching their unscrupulous colleagues, hiding behind the uniform, building up massive fortunes from corruption in government and they are worried that this tarnishes the image of the army,'' said a source in Nay Pyi Daw.
In the meantime there have been no promotions within the army for nearly a year as Than Shwe has continuously postponed the quarterly SPDC meetings for fear of being ousted by a push from those commanders who oppose the power of the USDA.
"The top generals have not met [for the quarterly meeting] for months, since before the August and September protests, so during that time, apart from the appointment of three regional commanders, there have been no promotions," said Win Min.
"The impact of this will certainly add to the growing frustration amongst some of the commanders who should have already been promoted," he said.
This resentment is going to continue to simmer. They know that after the referendum in May their position will become increasingly less significant, as ministers and selected military generals move into the USDA and take up civilian roles in the future. At the same time they fear that widespread corruption will also destroy the country and its political stability.
''The real army is the only institution that can bring genuine democracy to the country in the future,'' a military man told IPS. ''The new generation of officers represents the real hope for the country.'' They would be open to a political dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi, he insisted, as they see themselves as the real guardians of the country.
In the meantime, as Than Shwe’s health deteriorates, he is increasingly withdrawn and reclusive. His position is now becoming progressively more perilous, despite his carefully planned schemes, according to many specialists on Burma's military.
"It is not worth risking a crisis when nature may solve it for us legally and peacefully," Maung Aye recently told some of his close confidantes. But with the referendum only weeks away the army may yet have to move against the corrupt USDA lobby before it’s too late.
BANGKOK, Mar 31 (IPS) - By promising to hand over power to a civilian government within two years, Burma’s top general has sparked speculation on the future of the junta that has ruled this country since a military coup in 1962.
"As the new constitution has already been drafted, it will be put to a national referendum in forthcoming May, and subsequently multi-party general elections will follow in 2010 in line with the provisions of the constitution," Gen. Than Shwe told more than 13,000 soldiers, diplomats and other dignitaries assembled at the military parade for Armed Forces Day on Mar. 27.
But Than Shwe failed to announce a date for the ballot or reveal when the public would be allowed to see the final version of the charter, which has taken more than 14 years to draft. Criticising the constitution is illegal and punishable by a maximum of 20 years on jail.
Armed Forces Day, held in the new capital Nay Pyi Daw, commemorates the establishment of the national army in 1945, under the independence hero General Aung San, the assassinated father of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi..
Before addressing the crowd, Than Shwe reviewed the parade standing in the back of a new limousine, especially imported for the occasion.
This is likely to be Than Shwe’s last Army Day as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, according to Burmese military sources at the ceremony. His health is reportedly deteriorating rapidly. He is often short of breath and increasingly forgetful. He is known to suffer from diabetes and hypertension; his kidneys are failing and he suffers from acute coronary problems.
There was little evidence though of his medical problems during his 15-minute speech, although his voice seemed weaker than usual, according to diplomats who attended the occasion. It was also shorter than usual, which may also reflect the general’s ailments.
Than Shwe’s speech was as hard-line as usual, calling on the soldiers to join hands with the people and crush what he called "internal and external destructive elements trying to sabotage the stability of the state". He made no reference to the mass anti-government protests led by Buddhist monks last September.
"The Tatmadaw (Burmese military) is on an historic mission, to perform this important national duty of transforming the era and the system of government in a smooth and systematic way," he concluded.
But underneath this show of unity is the start of a new battle for Burma's future. This time it is not between the monks and the military, as it was last year, but between two factions in the army.In the past few months a major rift has emerged within Burma's military government over the country's political future.
At the centre of the conflict are concerns over who should control the roadmap -- Burma's plans for political change.The confrontation is now beginning to take shape -- between those who currently control Burma's government administration and the country's economic wealth, and those who now prefer to see themselves as the nation's guardians and wish to protect the country from unscrupulous officials.
The junta is no longer as cohesive and united as it was, as two major camps have clearly emerged. On one side there are the ministers and some members of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) who have major business interests and are associated with Gen Than Shwe's brainchild, the mass community-based Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA).On the other side are the top ranking generals -- loosely grouped around the second in command, Gen. Maung Aye -- who want a professional army and see its main role as protector of the people.They have become increasingly dismayed at the corruption within government and understand that it is undermining the army's future role in the country.
But the 'real' army, as these officers under Gen Maung Aye describe themselves, is going to have to act quickly if it is to remain a force to be reckoned with.The planned referendum for May and the election in two years' time will radically change the country's political landscape.The USDA, which is organising both the referendum and the elections, will significantly increase its power and control over the country's new emerging political process.
Senior members of the army are increasingly resentful of the growing dominance of the USDA and the likely curtailment of the army's authority after the May referendum. ''It will bring an abrupt end to the army's absolute power,'' said Win Min, an Burmese independent government academic based at Chiang Mai University. Key ministers and members of the SPDC have amassed huge personal fortunes from smuggling and kickbacks. Everyone seems powerless to stop them at present, according to Burmese government sources.
''They are known as 'the Nazis' within the top ranks of the army,'' according to a Burmese businessman with close links to the military hierarchy. ''They have the money and they have their own militia.''There are many within the army who view these developments with increasing concern. There is mounting resentment and frustration amongst the junior officers in Nay Pyi Daw.
Many of the junior officers are divisional commanders in the late forties and early fifties. These are the army's ''Young Turks'', who are alarmed at the way in which the USDA is growing in influence at the expense of the army. ''They are watching their unscrupulous colleagues, hiding behind the uniform, building up massive fortunes from corruption in government and they are worried that this tarnishes the image of the army,'' said a source in Nay Pyi Daw.
In the meantime there have been no promotions within the army for nearly a year as Than Shwe has continuously postponed the quarterly SPDC meetings for fear of being ousted by a push from those commanders who oppose the power of the USDA.
"The top generals have not met [for the quarterly meeting] for months, since before the August and September protests, so during that time, apart from the appointment of three regional commanders, there have been no promotions," said Win Min.
"The impact of this will certainly add to the growing frustration amongst some of the commanders who should have already been promoted," he said.
This resentment is going to continue to simmer. They know that after the referendum in May their position will become increasingly less significant, as ministers and selected military generals move into the USDA and take up civilian roles in the future. At the same time they fear that widespread corruption will also destroy the country and its political stability.
''The real army is the only institution that can bring genuine democracy to the country in the future,'' a military man told IPS. ''The new generation of officers represents the real hope for the country.'' They would be open to a political dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi, he insisted, as they see themselves as the real guardians of the country.
In the meantime, as Than Shwe’s health deteriorates, he is increasingly withdrawn and reclusive. His position is now becoming progressively more perilous, despite his carefully planned schemes, according to many specialists on Burma's military.
"It is not worth risking a crisis when nature may solve it for us legally and peacefully," Maung Aye recently told some of his close confidantes. But with the referendum only weeks away the army may yet have to move against the corrupt USDA lobby before it’s too late.
Democracy Leader Barred From Office
AP
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- A copy obtained by The AP of Myanmar's draft constitution confirms that pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi would be barred from holding office.
The document also would guarantee the military government a strong presence in parliament.
The draft constitution was completed in February but has not been made public.
A copy obtained by The Associated Press on Monday shows that the charter would allot 25 percent of seats in both houses of parliament to the military.
It also would effectively bar Suu Kyi from national office because she was married to a foreigner, maintaining a controversial clause from guidelines used to draft the charter.
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- A copy obtained by The AP of Myanmar's draft constitution confirms that pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi would be barred from holding office.
The document also would guarantee the military government a strong presence in parliament.
The draft constitution was completed in February but has not been made public.
A copy obtained by The Associated Press on Monday shows that the charter would allot 25 percent of seats in both houses of parliament to the military.
It also would effectively bar Suu Kyi from national office because she was married to a foreigner, maintaining a controversial clause from guidelines used to draft the charter.
Myanmar to defend title in ASEAN Championship women soccer match
China View
YANGON, March 31 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar women's soccer team will defend its title in the fourth ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Championship women's soccer tournament in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in October, according to the Myanmar Football Federation (MFF) Monday.
Myanmar women's soccer team, which was the defending champion of the 2007 ASEAN Championship tournament, together with host Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos and Malaysia will be in Group (A), while newcomer Australia, 24th SEA (Southeast Asian) Games defending title holder Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines will be in Group (B) in the 2008 ASEAN Championship women's soccer tournament scheduled on Oct. 6-20, the MFF said.
It will be the second competition for the Myanmar women's soccer team this year. Myanmar competed in the 2008 Asian Cup women's football second qualifying round in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from March 24 to 28, defeating Iran 2-1, losing Chinese Taipei 0-3 and host Vietnam 0-1 respectively and not qualified for the 2008 Asian Cup women's football tournament final-stage.
Meanwhile, Myanmar women's soccer team lost to Vietnam 1-2 in the semi-final and finished third in the last 24th SEA Games in Thailand in December 2007.
Myanmar women team crowned in the third ASEAN Championship women's soccer tournament, participated by eight national women's soccer teams from the ASEAN -- Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam -- at the Thuwunna Youth Training Center here in September 2007 after beating Thailand 5-2 with the penalty shootouts in the final.
Myanmar triumphed in the first ASEAN Championship tournament in Vietnam in October 2004 by defeating hosts in the final with penalty shootouts.
However, Myanmar lost to Vietnam in the final of the 23rd SEA Games in Manila, the Philippines, in 2005.
Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and the invited Chinese Taipei teams featured in the second ASEAN Championship tournament in Vietnam in May 2006. Myanmar lost to Thailand 2-3, Chinese Taipei 0-3 and host Vietnam 0-1 respectively in the tournament.
YANGON, March 31 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar women's soccer team will defend its title in the fourth ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Championship women's soccer tournament in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in October, according to the Myanmar Football Federation (MFF) Monday.
Myanmar women's soccer team, which was the defending champion of the 2007 ASEAN Championship tournament, together with host Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos and Malaysia will be in Group (A), while newcomer Australia, 24th SEA (Southeast Asian) Games defending title holder Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines will be in Group (B) in the 2008 ASEAN Championship women's soccer tournament scheduled on Oct. 6-20, the MFF said.
It will be the second competition for the Myanmar women's soccer team this year. Myanmar competed in the 2008 Asian Cup women's football second qualifying round in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from March 24 to 28, defeating Iran 2-1, losing Chinese Taipei 0-3 and host Vietnam 0-1 respectively and not qualified for the 2008 Asian Cup women's football tournament final-stage.
Meanwhile, Myanmar women's soccer team lost to Vietnam 1-2 in the semi-final and finished third in the last 24th SEA Games in Thailand in December 2007.
Myanmar women team crowned in the third ASEAN Championship women's soccer tournament, participated by eight national women's soccer teams from the ASEAN -- Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam -- at the Thuwunna Youth Training Center here in September 2007 after beating Thailand 5-2 with the penalty shootouts in the final.
Myanmar triumphed in the first ASEAN Championship tournament in Vietnam in October 2004 by defeating hosts in the final with penalty shootouts.
However, Myanmar lost to Vietnam in the final of the 23rd SEA Games in Manila, the Philippines, in 2005.
Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and the invited Chinese Taipei teams featured in the second ASEAN Championship tournament in Vietnam in May 2006. Myanmar lost to Thailand 2-3, Chinese Taipei 0-3 and host Vietnam 0-1 respectively in the tournament.
Vietnam supports Mekong regional plan on trade, investment
VNA
Vietnam supports the building of a plan to accelerate the liberalization and facilitation of trade and investment among countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), the prime minister said Sunday.
PM Nguyen Tan Dung made the statement at a forum on GMS business and investment that was held on the threshold of the third GMS Summit, which opens in Vientiane Monday.
PM Dung appreciated the business circle’s recommendations regarding the harmonization of policies and simplification of trade and investment procedures to reduce time and cost for business and trade in the region, thus facilitating regional investment cooperation and improving the region’s competitiveness.
He suggested that regional countries take advantage of the regional road system and work to boost investment, trade, tourism and cultural exchange.
He also stressed the need of a policy to support and boost the development of small and medium-sized enterprises in the region.
The same day, PM Dung attended the first GMS youth forum.
At the forum, PM Dung applauded the youth’s suggestions on the regional integration process.
He especially appreciated their proposals that the countries’ leaders help young people contribute more to the development of the region through job creation and the preservation of the cultural diversity.
PM Dung and his delegation had arrived in Vientiane Sunday.
He met with Lao President Choumaly Saynhasone and his Lao counterpart Bouasone Bouphavanh.
The leaders expressed satisfaction over the recent development of effective and practical relations in economy, trade and investment between the two nations.
They pledged to bring two-way trade revenues to US$1 billion by 2010, $2 billion by 2015 and $5 billion by 2020.
Vietnam supports the building of a plan to accelerate the liberalization and facilitation of trade and investment among countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), the prime minister said Sunday.
PM Nguyen Tan Dung made the statement at a forum on GMS business and investment that was held on the threshold of the third GMS Summit, which opens in Vientiane Monday.
PM Dung appreciated the business circle’s recommendations regarding the harmonization of policies and simplification of trade and investment procedures to reduce time and cost for business and trade in the region, thus facilitating regional investment cooperation and improving the region’s competitiveness.
He suggested that regional countries take advantage of the regional road system and work to boost investment, trade, tourism and cultural exchange.
He also stressed the need of a policy to support and boost the development of small and medium-sized enterprises in the region.
The same day, PM Dung attended the first GMS youth forum.
At the forum, PM Dung applauded the youth’s suggestions on the regional integration process.
He especially appreciated their proposals that the countries’ leaders help young people contribute more to the development of the region through job creation and the preservation of the cultural diversity.
PM Dung and his delegation had arrived in Vientiane Sunday.
He met with Lao President Choumaly Saynhasone and his Lao counterpart Bouasone Bouphavanh.
The leaders expressed satisfaction over the recent development of effective and practical relations in economy, trade and investment between the two nations.
They pledged to bring two-way trade revenues to US$1 billion by 2010, $2 billion by 2015 and $5 billion by 2020.
