By Manoj Anand
The free trade agreement between India and the 10-member bloc of Asean countries has come as a major morale booster for trade and commerce-related activities in eastern India, but trade bodies of north-eastern states are feeling betrayed following the alleged exclusion of the Northeast perspective from the "Look- East Policy".
While welcoming the free trade agreement, the Northeast Federation of International Trade (NEFIT) regretted, "India is looking east but not through its contiguous north-eastern borders like Burma which is supposed to be India’s gateway to Asean as it is the only country of this group which has land and maritime boundary with India."
Mr Mrinal Hatkhowa, the general secretary of the trade body, said, "We are concerned because Northeast perspective was vanishing away from the proposed Look East Policy."
Apart from a car rally of Southeast Asian countries which was flagged off by the Prime Minister and a few seminars of the external affairs ministry, the region has not witnessed any significant initiative to promote trade and commerce.
Though, the commerce ministry has been harping on trade routes with Bangladesh, the observers felt that it was not an achievement rather a part of illegal trade has now been regulated through the trade routes.
Referring to the delegation of the NEFIT which visited Burma in July this year and signed a memorandum of understanding with the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industries to enhance bilateral trade with Burma and Thailand, Mr Hatkhowa said, "The commerce ministry had identified trading points with Burma, like Awangkhu in Nagaland and Nampong in Arunachal Pradesh, but they are yet to be opened and commissioned."
However, other trade points, like Zakhwathar in Mizoram and Moreh in Manipur, are working, but have not been able to help the region in its trade activities in comparison to the proposed trade points in Nagaland and Arunchal Pradesh.
The NEFIT, which made an appeal to the governments of India and Burma to commission those proposed trade points at the earliest, has also demanded construction of a trilateral highways of India, Burma and Thailand, connecting Moreh in India via Mandalay and Myawadee in Burma and to be linked up with Asian highways No. 1 at Mae Sot in Thailand.
The Indo-Myanmar Trade Agreement, signed on January 31, 1994, was the first milestone for opening up the border trade along the international boundary. "In this background, it was proposed to revive the ancient trade route through the Northeast which necessarily requires the infrastructure of roads, railways, air transport and communication facilities. The government has failed in taking any concrete initiative in this direction so far," said the working president of international trade body, Mr Bijoy Phangcho, while suggesting that it is also necessary that commerce ministry should follow the uniform policy for entire country in promoting export and import through the region.
In the name of insurgency, home ministry has already rejected the opening of historical Stilwell Road constructed during the World War II and used by the Allied Forces as an alternative supply routes leading to Kunmingin in Yunan province of China.
Regretting the approach of New Delhi towards North-eastern states even on promoting trade and commerce, Mr Phangcho said, "The Chinese government was exploiting the region for promoting trade and commercial activities, but we are spoiling the potential in the name of security and insurgency."
He pointed out that there is a scope to open the land route via Pangsu Pass in Arunachal Pradesh with northern parts of Burma touching major towns and cities like Tanai, Myitkyina, Bhamo, Muse and Ruili in southern part of China.
He referred that Muse is the largest land custom stations of Burma on any international border. "Non-opening of the proposed Land Custom Stations will give further advantage to China which has already constructed highways from Ruili in China through Muse to Mandalay within Burma and beyond," warned the experts in international trade and commerce.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Northeast vanishing from pm’s ‘Look-East policy’
Monday, August 17, 2009
Look east, look sharp
Hindustan Times
New Delhi, August 17, 2009
First Published: 00:49 IST(17/8/2009)
Last Updated: 01:03 IST(17/8/2009)
India’s free trade agreement with the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) is expected to bump up two-way merchandise exports by $10 billion in the first year of its coming into force. This is in line with the growth witnessed in recent years — from $13 billion in 2003-04 to almost $40 billion in 2007-08 — during which time the two sides were bargaining hard over fairly similar export baskets.
The 4,000 products that will become duty-free by 2016 skirt sectors where fears have been raised, at home and among Asean members, that cheap imports could hurt the local industry.
India began talks with a list of 1,400 items that needed duty protection, it settled for 489, including automobile parts, chemicals and textiles. Produce of plantations, where India and Asean are direct rivals, is farthest off limits.
The tariff reductions India has offered Asean are deeper than it has to other preferential trade partners: once the treaty is fully implemented, 80 per cent of the goods traded will be duty-free. The agreement also has the most lenient rules India has negotiated on third-country wares; imports can claim to originate in Asean if any of its member countries adds a mere 35 per cent value to them.
The soft Indian stance looks beyond merchandise — Asean accounts for 10 per cent of our global trade while India makes up for 2 per cent of theirs — to the bigger prize in services, of which Asean imported $180 billion in 2007. By the time duties are abolished on goods trade, India hopes to stitch up a comprehensive agreement on services, where it has a distinct competitive advantage.
Our Look East policy has a big element of trade diversification built into it. The raft of free trade agreements India is entering into in Asia is an attempt to move away from our excessive dependence on the United States and European Union.
With a combined gross domestic product the size of India’s, our Southeast Asian neighbours provide suitable weight to this process. This pact becomes all the more important and meaningful now because both Asean and India are posting enviable growth rates during a global recession.
Although sub-optimal solutions, regional trade agreements are the best thing going in a world where multilateral trade talks have all but seized up. The lessons taken away from the Asean table ought to influence the much bigger, and hence more complex, free trade treaty
we are negotiating with the European Union, our largest trading partner.
MYANMAR: ANOTHER INSTANCE OF OBAMA'S REALPOLITIK
Paper no. 3359
15-Aug-2009
By B. Raman
In my article of March 10,2009, titled "Obama: Good-Bye To Dalai Lama & Aung San Suu Kyi, Hail Hu Jintao" , available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers31/paper3090.html , I wrote as follows: "There has been no surge in US rhetoric vis-a-vis China after Barack Obama assumed office on January 20, 2009. On the contrary, the focus of his advisers has been on identifying and expanding the mutual comfort features in the bilateral relations rather than on those features, which tended to cause friction in the past. The references from Washington DC to human rights issues---- whether they be in relation to Tibet, Myanmar or the Chinese role in the Sudan--- have been muted."
2. Suspicions that President Barack Obama was quietly planning a major departure from the policy followed by the previous US administrations towards Myanmar, its military junta and its heroic leader Aung San Suu Kyi proved correct on August 14,2009, when Democratic Senator Jim Webb, reputed to be close to Obama, arrived in Myanmar for talks with Senior Gen.Than Shwe, the leader of the military junta.
3. The Junta reportedly extended to Senator Webb courtesies the like of which it had not extended to any other foreign dignitary before, including Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary-General, who visited Myanmar in the beginning of July. Webb was granted an audience to meet Than Shwe at Naypyidaw, the new capital,shortly after his arrival, instead of having to wait for hours, if not days, as had happened with some foreign visitors in the past. He was also allowed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi at Yangon, the old capital, , a courtesy which was denied to the UN Secretary-General.
4. Senator Webb, a Vietnam war veteran and a former Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, is presently the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific Affairs. He has been an advocate of a more "constructive" US engagement with the Junta. The ostensible purpose of his visit----evidently undertaken with the prior approval of Obama---- was to secure the release of John Yettaw, an American citizen, who was convicted on August 11 along with Aung San Suu Kyi after the American swam uninvited to the Nobel laureate's lakeside home and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment and to meet Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been placed under house arrest by the Junta for another 18 months after she was found guilty in the same case of harbouring the American in her house without informing the Police.
5. His visit was as carefully choreographed as the visit of former US President Bill Clinton to Pyongyang on August 4,2009, during which he met President Kim Jong-il and secured the release of two American woman journalists, who had been sentenced by a North Korean court to long periods of imprisonment on a charge of illegally entering North Korean territory from China
6. One can be certain that Webb would not have undertaken the visit had he not been assured beforehand by the Junta through unidentified intermediaries that he would go back with Yettaw and would be allowed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi. Without a meeting with Suu Kyi, his visit would have been seen by the people of Myanmar as a cynical attempt to secure the release of an American citizen without worrying about the continued violation of the human rights of the people of the country by the Junta.
7. After his meeting with the Junta chief and Aung San Suu Kyi and after the announcement that Yettaw would be deported on August 16, Webb said in a statement: " I am grateful to the Myanmar Government for honouring these requests. It is my hope that we can take advantage of these gestures as a way to begin laying a foundation of goodwill and confidence-building in the future." Webb said he also urged the military regime to free Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the last two decades under house arrest. Webb described the meeting with her as "an opportunity for me to convey my deep respect to Aung San Suu Kyi for the sacrifices she has made on behalf of democracy around the world".
8. Webb did not say what was Than Shwe's response to his request for her release and whether she would be allowed to participate in the elections scheduled to be held by the Junta next year.
9. Webb's visit to Myanmar and his meeting with Than Shwe, coming in the wake of Clinton's visit to Pyongyang, indicates that the Obama Administration sees no problem in dealing with dictators and playing down human rights issues, if it will serve US national interests. In North Korea, the US objective was clearly to explore the availability of other options for persuading or pressuring North Korea to give up its nuclear capability.
10. What are the US interests in Myanmar? It is difficult to answer this question definitely at present. However, it is quite likely that the Myanmar initiative was triggered off by concerns that the policy of more and more sanctions followed by the US is not only pushing Myanmar increasingly into the arms of China, but may also push it to embrace North Korea, with which the Junta re-established diplomatic relations two years ago. There have recently been unconfirmed reports that North Korea has established a nuclear supply relationship with Myanmar.
11. While the leaders of the ASEAN would be happy over the US overtures to the Junta, the countries of the European Union, which had condemned very strongly the extended house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, may have been taken by surprise.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retired), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)
Saturday, August 15, 2009
14-8-09 Q+A-China's complex relationship with Myanmar
Fri Aug 14, 2009 10:27am IST
By Ben Blanchard
BEIJING, Aug 14 (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council voiced "serious concern" on Thursday about a sentence passed on Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, in a watered-down statement designed to win the consent of China and Russia. [ID:N13234524]
Here are some questions and answers on China's complex relationship with its troublesome southern neighbour to explain why China comes to the rescue every time Myanmar is subjected to pressure from Western governments.
WHY IS CHINA UNWILLING TO CRITICISE MYANMAR?
China has a longstanding policy of non-interference in other countries' affairs, especially over human rights issues, in part because it does not want the United States and Europe criticising Beijing's own record. [ID:nBKK197002]
Beyond that, China's overriding concern is a stable Myanmar. Drugs and HIV/AIDS pour across the border into the southwestern province of Yunnan and China is desperate to control that flow.
Any action that might place unbearable pressure on the generals and force a government collapse could have dire consequences for China. Ethnic minorities in Myanmar, which have in some cases waged long-running insurgencies, could then set up de facto states along the Chinese border and their primary income would likely come from drugs.
China also argues that Myanmar is no threat to international peace and warrants no U.N. Security Council involvement, unlike North Korea and its nuclear programme.
WHAT ABOUT CHINA'S ENERGY AND ECONOMIC TIES WITH MYANMAR?
Energy-hungry China is keen to import gas from Myanmar. A pipeline with annual capacity of 12 billion cubic metres, is expected from 2012 to ship gas to Kunming, capital of Yunnan province. [ID:nPEK42962]
China will also start building an oil pipeline next month through Myanmar to enable it to facilitate crude imports from the Middle East and Africa. The link would allow Chinese oil tankers to avoid a 1,200 km (750-mile) detour through the congested and strategically vulnerable Malacca Strait.
Overall, China has invested more than $1 billion in Myanmar, primarily in the mining sector, and is the country's fourth largest foreign investor, state media say. Bilateral trade grew more than one-quarter last year to around $2.63 billion.
WHAT ARE CHINA'S BROADER STRATEGIC GOALS?
China has long worried about hostile neighbours, including India, or Japan and South Korea with their U.S. military bases. Having a friendly government in Myanmar is therefore important.
Myanmar gives China important access to the Indian Ocean, not only for exports from landlocked southwestern Chinese provinces, but also potentially for military bases or listening posts.
There are no guarantees a democratically-elected civilian government would be as keen for close ties with a China which had previously supported the junta.
And China, with its own history of suppressing home-grown demands for democracy, is hardly going to push Myanmar to grant the kinds of freedoms it regularly denies its own citizens.
The sanctions already imposed on Myanmar by the United States and European Union have in any case had little effect. The government also defied expectations it would implode during violent pro-democracy protests two years ago.
ARE THERE SIGNS CHINA'S PATIENCE IS WEARING THIN?
Very small ones. At a May meeting in Hanoi, Asian and European foreign ministers urged Myanmar to free detainees and lift political restrictions, in a statement unexpected signed by China. [ID:nSP502104]
In 2007, China's Foreign Ministry published an unflattering account of Myanmar's new jungle capital Naypyidaw, expressing surprise that this poor country would consider such an expensive move and not even tell supposed friend Beijing first. (Editing by Ron Popeski)
Friday, August 14, 2009
MYANMAR: Suu Kyi’s Conviction & India’s Shameful Silence
Paper no. 3353
13-Aug-2009
By Col R Hariharan
The conviction and sentencing of democratic opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, to additional 18 months house arrest by a Yangon court at Yangon’s notorious Insein prison on August 11, has once again shown how the Myanmar’s ruling military junta was determined to stop her participation in the elections to be held in 2010. The 18- month sentence slapped on her would effectively do that.
The Nobel Peace laureate was found guilty of hosting a mentally disturbed American tourist John William Yettaw (53) who broke into her home on May 3 where she had been held under house arrest for nearly 14 years out of the past 19 years. It did not matter to the court that it was the security forces that controlled access to the house. In an act of “benevolence” the military regime commuted the court’s original three-year hard labour sentence handed out to her to 18 months house arrest.
In the last elections held in 1990 she led the National Democratic League (NLD) from the front and romped home with a thumping majority. Although the military regime never transferred powers to the NLD led civilian government it would not want to take a chance with her participation in the elections. Though the elections are to be held under the new constitution, weighted heavily in its favour, apparently Aung Saan Suu Kyi’s participation would make a difference.
The intention of the junta was very clear when it turned down the request of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to meet with Ms Suu Kyi when he visited Myanmar in July. As he described, Myanmar wasted a “unique opportunity” to turn a new leaf and usher in a new era of political openness.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s conviction has drawn universal condemnation. The U.S. President Obama demanded her immediate release while British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for a U.N. embargo on all arms exports to Burma. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France sought fresh restrictions on Myanmar's two important export items - rubies and hardwood.
Thailand, chairman of the ASEAN alliance in which Myanmar is a member, was even more explicit. It urged Myanmar to immediately free Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest to allow her to play a role in next year's general election. It reiterated the demand made at the16th ASEAN Regional Forum held last month for the immediate release of all political prisoners in Myanmar, including Aung San Suu Kyi.
The U.N. Security Council meeting in a closed door session to discuss the issue failed to reach agreement on a statement that would condemn Myanmar and demand Suu Kyi’s release. China - the military junta’s patron - held to its stand that the UNSC had no business to interfere in Mynamar court’s action, while Russia among other members expressed its reservations.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in a statement that it was time not for criticism but for dialogue with Myanmar. “This not only accords with Myanmar's interests, it is also beneficial to regional stability,” she added. She said the international society should fully respect Myanmar's judicial sovereignty.
The UNSC meetings on Myanmar had been effectively reduced to a charade by China’s firm support to the Myanmar’s military rulers. The global economic downturn has strengthened China’s global economic and as a corollary political clout. At present there is no incentive for China to change its stand on Myanmar; even if a civilian government of sorts comes to power in Myanmar, after the 2010 elections. Working under the benevolent eye of the army, it is doubtful whether a civilian government would be able to reduce Chinese influence in the country even if it wants to.
The Chinese are simply too well entrenched in Myanmar’s military, economy, trade and commerce. And the geo-strategy of Myanmar confers special advantage on China to intervene militarily in the shortest time than any other nation. As a veto-wielding permanent member of the UNSC, China is positioned better to bale out the military regime than any other Asian country including India.
Under such circumstances, India’s reaction to the conviction of Aung San Suu Kyi was shameful to say the least. It had not one word of condemnation or even ‘disappointment.’ The spokesman of the Ministry of External Affairs on questioning would only say, “We have seen reports of the sentencing of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar for a period of eighteen months.
India has emphasised to the Government of Myanmar the need to expedite their political reform and national reconciliation process and have noted the various steps taken so far by the Government of Myanmar in this direction.
We have maintained that this process should be broad based, including the various ethnic groups. In this context, the issue of release of political prisoners will no doubt receive due attention.”
What do these words mean? How can the sentencing Suu Kyi to 18-month house arrest be construed as part of the national reconciliation process? If past experience is any indication, it would be business as usual for India. Would the 12-member Indian Parliamentarians' Forum for Democracy in Burma, started in April, look into this and turn it into some meaningful positive action?
India’s soft pedaling of issues of global sensitivity is unlikely to affect either Myanmar’s cozy relations with China or build India as its preferred partner. On the contrary, Myanmar’s relations to India– particularly as long as the army holds the upper hand – would always be under close Chinese scrutiny.
It is time India re-examined its ‘Look East policy’ to make it more vibrant and meaningful. And Myanmar is a key player no doubt; but India needs to be proactive and not conditioned by China’s attitudes.
In this context the BBC report that India had abandoned plans to reopen the Stillwell road, a World War II entity, is of strategic significance. The road connects Ledo in Arunachal Pradesh with Yunnan Province in China after traversing through Kachin State of Myanmar. The opening of the road would have opened up India’s northeast for trade with ASEAN countries and provided a direct access from India to China from India without intruding into Tibet. What is disturbing is the announcement has come a few days after 13th round of India-China border talks. Is there a connection between India’s decision not to reopen the road and the border talks? Are we sacrificing Indian interests to appease the Chinese? Will the government take the public into confidence and explain?
(Col. R Hariharan, a retired Military Intelligence officer,, is associated with the South Asia Analysis Group, and the Chennai Centre for China Studies. Blog: www.colhariharan.org E-mail:colhari@yahoo.com)
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
MYANMAR: Suu Kyi Guilty
Paper no. 3351
12-Aug-2009
By C. S. Kuppuswamy
In the trial of Suu Kyi, which has been going on for the last three months, the verdict, which had been delayed more than once for various reasons is out. On 11 August 2009 Suu Kyi has been sentenced to18 months house arrest. The court had actually sentenced her to three years in prison with hard labour. By a special order from the Head of the State, read out by the Home Minister in the court, her sentence was reduced to 18 months and that it could be served under house arrest.
The verdict was on expected lines but the quantum of 18 months was significant as it covers till the end of 2010, by which time the multi party elections would be over. Hence the obvious fact is to keep her under house arrest till the elections are over and the new government is in position.
It was in July 1989 that she was first placed in house arrest. In the last two decades she has spent about 14 years under house arrest. She was to be released in May this year (2009). A few days before her expected release this incident of an American, John Yettaw, swimming across the lake and sneaking into her residence happened In this trial Yettaw has been sentenced to three years in prison for breaching Ms Suu Kyi’s house arrest, three years for an immigration offence and another one year term with hard labour for swimming in a restricted zone.
This incident proved a blessing in disguise for the military junta for charging her on violation of state security laws, breaching the terms of her house arrest and for permitting a foreigner to gain entry to her house. She was arrested and taken to Insein prison. She denied all the charges leveled against her and said that she accommodated the foreigner on humanitarian grounds. The trial lasted for 86 days till the verdict was announced on 11 August 2009.
When the military junta is in full control of the situation, the constitution framed to suit its requirements and the opposition in disarray, why should Suu Kyi be kept away from the scene?
During 1990 elections, she was under arrest and was not allowed to contest. Despite this, the opposition swept the polls on her name and her charisma.
In 2002, she was released unconditionally and allowed to move around the country freely. Her popularity was surging and thousands of people gathered to meet her wherever she travelled. The junta was surprised at the public response and support and had to resort to some extraneous means to attack her convoy in May 2003 and put her under house arrest.
Her party, National League for Democracy keeps raising the bogey of accepting the people’s verdict in the 1990 polls (both internally and internationally), which the military junta has annulled. It is keen to have the 2010 elections completed in their favour without any hurdles so that the 1990 verdict can become part of the country’s history. In this regard her being inaccessible to the party and the public will be crucial.
From the views expressed by the diplomats who were allowed inside the court on a few occasions during this trial, she was seen to be calm, brave, serene and gave no indications of remorse on her part or bitterness towards the prosecution. The general feeling was that she will still play a major role and influence the political future of this country.
The Junta is still scared of the charisma, popularity and influence that Suu Kyi (if released) can exert on the masses even after this long period of detention and house arrest.
The Constitution has a specific clause which reads “The President of the Union himself, parents, spouse, children and their spouses shall not owe allegiance to a foreign power, shall not be subject of a foreign power or citizen of a foreign country. They shall not be persons entitled to the rights and privileges of a subject or citizen of a foreign country”. This is to preclude her from a political comeback even if she is free without amending the constitution as she was married to Michael Aris, an Englishman and a Tibetan scholar. He died in March 1999. She did not even go for his funeral to England, fearing that she would never be allowed to return..
There has been wide spread condemnation of this verdict from the international community. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that it was “a purely political sentence”. The French President called upon the European Union to impose new sanctions. The EU presidency said it would impose “additional targeted measures against those responsible for the verdict”.
The military junta must be fully aware of the likely reactions on this verdict from the international community. With public memory being short lived, the pressure will ease as time passes and as long as China and Russia are on their side it can weather any storm raised in the international arena.
The military junta may also release some inconsequential political prisoners (out of the 2100 odd) in the near future, as indicated by the country’s ambassador to the UN, to placate the international community and to reduce the pressure.
Thus the military leadership will adhere to its road map to democracy, stage the multi party elections in 2010 and prop up a civilian government (without the NLD and Suu Kyi), that will be subservient to the junta’s interests. Than Shwe and the other senior generals can retire peacefully and be free from fear of any retribution and at the same time keep the military in a dominant position in the state for some years to come.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Fresh inclusive Roadmap for Burma?
Paper no. 3348
11-Aug-2009
Guest Column by Dr. Tint Swe
Burma is in crisis. The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), which is ruling the country since exactly 21 years ago has created a political system which seeks out continued dominance over Burma.
The government in exile, the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB) has been working on the international front. Essentially NCGUB works in areas, what the inside leadership can’t do. Accordingly it has to deal with friendly governments, the diplomats as well as the international civil society groups and the campaigners all over the world. The key area where NCGUB has special interest is working at the United Nations (UN).
There have been scores of envoys for Burma appointed by the UN. Those include UN representatives for human rights and special envoys of the UN Secretary-General. Professor Ibrahim Gambari is the current special envoy of Mr. Ban Ki-moon. Gambari’s second last visit to Burma in 2008 was highly criticized by Burmese opposition because he spoke in line with the military regime by talking in favor of the unacceptable 2010-election of regime’s design.
When Gambari received the Prime Minister of NCGUB the special envoy said the UN had to talk about the roadmap of the regime as the opposition lacked a common, better and a coherent proposal. So NCGUB decided develop an all-agreed and all-inclusive plan.
When all Burmese parliamentarians in exile gathered in Ireland in January 2009, NCGUB laid out a new proposal to the MPs’ Congress and this was agreed to on principle. The draft was again accepted in principle by the consultative meeting among major opposition groups held in Dublin on 26-1-09.
NCGUB consulted experienced diplomats, the ethnic groups and the pro-democracy organizations to make the draft more acceptable. Meanwhile the political developments inside Burma became critical as Ban Ki-moon’s two-day visit did not make any tiny change but Aung San Suu Kyi was put under a high profile trial. Nuclear ambition of the junta has also surfaced.
The SPDC’s 2008 constitution excludes many major political groups in Burma, including the ethnic nationalities who are the stake-holders of the Union of Burma. It does not permit full democratic elections; nor does it protect the human rights of the Burmese people.
The current legal and political framework does not allow economic activity to flourish. Despite Burma’s wealth of natural resources, millions of its people languish in poverty. Economic wealth is concentrated in the hands of cronies; economic development and a decent standard of living are denied to the majority of Burma’s population. Foreign and domestic Investments are impeded. It is largely limited to the unsustainable exploitation of Burma’s non-renewable natural resources, including virgin forests and minerals. The major agricultural sector is obviously ignored.
Only democracy, based upon a fully-inclusive constitution, will enable the people of Burma to achieve long-term peace and stability in a society in which all its peoples, through representative institutions, participate in political decision-making.
The concept paper of NCGUB for the emergence of an inclusive political process before 2010 was widely discussed among the opposition loop. The “Action plan on transition towards Democracy & Development in Burma” is about to be launched not only by the NCGUB but by other 6 coalition (ethnic, women, students, pro-democracy) groups next week.
This Action Plan is the means by which Burma may achieve a peaceful and lawful transition to democracy and economic development, achieved through consultation and dialogue between, on one hand, the democracy and ethnic movements of Burma and, on the other, the current military regime.
Working together, one can bring Burma back on the path of international legitimacy, regional stability and national peace, security, freedom and prosperity for all.
Will the SPDC listen?
(Dr. Tin Swe is an elected member of Parliament from Burma from the NLD now living in F-15, Vikas Puri, New Delhi and can be reached at his mobile- 981-000-3286, e-mail ncginida@vsnl.com)
Saturday, August 8, 2009
8-8-09 A Possible North Korea – Myanmar alliance?
Pranamita Baruah - 8/8/2009
At a time when there has been an increasing concern in the international community over the clandestine nuclear programme in North Korea and Iran, reports regarding the possible involvement of Myanmar’s military junta in developing a nuclear arsenal are disturbing. Factors like the recent aborted voyage of a North Korean ship – the Kang Nam I- allegedly carrying a cargo of Scud-type missiles and heading towards Myanmar, the arrest of two Japanese nationals and a North Korean in June, 2009, this year for allegedly trying to export a magnetic measuring device to Myanmar that could be used to develop missiles, recent photographs of massive tunnels in Myanmar, and the alleged reports of a secret military pact between Myanmar and North Korea, have raised alarm bells that there have been a nuclear relationship between North Korea and Myanmar. The possibility that Myanmar too might be aspiring to go nuclear, possibly with the help of North Korea, is sending shivers down through the spine of its neighbouring countries, including India.
Reports on this issue started hitting the international media during US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Thailand in July to attend the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meeting. During her visit, Clinton voiced concern over the issue of close North Korean-Myanmar collaboration in the pursuit of offensive weapons, including nuclear armament. At that time, not many were ready to accept her view on the issue, though. However, a recent report published in the Bangkok Post’s Spectrum magazine as well as the Sydney Morning Herald, clearly suggested that Myanmar has enlisted Pyongyang help in building its own nuclear bomb within the next five years. It definitely substantiated Clinton’s suspicion.
The report was the result of a two-year investigation into Myanmar’s nuclear ambitions by Desmond Ball, a regional security expert at the Australian National University and Phil Thornton, a Thai-based Australian journalist. The report, primarily based on the testimony of two Myanmar defectors, including one army officer and a book keeper for a trading company with close links to the military, claimed that Myanmar is excavating uranium in ten locations and has two uranium plants in operation to refine uranium into ‘yellowcake,’ the fissile material for nuclear weapons. The report further reveals that for the production of nuclear weapons, Myanmar has already planned a plutonium reprocessing plant in Naung Laing, in the country’s north. The plant reportedly runs parallel to a civil nuclear reactor being built at another site by Russia.
Nuclear Alliance?
While explaining Myanmar’s possible motive behind its nuclear ambition, the report reveals that it was basically the inability of the junta to compete with neighbouring Thailand on conventional weapons which ultimately compelled Myanmar to acquire nuclear capability to ‘play power like North Korea’. However, many analysts are of the view that the junta aspires to become nuclear for the dual purpose of international prestige and strategic deterrence. It has also been pointed out that the junta, under growing pressure to democratize, may seek a nuclear deterrent to any foreign moves to force regime change. It remains undoubtedly true that just like Pyongyang, Rangoon too would like to have a nuclear bomb so that they can challenge the Americans and the rest of the world.
Reports regarding Myanmar’s nuclear ambition started circulating since 1998 when just after the back to back nuclear tests carried out by India and Pakistan, the junta introduced an Atomic Energy Law (June 8, 1998). However, Myanmar’s interest in developing civil nuclear expertise came to be known in February 2001 when its decades long conventional military relationship with Russia was expanded to cover the civil nuclear field. In September 2001, the Myanmar government reportedly informed the IAEA about its plan to acquire a nuclear research reactor. But the IAEA inspectors, after their visit to the state, concluded that Myanmar did not have the required safety standards. Still, Myanmar went ahead with its exploratory talks with Russia on the subject, on which Moscow responded positively.
Myanmar popped up on the N-radar once again after 9/11 when the US troops reportedly found evidence of contacts between some retired and serving nuclear scientists of Pakistan and Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden. Two of the scientists, reportedly associates of Pakistani atomic renegade, A Q Khan, later on escaped to Myanmar and the junta allegedly offered them refuge there. Although there was no further reliable news about them, it was believed by many that Myanmar was embarking on a nuclear-research project with the help of those two Pakistani scientists, along with the scientists from Russia. A few years later, the junta had reportedly launched a nuclear-related ‘Ayelar Project’ headed by the two Pakistani scientists.
The steady airborne trade between Pakistan and North Korea in missiles and nuclear parts remains an undeniable fact. However, in 2007, it was reported that a transport aircraft that flew from North Korea to Myanmar flied a flight path across India to Pakistan. This was a sign that the missile trade between Pakistan and North Korea, at times, might have been a triangular trade, including Myanmar.
In January 2002, Myanmar government entered into talks with Russia to build a nuclear research reactor which would be used ‘for peaceful purposes’. However, due to the economic hurdles faced by the junta and the Russian reluctance to finalize the deal with Myanmar until it signs the safeguards agreement with the IAEA, no progress could be made on the nuclear project in the next five years. Ultimately in May 2007, Myanmar signed a MoU with Russian atomic energy agency to establish a nuclear studies center in Myanmar, build a 10-megawatt nuclear research reactor for peaceful purposes and train several hundred technicians in its operation.
Myanmar’s links with Iran too have come to light, as the Myanmar’s defectors alleged that the junta has sent uranium deposits from the mines to Iran (along with Russia) for evaluation.
Just a few months ago, videos and photographs of a mysterious ‘Operation Tortoise Shell’ made its way into Thailand. The evidence provided by these sources implicated that North Korea was helping Myanmar constructing around 800 tunnels during 2003-2006.
Myanmar broke off its diplomatic relations with North Korea in 1983 after Pyongyang’s alleged involvement in the bombing of the Martyr’s mausoleum in Yangon in an attempt to assassinate visiting South Korean President, Chun Doo-hwan. However, common interests brought the two secretive nations back together. A number of army delegations travelled to Pyongyang just after the two sides’ resumption of formal diplomatic relations in 2007. Soon, the personalities involved in the visits indicated that Myanmar is probably seeking cooperation from the North not only in procuring weapons, but also in establishing air defense weaponry, missiles, rockets or artillery production facilities. At present there has been a speculation that in return of its military cooperation, North Korea might have been provided with uranium by resource-rich Myanmar.
According to the two defectors’ report, although diplomatic relations between Myanmar and North Korea resumed only recently, cooperation between them began in earnest in September 2000 when a MoU was signed by Burma’s Lieutenant General Thein Hla and North Korean major General Kim Chan Su. During 2001-2002, four more contracts were signed. The ‘official’ agreements between the two countries covered nuclear related activities at two sites and involved North Korea’s assistance in installing, maintaining, training, and supplying equipment at the uranium refining and enrichment plant at Thabike Kyin. At the second reactor site at Naung Laing, the North Koreans agreed to help with the construction of an underground facility and a nuclear reactor. The report further reveals that in recent times, Pyongyang has forged closer ties with the junta by selling arms and missile technology to the latter. Recently, intelligence had found that junta had begun dealing with the Namchongang Trading Company of North Korea for missile and nuclear parts.
Is the allegation credible?
Despite the concern over Myanmar’s possible nuclear ambition, regional intelligence sources seem to be sceptical about the state’s capability to do so. It is so, primarily because verification of stories coming out of Myanmar is quite difficult, as the junta has banned international media. The shocking revelations of the recent report is based on the statements made by the two defectors who may be trying to boost their own importance in the hope of getting themselves resettled to a third country. After all, in various earlier occasions, the junta tried to put out misinformation to cover what it is really doing. Above all, Myanmar is a party to the NPT, and under a safeguards agreement with the IAEA, it is obligated to let the UN watchdog know at least six months ahead of operating a nuclear facility. At the recent ARF meet, Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win assured the ASEAN members that his government would abide by the UN Security Council’s recent resolution on North Korea that prohibits any cooperation with Pyongyang in the nuclear sector. Still, the sceptics are willing to concede that the Myanmar regime is not trustworthy.
Reactions
Reactions on Myanmar’s possible nuclear ambition are somewhat mixed. While during her visit to Thailand, Hillary Clinton stated that the possibility of Pyongyang transferring nuclear technology to Myanmar will be a threat to the U.S. allies in the region, and a ‘complete and irreversible denuclearization is the only viable path for North Korea’, on 3 August, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, Philip Crowley, stated that over time, the U.S. would like to clarify with Myanmar more precisely the nature of its military cooperation with North Korea.
While reacting to the U.S. view on the issue, Russia states that there is little cause of concern over a possible nuclear link between the two rogue states in Asia. Russian officials further states that the nuclear cooperation between Russia and Myanmar is not in conflict with the NPT or IAEA requirements, and Russia will definitely move ahead with its nuclear project in Myanmar.
Myanmar going nuclear will impact on India’s foreign policy in relation to this region. Although initially both the states had difference on Myanmar’s democratization and Aung San Suu Kyi issue since 2000, under its new ‘Look East’ policy, India has decided to develop cordial relations with the junta and ‘not to interfere in its internal affairs’. In the last few years, both the states have been actively collaborating on weeding out insurgents along the Indo-Myanmar border and developing trade links between the two states.
A nuclear weapon free Myanmar is important for India’s own security as well as for keeping the credibility of the NPT regime intact. A nuclear Myanmar might trigger a nuclear arms race in the region. India has a chance to play an important leadership role in avoiding the occurrence of such a scenario by dealing prudently with the junta.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
4-809 Nuclear watchdog urged to seek answers from Burma
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia): Nuclear watchdog urged to seek answers from Burma
Anne Davies
Tue 4 Aug 2009
Filed under: News, International
AMERICAN non-proliferation experts have called on the international nuclear watchdog to seek clarification from the Burmese Government over its nuclear program after a Herald report that quoted defectors claiming there was a secret military nuclear program.
The report, based on interviews by Professor Desmond Ball of the Australian National University and a journalist, Phil Thornton, said the country had been developing a secret nuclear program. It revealed Burma was building a secret reactor, with North Korea’s assistance, at Nuang Laing, close to Mandalay.
The report has prompted intense interest among US security experts, particularly in the light of comments by the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, in Thailand.
She said there had been “co-operation between North Korea and Burma in the past” and that North Korea had provided Burma with high-technology materials barred by the United Nations Security Council.
She made the remarks while praising Burma for having co-operated in the enforcement of UN resolution 1874, which is designed to prevent North Korea from shipping nuclear materials to other nations.
A North Korean ship turned back after being shadowed by the US Navy en route to Burma last month.
Daryl Kimball, of the Arms Control Association, told the Nelson Report, an influential online security report, that although there had been no evidence of a Burmese nuclear-weapons quest, whatever the North Koreans were doing must be made a priority by the International Atomic Energy Agency, of which Burma is a member.
“The report is probably enough cause for the IAEA director-general [and Russia] to seek clarification from Myanmar [Burma] and request a special inspection,” Mr Kimball said.
Russia is said to have agreed in 2007 to provide the Burmese with a small, civilian light-water reactor, which would be subject to agency inspections, although the project’s exact status is disputed.
David Albright, the head of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, which monitors nuclear proliferation said: “There’s no hard evidence, just suspicions right now. We are watching it.”
He pointed out visits to Burma by executives from the North Korean firm, Namchongang Trading Corporation, which is under sanctions for its role in trading nuclear technology. Western officials say it channelled equipment and material for the nuclear reactor in Syria, which was destroyed in an Israeli air strike in September 2007.
Mr Albright also pointed to sales of technology used in ballistic missile manufacture from North Korea to Burma.
On Monday the Institute for Science and International Security posted links to photos on the YaleGlobal site, which show extensive tunnel construction in Burma overseen by North Korean engineers. They are understood to be separate to tunnelling related to the nuclear program referred to by the defectors.