Myanmar number two to visit India
YANGON � The second-in-command of Myanmar's ruling junta Maung Aye will soon pay an official visit to neighbouring India, the nation's state-run newspaper confirmed yesterday.
Maung Aye and his wife Mya Mya San were invited by Indian Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari, the New Light of Myanmar said, but gave no date for the trip, saying only that it would happen "in the near future."
An Indian government official said in New Delhi earlier this month that Maung Aye would arrive on April 4 for a three-day visit, with economic cooperation, security and energy topping the agenda.
The official said General Maung Aye would likely sign a pact under which India would offer $130m of investment to develop Sittwe port in western Myanmar, near the Indian border.
The aim of the port is to give India's landlocked northeast access to a new trade route to Southeast Asia.
India and Myanmar share a 1339-km border, and New Delhi has cultivated close ties with the country's military rulers in recent years, citing its huge energy requirements.
In September last year, India pledged $150m for gas exploration in Myanmar amid anti-junta protests led by Buddhist monks.
Those investment plans drew criticism from the international community, which has been urging New Delhi and Beijing to pressure Myanmar to speed up democratic reforms.
Myanmar has been ruled by the military since 1962, and keeps opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest in Yangon. A United Nations investigation found that at least 31 people were killed when the junta cracked down on the protests, which were the biggest threat to military rule in nearly 20 years.
Meanwhile Myint Thein, the spokesman for Myanmar's National League for Democracy (NLD) opposition party who was jailed repeatedly, died at age 62 in Singapore, relatives said on Saturday.
Myint Thein was most recently detained for a month last year following the September anti-military protests in Yangon.
Maung Aye and his wife Mya Mya San were invited by Indian Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari, the New Light of Myanmar said, but gave no date for the trip, saying only that it would happen "in the near future."
An Indian government official said in New Delhi earlier this month that Maung Aye would arrive on April 4 for a three-day visit, with economic cooperation, security and energy topping the agenda.
The official said General Maung Aye would likely sign a pact under which India would offer $130m of investment to develop Sittwe port in western Myanmar, near the Indian border.
The aim of the port is to give India's landlocked northeast access to a new trade route to Southeast Asia.
India and Myanmar share a 1339-km border, and New Delhi has cultivated close ties with the country's military rulers in recent years, citing its huge energy requirements.
In September last year, India pledged $150m for gas exploration in Myanmar amid anti-junta protests led by Buddhist monks.
Those investment plans drew criticism from the international community, which has been urging New Delhi and Beijing to pressure Myanmar to speed up democratic reforms.
Myanmar has been ruled by the military since 1962, and keeps opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest in Yangon. A United Nations investigation found that at least 31 people were killed when the junta cracked down on the protests, which were the biggest threat to military rule in nearly 20 years.
Meanwhile Myint Thein, the spokesman for Myanmar's National League for Democracy (NLD) opposition party who was jailed repeatedly, died at age 62 in Singapore, relatives said on Saturday.
Myint Thein was most recently detained for a month last year following the September anti-military protests in Yangon.
U Myint Thein: Burmese democracy campaigner
For many years, Myint Thein was one of the few political dissidents in Burma able or willing to allow his name to be attached to the comments about the need for democratic change in a country headed by a régime that rules with an iron fist. As spokesman for the National League for Democracy, the party of the imprisoned political leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Thein regularly met with journalists – usually in secret – and tried to draw the attention of the outside world to the movement's struggle.
Active in the democracy movement since 1988, the year that thousands of civilians were killed by the military after a democracy uprising, he was imprisoned for a number of years. His most recent incarceration followed last September's protests, initiated by civilians but taken up by Buddhist monks, which saw tens of thousands of people take to the streets of Burma's biggest cities in a remarkable display of defiance.
He was held in Rangoon's notorious Insein Jail, where his health deteriorated rapidly. Released at the end of October, Thein was told he had severe gastritis and a problem with his gall bladder. Doctors recommended he travel to Singapore for treatment, a process that took two months to arrange, with the authorities allegedly refusing to speed up the process. He eventually arrived in Singapore General Hospital at the end of January where he was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
Born in 1947, Thein was elected as an MP from Kyaikmayaw Township in Burma's Mon State – a region dominated by the ethnic Mon people. He became a leading member of the state's NLD apparatus in the aftermath of the 1990 general election which the party easily won but whose victory was ignored by the military. A close ally of Suu Kyi, he was appointed party spokesman in 2004.
Thein always remained optimistic that international pressure could bring about change. Shortly before his arrest in September, he said: "We believe that if the international community makes enough pressure to release Suu Kyi they will. She is a Mandela. She will unite all the people."
Andrew Buncombe
Myint Thein, political campaigner: born 8 October 1947; married (one son); died Singapore 28 March 2008.
Active in the democracy movement since 1988, the year that thousands of civilians were killed by the military after a democracy uprising, he was imprisoned for a number of years. His most recent incarceration followed last September's protests, initiated by civilians but taken up by Buddhist monks, which saw tens of thousands of people take to the streets of Burma's biggest cities in a remarkable display of defiance.
He was held in Rangoon's notorious Insein Jail, where his health deteriorated rapidly. Released at the end of October, Thein was told he had severe gastritis and a problem with his gall bladder. Doctors recommended he travel to Singapore for treatment, a process that took two months to arrange, with the authorities allegedly refusing to speed up the process. He eventually arrived in Singapore General Hospital at the end of January where he was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
Born in 1947, Thein was elected as an MP from Kyaikmayaw Township in Burma's Mon State – a region dominated by the ethnic Mon people. He became a leading member of the state's NLD apparatus in the aftermath of the 1990 general election which the party easily won but whose victory was ignored by the military. A close ally of Suu Kyi, he was appointed party spokesman in 2004.
Thein always remained optimistic that international pressure could bring about change. Shortly before his arrest in September, he said: "We believe that if the international community makes enough pressure to release Suu Kyi they will. She is a Mandela. She will unite all the people."
Andrew Buncombe
Myint Thein, political campaigner: born 8 October 1947; married (one son); died Singapore 28 March 2008.
Smog in northern air is Thai problem alone
MICK SHIPPEN
An additional problem is that national borders get in the way, with man-made burn-offs also occurring in Burma's Shan State and in Laos," says your editorial, "Burning issue plagues North" on March 29.
Having recently returned from a 1,500km motorcycle trip in northern Laos, half of it off road on dirt tracks in the mountains, I can assure you the toxic soup that passes for air in Chiang Mai is an entirely Thai-made problem.
I did not see so much as a wisp of smoke in northern Laos or along the Burmese border. The air is clear and there is no haze until one is south of Chiang Rai.
As someone who lived and worked in Chiang Mai for six years before moving to Bangkok for the vastly improved air quality (oh yes), I assure you there is nothing even remotely encouraging in the health and forestry authorities' promised campaign to urge villagers not to burn off forests, rubbish or grass. We hear the same hot air from them every year.
Villagers continue their nightly burning of leaves and plastic, as local government officials and racketeers continue to pocket the cash from refuse contracts, ensuring that the rubbish is dumped in fields and burnt instead of going into landfill sites.
Meanwhile, thousands of heavily polluting empty songtaews continue to drive around all day, and the dust from the current frenzy of construction fills the air.
The result is that Chiang Mai has the highest rates of lung disease in the country. No amount of spineless local councillors commissioning yet another report into the cause of air pollution, analysing another air sample, waffling on about traditional lifestyles, handing out masks or pointing a barely visible finger through the smog toward Laos or Burma is going to solve the problem.
The solutions are clear, easily identified and easily solved. Start by getting rid of the incompetent buffoons who have mismanaged Chiang Mai for the past decade.
I do not know how anyone can reside in Chiang Mai today. The putrid air makes it one of the most unliveable cities in Thailand. I hung on until bronchitis brought on by nightly burning of waste in our village forced my reluctant retreat.
With its rich culture, beautiful scenery and easy-going people, Chiang Mai had so much going for it.
Unfortunately, self-interest, apathy and ignorance have taken a heavy toll on the city. That's a shame, because I miss it desperately and would love to move back, but not until I can do so without wheezing.
An additional problem is that national borders get in the way, with man-made burn-offs also occurring in Burma's Shan State and in Laos," says your editorial, "Burning issue plagues North" on March 29.
Having recently returned from a 1,500km motorcycle trip in northern Laos, half of it off road on dirt tracks in the mountains, I can assure you the toxic soup that passes for air in Chiang Mai is an entirely Thai-made problem.
I did not see so much as a wisp of smoke in northern Laos or along the Burmese border. The air is clear and there is no haze until one is south of Chiang Rai.
As someone who lived and worked in Chiang Mai for six years before moving to Bangkok for the vastly improved air quality (oh yes), I assure you there is nothing even remotely encouraging in the health and forestry authorities' promised campaign to urge villagers not to burn off forests, rubbish or grass. We hear the same hot air from them every year.
Villagers continue their nightly burning of leaves and plastic, as local government officials and racketeers continue to pocket the cash from refuse contracts, ensuring that the rubbish is dumped in fields and burnt instead of going into landfill sites.
Meanwhile, thousands of heavily polluting empty songtaews continue to drive around all day, and the dust from the current frenzy of construction fills the air.
The result is that Chiang Mai has the highest rates of lung disease in the country. No amount of spineless local councillors commissioning yet another report into the cause of air pollution, analysing another air sample, waffling on about traditional lifestyles, handing out masks or pointing a barely visible finger through the smog toward Laos or Burma is going to solve the problem.
The solutions are clear, easily identified and easily solved. Start by getting rid of the incompetent buffoons who have mismanaged Chiang Mai for the past decade.
I do not know how anyone can reside in Chiang Mai today. The putrid air makes it one of the most unliveable cities in Thailand. I hung on until bronchitis brought on by nightly burning of waste in our village forced my reluctant retreat.
With its rich culture, beautiful scenery and easy-going people, Chiang Mai had so much going for it.
Unfortunately, self-interest, apathy and ignorance have taken a heavy toll on the city. That's a shame, because I miss it desperately and would love to move back, but not until I can do so without wheezing.
Meet a woman of history
BY TOM PLATE (Pacific Perspectives)
POWERFUL women seem to be appearing frequently in Asian news these days. Recent headlines trumpeted the continued defiance of the great Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and of course mourned the assassination of the Pakistani heir-apparent Benazir Bhutto.
The truth, though, is there’s nothing that new about powerful women and Asia.
They are omnipresent throughout the region, embedded even in otherwise sexist or patriarchal cultures. Over the decades, national liberation movements have spawned prominent female insurgent leaders. Even the long-established political dynasties throw up their fair share of powerful matriarchs.
And so while the US electorate goes about deciding whether the next American president will be a woman, in a country where no woman has even been vice-president, I was able to sit down with a famous — indeed, in this region, legendary — Vietnamese woman who helped spearhead her country’s reunification struggle against both the ill-fated French and American interventions.
Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, now in her eighties, has been aging quite gracefully, thank you. Even today, she packs such punch and panache in her eyes and such bouncy incandescence and voice as she recollects her involvement in the historic Paris Peace Talks of 1972 and the ultimate US troop withdrawal from her country, that you can’t imagine how we Americans might ever have thought we could possibly prevail here.
Vice-president of Vietnam for ten years from 1992, Madame Binh looks every bit the part of the Asian women of steel and destiny. She is happy to comment, though diplomatically, about things American, especially as they relate to our troubled past with her own Vietnam.
“That Iraq war will go on too long,” she says, at once tugging at her brown socks, then sipping Vietnamese tea from a large glass. Like with Vietnam, “the US considered itself a big power and behaved like a big power. And because it was such a great power, it could not accept that the Vietnamese people would actually fight against them.”
It was only “after great losses,” as she put it, that America withdrew from Vietnam; with Iraq she fears our big-power hubris will delay the inevitability of withdrawal: “With Iraq, it’s different from Vietnam but the general purpose is the same: The US wants to impose its rule and its rules on other countries.”
This view of US hegemony through socialist eyes that have seen much over the decades might strike Americans as far more ideological than historical. The American intervention, after all, was justified to prevent the spread of communism from North Vietnam to the south and then (presumably) through all of Southeast Asia.
But, as Madame Binh notes, the Cold War is over, and America and Vietnam have gotten on with the job of trying to relate in a businesslike manner. And she is not at all reluctant to admit that Vietnam has made its own share of mistakes in its struggle to escape third-world underdevelopment:
“Socialism does need to be democratic,” she admitted, “and we really have not implemented it well enough. But if we want to implement true democracy in Vietnam, we need to have much better education for our people. You can’t have intelligent public participation without sufficient public education.”
That, she points out, will take lots of money — or, in the fancy phrase of our times, economic development. To that end, Vietnam needs to make friends with every country, make no more enemies than necessary, and be warm and gracious to all visitors and tourists, especially those with money to burn.
In truth, the Vietnamese can be the friendliest of hosts. The buoyant energy of the streets is palpable; at times the place feels like a surging South Korea a decade or so ago. To be sure, the country must not only overcome the enormous cost of its past war-time struggles but the continuing cost of an oft-overbearing communist bureaucracy which is characteristically suspicious of any move it cannot control. Madame Binh has seen it all, of course, and expects that in the course of time Vietnam’s political culture will measure up to its economic-development needs. It will have to or Vietnam will fail.
Such issues rise above gender, for all the prominence of women in Asia or elsewhere. And though her sisterhood makes her wish Hillary Clinton all the best, it is both the values and the decisions of America’s next president that catch her eye and roil her memory: “I am very happy for her,” she says, rising to say good bye, “but America’s actual policies are what is most important.” In effect, despite all the time that has gone by, very little has changed in that regard.
POWERFUL women seem to be appearing frequently in Asian news these days. Recent headlines trumpeted the continued defiance of the great Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and of course mourned the assassination of the Pakistani heir-apparent Benazir Bhutto.
The truth, though, is there’s nothing that new about powerful women and Asia.
They are omnipresent throughout the region, embedded even in otherwise sexist or patriarchal cultures. Over the decades, national liberation movements have spawned prominent female insurgent leaders. Even the long-established political dynasties throw up their fair share of powerful matriarchs.