4-8-09 China edgy over Burma’s nuclear ambitions
by Brian McCartan
Wednesday, 05 August 2009 14:12
Bangkok (Mizzima)
Another round of revelations concerning Burma’s nuclear ambitions and its nexus with North Korea has thrown up renewed international interest. Combined with comments by the United States of its concern over the growing cooperation between its pariah neighbours, China must be growing increasingly uneasy.
The revelations came about in a report in The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday and are based on two years of research by Desmond Ball, a strategic studies expert and Burma watcher at the Australian National University and freelance journalist Phil Thornton. Much of their information comes from the testimony of two defectors, who claim to have been connected to the nuclear programme, and from radio intercepts. While reports on Burma’s nuclear programme have been circulating for some time among the opposition media and Burmese activists, Ball and Thornton claim their research indicates with some certainty that two reactors are under development and that the regime is developing a nuclear weapons capability.
According to their research a 10 megawatt reactor is being developed with Russian assistance at Myaing in Magwe Division and another “secret” 10 megawatt reactor is being developed with North Korean help at Naung Laing in Mandalay Division. In addition, North Korea facilitated the construction of a uranium refining and enrichment facility at Thabike Kyin. Although both reactors are small, security analysts have noted that North Korea developed its runaway nuclear programme from a similar reactor at Yangbyon.
Of a more sinister nature, Ball and Thornton also claim that testimony from the defectors indicates that a programme is already underway to develop a viable nuclear weapon. Should the defectors testimony prove true, they say, then the “secret” reactor could be capable of “producing one bomb a year, every year, after 2014.”
Although a weapons programme would require more external support than is currently being provided, Pyongyang has shown a willingness to export technology and know-how to other reclusive and anti-Western regimes. In Burma’s case, that know-how and technology could be traded for fissionable nuclear material to continue the development of North Korea’s own weapons.
The voyage of a North Korean cargo ship, the Kang Nam 1, last month believed to be heading to Burma, aroused suspicions of cooperation between Pyongyang and Naypyidaw on the development of ballistic missiles. Opposition sources claim the junta may have already acquired Scud-type missiles or is testing its own designs with the help of North Korean advisors. These claims have not been independently verified, but a visit by General Thura Shwe Mann, SPDC Number 3, to North Korea seemed to partially confirm the claims when he and his entourage inspected a Scud production facility.
In early July, reports emerged that Tokyo police had arrested three Japanese executives for allegedly trying to sell equipment to Burma which could be used in ballistic missile construction. The Hong Kong-based New East International Trading Ltd. which had ordered the parts has been linked to the North Korean Pyongyang Worker’s Party.
Burma’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon and the development of ballistic missiles to deliver such a device will surely raise the regional security temperature and has the potential to spark a new Southeast Asian arms race. Following Saturday’s report, Thai National Security Council head Thawil Pliensri ordered officials to look into the reports.
Such a situation would almost certainly not be favoured by Burma's main international patron. Considerable effort has been spent by China in developing Burma as a source of cheap natural resources to supply its growing industrial base, as a trade gateway to its remote and landlocked southwestern region and as a strategic conduit for oil and gas shipments from the Middle East.
Work is scheduled to begin next month on an oil and gas pipeline that will carry 20 million tons of crude oil and 12 billion cubic meters of gas every year across Burma to the southwestern city of Kunming. The proposed pipeline will allow Chinese oil rigs to bypass the narrow Malacca Straits, where over 80 per cent of its current fuel imports pass and viewed as a potential strategic chokepoint in any conflict with the US.
The last thing China wants, say analysts, is to see its new commercial arteries put at risk by US concerns over a nuclear Burma. China has to varying degrees been propping up Burma’s military regime since it withdrew support for the Burmese Communist Party in the late 1980’s Beijing’s support through massive arms shipments has been key to the generals’ ability to rapidly expand their military to an estimated 500,000 soldiers.
China’s influence has also been key to deflecting criticism of Burma in international fora, including at the United Nation's Security Council. Since the 1980s Beijing has spent considerable effort and money making economic inroads and securing lucrative concessions over Burma's rich natural resources for Chinese companies.
Subtle signs have already surfaced of China’s growing annoyance with Burma’s brinksmanship with the international community. That assumed concern would no doubt grow if Burma were to acquire ballistic missiles or a nuclear-grade weapon. Australian Burma expert Andrew Selth wrote in a 2007 paper, "Beijing is unlikely to be happy about the prospect of the SPDC acquiring a nuclear weapon, given [Burma's] proximity to China, its internal instability and the unpredictable behaviour of its leaders."
While China has so far tolerated North Korean conventional weapons shipments and links to supplying ballistic missile and nuclear technology to other regimes considered unsavoury internationally such as Syria and Iran, that goodwill may be stretched by having that same technology shared with its nearby neighbours. This would be particularly the case if it sours ties with greater Southeast Asia, where it has recently dedicated considerable diplomatic and commercial energies in a so-called "soft power" campaign.
Maintaining regional stability is a paramount Chinese concern. Burma's possession of ballistic missiles or a nuclear capability would risk the spread of weapons of mass destruction technologies in a region where no state has acquired nuclear weapons. A regional arms race would likely ensue as Burma's neighbours sought deterrence options.
As Selth wrote, "In this atmosphere of fear and suspicion, the security stakes in the region would go up, raising the prospect of other countries feeling obliged to expand their own inventories of strategic weapons. Beijing would also worry about the possible response of the US to closer [Burma]-North Korea ties." If Burma were to acquire ballistic missiles and substantive evidence was found of a nuclear programme, Washington would likely be forced to re-evaluate its Burma policy towards more direct engagement.
During a regular press briefing on Monday, US Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, Philip J Crowley, said America was concerned by “the nature of cooperation between North Korea and Burma.” Although he did not elaborate on what type of cooperation and refused to comment on questions related to any underground nuclear complex, many observers believe the US is taking a renewed interest in Burma’s nuclear designs.
According to Andrew Selth in an article on August 3 in ‘The Interpreter’, the weblog of the Lowy Institute for International Policy, the Obama administration has conducted a thorough investigation of Burma’s nuclear programme as part of its ongoing review of its Burma policy. The US has, however, so far been cautious in its statements on the matter and seems to be waiting for more solid evidence before making a formal statement.
Continued leaks of information and the resultant media attention on military links and possible nuclear cooperation between Naypyidaw and Pyongyang will only serve to maintain and even heighten US interest in Burma. The Obama administration has already shown a renewed interest in Southeast Asia, making it in China’s best interest to reign in the ambitions of its southern neighbour.
Monday, August 3, 2009
MYANMAR: ANOTHER IRAQ OR ANOTHER IRAN?
Paper no. 3325
2-Aug-2009
By B.Raman
Is the military junta in Myanmar trying to acquire a military nuclear capability with North Korean assistance? Or is North Korea trying to shift some of its nuclear facilities to Myanmar to protect them from a possible attack by the US? If either of this scenario is true, is China, which has a strong and active presence in North Korea as well as Myanmar, aware of it? Has it taken up the matter with the two Governments? Has it alerted the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)?
2. These questions, among others, come to one’s mind in the wake of a flurry of reports regarding an alleged nuclear relationship between Myanmar and North Korea. These reports hit the international media coinciding with the meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which was held at Phuket in Thailand on July 23, 2009.
3.The meeting was attended among others by Mrs.Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, who had proceeded to Thailand after a high-profile visit to India. She told a Thai TV channel in an interview on July 21,2009: “ We worry about the transfer of nuclear technology from North Korea to Myanmar.” She subsequently reverted to the subject at Phuket where she spoke to the media of “ concerns being expressed about co-operation between North Korea and Burma in the pursuit of offensive weapons, perhaps even including nuclear weapons at some point.”
4.She was not categorical on the question of a possible nuclear relationship between North Korea and Myanmar, but she was on the question of a conventional military relationship between the two countries. Her concerns seemed to be that this might be expanded to cover the military nuclear field, if this has not already happened or is not already happening.
5. To what extent her concerns were well-founded? Was the reference to this issue by her meant to exercise political pressure on Myanmar and North Korea, both of which attended the ARF meeting---- Myanmar at the level of its Foreign Minister and North Korea at the level of an official of its Foreign Office? Was she merely trying to step up the pressure on Myanmar on the question of the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and restoration of democracy and on North Korea on the question of its denuclearization by using the nuclear co-operation allegations or was there something more to it?
6. The press release issued by the ASEAN Secretariat on the ARF meeting and the media briefing did not contain any reference to the nuclear allegation. Did she raise it at the ARF Foreign Ministers’ meeting or was it confined to her interactions with the media? It is not clear.
7. Even though Mrs. Clinton confined her remarks only to the alleged co-operation between North Korea and Myanmar and did not refer to the on-going civil nuclear co-operation between Myanmar and Russia, Moscow on its own referred to this subject in response to her remarks in Thailand.
8.The RIA Novosti news agency of Russia disseminated the following report on July 21: “ Nuclear cooperation between Russia and Myanmar is not in conflict with the Non-proliferation Treaty or IAEA requirements, and will move ahead, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday. Andrei Nesterenko's comment came in response to U.S. concerns over the cooperation. However, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said earlier on Tuesday that Washington was taking concerns about military cooperation between nuclear-armed North Korea and Myanmar "very seriously," but made no mention of Russia. "Our cooperation with Myanmar is absolutely legitimate and in full compliance with our obligations under the Non-proliferation Treaty and IAEA requirements," Nesterenko said. He added that the IAEA had no problem with Myanmar over its non-proliferation commitments. Russia signed an agreement in 2007 on the construction of a nuclear research center in Myanmar, and it will stand by this agreement, Nesterenko said. The center will include a 10 MW light-water research reactor.”
9.Reports of Myanmar’s interest in developing a nuclear research capability started circulating after the nuclear tests carried out by India and Pakistan in May 1998. Before 1998, it had an Atomic Energy Committee, which used to be headed by one of its Ministers in charge of Industries. The military junta introduced an Atomic Energy Law on June 8,1998, within a fortnight of Pakistan’s Chagai nuclear tests.
10. The interest of the Myanmar military junta in acquiring civil nuclear expertise with Russian assistance came to be known in February,2001. It has had a long history of conventional military relationship with Russia. This relationship was subsequently expanded to cover the civil nuclear field.
11.In September 2001, the Government of Myanmar reportedly informed the IAEA of its plans to acquire a nuclear research reactor. This was followed by a visit to Myanmar by a team of IAEA experts to study whether Myanmar had the required capability to run a research reactor safely. The team reportedly concluded that Myanmar did not have the required safety standards. Despite its negative report, the Government decided to go ahead with its exploratory talks with Russia on this subject. Moscow, which must have been aware of the negative findings of the IAEA team, had no hesitation in responding positively to the approach for help from the Myanmar Junta.
12. When the US troops occupied Afghanistan post-9/11 after expelling the Taliban from power, they reportedly found evidence of contacts between some retired and serving nuclear scientists of Pakistan and Osama bin Laden. They short-listed four names--- retired scientists Sultan Bashiruddin Ahmed Chaudhry and Abdul Majid and serving scientists Sulaiman Assad and Mohammad Mukhtar.
13. At the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) took into custody the two retired scientists who where interrogated by the FBI. They reportedly admitted having met bin Laden at Kandahar before 9/11, but asserted that their meeting with him was in connection with the work of a humanitarian relief organization which they had founded after retirement. They were released as no evidence of their involvement in any activity relating to the supply of nuclear material or expertise to Al Qaeda was found. However, as a safety measure, the ISI, at the request of the FBI, imposed restrictions on their movement outside their home town. The FBI got the bank accounts of their supposedly humanitarian relief organization frozen by taking up the matter with the anti-terrorism sanctions committee of the UN Security Council.
14.Sulaiman Assad and Mohammad Mukhtar managed to flee to Myanmar before they could be detained for questioning by the ISI. There was uncorroborated speculation that the ISI did not want them to be questioned by the FBI as they had knowledge of the proliferation activities of Pakistan, particularly about its nuclear and missile supply relationship with North Korea. It was alleged by some in Pakistan that the Myanmar military junta gave them sanctuary at the request of the ISI. There has been no further reliable news about them.
15.In an article published by the “Wall Street Journal” on January 3,2002, Bertil Lintner, its then staff reporter, stated as follows: “Myanmar is embarking on a nuclear-research project with the help of Russian and, possibly, Pakistani scientists. Diplomats say the development has upset China, which has heavily courted Myanmar in recent years and resents Moscow for muscling in on its turf. Believed by Western diplomats to be the brainchild of Science and Technology Minister U Thaung, the project was initiated by Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry, which in February announced plans to build a 10-megawatt research reactor in central Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. In July, Myanmar Foreign Minister Win Aung, accompanied by the military-ruled country's ministers of defense, energy, industry and railways, traveled to Moscow to finalize the deal. Western diplomats in Myanmar say the groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled to take place at a secret location near the town of Magway in January. The equipment and reactor will be delivered in 2003. Russian diplomats say more than 300 Myanmar nationals have received nuclear technical training in Russia during the past year.”
16.On January 22,2002, Khin Maung Win, Myanmar’s Deputy Foreign Minister, announced that the Myanmar Government was planning to build a nuclear research reactor and had entered into talks with Russia on this subject. In his statement, he also said that his Government had informed the IAEA of its intention to construct the reactor which would be used "for peaceful purposes".
17.His statement further said: "The Myanmar Government is striving to acquire modern technology in all fields, including maritime, aerospace, medical and nuclear. It is in the light of these considerations that Myanmar made enquiries for the possibility of setting up a nuclear research reactor. A proposal has since been received from the Russian Federation. Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty which Myanmar signed in 1992, it had the right to pursue the peaceful use and application of nuclear technology. All our neighbouring countries, with the exception of Laos, are already reaping the benefits from nuclear research reactors operating in their countries. In this age of globalization it is imperative that developing countries such as Myanmar actively seek to narrow the development gap so as not to be marginalized."
18.Khin Maung Win denied media reports that Myanmar had secretly brought two Pakistani nuclear scientists into the country to help it fulfil its nuclear ambitions. He said: “ The Myanmar Government categorically states once again that no nuclear scientists from Pakistan have been given sanctuary in Myanmar. However, Myanmar scientists had been trained by the IAEA in the application of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.”
19. The same day, the US reacted by warning Myanmar that it must honor its obligations under the NPT. An unidentified official of the State Department was quoted by the media as saying: "We expect the Government of Burma to live up to its obligations and to not pursue production of weapons grade fissile material."
20. There was no further development with regard to the Russian project for five years. This was attributed to the difficulties faced by the Junta in raising the money for it and the Russian reluctance to finalise the deal till Myanmar reached a safeguards agreement with the IAEA. It was only by April 2007 that the Junta found the money. It is not clear whether the Junta signed a safeguards agreement with the IAEA. In May, the conclusion of a contract between the Governments of Myanmar and Russia was announced.
21. On May 16,2007, the US expressed concern over the agreement between Myanmar and Russia. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said he had "no idea" what Russia's motivation was for the agreement. "Burma has neither the regulatory nor the legal framework or safeguard provisions or other kinds of things that you would expect or want to see for a country to be able to handle successfully a nuclear program of this type.It's not a good idea."
22.Casey further said that Myanmar did not have a nuclear regulatory commission or safeguards in place to prevent accidents, environmental damage or proliferation. According to him, one risk was that nuclear fuel could be diverted, stolen or otherwise removed because of a lack of accounting or other procedures in place to prevent this.
23.He added: “"There certainly would have to be a heck of a lot more work done by the Burmese before I think we would feel comfortable that they could safely deal with having a nuclear facility of this type on their soil."
24. Myanmar is a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and , according to some reports, has since signed a safeguards agreement with the IAEA. However, it has not yet accepted the Additional Protocol, which would allow the U.N. nuclear watchdog to conduct more intrusive monitoring of any nuclear operations.
25.Myanmar broke off diplomatic relations with Pyongyang in 1983, after alleged North Korean agents bombed the Martyr's mausoleum in Yangon in an attempt to assassinate the visiting South Korean President, Chun Doo-hwan. The explosion killed more than 20 persons, including the Deputy Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, and the South Korean Ambassador to Myanmar. The relations were re-established only in April 2007 after a gap of 24 years.
26.The re-establishment of diplomatic ties led to the beginning of a military-supply relationship between the two countries and the exchange of visits of military delegations. In 2007 and 2008, there were reports of the receipt of a number of military consignments by Myanmar from North Korea by sea----mostly consisting of conventional infantry weapons. Following the resumption of diplomatic relations, the Myanmar military junta also started allowing North Korean transport planes going to Pakistan and Iran to re-fuel in the Yangon airport.
27.North Korean engineers were reported to have helped Myanmar military engineers in the construction of a number of tunnels in the newly-constructed capital at Naypyidaw. They were also reported to be helping the Myanmar engineers in the construction of similar tunnels at a place called Yadanapon, where the junta is planning to have its summer capital. It was presumed by analysts that the North Korean assistance in tunnel construction had the purpose of providing shelter to the members of the Junta and other senior military officers in case of an attack by the US Air Force. It was the fear of an US attack which made the Junta shift the capital from Yangon to Naypyidaw and it was the same fear which motivated it to seek North Korean assistance in tunnel construction.
28. What set off an alarm was reports from Myanmar political exiles that North Koreans were helping in tunnel construction not only in the capital and the proposed summer capital, but also in certain other remote areas. Myanmar political exiles close to Aung San Suu Kyi have been linking the construction of tunnels at a place called Naung Laing in North Myanmar to possible North Korean assistance in the construction of a secret nuclear facility. What kind of a facility it could be is not clear. Western and Australian analysts and journalists seem to be particularly relying on claims made by two defectors. One claims to have been an officer in the Myanmar army who was allegedly sent to Moscow for two years’ training. The other claims to have been a former executive in a company called Htoo Trading, which, according to him, handled nuclear contracts with Russia and North Korea. There has so far been no independent corroboration of their claims.
29.The suspicions regarding a possible nuclear supply relationship have been strengthened following a recent incident in which a North Korean ship called Nam Kam 1, which was reportedly bound for a Myanmar port turned back on being shadowed by US vessels. It is not clear what prevented the US vessels from surrounding and searching it. Without searching it, it seems to have been presumed that the cargo on board the ship must have been nuclear-related.
30.Political exiles can be sometimes good sources and sometimes unreliable and even dangerous. The information about Iran’s clandestine uranium enrichment plant initially came from political exiles, who were found to have been accurate. The false information about Saddam Hussein’s nuclear arsenal came from political exiles who made a fortune from the US intelligence by planting a series of false reports. In the 1980s, when Rajiv Gandhi was the Indian Prime Minister, Indian analysts had over-estimated Chinese military deployments in Tibet on the basis of reports from Tibetan political exiles. These reports were subsequently found to have been highly exaggerated.
31.One has, therefore, to be cautious in assessing the reports, claims and allegations from political exiles and Army defectors from Myanmar. Their reports must be carefully verified. All one can say with some confidence at present is: firstly, that the Myanmar military junta’s interest in acquiring a civil nuclear capability dates back to 1998 when India and Pakistan carried out their nuclear tests; secondly, that since 2001 Myanmar has been in negotiations with Russia for the acquisition of a research reactor; thirdly, that there has been a long delay in the implementation of this project due to Myanmar’s lack of funds and the time taken to negotiate a safeguards agreement with the IAEA; and fourthly, that there has been an increase in North Korea’s military supply relationship with Myanmar since the two countries re-established diplomatic relations in April,2007.
32.Has the military supply relationship been expanded now to cover nuclear supply relationship? The evidence on this not yet strong enough to permit a categorical answer.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)
Friday, July 31, 2009
1-8-09 Revealed: Burma’s nuclear bombshell
Revealed: Burma’s nuclear bombshell
Hamish McDonald Asia-Pacific Editor
August 1, 2009
BURMA’s isolated military junta is building a secret nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction facilities with North Korean help, with the aim of acquiring its first nuclear bomb in five years, according to evidence from key defectors revealed in an exclusive Herald report today.
The secret complex, much of it in caves tunnelled into a mountain at Naung Laing in northern Burma, runs parallel to a civilian reactor being built at another site by Russia that both the Russians and Burmese say will be put under international safeguards.
Two defectors were extensively interviewed separately over the past two years in Thailand by the Australian National University strategic expert Desmond Ball and a Thai-based Irish-Australian journalist, Phil Thornton, who has followed Burma for years.
One was an officer with a secret nuclear battalion in the Burmese army who was sent to Moscow for two years’ training; the other was a former executive of the leading regime business partner, Htoo Trading, who handled nuclear contracts with Russia and North Korea.
Their detailed testimony brings into sharp focus the hints emerging recently from other defector accounts and sightings of North Korean delegations that the Burmese junta, under growing pressure to democratise, is seeking a deterrent to any foreign ‘‘regime change’’.
Their story will ring alarm bells across Asia. ‘‘The evidence is preliminary and needs to be verified, but this is something that would completely change the regional security status quo,’’ said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, the head of Thailand’s Institute of Security and International Studies, yesterday.
‘‘It would move Myanmar [Burma] from not just being a pariah state, but a rogue state – that is, one that jeopardises the security and wellbeing of its immediate neighbours.’’
Washington is increasingly concerned that Burma is the main nuclear proliferation threat from North Korea, after Israel destroyed in September 2007 a reactor the North Koreans were apparently building in Syria.
Professor Ball said another Moscow-trained Burmese army defector was picked up by US intelligence agencies early last year. Some weeks later, Burma protested to Thailand about overflights by unmanned surveillance drones that were apparently launched across Thai territory by US agencies. These would have yielded low-level photographs and air samples, in addition to satellite imagery.
At a meeting with Asian leaders, including some from Burma and North Korea, in Thailand last week, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and other foreign ministers won promises from the Burmese they would adhere to United Nations sanctions on North Korean nuclear and missile exports.
China and other Asian nations had recently helped persuade Rangoon to turn back a North Korean freighter, the Nam Kam 1, that was being shadowed by US warships on its way to Burma with an unknown cargo. A month ago, Japanese police arrested a North Korean and two Japanese for allegedly trying to export illegally to Burma a magnetic measuring device that could be used to develop missiles.
Professor Ball, who has studied the Burmese military for several years, said the evidence from two well-placed sources demanded closer study: ‘‘All we can say is these two guys never met up with each other, never knew of each other’s existence, and yet they both tell the same story basically.
‘‘If it was just the Russian reactor, under full International Atomic Energy Agency supervision, which the Russians keep insisting is their policy and the Burmese may have agreed to with that reactor, then the likelihood of them being able to do something with it in terms of producing fissionable fuel and designing a bomb would be zero.
‘‘I’d be more worried about a meltdown like Chernobyl … It’s the North Korean element which adds the danger to it.’’
North Korea’s interest could be a combination of securing a supply of uranium from Burma’s proven reserves, earning hard currency, and keeping its plutonium extraction skills alive in case it agrees to fully dismantle its own Yongbyon nuclear complex. ‘‘Do they want another source of fissionable plutonium 239 to supplement what they get from their Yongbyon reactor?’’ Professor Ball said.
1-8-09 Burma’s nuclear secrets
Burma’s nuclear secrets
August 1, 2009
Is Burma preparing to build a nuclear arsenal? Two years of interviews with defectors have persuaded two Australian investigators, Desmond Ball and Phil Thornton, there is more to the claim than global scepticism suggests.
A FEW years back, a paranoid military regime packed up Burma’s capital and shifted it north a few hundred kilometres. Rangoon, it seems, simply wasn’t safe enough any more. The generals’ new home was to be known as the Abode of Kings; more commonly as Naypyidaw. A city rose from the tropical plains with shiny buildings and slick roadways – a strange priority in a country suffering chronic poverty and a health system at the bottom of world rankings.
Now, a fresh question hangs over the goals of Burmese rulers. Could this junta’s priorities be so skewed as to embark upon construction of a nuclear arsenal? And might it have reached out for help to another paranoid regime, North Korea?
Desmond Ball and Phil Thornton are convinced this is a genuine threat. They have spent two years on the Burmese border, interviewing defectors who claim to know the regime’s plans.
The testimony of two Burmese men in particular has caused Ball and Thornton to confront their own deep scepticism about the claims.
Theirs might seem an unlikely collaboration – Ball, a professor of strategic studies at ANU with a deep interest in nuclear technology, and Thornton, a freelance journalist based in Thailand. But their report on the two defectors’ claims adds to mounting – albeit sketchy – evidence that Burma may be chasing the bomb.
There have been hints Burma aspires to a nuclear program. What is uncertain is the extent and intent. Rumours have swirled around refugee circles outside Burma about secret military installations, tunnels dug into the mountains to hide nuclear facilities, the establishment of a ‘‘nuclear battalion’’ in the army and work done by foreign scientists. But one defector – known as Moe Jo to protect his identity – gives the claims added weight. He warned of the regime having a handful of bombs ready by 2020.
Moe Jo escaped Burmese army service and fled to Thailand. Ball and Thornton met with him in dingy rooms and safehouses. ‘‘His hands shook and he worried about what price his family would have to pay for his actions,’’ they write. ‘‘Before rejecting his country’s nuclear plans, Moe Jo was an officer with 10 years’ exemplary army service. A former graduate of Burma’s prestigious Defence Services Academy, he specialised in computer science.’’
Moe Joe said the regime sent him to Moscow in 2003 to study engineering. He was in a second batch of trainees to be sent to Russia as part of effort to eventually train 1000 personnel to run Burma’s nuclear program.
Before leaving, he was told he would be assigned to a special nuclear battalion.
‘‘You don’t need 1000 people in the fuel cycle or to run a nuclear reactor,’’ said Moe Joe. ‘‘It’s obvious there is much more going on.’’
We knew Russia agreed in principle to sell Burma a small nuclear plant – a light water reactor – and to train about 300 Burmese scientists to run the site. The stated reason is for research purposes, specifically to produce medical isotopes.
In dispute is whether the Russian reactor would be large enough to be diverted to produce enriched uranium or plutonium for a nuclear weapon. Usually a heavy water reactor is needed to achieve this, but perhaps not with North Korean help. Ball and Thornton write: ‘‘As North Korea has shown with their [light water] reactor, it may be slow and more complex, but it is capable.’’
Moe Jo alleged a second, secret reactor of about the same size as the Russian plant had been built at complex called Naung Laing. He said that the army planned a plutonium reprocessing system there and that Russian experts were on site to show how it was done. Part of the Burmese army’s nuclear battalion was stationed in a local village to work on a weapon. He said that an operations area was buried in the nearby Setkhaya Mountains, a set-up including engineers, artillery and communications to act as command and control centre for the nuclear weapons program.
‘‘In the event that the testimonies of the defectors are proved, the alleged ‘secret’ reactor could be capable of being operational and producing a bomb a year, every year, after 2014,’’ write Ball and Thornton.
Claims of this type have stirred serious official concerns. The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, journeyed to Thailand for a regional security meeting last month and directly raised the issue. ‘‘We know that there are also growing concerns about military co-operation between North Korea and Burma, which we take very seriously,’’ she said.
The unease escalated when a North Korean freighter, the Kang Nam I, steamed towards Burma last month carrying undisclosed cargo. A South Korean intelligence expert, quoted anonymously, claimed satellite imagery showed the ship was part of clandestine nuclear transfer and also carried long-range missiles. Shadowed by the US Navy, the vessel eventually turned around and returned home.
Japanese police also recently caught a North Korean and two Japanese nationals allegedly trying to export a magnetic measuring device to Burma that could be used to develop missiles.
But it was what Clinton said during a television interview in Bangkok the next day that raised most eyebrows. For the first time, a senior White House official openly speculated on the prospect of nuclear co-operation between Burma and North Korea.
Clinton: ‘‘We worry about the transfer of nuclear technology and other dangerous weapons.’’
Question: ‘‘From North Korea, you mean?’’
Clinton: ‘‘We do, from North Korea, yes.’’
Q: ‘‘To Burma?’’
Clinton: ‘‘To Burma, yes.’’
Q: ‘‘So you’re concerned about the tie – the closer ties between North Korea and Burma?’’
Clinton: ‘‘Yes, yes.’’
But there are many doubts over how far Burma’s military regime has advanced its nuclear aspiration. Ball and Thornton say a regional security officer told them the Naung Laing operation was a decoy to distract people from the true site of the reactor.
‘‘Before it was a heavily guarded ‘no go-zone’. Now you can drive right up to the buildings. Villagers are allowed to grow crops again.’’ The security officer said the Russian-supplied reactor was located in the Myaing area.
To add to the confusion, there are doubts over the existence of the Russian reactor. ‘‘I’m sure the Russian reactor has not been built already,’’ says Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a Burma watcher over most of the past decade. He will soon have a book published on nuclear plans across South-East Asia.
He sees ‘‘nothing alarming’’ in the prospective Russian deal – Russia is a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty which governs the export of civilian nuclear technology – and doubts Moscow would hide a reactor. Nor has the International Atomic Energy Agency raised questions about Burma’s nuclear ambitions.
But Fitzpatrick is sceptical about the stated reasons offered by Burma’s rulers to explain their interest in nuclear technology, whether for research or power generation.
‘‘The most logical explanation for this interest in research is a prestige factor,’’ he says. Burma wants to demonstrate a level of technology expertise and perhaps also deliberately raise doubts over its nuclear capability. Having the bomb, after all, is a power military deterrent against foreign attack.’’
Of the defectors’ claims, he says: ‘‘I’ve heard these reports and I pay attention to them, and they shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.’’ North Korea is willing to sell anything to anyone, he says, and points to recent evidence that Pyongyang secretly sold a nuclear reactor to Syria.
Ball and Thornton add to the mystery by reporting the testimony of another defector they call Tin Min. He claimed to have worked as a bookkeeper for a tycoon closely linked to the Burmese military regime, whose company had supposedly organised nuclear contracts with Russia and North Korea. The deal with North Korea on nuclear co-operation supposedly dates back nine years, covering construction and maintenance of nuclear facilities.
‘‘Tin Min spoke excellent English and presented his reports to us with a touch of self-importance,’’ write Ball and Thornton. ‘‘Tin Min had good reason to know what it was like to feel important; before defecting, he had scaled the heights of his country’s high society and had reaped the benefits of that position.’’
Tin Min dismissed the regime’s rationale for requiring nuclear technology. ‘‘They say it’s to produce medical isotopes for health purposes in hospitals. How many hospitals in Burma have nuclear science? Burma can barely get electricity up and running. It’s a nonsense.’’
He claimed his boss once told him of the regime’s nuclear dreams. ‘‘They’re aware they cannot compete with Thailand with conventional weapons. They want to play power like North Korea. They hope to combine the nuclear and air defence missiles.’’ He said the nuclear program was known as UF6 Project and was run by the senior general Maung Aye. Ball and Thornton conclude the nuclear co-operation is based on a trade of locally refined uranium from Burma to North Korea in return for technological expertise.
Tin Min claimed his boss controlled much of the shipping in and out of Burma and could organise the transport of equipment to nuclear sites from the port at Rangoon. ‘‘He arranges for army trucks to pick up the containers of equipment from the North Korean boats that arrive in Rangoon and transport them at night by highway to the river or direct to the sites.’’
He also claimed to have paid a construction company in about 2004 to build a tunnel in a mountain at Naung Laing wide enough for two large trucks to pass each other.
But his story cannot be further tested. Tin Min died late last year.
There are obvious dangers of relying on the testimony of ‘‘defectors’’. The people giving evidence may have ulterior motives, as Ball and Thornton recognise, and the regime is not shy at disseminating false information.
Andrew Selth from Griffith University, a former senior intelligence analyst and an experienced Burma watcher, remains suspicious. ‘‘Understandably,’’ he recently wrote for the Lowy Institute, ‘‘foreign officials looking at these matters are being very cautious. No one wants a repetition of the mistakes which preceded the last Iraq war, either in underestimating a country’s capabilities, or by giving too much credibility to a few untested intelligence sources.
‘‘There has always been a lot of smoke surrounding Burma’s nuclear ambitions. Over the past year or so, the amount of smoke has increased, but still no one seems to know whether or not it hides a real fire.’’
Concern is not going away, however. The most recent edition of US Foreign Policy magazine compared claims surrounding Burma’s nuclear program to 1950s leaks about Israel having a secret nuclear site in the desert. Similar doubts held for claims about India and Pakistan. All three countries have since tested the bomb.
Ball and Thornton are convinced the world must face up to some uncomfortable possibilities. ‘‘According to all the milestones identified by the defectors, Burma’s nuclear program is on schedule. It is feasible and achievable. Unfortunately, it is not as bizarre or ridiculous as many people would like to think. Burma’s regional neighbours need to watch carefully.’’
Sunday, July 26, 2009
ဆာရီေတာ့သြားၿပီ လံုခ်ည္ေရာဘယ္လိုလဲ
ဇူလိုင္ ၂၅၊ ၂၀၀၉
က်မဟာ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံ နယူးေဒလီၿမိဳ႕က လက္မႈပညာ ပစၥည္းေတြ ေရာင္းတဲ့ လူစည္ကားရာ ဒီလီဟက္(DILLI HAAT) ေစ်းကို လည္ပတ္ရင္း ကိုယ့္ကိုယ္ကို အျပစ္ရွိေနသလို ခံစားမိတယ္။
အိႏၵိယရဲ႕ ပူျပင္းတဲ့ ေႏြရာသီညေနခင္းမွာ က်မ၀တ္ထားတဲ့ ဂ်င္းေဘာင္းဘီ၊ ညွပ္ဖိနပ္ နဲ႔ တီရွပ္ေတြဟာ လူတခ်ိဳ႕ရဲ႕ စား၀တ္ေနေရးကို သြားၿပီး ထိခိုက္ေနတယ္။
“နယူးေဒလီကလူေတြ ရိုးရာအ၀တ္အစားေတြကို မ၀ယ္ၾကေတာ့ဘူး၊ ဂ်င္းေဘာင္းဘီကိုပဲ ၀ယ္ေတာ့တယ္” လို႔ အသက္ ၂၄ ႏွစ္အရြယ္ ဆာရီ(SARI - အိႏၵိယအမ်ိဳးသမီး ရိုးရာ၀တ္ရံုထည္) ရက္လုပ္ၿပီး အသက္ ေမြး၀မ္းေက်ာင္း ျပဳတဲ့ အာမက္က ေျပာပါတယ္။ အာမက္ ဆာရီ ရက္လုပ္တဲ့အလုပ္ လုပ္ခဲ့တာ ၁၄ႏွစ္ ရွိပါၿပီ။ ဆာရီလုပ္ငန္းဟာ တျဖည္းျဖည္းနဲ႔ က်ဆင္းလာပါတယ္။ အရင္တုန္းက အိႏၵိယ အမ်ိဳးသမီးေတြ ေန႔စဥ္၀တ္တဲ့ ႏွစ္ေပါင္းရာခ်ီ ရိုးရာအျဖစ္ အသံုး ျပဳလာတဲ့ ဆာရီ ဟာ ေခတ္မမီေတာ့ဘူး ျဖစ္လာပါတယ္။
“ဆာရီ? ဟုတ္လား၊ ပံုမွန္ဆို က်မဘယ္ေတာ့မွ မ၀တ္ဘူး၊ ရိုးရာပဲြ အခမ္းအနားမွာမွ ၀တ္ျဖစ္တယ္” ၂၂ႏွစ္အရြယ္ အေရာင္းစာေရးမေလး ရရွ္မီးက တခစ္ခစ္ရယ္ၿပီး ေျဖပါတယ္။
ဆာရီေစ်းကြက္ဟာ ေဆာင္းရာသီ ကာလမွာ ေကာင္းလာတတ္တယ္။ အိႏၵိယမွာ ပြဲလမ္းသဘင္ေတြ မဂၤလာပဲြေတြ မ်ားတဲ့ အခ်ိန္ေလ။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ငယ္ရြယ္ ေခတ္ဆန္တဲ့ မိန္းကေလးေတြက စက္ရက္ကန္းထုတ္ ဒီဇိုင္း အဆန္းအျပားရွိတဲ့ ဆာရီကိုပဲ အ၀ယ္ မ်ားၿပီး လက္နဲ႔ ရက္လုပ္တဲ့ ေရွးရိုးရာ ဆာရီက အေရာင္း ထုိင္းလာပါတယ္။
လက္နဲ႔ ရက္လုပ္ရတဲ့ ဆာရီဟာ ဒီဇိုင္းေပၚ မူတည္ၿပီး ၂ ပတ္ တခါတေလ ၁လ ေလာက္အထိ ၾကာပါတယ္၊ ေစ်းလည္း ႀကီးေတာ့ ေစ်းသက္သာတဲ့ စက္ရက္ကန္းနဲ႔ တရုတ္ျပည္က သြင္းလာတဲ့ အလြန္ ေစ်းေပါတဲ့ ဆာရီကုိ ေစ်းကြက္မွာ မယွဥ္ႏိုင္ပါဘူး။
ဆာရီ အသံုးပိုမ်ားတဲ့ အိႏၵိယ ေတာင္ပိုင္းက လက္ ရက္ကန္း သမားေတြလည္း အခက္အခဲနဲ႔ ႀကံဳေနရပါတယ္။ ကန္ခ်ီပူရမ္ (KANCHIPURAM) ေဒသမွာ ၂၀၀၄ ႏွစ္က ဆာရီ ရက္ကန္းရံု ၂၂ ခု ရွိခဲ့တာ အခု ၁၃ ခုပဲ က်န္ပါေတာ့တယ္ လို႔ အိႏိၵယႏိုင္ငံထုတ္ BUSINESS TODAY မဂၢဇင္းမွာ ေဖာ္ျပထားပါတယ္။ နာမည္ ေက်ာ္ၾကားတဲ့ နယ္လီ(NALLI) ကုမၸဏီက ၿမိဳ႕ႀကီးတိုင္း လိုလိုမွာ ဆာရီ ေရာင္းတဲ့ ဆုိင္ခဲြေတြ ဖြင့္ထားၿပီး ရက္ကန္းရက္သမားေတြ မ်ားစြာကို အလုပ္ ေပးထားပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့လည္း ကန္ခ်ီပူရမ္မွာ အရင္က ရက္ကန္း အလုပ္သမားေတြ ၆ ေသာင္းကေန ယေန႔ဆို ၂ ေသာင္းေလာက္ပဲ က်န္ပါေတာ့တယ္။
ဆာရီ၀တ္ရံုဟာ အိႏၵိယအမ်ိဳးသမီးထုရဲ႕ ကိုယ္စားျပဳ ပံုရိပ္ ျဖစ္ေနဆဲပါပဲ။ အိႏိၵယ ရုပ္ရွင္ ဇာတ္လမ္းေတြမွာ ဆိုရင္ မင္းသမီးတိုင္း ဆာရီကို ေသခ်ာ က်က်နန ၀တ္ဆင္ထားတာကို ေတြ႔ႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ တကယ္ လက္ေတြ႔ ဘ၀မွာ ၆ ကိုက္ေလာက္ ရွည္လ်ားတဲ့ ဆာရီ၀တ္ရံုကို ၀တ္ဆင္ဖို႔ ဂရုစိုက္ဖို႔ သိပ္ မလြယ္ကူပါဘူး။ ကိုယ္ပိုင္ကား ၀ယ္စီးၿပီး ကိုယ္ဘာသာ တုိက္ခန္းငွား လြတ္လြတ္လပ္လပ္ ေနလာၾကတဲ့ ငယ္ရြယ္သူ အမ်ိဳးသမီးေတြဟာ ဆာရီကို စြန္႔လြတ္လာပါေတာ့တယ္။
“ဆာရီ၀တ္ဆင္မႈ ရိုးရာ တျဖည္းျဖည္းနဲ႔ ကြယ္ေပ်ာက္လာတာ ျမင္ရေတာ့ စိတ္မေကာင္း ျဖစ္မိပါတယ္၊ အေၾကာင္းရင္း တခုက အေနာက္တုိင္း၀တ္စံု ၀တ္ဆင္ထားတဲ့ အမ်ိဳးသမီး တေယာက္ဟာ ရိုးရာ၀တ္စံု ၀တ္ဆင္ထားသူထက္ ပို အစြမ္းအစရွိတယ္လို႔ လူေတြက ထင္ေနၾကတယ္” လို႔ အသက္ ၂၀ အရြယ္ ေဒလီတကၠသိုလ္ ေက်ာင္းသူ ခရစ္တီးက ေျပာပါတယ္။
တကယ္ေတာ့ အိႏိၵယ အမ်ိဳးသမီးေတြရဲ႕ စစ္မွန္တဲ့ လြတ္လပ္မႈ ဆိုတာဟာ ၀တ္ခ်င္တာ ၀တ္ႏိုင္ၿပီး အျခားသူေတြ ဘယ္လို ထင္ျမင္တယ္ ဆိုတာကို ဂရုမစိုက္ လ်စ္လ်ဴရွုႏိုင္ဖို႔ပဲ မဟုတ္လား။
ေက်ာ္ေက်ာ္
(ႏိုင္ငံရပ္ျခားေရာက္ ျမန္မာျပည္သားမ်ား ျမန္မာရိုးရာပဲြေတြမွာ လံုခ်ည္၊ ပုဆိုးမ်ား ၀တ္ဆင္လာေစလိုတဲ့ ဆႏၵျဖင့္ ဒီဘာသာျပန္ကို ေရးပို႔လုိက္ပါတယ္)
ဆာရီေတာ့သြားၿပီ လံုခ်ည္ေရာဘယ္လိုလဲ မိုးမခ မွ ကူးယူေဖၚျပပါသည္။
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Dr Sein Win Accepts MAGI Award 2009 for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
Wednesday, July 22 2009, 01:31 PM EDT
Speech delivered by Dr Sein Win at the MAGI Award 2009 Presentation Ceremony held at the City Hall of Durban, South Africa, to accept the award on behalf of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
Ladies and Gentlemen, it is a great honor for me to join with you on this auspicious occasion; the awarding of the prestigious "MAGI Award 2009" -- "Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Reconciliation and Peace" -- to our leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
On behalf of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the people of Burma, let me express our heartfelt gratitude to the Gandhi Development Trust and the people of South Africa for expressing your solidarity with us.
The special meaning of this award is not lost on me. The fact that MAGI Award is given to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi -- a strict follower of Gandhi's Principles and a strong advocate for peaceful, non-violent change in Burma -- is indeed a very proud moment for us. While we are meeting here on a joyous occasion, a mind-numbing reality of today's Burma is that our leader is not only being denied her basic freedoms but also being tried and held in Insein Prison under charges which are preposterous.
This moment, therefore, gives us cause to consider both the strength of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and to face the dreadful reality of today's Burma.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's strength is perhaps best epitomized in her unwillingness to compromise her principles even at the expense of her personal safety. Citing that she had the legal right to be present at a certain town, she led a march in front and soldiers who were aiming to shoot at her, let her proceed. When security personnel were using water cannon on her supporters, she climbed aboard the fire truck with water cannons and stopped them from being used against the people. The military junta in Burma has allowed her to leave Burma at any time. But she chose to remain in her country spending 14 of her last 20 years under detention. She pays the price to share the suffering of the people as all leaders should. She knows that once she leaves, she will never be allowed back. Her ties with her beloved country would be severed. So, she will not yield, will not renege.
She knows that her people are indeed suffering. The reality of Burma is indeed an awful thing to confront.
Burma has been for a decade a so-called 'Silent Emergency' as characterized by UN agencies and international humanitarian organizations.
More than 40% of the population is living below the poverty line and concerns over food security have become chronic, not without reason.
One out of three Burmese children under five is suffering severe malnutrition.
Burma has the second highest child mortality rate in Asia. Up to 150,000 children die every year, mainly from preventable diseases.
Despite the desperate situation, there are no initiatives or programs put forward by the regime to help the people cope. The global economic crisis, a palpable threat to the lives of so many Burmese, is hardly acknowledged in the planning of the generals.
Yet, already, Burmese migrant workers who were employed in labor intensive industries in neighboring countries are going back home, broken and penniless.
This ersatz government, sitting in its Potemkin capital, refuses to provide or plan for any alternative employment, nor to even consider basic social welfare.
Burma's rich agricultural sector, so long the backbone of its economy and the likely location of its immediate economic future, is in ruin due to the military's self-centered, often ad hoc policies to limit inputs, disrupt transport, control sales quotas and restrict staple crops.
Extrajudicial killings, lootings, forced labor, and recruitment of children as child soldiers continue unabated and Burma around 70,000 child soldiers, the highest number anywhere in the world.
Ethnic nationality communities are regularly, brutally, uprooted in the interests of the military's meandering mindset. The valuable socio-cultural fabric of these communities has been torn irrevocably. Their unique cultural inputs are now lost. Burma's army continues its hostile military operations in areas where ethnic nationalities are based, in the interests of quashing dissent and of consolidating its control.
People have been fleeing to Thailand to escape from the persecution of the military and as of January this year, the number of refugees at the Thai-Burma border has gone over the 140,000 mark.
Nearly one million Burmese have been internally displaced. Ninety percent of Burmese live on less than $US1 /day. Average household incomes are roughly 5% less than the average cost of feeding a family.
By our count, 2,114 political prisoners including 11 elected members of parliament remain in prison in appalling conditions. Since 1988 at least 137 political prisoners have died in jail.
These prevailing hardships and gross violations of human rights by the Burmese military are continuing to fan the flames of civil war and heightening the democratic aspirations of the people. Ongoing underground movement for change and surging wave of dissent among the people are a mark of the reach of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's influence and commitment. Even though she is formally disembodied from the body politic, the democracy movement of Burma still sees her as the central, driving force and its leader. She knows, as do we all, the road to freedom is arduous and strewn with obstacles.
Presently, the military junta is planning to hold elections under a constitution that it has drafted and passed through a unilateral process so that it will be able to legitimize military rule in the country. The constitution embodies stipulations which ensure the domination of military in the future political life of Burma. No major political party, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's party -- the National League for Democracy -- supports the constitution.
Furthermore, the 2008 constitution is designed to exclude any substantial role for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. It institutionalizes the rejection of her right to be elected for the ridiculous reason that she was married to a foreigner.
Burma is, therefore, once again facing a constitutional crisis. As such, finding a solution to the political, economic and humanitarian crisis in Burma is clearly a matter of urgency.
In that respect, the international community can play a vital role. The South African Government is particularly important via its influence.
We believe a concerted effort to bring democracy to Burma in the coming 12 months will yield positive results.
The people of Burma are inspired and they are willing to work for freedom. The people of Burma still seek to embody the spirit of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
The National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma and the National League for Democracy fully supports the United Nations Secretary-General's strong advocacy for Burma and we continue to seek reinforcement through strong and committed Security Council action.
We have championed the UN Secretary-General's five-step blueprint for the Burmese military: to release all political prisoners; to begin a substantive and time-bound dialogue; to move towards a transition regime; to improve socio-economic conditions inside Burma and; to formalize the United Nations good offices role through, for instance, a permanent presence in Burma.
We have a long-standing backing for full, open and unconditional dialogue between the NLD and the military.
Similarly our views on economic sanctions remain: there should be no adjustment or review of punitive economic measures without a parallel process of unprecedented and intensive diplomatic action.
But, clearly we need more. This is a time to step forward. To this end we have aligned Burma's various interests – ethnic groups, the religious communities, civil society, and the democracy movement both in Burma and abroad – to strike a new course for democracy.
The whole Movement for Democracy and Rights of Ethnic Nationalities has developed a program of action to address such pressing concerns as constitutional reform, steps to take for national reconciliation, economic reforms, and, the plight of refugees and internally displaced persons.
With this program, we are ready to sit down and to dialogue with the military on a peaceful transition toward democracy and development in Burma.
We seek the support of South Africa and African countries, democratic nations, the United Nations, and other international actors. We are encouraging action at the UN Security Council to bring about peaceful change in Burma.
The international community is given cause to focus its collective mind on Burma and on the need to end the nightmare. So we are here today, doing just that.
I would like to convey the appreciation Daw Aung San Suu Kyi would no doubt convey to you, our friends in a time of need.
She would want to say we all have a role to play, whether it is sending letters to your local member, becoming active in the struggle for Burmese democracy and to release Daw Aung San Suu Kyi or just by sending a prayer.
As The Lady herself has said, please use your own liberty for the liberty of the people of Burma.
I believe, one day soon, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, will be able to visit Durban and to celebrate the triumph of democracy in Burma together with you all.
Thank you.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
၂၂-၇-၀၉ အိႏၵိယက ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို ဘာေၾကာင့္ ရႈတ္ခ်သင့္သလဲ
နယူးေဒလီ (မဇၩိမ)
မံုပီး
ဗုဒၶဟူးေန႔၊ ဂ်ဴလုိင္လ 22 ရက္ 2009 ခုႏွစ္ 15 နာရီ 35 မိနစ္
ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကို ႐ုံးတင္ တရားစြဲဆိုေနသည့္ ကိစၥအေပၚ တကမၻာလံုးက ဝိုင္းဝန္းေဝဖန္ ျပစ္တင္ေနၾကခ်ိန္တြင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ၏ အိမ္နီးခ်င္း ႏိုင္ငံလည္းျဖစ္၊ ကမၻာ့အၾကီးဆံုး ဒီမိုကေရစီ ႏိုင္ငံၾကီးလည္းျဖစ္ေသာ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံက ေရငံုႏႈတ္ပိတ္ ေနသည္ဟု ဆိုလွ်င္ အံ့ၾသစရာေတာ့ မရွိပါ။
အိႏၵိယက ထိုသို႔ ႏႈတ္ပိတ္ေနျခင္းျဖင့္၊ ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရ ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားကို ကတိမ်ား ထပ္တလဲလဲေပးေနျခင္းျဖင့္ စီးပြားေရးႏွင့္ ကုန္သြယ္မႈ အခြင့္အလမ္းမ်ား ပိုမိုရရွိလာသည္။ နယ္စပ္တေလွ်ာက္ လံုၿခံဳေရးႏွင့္ အေရွ႕ေတာင္အာရွတြင္ ေျခခ်ခြင့္ ပိုမိုရရွိလာသည္။
၁၉၉ဝ စုႏွစ္မ်ား အေစာပိုင္းကတည္းက စတင္ခဲ့ေသာ ႏွစ္ႏိုင္ငံ အက်ဳိးတူဆက္ဆံေရးမွာ မေအာင္ျမင္ေၾကာင္း ျပသခဲ့ၿပီးျဖစ္သည္ဟု ေဝဖန္သူမ်ားက ေျပာဆိုေနလင့္ကစား အိႏၵိယအစိုးရကမူ ဤသို႔မထင္ပါ။ အလြန္ၾကီးမားေသာ ဓာတ္ေငြ႔သိုက္ၾကီးကို တူးေဖာ္ခြင့္ ရရွိထားသည္၊ သတၱဳတူးေဖာ္ခြင့္ႏွင့္ ဆိပ္ကမ္းတည္ေဆာက္ခြင့္မ်ား ရရွိထားသည္ဟု သူတို႔က ဆိုလိမ့္မည္။
ထို႔ျပင္ ႏွစ္ႏိုင္ငံဆက္ဆံေရး စတင္ အဆင္ေျပလာကတည္းက ကုန္သြယ္မႈမွာ တျဖည္းျဖည္း တိုးတက္လာခဲ့သည္။ ေနာက္ႏွစ္အတြက္ အက်ဳိးတူ ကုန္သြယ္မႈပမာဏကို အေမရိကန္ ေဒၚလာ သန္း ၁၀၀၀ ရွိရန္ လ်ာထားသည္။
အိႏၵိယ-ျမန္မာ ႏွစ္ႏိုင္ငံ အက်ဳိးတူကုန္သြယ္မႈပမာဏမွာ ယခင္ကတႏွစ္လွ်င္ အေမရိကန္ ေဒၚလာ သန္း ၃၀၀ သာ ရွိခဲ့ရာမွ ၂၀၀၇-၀၈ ဘ႑ာႏွစ္တြင္ အေမရိကန္ေဒၚလာ ၉၀၁ ဒႆမ ၃ သန္းသို႔ တိုးတက္လာခဲ့သည္။ ဤကိန္းဂဏန္းတြင္ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံက ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွ သြင္းကုန္တန္ဖိုးမွာ ၇၂၇ ဒႆမ ၈၅ သန္းဖိုး ရွိသည္။
သို႔ေသာ္ ဤတိုးတက္မႈမ်ားသည္ တန္ဖိုးတခုေပးၿပီးမွ ရရွိလာခဲ့ျခင္းသာ ျဖစ္သည္။ ႏိုင္ငံတကာစင္ျမင့္တြင္ ျမန္မာ့ႏိုင္ငံေရး တိုးတက္ျဖစ္ေပၚမႈမ်ားႏွင့္ စပ္လ်ဥ္း၍ ေရငံုႏႈတ္ပိတ္ေနရသည္။ ႏိုင္ငံတကာနယ္ပယ္တြင္ ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရကို တြက္ခ်က္ခ်ိန္ဆ ေထာက္ခံမႈမ်ား လုပ္ရသည္။
၂၀၀၆ ခုႏွစ္ မတ္လအတြင္းက သြားေရာက္ခဲ့ေသာ ယခင္ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံ သမၼတၾကီး အဗၺဒူ ကာလမ္ (APJ Abdul Kalam) က ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မႉးၾကီးသန္းေရႊကို ကမၻာ့ကုလသမဂၢ၊ အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ အလုပ္သမားအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္၊ ကုလလူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ေကာ္မရွင္ အပါအဝင္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာစင္ျမင့္တြင္ စစ္အစိုးရကို ေထာက္ခံသြားပါမည့္အေၾကာင္း ထပ္ေလာင္းအတည္ျပဳေျပာၾကားခဲ့ရသည္။
မဇၩိမက ရရွိထားေသာ ျပင္ပသို႔ေပါက္ၾကားလာသည့္ ႏွစ္ႏိုင္ငံအၾကီးအကဲမ်ား၏ အစည္းအေဝး မွတ္တမ္းအရ မစၥတာ ကာလမ္က ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မႉးၾကီးသန္းေရႊကို ျမန္မာ့ႏိုင္ငံေရး ျဖစ္ထြန္းတုိးတက္မႈမ်ားကို အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံက ေမးခြန္းထုတ္လိမ့္မည္ မဟုတ္ေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ စစ္အစိုးရ၏ ဒီမိုကေရစီသို႔ သြားရာလမ္းျပေျမပံု ၇ ခ်က္ကို အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံက ေထာက္ခံပါေၾကာင္း ကတိျပဳေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။
ဤသို႔ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံက ကတိျပဳသည္ကုိ တံု႔ျပန္သည့္အေနျဖင့္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မႉးၾကီးသန္းေရႊကလည္း ျမန္္မာ့ေျမေပၚရွိ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံမွ ေသာင္းက်န္းသူမ်ားကို ေမာင္းထုတ္ေပးမည့္အေၾကာင္း ကတိေပးခဲ့သည္။ ထို႔ျပင္ အိႏၵိယ-ျမန္မာ နယ္စပ္ၿမိဳ႕ တမူးႏွင့္ ကေလးဝသို႔ ကားလမ္းေဖာက္လုပ္ေရးကိုလည္း ခြင့္ျ႔ပဳခဲ့သည္။
သို႔ေသာ္ အိႏိၵယႏုိင္ငံ၏ ျပည္နယ္တခုျဖစ္ေသာ မီဇိုရမ္ႏွင့္ နယ္နိမိတ္ခ်င္း ထိစပ္ေနသည့္ ခ်င္းျပည္နယ္၌ တီးတိန္၊ ဖလမ္း၊ ရိဒ္ေရကန္တို႔ကို ဆက္သြယ္သည့္ ကားလမ္းေဖာက္လုပ္ရာတြင္ ထပ္မံအကူအညီေပးပါရန္လည္း ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မႉးၾကီးက အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံကို ထပ္မံေတာင္းဆိုခဲ့သည္။
နယ္စပ္တေလွ်ာက္ ေသာင္းက်န္းသူမ်ားကို ရင္ဆိုင္တိုက္ခိုက္ရာတြင္ လိုအပ္သည့္ ကားလမ္းမ်ား ေဖာက္လုပ္ႏိုင္ေရးအတြက္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံက အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံ၏ အကူအညီကို လိုအပ္ေၾကာင္း၊ ဘူဒိုဇာမ်ား၊ အၾကီးစား ေမာ္ေတာ္ယာဥ္မ်ား ေထာက္ပံ့ေပးပါရန္လည္း ေတာင္းဆိုခဲ့သည္။
သို႔ေသာ္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မႉးၾကီးက ဤသို႔ ေျပာဆိုေနေသာ္လည္း အိႏၵိယ-ျမန္မာ နယ္စပ္တေလွ်ာက္ သတင္းရပ္ကြက္္မ်ား၏ အဆိုအရ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံမွ ေသာင္းက်န္းသူမ်ား၊ အထူးသျဖင့္ မဏိပူ သူပုန္မ်ားသည္ ျမန္မာစစ္တပ္မွ အရာရွိမ်ားႏွင့္ ေဆြးေႏြးညိႇႏိႈင္းကာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ စစ္ကိုင္းတိုင္းအတြင္း၌ ခိုလံႈေနထိုင္လ်က္ရွိေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ အခ်ဳိ႕ အဆင့္ျမင့္ အရာရွိအနည္းငယ္ဆိုလွ်င္ အိမ္မ်ားပင္ ပိုင္ဆိုင္ထားၾကၿပီျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ေျပာသည္။
အဆိုပါ အစည္းအေဝးအတြင္း ႏွစ္ႏိုင္ငံအၾကီးအကဲမ်ားက ႏွစ္ႏိုင္ငံ အက်ဳိးတူစီမံကိန္းမ်ား ျဖစ္ၾကေသာ ကုလားတန္ ဘက္စံုစီမံကိန္း၏ အစိတ္အပိုင္းတရပ္ျဖစ္ေသာ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ စစ္ေတြဆိပ္ကမ္း တိုးတက္ဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးေရး၊ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ အေနာက္ေျမာက္ဘက္ စစ္ကိုင္းတိုင္းအတြင္း ထမံသီ ေရအားလွ်ပ္စစ္စီမံကိန္းတို႔ကို ဆက္လက္ေဆာင္ရြက္ေရးကို သေဘာတူညီခဲ့ၾကသည္။ ထမံသီစီမံကိန္းမွာ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံက ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြင္း ေဆာင္ရြက္မည့္ နီကယ္ႏွင့္ ေၾကးနီ တူးေဖာ္ေရးလုပ္ငန္း စီမံကိန္းမ်ားသို႔ လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အား ေပးပို႔မည္ျဖစ္သည္။
အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံက သူ႔စစ္အစိုးရကို ေထာက္ခံသြားရန္ ကတိျပဳသည္ကို တံု႔ျပန္သည့္အေနျဖင့္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မႉးၾကီးသန္းေရႊကလည္း ရခိုင္ကမ္း႐ိုးတန္း အေနာက္ပိုင္းရွိ ျမန္မာ့ကမ္းလြန္ သဘာဝဓာတ္ေငြ႔ လုပ္ကြက္မ်ား၌ ဓာတ္ေငြ႔ထုတ္လုပ္ခြင့္ႏွင့္ တင္သြင္းခြင့္ ေပးရန္လည္း မစၥတာကာလမ္ကို ျပန္လည္ ကတိျပဳခဲ့သည္။
အေစာပိုင္းတြင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံက တ႐ုတ္ႏိုင္ငံသို႔ ဓာတ္ေငြ႔ေရာင္းခ်ရန္ နားလည္မႈ စာခၽြန္လႊာတရပ္ လက္မွတ္ေရးထိုးခဲ့ေသာ္လည္း၊ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသည္ ေနာက္ထပ္ ဓာတ္ေငြ႔သိုက္မ်ား ရွာေဖြေတြ႔ရွိရန္ အလားအလာမ်ား ရွိေနသျဖင့္ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံအေနျဖင့္လည္း အလားတူ ကန္ထ႐ိုက္စာခ်ဳပ္တရပ္ကို ရရွိႏိုင္ေသးေၾကာင္း ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မႉးၾကီးသန္းေရႊက ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။
''ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဟာ အလြန္ၾကီးမားတဲ့ သဘာဝဓာတ္ေငြ႔သိုက္ ရွိတာေၾကာင့္ တ႐ုတ္နဲ႔ အိႏၵိယ ႏွစ္ႏိုင္ငံလံုးကို ဓာတ္ေငြ႔မ်ား ေရာင္းခ်ေပးသြားႏိုင္သည့္ အေျခအေန ရွိပါေၾကာင္း'' ဟု ျမန္မာစစ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္က မစၥတာကာလမ္ကို ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ၏ ဒုတိယအၾကီးဆံုးၿမိဳ႕ မႏၲေလးၿမိဳ႕အနီးတြင္ သတင္းႏွင့္ဆက္သြယ္ေရးနည္း ပညာဥယ်ာဥ္ (ICT Park) တခု တည္ေဆာက္ႏိုင္ေရးအတြက္လည္း ကူညီပါရန္ သူက အိႏၵိယကုမၸဏီမ်ားကို အကူအညီေတာင္းခံခဲ့သည္။
ဤသေဘာတူညီခ်က္မ်ား အားလံုးအတြက္ သက္ဆိုင္ရာဝန္ၾကီးဌာနမ်ားအလိုက္ ကန္ထ႐ိုက္စာခ်ဳပ္ ခ်ဳပ္ဆိုျခင္းမ်ား၊ နားလည္မႈ စာခၽြန္လႊာလက္မွတ္ ေရးထိုးျခင္းမ်ားကို ႏွစ္ႏိုင္ငံအဆင့္ျမင့္အရာရွိမ်ား၊ သံတမန္ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲမ်ား ၾကိမ္ဖန္မ်ားစြာ ျပဳလုပ္ၿပီးေနာက္ ေရးထိုးခဲ့ၾကျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။
အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံ၏ `အေရွ႕ေမွ်ာ္မူဝါဒ´ ႏွင့္အညီ အဆုိပါ စီမံကိန္းအားလံုးကို ျမန္မာ့ေျမေပၚတြင္ ျပဳလုပ္ေဆာင္ရြက္မည္ျဖစ္ၿပီး၊ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံက လိုအပ္သည့္ နည္းပညာႏွင့္ ဘ႑ာေရး အေထာက္အပံ့တို႔ကို ေပးအပ္သြားမည္ျဖစ္သည္။
ကုလားတန္ ဘက္စံုစီမံကိန္းတြင္ စုစုေပါင္း ဘတ္ဂ်က္ခန္႔မွန္းေျခ အေမရိကန္ ေဒၚလာသန္း ၁၀၀ အနက္ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံက ေဒၚလာ သန္း ၉၀ ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံသြားမည္ျဖစ္ၿပီး က်န္ ၁ဝ သန္းကို ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံက ေပးအပ္မည္ျဖစ္သည္။
ဤစီမံကိန္းသည္ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံ၏ အစျပဳေဆာင္ရြက္ခ်က္ျဖစ္သည့္ အားေလ်ာ္စြာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံက ထည့္ဝင္ရမည့္ ေဒၚလာ ၁၀ သန္းအတြက္လည္း အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံက အနည္းဆံုး အတိုးႏႈန္းႏွင့္ ေငြထုတ္ေခ်းသြားမည္ ျဖစ္သည္။
ကုလားတန္စီမံကိန္းသည္ အိႏၵိယအေရွ႕ေျမာက္ျပည္နယ္ မီဇိုရမ္ႏွင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ စစ္ေတြဆိပ္ကမ္းတို႔ကို ဆက္သြယ္ေပးမည္ျဖစ္ကာ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံအေနျဖင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသို႔သာမက အေရွ႕ေတာင္အာရွ ေဒသတခုလံုးသို႔လည္း လမ္းေပါက္သြားမည္ျဖစ္သည္။
ဤကိစၥမ်ားအျပင္ ေသာင္းက်န္းသူႏွိမ္နင္းေရးႏွင့္ သက္ဆိုင္သည့္ ႏွစ္ႏိုင္ငံနယ္စပ္ လံုၿခံဳေရးကိစၥမ်ားကို ေဆြးေႏြးႏိုင္ရန္ စစ္တပ္အဆင့္ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲမ်ား တႏွစ္ ႏွစ္ၾကိမ္ ျပဳလုပ္ရန္လည္း သေဘာတူညီခဲ့သည္။
ဤသို႔စီမံကိန္းေပါင္း မ်ားစြာကို အေကာင္အထည္ ေဖာ္ေနသည့္အတြက္ ထိန္းသိမ္းခံ ျမန္မာ့ အတိုက္အခံေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကို ႐ံုးတင္ တရားစြဲဆိုေနျခင္း အေပၚလည္း ဘာမွမေျပာဘဲ ေရငံုႏႈတ္ပိတ္ေနရျခင္း၊ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ မ်က္ႏွာစာတြင္ စစ္အစိုးရကို ေက်ာေထာက္ေနာက္ခံ ျပဳေပးေနရျခင္းတို႔အတြက္ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံတြင္ အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္မ်ား ရိွမည္မွာ ေသခ်ာပါသည္။ ဤအစီအမံမ်ားမွာ ႏွစ္ႏိုင္ငံလံုးအတြက္ အက်ဳိးျဖစ္ထြန္းေနျခင္းေၾကာင့္ပင္ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
21-7-09 Burma may join nuclear club: experts
July 21, 2009 - 4:19PM
No one expects military-run Burma to obtain an atomic bomb anytime soon but experts have the Southeast Asian nation on their radar screen.
The recent aborted voyage of a North Korean ship, photographs of massive tunnels and a top-secret meeting have rung alarm bells that one of the world's poorest nations may be aspiring to join the nuclear club - with help from its friends in Pyongyang.
"There's suspicion that something is going on, and increasingly that cooperation with North Korea may have a nuclear undercurrent. We are very much looking into it," says David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington, DC think tank.
The issue is expected to be discussed, at least on the sidelines, at this week's ASEAN Regional Forum, a major security conference hosted by Thailand. US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, along with representatives from North Korea and Burma, will attend.
Alert signals sounded recently when a North Korean freighter, the Kang Nam I, headed toward Burma with undisclosed cargo. Shadowed by the US Navy, it reversed course and returned home earlier this month.
It is still not clear what was aboard. US and South Korean officials suspected artillery and other non-nuclear arms, but one South Korean intelligence expert, citing satellite imagery, says the ship's mission appeared to be related to a Burmese nuclear program and also carried Scud-type missiles.
The expert said North Korea is helping Burma set up uranium- and nuclear-related facilities, echoing similar reports that have long circulated in Burma's exile community and media.
Meanwhile, Japanese police arrested a North Korean and two Japanese nationals last month for allegedly trying to export a magnetic measuring device to Burma that could be used to develop missiles.
And a recent report from Washington-based Radio Free Asia and Burmese exile media said senior Burmese military officers made a top-secret visit late last year to North Korea, where an agreement was concluded for greatly expanding cooperation to modernise Burma's military muscle, including the construction of underground installations. The military pact report has yet to be confirmed.
In June, photographs, video and reports showed as many as 800 tunnels, some of them vast, dug in Burma with North Korean assistance under an operation code-named "Tortoise Shells". The photos were reportedly taken between 2003 and 2006.
Thailand-based author Bertil Lintner is convinced of the authenticity of the photos, which he was the first to obtain. However, the purpose of the tunnel networks, many near the remote capital of Naypyitaw, remains a question mark.
"There is no doubt that the Burmese generals would like to have a bomb so that they could challenge the Americans and the rest of the world," says Lintner, who has written books on both Burma and North Korea.
"But they must be decades away from acquiring anything that would even remotely resemble an atomic bomb."
David Mathieson of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, who monitors developments in Burma, says that while there's no firm evidence the generals are pursuing a nuclear weapons capability, "a swirl of circumstantial trends indicates something in the nuclear field is going on that definitely warrants closer scrutiny by the international community".
Albright says some of the suspicion stems from North Korea's nuclear cooperation with Syria, which now possesses a reactor.
Syria had first approached the Russians, just as Burma did earlier, but both countries were rejected, so the Syrians turned to Pyongyang - a step Burma may also be taking.
© 2009 AP http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-world/burma-may-join-nuclear-club-experts-20090721-drs4.html
21-7-09 Is Burma Going Nuclear?
By DENIS D GRAY / AP WRITER
Irrawaddy
Tuesday, July 21, 200
BANGKOK — The recent aborted voyage of a North Korean ship, photographs of massive tunnels and a top secret meeting have raised alarm bells that one of the world's poorest nations may be aspiring to join the nuclear club—with help from its friends in Pyongyang. No one expects military-run Burma, also known as Myanmar, to obtain an atomic bomb anytime soon, but experts have the Southeast Asian nation on their radar screen.
"There's suspicion that something is going on, and increasingly that cooperation with North Korea may have a nuclear undercurrent. We are very much looking into it," says David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington DC think tank.
The issue is expected to be discussed, at least on the sidelines, at this week's Asean Regional Forum, a major security conference hosted by Thailand. US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, along with representatives from North Korea and Burma, will attend.
Alert signals sounded recently when a North Korean freighter, the Kang Nam I, headed toward Burma with undisclosed cargo. Shadowed by the US Navy, it reversed course and returned home earlier this month.
It is still not clear what was aboard. US and South Korean officials suspected artillery and other non-nuclear arms, but one South Korean intelligence expert, citing satellite imagery, says the ship's mission appeared to be related to a Burma nuclear program and also carried Scud-type missiles.
The expert, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said North Korea is helping Burma set up uranium- and nuclear-related facilities, echoing similar reports that have long circulated in Burma's exile community and media.
Meanwhile, Japanese police arrested a North Korean and two Japanese nationals last month for allegedly trying to export a magnetic measuring device to Burma that could be used to develop missiles.
And a recent report from Burmese exile media said senior Burmese military officers made a top secret visit late last year to North Korea, where an agreement was concluded for greatly expanding cooperation to modernize Burma's military muscle, including the construction of underground installations. The military pact report has yet to be confirmed.
In June, photographs, video and reports showed as many as 800 tunnels, some of them vast, dug in Burma with North Korean assistance under an operation code-named "Tortoise Shells." The photos were reportedly taken between 2003 and 2006.
Thailand-based author Bertil Lintner is convinced of the authenticity of the photos, which he was the first to obtain. However, the purpose of the tunnel networks, many near the remote capital of Naypyidaw, remains a question mark.
"There is no doubt that the Burmese generals would like to have a bomb so that they could challenge the Americans and the rest of the world," says Lintner, who has written books on both Burma and North Korea. "But they must be decades away from acquiring anything that would even remotely resemble an atomic bomb."
David Mathieson of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, who monitors developments in Burma, says that while there's no firm evidence the generals are pursuing a nuclear weapons capability, "a swirl of circumstantial trends indicates something in the nuclear field is going on that definitely warrants closer scrutiny by the international community."
Albright says some of the suspicion stems from North Korea's nuclear cooperation with Syria, which now possesses a reactor. Syria had first approached the Russians, just as Burma did earlier, but both countries were rejected, so the Syrians turned to Pyongyang—a step Burma may also be taking.
Since the early 2000s, dissidents and defectors from Burma have talked of a "nuclear battalion," an atomic "Ayelar Project" working out of a disguised flour mill and two Pakistani scientists who fled to Burma following the September 11 World Trade Center attack providing assistance.
Monday, July 20, 2009
12-7-09 Support from Northeast India for democracy in Burma
Merinews
The civil society and advocacy groups of Northeast India continue supporting the pro-democratic movement in the military ruled country. There is nanimous support in the region for release of pro-democracy Burmese icon Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
CONTRARY TO New Delhi’s policy on Burma (Myanmar), the civil society and advocacy groups of Northeast India continue supporting the pro-democratic movement in the military ruled country. If the Central government is willing to engage the Burmese junta for various strategic and trade relationship, the student-youth-journalist and also political party workers of the region maintain their demands to snap all ties with the brand of dictators of Nay Pyi Taw (the new capital of Burma after Rangoon).
They are also in unanimous in various public meetings taking places in the region that the pro-democracy Burmese icon Daw Aung San Suu Kyi must be released and allowed her to continue the political activities.
The latest interaction between a group of Burmese exiles and local citizens of Guwahati revolved around those issues. The meeting at Guwahati Press Club on July 4, where an exile Burmese Parliamentarian participated, concluded with a number of resolutions in support for the democratic movement in the Southeast Asian country.
Organised jointly by Burma Centre Delhi and Journalists’ Forum Assam, meeting on ‘India’s Policy on Burma: A Northeastern Perspective’ also witnessed the discussion on the probable ways, by which the people from Northeast can extend support for the movement led by Suu Kyi.
Addressing the gathering, Dr Tint Swe, an exile Member of Parliament, National Coalition Government of Union of Burma, argued that New Delhi should play a major role in democratisation of Burma. The elected Parliamentarian (in 1990 general election of Burma), who has been living in India for more than a decade, did not forget to mention about the help and cooperation from Indian people in general and the Northeastern in particular in their endeavour.
“India being the largest democracy in the globe should review its policy on Burma and make it as pro-democratic movement,” insisted Dr Tint Swe adding,“ New Delhi should also review its Look East Policy, as the military dictators of Burma will never support the initiative to be successful.”