And so while the US electorate goes about deciding whether the next American president will be a woman, in a country where no woman has even been vice-president, I was able to sit down with a famous — indeed, in this region, legendary — Vietnamese woman who helped spearhead her country’s reunification struggle against both the ill-fated French and American interventions.
Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, now in her eighties, has been aging quite gracefully, thank you. Even today, she packs such punch and panache in her eyes and such bouncy incandescence and voice as she recollects her involvement in the historic Paris Peace Talks of 1972 and the ultimate US troop withdrawal from her country, that you can’t imagine how we Americans might ever have thought we could possibly prevail here.
Vice-president of Vietnam for ten years from 1992, Madame Binh looks every bit the part of the Asian women of steel and destiny. She is happy to comment, though diplomatically, about things American, especially as they relate to our troubled past with her own Vietnam.
“That Iraq war will go on too long,” she says, at once tugging at her brown socks, then sipping Vietnamese tea from a large glass. Like with Vietnam, “the US considered itself a big power and behaved like a big power. And because it was such a great power, it could not accept that the Vietnamese people would actually fight against them.”
It was only “after great losses,” as she put it, that America withdrew from Vietnam; with Iraq she fears our big-power hubris will delay the inevitability of withdrawal: “With Iraq, it’s different from Vietnam but the general purpose is the same: The US wants to impose its rule and its rules on other countries.”
This view of US hegemony through socialist eyes that have seen much over the decades might strike Americans as far more ideological than historical. The American intervention, after all, was justified to prevent the spread of communism from North Vietnam to the south and then (presumably) through all of Southeast Asia.
But, as Madame Binh notes, the Cold War is over, and America and Vietnam have gotten on with the job of trying to relate in a businesslike manner. And she is not at all reluctant to admit that Vietnam has made its own share of mistakes in its struggle to escape third-world underdevelopment:
“Socialism does need to be democratic,” she admitted, “and we really have not implemented it well enough. But if we want to implement true democracy in Vietnam, we need to have much better education for our people. You can’t have intelligent public participation without sufficient public education.”
That, she points out, will take lots of money — or, in the fancy phrase of our times, economic development. To that end, Vietnam needs to make friends with every country, make no more enemies than necessary, and be warm and gracious to all visitors and tourists, especially those with money to burn.
In truth, the Vietnamese can be the friendliest of hosts. The buoyant energy of the streets is palpable; at times the place feels like a surging South Korea a decade or so ago. To be sure, the country must not only overcome the enormous cost of its past war-time struggles but the continuing cost of an oft-overbearing communist bureaucracy which is characteristically suspicious of any move it cannot control. Madame Binh has seen it all, of course, and expects that in the course of time Vietnam’s political culture will measure up to its economic-development needs. It will have to or Vietnam will fail.
Such issues rise above gender, for all the prominence of women in Asia or elsewhere. And though her sisterhood makes her wish Hillary Clinton all the best, it is both the values and the decisions of America’s next president that catch her eye and roil her memory: “I am very happy for her,” she says, rising to say good bye, “but America’s actual policies are what is most important.” In effect, despite all the time that has gone by, very little has changed in that regard.
Burma voices: Six months later
BBC NEWS
Six months after protests in Burma ended in a military crackdown, people describe the atmosphere in the country and their fears for the future.
Life has been hard as ever. No change or hope has come yet to us.
People no longer talk about politics for fear of arrest, accusations, safety and other frightening things.
But everybody desires to know something more and to talk freely about these issues. Some day we hope to have our freedom or right to speak. Ha ha. What a joke!
Everything has been over for nearly six months now. But some of us still recall it.
Here, a referendum on a new constitution is drawing near. People are talking about it and no-one really knows what it is going to look like.
But almost everybody accepts that the government will win it whether the constitution is ratified or not by the people in May.
Even now almost everybody has little understanding of what the referendum is and what has to happen.
I have been in the capital Nay Pyi Taw for a few months now. More construction sites are still being built as more NGOs and private companies have to move here somehow.
They say Nay Pyi Taw is the capital and its future lies with the new democratic government body. There is no sign yet of how the military will stand after the results are out.
Six months after protests in Burma ended in a military crackdown, people describe the atmosphere in the country and their fears for the future.
Life has been hard as ever. No change or hope has come yet to us.
People no longer talk about politics for fear of arrest, accusations, safety and other frightening things.
But everybody desires to know something more and to talk freely about these issues. Some day we hope to have our freedom or right to speak. Ha ha. What a joke!
Everything has been over for nearly six months now. But some of us still recall it.
Here, a referendum on a new constitution is drawing near. People are talking about it and no-one really knows what it is going to look like.
But almost everybody accepts that the government will win it whether the constitution is ratified or not by the people in May.
Even now almost everybody has little understanding of what the referendum is and what has to happen.
I have been in the capital Nay Pyi Taw for a few months now. More construction sites are still being built as more NGOs and private companies have to move here somehow.
They say Nay Pyi Taw is the capital and its future lies with the new democratic government body. There is no sign yet of how the military will stand after the results are out.
Transport corridor tops Myanmar gen's agenda
The Time of India
NEW DELHI: The visit of Myanmar's second-in-command General Maung Aye to India, starting Wednesday, will be watched in more than one global capital with keen interest.
But after India facilitated the second visit of the UN's special envoy Ibrahim Gambari to Myanmar, it is now getting ready to significantly ramp up its presence in its eastern neighbour.
The much publicised multi-modal transport corridor that will link Myanmar to north-eastern India, bypassing Bangladesh, is finally ready for a formal launch and this is likely to be the high point of Gen Aye's visit.
The Cabinet recently approved Rs 535.91 crore for upgradation of Sittwe port and Kaladan river way. The rest will be spent on a road from Kalewa to Tamu on the Mizoram border.
"The project will provide an access to Mizoram and to other northeastern states as well as an outlet to the sea," a spokesperson said after the Cabinet meeting. The project will be executed by the Inland Waterways Authority of India.
The more important strategic point that India will make to the world is that it is not going to abandon Myanmar to the tender mercies of the Chinese. It's vitally important for India to protect this particular flank from the pervasive Chinese influence on India's periphery.
Just as in Tibet, where Han Chinese have been imposed on the local population, Indian strategists have, over the years, noticed with concern that Myanmar too is succumbing rapidly to the Han Chinese presence. "East of the river Irrawaddy is completely Chinese populated," said sources in the government.
India believes it's important that it provides a credible and rewarding alternative to the Myanmarese. Western concerns about Myanmar aside, India says it has much more important business with its eastern neighbour - in fact, a section of the government has even quietly proposed bringing Myanmar into SAARC, just like Afghanistan.
The official talks between the two sides will be dominated by issues of economic cooperation, energy security and connectivity.
NEW DELHI: The visit of Myanmar's second-in-command General Maung Aye to India, starting Wednesday, will be watched in more than one global capital with keen interest.
But after India facilitated the second visit of the UN's special envoy Ibrahim Gambari to Myanmar, it is now getting ready to significantly ramp up its presence in its eastern neighbour.
The much publicised multi-modal transport corridor that will link Myanmar to north-eastern India, bypassing Bangladesh, is finally ready for a formal launch and this is likely to be the high point of Gen Aye's visit.
The Cabinet recently approved Rs 535.91 crore for upgradation of Sittwe port and Kaladan river way. The rest will be spent on a road from Kalewa to Tamu on the Mizoram border.
"The project will provide an access to Mizoram and to other northeastern states as well as an outlet to the sea," a spokesperson said after the Cabinet meeting. The project will be executed by the Inland Waterways Authority of India.
The more important strategic point that India will make to the world is that it is not going to abandon Myanmar to the tender mercies of the Chinese. It's vitally important for India to protect this particular flank from the pervasive Chinese influence on India's periphery.
Just as in Tibet, where Han Chinese have been imposed on the local population, Indian strategists have, over the years, noticed with concern that Myanmar too is succumbing rapidly to the Han Chinese presence. "East of the river Irrawaddy is completely Chinese populated," said sources in the government.
India believes it's important that it provides a credible and rewarding alternative to the Myanmarese. Western concerns about Myanmar aside, India says it has much more important business with its eastern neighbour - in fact, a section of the government has even quietly proposed bringing Myanmar into SAARC, just like Afghanistan.
The official talks between the two sides will be dominated by issues of economic cooperation, energy security and connectivity.
AEC ready to rule today on ex-pm thaksin's role
THE NATION
The Assets Examination Committee will today rule on indicting former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra over alleged irregularities involving the Bt1-billion additional soft loan extended to Burma.
An investigative panel headed by Sak Korsaengruang would recommend Thaksin be charged with violating Article 152 and 157 of the Criminal Code by seeking to promote the vested interest of the Shinawatra family.
The AEC panel alleged that Thaksin had instructed Export-Import Bank of Thailand (Exim Bank) to extended the soft loan to Burma to enable them to buy products of Shin Satellite.
A source said the investigative panel dismissed Thaksin's defence testimony as groundless and recommended the AEC forward the case to the Attorney-General to indict Thaksin at the Supreme Court's Political Division for Political Office Holders.
The panel found Thaksin, during an "unofficial" negotiation, promised Burmese leaders to extend more soft loans. When the Burmese sought additional funds, citing the unofficial negotiation, Thaksin instructed then foreign minister Surakiart Sathirathai to respond in a letter that Thailand would increase the soft loan from Bt3 billion to Bt4 billion for Burma's telecommunication system and reduce the interest rate without Cabinet approval, the source said.
The AEC had solid testimony from Surakiart that Thaksin had verbally instructed him twice to extend loans to Burma in two instalments, Bt3 billion and Bt1 billion, the source said.
"The AEC believes the move damaged the Exim Bank. Thaksin went to Burma with Shin Sat staff to negotiate a business transaction for Shin Sat and Shin Corp both of which belonged to Thaksin's family and Thaksin himself also benefited from the companies,'' the source added.
Thaksin's testimony denied the allegations. He said he had followed the national policies declared before the House to support the economic development of neighbouring countries. Thaksin also argued that the soft loan extension was a commitment Thailand had made to Burma in accordance with the Bagan Declaration.
Thaksin said in his testimony that the AEC had made unfair allegations against him related to the loan. He reasoned that Thailand would hugely benefit from Burmese natural resources worth trillions of baht.
Thaksin also rejected the allegation that the soft loan was extended to Burma to buy Shin Sat equipment.
The Assets Examination Committee will today rule on indicting former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra over alleged irregularities involving the Bt1-billion additional soft loan extended to Burma.
An investigative panel headed by Sak Korsaengruang would recommend Thaksin be charged with violating Article 152 and 157 of the Criminal Code by seeking to promote the vested interest of the Shinawatra family.
The AEC panel alleged that Thaksin had instructed Export-Import Bank of Thailand (Exim Bank) to extended the soft loan to Burma to enable them to buy products of Shin Satellite.
A source said the investigative panel dismissed Thaksin's defence testimony as groundless and recommended the AEC forward the case to the Attorney-General to indict Thaksin at the Supreme Court's Political Division for Political Office Holders.
The panel found Thaksin, during an "unofficial" negotiation, promised Burmese leaders to extend more soft loans. When the Burmese sought additional funds, citing the unofficial negotiation, Thaksin instructed then foreign minister Surakiart Sathirathai to respond in a letter that Thailand would increase the soft loan from Bt3 billion to Bt4 billion for Burma's telecommunication system and reduce the interest rate without Cabinet approval, the source said.
The AEC had solid testimony from Surakiart that Thaksin had verbally instructed him twice to extend loans to Burma in two instalments, Bt3 billion and Bt1 billion, the source said.
"The AEC believes the move damaged the Exim Bank. Thaksin went to Burma with Shin Sat staff to negotiate a business transaction for Shin Sat and Shin Corp both of which belonged to Thaksin's family and Thaksin himself also benefited from the companies,'' the source added.
Thaksin's testimony denied the allegations. He said he had followed the national policies declared before the House to support the economic development of neighbouring countries. Thaksin also argued that the soft loan extension was a commitment Thailand had made to Burma in accordance with the Bagan Declaration.
Thaksin said in his testimony that the AEC had made unfair allegations against him related to the loan. He reasoned that Thailand would hugely benefit from Burmese natural resources worth trillions of baht.
Thaksin also rejected the allegation that the soft loan was extended to Burma to buy Shin Sat equipment.
Plague rats feast as millions face starvation
By Ryys Blakely
MILLIONS of people in India face starvation after a chilling forecast about a plague of rats overrunning a region every half-century appears to have come true.
Millions of tribal families in the state of Mizoram, on the border with Burma and Bangladesh, are struggling to feed themselves after the area was overrun by hundreds of millions of rats -- a phenomenon known as the mautam.
The rodent plague follows the heavy flowering of a local species of bamboo, an event that occurs every 48 years and provides the region's rats with a feast of high-protein foliage.
Once the rats have ravaged the bamboo, they turn on the crops, consuming hundreds of tonnes of rice and maize supplies.
"People do not have food for tomorrow," J. Rochunga, of Poithar village in Lawngtlai, one of the hardest-hit areas, said.
"We are afraid to plant anything because the rats consume everything, even cash crops like oranges and vegetables, pumpkins and chillies."
Survivors of the previous mautam, which heralded widespread famine in 1958, say they remember areas of paddy fields the size of four soccer pitches being devastated overnight.
Villagers forced to abandon their smallholdings and scavenge for food in the jungle are reliving the nightmare.
"My family could starve," Gulsogi, of Bolisora, another village in Lawngtlai, said.
"How long can we forage to survive? We are walking longer into the forest each day to find anything."
Government relief measures such as a bounty of one rupee (2c) per rat tail - an offer that fuelled a cull of about 221,000 rodents in 2006 - have made little impact.
Now, with at least 100,000 people already going hungry, aid workers say the situation will deteriorate as farmers refuse to sow next season's crop until the rats have been eradicated.
"There are clear signs of a crisis unfolding," Mrinal Gohain, of the charity ActionAid, said yesterday.
"Some villages are in a particularly bad shape, with people surviving by foraging in the forest since October last year."
Almost two-thirds of the villages in some areas are now in a state of "serious crisis" as inaccessible terrain and a wider shortage of food hampers aid, officials say.
The mautam is unfolding amid wider concern over South Asia's ability to feed itself as world prices for staple foods soar. The World Bank lobbied India last week to export rice supplies to Bangladesh.
However, Indian officials have their eyes fixed on their home markets, and recently slashed import taxes on rice in an attempt to ease local prices.
Mizoram's desperate farmers are now selling their property, and families that practise slash-and-burn cultivation say they cannot prepare to plant the next crop as long as the rat menace persists.
"The local fishing pond provided seasonal income in our village but now even that is up for sale," one villager told the aidworkers.
MILLIONS of people in India face starvation after a chilling forecast about a plague of rats overrunning a region every half-century appears to have come true.
Millions of tribal families in the state of Mizoram, on the border with Burma and Bangladesh, are struggling to feed themselves after the area was overrun by hundreds of millions of rats -- a phenomenon known as the mautam.
The rodent plague follows the heavy flowering of a local species of bamboo, an event that occurs every 48 years and provides the region's rats with a feast of high-protein foliage.
Once the rats have ravaged the bamboo, they turn on the crops, consuming hundreds of tonnes of rice and maize supplies.
"People do not have food for tomorrow," J. Rochunga, of Poithar village in Lawngtlai, one of the hardest-hit areas, said.
"We are afraid to plant anything because the rats consume everything, even cash crops like oranges and vegetables, pumpkins and chillies."
Survivors of the previous mautam, which heralded widespread famine in 1958, say they remember areas of paddy fields the size of four soccer pitches being devastated overnight.
Villagers forced to abandon their smallholdings and scavenge for food in the jungle are reliving the nightmare.
"My family could starve," Gulsogi, of Bolisora, another village in Lawngtlai, said.
"How long can we forage to survive? We are walking longer into the forest each day to find anything."
Government relief measures such as a bounty of one rupee (2c) per rat tail - an offer that fuelled a cull of about 221,000 rodents in 2006 - have made little impact.
Now, with at least 100,000 people already going hungry, aid workers say the situation will deteriorate as farmers refuse to sow next season's crop until the rats have been eradicated.
"There are clear signs of a crisis unfolding," Mrinal Gohain, of the charity ActionAid, said yesterday.
"Some villages are in a particularly bad shape, with people surviving by foraging in the forest since October last year."
Almost two-thirds of the villages in some areas are now in a state of "serious crisis" as inaccessible terrain and a wider shortage of food hampers aid, officials say.
The mautam is unfolding amid wider concern over South Asia's ability to feed itself as world prices for staple foods soar. The World Bank lobbied India last week to export rice supplies to Bangladesh.
However, Indian officials have their eyes fixed on their home markets, and recently slashed import taxes on rice in an attempt to ease local prices.
Mizoram's desperate farmers are now selling their property, and families that practise slash-and-burn cultivation say they cannot prepare to plant the next crop as long as the rat menace persists.
"The local fishing pond provided seasonal income in our village but now even that is up for sale," one villager told the aidworkers.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
KTC diamond jubliee conclude with 2,899 new followers
By KNG
The Diamond Jubilee of the Kachin Theological College (KTC) in Northern Burma was concluded today with 2,899 new followers, KTC sources said.
The new followers were baptized this morning at Mali Hka (Mali River) near the KTC school compound in Nawng Nang village, 10 miles north of Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State, by KTC alumni pastors, Rev. Mading Zung Kyang, the head of the Baptizing Committee said.
Most new followers were church-born people in 12 districts of Kachin Baptist Sub-convention under the Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC) in Burma and of them about 30 people were converted from Buddhism to Christianity, Rev. Mading Zung Kyang added.
The KTC is the biggest Theological school in KBC and the KTC and its branch school Kutkai Bible School in Northeast Shan State produces about 200 graduate students annually, Rev. Hkalam Sam Sun, chairman of KTC Trustees said.
Rev. Sam Sun said the KTC has been training more and more students year after year. However, graduate students did not have the spiritual maturity to lead followers of the Christian faith in their churches as well as all other churches in KBC. It has resulted in a big problem of shortage of required teachers and pastors.
In the future, the KTC will try to impart both theology and secular education to students, KTC Trustee chairman, Rev. Sam Sun added.
The first Kachin Bible School (now KTC in Nawng Nang) was founded in June 6, 1932 in Bhamo, before Burma got independence, because of the dedicated service of three Kachin leaders, Pangmu Duwa Lahpai Zau Tu, Maran Robin and Labya De.
From 1972 to now, the KTC has trained a total of 3,817 students, where 2,220 are men and 1,597 are women, KTC records say.
Over 86 million kyats was spent in the seven-day Diamond Jubilee celebrations and a Diamond Jubilee Hall costing over 200 million kyats was inaugurated during the ceremony, said Rev. Mading Zung Kyang, Chief of Fund Finding and Baptizing Committee
The celebrations were attended by over 20,000 people including the key guest of KBC, Rev. Tom Steller, a deputy pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in the United States of America, the root Baptist missionary of KBC, the KTC leaders said.
The Diamond Jubilee of the Kachin Theological College (KTC) in Northern Burma was concluded today with 2,899 new followers, KTC sources said.The new followers were baptized this morning at Mali Hka (Mali River) near the KTC school compound in Nawng Nang village, 10 miles north of Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State, by KTC alumni pastors, Rev. Mading Zung Kyang, the head of the Baptizing Committee said.
Most new followers were church-born people in 12 districts of Kachin Baptist Sub-convention under the Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC) in Burma and of them about 30 people were converted from Buddhism to Christianity, Rev. Mading Zung Kyang added.
The KTC is the biggest Theological school in KBC and the KTC and its branch school Kutkai Bible School in Northeast Shan State produces about 200 graduate students annually, Rev. Hkalam Sam Sun, chairman of KTC Trustees said.
Rev. Sam Sun said the KTC has been training more and more students year after year. However, graduate students did not have the spiritual maturity to lead followers of the Christian faith in their churches as well as all other churches in KBC. It has resulted in a big problem of shortage of required teachers and pastors.
In the future, the KTC will try to impart both theology and secular education to students, KTC Trustee chairman, Rev. Sam Sun added.
The first Kachin Bible School (now KTC in Nawng Nang) was founded in June 6, 1932 in Bhamo, before Burma got independence, because of the dedicated service of three Kachin leaders, Pangmu Duwa Lahpai Zau Tu, Maran Robin and Labya De.
From 1972 to now, the KTC has trained a total of 3,817 students, where 2,220 are men and 1,597 are women, KTC records say.
Over 86 million kyats was spent in the seven-day Diamond Jubilee celebrations and a Diamond Jubilee Hall costing over 200 million kyats was inaugurated during the ceremony, said Rev. Mading Zung Kyang, Chief of Fund Finding and Baptizing Committee
The celebrations were attended by over 20,000 people including the key guest of KBC, Rev. Tom Steller, a deputy pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in the United States of America, the root Baptist missionary of KBC, the KTC leaders said.
India set to sign transport project agreement with Myanmar
The Economic Time
NEW DELHI: Brushing aside pressures from the international community, India is set to sign an agreement for an ambitious multi-modal transport project with Myanmar during the visit of the second most powerful man in the country's ruling military junta here from Wednesday.
Economic cooperation, connectivity, security and energy are among the issues that are expected to dominate the talks that Vice Senior General Maung Aye will hold with Indian leaders, sources told PTI.
Myanmar's movement towards democracy will also come up for discussion.
The highlight of the visit is expected to be the signing of the USD 110 million Kaladan multi-modal transport project that will provide easier access to North East region besides alternate connectivity between India and Myanmar, bypassing Bangladesh.
The project envisages connectivity between Indian ports on the eastern seaboard and Sittwe Port in Myanmar and then through riverine transport and by road to Mizoram.
India will contribute about USD 100 million as well as be liable for any cost overruns while Myanmar will contribute USD 10 million and free land for the project, sources said.
After six rounds of talks since 2003, the two sides have already initialed the Draft Framework Agreement on the Project, Draft Protocol on Facilitation of Transit Transport, Draft Protocol on Financial Arrangements and Draft Protocol on Joint Maintenance and Administration.
NEW DELHI: Brushing aside pressures from the international community, India is set to sign an agreement for an ambitious multi-modal transport project with Myanmar during the visit of the second most powerful man in the country's ruling military junta here from Wednesday.
Economic cooperation, connectivity, security and energy are among the issues that are expected to dominate the talks that Vice Senior General Maung Aye will hold with Indian leaders, sources told PTI.
Myanmar's movement towards democracy will also come up for discussion.
The highlight of the visit is expected to be the signing of the USD 110 million Kaladan multi-modal transport project that will provide easier access to North East region besides alternate connectivity between India and Myanmar, bypassing Bangladesh.
The project envisages connectivity between Indian ports on the eastern seaboard and Sittwe Port in Myanmar and then through riverine transport and by road to Mizoram.
India will contribute about USD 100 million as well as be liable for any cost overruns while Myanmar will contribute USD 10 million and free land for the project, sources said.
After six rounds of talks since 2003, the two sides have already initialed the Draft Framework Agreement on the Project, Draft Protocol on Facilitation of Transit Transport, Draft Protocol on Financial Arrangements and Draft Protocol on Joint Maintenance and Administration.
Monks reflect warrior legacy
By DENIS D. GRAY
BANGKOK, Thailand Ñ Buddhist monks hurling rocks at Chinese in Tibet, or peacefully massing against Myanmar's military, can strike jarring notes.
These scenes run counter to Buddhism's philosophy of shunning politics and embracing even bitter enemies Ñ something the faith has adhered to, with some tumultuous exceptions, through its 2,500-year history.
But political activism and occasional eruptions of violence have become increasingly common in Asia's Buddhist societies as they variously struggle against foreign domination, oppressive regimes, social injustice and environmental destruction.
More monks and nuns are moving out of their monasteries and into slums and rice paddies Ñ and sometimes into streets filled with tear gas and gunfire.
"In modern times, preaching is not enough. Monks must act to improve society, to remove evil," says Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile and a high-ranking lama.
"There is the responsibility of every individual, monks and lay people, to act for the betterment of society," he told The Associated Press in Dharmsala, India, discussing protests in Tibet this month that were initiated by monks.
In widespread protests over the past three weeks, crimson-robed monks Ñ some charging helmeted troops and throwing rocks Ñ have joined with ordinary citizens who unfurled Tibetan flags and demanded independence from China. Beijing's official death toll from the rioting in Lhasa is 22, but the exiled government of the Dalai Lama says 140 Tibetans were killed there and in Tibetan communities in western China.
Bloodshed stained last fall's pro-democracy uprising in Myanmar, dubbed the "Saffron Revolution" after the color of the robes of monks who led nonviolent protests against the country's oppressive military regime.
In Thailand, followers of a Buddhist sect took part in street demonstrations which led to the ouster of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra two years ago.
In Sri Lanka, the ultra-nationalist Jathika Hela Urumaya party, led by monks, has pushed for using brute force against the country's Tamil rebels. In 1959 a monk assassinated a prime minister over a law giving some protection to the Tamil language.
Indeed, the activism reflects another side of Buddhist history. Despite the faith's image of passivity, an aggressive strain has long existed, especially in the Mahayana school of Buddhism, practiced in Japan, Korea, China and Tibet.
The sohei, monks in Japan, fought pitched battles with one another and with secular clans for more than 600 years until about 1600. China's Shaolin Temple, a martial arts center to this day, was allowed to retain warrior monks from the 7th century by emperors who sometimes used them to put down rebellions and banditry.
BANGKOK, Thailand Ñ Buddhist monks hurling rocks at Chinese in Tibet, or peacefully massing against Myanmar's military, can strike jarring notes.
These scenes run counter to Buddhism's philosophy of shunning politics and embracing even bitter enemies Ñ something the faith has adhered to, with some tumultuous exceptions, through its 2,500-year history.
But political activism and occasional eruptions of violence have become increasingly common in Asia's Buddhist societies as they variously struggle against foreign domination, oppressive regimes, social injustice and environmental destruction.
More monks and nuns are moving out of their monasteries and into slums and rice paddies Ñ and sometimes into streets filled with tear gas and gunfire.
"In modern times, preaching is not enough. Monks must act to improve society, to remove evil," says Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile and a high-ranking lama.
"There is the responsibility of every individual, monks and lay people, to act for the betterment of society," he told The Associated Press in Dharmsala, India, discussing protests in Tibet this month that were initiated by monks.
In widespread protests over the past three weeks, crimson-robed monks Ñ some charging helmeted troops and throwing rocks Ñ have joined with ordinary citizens who unfurled Tibetan flags and demanded independence from China. Beijing's official death toll from the rioting in Lhasa is 22, but the exiled government of the Dalai Lama says 140 Tibetans were killed there and in Tibetan communities in western China.
Bloodshed stained last fall's pro-democracy uprising in Myanmar, dubbed the "Saffron Revolution" after the color of the robes of monks who led nonviolent protests against the country's oppressive military regime.
In Thailand, followers of a Buddhist sect took part in street demonstrations which led to the ouster of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra two years ago.
In Sri Lanka, the ultra-nationalist Jathika Hela Urumaya party, led by monks, has pushed for using brute force against the country's Tamil rebels. In 1959 a monk assassinated a prime minister over a law giving some protection to the Tamil language.
Indeed, the activism reflects another side of Buddhist history. Despite the faith's image of passivity, an aggressive strain has long existed, especially in the Mahayana school of Buddhism, practiced in Japan, Korea, China and Tibet.
The sohei, monks in Japan, fought pitched battles with one another and with secular clans for more than 600 years until about 1600. China's Shaolin Temple, a martial arts center to this day, was allowed to retain warrior monks from the 7th century by emperors who sometimes used them to put down rebellions and banditry.