“Burma and India has a strong historical and geographical link where Northeast shares a very close connection in terms of trade, political beliefs and culture. In 1988, during democracy uprising in Burma, New Delhi as well as the people of India strongly supported the movement and provided shelter to those who fled to Indo-Burma border by setting up refugee camps in Mizoram and Manipur,” highlighted M Kim, another Burmese exile in India. Kim, who is living in New Delhi for two decades, also added, “However, from the mid 1990s, a shift took place in New Delhi’s attitude when it launched its Look East Policy and began engaging the military junta in bilateral cooperation.”
Today New Delhi maintains a sustained strategic relationship with the ruling State Peace and Development Council, under which a series of agreements and memorandums of understanding were signed. More over, the government of India remains silent on the issue of Suu Kyi’s re-arrest and trail, even though the great Lady was hounoured with Jawaharlal Nehru Peace Prize and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose award. The daughter of Aung San, the father of modern Burma, Suu Kyi was also awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mentionable that Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for nearly 13 years out of 19 years stay in her country. More recently, Suu Kyi was shifted to the Insein prison of Rangoon, where she has been tried at a special court with the charge of violating rules under her house arrest. Suu Kyi is recognised as one of the world's most renowned freedom fighters and the SPDC is understood to try its best to prevent her (with her party National League for Democracy) participating in the forthcoming General Election during 2010.
“Asia had given birth to many great women leaders. But it can be said without doubt that Suu Kyi will be regarded as one of the greatest heroic women not only of Asia but of the world. While presenting the Congressional Medal of honour to Suu Kyi, Washington formally recognised her a status equal to other non-American recipients of the medal like Sir Winston Churchill, Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa,” commented Rajen Barua of Friends of Assam and Seven Sisters (FASS).
Speaking to this writer from Houston, Barua also added, “For the Burmese people, Suu Kyi represents their best and perhaps only hope that one day there will be an end to the country's military repression. Today, from the isolation of her house arrest Suu Kyi radiates a moral authority that exposes the illegitimacy of the Burmese regime and all of its pretensions to appear different from what it really is.”
Earlier in an official message to the organisers, the FASS argued that the people of Northeast‘ as a neighbour of Burma need to keep in touch with the people of Burma and especially the enlightened Burmese who are living outside their counrty’.
“We in the Northeast have more important roles to play. After all, we are very much concerned about the hardship that Suu Kyi is going through. We also urge the government of China, Russia and other countries with strong ties with Burma, to pressurise the military rulers for immediate release of Suu Kyi, so that she can freely move in Burma for advancement of democratic values and human rights,” the message, which was read out by Jayanta Barman in the Guwahati meeting, added.
Meanwhile, in a message sent to the organisers of Guwahati meeting, the All Assam Students’ Union and the North East Students’ Organisation leader Dr Samujjal Kumar Bhattacharya expressed their support to the pro-democracy movement in Burma and demanded release of Suu Kyi.
The meeting meanwhile urged New Delhi to stop forthwith sales of all arms to the military rulers of Burma, who use the weapons to suppress the ever-growing movement for democracy in the country. It also demanded immediate release of over 2000 political prisoners in Burma including Suu Kyi. India should have a non-discriminatory refugee policy as early as possible, another resolution said.
The speakers including Dr Alana Golmei, Htun Htun from Burma Centre Delhi and journalists Rupam Baruah, Hiten Mahanta, RK Goswami with others were of the opinion that trade relations between India and Burma should not be at the cost of the democratic movement in that country. Mentionable that both the neighboring countries did business to the tune of nearly US $ 900 million in the 2007-08 fiscal year.
The major outcome of the meeting was the proposal to form a regional forum to pursue democracy in Burma. The proposed ‘Northeast India Forum for Democracy in Burma’ is supposed to provide space for the people of Northeast and Burma to join hands with an aim to continue the campaign against the military junta.
Similarly, few days back, hundreds of Mizo and Burmese activists organised a demonstration at Aizawl with the primary demand for an early release of Suu Kyi. Initiated by Mizoram Committee for Democracy in Burma, the programme on June 25, also included the decision to send a memorandum to the Indian President Pratibha Devisingh Patil and the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, through the state government of Mizoram-bordering Chin State of Burma-with an appeal to pursue with the Burmese government for the release of Suu Kyi and also restoration of democracy in Burma.
Mentionable that over 50,000 Chin people have been taking shelter in Mizoram. Most of them are economic migrants, who crossed the Indo-Burma border for a better future in India.
Many of them are activists, who fled their country to escape the repression of the junta. Amazingly, the Chin and Mizo people share similar historical, cultural and religious backgrounds. But time to time, the state witnesses resentment against those unwelcome guests from Burma.
Representatives from the ruling Mizoram Pradesh Congress Committee, Mizo National Front (the main opposition party of Mizoram), Zoram Nationalist Party, Bharatiya Janata Party, Miozram Peoples Conference with Mizo Zirlai Pawl, Mizo Students' Union, Mizo Hmeichhe Insuihkhawm Pawl, Mizo Women Association, Human Rights and Law Network, People Union for Civil Liberties etc joined the programme.
Earlier more than hundred Indian MPs, including those from Northeast, called on the Union government to intervene for the release of Suu Kyi and for the restoration of democracy in Burma. The lawmakers under the banner Indian Parliamentarian Forum for Democracy in Burma submitted a petition on 10 June to the Indian Prime Minister urging him to take personal interest to resolve the issue amicably.
19-7-09 Restoring Democracy in Burma, Supporting-hands from Northeast India
Nava Thakuria
Contrary to New Delhi´s policy on Burma (Myanmar), the civil society and advocacy groups of Northeast India continue supporting the pro-democratic movement in the military ruled country. If the Central government is willing to engage the Burmese junta for various strategic and trade relationship, the student-youth-journalist and also political party workers of the region maintain their demands to snap all ties with the brand of dictators of Nay Pyi Taw (the new capital of Burma after Rangoon).
They are also in unanimous in various public meetings taking places in the region that the pro-democracy Burmese icon Daw Aung San Suu Kyi must be released and allowed her to continue the political activities.
The latest interaction between a group of Burmese exiles and local citizens of Guwahati revolved around those issues. The meeting at Guwahati Press Club on July 4, where an exile Burmese Parliamentarian participated, concluded with a number of resolutions in support for the democratic movement in the Southeast Asian country.
Organised jointly by Burma Centre Delhi and Journalists´ Forum Assam, meeting on ´India´s Policy on Burma: A Northeastern Perspective´ also witnessed the discussion on the probable ways, by which the people from Northeast can extend support for the movement led by Suu Kyi.
Addressing the gathering, Dr. Tint Swe, an exile Member of Parliament, National Coalition Government of Union of Burma, argued that New Delhi should play a major role in democratization of Burma. The elected Parliamentarian (in 1990 general election of Burma), who has been living in India for more than a decade, did not forget to mention about the help and cooperation from Indian people in general and the Northeastern in particular in their endeavor.
"India being the largest democracy in the globe should review its policy on Burma and make it as pro-democratic movement," insisted Dr. Tint Swe adding, "New Delhi should also review its Look East Policy, as the military dictators of Burma will never support the initiative to be successful."
"Burma and India has a strong historical and geographical link where Northeast shares a very close connection in terms of trade, political beliefs and culture. In 1988, during democracy uprising in Burma, New Delhi as well as the people of India strongly supported the movement and provided shelter to those who fled to Indo-Burma border by setting up refugee camps in Mizoram and Manipur," highlighted M Kim, another Burmese exile in India. Kim, who is living in New Delhi for two decades, also added, "However, from the mid 1990s, a shift took place in New Delhi´s attitude when it launched its Look East Policy and began engaging the military junta in bilateral cooperation."
Today New Delhi maintains a sustained strategic relationship with the ruling State Peace and Development Council, under which a series of agreements and memorandums of understanding were signed. More over, the government of India remains silent on the issue of Suu Kyi´s re-arrest and trail, even though the great Lady was hounoured with Jawaharlal Nehru Peace Prize and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose award. The daughter of Aung San, the father of modern Burma, Suu Kyi was also awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mentionable that Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for nearly 13 years out of 19 years stay in her country. More recently, Suu Kyi was shifted to the Insein prison of Rangoon, where she has been tried at a special court with the charge of violating rules under her house arrest. Suu Kyi is recognised as one of the world's most renowned freedom fighters and the SPDC is understood to try its best to prevent her (with her party National League for Democracy) participating in the forthcoming General Election during 2010.
"Asia had given birth to many great women leaders. But it can be said without doubt that Suu Kyi will be regarded as one of the greatest heroic women not only of Asia but of the world. While presenting the Congressional Medal of honour to Suu Kyi, Washington formally recognised her a status equal to other non-American recipients of the medal like Sir Winston Churchill, Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa," commented Rajen Barua of Friends of Assam and Seven Sisters (FASS).
Speaking to this writer from Houston, Barua also added, "For the Burmese people, Suu Kyi represents their best and perhaps only hope that one day there will be an end to the country's military repression. Today, from the isolation of her house arrest Suu Kyi radiates a moral authority that exposes the illegitimacy of the Burmese regime and all of its pretensions to appear different from what it really is."
Earlier in an official message to the organisers, the FASS argued that the people of Northeast´ as a neighbour of Burma need to keep in touch with the people of Burma and especially the enlightened Burmese who are living outside their counrty´.
"We in the Northeast have more important roles to play. After all, we are very much concerned about the hardship that Suu Kyi is going through. We also urge the government of China, Russia and other countries with strong ties with Burma, to pressurise the military rulers for immediate release of Suu Kyi, so that she can freely move in Burma for advancement of democratic values and human rights," the message, which was read out by Jayanta Barman in the Guwahati meeting, added.
Meanwhile, in a message sent to the organisers of Guwahati meeting, the All Assam Students´ Union and the North East Students´ Organisation leader Dr Samujjal Kumar Bhattacharya expressed their support to the pro-democracy movement in Burma and demanded release of Suu Kyi.
The meeting urged New Delhi to stop forthwith sales of all arms to the military rulers of Burma, who use the weapons to suppress the ever-growing movement for democracy in the country. It also demanded immediate release of over 2000 political prisoners in Burma including Suu Kyi. India should have a non-discriminatory refugee policy as early as possible, another resolution said.
The speakers including Dr Alana Golmei, Htun Htun from Burma Centre Delhi and journalists Rupam Baruah, Hiten Mahanta, Biman Hazarika, RK Goswami with others were of the opinion that trade relations between India and Burma should not be at the cost of the democratic movement in that country. Mentionable that both the neighboring countries did business to the tune of nearly US $ 900 million in the 2007-08 fiscal year.
The major outcome of the meeting was the proposal to form a regional forum to pursue democracy in Burma. The proposed ´Northeast India Forum for Democracy in Burma´ is supposed to provide space for the people of Northeast and Burma to join hands with an aim to continue the campaign against the military junta.
Similarly, few days back, hundreds of Mizo and Burmese activists organised a demonstration at Aizawl with the primary demand for an early release of Suu Kyi. Initiated by Mizoram Committee for Democracy in Burma, the programme on June 25, also included the decision to send a memorandum to the Indian President Pratibha Devisingh Patil and the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, through the state government of Mizoram-bordering Chin State of Burma-with an appeal to pursue with the Burmese government for the release of Suu Kyi and also restoration of democracy in Burma.
Mentionable that over 50,000 Chin people have been taking shelter in Mizoram. Most of them are economic migrants, who crossed the Indo-Burma border for a better future in India. Many of them are activists, who fled their country to escape the repression of the junta. Amazingly, the Chin and Mizo people share similar historical, cultural and religious backgrounds. But time to time, the state witnesses resentment against those unwelcome guests from Burma.
Representatives from the ruling Mizoram Pradesh Congress Committee, Mizo National Front (the main opposition party of Mizoram), Zoram Nationalist Party, Bharatiya Janata Party, Miozram Peoples Conference with Mizo Zirlai Pawl, Mizo Students' Union, Mizo Hmeichhe Insuihkhawm Pawl, Mizo Women Association, Human Rights & Law Network, People Union for Civil Liberties etc joined the programme.
Earlier more than hundred Indian MPs, including those from Northeast, called on the Union government to intervene for the release of Suu Kyi and for the restoration of democracy in Burma. The lawmakers under the banner Indian Parliamentarian Forum for Democracy in Burma submitted a petition on 10 June to the Indian Prime Minister urging him to take personal interest to resolve the issue amicably.
19-7-09 Waiting for a Democratic Burma by Nava Thakuria
Contrary to New Delhi's policy on Burma (Myanmar), the civil society and advocacy groups of Northeast India continue supporting the pro-democratic movement in the military ruled country. If the Central government is willing to engage the Burmese junta for various strategic and trade relationship, the student-youth-journalist and also political party workers of the region maintain their demands to snap all ties with the brand of dictators of Nay Pyi Taw (the new capital of Burma after Rangoon).
They are also in unanimous in various public meetings taking places in the region that the pro-democracy Burmese icon Daw Aung San Suu Kyi must be released and allowed her to continue the political activities. The latest interaction between a group of Burmese exiles and local citizens of Guwahati revolved around those issues.
The meeting at Guwahati Press Club on July 4, where an exile Burmese Parliamentarian participated, concluded with a number of resolutions in support for the democratic movement in the Southeast Asian country. Organised jointly by Burma Centre Delhi and Journalists' Forum Assam, meeting on 'India's Policy on Burma: A Northeastern Perspective' also witnessed the discussion on the probable ways, by which the people from Northeast can extend support for the movement led by Suu Kyi. Addressing the gathering, Dr Tint Swe, an exile Member of Parliament, National Coalition Government of Union of Burma, argued that New Delhi should play a major role in democratisation of Burma.
The elected Parliamentarian (in 1990 general election of Burma), who has been living in India for more than a decade, did not forget to mention about the help and cooperation from Indian people in general and the Northeastern in particular in their endeavour. "India being the largest democracy in the globe should review its policy on Burma and make it as pro-democratic movement," insisted Dr Tint Swe adding," New Delhi should also review its Look East Policy, as the military dictators of Burma will never support the initiative to be successful." "Burma and India has a strong historical and geographical link where Northeast shares a very close connection in terms of trade, political beliefs and culture.
In 1988, during democracy uprising in Burma, New Delhi as well as the people of India strongly supported the movement and provided shelter to those who fled to Indo-Burma border by setting up refugee camps in Mizoram and Manipur," highlighted M Kim, another Burmese exile in India. Kim, who is living in New Delhi for two decades, also added, "However, from the mid 1990s, a shift took place in New Delhi's attitude when it launched its Look East Policy and began engaging the military junta in bilateral cooperation."
Today New Delhi maintains a sustained strategic relationship with the ruling State Peace and Development Council, under which a series of agreements and memorandums of understanding were signed. Moreover, the government of India remains silent on the issue of Suu Kyi's re-arrest and trail, even though the great Lady was honoured with Jawaharlal Nehru Peace Prize and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose award. The daughter of Aung San, the father of modern Burma, Suu Kyi was also awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize. Mentionable that Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for nearly 13 years out of 19 years stay in her country. More recently, Suu Kyi was shifted to the Insein prison of Rangoon, where she has been tried at a special court with the charge of violating rules under her house arrest.
Suu Kyi is recognised as one of the world's most renowned freedom fighters and the SPDC is understood to try its best to prevent her (with her party National League for Democracy) participating in the forthcoming General Election during 2010. "Asia had given birth to many great women leaders. But it can be said without doubt that Suu Kyi will be regarded as one of the greatest heroic women not only of Asia but of the world. While presenting the Congressional Medal of honour to Suu Kyi, Washington formally recognised her as a status equal to other non-American recipients of the medal like Sir Winston Churchill, Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa," commented Rajen Barua of Friends of Assam and Seven Sisters (FASS).
Speaking to this writer from Houston, Barua also added, "For the Burmese people, Suu Kyi represents their best and perhaps only hope that one day there will be an end to the country's military repression. Today, from the isolation of her house arrest Suu Kyi radiates a moral authority that exposes the illegitimacy of the Burmese regime and all of its pretensions to appear different from what it really is." Earlier in an official message to the organisers, the FASS argued that the people of Northeast' as a neighbour of Burma need to keep in touch with the people of Burma and especially the enlightened Burmese who are living outside their counrty'. "We in the Northeast have more important roles to play.
After all, we are very much concerned about the hardship that Suu Kyi is going through. We also urge the government of China, Russia and other countries with strong ties with Burma, to pressurise the military rulers for immediate release of Suu Kyi, so that she can freely move in Burma for advancement of democratic values and human rights," the message, which was read out by Jayanta Barman in the Guwahati meeting, added. Meanwhile, in a message sent to the organisers of Guwahati meeting, the All Assam Students' Union and the North East Students' Organisation leader Dr Samujjal Kumar Bhattacharya expressed their support to the pro-democracy movement in Burma and demanded release of Suu Kyi.
The meeting urged New Delhi to stop forthwith sales of all arms to the military rulers of Burma, who use the weapons to suppress the ever-growing movement for democracy in the country. It also demanded immediate release of over 2000 political prisoners in Burma including Suu Kyi. India should have a non-discriminatory refugee policy as early as possible, another resolution said. The speakers including Dr Alana Golmei, Htun Htun from Burma Centre Delhi and journalists Rupam Baruah, Hiten Mahanta, Biman Hazarika, RK Goswami with others were of the opinion that trade relations between India and Burma should not be at the cost of the democratic movement in that country.
Mentionable that both the neighboring countries did business to the tune of nearly US $ 900 million in the 2007-08 fiscal year. The major outcome of the meeting was the proposal to form a regional forum to pursue democracy in Burma. The proposed 'Northeast India Forum for Democracy in Burma' is supposed to provide space for the people of Northeast and Burma to join hands with an aim to continue the campaign against the military junta.
Similarly, few days back, hundreds of Mizo and Burmese activists organised a demonstration at Aizawl with the primary demand for an early release of Suu Kyi. Initiated by Mizoram Committee for Democracy in Burma, the programme on June 25, also included the decision to send a memorandum to the Indian President Pratibha Devisingh Patil and the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, through the state government of Mizoram-bordering Chin State of Burma-with an appeal to pursue with the Burmese government for the release of Suu Kyi and also restoration of democracy in Burma. Mentionable that over 50,000 Chin people have been taking shelter in Mizoram. Most of them are economic migrants, who crossed the Indo-Burma border for a better future in India.
Many of them are activists, who fled their country to escape the repression of the junta. Amazingly, the Chin and Mizo people share similar historical, cultural and religious backgrounds. But time to time, the state witnesses resentment against those unwelcome guests from Burma. Representatives from the ruling Mizoram Pradesh Congress Committee, Mizo National Front (the main opposition party of Mizoram), Zoram Nationalist Party, Bharatiya Janata Party, Miozram Peoples Conference with Mizo Zirlai Pawl, Mizo Students' Union, Mizo Hmeichhe Insuihkhawm Pawl, Mizo Women Association, Human Rights and Law Network, People Union for Civil Liberties etc joined the programme.
Earlier more than hundred Indian MPs, including those from Northeast, called on the Union government to intervene for the release of Suu Kyi and for the restoration of democracy in Burma. The lawmakers under the banner Indian Parliamentarian Forum for Democracy in Burma submitted a petition on June 10 to the Indian Prime Minister urging him to take personal interest to resolve the issue amicably.
Nava Thakuria is a Guwahati, Northeast India based independent journalist and contributes to various media outlets throughout the world. Contact him at navathakuria@yahoo.com
Sunday, July 12, 2009
11-7-09 Love for Suu Kyi from Assam
.jpg)
Nava Thakuria / Guwahati: It was an intense, but intriguing session, where a group of conscious people got together and discussed about the present socio-political turmoil in Burma and also the probable ways, by which the people from Northeast India can extend support for the cause of democracy in the neighbouring country.
The meeting on ‘India’s Policy on Burma: A Northeastern Perspective’, was organized jointly by Burma Centre Delhi and Journalists’ Forum Assam at Guwahati Press Club on July 4, where Dr. Tint Swe, exile member of parliament, National Coalition Government of Union of Burma, joined as a main speaker.
Addressing the gathering, Dr. Tint Swe, an exile Member of Parliament, National Coalition Government of Union of Burma, argued that New Delhi should pursue with the military rulers for the release of pro-democracy Burmese icon Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and finally play a major role in democratization of Burma. The elected Parliamentarian (in 1990 general election of Burma), who has been living in India for more than a decade, did not forget to mention about the help and cooperation from Indian people in general and the Northeastern in particular in their endeavor.
“India being the largest democracy in the globe should review its policy on Burma and make it as pro-democratic movement,” insisted Dr. Tint Swe adding, “New Delhi should also review its Look East Policy, as the military dictators of Burmawill never support the initiative to be successful.”
“Burma and India has a strong historical and geographical link where Northeast shares a very close connection in terms of trade, political beliefs and culture. In 1988, during democracy uprising in Burma, New Delhi as well as the people of Indiastrongly supported the movement and provided shelter to those who fled to Indo-Burma border by setting up refugee camps in Mizoram and Manipur,” highlighted M. Kim, another Burmese exile in India.
Kim, who is living in New Delhi for two decades, also added, “However, from the mid 1990s, a shift took place in New Delhi’s attitude when it launched its Look East Policy and began engaging the military junta in bilateral cooperation.”
Today New Delhi maintains a sustained strategic relationship with the ruling State Peace and Development Council, under which a series of agreements and memorandums of understanding were signed. More over, the government of India remains silent on the issue of Suu Kyi’s re-arrest and trail, even though the great Lady was hounoured with Jawaharlal Nehru Peace Prize and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose award. The daughter of Aung San, the father of modern Burma, Suu Kyi was also awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mentionable that Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for nearly 13 years out of 19 years stay in her country. More recently, Suu Kyi was shifted to the Insein prison of Rangoon, where she has been tried at a special court with the charge of violating rules under her house arrest. Suu Kyi is recognized as one of the world's most renowned freedom fighters and the SPDC is understood to try its best to prevent her (with her party National League for Democracy) participating in the forthcoming general election during 2010.
“Asia had given birth to many great women leaders. But it can be said without doubt that Suu Kyi will be regarded as one of the greatest heroic women not only of Asia but of the world. While presenting the Congressional Medal of honor to Suu Kyi, Washington formally recognized her a status equal to other non-American recipients of the medal like Sir Winston Churchill, Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa,” commented Rajen Barua of Friends of Assam and Seven Sisters (FASS).
Speaking to this writer from Houston, Barua also added, “For the Burmese people, Suu Kyi represents their best and perhaps only hope that one day there will be an end to the country's military repression. Today, from the isolation of her house arrest Suu Kyi radiates a moral authority that exposes the illegitimacy of the Burmese regime and all of its pretensions to appear different from what it really is.”
Earlier in an official message to the organizers, the FASS argued that the people of Northeast ‘as a neighbour of Burma need to keep in touch with the people of Burma and especially the enlightened Burmese who are living outside their counrty’.
“We in the Northeast have more important roles to play. After all, we are very much concerned about the hardship that Suu Kyi is going through. We also urge the government of China, Russia and other countries with strong ties with Burma, to pressurize the military rulers for immediate release of Suu Kyi, so that she can freely move in Burma for advancement of democratic values and human rights,” the message, which was read out by Jayanta Barman in the Guwahati meeting, added.
The meeting meanwhile urged New Delhi to stop forthwith sales of all arms to the military rulers of Burma, who use the weapons to suppress the ever-growing movement for democracy in the country. It also demanded immediate release of over 2000 political prisoners in Burma including Suu Kyi. In another resolution, the participants argued that India should have a non-discriminatory refugee policy as early as possible.
The speakers including Dr Alana Golmei, Htun Htun from Burma Centre Delhi and journalists Rupam Baruah, Hiten Mahanta, Biman Hazarika, RK Goswami with others were of the opinion that trade relations between India and Burma should not be at the cost of the democratic movement in that country. Mentionable that, both the neighboring countries did business to the tune of nearly US $ 900 million in the 2007-08 fiscal year.
Meanwhile, in a message sent to the organizers of Guwahati meeting, the All Assam Students’ Union and the North East Students’ Organization leader Dr Samujjal Kumar Bhattacharya expressed their support to the pro-democracy movement in Burma and demanded release of Suu Kyi.
The major outcome of the meeting was the proposal to form a regional forum to pursue democracy inBurma. The proposed ‘Northeast India Forum for Democracy in Burma’ is supposed to provide space for the people of Northeast and Burma to join hands with an aim to raise voice for the release of Suu Kyi and also continue the campaign against the Burmese junta.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
ျမန္မာသည္ အထီးက်န္ မဟုတ္ပါ (ဘန္ကီမြန္း၏ မိန္႔ခြန္း ဘာသာျပန္)
(ကုလ အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉးခ်ဳပ္ မစၥတာ ဘန္ကီမြန္း၏ မိန္႔ခြန္း)
မဇၩိမသတင္းဌာန
ဗုဒၶဟူးေန႔၊ ဂ်ဴလုိင္လ 08 ရက္ 2009 ခုႏွစ္ 15 နာရီ 15 မိနစ္
အစုိးရမဟုတ္ေသာ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ား - NGO ၊ သံတမန္မ်ား၊ ျပည္တြင္း သတင္းေထာက္မ်ား စုစုေပါင္း ၅ဝဝ ခန္႔ တက္ေရာက္ခဲ့သည့္ ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ ဟံသာဝတီ မူးယစ္ ေဆးဝါးျပတုိက္၌ ယခုလ ၄ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ေသာ သတင္းစာ ရွင္းလင္းပြဲ၌ ကုလသမဂၢ အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉးခ်ဳပ္ မစၥတာ ဘန္ကီမြန္း ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည့္ မိန္႔ခြန္းအျပည့္အစုံကုိ ေဒါက္တာ ေမာင္ေမာင္လွၾကိဳင္မွ ဘာသာျပန္ဆုိ ေပးပို႔ျခင္း ျဖစ္ပါသည္။
ဂုဏ္သေရရွိ လူၾကီးမင္းမ်ား၊ ဧည့္သည္ေတာ္မ်ားႏွင့္ ေရာင္းရင္းမိတ္ေဆြမ်ား ခင္ဗ်ား
ဒါဟာ တႏွစ္ေက်ာ္အတြင္း ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို ဒုတိယအၾကိမ္ေျမာက္ လာေရာက္ျခင္း ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ႏွစ္ၾကိမ္စလုံးဟာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ အနာဂတ္အတြက္ အေရးၾကီးတဲ့ အခ်ိန္မ်ားပင္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ပထမ က်ေနာ္ လာေရာက္တဲ့အခ်ိန္ဟာ နာဂစ္မုန္တုိင္း ဝင္ေရာက္ၿပီးခ်ိန္အတြင္း ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီ ေၾကာက္မက္ဘြယ္ သဘာဝေဘးအႏၲရာယ္ဟာ အသက္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာကုိ ယူသြားခဲ့တယ္၊ ၾကမ္းတမ္းတဲ့ အေျခအေနေတြကုိလဲ ဖန္တီးခဲ့တယ္၊ တကမၻာလုံးရဲ႕ ႏွလုံးသည္းပြတ္ေတြကုိလဲ ခံစားရေအာင္ လႈပ္ကုိင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ လုိအပ္ေနခ်ိန္မွာ ကမၻာက ရက္ရက္ေရာေရာ တုံ႔ျပန္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ကယ္ဆယ္ေရးနဲ႔ ျပန္လည္ထူေထာင္ရန္ ၾကိဳးပမ္းခ်က္ျဖစ္တဲ့ သင္တုိ႔ရဲ႕ ထင္ရွားတဲ့ ပ့ံပုိးကူညီမႈမ်ားအတြက္ အားလုံးကုိ ေက်းဇူးတင္ရွိပါေၾကာင္း ဒီေန႔ ဒီေနရာကေန ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေရးအရ က်ေနာ္ ေျပာၾကားလုိပါတယ္။
သင္တုိ႔ဟာ အသက္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာကုိ ကယ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္၊ လူ႔အသုိင္းအဝုိင္းကုိ ျပန္လည္ ရွင္သန္ လန္းဆန္းေစပါတယ္၊ ေထာင္ေပါင္း မ်ားစြာေသာ ျပည္သူေတြကုိ သူတုိ႔ရဲ႕ ေနထုိင္မႈဘဝမ်ားအား ျပန္လည္ အသက္ဆက္ေစႏိုင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ဂုဏ္သေရရွိ လူၾကီးမင္းမ်ား ခင္ဗ်ား
အာရွတုိက္သားတေယာက္အေနနဲ႔ေရာ အေထြေထြအတြင္းေရးမႉးခ်ဳပ္အေနနဲ႔ပါ နာဂစ္မုန္တုိင္းဒဏ္ကုိ ေၾကကြဲစြာ ခံစားရမိပါတယ္။
က်ေနာ္ဟာ အာရွတုိက္ရဲ႕ ဒုတိယေျမာက္ အေထြေထြအတြင္းေရးမႉးခ်ဳပ္ပါ။ ပထမေျမာက္ ပုဂၢဳိလ္ကေတာ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသား ဦးသန္႔ပါ။ သူ႔ရဲ႕ မွတ္ဉာဏ္ကုိ က်ေနာ္ ျမတ္ႏိုးၾကည္ညိဳပါတယ္။ သူရဲ႕ ပညာရွိစကားကုိလဲ အမွတ္ရပါတယ္။
ဦးသန္႔က ဆိုမိန္႔ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ “လူသားတဦးခ်င္းစီရဲ႕ တန္ဖုိးဟာ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ရဲ႕ အဖုိးတန္ ပိုင္ဆိုင္မႈေတြအနက္ အလြန္ထူးျခားၿပီး အလြန္တန္ဖုိးရွိလွပါတယ္။ အစုိးရမ်ား၊ စံနစ္မ်ား၊ အေတြးအေခၚမ်ားနဲ႔ အသင္းအပင္း၊ အဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ား ဝင္လိုက္ ထြက္လုိက္နဲ႔ ျဖစ္ေနေပမင့္ လူသားဂုဏ္ရည္ကေတာ့ ဆက္လက္တည္ရွိေနမွာပါ” တဲ့။
ဒါေၾကာင့္ က်ေနာ္ ျပန္လာခဲ့တာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉးခ်ဳပ္အေနနဲ႔ သူတုိ႔ရဲ႕ တရားဝင္ဆႏၵျပင္းျပမႈမ်ား ရရွိေစႏိုင္ရန္အတြက္ ဒီႏိုင္ငံျပည္သူမ်ားအား ကူညီႏိုင္ေရးကုိ အေရးအၾကီးဆုံးအျဖစ္ က်ေနာ္ ဦးထိပ္ပန္ဆင္ သယ္ေဆာင္လာပါတယ္။