နအဖ ဒုတိယ စစ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ၾကီး ေမာင္ေအး အိႏၵိယသို႕ သြားေရာက္ လည္ပတ္မည္
ေမာင္ရမၼာ(နိရဥၥရာ) နအဖ ဒုတိယစစ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေမာင္ေအးသည္ မၾကာမီ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံသို႕ တရား၀င္သြားေရာက္မည္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ယေန႕ ေနျပည္ေတာ္မွ တရား၀င္ သတင္း ထုတ္ျပန္သည္။
သြားေရာက္မည့္ရက္ကို တရား၀င္အေသးစိတ္ထုတ္ေဖၚေျပာၾကားျခင္းမရွိေသာ္လည္း ရက္အနည္းငယ္ အတြင္း သြားေရာက္လည္ပတ္မည္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း နအဖ အရာရွိမ်ားက ေျပာဆိုသည္။
ေမာင္ေအးမွာ အိႏၵိယနိုင္ငံ ဒုသမၼတ မိုဟာမတ္ ဟာမိအန္ဆာရီ၏ ဖိတ္ၾကားခ်က္အရ သြားေရာက္လည္ပတ္မည့္ ေလးေယာက္ေျမာက္ နအဖ ထိပ္ပိုင္း စစ္အရာရွိၾကီး တဦးျဖစ္သည္။
အဆိုပါ ခရီးစဥ္တြင္ ၂၀၀၄ ခုႏွစ္က နအဖ စစ္အစိုးရေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးၾကီး သန္းေရႊ နယူးေဒလီသို႕လာေရာက္ခဲ့စဥ္ အေမရိကန္ေဒၚလာ သန္းေပါင္း ၁၃၀-ကုန္က်မည့္ စစ္ေတြဆိပ္ကမ္း မြန္းမံတည္ေဆာက္ေရးႏွင့္ အိႏၵိယအေရွ႕ေျမာက္ျပည္နယ္မ်ားသို႕ ကုန္ပစၥည္းတင္ပို႕ရန္ အတြက္ ကုလားတန္ျမစ္ေၾကာင္း တုိးတက္ဖြံျဖိဳးေရး လုပ္ငန္းစီမံကိန္း သေဘာတူ စာခ်ဳပ္ကို လက္မွတ္ေရးထိုးရန္ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ရေၾကာင္း အိႏၵိယ PTI သတင္းတပုဒ္တြင္ ေဖၚျပထားသည္။
အလားတူ အဆိုပါ စီမံကိန္း အေကာင္အထည္ ေဖၚေဆာင္ေရးကို ယခုႏွစ္ ဇႏၷ၀ါရီလ အတြင္း အိႏၵိယ ႏိုင္ငံသို႕ နအဖ ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ၾကီး ဦးဥာဏ္၀င္း သြားေရာက္ခဲ့စဥ္ကလည္း တိုင္ပင္ေဆြးေႏြး ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။
ယခုႏွစ္ မတ္လအတြင္း နယူးေဒလီတြင္ က်င္းပေသာ ၁၄-ၾကိမ္ေျမာက္ ႏွစ္ပတ္လည္ ျပည္ထဲေရး အတြင္း၀န္ အဆင့္ အစည္းအေ၀းတြင္ နအဖ ဒုတိယျပည္ထဲေရး၀န္ၾကီး ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ ဖုန္းေဆြႏွင့္ အိႏၵိယ ျပည္ထဲေရးအတြင္း၀န္ မာဒူကာဂူပတာတို႕ ႏွစ္ႏိုင္ငံအၾကား အဆိုပါစီမံကိန္းအေကာင္အထည္ေဖၚ ေဆာင္ေရး ပိုမိုတိုးတက္ ေကာင္းမြန္ေစရန္ အတြက္ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကသည္။
၂၀၀၆ မတ္လတြင္ အိႏိၵိယ သမၼတ APJ အဘဒူလ္ ကာလန္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသို႕ လာေရာက္လည္ပတ္စဥ္ အဆိုပါ ကုလားတန္ျမစ္ေၾကာင္း သယ္ယူပို႕ေဆာင္ေရး လုုပ္ငန္း စီမံကိန္းတြင္ ခ်င္းျပည္နယ္ ပလက္၀ နယ္စပ္ ဆက္သြယ္ေရးလမ္း ျမင့္တင္ေရး အတြက္ အေမရိကန္ ေဒၚလာ ၁၀-သန္း တိုးခ်ဲ႕ခဲ့သည္။
အျခားတဘက္တြင္လည္း အဆိုပါစီမံကိန္းတြင္ ခ်င္းျပည္နယ္ အေနာက္ေျမာက္ ေဒသအတြင္း ေရေၾကာင္း လမ္းဆက္သြယ္ေရး အတြက္ မရစ္၀တြင္ ဆိပ္ကမ္း ဆည္ေဆာက္ေရး ကိစၥႏွင့္ မီဇူရမ္ႏွင့္ ခ်င္းျပည္နယ္ ကားလမ္းဆက္သြယ္ေရး အစိတ္အပိုင္းႏွစ္ခုလံုးကိုလည္း တိုးျမင့္လုပ္ေဆာင္သြားမည္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။
သြားေရာက္မည့္ရက္ကို တရား၀င္အေသးစိတ္ထုတ္ေဖၚေျပာၾကားျခင္းမရွိေသာ္လည္း ရက္အနည္းငယ္ အတြင္း သြားေရာက္လည္ပတ္မည္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း နအဖ အရာရွိမ်ားက ေျပာဆိုသည္။
ေမာင္ေအးမွာ အိႏၵိယနိုင္ငံ ဒုသမၼတ မိုဟာမတ္ ဟာမိအန္ဆာရီ၏ ဖိတ္ၾကားခ်က္အရ သြားေရာက္လည္ပတ္မည့္ ေလးေယာက္ေျမာက္ နအဖ ထိပ္ပိုင္း စစ္အရာရွိၾကီး တဦးျဖစ္သည္။
အဆိုပါ ခရီးစဥ္တြင္ ၂၀၀၄ ခုႏွစ္က နအဖ စစ္အစိုးရေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးၾကီး သန္းေရႊ နယူးေဒလီသို႕လာေရာက္ခဲ့စဥ္ အေမရိကန္ေဒၚလာ သန္းေပါင္း ၁၃၀-ကုန္က်မည့္ စစ္ေတြဆိပ္ကမ္း မြန္းမံတည္ေဆာက္ေရးႏွင့္ အိႏၵိယအေရွ႕ေျမာက္ျပည္နယ္မ်ားသို႕ ကုန္ပစၥည္းတင္ပို႕ရန္ အတြက္ ကုလားတန္ျမစ္ေၾကာင္း တုိးတက္ဖြံျဖိဳးေရး လုပ္ငန္းစီမံကိန္း သေဘာတူ စာခ်ဳပ္ကို လက္မွတ္ေရးထိုးရန္ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ရေၾကာင္း အိႏၵိယ PTI သတင္းတပုဒ္တြင္ ေဖၚျပထားသည္။
အလားတူ အဆိုပါ စီမံကိန္း အေကာင္အထည္ ေဖၚေဆာင္ေရးကို ယခုႏွစ္ ဇႏၷ၀ါရီလ အတြင္း အိႏၵိယ ႏိုင္ငံသို႕ နအဖ ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ၾကီး ဦးဥာဏ္၀င္း သြားေရာက္ခဲ့စဥ္ကလည္း တိုင္ပင္ေဆြးေႏြး ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။
ယခုႏွစ္ မတ္လအတြင္း နယူးေဒလီတြင္ က်င္းပေသာ ၁၄-ၾကိမ္ေျမာက္ ႏွစ္ပတ္လည္ ျပည္ထဲေရး အတြင္း၀န္ အဆင့္ အစည္းအေ၀းတြင္ နအဖ ဒုတိယျပည္ထဲေရး၀န္ၾကီး ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ ဖုန္းေဆြႏွင့္ အိႏၵိယ ျပည္ထဲေရးအတြင္း၀န္ မာဒူကာဂူပတာတို႕ ႏွစ္ႏိုင္ငံအၾကား အဆိုပါစီမံကိန္းအေကာင္အထည္ေဖၚ ေဆာင္ေရး ပိုမိုတိုးတက္ ေကာင္းမြန္ေစရန္ အတြက္ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကသည္။
၂၀၀၆ မတ္လတြင္ အိႏိၵိယ သမၼတ APJ အဘဒူလ္ ကာလန္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသို႕ လာေရာက္လည္ပတ္စဥ္ အဆိုပါ ကုလားတန္ျမစ္ေၾကာင္း သယ္ယူပို႕ေဆာင္ေရး လုုပ္ငန္း စီမံကိန္းတြင္ ခ်င္းျပည္နယ္ ပလက္၀ နယ္စပ္ ဆက္သြယ္ေရးလမ္း ျမင့္တင္ေရး အတြက္ အေမရိကန္ ေဒၚလာ ၁၀-သန္း တိုးခ်ဲ႕ခဲ့သည္။
အျခားတဘက္တြင္လည္း အဆိုပါစီမံကိန္းတြင္ ခ်င္းျပည္နယ္ အေနာက္ေျမာက္ ေဒသအတြင္း ေရေၾကာင္း လမ္းဆက္သြယ္ေရး အတြက္ မရစ္၀တြင္ ဆိပ္ကမ္း ဆည္ေဆာက္ေရး ကိစၥႏွင့္ မီဇူရမ္ႏွင့္ ခ်င္းျပည္နယ္ ကားလမ္းဆက္သြယ္ေရး အစိတ္အပိုင္းႏွစ္ခုလံုးကိုလည္း တိုးျမင့္လုပ္ေဆာင္သြားမည္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။
16 Shops Gutted in Maungdaw Fire
Narinjara News
Maungdaw: A fire gutted 16 shops on Friday in a market located on the outskirts of Maungdaw, a western Burmese border town, and properties worth over 10 million kyat were lost in the fire, reports a police officer from the town.
The fire broke out in a shop owned by U Ari at Ba Gon Na market at 10:30 pm on 28 March.
A witness said the fire burned for nearly two hours because the local people were unable to extinguish it quickly for lack of proper equipment. Nasaka forces eventually managed to put out the devastating blaze with the help of locals around 12:30 pm.
On shop owner said the fire originated from U Ari's shop at the market, but there was no emergency plan in place to deal with fires if they broke out at the market. Now cash and valuables worth over 10 million kyat have been destroyed by the fire.
The owner of the shop where the blaze originated is currently hiding in an unknown location out fear that the authorities will arrest him and charge him for the fire.
Maungdaw: A fire gutted 16 shops on Friday in a market located on the outskirts of Maungdaw, a western Burmese border town, and properties worth over 10 million kyat were lost in the fire, reports a police officer from the town.
The fire broke out in a shop owned by U Ari at Ba Gon Na market at 10:30 pm on 28 March.
A witness said the fire burned for nearly two hours because the local people were unable to extinguish it quickly for lack of proper equipment. Nasaka forces eventually managed to put out the devastating blaze with the help of locals around 12:30 pm.
On shop owner said the fire originated from U Ari's shop at the market, but there was no emergency plan in place to deal with fires if they broke out at the market. Now cash and valuables worth over 10 million kyat have been destroyed by the fire.
The owner of the shop where the blaze originated is currently hiding in an unknown location out fear that the authorities will arrest him and charge him for the fire.
သာသနာေရးဦးစီးဌာနတြင္ ေငြမရွိေသာေၾကာင့္ စာေမးပြဲ ေျဖဆိုမည့္ ရဟန္းေတာ္မ်ား ဆြမ္းအတြက္ အဖြဲ႕မ်ားဖြဲ႕ျပီး ေငြေကာက္
Narinjara News
ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ ေမာင္ေတာျမိဳ႕နယ္တြင္ မနက္ျဖန္တြင္ စတင္စာေမးပြဲ ေျဖဆိုၾကမည့္ ရဟန္းေတာ္ ၅၁ ပါးအတြက္ ဆြမ္းႏွင့္ လိုအပ္ေသာ တျခား ေ၀ယ်ာကိစၥ မ်ားအတြက္ ေမာင္ေတာ ခရိုင္တာ၀န္ရွိသူမ်ားမွ အဖြဲ႕မ်ား ဖြဲ႕စည္းျပီး အရပ္သားမ်ားထံက ေငြေကာက္ေနေၾကာင္း သတင္းရရွိသည္။
အမည္မေဖၚလိုသူ အရာရွိ တဦး အေျပာအရ ေမာင္ေတာ အမွတ္ ၁ ရပ္ကြက္တြင္ ျမိဳ႕နယ္ ဦးစီး အရာရွိ ဦးငမဲေခ် ဦးေဆာင္ေသာ အဖြဲ႕၀င္ ၈ ဦးမွ၎၊ အမွတ္ ၃ ရပ္ကြက္တြင္ ဒုအေထြေထြ ဦးစီးမွဳး ဦးေက်ာ္မ်ိဳးထြန္း ဦးေဆာင္ေသာ အဖြဲ႕ ၀င္ ၉ ဦးပါ အဖြဲ႕မွ၎၊ အမွတ္ ၄ ရပ္ကြက္တြင္ စည္ပင္ ဦးစီး အရာရွိ ဦးလွေဖၚဇံ ဦးေဆာင္ေသာ အဖြဲ႕၀င္ ရွစ္ဦးပါေသာ အဖြဲ႕မွ၎ တအိမ္၀င္ထြက္ လွည့္လည္ျပီး ေငြေကာက္ခံေနသည္ဟု ေျပာသည္။
၎အျပင္ တျခားရပ္ကြက္မ်ား၊ စီးပြားေရး လုပ္ငန္းရွင္မ်ားႏွင့္ ခ်မ္းသာသူမ်ား ထံမွလည္း အသစ္ေရာက္ရွိလာေသာ ေမာင္ေတာျမိဳ႕နယ္ မယက ဥကၠဌ ဦးရဲမင္းေအာင္၏ လက္မွတ္ျဖင့္ ရဟန္းေတာ္မ်ား ဆြမ္းေကၽြးရန္ အတြက္ ေငြမ်ားေတာင္းခံေနေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။
အမည္မေဖၚလိုသူ ဒက္ရြာမွ အရပ္သားတဦးက “ပိုက္ဆံ တေထာင္ကေန တသိန္းထိ သူတို႕ေကာက္တယ္လို႕ ၾကားေၾကာင္း၊ သူမိသားစုမွ ၂၅၀၀ က်ပ္ေပးလိုက္ရေၾကာင္း၊ ေစတနာ စာေရးတန္ အေနျဖင့္ ေကာက္ခံျခင္း ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း” ေျပာသည္။
အဆိုပါ ေငြမ်ားအား ဧျပီလ ၂၉ ရက္ေန႕က စတင္ေကာက္ခံျခင္း ျဖစ္ျပီး ယေန႕ တနဂၤေႏြေန႕တြင္ ေနာက္ဆံုးထား မယက ဥကၠဌ အသစ္ ရဲမင္းေအာင္ထံ အဆိုပါ ေငြမ်ားအား ေပးအပ္ရမည္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ေငြေကာက္ရာတြင္ ပါ၀င္သူ အမည္မေဖၚလိုသူ အရာရွိတဦးက နိရဥၥရာသို႕ ဖံုးျဖင့္ေျပာသည္။
ယခုနွစ္တြင္ ပဌမငယ္မွ ပဌမၾကီးထိ ရဟန္းေတာ္ ၅၁ ပါး စာေမးပြဲ ေျဖဆိုရန္ ေမာင္ေတာျမိဳ႕နယ္တြင္ စာရင္းသြင္းထားျပီး ယမန္ႏွစ္က ၇၀ ခန္႕ေျဖဆိုခဲ့သျဖင့္ အနည္းငယ္ခန္႕ ေလ်ာ့က်သြားခဲ့ေၾကာင္း၊ ေမာင္ေတာျမိဳ႕တြင္ ဗုဒၶဘာသာ၀င္မ်ားမွာ လူနည္းစုျဖစ္သျဖင့္ အစိုးရနွင့္ ပူးေပါင္းျပီး ဘာသာေရး လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားကိုသာ လုပ္ေဆာင္သူ ရဟန္းေတာ္မ်ားသာ ရွိျပီး စစ္အစိုးရကို ဆန္႕က်င္သူ ရဟန္းေတာ္မွာ ေမာင္ေတာတြင္ မရွိေၾကာင္း ေမာင္ေတာက ရဟန္းေတာ္တပါးက ေျပာသည္။
ယခု ေမာင္ေတာခရို္င္တာ၀န္ရွိသူမ်ားက ေကာက္ခံေနေသာ ေငြမ်ားမွာ စာေျဖ ရဟန္းေတာ္ ၅၁ ပါးအ၀င္ စာေမးပြဲအား ၾကီးၾကပ္မည့္ ဆရာေတာ္ ၁၃ ပါးအတြက္ သံုးစြဲရန္ ေငြမ်ား ျဖစ္ျပီး ျမိဳ႕နယ္ သာသနာေရး ဦးစီးဌာနတြင္ ေငြမရွိေသာေၾကာင့္ ယခုကဲ့သို႕ ရဟန္းေတာ္မ်ား စာေမးပြဲအတြက္ အရပ္သားမ်ားထံက ေစတနာ စာေရးတန္ သေဘာျဖင့္ ေငြေကာက္ခံျခင္း ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။
ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ ေမာင္ေတာျမိဳ႕နယ္တြင္ မနက္ျဖန္တြင္ စတင္စာေမးပြဲ ေျဖဆိုၾကမည့္ ရဟန္းေတာ္ ၅၁ ပါးအတြက္ ဆြမ္းႏွင့္ လိုအပ္ေသာ တျခား ေ၀ယ်ာကိစၥ မ်ားအတြက္ ေမာင္ေတာ ခရိုင္တာ၀န္ရွိသူမ်ားမွ အဖြဲ႕မ်ား ဖြဲ႕စည္းျပီး အရပ္သားမ်ားထံက ေငြေကာက္ေနေၾကာင္း သတင္းရရွိသည္။အမည္မေဖၚလိုသူ အရာရွိ တဦး အေျပာအရ ေမာင္ေတာ အမွတ္ ၁ ရပ္ကြက္တြင္ ျမိဳ႕နယ္ ဦးစီး အရာရွိ ဦးငမဲေခ် ဦးေဆာင္ေသာ အဖြဲ႕၀င္ ၈ ဦးမွ၎၊ အမွတ္ ၃ ရပ္ကြက္တြင္ ဒုအေထြေထြ ဦးစီးမွဳး ဦးေက်ာ္မ်ိဳးထြန္း ဦးေဆာင္ေသာ အဖြဲ႕ ၀င္ ၉ ဦးပါ အဖြဲ႕မွ၎၊ အမွတ္ ၄ ရပ္ကြက္တြင္ စည္ပင္ ဦးစီး အရာရွိ ဦးလွေဖၚဇံ ဦးေဆာင္ေသာ အဖြဲ႕၀င္ ရွစ္ဦးပါေသာ အဖြဲ႕မွ၎ တအိမ္၀င္ထြက္ လွည့္လည္ျပီး ေငြေကာက္ခံေနသည္ဟု ေျပာသည္။
၎အျပင္ တျခားရပ္ကြက္မ်ား၊ စီးပြားေရး လုပ္ငန္းရွင္မ်ားႏွင့္ ခ်မ္းသာသူမ်ား ထံမွလည္း အသစ္ေရာက္ရွိလာေသာ ေမာင္ေတာျမိဳ႕နယ္ မယက ဥကၠဌ ဦးရဲမင္းေအာင္၏ လက္မွတ္ျဖင့္ ရဟန္းေတာ္မ်ား ဆြမ္းေကၽြးရန္ အတြက္ ေငြမ်ားေတာင္းခံေနေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။
အမည္မေဖၚလိုသူ ဒက္ရြာမွ အရပ္သားတဦးက “ပိုက္ဆံ တေထာင္ကေန တသိန္းထိ သူတို႕ေကာက္တယ္လို႕ ၾကားေၾကာင္း၊ သူမိသားစုမွ ၂၅၀၀ က်ပ္ေပးလိုက္ရေၾကာင္း၊ ေစတနာ စာေရးတန္ အေနျဖင့္ ေကာက္ခံျခင္း ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း” ေျပာသည္။
အဆိုပါ ေငြမ်ားအား ဧျပီလ ၂၉ ရက္ေန႕က စတင္ေကာက္ခံျခင္း ျဖစ္ျပီး ယေန႕ တနဂၤေႏြေန႕တြင္ ေနာက္ဆံုးထား မယက ဥကၠဌ အသစ္ ရဲမင္းေအာင္ထံ အဆိုပါ ေငြမ်ားအား ေပးအပ္ရမည္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ေငြေကာက္ရာတြင္ ပါ၀င္သူ အမည္မေဖၚလိုသူ အရာရွိတဦးက နိရဥၥရာသို႕ ဖံုးျဖင့္ေျပာသည္။
ယခုနွစ္တြင္ ပဌမငယ္မွ ပဌမၾကီးထိ ရဟန္းေတာ္ ၅၁ ပါး စာေမးပြဲ ေျဖဆိုရန္ ေမာင္ေတာျမိဳ႕နယ္တြင္ စာရင္းသြင္းထားျပီး ယမန္ႏွစ္က ၇၀ ခန္႕ေျဖဆိုခဲ့သျဖင့္ အနည္းငယ္ခန္႕ ေလ်ာ့က်သြားခဲ့ေၾကာင္း၊ ေမာင္ေတာျမိဳ႕တြင္ ဗုဒၶဘာသာ၀င္မ်ားမွာ လူနည္းစုျဖစ္သျဖင့္ အစိုးရနွင့္ ပူးေပါင္းျပီး ဘာသာေရး လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားကိုသာ လုပ္ေဆာင္သူ ရဟန္းေတာ္မ်ားသာ ရွိျပီး စစ္အစိုးရကို ဆန္႕က်င္သူ ရဟန္းေတာ္မွာ ေမာင္ေတာတြင္ မရွိေၾကာင္း ေမာင္ေတာက ရဟန္းေတာ္တပါးက ေျပာသည္။
ယခု ေမာင္ေတာခရို္င္တာ၀န္ရွိသူမ်ားက ေကာက္ခံေနေသာ ေငြမ်ားမွာ စာေျဖ ရဟန္းေတာ္ ၅၁ ပါးအ၀င္ စာေမးပြဲအား ၾကီးၾကပ္မည့္ ဆရာေတာ္ ၁၃ ပါးအတြက္ သံုးစြဲရန္ ေငြမ်ား ျဖစ္ျပီး ျမိဳ႕နယ္ သာသနာေရး ဦးစီးဌာနတြင္ ေငြမရွိေသာေၾကာင့္ ယခုကဲ့သို႕ ရဟန္းေတာ္မ်ား စာေမးပြဲအတြက္ အရပ္သားမ်ားထံက ေစတနာ စာေရးတန္ သေဘာျဖင့္ ေငြေကာက္ခံျခင္း ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။
Donation Collected for Monks' Exam
Narinjara News
Maungdaw: The examination for Buddhist monks sponsored by the military government will start tomorrow throughout Arakan State, and authorities are currently collecting donations from local residents to offer food to the examinees, said an official from Maungdaw on the condition of anonymity.
He said, "We collected the donation from local residents in Maungdaw yesterday to offer food to the monk examinees, and the collection will continue until this evening."
Maungdaw's district council recently formed three groups along with many government officials to collect donations from locals in Maungdaw.
A resident from Maungdaw said, "Yes, a group of government officials led by U Nga Mae Chay, director of Maungdaw Township government directorate, has been collecting donations from our ward number one, and there are eight officials in the group."
Similarly, an eight-member team led by U Hla Paw Zan, who is an official from Maungdaw Township municipal council, has been collecting donations from residents in ward four, while a nine-member team led by Kyaw Myo Tun has been collecting donations from ward number three.
The collections will be handed over to U Ray Min Aung, a newly appointed Maungdaw Township chairman according to the deadline set by the authority, said one source.
"It is a duty of the township religious department in Maungdaw to offer food to the monk examinees, but the department does not have enough in the budget to make the offering during the exam period. So the authority arranged to collect the donations from local residents," said the resident.
In Maungdaw Township, 51 monks will participate in the examination this year, and 13 abbots will supervise the exam. Because of this, the authority is collecting funds from local residents to support food offerings to the monks. The exam will end next Monday.
The resident said, "We are Buddhist and it is culture to donate to monks. People in Maungdaw donated the fund to the collectors willingly, but it is impossible to donate whenever the authority asks for it, because the people are suffering currently from a continued decline in the economy in the region."
According to local residents, it is typical for the Burmese military to collect funds from locals to establish pagodas and temples, but the military authorities often use the funds to pay for inscriptions to record their own names for posterity.
Maungdaw: The examination for Buddhist monks sponsored by the military government will start tomorrow throughout Arakan State, and authorities are currently collecting donations from local residents to offer food to the examinees, said an official from Maungdaw on the condition of anonymity.He said, "We collected the donation from local residents in Maungdaw yesterday to offer food to the monk examinees, and the collection will continue until this evening."
Maungdaw's district council recently formed three groups along with many government officials to collect donations from locals in Maungdaw.
A resident from Maungdaw said, "Yes, a group of government officials led by U Nga Mae Chay, director of Maungdaw Township government directorate, has been collecting donations from our ward number one, and there are eight officials in the group."
Similarly, an eight-member team led by U Hla Paw Zan, who is an official from Maungdaw Township municipal council, has been collecting donations from residents in ward four, while a nine-member team led by Kyaw Myo Tun has been collecting donations from ward number three.
The collections will be handed over to U Ray Min Aung, a newly appointed Maungdaw Township chairman according to the deadline set by the authority, said one source.
"It is a duty of the township religious department in Maungdaw to offer food to the monk examinees, but the department does not have enough in the budget to make the offering during the exam period. So the authority arranged to collect the donations from local residents," said the resident.
In Maungdaw Township, 51 monks will participate in the examination this year, and 13 abbots will supervise the exam. Because of this, the authority is collecting funds from local residents to support food offerings to the monks. The exam will end next Monday.
The resident said, "We are Buddhist and it is culture to donate to monks. People in Maungdaw donated the fund to the collectors willingly, but it is impossible to donate whenever the authority asks for it, because the people are suffering currently from a continued decline in the economy in the region."
According to local residents, it is typical for the Burmese military to collect funds from locals to establish pagodas and temples, but the military authorities often use the funds to pay for inscriptions to record their own names for posterity.
Around the World: Family travel in Myanmar
By jackie Burrell
THE TRAVELERS: Parent educator Ksenija Soster Olmer, civil engineer Miroslav Olmer and their daughters, Solana, 18, and Naya, 15.
THE TREK IN A SEC: This Orinda family spent two weeks traveling in Myanmar (Burma), wandering through gorgeous pagodas, floating gardens, colorful tribal markets and deserted beaches. But the high point of the trip was visiting orphanages in the highlands for what would become the family's philanthropic mission, the Hungry Duckling Project.
BEST FAMILY-FRIENDLY HOTEL: The Amazing Nyaung Shwe near Inle Lake. "You have to cross a small bridge over a moat to the small hotel's lobby," says Ksenija. "The rooms are simple, but bright with new wooden furniture and western private bathrooms. Every night two beautiful ladies come in, spray under the beds for mosquitoes and literally tuck you in with the crisp white bedding. In the morning you are awoken by the bells and monk prayers from a monastery around the corner."
MOST MEMORABLE MEAL: Most food is very simple with lots of rice, but the Olmers' favorite treat was the doughy breakfast sweet, pronounced Ee-chaq-we — a cross between a doughnut and a churro — fried up by street vendors at 6 a.m. for about 5 cents.