ကုလသမဂၢဟာ လူအမ်ားရဲ႕ အခြင့္အေရးမ်ား၊ ခ်မ္းသာသုခမ်ား၊ ဂုဏ္အရွိန္အဝါမ်ားအတြက္ ေဆာင္႐ြက္ေပးေနပါတယ္။ ဒါဟာ စိတ္ၾကိဳက္ေ႐ြးခ်ယ္လုပ္ေပးေနျခင္း မဟုတ္ပါ။ ဒါဟာ က်ေနာ္တို႔ရဲ႕ တာဝန္ပုိင္းပါ။
ကုလသမဂၢရဲ႕ ျပတ္သားၿပီး တာဝန္ခြဲေဝကာ ျပ႒ာန္းႏွစ္ျမႇဳပ္ေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္းကို ျမန္မာျပည္သူမ်ားအား ျပသရန္ က်ေနာ္ လာေရာက္တာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ဒီေန႔ ဒီေနရာမွာ က်ေနာ္ ေျပာပါရေစ။ ျမန္မာ - သင္သည္ အထီးက်န္ မဟုတ္ပါ။
စည္းလုံးညီၫြတ္တဲ့၊ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းတဲ့၊ ေပါႂကြယ္ဝတဲ့ ေခတ္သစ္ဒီမုိကေရစီ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြက္ သင္တုိ႔နဲ႔အတူ အလုပ္လုပ္ရန္ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ လုိလားပါတယ္။ ဆင္းရဲတြင္းမွ ႐ုန္းထႏိုင္ရန္ သင္တုိ႔ကုိ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ကူညီလုိပါတယ္။
ႏိုင္ငံတကာ အသုိင္းအဝန္းရဲ႕ ေလးစားခံရတဲ့ တာဝန္သိတဲ့ အဖြဲ႔ဝင္ေနရာကုိ သင္တုိ႔ႏိုင္ငံရယူႏိုင္ရန္အတြက္ သင္တုိ႔နဲ႔အတူ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ လုပ္ေဆာင္လုိပါတယ္။
အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရး၊ တည္တံ့တဲ့ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးနဲ႔ ေရရွည္ခံ ဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးတုိးတက္မႈမ်ားအတြက္ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ သင္တုိ႔ကုိ ကူညီလုိပါတယ္။
ဒါေပမင့္ က်ေနာ္ အေလးအနက္ျပဳ ေျပာပါရေစ - ဒီမုိကေရစီနဲ႔ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ေလးစားလိုက္နာမႈ မရွိလွ်င္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေသာ္၎၊ ဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးတုိးတက္မႈေသာ္၎ ႐ွင္သန္မွာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဟာ ျခြင္းခ်က္မဟုတ္ပါ။
ဂုဏ္သေရရွိ လူၾကီးမင္းမ်ား ခင္ဗ်ား
စိန္ေခၚမႈေတြက အမ်ားၾကီးပါ။ ဒါေပမင့္ ေက်ာ္လႊားလုိ႔မရႏိုင္တာေတာ့ မဟုတ္ပါ။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းတဲ့၊ ဒီမုိကေရစီစံနစ္ရွိတဲ့ သာယာဝေျပာ ေပါႂကြယ္ဝတဲ့ အနာဂတ္ကုိ ကာကြယ္ထိန္းသိမ္းရမယ့္ကိစၥဟာ ႐ႈပ္ေထြးတဲ့ လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း အေတြ႔အၾကဳံမ်ားအရ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ သိရွိရပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြက္ မည္သည့္ စိန္ေခၚမႈကုိမဆုိ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံခ်ည္းသက္သက္ မေျဖ႐ွင္းႏိုင္ပါ။ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး၊ ဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးတုိးတက္ေရးနဲ႔ လူအခြင့္အေရးဟာ အျပန္အလွန္ ႏြယ္ယွက္ ဆက္စပ္ေနပါတယ္။
ဒီအခ်က္ေတြကုိ တူညီတဲ့အာ႐ုံစုိက္ အေလးထားမႈမ႐ိွဘဲ ေျပာဆုိေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္းဟာ ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး၊ တည္တ့ံတဲ့ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးနဲ႔ သာယာဝေျပာေရးတုိ႔ရဲ႕ အလားအလာေကာင္းျခင္းကုိ ေမွးမွိန္ ေသးသိမ္ေစပါတယ္။
ဒါေပမင့္၊ ေတြ႔ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးေရးနဲ႔ ျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရးအတြက္ စစ္မွန္တဲ့ ဆႏၵရွိမယ္ဆုိရင္ အခက္အခဲ အားလုံးကုိ ေက်ာ္လႊားေအာင္ျမင္မွာပါ။
‘အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရး၊ ဒီမုိကေရစီအသြင္ကူးေျပာင္းေရးနဲ႔ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးကုိ အျပည့္အဝ အေလးထားေရးအတြက္ ေစာင့္ဆုိင္းဘုိ႔ ျမန္မာဟာ အခ်ိန္ဘယ္ေလာက္ၾကာၾကာ ၾကိဳးပမ္းႏိုင္မွာလဲ’ ဆုိတာဟာ ယေန႔ ေမးခြန္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
က်ေနာ္ ရွင္းလင္းေျပာျပပါရေစ။ အမ်ဳိးသားေရးအတြက္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသားအားလုံး ေဆာင္ရြက္ရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ မွတ္ပုံတင္ထားတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရးပါတီမ်ားမွ ကုိယ္စားလွယ္မ်ားနဲ႔ အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္စဲေရး ေလ့လာေနတဲ့ လက္နက္ကုိင္အုပ္စုမ်ားနဲ႔ ယမန္ေန႔က ေတြ႔ခဲ့စဥ္မွာ က်ေနာ္ ေျပာခဲ့တာပါ။ ဒီမိုကေရစီလုပ္ငန္းစဥ္နဲ႔ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအတြက္ သူတုိ႔ရဲ႕ ျပ႒ာန္းၾကိဳးပမ္းမႈကုိ ဂုဏ္ျပဳရန္အတြက္ သီးျခားစီ က်ေနာ္ ေျပာၾကားအားေပးခဲ့တာပါ။
သုိ႔ေသာ္၊ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကုိ ေျမာ္မွန္းထားတဲ့ အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရးနဲ႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ရည္မွန္းခ်က္ပန္းတိုင္မ်ားကို ေရာက္ရွိရန္ အဓိကတာဝန္မွာ ႏိုင္ငံ့အစုိးရေပၚ က်ေရာက္လ်က္ ရွိေနပါတယ္။
ဒီတာဝန္မ်ားကုိ ေက်ပြန္စြာ မေဆာင္႐ြက္ႏိုင္လွ်င္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသားမ်ားအား သူတုိ႔ရဲ႕ ‘စြမ္းရည္ အျပည့္အဝကုိ နားလည္သေဘာေပါက္ျခင္း’ မွ ဟန္႔တားထားရာ ေရာက္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။
ဒီတာဝန္မ်ားကုိ ေက်ပြန္စြာ မေဆာင္႐ြက္ႏိုင္လွ်င္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသားမ်ားရဲ႕ ဂုဏ္သေရရွိစြာ ေနထုိင္ႏိုင္ခြင့္နဲ႔ ပုိမုိ လြတ္လပ္မႈျဖင့္ သာလြန္ေကာင္းမြန္တဲ့ လူမႈအဆင့္အတန္းမ်ား ခံစားခြင့္ကုိ ျငင္းပယ္ရာ ေရာက္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။
ဒီ အေျခခံစည္းမ်ဥ္းမ်ားဟာ ‘ကြ်ႏု္ပ္တုိ႔သည္ ျပည္သူမ်ားျဖစ္ၾကသည္’ ဆုိတဲ့ စကားမ်ားျဖင့္ အဖြင့္နိဒါန္းခ်ီထားတဲ့ ကုလသမဂၢ ပဋိဉာဥ္စာတမ္းရဲ႕ ေက်ာ႐ိုးအတြင္းမွာ တည္႐ိွေနပါတယ္။
ဒီ မြန္ျမတ္တဲ့ စကားမ်ားကုိ လြတ္လပ္တဲ့ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံရဲ႕ စတင္ေရးဆြဲခဲ့တဲ့ ဖြဲ႔စည္းအုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ပုံ အေျခခံဥပေဒကလဲ ပဲ့တင္ထပ္ထားပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ အနာဂတ္မွာ ဒီစည္းမ်ဥ္းစည္းကမ္းမ်ားကုိ အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ဘုိ႔ ေသခ်ာေစေရးအတြက္လဲ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ အတူတကြ လုပ္ေဆာင္ၾကရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ဒီအခ်က္ကုိ ကြန္ေတာ္စိတ္ထဲမွာထည့္ထားၿပီး အမွာစကား ၃ ခုကို သယ္ေဆာင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ပထမဦးစြာအေနနဲ႔ ဘယ္ေဒသမွာမဆုိ လူသားဂုဏ္ရည္ကုိ အေလးထားေလးစားျခင္းဟာ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးနဲ႔ ဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးတုိးတက္ေရးအတြက္ မရွိမျဖစ္ လုိအပ္ခ်က္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဟာ အျပည္ျပည္ဆုိင္ရာ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ေၾကညာစာတမ္းကုိ ပထမ စတင္လက္ခံခဲ့တဲ့ ကုလသမဂၢ အဖြဲ႔ဝင္ႏိုင္ငံမ်ားမွာ တႏိုင္ငံ အပါအဝင္ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ႏိုင္ငံေရး၊ စီးပြါးေရးနဲ႔ လူမႈေရးတုိးတက္မႈမ်ားအတြက္ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးနဲ႔ အေျခခံလြတ္လပ္မႈမ်ားအား ေလးစားဘုိ႔ အမ်ားဆုံးျဖတ္ခ်က္ဆႏၵကို ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံက ေစာစီးစြာ ေထာက္ခံခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ကံမေကာင္း အေၾကာင္းမလွစြာဘဲ ဒီျပ႒ာန္းၾကိဳးပမ္းမႈဟာ အမွန္တကယ္မွာ အံဝင္ခြင္က်မႈ မရွိခဲ့ပါ။ ျမန္မာ့လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး မွတ္တမ္းဟာ အလြန္အမင္း စုိးရိမ္ေသာကျဖစ္စရာ အေၾကာင္းအရာအေနနဲ႔ တည္ရွိေနလ်က္ပါ။
ျမန္မာအစုိးရဟာ သူ႔ရဲ႕ရည္မွန္းခ်က္မ်ားျဖစ္တဲ့ တည္ၿငိမ္မႈ၊ အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရးနဲ႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီေရးတုိ႔ကုိ ေျပာဆုိေနပါတယ္။
အႏွစ္ ၂ဝ အတြင္း ပထမဆုံးအေနနဲ႔ က်င္းပမွာျဖစ္တဲ့ လာမယ့္ေ႐ြးေကာက္ပြဲဟာ ဂုဏ္ထယ္တင့္တယ္ေစလုိလွ်င္ အားလုံးပါဝင္ၿပီး အျမင္ၾကည္လင္မႈ ရွိရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ ေ႐ွ႕ဆက္မယ့္ခရီးမွာ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးကုိ ေလးစားလုိက္နာမႈ အျမစ္တြယ္ရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ဒါေၾကာင့္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ အပါအဝင္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားအားလုံးကုိ အျမန္ဆုံးလႊတ္ေပးရမယ္လုိ႔ က်ေနာ္ ေျပာခဲ့တာပါ။
ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ၾကီးသန္းေ႐ႊနဲ႔ မေန႔ကနဲ႔ ဒီေန႔ ေတြ႔ရတဲ့အခါ ေဒၚစုၾကည္ကုိေတြ႔ဘုိ႔ ေတာင္းဆုိခဲ့ပါတယ္။ သူက ျငင္းပယ္လုိက္တဲ့အတြက္ က်ေနာ္ မ်ားစြာ စိတ္ပ်က္ခဲ့ရပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာအစိုးရဟာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးပြင့္လင္းမႈရဲ႕ က႑သစ္မွာ ျပ႒ာန္းၾကိဳးပမ္းမႈကို ျပသႏိုင္မယ့္ အခြင့္အေရးထူးတခု ဆုံး႐ႈံးသြားၿပီလုိ႔ က်ေနာ္ ယုံၾကည္လုိက္ပါတယ္။
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္အား ေတြ႔ဆုံခြင့္ေပးလိုက္ျခင္းဟာ ၂ဝ၁ဝ ေ႐ြးေကာက္ပဲြကုိ အမ်ားယုံၾကည္လက္ခံႏိုင္မႈ ရွိေစေရးအတြက္ အေရးၾကီးတဲ့ အဓိပၸာယ္ရွိေသာ ေဆာင္႐ြက္မႈကုိ စတင္လုပ္ေဆာင္ရန္ အစုိးရက ဆႏၵရွိေၾကာင္းကို ေဖာ္ျပတဲ့ အေရးၾကီးတဲ့ ျပယုဂ္ျဖစ္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။
ဒီႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ အနာဂတ္အတြက္ ျပည့္ဝတဲ့ ပါဝင္ေဆာင္႐ြက္ႏိုင္ခြင့္အား ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသားအားလုံးကုိ အမွန္တကယ္ ေပးရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ပါဝင္ေဆာင္႐ြက္လုိသူမ်ားအားလုံး လြတ္လပ္တက္ႂကြစြာ ပါဝင္မႈမရွိလွ်င္ အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရးဟာ မျပည့္စုံႏိုင္ပါ။
သက္ဆုိင္တဲ့ပုဂၢိဳလ္မ်ား၊ တုိင္းရင္းသားအုပ္စုမ်ားနဲ႔ လူနည္းစုမ်ားအားလုံး ပါဝင္တဲ့ စစ္မွန္တဲ့ ေတြ႔ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးမႈ လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ကုိ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဟာ စတင္ေဆာင္႐ြက္ရမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ျပည္သူအမ်ားဟာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးေဆြးေႏြးမႈမွာ လြတ္လပ္စြာ အေျခအတင္ ေျပာႏုိင္ရမယ္၊ လြတ္လပ္စြာ ပါဝင္ႏိုင္ရမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီမိုကေရစီလုပ္ငန္းစဥ္မွာ အဓိပၸာယ္ရွိစြာ ပါဝင္ႏိုင္ေရးအတြက္ အေထာက္အကူျဖစ္ေစမယ့္ သတင္းအခ်က္အလက္မ်ားကုိ လြတ္လပ္စြာ သိရွိရယူႏိုင္ရမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ဂုဏ္သေရရွိ လူၾကီးမင္းမ်ား ခင္ဗ်ား
အသြင္ကူးေျပာင္းမႈတုိင္းဟာ ခက္ခဲလွပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဟာ သက္ဦးဆံပုိင္စံနစ္ကေန ကုိလုိနီစံနစ္၊ အခုတခါ လြတ္လပ္တဲ့ႏိုင္ငံအျဖစ္ အသြင္ကူးေျပာင္းခဲ့ပါတယ္။
သမုိင္းဟာ လတ္တေလာမွာ နာက်င္ဘြယ္ ျဖစ္ရပ္မ်ား အပါအဝင္ ‘အေမြ’ ႏွစ္မႊာပူးကို သေႏၶေဆာင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
လက္နက္ကုိင္ ပဋိပကၡနဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံေရး ေရွ႕မတုိးသာ ေနာက္မဆုတ္သာ အေျခအေနေတြပါ။
အခ်ဳပ္အျခာပုိင္ဆုိင္မႈ၊ နယ္ေျမတည္တံ့ခုိင္ၿမဲမႈနဲ႔ အမ်ဳိးသားညီၫြတ္ေရးတုိ႔ဟာ ႏိုင္ငံတုိင္းရဲ႕ တရားဝင္ စိုးရိမ္ေသာကမ်ား ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ႏိုင္ငံေရးဝန္းက်င္ကုိ ဖြင့္ေပးျခင္းနဲ႔ ခ်ဲ႕ထြင္ျခင္းဟာ ပုိမုိၾကီးမားတဲ့ စုေပါင္းေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္းရဲ႕ အစိတ္အပုိင္းအျဖစ္ အုပ္စုတစုခ်င္းနဲ႔ လူတဦးခ်င္း ပါဝင္ႏိုင္မႈအတြက္ အာမခံရန္ အေကာင္းဆုံးနည္းလမ္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ရဲရဲၾကီးေျပာႏိုင္ပါတယ္။
စစ္တပ္၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအဖြဲ႔အစည္းအားလုံး၊ တုိင္းရင္းသားလူနည္းစုမ်ား၊ အမ်ားျပည္သူနဲ႔ သက္ဆိုင္ေသာ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ားနဲ႔ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ သားသမီးတုိင္း အမွန္တကယ္ကုိ ႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ အသြင္ကူးေျပာင္းေရးမွာ ပါဝင္ၾကရမွာ။
အျပန္အလွန္ အေပးအယူလုပ္ညိႇႏိႈင္းျခင္း၊ ေလးစားျခင္းနဲ႔ နားလည္မႈတုိ႔သာလွ်င္ ၾကာရွည္တည္တ့ံမယ့္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး၊ အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရးနဲ႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီေရးတုိ႔အတြက္ အေျခခံအုတ္္ျမစ္ ခ်ေပးႏိုင္မွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
က်ေနာ္ရဲ႕ ဒုတိယ အမွာစကားကေတာ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသားမ်ားရဲ႕ လူသားခ်င္းစာနာတဲ့ လိုအပ္ခ်က္မ်ားကုိ ေဖာ္ျပလုိပါတယ္။
ဧရာဝတီ ျမစ္ဝကြ်န္းေပၚေဒသမွာ ျဖစ္ထြန္းခဲ့တဲ့ တုိးတက္မႈမ်ားကုိ ၾကည့္ျမင္ႏိုင္ရန္ ျပန္လည္ေရာက္ရွိလာႏိုင္စြမ္းအတြက္ က်ေနာ္ ဝမ္းသာလွပါတယ္။
အလုိခ်င္ဆုံးကေတာ့ နာဂစ္မုန္တုိင္းဒဏ္ကုိ တုံ႔ျပန္ျခင္းဟာ သီးျခားခြဲျခားထားျခင္းအေပၚ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္႐ြက္ႏိုင္ျခင္းရဲ႕ တန္ဖုိးကုိ သက္ေသျပႏိုင္တာပဲ။
အလႉရွင္အသုိင္းအဝန္းရဲ႕ ကူညီပံ့ပုိးမႈျဖင့္ ‘သုံးပြင့္ဆုိင္ ေက်ာ႐ိုးအုပ္စု’ အျဖစ္ ျမန္မာ၊ ကုလသမဂၢနဲ႔ အာဆီယံတုိ႔အတြင္း မၾကံဳစဖူး ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္းဟာ လူသားခ်င္း စာနာမႈ အေရးပါျခင္းနဲ႔ အခ်ဳပ္အျခာ အာဏာပုိင္မႈရဲ႕ စည္းမ်ဥ္းစည္းကမ္းတုိ႔ဟာ ပဋိပကၡ မျဖစ္ၾကဘူးဆုိတာ သက္ေသျပသြားပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံနဲ႔ မည္သည့္ေနရာတြင္မဆုိ လူသားခ်င္းစာနာမႈ အကူအညီဟာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအတြက္ တုံ႔ျပန္ရမယ့္ ဓားစာခံ မျဖစ္သင့္ပါဘူး။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရွိ လူသားခ်င္းစာနာမႈနဲ႔ တုိးတက္မႈ အေထာက္အကူမ်ား လုိအပ္ေနသူအားလုံး ရရွိႏိုင္ေရးအာမခံခ်က္ရွိေအာင္ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ အတူတကြေဆာင္႐ြက္ႏိုင္ရမယ္၊ လုပ္ကုိလုပ္ရမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
အခုဟာကေတာ့ က်ေနာ္ရဲ႕ တတိယ အမွာစကားျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
အခုအခ်ိန္ဟာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအေနနဲ႔ သူရဲ႕ စီးပြါးေရးစြမ္းအင္ အလားအလာေကာင္းမ်ားကို ထုတ္ေဖာ္ဘုိ႔ အခ်ိန္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
‘အာရွစီးပြါးေရးအံ့ဘြယ္’ အလယ္မွာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဟာ ရပ္တည္ေနပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံတဝွန္းမွာ လ်င္ျမန္တဲ့ တုိးတက္မႈမ်ားအတြက္ ျမန္မာကုိ ‘ကၾကိဳးဆင္ေစျခင္းဟာ’ လူေနမႈအဆင့္အတန္း ျမင့္မားေရးအတြက္ အေသခ်ာဆုံးနည္းလမ္း ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာအစုိးရရဲ႕ ကုန္သြယ္မႈအတြက္ ျပင္ပကို လမ္းဖြင့္ေပးျခင္းဝါဒ၊ ေထာင္စုဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးတုိးတက္မႈ ရည္မွန္းခ်က္မ်ား ရရွိေအာင္ ၾကိဳးပမ္းမႈ၊ အိတ္ခ်္အုိင္ဗီ ေဝဒနာ ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္မႈ၊ လူကုန္ကူးမႈ တုိက္ဖ်က္ေရးနဲ႔ ဘိန္းထုပ္လုပ္မႈ အဆုံးသတ္ေရးတုိ႔ကုိ က်ေနာ္ ၾကိဳဆုိပါတယ္။
ဒါေပမင့္ အမွန္လက္ေတြ႔မွာေတာ့ ျပည္သူသန္းေပါင္းမ်ားစြာဟာ ဆက္လက္ဆင္းရဲေနဆဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ လူေနမႈအဆင့္အတန္းဟာ အာရွရဲ႕ အနိမ့္ဆုံးထဲမွာ ပါဝင္ေနတုန္းပါ။
ဒီျမန္မာျပည္သူမ်ားဟာ အလုပ္မ်ား လိုအပ္ေနပါတယ္။ စားနပ္ရိကၡာဖူလုံမႈေတြ လုိအပ္ေနပါတယ္။ က်န္းမာေရး ေစာင့္ေရွာက္ခံယူႏိုင္မႈေတြ လုိအပ္ေနပါတယ္။
ေဒသဆုိင္ရာနဲ႔ တကမၻာလုံးဆုိင္ရာ စီးပြါးေရးမွ အက်ဳိးအျမတ္ ရႏိုင္ေအာင္နဲ႔ ပါဝင္ပံ့ပုိးေပးႏိုင္ေရးအတြက္ ျမန္မာျပည္သူမ်ားကို အာမခံရဘုိ႔ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ လုပ္ေပးရမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
တည္ၿငိမ္ၿပီး သာယာဝေျပာေပါႂကြယ္တဲ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွ ေဒသနဲ႔ ကမၻာက အက်ဳိးအျမတ္ေတြ ပုိမုိရရွိလာမွာကုိ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ အသိအမွတ္ျပဳရမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီရည္မွန္းခ်က္အတြက္ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ေဆာင္႐ြက္ေပးရပါ့မယ္။
ျမန္မာအစုိးရကလဲ ဒီအခ်ိန္အခါကုိ အမိအရ ရယူရမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
အျပည္ျပည္ဆုိင္ရာ အသုိင္းအဝန္းက ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံျပည္သူမ်ားကုိ လက္ကမ္းရန္ ျပင္ဆင္ေနသည့္ အခြင့္အလမ္းမ်ားရဲ႕ အက်ဳိးသက္ေရာက္မႈကုိ ျမန္မာအစုိးရက ရယူရမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ဂုဏ္သေရ႐ွိ လူၾကီးမင္းမ်ား ခင္ဗ်ား
က်ေနာ္ ဒီကုိ မိတ္ေဆြတဦးအျဖစ္ ေရာက္လာခဲ့တာပါ။
က်ေနာ့္တာဝန္က ကုလသမဂၢပဋိဉာဥ္ရဲ႕ အေကာင္းဆုံးစံမ်ားနဲ႔ စည္းမ်ဥ္းစည္းကမ္းမ်ားကုိ ထိန္းသိမ္းဘုိ႔ပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
က်ေနာ့္အခန္းက႑ကေတာ့ သင္တုိ႔အားလုံး - အစုိးရ၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ား၊ တုိင္းရင္းသားအုပ္စုမ်ား၊ လူမႈအဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ား - ကို ျပည္သူတရပ္အေနနဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံတခုအေနနဲ႔ အတူတကြ ေရွ႕ဆက္ေ႐ြ႔လ်ားဘုိ႔ အားေပးရန္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
က႑အားလုံးရဲ႕အေပၚမွာ ျပည္သူ႔အက်ဳိးကုိ ထားရွိလုိက္တဲ့အခါ မေက်ာ္လႊားႏိုင္တာ သုိ႔မဟုတ္ မျဖစ္ႏိုင္တာ ဆုိတာ မ႐ွိပါဘူး။
ေဒသနဲ႔ ကမၻာဟာ လ်င္ျမန္စြာ ေျပာင္းလဲေနပါတယ္။ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္းမွ၊ ၿပီးေတာ့ မိမိကိုယ္တုိင္ ေျပာင္းလဲမႈကုိ စတင္လုပ္ျခင္းမွ အက်ဳိးျဖစ္ထြန္းဘို႔ ျမန္မာဟာ ရပ္တည္လုိ႔သာ ေနပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာအစုိးရက ကုလသမဂၢနဲ႔ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္းဟာ ႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဝါဒရဲ႕ အေျခခံအုတ္ျမစ္ ျဖစ္တယ္လုိ႔ ထပ္ခါတလဲလဲ ေျပာလ်က္႐ွိပါတယ္။
စကားေတြနဲ႔ အလုပ္ေတြ ကုိက္ညီဘုိ႔အတြက္ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ေတာင္းဆုိပါတယ္။
သူ႔ျပည္သူမ်ားရဲ႕ လုိအပ္ခ်က္မ်ားနဲ႔ ျပင္းျပတဲ့ဆႏၵမ်ားကုိ တု႔ံျပန္ဘုိ႔ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဟာ ကုလသမဂၢနဲ႔ ပုိမုိပူးေပါင္းလုပ္ေဆာင္ေလ ႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ အခ်ဳပ္အျခာပုိင္ဆုိင္မႈကုိ အခုိင္အမာျပဳႏိုင္ေလ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ဒီအတူပါပဲ။ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔္ရဲ႕ ေဝမွ်ခံယူထားတဲ့ ရည္မွန္းခ်က္မ်ားျဖစ္တဲ့ ျပည္သူအားလုံးရဲ႕ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးကုိ အျပည့္အဝ ေလးစားျခင္းနဲ႔အတူ ညီၫြတ္တဲ့ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းတဲ့ သာယာဝေျပာတဲ့ ဒီမုိကေရစီနည္းလမ္းက်တဲ့ အနာဂတ္အတြက္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ လက္လွမ္းမီႏိုင္ေအာင္ ကူညီရန္ အတူတကြ လုပ္ေဆာင္ဘုိ႔ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ အသုိင္းအဝန္းမွာလဲ တာဝန္႐ွိပါတယ္။
ေက်းဇူးတင္ပါတယ္။
(ဇူလုိင္လ ၆ ရက္၊ ၂ဝဝ၉ ခုႏွစ္)
Monday, July 6, 2009
6-7-09 EDITORIAL Humiliation of UN chief
Published: 6/07/2009 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: News
The Burmese military junta stripped away the pride of the United Nations during the weekend, but the UN was a too-willing accomplice. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spent two fruitless days on an impossible mission. He not only failed to secure the release of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, but also refrained from even the most mild criticism of the regime that has locked her away on trumped-up charges. Then, in a final humiliation of the visitor, the ruling Burmese generals guided Mr Ban into a meeting with ''former armed groups'' now intimidated into acting as shills for the regime.
The United Nations, and Mr Ban himself, billed the visit to Burma in somewhat glowing terms. Their theory was that the presence of the secretary-general in Burma would create a moral facade. The importance of his office, Mr Ban apparently believed, would convince or shame the generals into changing 47 years of iron-fisted control. They would release Mrs Suu Kyi and hundreds of other political prisoners and agree to accept a political path to democracy. The reality was that the dictators stayed on the course they have repeatedly announced and enforced with the blood of thousands of Burmese citizens. Mrs Suu Kyi remains jailed, as do all other political prisoners, and Burma remains under the boot of the military regime.
Mr Ban and his aides at the United Nations had plenty of warning that the secretary would become a pawn rather than a peacemaker. His decision to visit Burma and plead for Mrs Suu Kyi was doomed from the start, and it is disturbing that he could not see it. His cheerful optimism last week seemed to be a denial of the task that lay ahead. He did not go to Burma to demand freedom for thousands of battered and unjustly imprisoned citizens; he went to beg for them.
It is not that Mr Ban failed to win freedom for Mrs Suu Kyi and 50 million fellow Burmese. It was the manner of his failure that let down the free world and caused Mr Ban and the UN to lose face. The UN chief said as his ill-fated trip ended that he was ''deeply disappointed'' in failing to win so much as a prison visit with Mrs Suu Kyi. There were no sharp words about her jailers, no criticism of the system they impose at gunpoint.
Mr Ban had a rare opportunity to shed light and show the world how violent and unjust the Burmese generals have made their country. Instead, he was convinced or tricked into attending a fake event to boost the prestige of the junta. Prime Minister Thein Sein ushered the visitor into a meeting of former opponents of the regime. These groups, including political parties and former armed rebel forces, have been crushed and intimidated at gunpoint. The junta has coerced or forced them into supporting the regime's so-called ''road to democracy'' sham, which will climax next year in a carefully controlled referendum to perpetuate military rule in Burma forever.
There was never much chance that Mr Ban would succeed at gaining freedom for Mrs Suu Kyi or the other political prisoners. Nor was there a chance that the generals would heed the prestige of the UN and switch from brutal dictatorship to democracy. But Mr Ban did have a rare chance to stand up to the junta. He did have an opportunity to speak the truth. By confronting the junta, he would have earned huge respect for the United Nations and provide hope to the people of Burma.
Instead he has reduced the plight of that sad country to more routine diplomatic failure.
4-7-09 Ban Ki-moon's Speech in Bangkok
UNITED NATIONS
THE SECRETARY-GENERAL
REMARKS TO THE MEDIA
Bangkok, 4 July 2009
Good evening. Thank you for coming to meet me at this late hour of the day.
As you know, I have just come from a two-day visit to Myanmar. I met twice the Senior General Than Shwe, and I had discussions with other government officials.
I also met with leaders of Myanmar’s registered political parties and with those former armed groups that have chosen to observe a cease-fire.
This morning I also had time to visit Kyon Da Village in the Irrawaddy Delta to see the results of recovery and reconstruction work.
Let me first address my meetings with Senior General Than Shwe.
As you know by now, I asked to meet with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
I am deeply disappointed that Senior General Than Shwe refused my request. Allowing a visit to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi would have been an important symbol of the government’s willingness to embark on the kind of meaningful engagement that will be essential if the elections in 2010 are to be seen as credible.
I believe the government of Myanmar failed to take a unique opportunity to show its commitment to a new era of political openness.
Nonetheless, my visit has enabled me to convey the concerns of the international community very frankly and directly to Senior General Than Shwe and his government.
My meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, however, should not be seen as the only benchmark for success or failure of my visit. Because I believe that there are many more fundamental issues which we addressed, during the visit, which [will] help move Myanmar forward.
The members of the international community wanted me to tell Myanmar’s leaders that the international community stands ready to help the people of Myanmar achieve their legitimate aspirations.
This is why I went to Myanmar, and this is what we did.
I told Senior General Than Shwe that the international community wants to help Myanmar to achieve democracy, national reconciliation, durable peace and sustainable development.
And I emphasized that neither peace nor development can thrive without democracy and respect for human rights.
I outlined my proposals for progress.
I told Senior General Than Shwe that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners should be released without delay and allowed to participate freely in the political process.
I said I wanted to see resumption of substantive and time-bound dialogue between the government and Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy at the higher level of engagement.
I set out detailed criteria for a conducive environment for free and fair elections in 2010. Only then will the elections be seen as credible and legitimate.
I have urged them to publish as soon as possible the electoral law and establish an electoral commission and set a date or month for the election in 2010. I discussed the establishment of a broad-based national economic forum to address Myanmar’s development needs.
I also discussed the practical issues related to humanitarian assistance, especially the swift issuance of visas.
I discussed, as well, the expansion of humanitarian assistance beyond the Delta area.
These are all areas where I expect the Myanmar government to demonstrate progress in the very near future.
Finally, before I left for the airport, I spoke to an audience of Myanmar senior government officials, diplomats, local and international non-governmental organizations and United Nations agencies. It was a huge gathering. I delivered a wide-ranging speech setting out my messages for Myanmar – on national reconciliation, human rights and democracy, on humanitarian assistance and on economic progress.
Today, before I came here, I had a meeting with the Prime Minster of Thailand and I briefed my visit to Myanmar, and I’m going to continue to engage with the members of the group of friends on Myanmar. My special adviser Mr. Gambari, upon his return to New York, is going to convene the group of friends on Myanmar and brief the members there that we will continue to follow up with the Myanmar authorities on the progress of the issues which I have discussed with the Myanmar authorities.
I again thank you for your attention and will welcome a few questions.
Thank you very much.
Q&A
Simon Montlake (Christian Science Monitor): Is it fair to say that you are coming away with nothing from this trip? It seems like you are going back to New York with absolutely no concessions from the Myanmar Government on any of the points you raised.
SG: As I said, I have laid out and conveyed the concerns exactly and correctly of the international community to the Myanmar authorities, my own views as Secretary General of the United Nations, what the international community, what the United Nations expects them to do as part of the democratization process, as they have committed to a road map. This is what I have told them as strongly as possible, as hard as I could press. Now we have to follow up and closely monitor in close coordination with the Member States how they will implement the discussions which I had.
NHK: At this time even though you showed your strong concern to the Government but your requests have all been rejected, what is your next step, what can you do more.
SG: If you use the word, reject, I think it is only my request to meet with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. For all the proposals, I believe that they will seriously consider, they have not rejected any of what I proposed and therefore it would be extremely important for the international community, particularly myself and my Special Adviser, in carrying out the good offices role mandated by the General Assembly to follow up on all the issues which I have discussed.
(Peter Jansen) DPA: So you met with the NLD executive committee, I heard you met 20 minutes in your private room, can you give us any idea what you discussed with the NLD and if you can expect them to participate in the election for some odd reason?
SG: That is a part of my meeting in a group of representatives of 10 registered political parties of Myanmar. After that meeting I had an opportunity of meeting separately those representatives of the NLD. I listened to their concerns and I explained to them what I had discussed with Senior General Than Shwe. My message to them was that all political parties may have a difference of opinion and positions. But the democratic process requires that it would be necessary for each and every one of the political parties to play their own role in a constructive way to this reconciliatory process.
And I also urged the government leaders to protect the politically and socially conducive atmosphere, where all of these political party members could freely, actively engage in their political activities. This requires the cooperation and commitment from both sides, the Government and the political party leaders. This was my message to all the political leaders including NLD.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=16278
=============================
Despite Humiliation, Ban Irked the Generals
By WAI MOE Monday, July 6, 2009
Local reporters who covered the fruitless two-day visit to Burma by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon say that although he was humiliated by junta leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe, his candid message to the generals would have irked them.
This picture provided by the United Nations shows UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visiting the village of Kyondah in the Delta of Burma to see the progress of reconstruction from last year's devastating cyclone which killed over 130,000 people.
Before leaving Burma empty-handed, Ban told INGO staffers and local reporters that the cost of delaying national reconciliation in Burma would be counted in wasted lives and lost opportunities.
“Nonetheless, the primary responsibility lies with the government to move the country towards its stated goals of national reconciliation and democracy,” Ban said. Failure to do so would prevent the Burmese people from realizing their full potential, such as their right to live in dignity, and to enjoy better standards of life in a broader freedom, he said.
Ban said he had called for the release of political prisoners, including pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, because Burmese stability, national reconciliation and democracy must be rooted in respect for human rights.
“When I met General Than Shwe yesterday [Friday] and today [Saturday], I asked to visit Ms Suu Kyi. I am deeply disappointed that he refused,” Ban said. “I believe the government of Myanmar [Burma] has lost a unique opportunity to show its commitment to a new era of political openness.
“Allowing a visit to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi would have been an important symbol of the government’s willingness to embark on the kind of meaningful engagement that will be essential if the elections in 2010 are to be seen as credible.”
Ban Ki- moon will brief the UN Security Council on his visit.
“I would like ask him to describe the situation exactly,” Win Tin, a prominent leader of the NLD told The Irrawaddy..
“The international community must know the real situation in the country,” he said.
Burma, like North Korea, should be subjected to an arms embargo as a means of pressure on the regime to change course, Win Tin said.
Ban should also talk with Russia and China, who customarily use their vetoes to stall UN Security Council action on Burma, he said—and urged action by the international community to pressure the regime to release political prisoners and agree to a national reconciliation process.
Commenting on Ban Ki-moon’s remarks after his Burma visit, Win Tin said he hoped the secretary-general’s words would be followed by real action. “I hope Mr Ban Ki-moon’s speech will not end just in Rangoon,” he said.
Burma’s state-run-newspapers reported on the meetings between Ban and Than Shwe but did not publish Ban’s remark.
According to The New Light of Myanmar, Than Shwe told Ban that he would like to arrange a meeting with Suu Kyi but could not do so because she was on trial.
Than Shwe told Ban that Burma is focusing on two important tasks: holding elections in 2010 and forming the future government. There was no possibility now to pay attention to any personal cases, he told Ban.
Observers say that Than Shwe’s rejection of Ban’s request to meet Suu Kyi was a humiliation for the UN.
“There was never much chance that Mr Ban would succeed at gaining freedom for Mrs Suu Kyi or the other political prisoners,” Thailand’s Bangkok Post wrote in an editorial on Monday. “Nor was there a chance that the generals would heed the prestige of the UN and switch from brutal dictatorship to democracy.”
Debbie Stothard, coordinator of the Alternative Asean Network (Altsean), said the junta humiliated Ban because the Burmese generals assumed they would not be subject to any real pressure, sanctions and punishment for this behavior.
“I think if we want to stop the violation of human rights in Burma and war in Burma, it is time for the UNSC to take action on the junta,” she said. “At least the UNSC should have the commission inquire into war crimes and crimes against humanity that the State and Peace Development Council is afraid of.”
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=16279
Burmese Indians
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Contents
• 1 History
o 1.1 Origin of Burmese Indians
1.1.1 Tamils
1.1.1.1 Chettiars
1.1.1.2 Brahmans
1.1.2 Hindi
1.1.3 Bengali
1.1.4 Gujarati and Soorti
1.1.5 Orisi or Oriya
1.1.6 Gurkhas
1.1.7 Punjabis
1.1.8 Pathans
o 1.2 Indians in Burmese History
1.2.1 Pyu and India
1.2.2 Orissa
1.2.3 Andhra Dynasty
1.2.4 Indian Royal family
1.2.5 Talaings
1.2.6 Ah Yee Gyis
1.2.7 Bengal prince Pateik Kara
1.2.8 India and Arakan
• 2 Culture
• 3 Economic roles
• 4 Religion
o 4.1 Muslims
o 4.2 Racial Discriminations
4.2.1 Anti-Indian Riots
4.2.2 After Independence
4.2.3 Massacre of Indian Shans
• 5 Language
• 6 Notable Burmese Indians
• 7 See also
• 8 References
• 9 Notes
• 10 External links
History
The term "Burmese Indian" refers to a broad range of ethnic groups from South Asia, most notably from present-day Bangladesh and India. The widely-accepted term ka-la, however, is considered derogatory. Its root is believed to be ku la meaning either "to cross over (the Bay of Bengal)" or "person" depending on the way it is pronounced.[2] According to the History Professor U Than Tun, the 'Kala' is derived from “Ku lar” meaning the people who adhere to a caste system.[3] Their association with foreign rule and repression in the form of colonial courts, police [4] and Sepoys under the command of the British has been mainly responsible for a lasting animosity compounded by the more obvious difference in their physical appearance, unlike the Chinese who also happen to be Buddhists and historically regarded by the Bamar as their cousins. White Europeans were also called kala hpyu (white kala) before British rule became established.[5]The Indian was seen to be subservient and loyal to the white man giving rise to the expression, Myin oungun, kyun kala, maya tawthu - "a chestnut for a horse, a kala for a slave and a village girl for a wife".[citation needed]
The majority of Indians arrived in Burma whilst it was part of British India as indentured labourers, civil servants, engineers, river pilots and traders. [6] It was perhaps the Tamil-speaking Chettiars (moneylenders) who did the most damage to the Indians' standing in Burmese eyes.[5][7] They came in when the rice trade boomed after the opening of the Suez Canal [8], but when depression hit in 1930 and the price of rice plummeted, they foreclosed on the peasants confiscating land and livestock. [9] This led to a peasant uprising that became known as The Galon Rebellion led by a former monk called Saya San and eventually subdued by bringing in more Indian Sepoys. Widespread riots also broke out in Rangoon when the port authorities tried to break an Indian dockers strike by bringing in Burmese workers.[7] [10] Many Indians in Myanmar live in large cities such as Yangon (Rangoon), and in post-British hill towns such as Pyin U Lwin (formerly Maymyo). In Pyin U Lwin, we could still find many Burmese-Indians.