COOLEST SIGHTSEEING: "There is much to see in Myanmar," says Ksenija, "but the best part is there are so few tourists that you will have it all to yourself. Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon is absolutely incredible. In the late afternoon as the rays of the setting sun deepen the gleam of the golden spires, stroll barefoot around the marble courtyard, one with the local crowd of novice monks in orange robes, nuns in pink, whole extended families. As the sun sets, descend the long staircase and, as you emerge from the covered walkway, look back to see literally thousands upon thousands of birds pouring out of the pagoda like a river in the sky. The spectacle goes on for 40 minutes every evening with the birds returning at dawn."
"The highlight of our trip was a visit to two orphanages, about an hour from the lake, where we were able to bring in school supplies and toiletries for each child, interact with the children and purchase many necessities that will improve their daily life and their future," says Ksenija. "It was a transforming experience for our whole family."
TRAVEL TIPS:
1. Hire an inexpensive car with driver. There are no rental cars available, and you really wouldn't want to try to attempt to drive on the notoriously disintegrating roads.
2. Make sure your tetanus shots are current, and consider also getting hepatitis, yellow fever and cholera shots, and if you're traveling in the hot months, anti-malarial medication.
THE TRAVELERS: Parent educator Ksenija Soster Olmer, civil engineer Miroslav Olmer and their daughters, Solana, 18, and Naya, 15.
THE TREK IN A SEC: This Orinda family spent two weeks traveling in Myanmar (Burma), wandering through gorgeous pagodas, floating gardens, colorful tribal markets and deserted beaches. But the high point of the trip was visiting orphanages in the highlands for what would become the family's philanthropic mission, the Hungry Duckling Project.
BEST FAMILY-FRIENDLY HOTEL: The Amazing Nyaung Shwe near Inle Lake. "You have to cross a small bridge over a moat to the small hotel's lobby," says Ksenija. "The rooms are simple, but bright with new wooden furniture and western private bathrooms. Every night two beautiful ladies come in, spray under the beds for mosquitoes and literally tuck you in with the crisp white bedding. In the morning you are awoken by the bells and monk prayers from a monastery around the corner."
MOST MEMORABLE MEAL: Most food is very simple with lots of rice, but the Olmers' favorite treat was the doughy breakfast sweet, pronounced Ee-chaq-we — a cross between a doughnut and a churro — fried up by street vendors at 6 a.m. for about 5 cents.
COOLEST SIGHTSEEING: "There is much to see in Myanmar," says Ksenija, "but the best part is there are so few tourists that you will have it all to yourself. Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon is absolutely incredible. In the late afternoon as the rays of the setting sun deepen the gleam of the golden spires, stroll barefoot around the marble courtyard, one with the local crowd of novice monks in orange robes, nuns in pink, whole extended families. As the sun sets, descend the long staircase and, as you emerge from the covered walkway, look back to see literally thousands upon thousands of birds pouring out of the pagoda like a river in the sky. The spectacle goes on for 40 minutes every evening with the birds returning at dawn."
"The highlight of our trip was a visit to two orphanages, about an hour from the lake, where we were able to bring in school supplies and toiletries for each child, interact with the children and purchase many necessities that will improve their daily life and their future," says Ksenija. "It was a transforming experience for our whole family."
TRAVEL TIPS:
1. Hire an inexpensive car with driver. There are no rental cars available, and you really wouldn't want to try to attempt to drive on the notoriously disintegrating roads.
2. Make sure your tetanus shots are current, and consider also getting hepatitis, yellow fever and cholera shots, and if you're traveling in the hot months, anti-malarial medication.
Rebel effort is self defense
By Anna Sussman
MAE SOT, Thailand (CNN) -- A Myanmar rebel leader killed in February said that his group is fighting for the preservation of the ethnic Karen minority, and for greater freedom throughout the southeast Asian nation.
Pa Doh Mahn Sha, the secretary-general of the Karen National Union (KNU), spoke in an interview three weeks before his death. He talked about his group's battle against Myanmar's military government.
"Our struggle is to protect ourselves from the military regime," he said. "They always attack our villages, burn down our villages, burn our food supplies. We want to stop fighting but we have no choice."
The government of Myanmar has blamed the KNU for waging attacks to destabilize the military junta.
Mahn Sha was shot and killed at his home in Thailand on February 14, a KNU official said. During one of the last interviews Mahn Sha granted to international journalists, he posed in front of the Karen national flag hanging in his living room, and talked about the future of the Karen people and the KNU's fight for autonomy.
He said the KNU's fighters would continue to battle the military junta in self-defense. "Our struggle is the same struggle as the monks who protested in September, the same struggle as [pro-democracy activist] Aung San Suu Kyi," he said. "Only in a different form, ours is a violent struggle, and we cannot give up until we have won."
The 64-year-old Mahn Sha was shot and killed in Mae Sot, Thailand, just across the border from Myanmar, a KNU official said. As Thai police investigate his killing, speculation has varied on how the Karen leader was killed.
There have been suggestions the killing may have been the result of internal differences within the rebel group. But some Karen blame Myanmar's military junta. The government has not commented.
The killing came just days after Myanmar announced plans for a referendum on a new constitution, to be followed by a general election in 2010 as part of its "road map to democracy." The plan has been denounced by pro-democracy opposition leaders.
A charismatic leader mourned
Mahn Sha was the KNU's third in command, but widely respected as the group's acting leader, said KNU Foreign Affairs spokesperson David Taw. His death is viewed by many as a major setback for the already struggling resistance movement.
"Mahn Sha [was] the strong guiding light," said Oscar Baaye, an ethnic Karen from the United States who was living with Mahn Sha prior to the rebel leader's death.
Mahn Sha had been described as a skilled mediator between different Karen factions, as well as other ethnic groups in the region and those working for democracy in Myanmar.
Mahn Sha's assassination was a blow to the entire democracy process," said Aung Zaw, editor of the Irrawaddy magazine. "A lot of people saw him as a potential figure to work on national reconciliation. He was able to connect the Karen struggle to the bigger picture," he said.
"He built bridges between all groups, that was one of his strengths," said Phil Thornton, author of Restless Souls, who has been reporting on the Karen for seven years and lives in Mae Sot.
Young Karen, in particular, said they felt inspired by Mahn Sha's approach to the democracy movement in Myanmar. "He had a very clear vision of our struggle," said Nicky Zaw, who attended Mahn Sha's funeral.
Dwindling numbers
The KNU's military, a ragtag group of soldiers who often wield World War II weaponry, has come under criticism, accused of recruiting child soldiers and carrying on what many have called an unwinnable war in civilian-occupied territory. The KNU has denied using child soldiers.
In his interview, Mahn Sha said that the KNU had the support and backing of the villagers who are caught in the middle of this conflict.
"The military regime might have big numbers, but they don't have the support of the people," he said, claiming that for every KNU soldier there are at least 25 government soldiers. "We can protect them because we have their support," he said.
Still, humanitarian groups such as the Free Burma Rangers regularly report attacks in Karen villages by the military regime carrying out counterinsurgency operations. Thousands have fled the fighting.
Prior to his death, Mahn Sha had just returned from a Karen Unity Seminar, in which Karen from around the world gathered at a secret headquarters in Myanmar to discuss the future of their movement and their people.
The KNU has been fighting the government of Myanmar for about 60 years, since shortly after the departure of the British from the country then known as Burma in 1948. It is one of the world's longest-running insurgencies.
But during the past decade, their troop numbers have dwindled from 20,000 to a mere 4,000, said David Taw. The KNU has suffered huge losses as members tire of war and resettle in places such as Europe and the United States, he said.
The group also still suffers from crippling infighting and another splinter group, a faction commonly called the Karen National Union Peace Council, recently broke ranks to sign a peace agreement with the government of Myanmar-- like many other groups.
While KNU leaders have been clear that they will continue their battle against Myanmar's military regime, they say the loss of Mahn Sha was a huge blow for the movement.
At Mahn Sha's funeral, more than 1,000 mourners gathered in the jungle inside Myanmar, including representatives from nearly every regional ethnic group and Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party.
MAE SOT, Thailand (CNN) -- A Myanmar rebel leader killed in February said that his group is fighting for the preservation of the ethnic Karen minority, and for greater freedom throughout the southeast Asian nation.Pa Doh Mahn Sha, the secretary-general of the Karen National Union (KNU), spoke in an interview three weeks before his death. He talked about his group's battle against Myanmar's military government.
"Our struggle is to protect ourselves from the military regime," he said. "They always attack our villages, burn down our villages, burn our food supplies. We want to stop fighting but we have no choice."
The government of Myanmar has blamed the KNU for waging attacks to destabilize the military junta.
Mahn Sha was shot and killed at his home in Thailand on February 14, a KNU official said. During one of the last interviews Mahn Sha granted to international journalists, he posed in front of the Karen national flag hanging in his living room, and talked about the future of the Karen people and the KNU's fight for autonomy.
He said the KNU's fighters would continue to battle the military junta in self-defense. "Our struggle is the same struggle as the monks who protested in September, the same struggle as [pro-democracy activist] Aung San Suu Kyi," he said. "Only in a different form, ours is a violent struggle, and we cannot give up until we have won."
The 64-year-old Mahn Sha was shot and killed in Mae Sot, Thailand, just across the border from Myanmar, a KNU official said. As Thai police investigate his killing, speculation has varied on how the Karen leader was killed.
There have been suggestions the killing may have been the result of internal differences within the rebel group. But some Karen blame Myanmar's military junta. The government has not commented.
The killing came just days after Myanmar announced plans for a referendum on a new constitution, to be followed by a general election in 2010 as part of its "road map to democracy." The plan has been denounced by pro-democracy opposition leaders.
A charismatic leader mourned
Mahn Sha was the KNU's third in command, but widely respected as the group's acting leader, said KNU Foreign Affairs spokesperson David Taw. His death is viewed by many as a major setback for the already struggling resistance movement.
"Mahn Sha [was] the strong guiding light," said Oscar Baaye, an ethnic Karen from the United States who was living with Mahn Sha prior to the rebel leader's death.
Mahn Sha had been described as a skilled mediator between different Karen factions, as well as other ethnic groups in the region and those working for democracy in Myanmar.
Mahn Sha's assassination was a blow to the entire democracy process," said Aung Zaw, editor of the Irrawaddy magazine. "A lot of people saw him as a potential figure to work on national reconciliation. He was able to connect the Karen struggle to the bigger picture," he said.
"He built bridges between all groups, that was one of his strengths," said Phil Thornton, author of Restless Souls, who has been reporting on the Karen for seven years and lives in Mae Sot.
Young Karen, in particular, said they felt inspired by Mahn Sha's approach to the democracy movement in Myanmar. "He had a very clear vision of our struggle," said Nicky Zaw, who attended Mahn Sha's funeral.
Dwindling numbers
The KNU's military, a ragtag group of soldiers who often wield World War II weaponry, has come under criticism, accused of recruiting child soldiers and carrying on what many have called an unwinnable war in civilian-occupied territory. The KNU has denied using child soldiers.
In his interview, Mahn Sha said that the KNU had the support and backing of the villagers who are caught in the middle of this conflict.
"The military regime might have big numbers, but they don't have the support of the people," he said, claiming that for every KNU soldier there are at least 25 government soldiers. "We can protect them because we have their support," he said.
Still, humanitarian groups such as the Free Burma Rangers regularly report attacks in Karen villages by the military regime carrying out counterinsurgency operations. Thousands have fled the fighting.
Prior to his death, Mahn Sha had just returned from a Karen Unity Seminar, in which Karen from around the world gathered at a secret headquarters in Myanmar to discuss the future of their movement and their people.
The KNU has been fighting the government of Myanmar for about 60 years, since shortly after the departure of the British from the country then known as Burma in 1948. It is one of the world's longest-running insurgencies.
But during the past decade, their troop numbers have dwindled from 20,000 to a mere 4,000, said David Taw. The KNU has suffered huge losses as members tire of war and resettle in places such as Europe and the United States, he said.
The group also still suffers from crippling infighting and another splinter group, a faction commonly called the Karen National Union Peace Council, recently broke ranks to sign a peace agreement with the government of Myanmar-- like many other groups.
While KNU leaders have been clear that they will continue their battle against Myanmar's military regime, they say the loss of Mahn Sha was a huge blow for the movement.
At Mahn Sha's funeral, more than 1,000 mourners gathered in the jungle inside Myanmar, including representatives from nearly every regional ethnic group and Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party.
Summit of Mekong River countries kicks off
Asia World News
Bangkok - A summit of the six countries connected by the Mekong River kicked off Sunday in land-locked Laos, state media reports said. The 3rd Summit of Greater Mekong Subregion countries - Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam - was officially launched Sunday morning in Vientiane, Radio Laos reported in a broadcast monitored in Bangkok.
Khamthan Suthienamtha, secretary general of the Youth Union of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party, opened the meeting with the prediction that the summit would help "meet the strategic targets of the younger generation in all six countries."
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao arrived Saturday to attend the summit and met with Lao President Choummaly Saygnasone Sunday morning to discuss bilateral relations.
China has become a leading aid donor to Laos in recent years. Chinese companies have become major investors, especially in rubber plantations and hydroelectricity projects, in the land-locked communist country of less than 6 million people but a land mass equal to half of France.
The summit co-hosted by the Asian Development Bank is expected to mark the official opening of a 1,800-kilometre road from Kunming, in China, to Thailand's capital Bangkok.
Besides Wen, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Myanmar Premier General Thein arrived in Vientiane Saturday to attend the summit, which will also draw the premiers of Thailand and Vietnam.
The bloc was established in 1992 to promote economic and social development, irrigation and cooperation within the six countries linked by the 4,200-kilometre Mekong River.
Bangkok - A summit of the six countries connected by the Mekong River kicked off Sunday in land-locked Laos, state media reports said. The 3rd Summit of Greater Mekong Subregion countries - Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam - was officially launched Sunday morning in Vientiane, Radio Laos reported in a broadcast monitored in Bangkok.
Khamthan Suthienamtha, secretary general of the Youth Union of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party, opened the meeting with the prediction that the summit would help "meet the strategic targets of the younger generation in all six countries."
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao arrived Saturday to attend the summit and met with Lao President Choummaly Saygnasone Sunday morning to discuss bilateral relations.
China has become a leading aid donor to Laos in recent years. Chinese companies have become major investors, especially in rubber plantations and hydroelectricity projects, in the land-locked communist country of less than 6 million people but a land mass equal to half of France.
The summit co-hosted by the Asian Development Bank is expected to mark the official opening of a 1,800-kilometre road from Kunming, in China, to Thailand's capital Bangkok.
Besides Wen, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Myanmar Premier General Thein arrived in Vientiane Saturday to attend the summit, which will also draw the premiers of Thailand and Vietnam.
The bloc was established in 1992 to promote economic and social development, irrigation and cooperation within the six countries linked by the 4,200-kilometre Mekong River.
Premier showing no compassion
ACHARA ASHAYAGACHAT
It is sad to see Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej treating the Rohingya minority as if they were a beast of burden by suggesting that they be relocated to a deserted island to stop their influx into the country.
This is certainly a sour note from him for the Muslim ethnic minority migrants, compared to the premier's sweet remarks after returning from Naypidaw, the Burmese capital, on March 14 that the junta was not heartless and the Burmese generals have also shown they are good Buddhists by meditating.
Some countries, such as Bangladesh, have accepted several million Rohingya refugees over the past few years after members of the Muslim minority group were forced to flee from Arakan state due to persecution by the military and other hardships inside Burma.
What Prime Minister Samak has said simply reflects how much Thailand really cared for the minorities, having no proper long-term policy to respond to the problems facing the ethnic minority refugees in the country.
Instead of developing a balanced policy between security and human rights, Thailand could only introduce more stringent measures to make life even more miserable for the displaced.
If any of the ethnic minority groups in Thailand is seen as a security threat, the country should first come up with a well-rounded strategy to better understand their culture, before taking any steps to drive them out of the country.
In addition to the Rohingya, other such groups include the Hmong, who mostly come from areas bordering Thailand, Burma and Laos.
State authorities have yet to properly understand these people and deal with their problems individually.
Society should show compassion and adopt a more positive attitude towards these groups and stop treating them like an unwanted lot.
After all, they are also human beings like us.
Preparing the appropriate mindset will require long-term education for the new generation.
A long-term solution to stop the influx of ethnic groups from neighbouring countries could not be achieved without social and economic integration.
For Burma, democratisation, both politically and economically, is the only way to stop their citizens from sneaking into other countries to seek a better life.
For Thailand, while calling for assistance from such international organisations as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other non-government organisations to help end the problems of the displaced, certain conditions are still required for their active involvement.
Thailand is among several countries that has been called upon by the international civil society to receive a visit by an independent UN expert to look into the situation of their minorities.
The country has tried in several unacceptable ways to deal with the issue and should by now have learned a lesson that relocating or putting them in a restricted area is simply a short-term measure, not a long-term solution.
The country should take courage in raising a serious debate on the related issues with the host problem countries in the presence of third parties such as the UNHCR and the International Migration Organisation, if a proper solution is to be found.
It is sad to see Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej treating the Rohingya minority as if they were a beast of burden by suggesting that they be relocated to a deserted island to stop their influx into the country.
This is certainly a sour note from him for the Muslim ethnic minority migrants, compared to the premier's sweet remarks after returning from Naypidaw, the Burmese capital, on March 14 that the junta was not heartless and the Burmese generals have also shown they are good Buddhists by meditating.
Some countries, such as Bangladesh, have accepted several million Rohingya refugees over the past few years after members of the Muslim minority group were forced to flee from Arakan state due to persecution by the military and other hardships inside Burma.
What Prime Minister Samak has said simply reflects how much Thailand really cared for the minorities, having no proper long-term policy to respond to the problems facing the ethnic minority refugees in the country.
Instead of developing a balanced policy between security and human rights, Thailand could only introduce more stringent measures to make life even more miserable for the displaced.
If any of the ethnic minority groups in Thailand is seen as a security threat, the country should first come up with a well-rounded strategy to better understand their culture, before taking any steps to drive them out of the country.
In addition to the Rohingya, other such groups include the Hmong, who mostly come from areas bordering Thailand, Burma and Laos.
State authorities have yet to properly understand these people and deal with their problems individually.
Society should show compassion and adopt a more positive attitude towards these groups and stop treating them like an unwanted lot.
After all, they are also human beings like us.
Preparing the appropriate mindset will require long-term education for the new generation.
A long-term solution to stop the influx of ethnic groups from neighbouring countries could not be achieved without social and economic integration.
For Burma, democratisation, both politically and economically, is the only way to stop their citizens from sneaking into other countries to seek a better life.
For Thailand, while calling for assistance from such international organisations as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other non-government organisations to help end the problems of the displaced, certain conditions are still required for their active involvement.
Thailand is among several countries that has been called upon by the international civil society to receive a visit by an independent UN expert to look into the situation of their minorities.
The country has tried in several unacceptable ways to deal with the issue and should by now have learned a lesson that relocating or putting them in a restricted area is simply a short-term measure, not a long-term solution.
The country should take courage in raising a serious debate on the related issues with the host problem countries in the presence of third parties such as the UNHCR and the International Migration Organisation, if a proper solution is to be found.
Tibetan monk protests reflect growing activism
More Buddhist monks, nuns likely to revolt against injustice, oppression
BANGKOK, Thailand - Buddhist monks hurling rocks at Chinese in Tibet, or peacefully massing against Myanmar's military, can strike jarring notes.
These scenes run counter to Buddhism's philosophy of shunning politics and embracing even bitter enemies — something the faith has adhered to, with some tumultuous exceptions, through its 2,500-year history.
But political activism and occasional eruptions of violence have become increasingly common in Asia's Buddhist societies as they variously struggle against foreign domination, oppressive regimes, social injustice and environmental destruction.
BANGKOK, Thailand - Buddhist monks hurling rocks at Chinese in Tibet, or peacefully massing against Myanmar's military, can strike jarring notes.
These scenes run counter to Buddhism's philosophy of shunning politics and embracing even bitter enemies — something the faith has adhered to, with some tumultuous exceptions, through its 2,500-year history.
But political activism and occasional eruptions of violence have become increasingly common in Asia's Buddhist societies as they variously struggle against foreign domination, oppressive regimes, social injustice and environmental destruction.
Myanmar second top leader Maung Aye to visit India
YANGON, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Vice-Chairman of the Myanmar StatePeace and Development Council (SPDC) Vice Senior-General Maung Ayewill pay an official visit to India in the near future, said an official announcement from Nay Pyi Taw Sunday without specifying the date of his visit.
Expected in a few days, the visit of Maung Aye, who is also Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Services and Commander-in-Chief of the Army, will be his second since 2000.
Invited by Indian Vice-President Mohammad Hamid Ansari, Maung Aye's forthcoming visit, which also comes more than three years after that to New Delhi by Myanmar's SPDC Chairman Senior-General Than Shwe in 2004, is expected to be highlighted by the signing ofa 130 million U.S. dollars' Kaladan multi-modal transport project to provide alternate route for transporting goods to North East India bypassing Bangladesh, according to an earlier report of Indian press media PTI.
In early January this year, Myanmar Foreign Minister U Nyan Winalso visited India and made consultation on the project. The project was further covered by a talk in March between Myanmar Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Brigadier-General Phone Swe and Indian Union Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta during their 14th roundof annual home secretary-level meeting between the two countries held in New Delhi.
The Kaladam multi-modal river transportation project, which also involves the building of the Paletwa border road, was raised during Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam's state visit to Myanmar in March 2006 with the Indian side being committed to extend a 10 million U.S. dollars' line of credit for the project.
The Kaladam project will cover upgrading of waterways along the Kaladam River and Sittway port in Western Myanmar's Rakhine state.
Besides, the project will also cover upgrading of both motor roads and waterways in those parts in northwestern Chin state to enable Indian cargo vessels along the Kaladam river in Sittway's eastern bank to berth at Paletwa where a high-standard port is to be built through which a highway will also be built to enable access to the border area of Myeikwa in the state for commodity flow to India's Mizoram state.
Expected in a few days, the visit of Maung Aye, who is also Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Services and Commander-in-Chief of the Army, will be his second since 2000.
Invited by Indian Vice-President Mohammad Hamid Ansari, Maung Aye's forthcoming visit, which also comes more than three years after that to New Delhi by Myanmar's SPDC Chairman Senior-General Than Shwe in 2004, is expected to be highlighted by the signing ofa 130 million U.S. dollars' Kaladan multi-modal transport project to provide alternate route for transporting goods to North East India bypassing Bangladesh, according to an earlier report of Indian press media PTI.
In early January this year, Myanmar Foreign Minister U Nyan Winalso visited India and made consultation on the project. The project was further covered by a talk in March between Myanmar Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Brigadier-General Phone Swe and Indian Union Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta during their 14th roundof annual home secretary-level meeting between the two countries held in New Delhi.
The Kaladam multi-modal river transportation project, which also involves the building of the Paletwa border road, was raised during Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam's state visit to Myanmar in March 2006 with the Indian side being committed to extend a 10 million U.S. dollars' line of credit for the project.
The Kaladam project will cover upgrading of waterways along the Kaladam River and Sittway port in Western Myanmar's Rakhine state.
Besides, the project will also cover upgrading of both motor roads and waterways in those parts in northwestern Chin state to enable Indian cargo vessels along the Kaladam river in Sittway's eastern bank to berth at Paletwa where a high-standard port is to be built through which a highway will also be built to enable access to the border area of Myeikwa in the state for commodity flow to India's Mizoram state.
Myanmar second top leader Maung Aye to visit India
YANGON, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Vice-Chairman of the Myanmar StatePeace and Development Council (SPDC) Vice Senior-General Maung Ayewill pay an official visit to India in the near future, said an official announcement from Nay Pyi Taw Sunday without specifying the date of his visit.
Expected in a few days, the visit of Maung Aye, who is also Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Services and Commander-in-Chief of the Army, will be his second since 2000.
Invited by Indian Vice-President Mohammad Hamid Ansari, Maung Aye's forthcoming visit, which also comes more than three years after that to New Delhi by Myanmar's SPDC Chairman Senior-General Than Shwe in 2004, is expected to be highlighted by the signing ofa 130 million U.S. dollars' Kaladan multi-modal transport project to provide alternate route for transporting goods to North East India bypassing Bangladesh, according to an earlier report of Indian press media PTI.
Expected in a few days, the visit of Maung Aye, who is also Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Services and Commander-in-Chief of the Army, will be his second since 2000.
Invited by Indian Vice-President Mohammad Hamid Ansari, Maung Aye's forthcoming visit, which also comes more than three years after that to New Delhi by Myanmar's SPDC Chairman Senior-General Than Shwe in 2004, is expected to be highlighted by the signing ofa 130 million U.S. dollars' Kaladan multi-modal transport project to provide alternate route for transporting goods to North East India bypassing Bangladesh, according to an earlier report of Indian press media PTI.
Burma Democratic Concern
Burma Democratic Concern today called for United Nations to change their stand on Burma. They must have the clear vision. Military Regime declared to hold the referendum in May 2008. The regime manipulated the international community and misled by declaring the new election which will be taken place in 2010. United Nations seem to deem its vision on Burma by asking for inclusive 2010 election and transparent 2008 referendum.
“If this country is to achieve genuine democracy, the result of the elections of 1990 must be recognized. It must be recognized by the military regime, as it has been recognized by the people, and by the world at large. It is through this recognition that we will be able to make genuine progress in Burma. The results of the 1990 General Elections must be implemented is a resolution already taken by the United Nations. We already know that the General Assembly of the United Nations has accepted the notion that the will of the people has been expressed in the 1990 General Elections. This is something we cannot abandon. It will be to the detriment of our country if after an election has been held the results are not honoured and we do not resist attempts to trivialise it", once Daw Aung San Suu Kyi insisted.
"People show their destiny, their will and sacrifice their lives. How many more Lives need to sacrifice to take serious action on Burma? United Nations must enforce the military regime to recognize the 1990 election results and take action on it now "added Khin Maung Win, the director of Burma Democratic Concern in United States.
United Nations must push military regime to do time-bound genuine dialogue and press to transfer the power to NLD which won the election. "The Burma situation is like the circle, we need to break the chain and start the new era" said Kyaw Lin Oo, the director of Burma Democratic Concern in Thailand.
Burma Democratic Concern is calling for the United Nations to enforce the Junta to honour the 1990 election results and start taking action on it now rather than following the footstep of the military Junta.
For more information, please contact on
Myo Thein
00 44 787 788 2386
[United Kingdom]
Khin Maung Win
00 194196126 22
[United States]
Kyaw Lin Oo
00 664107 9352
[Thailand]
“If this country is to achieve genuine democracy, the result of the elections of 1990 must be recognized. It must be recognized by the military regime, as it has been recognized by the people, and by the world at large. It is through this recognition that we will be able to make genuine progress in Burma. The results of the 1990 General Elections must be implemented is a resolution already taken by the United Nations. We already know that the General Assembly of the United Nations has accepted the notion that the will of the people has been expressed in the 1990 General Elections. This is something we cannot abandon. It will be to the detriment of our country if after an election has been held the results are not honoured and we do not resist attempts to trivialise it", once Daw Aung San Suu Kyi insisted.
"People show their destiny, their will and sacrifice their lives. How many more Lives need to sacrifice to take serious action on Burma? United Nations must enforce the military regime to recognize the 1990 election results and take action on it now "added Khin Maung Win, the director of Burma Democratic Concern in United States.
United Nations must push military regime to do time-bound genuine dialogue and press to transfer the power to NLD which won the election. "The Burma situation is like the circle, we need to break the chain and start the new era" said Kyaw Lin Oo, the director of Burma Democratic Concern in Thailand.
Burma Democratic Concern is calling for the United Nations to enforce the Junta to honour the 1990 election results and start taking action on it now rather than following the footstep of the military Junta.
For more information, please contact on
Myo Thein
00 44 787 788 2386
[United Kingdom]
Khin Maung Win
00 194196126 22
[United States]
Kyaw Lin Oo
00 664107 9352
[Thailand]
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