British colony Burma
During the British colonial administration of Burma, Indian Immigrants were brought in to run the almost all of the Government Services and to run the British companies. They also formed the military and civilian staff of the British Army and Burma Police Force. Some of them were clerks, almost in all the fields of manpower (skilled and unskilled). Others were doctors, engineers, hospital and medical workers, teachers, Burma Railway staff, river shipping staff, Post office staff and rice mill staff. Some were staff and workers for; mines, oil fields, banks, shops, treasury and Public Administration office. As private civilians, they also came in as; traders, various type of shop owners, servants, launders (dhobi), hotel and restaurant owners, dispatch boys, watchmen etc.[11]
Origin of Burmese Indians
Tamils
Tens of thousands of Tamil people from Tamil Nadu came to work in Burma during the British colonial rule. Telugu and Hindi speaking workers also migrated at that time. Burmese Tamils (Myanmar Tamils) had their own Tamil language magazines for local and Tamil Nadu news, schools for teaching Tamil, and movie theaters for screening Tamil movies imported from India. Telugu and Hindi speakers also had similar institutions and facilities. The "immigrant population", although many had been living there for generations and have integrated with the Burmese society, became a target for discrimination and oppression by the new government formed after the military coup in 1962. The Myanmar Military Government closed down the Tamil, Telugu and Hindi magazines, schools, except for schools that were operated from temples and houses.[12]
"A report dated March 1966 from Burma states:
• Tamil population 200,000
• Telegu population 50,000
• Malayalee population 5,000
About 50 primary schools are conducted by Tamils. The Rasika Ranjani and Thondan, two Tamil dailies have been banned since January 1966. There are over 40 Hindu temples founded and administered by Tamils in Burma, and two Tamil Catholic parishes. The Nattukkotai Chettiars administer Thendayuthapani temples in 32 towns." " Our Tamilians along with other Indians are leaving Burma for good."[13][14] There are many South Indian Temples all over Rangoon or Yangoon, but like all buildings, they are not well maintained. Even today South Indian restaurants in Burma are called Chetty Restaurants because Chettiar are also Tamils . Food is plentiful and very cheap. Burma is the only place in the world where Tamil writings and language is a kind of banned! The remaining Tamils, around 500,000 have adapted themselves, embraced Buddhist ways in addition to Hinduism, speak Burmese and dress in Burmese style. Indians are also needed to adopt Burmese names to avoid blatant outright discriminations.[15] Tamil muslims are called Chulias. Some of them come from Madaras and called Madarasi. They are metal-tool merchants.[16]
Chettiars
Chettiars are also known as Chetti, Chetty, Chety, Shetty or Setti. The first Chettiars arrived Burma during the British rule – in 1826 accompanying Indian troops and labourers during the British campaign in Tenasserim in the first Aglo-Burmese war.[17] Their activities, however, were petty and remained so even after the first formal Chettiar ‘office’ was established in Moulmein in 1850.[18] It was, however, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the passing of the Burma Land Act brought about the mass entry of Chettiars into Burma. By 1880 the Chettiars had fanned out throughout Burma and by the end of the century they had become by far the ‘the most important factor in the agricultural credit structure of Lower Burma’.[19] By 1905 there were about 30 Chettiar offices in Burma. According to the Burma Provincial Banking Enquiry Report (BPBE), the most dependable source on the extent of Chettiar operations, this number had increased to 1,650 by 1930.[20] Conveying more graphically the ubiquity of Chettiar offices, the BPBE concluded (1930a:203) that in ‘nearly every well-populated part of Lower Burma there is a Chettiar within a day’s journey of every cultivator’.
A community of moneylenders indigenous to Chettinad, Tamil Nadu,the Chettiars operated throughout the Southeast Asian territories of the British Empire. They played a particularly prominent role in Burma where, they were typically demonised as rapacious usurers, responsible for all manner of vices concomitant with the colonial economy. Not least of these was the chronic land alienation of the Burmese cultivator. Their role was crucial in the dramatic growth in Burma's agricultural output during the colonial era. Success of the Chettiars in Burma lay less in the high interest rates they charged, than it did to patterns of internal organisation that provided solutions to the inherent problems faced by financial intermediaries. A proper functioning financial system could have provided better solutions perhaps for Burma's long-term development, but Burma did not have such a system, then. Tersely and pointedly speaking, Chettiar banks are fiery dragons that parch every land that has the misfortune of coming under their wicked creeping..[21]
Without the assistance of the Chettiar banking system Burma would never have achieved the wonderful advance of the last 25 to 30 years…The Burman today is a much wealthier man than he was 25 years ago; and for this state of affairs the Chettiar deserves his thanks.[22]
The Chettiars were the crucial providers of the capital that turned Burma into the ‘rice-bowl’ of the British Empire. But they were seen as the moneylenders, vilified as predatory usurors whose purpose was to seize the land of the Burmese cultivator. The truth was that the Chettiars were the primary providers of capital to Burmese cultivators through much of the colonial period, but the combination of the collapse of paddy prices in the Great Depression, the Chettiar insistence of land as collateral, and the imposition of British land-title laws, did bring about a substantial transfer of Burma’s cultivatable land into their hands. The Chettiars did not charge especially high interest rates and, indeed, their rates were much lower than indigenous moneylenders. In the end the Chettiars were expelled from Burma, in the process losing the land they had acquired and much of their capital.
Chettiars had the role in the reclamation of the Irrawaddy Delta for rice growing. Burma’s emergence as the ‘rice-bowl’ of the British Empire came as a result of what J S Furnivall (1956:116) memorably lauded as the ‘epic bravery and endurance’ of the country’s cultivators in reclaiming the swamps and jungles of the Irrawaddy Delta. An epic motivated by Burma’s entry into the commercial imperatives of the British Empire, the conversion of the Delta into rich paddy-producing land initially required little capital. Britain’s great ‘exchange banks’ took care of shipping, milling and other export-finance needs, and up until the middle of the nineteenth century the amount of capital required ‘on the ground’ in land preparation was slight. As Adas (1974b:389)noted,[23]in the early years of British rule in ‘Lower Burma’ the growth in rice exports was founded on cheap and surplus labour within cultivator families, and upon abundant land that required little more than clearing.[24]
Brahmans
Brahmans are known as Ponnas in Burmese. They are priests and scholars of the highest ranking group or most purified among the cast system in India. Ancient Burmese Kings up to the present Military Rulers and most of the Myanmar Citizens used to rely them for advise as they are famous in Astrology and Palmistry. Burmese Kings used the service of the “White Ponna” and “Dark Ponna” as consultants for any advise in daily events up to the administration of the country e.g. for the Royal customs, rules and regulations. Sometimes they were given the post of the Royal Ministers. In Burmese folk tales and religious stories, they were usually portrayed as villains.
The Buddhist kings of Indo-China had borrowed from Hinduism much of their court ceremonial. In Burma, Siam, Cambodia and Champa, and in a host of smaller states, Brahman astrologers and soothsayers were masters of the ceremonies. As interpreters of the omens and repositories of ancient tradition their influence was great.[25]
Hindi
The "Hindi" are the people who speak Hindi language which is an Indo-Aryan language. There are conflicts between the Urdu speakers (mostly Muslims) and the Hindi speakers (mostly Hindus). The Hindi speakers are divided into a number of ethnic and social groups. The Hindus, who constitute the largest group, are divided into four main social groups called "castes", a hierarchical order based on the principles of "purity and pollution",as below_
• Brahmans, the priests and scholars
• Kshatriyas, the rulers and warriors
• Vaisyas, the merchants and professionals
• Sudras, the laborers and servants
These four castes have many sub-castes, which are further divided into circles. Castes are culture groups, based not only on occupations, but also on customs, manners, and habits. The majority of the Hindi speakers are Hindus, which is considered more a lifestyle than a religion. Hindus worship a pantheon of gods. They believe that sacrifices and offerings must be made to the gods regularly to appease them and avoid calamity. Hinduism teaches that the soul never dies. When the body dies, the soul is reborn or "reincarnated." The soul may be reborn as an animal or as a human. They worship some gods in the form of animals. Cows are considered sacred, but other animals are also revered. The law of "karma" states that every action influences how the soul will be born in the next reincarnation. If a person lives a good life, the soul will be born into a higher state. If a person leads an evil life, the soul will be born into a lower state.
The Muslim Hindi-speaking women still follow the tradition of purdah, which is the covering of their entire bodies, especially their eyes, as a sense of seclusion. However, purdah is practiced to varying degrees depending on the extent of westernization and urbanization.
Bengali
The Bengali came from Bengal region, that is Bangladesh and West Bengal, a state in India. Their native language is Bengali. Their culture remains diversified e.g. from various castes, such as the Brahman, Kayastha, Vaidya, Namasudra, Gandha Banik, Saadgop, Napit, Mahisya, Kanaani, and Subarnabanik. Their occupations and religions had created other cultural distinctions as well. The majority of Bengalis are Muslims (60%), while the rest are Hindu or Hinduized animists. The Bengali of Bangladesh are the largest group and are 99.9% Mulsims.
Bengali Hindu worship many gods. Cows, monkeys, snakes, and many other animals are sacred. They teach and practice yoga and believed in reincarnation (a continual cycle of death and rebirth). The law of karma states that every action influences how the soul will be born in the next life. The cycle continues until spiritual perfection is achieved. Then the soul enters moksha, a new level of existence, from which it never returns.
Some of them are staying near the Myanmar- Bangladesh border and Mawlamyaing City, Mon State.
Bengalis from Chittagong are famous as sailors and took over river shipping in Burma. [26]
Gujarati and Soorti
The Gujarati came from the state of Gujarat, western India. Their language is Gujarati. They are a complex group, speaking various dialects and having many cultural distinctions. Some of these differences are based on region, while others are based on their "caste". They are often involved in trade or in operating small businesses.
The Hindus, who make up the largest group, are divided into a number of castes or jatis. They practice purdah i.e. the women are required to wear veils and remain isolated.
Approximately 30% of them are Muslims and those Gujarati Muslims are called Soorti. There are a lot of Soorti in Burma/Myanmar. Most of them are well to do merchants [27] and entrepreneurs and industrialists. There is a high proportion of Soorti in Rangoon. Many of these Soorti Muslims have now emigrated out of Burma and are found all around the world, reaching as far as the UK and other English-speaking countries.
Orisi or Oriya
While there are 25 million Orisi in India, some of them migrated to Bangladesh and Burma. The Orisi speak an Indo-Aryan language called Oriya and also known as Oriya. United Nations ex-Secretary General U Thant’s father is an Oriya.
Almost all the Oriya are Hindu. They used to pray to the deities, the "disease spirits," and the village gods. Gunias (magicians) practice witchcraft and sorcery. Extensive rituals and festivals are celebrated throughout the land. The Orisi believe that sickness is placed on people by evil spirits and witches. They also sustain the belief that planets and stars in the zodiac are responsible for an individual's physical and mental condition. They look to herbal folk medicines, exorcisms, and the gunias for cures from these and other illnesses. The Orisi believe that death is simply a passing from one life into the next. They believe that this cycle of death and rebirth will continue until the spirit merges with the person's "absolute soul." They believe that Yama, the god of justice, sends the soul to heaven or hell.
Gurkhas
Gurkha, also spelt as Gorkha, are people from Nepal who take their name from the eighth century Hindu warrior-saint Guru Gorakhnath. His disciple Bappa Rawal later moved further east to found the house of Gorkha, which in turn founded the Kingdom of Nepal.Many Gurkhas or Nepalese migrated out of Nepal and settled in various parts of northern India, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Bhutan. They speak Khas Kura language. Like other Hindu, the Nepalese belong to a "caste" structure which has only two categories: upper class landowners and lower class servants. Most of the Nepalese in Myanmar are farmers and most of them own the lands. They grew wet rice, dry rice, maize, millet, wheat and vegetable. Most of the farmers raise buffalo and goats for meat and cows for milk. Nepalese villages consist of loosely grouped homes surrounded by farm land. Some of them are staying in larger towns where the temples or monasteries are located.
Almost all of the Nepalese in Myanmar are Hindus, worshipping many gods. They believe in ghosts and demons. Many Gurkha or Nepalese arrived Burma with the British India Army. Gurkhas are best known for their history of bravery and strength in the British Army Brigade of Gurkhas and the Indian Army. They were designated by the British as a Martial Race. Martial Race is a designation created by officials of British India to describe "races" (peoples) that were thought to be naturally warlike and aggressive in battle, and to possess qualities like courage, loyalty, self sufficiency, physical strength, resilience, orderliness, hard working, fighting tenacity and military strategy. The British recruited heavily from these Martial Races for service in the colonial army.
Gurkhas Regiments served in the Second World War, most notably in Malaya and Burma where the Allies suffered the intense attacks from the Japanese. They had a heavy fighting in 1944 in the Arakan and during the Japanese offensive from March to June 1944 against north-east India at Kohima and Imphal. Imphal was besieged by the Japanese until the Allies achieved a decisive victory at Kohima in June and the Japanese fled back into Burma. The Regiment continued with the successful Allied offensive into Burma and on the 3 May the Burmese capital Rangoon was liberated. Gurkha soldiers have won 13 Victoria Crosses. Ethnically, Gurkhas who are presently serving in the British armed forces are Indo-Tibeto-Mongolians. Gurkhas serving in the Indian Armed Forces are of both groups, Indo-Tibeto-Mongolian and ethnic Rajput. Gurkhas of Indo-Tibeto-Mongolian origin mostly belong to the Gurung, Magar, Tamang, Khasa and Kiranti origin, many of whom are adherents of Tibetan Buddhism and Shamanism. [28]
All Gurkhas, regardless of ethnic origin, speak Nepali, an Indo-Aryan language. They are also famous for their large knife called the khukuri.
Punjabis
The majority of the Punjabi live in India and Pakistan; but they can also be found in nearly thirty other countries. Punjabi is an Indo-European language that is divided into six main dialects. It is primarily spoken in the major regions of India and Pakistan. Those who speak Punjabi language or those who inhabit the Punjab region are called Punjabi.
It is commonly said among the Punjabi that "land, women, and water are the sources of all conflicts." This simply means that they deem it necessary to control the means by which one perpetuates his family and property. The Diaspora Punjabi reflect the three major religions of their homeland: Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism. Most of the Diaspora Punjabi speakers are Sikhs, except for those in Myanmar, who are mostly atheists. Sikhism is a monotheistic religion that was founded in northern India during the sixteenth century. Its teachings have combined the elements of both Hinduism and Islam in an attempt to find one god who transcends all religious distinctions.[29]
In March 1944, the Japanese 31st Division moved northwestward in Burma's Naga hills and invaded Imphal and Kohima in India. Finally, after 64 days, amid terrible losses on both sides, the Japanese were beaten back. The determination and gallantry shown by allied troops in the Kohima siege was quick to become the subject of poem, song, and legend.Today in the Kohima cemetery, among the 1,378 grave markers, is the famous Kohima Memorial with its historic inscription:
"When you go home
Tell them of us, and say,
For your tomorrow
We gave our today"
The Burma Star Association was founded in 1951 by Admiral the Lord Louis Mountbatten, Field Marshal the Viscount Slim and other British Veterans of the Burma Campaigns. Admiral Mountbatten had been CinC of the Allied Southeast Asia Command (SEAC) with the late General Joseph C. "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell as Deputy CinC. Stillwell was also the Commander of the U.S. China-Burma-India Theater of Operations and Chief of Staff to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-sheck for all Chinese forces in the CBI. Then General William Slim Commanded the British XIV Army in India and Burma. Following the total defeat of Japanese Imperial forces in Southeast Asia General Slim is said to have told his troops: "When you go home don’t worry about what to tell your loved ones and friends about service in Asia. No one will know where you were, or where it is if you do. You are, and will remain ‘The Forgotten Army.’"
Reunions were held by various units (UK) in England and the China-Burma-India Veterans Association was formed in the U.S. In 1950 only, Admiral Montbatten started the Burma Star Organization. Admiral Mountbatten became the first patron, an honor held until his death by assassination in 1979. Current Royal Patron is Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. The first president was Field Marshal the Viscount Slim upon whose death was succeeded by his son, Colonel the Viscount Slim.
"I have never met a despondent Sikh in the front line. In a hospital in the rear he will moan dreadfully over a small wound, but in a fight he will go on to his last breath, and die laughing at the thought of Paradise, with the battle-cry of Khalsa ji ki jai as he falls.
"This very cry, a friend told me, came over a field telephone in the Arakan when a Sikh signal-havildar had been cut off beyond hope of rescue. The line remained alive. The havildar described to my friend how the Japanese were creeping up. A pause, then he came back to say that he had killed a skirmisher, but that now his ammunition was exhausted. "There’s not much time, Sahib. I’ll break the telephone before they get me. Victory to the Holy Brotherhood!" They found him dead beside an enemy he had brained with the butt of his Sten.
"A remarkable people, the Sikhs, with their Ten Prophets, five distinguishing marks, and their baptismal rite of water stirred with steel; a people who have made history, and will make it again."
"Every man in this magnificent battalion of the Indian State Forces [1st Patiala Regiment] stands 5 foot 11 inches, or over: they are the finest lot of Sikhs I have ever seen, and that is saying much. Every officer in the Lieutenant-Colonel Balwant Singh's battalion is a Sikh. In discipline, turn-out, and fighting efficiency the 1st Patialas have earned the unstinting admiration of all their comrades in the division."[30][31]
"Finally, we that live on can never forget those comrades who in giving their lives gave so much that is good to the story of the Sikh Regiment. No living glory can transcend that of their supreme sacrifice, may they rest in peace. In the last two world wars 83,005 turban wearing Sikh soldiers were killed and 109,045 were wounded. They all died or were wounded for the freedom of Britain and the world and during shell fire, with no other protection but the turban, the symbol of their faith."
Pathans
Pathans or Pashtuns[32] (also Pathans[33] or ethnic Afghans[34][35]) are an ethno-linguistic group with populations primarily in eastern and southern Afghanistan and in the North-West Frontier Province, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Balochistan provinces of Pakistan. The Pashtuns are typically characterized by their Pashto language, adherence to Pashtunwali (a pre-Islamic indigenous religious code of honor and culture)[36] and Islam. Pashtun martial prowess has been renowned since Alexander the Great's invasion in the third century BCE.[37] Their modern past began with the rise of the Durrani Empire in 1747. The Pashtuns were also one of the few groups that managed to impede British imperialism during the 19th century.[38] The Pashtuns are the world's largest (patriarchal) segmentary lineage tribal group.[39] The total population of the group is estimated to be at least 40 million. Pashtun regions have seen invasions and migrations including Aryan tribes (Iranian peoples, Indo-Aryans, Medes, and Persians), Scythians, Kushans, Hephthalites, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols.
The patrilineal definition is based on an important orthodox law of Pashtunwali. Its main requirement is that anyone claiming to be a Pashtun must have a Pashtun father. Under this definition, in order to be an ethnic Pashtun, there is less regard as to what language one speaks (Pashto, Persian, Urdu, English, etc.), while more emphasis is placed upon one's father. Thus, the Pathans in Myanmar, for example, who have lost both the language and presumably many of the ways of their putative ancestors, can, by being able to trace their fathers' ethnic heritage back to the Pashtun tribes. Recently some research persons found out that about three thousand Afghanis were settled around Mandalay, during the Burmese kings. They served in various places in Burmese kings’ army and were brought back to the capital from Arakan. And some of the Afghanis helped the Kamans in Arakan State of Burma to rebel against Arakan Myauk U and cause the end of that era.[40]
Indians in Burmese History
The highway between India and China [41][42]
India and China are the world’s biggest and ancient cradle of civilizations. High, snow peaked, rough and steep Himalaya mountain ranges block the direct interaction or travelling between the two of them except for the virtual highway through Myanmar/Burma. So there were a lot of travelers, migrants, victims of disasters and famine, war refugees and etc moving along this Burma Highway and some of them settled in Burma.
In the official Thailand History books, they even claim that all of the Tibeto-Burman groups including Tibet came down from Yunnan stressing that Tibet had made an almost U turn and climbed beck onto the Tibet Highlands.[43]
There was the Burma Road which linked Burma and China. Its terminals are Kunming in China and Lashio in Burma. The road is about 1,130 kilometres long and runs through rough mountain country. General Merrill and General Stillwell built during the colonial times under British. When the Japanese overran sections of the Burma Road the Allies built the Ledo Road, also later known as the Stillwell Road. Ledo Road was built from Ledo in Assam into the Hukawng Valley as an alternative to the Burma Road. It was completed in January 1945 and was renamed Stilwell Road by Chiang Kai-shek. Now China and India are negotiating with Myanmar to build a modern high way liking their countries through Burma including to lay natural gas pipe line from Rakhine to India, Yunnan, China.
Since it was the colonialists who invented the idea of the Mongolian origins of the Burmese peoples in the first place, contradicting the Burmese belief of having originated from Northern India and Nepal, this merely confirms the strength of colonialist discourse in penetrating Burmese self-perception fifty years later. In spite of asserting commonality Minye Kaungbon[44]cannot resist the temptation to provide the Bamars with a special historical mention that lifts them high above the Mongoloid race and raises their pride as a superior race, namely that ‘Bamars are descendants of Sakyans who are of the Aryan Race or of some other descendants of Aryans’. Though there is ‘scarcely any race that can claim descent from exclusively one original race’, nevertheless, Burma's proximity to India permits the claim that the Burmans have ‘an ornamental Aryan superstructure on the existing Mongoloid foundation’, resulting in some historians proclaiming that ‘Myanmars were descendants of Aryans’.[45]
Pyu and India
[46] Pyu, one of the three founding father of Bamar or Myanmar race was believed to be the mixture of three groups; (i) Few insignificant local inhabitants since Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age, (ii) many migrants came from India bringing in Hinduism and Buddhism along with their cultures and literatures successively (iii) and the last group believed to came down from north, Tibeto-Burman group.[47]
Pyu settlement
Pyu arrived in future Burma area in the 1st century BC or earlier and established village kingdoms at: Hanlin, Kutkhaing in the north, Thanlwin coastal line in the east, Gulf of Mataban and its coast in the south, Thandwe in the southern west and Yoma in the west.[48]
Pyu had built towns in: Sri Ksetra (Pyeh) 4-8AD, Maingmaw, Beikthano. (Actually VISHNU from Hindi god) (Khmer troops occupied 210-225 AD), Taung Dwin Gyi 1-4 AD,, Hanlin (Wet Let) 2-9AD, (Halingyi), Tagaung (Thabeikkyin), Waddi (Nga Htwoe Gyi), Maingmaw (Pinlay)(Myittha), Beinnaka (Pyaw Bwe), and Bilin township (Mon state)[49]
Pyu variant of the Gupta script
Pyu established ancient kingdom (and its language) found in the central and northern regions of what is now Burma. The history of the Pyu is known to us from two main historical sources: the remnants of their civilization found in stone inscriptions (some in Pali, but rendered in the Pyu script, or a Pyu variant of the Gupta script) and the brief accounts of some travellers and traders from China, preserved in the Chinese imperial history.[50]
Pyu chronicles speak of a dynastic change in A.D. 94. Sri Ksetra village was apparently abandoned around A.D. 656 it was sacked by the Nan Cho Chinese Shan in the mid-9th century, ending the Pyu's period of dominance.
Pyu language started in 5AD in Southern Rakhine. At famous Mya Zedi Pagoda stone inscriptions were written in Pyu, Mon, Bama, and Pali in 1113AD. Pyu had written records, dated from 1st century A.D. and Mon from 5th century A.D. and Bama had its own written records only in 11th century A.D.[51][52]
Beikthano (Vishnu)
Beikthano (Vishnu) at the end of 4th. AD (9Khmer troops occupied 210-225 AD.(Taung Dwin Gyi) after which the Mons moved in, giving the cities names Panthwa and Ramanna pura. Religious remains show both forms of Buddhism, Mahayanism and Hinayanism, together with Vishnu worship. There are large stone Buddhist sculptures in relief in the Gupta style, bronze statuettes of Avalokitesvara, one of the three chief Mahayanist Bodhisattvas, and so many stone sculptures of Vishnu that the city was sometimes referred to as ‘Vishnu City’.[53]
Pyu Kings are Maharajas
In Chinese Chronicles they recorded Pyu as ‘P’aio’. But Pyu Called themselves Tircul.[54]. There are records of Nan Cho and Tibet alliance in 755 AD to defeat Chinese. Nan Cho king Ko-lo-fen communicate with Pyu. Pyu Kings were called Maharajas and Chief ministers were called Mahasinas.
Nan Cho conscripted Pyu soldiers to attack of Hanoi in 863 AD. In 832 AD Nan Cho looted Han Lin village from Pyu.[55]
Pyu kings named Vishnu as in Gupta, India
Inscriptions in Pyu language using a South Indian script, showed a Vikrama dynasty ruling there at least from AD 673 to 718.[56]On Pyu’s stone inscriptions, kings names with Vikrama were suffix with Vishnu. The same tradition was noticed in Gupta era India 100 BC.and in Sri Kestia, Mon in south, Thai and Cambodia. Statue of Vishnu standing on Garuda with Lakshmi standing on the lotus on left. And Brahma, Siva and Vishnu thrones were also found. Name, Varman indicated that there was influence of Pallava of India.[57] The mentioning of Varman dynasty, an Indian name, indicated there was a neighbouring and rival city, but Old Prome is the only Pyu site so‘ far to be excavated in that area.[58]
Indian Dravidian tribe in Panthwa
In Chinese Chronicles Chen Yi-Sein instead gives an Indian derivation for Panthwa village, as the name of a Dravidian tribe settled in Mon’s areas around the Gulf of Martaban. This group was later one of the pioneers in a ‘Monized’ occupation of Beikthano village, which also led to the village/city being called Ramanna-pura, linked to Mon areas of southern Myanmar (1999:77).[59]
The Tagaung dynasty is explicitly incorporated into the story of Duttabaung’s mother and father; the lineage of the Queen of Beikthano is less consistent, but always intertwined with that of the Sri Kestra village rulers. In all of these, links are made between territorial control, royal patronage of Hindu or Buddhist sects and supernatural events. [60]
Orissa
Orissa, Indian Buddhist colonists, arrived lower Burma, settled and built pagodas since 500 BC.[61]
Thamala and Wimala
Two princes named Thamala and Wimala (Myanmar version of Indian names-Thalma and Vimala.) established the town Bago in 573AD. Tabinshwehti (Taungoo Dynasty) conquered it in 1539 AD.[62]
Andhra Dynasty
Hindu colonists, of Andhra Dynasty, from middle India (180 BC) established Hanthawaddy (Mon town) and Syriam (Ta Nyin or Than Lyin) in Burma.[63]
Indian Royal family
Abi Raja
Some believed that Burma started from Tagaung, built by Abi Raja, a Sakian (Tha Ki Win min), Indian Royal family member, migrated from Kapilavatthu (India) after defeated by the king of Panchala (India), Vitatupa. He left the Middle Country (India) and established the Tagaung country, known at that time as Sangassarattha or Sangassanagara. On the death of Abi Raja, younger son Kan Raja Nge (younger King Kan) got the throne. Thirty-three kings reigned there.[64]
Kan Raja Gyi ruled Arakan
Elder brother Kan Raja Gyi (elder King Kan) went down the Ayeyarwaddy River, ascended the Thallawadi River, arrived Kelataungnyo and ruled there as Rajagaha. He ruled the ancient Arakan.[65]
Kan Raja Gyi's son Muducitta
His son Muducitta became king of the Pyus (ancestors of modern Myanmar). He founded the city of Kyauppadaung. He conquered the Dhannavati (built by king Marayu).[66]
Bhinnaka Raja
The invading Chinese from the north destroyed Tagaung. The last king of Tagaung, Bhinnaka Raja run away and died later. His followers split in to three divisions.[67]
One division founded the nineteen Shan States at the eastern part.
Muducitta, grandson of Abi Raja
Another division moved down Ayeyarwady River and combined with Muducitta (second generation migrant, grand son of Indian Abi Raja) and other Sakiyan (Indian) princes, among the Pyus, Kanyans and Theks.[68]
Naga Hsein, a Sakiyan Indian
The third group stayed in Mali with the chief queen Naga Hsein, a Sakiyan.(Indian) She was the queen of the Sakyiyan king Dhaja Raja migrated from India. On the way he founded Thintwe’. Then they founded the upper Bagan(Pagan).[69]
Dahnnavata captured Thambula, queen of Pyus. But Nanhkan (China) queen of Pyus had driven out the Kanyans, who lived in seven hill-tracks beginning Thantwe’.[70]
King Dwattabaung from Indian Royal Family
King Dwattabaung, direct descendent of Abi Raja (Indian Migrant) founded Thare Khit Taya in 443 BC. It was said to be self-destroyed in 94 AD. The history is half -mystical at that time.[71]
Talaings
Mons or Talaings, an Ethnic Minority Group of Myanmar, migrated from the Talingana State, Madras coast of Southern India. They mixed with the new migrants of Mongol from China and driven out the above Andhra and Orissa colonists.[72]
Those Mon (Talaings) brought with them the culture, arts, literature, religion and all the skills of civilisation of present Myanmar. They founded the Thaton and Bago (Pegu) Kingdoms. King Anawrahta of Bagan (Pagan) conquered that Mon Kingdom of King Manuha, named Suvannabumi (The Land of Golden Hues).[73]
The conquest of Thaton in 1057 was a decisive event in Burmese history. It brought the Burman into direct contact with the Indian civilizing influences in the south and opened the way for intercourse with Buddhist centres overseas, especially Ceylon.[74]
The evidence of the inscriptions, Luce[75] warns us, shows that the Buddhism of Pagan ‘was mixed up with Hindu Brahmanic cults, Vaisnavism in particular.[76]
Ah Yee Gyis
Ah Yee Gyis or Aries, notoriously powerful in Pagan or Bagan, before the Buddhist Religion arrived. Ah Yee Gyis or Aries were related to one Indian sect or religion. The Indian Aris or Ah Yees were also known for, swimming, martial arts, traditional medicine practice and the custom of sleeping with the brides on the first night of weddings. They are the last to eliminate just after formation of first Bama Empire.
Bengal prince Pateik Kara
Pateikkara was an Indian (Kala) prince from ancient Bengal who fall in love with Burma Bagan’s 3rd Great King Kyansittha’s daughter. King Kyansittha indirectly cause the death of his daughter, Shwe Ein Si’s lover, Prince of Pateik Kara. He used to bribe the royal guards with ten baskets of silver to see the princess. When the king heard of the secret lovers’ tryst, he forced his daughter to marry Sawyun, the son of late King Sawlu, although Sawyun was a handicapped person walking with a limp. Kyansittha preferred him rather than a Kala (Indian). [77]
India and Arakan
The Arakanese chronicles claim that the Kingdom was founded in the year 2666 BC.[78]
Wesali founded by Hindu Chandras
"The area known as North Arakan had been for many years before the 8th century the seat of Hindu dynasties. In 788 AD a new dynasty, known as the Chandras, founded the city of Wesali. This city became a noted trade port to which as many as a thousand ships came annually; the Chandra kings were upholders of Buddhism, ... their territory extended as far north as Chittagong;---- Wesali was an easterly Hindu kingdom of Bengal --- Both government and people were Indian.[79] So far as Arakan is concerned, the inscriptions show traces of two early dynasties holding sway in the north. The earlier one, a Candra dynasty, seems to have been founded in the middle of the fourth century A.D. Its capital was known by the Indian name of Vaisali and it maintained close connections THE PRE-PAGAN PERIOD 9 with India. Thirteen kings of this dynasty are said to have reigned for a total period of 230 years. The second dynasty was founded in the eighth century by a ruler referred to as Sri Dharmavijaya, who was of pure Ksatriya descent. His grandson married a daughter of the Pyu king of Sri Ksetra.[80]
Hindu statues and inscriptions in Wesali
The ruins of old capital of Arakan - Wesali show Hindu statues and inscriptions of the 8th century AD. Although the Chandras usually held Buddhistic doctrines, there is reason to believe that Brahmanism and Buddhism flourished side by side in the capital.
Chittagong is from Tsit-ta-gung
The Arab chief was the Thuratan, in the Arakanese utterance whom the king of Arakan Tsula-Taing Tsandra (951-957 AD.), claimed to have defeated in his invasion of Chittagong in 953 AD. In memory of his victory the Arakanese king set up a stone trophy, in the conquered land. And inscribed on it the Burmese word, "Tsit-ta-gung" meaning "there shall be no war". And from this remark of the monument, according to Burmese tradition, the district took its name, Chittagong.[81]
Chittagong under Arakanese rule
Nearly a century, from about 1580 till 1666 AD Chittagong was under almost uninterrupted Arakanese rule. Arakanese captured and sent numbers of the inhabitants of Bengal into Arakan as agricultural and slave labours.
Arakanese known in Bengal as Maghs
The Buddhists Arakanese, known as Magh or Rakhine are descended from Aryans of Maghada, India Mongolians mixed with the Tibeto-Burmans.[82]
During the 16th and 17th centuries the Arakanese (known in Bengal as Maghs) in alliance with the Portuguese constituted a plundering party. By dominating the riverine tracts they plundered and devastated large parts of southern and eastern Bengal.[83]
They carried a large number of men, women and children from the coastal districts of Bengal,[84] as captives and the Maghs (Arakanese) employed them as agricultural labour. It is well known that the Kingdom of Arakan was a sparsely populated area, which required huge amount of human labour for agriculture. With this intention the Arakanese employed a large number of captives in the villages of land on the bank of the Kuladan river to the Naf. This Kula population of the country form about 15 percent of the whole population. A.P.Phayre mentions, "the Kolas or Mossalmans, are of an entirely different race. They being of Bengalee descent.[85]
Burmese settlement in Arakan
“The Burmese do not seem to have settled in Arakan until possibly as late as the tenth century AD. Hence earlier dynasties are thought to have been Indian, ruling over a population similar to that of Bengal. All the capitals known to history have been in the north near modern Akyab”.[86]
Arrival of Arab Muslims
The Arab Muslims first came into contact with Arakan through trade and commerce during the 8th century AD and since then Islam started spreading in the region. In those days the Arabs were very much active in sea-trade, they even monopolized trade and commerce in the East.[87]
Dr. Mohammad Enamul Haque introduces another Arakanese chronicle, which informs us of an Arab settlement, in the tenth century AD. extending from the mouth of the Meghna to the North of the Naf riverin the East.[88]
With the passing of time, the number of Muslims in Arakan began to increase. Gradually these Muslims have established very good and cordial relations with the local people and intermixed by marrying local women.
"They differ but little from the Arakanese except in their religion and in the social customs which their religion directs; in writing they use Burmese, but amongst themselves employ colloquially the language of their ancestors".[89]
Even, a Russian merchant, Athanasius Nitikin, who travelled in the East (1470) mentions regarding activities of some Muslim sufis of Pegu (Bago). The Merchant pictured Pegu as "no inconsiderable port, inhabited by Indian dervishes.[90]
Ships wrecked at Ramree Island
In the history of the Arakanese kings, it is recorded that during the reign, of Arakanese king Mahat-y-ing Chandayat (780-810 AD.) several Kula or foreign ships were wrecked upon the island of Ramree, and the people who boarded on them were said to be Muslims. The Arakanese king ordered them to be settled in the villages of Arakan.[91]
Narameikhla alias Solaiman Shah
However, Islam made its first major political and cultural impact during the early 15th century through Narameikhla, king of Arakan. He lost the war,run to India Mogul Empire for help. With the help of Muslim soldiers he was restored as a king and Narameikhla, took the title Solaiman Shah.[92] and established a new dynasty, known as Maruk-u-dynasty, with its capital at Mrohaung.[93]
Arakan coins with Islamic features
With effect from the year 1430 the kingdom of Arakan became tributary to Bengal and the kings assume a Muslim name and struck coins with Kalima (The declarition of Islamic faith of the single God, Allah and believef of His messenger Mohammad- Peace be upon him.)[94]
"It is common for the kings, though Buddhist, to use Mohamedan designations in addition to their own names, and even to issue medallions bearing the Kalima, the Mohammedan confession of faith, in Persian script".[95]
This practice was prevalent among the Arakanese kings till the first half of the seventeenth century. This was because they not only wished to be thought of as sultans in their own rights, but also because there were Muslims in ever larger numbers among their subjects. A.P.Phayre observes that the practice of assuming Muslim name and inscribing Kalima in their coins was probably first introduced in fulfilment of the promise made by Mung-Somwun but was continued in later time as a token of sovereignty in Chittagong.[96]
He also mentions that "these they assumed as being successors of Mussalman kings, or as being anxious to imitate the prevailing fashion of lndia.[97]
Muslim influence in Arakan since 1430
So the Muslim influence in Arakan may be said to date from 1430, the year of Narameikhla's restoration.During his reign an unexpected development took place, which paved the way for a period of Muslim domination in the land of Arakan. From this time onwards the relation of Muslims with the Arakanese became more intimate and for about two centuries Arakan was united in a bond of friendship with Islamic lands. As a result of the impact of the civilization of the Muslims, Arakanese culture also progressed and thus began the 'Golden Age' in the history of Arakan.[98]
Muslims Massacred in Arakan
The next and last event was the flight of Shah Shuja, the brother of Aurangzeb, to Arakan in 1660, which brought a new wave of Muslim immigrants to the kingdom of Arakan and also caused political changes. Later on the prince and some of his soldiers were murdered on Feb., 1661.[99]
Kaman or Kamanci
But “who escaped the massacre were later admitted into the king's bodyguard as a special archers unit called Kamans or Kamanci”.[100]
From 1666 to 1710 the political rule of Arakan was completely in their hands, during which the Muslim Kaman units played a decisive role of king makers and king breakers. Their numbers were increased from time to time by fresh arrivals from upper India.[101]
Buddhist Arakan Kings with Islamic names
All the kings of Arakan were said to be Buddhist. However to rule the 12 towns in the Bangal smoothly seven kings decided to have Arakanese and Mogul Islamic names. The interference of Ava and Pegu in the affairs of Arakan had important consequences for that country. The Ava king placed his son-in-law on the throne of Arakan. The Mons in return invaded the country, killed the Burmese nominee and replaced him with a ruler chosen by Razadarit. In 1430, however, with the assistance of Bengal, the exiled king, Narameikhla,returned and was reinstated as the vassal of the Mohammedan king of Gaur. He founded Mrohaung as his capital, and his, Mohammedan followers built a mosque there. From this time onwards the Arakanese kings, although Buddhists, used Mohammedan titles in addition to their own names, They even issued medallions bearing the Kalima, the Mohammedan confession of faith. The connection between Arakan and India became even more pronounced when in 1459 an Arakanese king occupied Chittagong.[102]
The Islamic-names of Arakan Kings
No- - -Name- - - - - - - - - - - year
1 Min-kha-ri (Ali Khan)- - - 1433
2 Ba-saw-phru (Kalama Shah)- -1459
3 Dolay (Mokhu Shah)- - 1482
4 Ba-saw-min-nyo (Maha Moshah)- -1492
5 Min-raza-kri (Ili Shah)- - - 1501
6 Saw-min-o (Jal Shah)- - - 1515
7 Thazata (Itsli Shah)- --1515
Summarized History of Arakan
Independent Kingdom --- 266 BC- 1782 AD.
Burmese ruled ----------1783 - 1815 AD.
British ruled ----------1815 - 1942 AD.
Japanese ruled ----------1942 - 1945 AD.
British ruled ----------1945 - 1947 AD.
Burmese rule -----------1948 till present.
Culture
India has been particularly influential in Burmese culture as the cradle of Buddhism, and ancient Hindu traditions can still be seen in brahmins presiding over important ceremonies such as weddings and ear-piercings but most notably in Thingyan, the Burmese New Year festival.[5] Traditions of kingship including coronation ceremonies and formal royal titles as well as those of lawmaking were also Hindu in origin.[5] Many Burmese dishes and breads came as a result of Indian influence, prominently reflected in the Burmese version of Indian biryani (ဒန္ေပါက္).
The Japanese invasion led to an exodus of half a million Indians mostly by overland route enduring great suffering and loss of life so there was a dramatic drop after Burma gained independence from Great Britain in 1948.[7]
Economic roles
Burmese Indians had made their livelihoods as merchants, traders and shopkeepers as well as manual labourers such as coolies, dockers, municipal workers, rickshaw men, pony cart drivers, malis and durwans. They were also heavily represented in certain professions such as civil servants, university lecturers, pharmacists, opticians, lawyers and doctors. They had virtual monopolies in several types of businesses such as auto parts and electrical goods, ironmongery and hardware, printing and bookbinding, books and stationery, paper and printing ink, tailoring and dry-cleaning, English tuition, and money lending. They traded in textiles, gold and jewellery where the market was traditionally dominated by Burmese women. However, Ne Win's rise to power in 1962 and his relentless persecution of "resident aliens" (immigrant groups not recognised as citizens of the Union of Burma) led to an exodus of some 300,000 from racial discrimination and particularly after wholesale nationalisation of private enterprise a few years later in 1964.[7]
Religion
Image:Bengali Sunni Jameh Mosque, Yangon.jpg
The Bengali Sunni Jameh Mosque, built in the colonial era, is one of many mosques in Yangon.
More Burmese Indians practise Islam (Mahamaydin - Muhammadan pronounced in Myanmar language) than any other religion, perhaps indicating a preponderance of people who had come from East Bengal, although there are large numbers of Hindus. Burmese Muslims, some of them of mixed blood born of Burmese mothers, call themselves Bama Musalin (ဗမာမူစလင္) and the majority belongs to the Sunni sect with small numbers of Shi'as. The Burmese call them Zaydabayi or Pathi kala (ပသီကုလား). Other religions practised by Burmese Indians include Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Bahá'í.
Muslims
Myanmar Indian Muslims formed one of the definite group among Myanmar Muslims or Burmese Muslims.
Myanmar's Muslims are descendents of the following countries - a more appropriate and accurate term should be South Asian" Burmese as they consist of groups originating from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. Also, an even smaller minority claim descent from Arabs, Persians, Turks, Moors, various groups of Indian-Muslims, Pakistanis, Pathans, and Bengalis intermarried with local Burmese and many ethnic Myanmar groups such as, Rakhine, Shan, Karen, Mon etc.
The various sub groups of Burmese Indian Muslims are; Soorti, Meimans, Chulia. Tamil, Bengali, Pakistan, Shia (originated from Iran), Dawoodi-Bhora community, Isaili Community, Malabar group,Hydrabud Muslims, Madarasi depending from their origin in India subcontinent.
Many of the Pakistani affiliated groups including the Rakhine have been resettled to Pakistan.
Nationalization
Most of the South Asians who arrived during the time of British India went back to their respective countries in the subcontinent after General Ne Win took over and nationalized all the business. So who decided to continue to stay in Burma cut off the umbilical cord and have shown love to the new home, Burma. Now most of them are second and third generation or some of them were married to locals and almost totally assimilated into mainstream Myanmar Muslims. [103] Now they lost contact with their roots and most of them are even not interested at all to trace their origin.[104] [105]
Myedu Muslims
Some of the earliest Myanmar Muslims or Zerbardi or Kala Pyo or Myedu Muslims or Myedu Kalas or Thone Thaung Khunhit Yar (=3700) were also actually from the Indian subcontinent of Asam and Manipura, brought in by the Burmese Kings as prisoners of wars.[106] Some of the most assimilated or Burmanized Muslims in Burma took the name Pathi as the race and even try to put infront of their name as a prefix e.g. Pathi Ko Lay.
In the 1930 Census, British enlisted Muslims as Zerbardi Race. But most of the Muslims did not know the origin of the word and refused to accept that name. Moshe Yegar solved the problem by the following finding. He searched for the source and found out in the library in Singapore that the Arab sailors called themselves, people above the wind. (Orang atas angin, in Malay) and called the Muslims from Burma, Thailand, Malaya and Indonesia as, people under the wind (Orang bawah angin, in Malay). That is Zerbard in Persian. So Zerbardi referred to Muslims from Burma, Thailand, Malaya and Indonesia.[107]
Racial Discriminations
Anti-Indian Riots
British Official White Paper
This paragraph's basic facts are taken from Maurice Collis' "Trials in Burma". He was the judge in Rangoon, eyewitness of the riots, and wrote his book based on the British Official White Paper given by The Simon Commission (The Royal Statutory Commission, appointed according to the Law of the Government of India 1919, The Montague-Chelmsford Law.)[108]
Anti Indian sentiments
Anti Indian sentiments started after the First World War during the British rule.[109] In Burma there were half million Muslims in 1921. More then half of Indians were Indian Muslims.[110] Although Myanmar Muslims are different from the Indian Muslims and Indian Myanmar Muslims, Burmese Buddhists put them together even mixed with Hindu Indians, and called them Kala.[111]
The root of this hatred was_ [112] [113]
1. Different in religion.
2. Basic anti foreigner feelings.
3. Low standard of living of the recent migrants.
4. Recent migrants willingness to do, Dirty, Difficult and Dangerous jobs.
5. Indians took over the Burmese lands especially Chittiers.
6. Indians had already filled up and monopolized the government services when the Burmese were later ready for those jobs.
7. Professional competition.
8. World economic recession of 1930 aggravated the competition for the reduced economic pie.
1930 anti-Indian riots
In 1930 there was an anti-Indian riots in Burma under British rule.
The problem started in Yangon port, because of the irresponsible action of the British firm of Stevedores. It had employed hundreds of Indian labourers. While those Indians were on strike, that firm had employed the Burmese workers just to break the strike. So the Indians had to give in and ended the strike. Next morning when the Burmese workers came and report for work they were told by the British firm that their service was no more needed. Some of the Indian workers who were angry because they had to end the strike at failure because of these Burmese workers laughed at them. Some Burmese workers were angry and started the fight and Indians retaliate. It grew rapidly into anti Indian (including anti Muslims) riots. Even within the first half-hour at least two hundred Indians were massacred and flung into the river. Authorities ordered the police to fire upon any assembly of five or more who refuse to lay down the arms, under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code. That was a black day of 26 May. Within two days it spread to the whole country and no one knew the exact causality. [114]
Anti Muslim riots in 1938
There was another anti Muslim riots in 1938, while still under British rule. The real basic hidden agenda was aimed at British Government but the Burmese dare not show this openly. The growing Nationalistic sentiments fanned by the local media disguised as anti Muslim to avoid the early detection and notice followed by the full blown force of mighty British Government machinery.Throughout the Burmese struggles against British rule, all the political issues, movements, meetings, demonstrations, riots, rebellions and even the revolutions were instigated, inspired, influenced and led by newspapers. [115] [116]
Burma for Burmese Campaign
Burmese started the Burma for Burmese only Campaign. Then marched to the Muslim (Surti) Bazar. [117] While the Indian Police broke the violent demonstration, three monks were hurt. Burmese Newspapers use the pictures of Indian police attacking the Buddhist monks to further incite the spread of riots.[118] Muslim properties: shops, houses and mosques were looted, destroyed and burnt to ashes. They assaulted and even massacred the Muslims. It spreads to all over Burma and recorded that 113 mosques were damaged. [119]
The Inquiry Committee by British
On 22.9.38. British Governor set up the Inquiry Committee. [120] They found out that the real cause was the discontent in the government regarding the deterioration in sociopolitical and economic conditions of Burmans. [121] The book was used as an inciting factor by the irresponsible Burmese newspapers. [122] They use the anti Muslim propaganda as a disguise to cover up for the political struggle to gain independence.So the Buddhist used the Muslims as a scapegoat, for the first time, to fight against the British.
The Simon Commission (The Royal Statutory Commission, appointed according to the Law of the Government of India1919, The Montague-Chelmsford Law) to inquire the effects of Dyarchy system of ruling Burma, had recommended that special places be assigned to the Myanmar Muslims in the Legislative Council.
It recommended that full rights of citizenship should be guaranteed to all the minorities: the right of free worship, the right to follow their own customs, the right to own property and to receive a share of the public revenues for the maintenance of their own educational and charitable institutions. It recommended Home Rule or independent government separate from India or the status of dominion.
But the British Government refused to accept all those recommended except the separation, at the round table committee on India held in London in 1930.
After Independence
King Dragon expelling Rohingyas
While preparing for that Citizenship Act, General Ne Win expelled some of the Arakan Rohingya Muslims in an operation, code named-‘King Dragon’. There are still some refugees in Bangladesh and some of them have set up anti-Rangoon groups to fight for self-determination. About 60,000 of Muslims have since migrated to Saudi Arabia where they were greeted with open arms as brothers-in-Islam.[123]
Massacre of Indian Shans
--- the sort of fighting and bloody killings that took place between 1812-19 when the Burmese kings of Mandalay tried to conquer and subdue the Shan Ahom kingdom in Assam, India, where the Burmese General Maha Bandula's troops committed indescribable cruelties and barbarities as to decimate something like 2/3 of the population and certainly 1/3 of the men and boys - disemboweling them, eating their flesh and burning them alive in cages to intimidate and suppress the Shan Ahom of Assam,India.[124]
This event so weakened and disorganized the Shan Ahom that by 1839 the kingdom was completely annexed by the British. Before that from about 1220 - 1812 AD they maintained themselves under one Dynasty, (that of Mong Mao 568-1604 AD when its descendants ruled Hsenwi or Theinni in Burmese). Indeed the Shan Ahom resisted conquest by the Mughals who had conquered much of India before the British incursion.[125] [2] Burmese translation of above interview_ [3]
Language
Burmese Indians also speak an array of different languages. There are Tamils, Punjabis, Parsis, Gujaratis and Marawaris as well as Bengalis and Pathans. Most can only communicate in Burmese, due to years of assimilation and lack of education in languages other than English. However, small segments of the population can speak other languages, such as Urdu, Hindi, Tamil, and Arabic.
Notable Burmese Indians
• Exiled Moghul Emperor
The Mughal (and Muslim) rule was formally abolished by the British. The last Muslim Moghul Emperor of India, Abu Za’far Saraj al-Din Bahadur Shah and his family members and some followers were exiled to Yangon, Myanmar (Burma).
The king-poet was arrested from Delhi after the failure of the first war of independence against the British in 1857. The sad and broken Bahadur Shah was brought here in chains after the brutal murder of his sons.
Bahadur Shah Zafar spent four long years in Yangon and died on November 7,1862. Confined to a garage attached to a bungalow of an English officer, Zafar lived the life of a 'faqir' and passed away in ignominious anonymity in the outskirts of the city.
Two other exiled members of his family, wife Begum Zeenat Mahal and granddaughter Raunaq Zamani Begum who died in 1930 were buried alongside Bahadur Shah's grave.
Now his burial site became a minor diplomatic clash between India and Pakistan. Both of them want to control the site now famous as a shrine.[126]
The Mazar (mausoleum) , located at No. 6, Theatre Road, is the most famous address for any Indian visiting the Myanmar capital, Yangon. Beginning with Subhash Chandra Bose, there has been a tradition of Indian leaders visiting the monument as part of their official itinerary.
• S. N. Goenka - eminent Vipassana Buddhist meditation teacher (b. 1924)
• Goshal aka Thakin Ba Tin[7] - Communist leader and founding member from the 1940s to the 1960s
• S. Mukerjee aka Pyu Win[7]- Communist trade union leader killed in the 1950s
• Dr. Nath[7]- Communist leader and founding member killed in the 1960s
• Saya Rajan aka Aung Naing[7] - Communist trade union leader captured in the 1950s
• Thakin Tha Khin (Shan Indian) - Government Minister in the 1950s[7]
• Maung Di - Department chair and dean of Rangoon Arts and Science University (now Yangon University), Deputy Education Minister. Son of the Dean of Islamic Religious College in Kanbalu.[127]
• Ba Than Haq - Professor of Geology and Minister of Mines. (A Muslim who converted to Buddhism)[128]
• Sein Win (Shia Muslim who converted to Buddhism) - Prime Minister of General Ne Win’s Government.[129]
• Captain Ohn Kyaw Myint. Martyred after failed attempt of coup d'état[130]
• Bahadur, the Pelé of Burmese football
For much of the 1960s, the team was led by the Ghurka-born striker from Shan State, Suk Bahadur—the Pelé of Burmese football, who was also a dominating tennis and field hockey player as well as the national 100-meter sprint champion.
Historian John F. Cady writes in his book The United States and Burma that following consecutive victories in international matches in 1970–71, "proficiency in soccer became a significant mark of Burmese identity and prestige."[131]
Indeed, football provided a strong focus for the representation of Burma to the rest of Asia. The list of Burma’s football "heroes" meanwhile provides an epic narrative of sorts in which the "beautiful game" has made an important contribution to the construction of the nation. To restore that sense of pride to Burma's national side, the state-owned press kicked off a small media campaign. A January 13, 2000, article in the English-language daily The New Light of Myanmar urged public support. "To reach the Golden Age in soccer again, all media organizations are to provide assistance for development of soccer." A separate article in the same paper stated that football victories bring honor to the state and that the people's "hearts are thrilled with pleasure when they see or learn the victory of their national team. That is the sign of expressing their patriotism."[132]
• Daw Tint Tint @ Usha Narayanan, wife of Former Indian President, Kocheril Raman Narayanan
In 1949, K. R. Narayanan joined the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) on Nehru's request.[133] He worked as a diplomat in the embassies at Rangoon, Tokyo, London, Canberra, and Hanoi. He was the Indian ambassador to Thailand (1967-69), Turkey (1973-75), and the People's Republic of China (1976-78).
While working in Rangoon, Burma (Myanmar), K. R. Narayanan met Ma Tint Tint, whom he later married in Delhi on 8 June 1951). Ma Tint Tint got the BA (Psychology) from Rangoon University and went to India to do Masters.[134] Their marriage needed a special dispensation from Nehru per Indian law, because Narayanan was in the IFS and she was a foreigner. Ma Tint Tint adopted the Indian name Usha and became an Indian citizen. Usha Narayanan worked on several social welfare programmes for women and children in India. She also translated and published several Burmese short stories; a collection of translated stories by Thein Pe Myint, titled Sweet and Sour, appeared in 1998. She is the only woman of foreign origin to have become the First Lady. They have two daughters, Chitra (who has served as Indian ambassador to Sweden and Turkey) and Amrita.
• Helen of Bollywood
Born on July 14, 1938 or 1939. Helen was exotic as all vamps must be, but the Bombay film industry's somewhat uncomplicated notion of exotica was such that Helen could be made to fit any set of circumstances. As an alien with no fixed place of origin (her mother was a half-Spanish, half-Burmese, and her father a Frenchman posted in Burma though she took on her stepfather and became Helen Richardson and walked her way to Assam along with other refugees after the Second World War), she could be any kind of foreigner, any outsider.
It is a tribute to her talent and charisma that she literally side-stepped all competition during the period she strutted her stuff to perfection. How good a job did Helen make of seduction? A great one for the viewers - her fan base hasn't diminished much in close to 50 years."[135] [4]
See also
• Islam in Myanmar
• Islam in India
• Islam in China
• Islam in Asia
• Islam
• Burmese Chinese
• Panthay
• Rohingya People
• Expulsion of Indians from Myanmar in 1962
References
• Priestly, Harry. "The Outsiders", The Irrawaddy, 2006-01. Retrieved on 2006-07-07.
• Butkaew, Samart. "Burmese Indians: The Forgotten Lives", Burma Issues, 2005-02. Retrieved on 2006-07-07.
• Gregory, James. Myanmar: A Neglected Area of Tamil Lexicography. University of Cologne.
• Pe Maung Tin and G.H.Luce, The Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma, Rangoon University Press, Rangoon, Burma, January 1960.
• Dr Than Tun (History Professor, Mandalay University) M.A., B.L., D. Lit., Ph.D.“Ancient Pyu”
• Dr Than Tun (History Professor, Mandalay University) M.A., B.L., D. Lit., Ph.D.“Bagan Culture”,
• Shway Yoe (Sir James George Scott) 1882. The Burman - His Life and Notions. New York: The Norton Library 1963.
• Martin Smith (1991). Burma - Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity. London,New Jersey: Zed Books
• 'The Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar, 1972, Otto Harrassowitz. Wisbaden.
• Tamil Studies Abroad, A Symposium edited by Xavier S.Thaninayagam, published by the International Association of Tamil Research, 1968:
• The Chettiars in Burma by Sean Turnell Economics Department Macquarie University.
• The Sikh Regiment In The Second World War, Colonel F.T.Birdwood OBE.
• Myanmar Muslim History, Myanmar Muslim Students Association, Rangoon Arts and Science University. Limited Edition.
• The Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar, 1972, Otto Harrassowitz. Wisbaden.
• Bertil Lintner, famous Sweden journalist expert on Burma, 17th. of April 1988 in the Bangkok Post.
• ‘DIALOGUE WITH A SHAN LEADER, H.R.H HSO KHAN PHA” . Tiger Yawnghwe or His Royal Highness Prince Hso Khan Pha; he is the eldest son of Sao Shwe Thaik, the former Saopha[Prince] of Yawnghwe[Nyaung-Shwe] and the first President of Burma after Burma's Independence from British colonial rule. Interview with Dr Tayza, Chief Editor of Burma Digest.
• Dr Than Tun (History Professor, Mandalay University) ‘The Story of Myanmar told in pictures’.
• Elizabeth Moore, Myanmar Historical Research Journal 2004.
• D. G. E Hall, A History of the South East Asia, New York, 1968.
• G.E Hervey, History of Burma, London 1925,
• D. G. E Hall, Studies in Dutch Relations with Arakan, Journal of the Burma Research Society, VOL XXVI, 1936, P. 6. and Mr. R. B. Smart, Burma Gazetteer-Akyab District, voL A., Rangoon. 1957
• A.P. Phayre, History of Burma 1853
• A. P. Phayre, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1846.
• Haresh Pandya: "K. R. Narayanan: Indian president from downtrodden caste", The Guardian, 29 Nov. 2005.
• SURESH KOHLI, Helen of Bollywood . Hindu, India's National Newspaper Friday, Apr 14, 2006.
• Martin Smith (1991). Burma - Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity. London,New Jersey: Zed Books.
• M.S. Collis, Arakan's place in the civilization of the Bay, Joumal of the Burma Research Society, 50th Anniversary publications No.2, Rangoon, 1960
Notes
1. ^ Burma - CIA World Factbook
2. ^ Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 111, paragraph 4
3. ^ “Ancient Pyu” page 4. Professor U Than Tun M.A.B.L.D. Lit. Ph.D.
4. ^ Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 36, paragraph 4. Page 37, line 1,2
5. ^ a b c d Shway Yoe (Sir James George Scott) 1882. The Burman - His Life and Notions. New York: The Norton Library 1963, 436,249-251,348,450.
6. ^ "The Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 29, line 6,7,8. paragraph 3,4. page 30.
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Martin Smith (1991). Burma - Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity. London,New Jersey: Zed Books, 43-44,98,56-57,176.
8. ^ "The Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 29 p 29, paragraph3 first line
9. ^ "The Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 32, paragraph 2, line 2,3,4
10. ^ "The Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 32,paragraph 3
11. ^ 'The Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar, page 30.
12. ^ Thanjai Nalankilli, TAMIL TRIBUNE, July 2002 (ID.2002-07-02)
13. ^ From Tamil Studies Abroad, A Symposium edited by Xavier S.Thaninayagam, published by the International Association of Tamil Research, 1968:
14. ^ Tamil Nation
15. ^ Ananthan @ siva.for.uidaho.edu on: Fri Aug 23 03:24:50
16. ^ Moshe Yegar, Muslims of Burma, page 30, paragraph 4, line 8
17. ^ Furnivall 1956:120
18. ^ Cooper 1959:30
19. ^ Cooper 1959:30
20. ^ BPBE 1930a:203
21. ^ Testimony of a Karen witness to the Burma Provincial Banking Enquiry, 1929.
22. ^ Sir Harcourt Butler, Governor of Burma, 1927.
23. ^ Adas (1974b:389)
24. ^ Parching the Land?: The Chettiars in Burma by Sean Turnell Economics Department Macquarie University.sturnell@efs.mq.edu.au
25. ^ BURMA, D. G . E. HALL, M.A., D.LIT., F.R.HIST.S. Professor Emeritus of the University of London and formerly Professor of History in the University of Rangoon, Burma. Third edition 1960. Page 41
26. ^ "The Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 30 paragraph 4, line 9, 10
27. ^ "The Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 30, paragraph 4, line 8
28. ^ Nepal - From The Anglo-Nepalese War To World War II
29. ^ [1]
30. ^ Martial India, F. Yeats-Brown, 1945.
31. ^ The Sikh Regiment In The Second World War, Colonel F.T.Birdwood OBE
32. ^ Pashto/Urdu/Persian: پشتون Paštūn or پختون Paxtūn. Also Pushtuns, Pakhtuns, Pukhtuns
33. ^ Urdu: پٹھان, Hindi: पठान Paṭhān
34. ^ Persian: افغان Afğān
35. ^ Banuazizi, Ali and Myron Weiner (eds.). 1994. The Politics of Social Transformation in Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan (Contemporary Issues in the Middle East), Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0-8156-2608-8 (retrieved 7 June 2006).
36. ^ Kakar, Palwasha. Harvard University - School of Law - Tribal Law of Pashtunwali and Women’s Legislative Authority (retrieved 7 June 2006)
37. ^ Caroe, Olaf. 1984. The Pathans: 500 B.C.-A.D. 1957, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195772210 (retrieved 7 June 2006)
38. ^ Anglo-Afghan Wars, Iranica.com (retrieved 16 January 2006)
39. ^ Ethnic, Cultural and Linguistic Denominations in Pakhtunkhwa, Khyberwatch.com (retrieved 7 June 2006)
40. ^ 'The Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar, 1972, Otto Harrassowitz. Wisbaden
41. ^ “Bagan Culture”page 42, Professor U Than Tun M.A., B.L., D. Lit., Ph.D.
42. ^ “Ancient Pyu” page page 3&4 Professor U Than Tun M.A., B.L., D. Lit., Ph.D.
43. ^ Thailand History books
44. ^ Minye Kaungbon (1994:165). New Light of Myanmar
45. ^ ILCAA 1999 - Gustaaf Houtman. Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics. ILCAA Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia & Africa Monograph Series 33, Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1999, ISBN 4-87297-748-3, p 070/392
46. ^ “Ancient Pyu” page page 3&4 Professor U Than Tun M.A., B.L., D. Lit., Ph.D.
47. ^ Dr Than Tun (History Professor, Mandalay University) ‘The Story of Myanmar told in pictures’.
48. ^ Dr Than Tun , “The Story of Myanmar told in pictures”
49. ^ Dr Than Tun , “The Story of Myanmar told in pictures”
50. ^ Chinese imperial history
51. ^ Chinese imperial history
52. ^ “Ancient Pyu” page page 3&4 Professor U Than Tun M.A., B.L., D. Lit., Ph.D.
53. ^ BURMA, D. G . E. HALL, M.A., D.LIT., F.R.HIST.S.Professor Emeritus of the University of London and formerly Professor of History in the University of Rangoon, Burma.Third edition 1960. Page 8
54. ^ (Perso-Arab authours) of 9-10 AD
55. ^ (Elizabeth Moore, Myanmar Historical Research Journal 2004)
56. ^ BURMA, D. G . E. HALL, M.A., D.LIT., F.R.HIST.S.Professor Emeritus of the University of London and formerly Professor of History in the University of Rangoon, Burma.Third edition 1960. Page 8
57. ^ (Elizabeth Moore, Myanmar Historical Research Journal 2004)
58. ^ BURMA, D. G . E. HALL, M.A., D.LIT., F.R.HIST.S.Professor Emeritus of the University of London and formerly Professor of History in the University of Rangoon, Burma.Third edition 1960. Page 8
59. ^ D. G . E. HALL, “BURMA”
60. ^ D. G . E. HALL, “BURMA”
61. ^ HGE Hall, "History of Southeast Asia."
62. ^ Pe Maung Tin and G.H.Luce, The Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma
63. ^ HGE Hall, "History of Southeast Asia."
64. ^ Pe Maung Tin and G.H.Luce, The Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma, Rangoon University Press, Rangoon, Burma, January 1960.page 1. paragraph 2&3
65. ^ Pe Maung Tin and G.H.Luce, The Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma,page 2, paragraph 2
66. ^ Pe Maung Tin and G.H.Luce, The Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma,page 2, line 22
67. ^ Pe Maung Tin and G.H.Luce, The Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma,page 3, line 4 to 7
68. ^ Pe Maung Tin and G.H.Luce, The Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma,page 2,3,6,13
69. ^ Pe Maung Tin and G.H.Luce, The Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma,page 3,4&30
70. ^ Pe Maung Tin and G.H.Luce, The Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma,page6,12,13
71. ^ Pe Maung Tin and G.H.Luce, The Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma,page 7,9,13,21,23,83,86,94
72. ^ “The Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar, 1972, Otto Harrassowitz. Wisbaden.
73. ^ HGE Hall History of Southeast Asia.
74. ^ BURMA, D. G . E. HALL, M.A., D.LIT., F.R.HIST.S.Professor Emeritus of the University of London and formerly Professor of History in the University of Rangoon, Burma.Third edition 1960. Page 16
75. ^ Luce , G. H., ‘Burma’s Debt to Pagan’, Journal of the Burma Research Society, Vol. XXII, p121.
76. ^ BURMA, D. G . E. HALL, M.A., D.LIT., F.R.HIST.S.Professor Emeritus of the University of London and formerly Professor of History in the University of Rangoon, Burma.Third edition 1960. Page 16
77. ^ Pe Maung Tin and G.H.Luce, [Glass Palace Chronicle] Page 105 paragraph 4 to page 106 paragraph 1
78. ^ A.P. Phayre, History of Burma London, 1883, PP. 293-304.
79. ^ M.S. Collis, Arakan's place in the civilization of the Bay, Joumal of the Burma Research Society, 50th Anniversary publications No.2, Rangoon, 1960, P. 486.
80. ^ BURMA, D. G . E. HALL, M.A., D.LIT., F.R.HIST.S.Professor Emeritus of the University of London and formerly Professor of History in the University of Rangoon, Burma.Third edition 1960. Page 8 -9
81. ^ A.P. Phayre,op.cit, P36.
82. ^ HGE Hall History of Southeast Asia.
83. ^ For details; J.N.Sarkar: The Feringhi Pirates of Chatgaon; Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengalvol.111,1907,pp.419-25,andFBemier:Travels in the Mughal Empire. Delhi l 968, P.175.
84. ^ (District Gazetteer - 24 Pargana. P. 39.)
85. ^ A. P. Phayre, Account of Arakan Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. X, 184 1, P. 68 1.
86. ^ D. G. E Hall, A History of the South East Asia, New York, 1968, P. 389.
87. ^ Muhammed Abdur Rahim, Social & Cultural History of Bengal, VoL 1, Karach, 1963, P. 37
88. ^ Muhammed Enamul Haque, Purba Pakistane Islam, Dhaka, 1948, pp. 16-17 & Enamul Haque 0 Abdul Karim Shahitya Bisharad, Arakan Rajshabhay Bangla Shahitya, Calcutta, 1935, P. 3.
89. ^ D. G. E Hall, Studies in Dutch Relations with Arakan, Journal of the Burma Research Society, VOL XXVI, 1936, P. 6. and Mr. R. B. Smart, Burma Gazetteer-Akyab District, voL A., Rangoon. 1957
90. ^ G.E Hervey, History of Burma, London 1925, P. 121.
91. ^ A.P. Phayre, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, voL XII, part, 1, 1844, p.36.
92. ^ (A.S.Bahar, The Arakani Rahingyas in Burmese Society, M.A. Thesis, University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, p.27.)
93. ^ (Moshe Yegar, Op. cit.; P. 18.)
94. ^ M. Robinson and L.A. Shaw, The Coins and Banknotes of Burma, England, 1980, P. 44.
95. ^ (G.EHarvey, Op. cit, P. 140.)
96. ^ A.P. Phayre, History of Burma 1853, P. 78.
97. ^ A. P. Phayre, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1846.
98. ^ M. Siddique Khan, op. cit., P. 249.
99. ^ G.E.Hervey, The fate of Shah Shuja 1661. Journal of the Burma Research Society, part 1, 1922. pp. 107-115.
100. ^ M. Siddique Khan, op, cit., p. 253.
101. ^ G. E Hervey, History of Burma, London 1925, P. 148. Mohammad Khalilur Rahman, Tarik-i-Islam Arakan & Burma, Urdu version, Quoted by Abdul Haque Chowdhury.
102. ^ BURMA, D. G . E. HALL, M.A., D.LIT., F.R.HIST.S.Professor Emeritus of the University of London and formerly Professor of History in the University of Rangoon, Burma.Third edition 1960. Page 31-32
103. ^ "The Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 29 paragraph 1
104. ^ Myanmar Muslim History, Myanmar Muslim Students Association, Rangoon Arts and Science University. Limited Edition
105. ^ "The Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 71,86 & Chap 4
106. ^ 'The Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 11, paragraph 3. Page 12 paragraph 1
107. ^ 'The Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 28,33,49,57,64,74,107,118
108. ^ Maurice Collis, Trials in Burma
109. ^ Moshe Yegar, Muslims of Burma, page 32
110. ^ Moshe Yegar, Muslims of Burma, page 29 paragraph 1 and foot note 1. Page 31 line 1, 2, 11
111. ^ Maurice Collis, Trials in Burma
112. ^ Maurice Collis, Trials in Burma
113. ^ Moshe Yegar, Muslims of Burma, page 111, paragraph 4, line 8 to 15. Page 27, paragraph 4, line 5,6,7. Page 31 paragraph 2. Page 32 paragraph 4
114. ^ Maurice Collis, Trials in Burma
115. ^ Democratic Voice of Burma, Media conference (July 19-20, Oslo) Burmese Media: Past, present and future by U Thaung (Mirror/Kyae Mon news paper Retired Chief Editor)
116. ^ Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 32 paragraph 4.Page 36, paragraph 1, line 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15
117. ^ Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 36, paragraph 3.
118. ^ Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 36, paragraph 4. Page 37, line 1,2
119. ^ Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 37, paragraph 2.
120. ^ Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 38, line 1
121. ^ Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 38, paragraph 2
122. ^ Muslims of Burma” A study of a minority Group, by Moshe Yegar,Page 38, paragraph 2, line 12,13,14
123. ^ Newsletter WAMY World Assembly of Muslim Youth Movement, Riyad Saudi Arabia
124. ^ History of Assam by Sir Edward Gaits.
125. ^ “DIALOGUE WITH A SHAN LEADER, H.R.H HSO KHAN PHA” . Tiger Yawnghwe or His Royal Highness Prince Hso Khan Pha; he is the eldest son of Sao Shwe Thaik, the former Saopha[Prince] of Yawnghwe[Nyaung-Shwe] and the first President of Burma after Burma's Independence from British colonial rule. Interview with Dr Tayza, Chief Editor of Burma Digest.
126. ^ Independent-Bangladesh,Bahadur Shah Zafar's Mazar,Myanmar turns down Pakistan's claim,PTI, YANGON.Nov 16:2003
127. ^ History of Myanmar Muslims, Rangoon University Islamic Association.
128. ^ History of Myanmar Muslims, Rangoon University Islamic Association.
129. ^ History of Myanmar Muslims, Rangoon University Islamic Association.
130. ^ History of Myanmar Muslims, Rangoon University Islamic Association.
131. ^ John F. Cady, The United States and Burma
132. ^ January 13, 2000, article in the English-language daily The New Light of Myanmar
133. ^ Haresh Pandya: "K. R. Narayanan: Indian president from downtrodden caste", The Guardian, 29 Nov. 2005.
134. ^ Mrs President's interview with News Straight Times
135. ^ SURESH KOHLI, Helen of Bollywood . Hindu, India's National Newspaper Friday, Apr 14, 2006
External links
• Myanmar Muslim news- [5]
• Burmese Muslims Network- [6]
• Islamic Unity Brotherhood [7]
• Myanmar Muslim political Awareness Oranization- [8]
• Panthay on line community- [9]
• Office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights[10]
• US Department of State,International Religious Freedom Report 2005 on Burma[11]
• US Department of State, Burma, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices- 2005.Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor[12]
• Amnesty International’s report on Burma[13]
• UK Conservatives’ Human Rights[14]
• Refusal of Identity Cards for Burmese Muslims[15] [16]
• Refusal of Identity Cards for Burmese Muslims (in Burmese. We also love Burma.)[17]
• Racial Discriminations on Burmese Muslims[18][19]
• Human Rights issues in Burma [20]
• PRAYERS FOR BURMA [21]
• Priestly, Harry. "The Outsiders", The Irrawaddy, 2006-01. Retrieved on 2006-07-07.
• Butkaew, Samart. "Burmese Indians: The Forgotten Lives", Burma Issues, 2005-02. Retrieved on 2006-07-07.
• The Persecution of Muslims in Burma, by Karen Human Rights Groupar:الإسلام في ميانمار
4-7-09 WITNESS - Overnight in Myanmar's ghost town capital
Saturday July 4, 2009
By Louis Charbonneau
NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar (Reuters) - A green and yellow sign greeted us in English and Burmese with the words: "Welcome to Naypyitaw". Someone in our bus quipped that it should have read: "Welcome to the Dictators' Disneyland."
Myanmar's remote new capital, Naypyidaw, looks more like a seaside resort-in-progress than a city. But it is too far from the sea to make it a proper resort.
In fact, Naypyidaw is a virtual fortress where the reclusive military rulers of the former Burma have isolated themselves, some 320 km away from the mass demonstrations that occasionally erupt in the country's largest city, Yangon.
I was one of a small group of journalists who had the rare privilege of spending the night in Naypyidaw, where foreigners are banned unless they are invited there on official business.
As members of a U.N. delegation travelling with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon we got special treatment -- we could use satellite telephones, which are illegal in Myanmar, to contact the outside world.
We also had access to the Internet to file stories and send emails about Ban's second trip to the new capital, established in 2005.
During his two-day visit, Ban tried unsuccessfully to persuade Senior General Than Shwe, the junta leader, to let him meet Myanmar's main opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is currently trial for breaching the terms of her house arrest.
One of the first things I noticed about Naypyidaw was the lack of people and cars, which gave the city the eerie atmosphere of a ghost town.
As we sped along the pristine but empty highway towards our hotel, the only people we saw were military police, security officials, and a few labourers working in the fields or on construction sites.
The preferred architecture for ministry buildings and government mansions is white and beige stone with coloured roofs surrounded by carefully manicured lawns, palm trees, shrubbery and stone walls.
Some of the buildings have cheerful-looking signs identifying which ministries they belong to.
One of the officials in the delegation told us privately that there have been some recent additions to Naypyidaw -- it now has a shopping mall and its own zoo, complete with penguins and lions to keep the rulers and people forced to relocate there entertained.
There is also a golf course, since the generals and many of their official guests enjoy taking in an occasional round of golf.
Underneath the city, U.N. officials explained, is an extensive network of tunnels designed by engineers from North Korea, a country with a communist government that rivals Myanmar in its secrecy.
The most impressive building we saw was the junta's new palatial reception hall. Named after an 18th century king, Bayint Naung Yeiktha, it is where Ban met with Than Shwe and other leaders of the junta.
Surrounded by rolling hills and jungle vegetation, the building is circumscribed by a high-security fence that would not be easy to climb.
Inside the hall, there was an ornate waterfall fountain in which massive goldfish rise up and spout water against a mountainside.
Journalists received rough treatment at the hands of the military police and security officials. I was trying to photograph Ban as he entered the meeting with Than Shwe when a uniformed military official grabbed me by my backpack and threw me roughly back towards a chair.
They pushed us around constantly until we were out of sight of the 76-year-old Than Shwe.
Back at the Naypyidaw hotel, our hosts had forgotten to arrange for food for the reporters. The eternally polite hotel workers took care of us.
They gathered up leftovers from a buffet prepared for some of the security officials -- fried noodles and vegetables, spicy sour soup, dried fish and fried rice.
After a delicious dinner, I took the opportunity to update my Facebook status with the words: "Lou Charbonneau is in Naypyidaw, the surreal and brand-spanking-new capital of Myanmar, better known as Burma."
I'd like to think that was a first for Naypyidaw.
Copyright © 2008 Reuters
4-7-09 Burma starts to acquire veneer of wealth as elite enjoy times of plenty
By Amy Kazmin
Published: July 4 2009 03:00 | Last updated: July 4 2009 03:00
It's nearly midnight on Saturday and the dance floor of DJ's Bar in Rangoon is packed with Burmese youth, grooving to throbbing house music as red, green and yellow light beams flash and slice across the room.
The revellers - young men with hair gelled into modish styles and young women wearing mini-skirts and clutching mobile phones - have each paid a $10 cover charge to enter, a steep price in a land where university lecturers earn just $80 (£50, €57) a month.
Yet the hefty charges are no barrier for these affluent, well-connected members of an emergent Burmese elite with money to burn. "People are spending money - and it's not just a half a dozen of the regime cronies," says one foreign diplomat in Rangoon.
Burma's resource-rich economy, a treasure trove of natural gas, precious gems and valuable hardwood, has long been squeezed by the twin pressures of western sanctions and a military junta with a weak grasp of economics and little faith in civilian technocrats. That no-win combination has left most of Burma's 52m people struggling to get by, with their frustration boiling over into mass protests in 2007.
Yet amid the widespread hardship, Rangoon, the dilapidated former colonial capital, is acquiring a veneer of wealth, as a privileged elite enjoys unprecedented times of plenty, two decades after the military abandoned its autarkic "Burmese way to socialism".
Today, Burmese with the right military connections are profiting from access to natural resources, government construction contracts and privileges including the right to engage in international trade, still tightly controlled by the regime.
In the commodity boom, Burma's agricultural exports soared to $2bn, up from $300m a few years earlier, doing little for farmers, but enriching urban traders. "There is economic activity going on," the foreign diplomat said. "The vast majority of trade is with Burma's immediate neighbours, and there is a lot of investment and a lot of exports."
Growth in tourism and other forms of commerce has created a small cadre of professionals. "More people are getting management roles and seeing salaries rise," said the diplomat.
Meanwhile, signs of affluence are everywhere. Stylish-looking new condominiums are sprouting near the city's lakes, and prime real estate prices have tripled over the past five years. Colonial-era wooden bungalows are being replaced by ostentatious mansions with Greco-Roman columns.
Young men drive souped-up Jeeps painted lemon yellow or ultra-violet while their elders display their wealth in expensive imported Land Cruisers and Pajeros. Swanky boutiques proliferate, with names such as the Sky Princess beauty salon, We and We interior design, and She Shines jewellery.
Yet some savvy Burmese business people say Rangoon's spurt of highly conspicuous consumption reflects the economy's deep malaise - including its dysfunctional banking system and rampant inflation - rather than its fundamental health.
Although Burma has about a dozen private banks, they are hampered by regime rules that cap their deposit-taking at just 10 per cent of their paid-in capital, preventing them from channelling surplus household cash into productive investment. According to the IMF, the ratio of bank deposits, and credit to the private sector, to gross domestic product has fallen sharply over the past eight years.
With inflation running at about 30 per cent, many Burmese are pouring their surplus cash into hard assets that they feel will at least hold their value - if not appreciate. "You can't put it in the bank so you put your money in cars or a nice new house to keep the value of the money," said one business person.
But Burma's asset bubble may be about to burst. Many of the Rangoon condos have been developed by companies that received prime urban land as part of their payment for helping to construct the junta's new capital city far to the north and its $3.5bn new airport. Many of the units are unsold, leaving the companies struggling to recover costs.
Senior General Than Shwe, the junta's head, has apparently ordered the government to balance its budget, which has been in deficit for years, ahead of the regime's planned elections next year, which could create a squeeze on liquidity and bring the spending spree to a halt.
"No one is getting any more money," said one economist. "Businessmen are also quite fed up. They want change."
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
4-7-09 The Secretary-General remarks on Myanmar to diplomatic missions, UN agecies, international and NGOs
Yangon, 4 July 2009
Excellencies,
Distinguished guests and colleagues
Ladies and Gentlemen,
This is my second visit to Myanmar in just over a year. Both visits have been at critical times for the country’s future.
My first visit was in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. This devastating natural disaster, which took so many lives and created so much hardship, touched hearts across the globe. In Myanmar’s moment of need, the world responded generously.
I want to personally thank everyone here today for your remarkable contributions to the relief and recovery effort.
You have saved lives, rejuvenated communities and made it possible for many thousands of people to reclaim their livelihoods. You have helped Myanmar to overcome adversity. It is important that this work continues.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I felt the tragedy of Cyclone Nargis deeply -- as a fellow Asian and as Secretary-General .
I am Asia’s second Secretary-General. The first was Myanmar's U Thant. I revere his memory. I also recall his wise words.
U Thant said: “The worth of the individual human being is the most unique and precious of all our assets and must be the beginning and end of all our efforts. Governments, systems, ideologies and institutions come and go, but humanity remains.”
This is why I have returned.
As Secretary-General, I attach the highest importance to helping the people of this country to achieve their legitimate aspirations.
The United Nations works for people – their rights, their well-being, their dignity. It is not an option. It is our responsibility.
I have come to show the unequivocal shared commitment of the United Nations to the people of Myanmar.
I am here today to say: Myanmar – you are not alone.
We want to work with you for a united, peaceful, prosperous, democratic and modern Myanmar.
We want to help you rise from poverty.
We want to work with you so your country can take its place as a respected and responsible member of the international community.
We want to help you achieve national reconciliation, durable peace and sustainable development.
But, let me emphasize: neither peace nor development can thrive without democracy and respect for human rights.
Myanmar is no exception.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The challenges are many. But they are not insurmountable.
We know from experience that securing Myanmar’s peaceful, democratic and prosperous future is a complex process.
None of Myanmar’s challenges can be solved on their own. Peace, development and human rights are closely inter-related.
Failure to address them with equal attention will risk undermining the prospects for democracy, durable peace and prosperity.
However, we also know that where there is a genuine will for dialogue and reconciliation, all obstacles can be overcome.
The question today is this: how much longer can Myanmar afford to wait for national reconciliation, democratic transition and full respect for human rights?
The cost of delay will be counted in wasted lives, lost opportunities and prolonged isolation from the international community.
Let me be clear: all the people of Myanmar must work in the national interest.
I said this yesterday when I met with representatives of Myanmar’s registered political parties and with those armed groups that have chosen to observe a cease-fire. I encouraged them respectively to honour their commitments to the democratic process and peace.
Nonetheless, the primary responsibility lies with the Government to move the country towards its stated goals of national reconciliation and democracy.
Failure to do so will prevent the people of Myanmar from realizing their full potential.
Failure to do so will deny the people of Myanmar their right to live in dignity and to pursue better standards of life in larger freedom.
These principles lie at the core of the United Nations Charter, whose opening words are “We the peoples”.
The founding Constitution of independent Myanmar echoes these noble words. We must work together to ensure that Myanmar’s future embodies these principles too.
With this in mind, I bring three messages.
First, respect for human dignity is the precondition for peace and development everywhere.
Myanmar was one of the first United Nations Member States to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It subscribed early on to the consensus that respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms is indispensable to political, economic and social progress.
Unfortunately, that commitment has not been matched in deed. Myanmar’s human rights record remains a matter of grave concern.
The Government has articulated its goals as stability, national reconciliation and democracy.
The upcoming election –the first in twenty years – must be inclusive, participatory and transparent if it is to be credible.
Myanmar’s way forward must be rooted in respect for human rights.
This is why I say that all political prisoners, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, should be released without delay.
When I met General Than Shwe yesterday and today, I asked to visit Ms.
Suu Kyi. I am deeply disappointed that he refused.
I believe the government of Myanmar has lost a unique opportunity to show its commitment to a new era of political openness.
Allowing a visit to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi would have been an important symbol of the government’s willingness to embark on the kind of meaningful engagement that will be essential if the elections in 2010 are to be seen as credible.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi must be allowed to participate in the political process without further delay.
Indeed, all the citizens of Myanmar must be given the opportunity to contribute fully to the future of this country.
National reconciliation cannot be complete without the free and active participation of all who seek to contribute.
The country must embark on a process of genuine dialogue that includes all concerned parties, all ethnic groups and all minorities.
People must be free to debate and to engage in political dialogue, and they must have free access to the information that will help them participate meaningfully in the democratic process.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Any transition is difficult. Myanmar has already undergone transitions from sovereign kingdom, to occupied colony, and now independent State.
This history carries a twin legacy of armed conflict and political deadlock, including recent painful events: the repression of demonstrators in 1988, the cancellation of the 1990 election results, and the clampdown on peaceful dissent that continues to this day.
At the same time, there have been some positive efforts that should be recognized.
Although still fragile, the cease-fire agreements between the Government and armed groups have reduced the level of conflict. The United Nations has wide-ranging experience in making such gains irreversible.
Sovereignty, territorial integrity and national unity are legitimate concerns for any government.
We contend that opening and broadening the political space is the best way to ensure that each group and each individual becomes part of the greater collective project.
The military, all political parties, ethnic minority groups, civil society, and indeed every son and daughter of Myanmar has a role to play in this country’s transition.
Only mutual compromise, respect and understanding can lay the foundations for durable peace, national reconciliation and democracy.
My second message is on addressing the humanitarian needs of Myanmar’s people.
I am glad I have been able to return to see the progress made in the Irrawaddy Delta. The loss of some 130,000 people was tragic, but the rebuilding I saw today was impressive.
The tragedy showed the resilience of the people of Myanmar. It also demonstrated that people throughout the world care deeply about Myanmar and its people.
Above all, the response to Cyclone Nargis proved the value of engagement over isolation.
The unprecedented cooperation between Myanmar, the United Nations and ASEAN through the Tripartite Core Group, with the support of the donor community, has demonstrated that humanitarian imperatives and the principles of sovereignty do not conflict.
Humanitarian assistance -- in Myanmar as elsewhere -- should never be held hostage to political considerations. We can and must work together to ensure access to humanitarian and development assistance to all those in Myanmar who need it.
This brings me to my third message. It is time for Myanmar to unleash its economic potential.
Myanmar sits in the middle of Asia’s economic miracle. Harnessing Myanmar to the rapid advances taking place around it is the surest way to raise living standards.
I welcome the Government’s policy of opening up to outside trade and investment, and its efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, control HIV, combat human trafficking and curtail opium production.
But the reality is that millions continue to live in poverty. Standards of living in Myanmar remain among the lowest in Asia.
The people of Myanmar need jobs, they need food security and they need access to health care.
We must work to ensure that the people of Myanmar can benefit from and contribute to the regional and global economy.
We must recognize that the region and the world have much to gain from a stable, prosperous and democratic Myanmar. We must work together for that goal.
The Government of Myanmar must seize the moment.
It must take advantage of the opportunities that the international community is prepared to offer to the people of Myanmar.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I came here as a friend.
My duty is to uphold the ideals and principles of the United Nations Charter.
My role is to encourage all of you – the Government, political parties, ethnic groups, civil society – to move forward together as one people and one nation.
Nothing is insurmountable or impossible when the people’s interest is placed above divisions.
The region and the world are changing fast. Myanmar only stands to gain from engagement -- and from embarking on its own change.
The Government of Myanmar has repeatedly stated that cooperation with the United Nations is the cornerstone of the country’s foreign policy.
We ask it to match deeds with words.
The more Myanmar works in partnership with the United Nations to respond to its people’s needs and aspirations, the more it affirms its sovereignty.
Similarly it is incumbent on the international community as whole to work together to help Myanmar meet our shared goals: a united, peaceful, prosperous and democratic future, with full respect for the human rights of all the country’s people.
Kyae zoo tin bar tae.
6-7-09 Why sanctions aren't working in Myanmar
Analysis: Why sanctions aren't working in Myanmar
By Pauline Chiou
CNN
HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- Be it Iran or North Korea, economic sanctions are a well-used weapon in the diplomatic arsenal for dealing with international disputes. But do they work?
Workers at TOTAL's project in Burma unload pipe for the 1996 construction of the Yadana pipeline.
Workers at TOTAL's project in Burma unload pipe for the 1996 construction of the Yadana pipeline.
Consider the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar. Ruled by the military since 1962, the state (formerly known as Burma) has been under sanctions from Western nations for more than a decade. Despite years of tightening economic pressure, military rule in Myanmar continues.
"I think sanctions have very little effect on the economy (of Myanmar) because they have very little in the way of international trade," said Sean Turnell, author of Fiery Dragons: Banks Moneylenders and Microfinance in Burma and an economics professor at Macquarie University in Australia.
While the U.S., European Union and Australia have banned new investment, non-sanctioning countries are taking advantage of business opportunities in Myanmar, which is rich with natural resources like natural gas, timber, jade and rubies.
China, Thailand, India and Singapore already have lucrative deals in place with Myanmar's military government.
Neighboring Thailand depends heavily on Myanmar's offshore natural gas and hydroelectric dams to provide power to the Thai population. China has signed a deal to build a natural gas pipeline from the west coast of Myanmar into western China. Thailand buys about 30 percent of its gas from Myanmar and uses gas to generate about two-thirds of its electricity. Video Watch the history of Myanmar sanctions »
Despite the American and European sanctions currently in place, U.S.-based Chevron and French-based TOTAL are doing business in Myanmar today because their contracts were signed with Myanmar's military government before international pressure was tightened.
The Yadana natural gas project, off the coast of Myanmar, involves three foreign firms: TOTAL, Chevron and the Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT). TOTAL has the biggest investment with a 31% stake in the project. TOTAL told CNN it paid $250 million in taxes to the Myanmar government in 2008.
Chevron did not respond to repeated phone and email requests for comment on this story, but Chevron's Web site said the company's local community projects benefit the people of Myanmar.
Western corporations have faced criticism for doing business in a country run by a government accused of human rights abuses. But these companies go to where the oil and gas lie -- often in unstable regions of the world.
"What we provide is a different example of work, of business and what good governance should be about," said Jean-Francois Lassalle, vice president of public affairs for Total. "Our employees have benefits from social pensions, employee representation, holidays and good contracts. We function in Burma the same way we do in Europe. In that sense, we're trying to be an example."
The company employs 250 permanent and more than 600 subcontracted workers in Myanmar, Lassalle said. TOTAL provides free medicine and education to the local population, along with funding for hospitals and orphanages. The company estimates its community projects affect 50,000 people in Myanmar.
French-based TOTAL says it paid $250 million in taxes to Myanmar's government in 2008.
Taxes are based on the percentage of participation in the joint venture. U.S.-based Chevron did not respond to any of CNN's questions about the venture.
85% of the gas produced from the Yadana project is sold to Thailand. This gas makes up about 20% of Thailand's energy consumption.
SOURCE: CNN research
Yet Myanmar remains one of the poorest countries in Asia. According to some estimates, more than 30 percent of the population live under the poverty line.
The military regime has suppressed democracy movements for the past several decades. Myanmar's most famous citizen, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi -- whose party won the majority of seats in the 1990 election -- has been kept under house arrest and is currently on trial for alleged violations of her detention.
It is another indication of the military's tight grip on power, despite sanctions. Some experts say more should be done to hit the military regime where it hurts: their personal bank accounts.
The Myanmar military elite have millions in overseas bank accounts, experts say.
Southeast Asia expert Jamie Metzl of the non-profit Asia Society, said freezing personal assets of the military generals was a good idea but cautions it would be an uphill battle. Metzl believes that any such move would need the support of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) which includes Thailand -- a major trade partner -- and Singapore.
advertisement
"If sanctions [of freezing personal assets] were put in place and if ASEAN states including Singapore were on board, then conceivably, there could be a way to reach some of those assets, although the generals could move them elsewhere."
Metzl noted that ASEAN tends to favor a policy of engagement with Myanmar: In other words, soft diplomacy rather than the harsh bite of economic sanctions. Unless all countries play ball, it is clear that economic sanctions can only do so much.
5-7-09 Aung San Suu Kyi 5000 days
Myanmar: Suu Kyi's 5000th day in detention
9:59AM Sunday Jul 05, 2009
By Andrew Buncombe
Today, like most days, Aung San Suu Kyi will sit and wait. She will spend the day with the two women she has been detained with since 2003.
That she is being held in a "guesthouse" in the grounds of Rangoon's Insein jail, as opposed to her lakeside house where she has spent the past six years, makes little difference; she has no television, radio or phone. But today is special, and for the most dismal of reasons. It is the 5000th day of her incarceration.
Ms Suu Kyi is being held at the prison, having been charged with violating the terms of her house arrest after a mysterious American swam to her home and spent the night there.
In truth, the only crime committed by the graceful opposition leader was to win an election two decades ago. Even now, the junta is terrified that this slight 64-year-old widow has the power to do something they have never been able to do: lead and unite the people of Burma without the threat of force. That is why she is kept a prisoner, out of sight but never out of mind.
Yesterday, in a move that underlined the regime's fear about Ms Suu Kyi's latent power, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was refused permission to speak with her.
On a controversial visit to Burma to try to convince Senior General Than Shwe to release more than 2000 political prisoners and restart dialogue with the opposition, Mr Ban said his request for a meeting with Ms Suu Kyi had been turned down.
"I pressed as hard as I could. I had hoped that he would agree to my request, but it is regrettable that he did not," he told reporters.
"I am deeply disappointed that they have missed a very important opportunity."
The high-profile snub came after the UN head had initially asked General Than Shwe for a meeting with the detained opposition leader during two hours of talks on Friday evening in the remote administrative capital, Naypyitaw.
He was made to wait overnight for the decision and was then told that a meeting would be impossible because the opposition leader's trial was ongoing.
As he last night left Burma empty-handed, having met with foreign ambassadors in Rangoon, the Secretary General faced renewed criticism from campaigners and members of the international community - Britain among them n who believed that he should not have gone. Many warned that by coming away with nothing, Mr Ban was merely providing the regime with a propaganda coup.
Yet others were not surprised, not least by the generals' decision not to allow him to visit Ms Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide election victory in 1990 only for the result to be ignored by the junta. It was at that time that the opposition leader was first imprisoned, for a period of three years. She was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Since then she has spent almost 14 of the past 19 years under house arrest, the world's most prominent political prisoner. On occasion, the junta has made clear it would release her if she agreed to leave Burma but she has always chosen to remain a part of her country's struggle.
In 1999, while temporarily free, she faced the dilemma of whether to visit her dying husband, the British academic Michael Aris, who had prostate cancer and who was refused a visa to enter Burma.
Fearful that if she left she would never be allowed to return, she stayed in Burma without seeing her husband again.
"Since we live in this world, we have to do our best for this world," she once told an interviewer.
Those are typically brave words from a woman whose life has been blighted by political opponents almost from the start.
She was a mere toddler in 1948 when her father, who had negotiated Burma's independence from Britain a year earlier, was assassinated.
The mantle of the country's democracy movement passed eventually to her mother, and then - after her graduation from Oxford, postgraduate studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and time spent working for the UN - to her.
Mark Farmaner, of the Burma Campaign UK, said the reason for her continued detention was very simple.
In a country that has been brutalised by violence and the fear of violence, ordinary people will still, in private, whisper about the "the lady" and how she could help fix their broken land.
"It might be one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world but they are terrified of this one woman," he added.
"They hoped by keeping her detained the world would forget about Burma, but the opposite has happened. The fact that she has now spent 5,000 days in detention should shame world leaders who have tolerated this situation."
The current charges against Ms Suu Kyi were brought in May after John Yettaw, a 53-year-old Vietnam veteran, swam across Rangoon's Inya Lake to her home.
Apparently, the opposition leader was not pleased by the intrusion - realising what it would mean for her - but let him sleep on the floor.
Her supporters later complained to the authorities about the breakdown in security at her supposedly heavily guarded home.
After she was charged with breaching the terms of her house arrest, her supporters claimed that the regime was using the incident as an excuse to keep her locked up until after an election is held next year.
The planned election has been widely condemned as a sham that will do nothing other than cement the regime's control, and the NLD is to boycott proceedings.
Aung Din, a former political prisoner who now heads the US Campaign for Burma, said the regime believes that by holding the election it will be seen as a legitimate government by the international community.
"It is extremely important for the regime that its crony candidates should secure almost all of seats to be contested in the election.
"[Ms Suu Kyi] is the serious and major obstacle for the regime to achieve its objective. If she is released, she will be able to revive the NLD and organise the people to stand up together for positive changes ... That's why the regime is trying to extend her detention."
၃-၇-၀၉ စစ္အစိုးရႏွင့္ပတ္သက္သည့္ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယား ကုမၸဏီ အေမရိကန္ အေရးယူ
Friday, 03 July 2009 19:43
ကိုေထြး၊ ဧရာ၀တီ။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို စစ္လက္နက္ ပစၥည္းဆိုင္ရာ အကူအညီေပးခဲ့ေသာ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယား Namchingang Trading Corp ႏွင့္ အီရန္ အေျခစိုက္ ေဟာင္ေကာင္ Electronics ကုမၸဏီ ၂ ခုကို အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံက ဘ႑ာေရး ဆိုင္ရာ တားျမစ္ ကန္႔သတ္မႈမ်ား ျပဳလုပ္လိုက္သည္။
အဆိုပါ ကန္႔သတ္ခ်က္တြင္ အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံ၏ မည့္သည့္ စီးပြားေရးလုပ္ငန္းမဆို ထိုကုမၸဏီ ၂ခုႏွင့္ စီးပြားေရး ကိစၥရပ္မ်ားကို ေဆာင္ရြက္ျခင္း မျပဳရန္ပါ၀င္ေၾကာင္း အဂၤါေန႔ထုတ္ Wall Street ဂ်ာနယ္တြင္ ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။
အဆုိပါကုမၸဏီ ၂ခုသည္ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယား ႏိုင္ငံအတြင္းမွ ႏ်ဴကလီးယား၊ တာေ၀းပစ္ဒုံးက်ည္မ်ားႏွင့္ သက္ဆိုင္ေသာ နည္းပညာမ်ားကို ျပည္ပသို႔ တင္ပို႔ရန္ ႀကိဳးစားသျဖင့္ အဆိုပါကန္႔သတ္ တားျမစ္မႈကို ခ်မွတ္ခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း အေမရိကန္ အစိုးရ ဘ႑ာေရး၀န္ႀကီး ဌာန၏ အစီရင္ခံစာတေစာင္ကုိ ကုိးကားၿပီး ယင္းဂ်ာနယ္တြင္ ေရးသားထားသည္။
အေမရိကန္ အစိုးရ ဘ႑ာေရး၀န္ႀကီးဌာန တာ၀န္ရွိသူတဦး ျဖစ္သူStuart Leveyက “ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားက ေငြေၾကးဆိုင္ရာ ဆက္သြယ္မႈရွိတယ္ ဆိုတာကို ေျခရာမခံႏိုင္ေအာင္ ေဟာင္ေကာင္ Electronics လို ကုမၸဏီ ေတြကို အသုံးျပဳေလ့ရွိတယ္”ဟူေသာ ေျပာဆိုခ်က္ကို ယင္းေဆာင္းပါးက ကိုးကားထားသည္။
Namchingang Trading Corp ကုမၸဏီသည္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ စစ္လက္နက္ပစၥည္းဆိုင္ရာ အကူအညီေပးခဲ့သကဲ့သုိ႔ ယူေရနီယံ သန္႔စင္ရန္အတြက္ သက္ဆိုင္ေသာ ပစၥည္းကိရိယာမ်ားကို ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားႏိုင္ငံအတြင္းသုိ႔ တင္သြင္းခဲ့ေၾကာင္းသိရသည္။
ေဟာင္ေကာင္ Electronics ကုမၸဏီမွာလည္း တာေဝးပစ္ ဒုံးက်ည္ႏွင့္ ဆက္စပ္ပစၥည္း တမ်ဳိးကုိ ျမန္မာျပည္သုိ႔ တရားမဝင္ တင္ပုိ႔ရန္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းသျဖင့္ ၿပီးခဲ့ေသာရက္ပိုင္းကဖမ္းဆီးခံခဲ့ရေသာ ဂ်ပန္လုပ္ငန္းရွင္ ၃ဦးႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္ေနေၾကာင္း ယင္းေဆာင္းပါးတြင္ ေရးသားထားသည္။
ဖမ္းဆီးခံရသူမ်ားမွာ တုိက်ဳိအေျခစုိက္ လုပ္ငန္းရွင္မ်ား ျဖစ္ၾကေသာ ေျမာက္ကုိရီးယားႏုိင္ငံသား ၁ ဦး ႏွင့္ ဂ်ပန္ ႏုိင္ငံသား ၂ ဦးတုိ႔ ျဖစ္သည္ဟု သိရသည္။
၎တုိ႔မွာ ေျမာက္ကုိရီးယားႏုိင္ငံသား Toko Boeki ကုမၸဏီ ဥကၠ႒ လီက်ဳံးဟုိ၊ ကုန္ပစၥည္း ထုတ္လုပ္ေရး ကုမၸဏီ တခု၏ ဥကၠ႒ Miaki Katsuki ႏွင့္ ထုတ္ကုန္ ေအဂ်င္စီတခု၏ ဥကၠ႒ Yasuhiko Muto တို႔ျဖစ္သည္ဟု ဆုိသည္။
ေဟာင္ေကာင္ Electronics ကုမၸဏီသည္ ေျမာက္ကိုးရီးယားႏွင့္ အီရန္ႏိုင္ငံတို႔အၾကား လက္နက္ အေရာင္းအ၀ယ္ကို အဓိကေနရာမွ ေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးေနသည္ဟု အေမရိကန္တို႔က သံသယရွိထားသည္။
Namchingangကုမၸဏီ သည္ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) သို႔ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယား ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ သံတမန္တဦး အျဖစ္သြားေရာက္ခဲ့ေသာ Yun Ho Jin ကဦးေဆာင္ တည္ေထာင္ထား ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။
၎သည္ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယား ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ကင္ဂ်ဳံအီလ္း အစုိးရအဖြဲ႔ႏွင့္ ရင္းႏွီးေသာ ဆက္ဆံေရးရွိခဲ့သည္။
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Al Jazeera - Myanmar's secret military tunnel network
Myanmar's secret military tunnel network
New images have emerged showing the construction of a series of secret tunnels in Myanmar, reportedly built with North Korean help. The images broadcast by the Democratic Voice of Burma in Oslo show tunnels large enough for heavy vehicles to drive through.
Al Jazeera's Veronica Pedrosa reports.
A television channel run by Myanmar exiles in Norway has obtained pictures it says show the construction of a network of secret, bomb-proof tunnels being built by Myanmar's ruling military with the help of North Korean engineers.
According to the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), which agitates against Myanmar's military government, between 600 and 800 underground facilities and tunnels are in various stages of construction, although their exact purpose remains unclear.
In video
Myanmar's secret military tunnel network
The photographs and videos show extensive underground tunnel complexes large enough for heavy vehicles to drive through, with built-in ventilation facilities and an independent power supply.
Several Myanmar military officials are reported to have been detained following the leaking of the photographs, the DVB said, as the government investigates how details of the sensitive project were leaked.
It added that among those being questioned are associates of Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt, Myanmar's former intelligence chief.
The tunnel project, reportedly given the codename "Tortoise Shells" by Myanmar's military, is believed to have been implemented with North Korean involvement between 1996 and 2006.
'Foreign aid' used
Citing what it said were government documents on the construction project, the DVB said the cost of the tunnel scheme "has likely run into the billions".
"Several government budget files also show evidence of foreign aid and loans being used to fund construction work," the DVB said.
According to documents received by DVB, fibre-optic cables link the tunnel network which is believed to be designed to operate as command centres in the event of an emergency.
Nearly 40 of the 53 underground stations located at the Thai-Myanmar border are believed to have been built since 2004.
Myanmar's military government began investigating the leaked photographs after they were published in Yale Global Online on June 8.
Disguised
Asian allies
Myanmar
GDP: $55.04bn (per cap: $1,200)
Key exports: Natural gas, timber, jade and gems
Armed forces: 492,000
Military budget: $7.07bn*
North Korea
GDP: $40bn (per cap: $1,700)
Key exports: Minerals and metallurgical products, armaments, fishery products
Armed forces: 1.12 million
Military budget: $6.19bn*
Sources: Centre for Strategic and International Studies Wash. DC; CIA world factbook
* 2005 estimate
The tunnel network which the DVB says was disguised as a fibre-optic cable installation project had enough food and and room for about 600 people to survive underground for several months.
Bertil Lintner, a Bangkok-based journalist who obtained the first images of the tunnel project, has said evidence points to North Korean officials helping to build the extensive underground installations, with Myanmar giving payment in gold or barter.
Writing in the magazine Yale Global Online, Lintner, a long-time observer of Myanmar said the tunnels were built near Naypyidaw, the country's new capital 460km north of Yangon, and was linked to provincial capitals across Myanmar.
The project apparently underscores shows an increasingly close relationship between two of Asia's most internationally isolated states.
It would also mark a sharp upturn in ties between the two countries after Myanmar cut off relations with Pyongyang in 1983 following a North Korean bomb attack in Yangon.
The bomb, planted by North Korean agents, killed more than a dozen visiting South Koreans, including several top government officials.
The agents were reportedly operating on the orders of Kim Jong-il – now North Korea's leader.
Secret talks
Observers say North Korean and Myanmar officials began secret talks in 1990 followed by more high-level meetings which led to the re-establishment of trade and eventually diplomatic relations in 2007.
The US navy is tracking a North Korean ship believed to be headed for Myanmar [AP]
News of the secret tunnel project comes as the US navy continues to track a North Korean freighter that reports have said may be carrying weapons, including missiles and missile parts, bound for Myanmar.
The freighter Kang Nam 1, which left port a week ago, is the first North Korean ship to be monitored under new UN sanctions that authorise member states to inspect North Korean sea, air and land cargo.
According to the Thailand-based Irrawaddy magazine, Myanmar has recently stepped up its interest in North Korean military hardware as its looks to upgrade its armed forces in the face of a UN arms embargo.
Impoverished North Korea, itself subject to international sanctions, has long used its arms industry as one of its few sources of income.
According to the Irrawaddy report, a high-level Myanmar military delegation made a week-long secret visit to North Korea in November 2008, reportedly to see Pyongyang's underground military installations.
The Myanmar delegation also reportedly inspected North Korean arms factories and later officially formalised military co-operation between the two countries.
Greater Mekong Myanmar country report August 2008
Greater Mekong Myanmar country report August 2008.pdf
Greater Mekong sub-region 12th meeting of the sub-regional transport forum, Da Nang, Vietnam
12-14 august, 2008 country paper presented by Myanmar delegation
29-6-09 Myanmar pipelines confirm China's place in Bay of Bengal
Jyoti Malhotra / New Delhi June 29, 2009, 0:25 IST
Come September, and China will begin to lay parallel oil and natural gas pipelines from the Kyaukpyu deep-sea port on Myanmar’s Arakan coast in the Bay of Bengal, all the way up north-east to Kunming in China’s Yunnan province. That will significantly enhance its energy security while also establishing the presence of Chinese ships in India’s eastern backyard.
The 1,100-km-long gas pipeline will tap into key blocks in Myanmar’s energy-rich Shwe gas fields (which are bigger than any gas field in India). The fields have been given on a 30-year lease to a Chinese-led consortium; the irony is that India’s Oil & Natural Gas Commission has a 30 per cent stake in the field.
The pipeline project was inked during the visit to Beijing in mid-June by Myanmar’s second-ranking general, Maung Aye. The pipeline reduces China’s dependence on the narrow Malacca Straits, through which pass 80 per cent of its oil imports of 4 million barrels per day.
The circumvention of its “Malacca dilemma,” a reference to Chinese President Hu Jintao’s statement in November 2003 that “certain major powers” could choke the narrow channel between Malaysia and Indonesia’s Sumatra island in case of a conflict, is a coup on Bejing’s part even as it seeks to secure more energy resources worldwide to feed its growing economy.
When the oil and gas pipelines are completed by 2013, according to China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), Chinese tankers will dock at Kyaukpyu port to transport 0.6 million barrels every day from West Asia and Africa. The gas pipeline, meanwhile, will move about 12 billion cubic metres of gas annually to Kunming.
Myanmar has become the centre of Sino-Indian rivalry for energy resources, with Yangon agreeing in 2004-05 that India build a pipeline from its newly discovered A-1 block in the Shwe gas fields, through Bangladesh, to serve India’s north-eastern states. When Dhaka refused India transit permission, PetroChina was waiting to make a counter-offer, and willing to fund the cost of the pipeline.
Indian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said Delhi was not “overly concerned” by the fact that the Chinese had been able to “score over India”, simply because Myanmar’s generals in the State Peace & Development Council (SPDC) had also allowed Indian companies to expand their footprint on Myanmarese territory.
K Vhome, an expert on Myanmar at the Observer Research Foundation, conceded that while China’s enhanced presence in the Bay of Bengal would “create some uneasiness in India,” the “changing discourse in India-Myanmar relations in the last decade means that the India factor has become important in Myanmar’s relationship with China.” He said Myanmar has embarked upon a “very cautious balancing act, calculated to reduce its overwhelming dependence on China”.
Describing it as Myanmar’s effort to attain “strategic equidistance” between India and China, Indian officials pointed out that Yangon’s generals had allowed Delhi in 2008 to “build, operate and use” the Sittwe port on the Arakan coast in the Bay of Bengal and make the Kaladan river navigable all the way up to the adjoining state of Mizoram.
Delhi’s success with the Kaladan project means it has been able to circumvent Bangladesh’s refusal of access to India’s north-east and establish a presence on the Bay of Bengal.
The officials also pointed out that Yangon, having withdrawn the offer to develop a hydro-electric project on the Tamanthi river because of inordinate delays in New Delhi, had a few weeks ago offered it back to the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation, on the condition that the detailed project report be submitted to Yangon in 12 months.
Meawhile, as China has built a network of roads and railways across the country, plus a base on Myanmar’s southern tip and listening posts on some Myanmarese islands, India too has begun to forge cross-border links.
The India-Myanmar Friendship Road was completed in 2001 from Tamu to Kalewa, via Kalemyo, while two other sections at Rhi-Tidim (where Mizos believe their souls come to rest) and Rhi-Falam across the border from Mizoram are under way.
An optical fibre network has been laid from Mandalay to Yangon and onward to Kolkata, Essar is in the oil business and Tata Motors is planning to sell buses to Myanmar.
Myanmar’s efforts to diversify its relationships also means that Thailand, not China, has become Myanmar’s largest trading partner – and athis includes the export of natural gas.
As for Russia, it has sold fighter aircraft to Myanmar and given assistance to build a nuclear research reactor.
Vhome summed it up when he said, “Myanmar’s relationship with China is a very old one, but at least India is being seen as a counter-weight to China in the region”.