BURMA NEWS: MYANMAR NEWS,FREE BURMA NEWS "Voice of the Voiceless"

Burma Army Kills Two Men and Submits Hundreds to Forced Labor as it Increases Activity in Toungoo District

2011-03-27T22:42:00.003+06:30

Saw Oo Nay Mya, age 44, was shot by Infantry Battalion (IB) 250 of Military Operations Command (MOC) 7 on 2 February 2011 in Toungoo District, Northern Karen State. The commander of this unit is Major Hla Tun. Saw Ler Maw, age 22, from Hkler Lah village in the same district was killed by MOC 9 on 22 February 2011.

Starting from the middle of January 2011 the SPDC has been increasing its activity in Toungoo district. Currently, the Burma Army has 3 Tactical Operations Commands (TOC) in the area. These troops have been moving food along the car road from Hkler Lah camp to Bu Hsa Hkee camp. During this process the Burma Army has been using prisoners from Toungoo and Insein Prisons as forced labor. The movement of food is possibly a sign of coming attacks.

Burma Army activity
The Burma Army currently has 3 TOCs under MOC 9 in Toungoo District. Light Infantry Battalions (LIB) 375 and 376 from TOC 1 have been transporting food from Hkler Lah to Bu Hsa Hkee using more than 100 trucks. Along the car road, MOC 7 is providing security for MOC 9. The military equipment of these troops includes M-81s, RPGs, machine guns and sniper rifles.

Human rights abuses along the car road
All the way from Hkler Lah to Bu Hsa Hkee, Burma Army troops ordered villagers to drive their own trucks on the road to check for landmines. After that, the Burma Army's own trucks would follow. Because this landmine-sweeping job was very dangerous, no one wanted to do it. The villagers drew lots to decide who would have to go. To transport food, the Burma Army used 70 prisoners from Toungoo Prison and 70 prisoners from Insein Prison in Rangoon. The Burma Army used these prisoners to carry heavy loads. Prisoners who could not carry the loads were beaten by the soldiers. One of the prisoners escaped and reached the area under control of the Karen National Liberation Army (local pro-democracy resistance), who gave him permission to find his way home.

In addition to this, 40 villagers from Hkler Lah were forced to transport food by SPDC MOC 9 by motorbike from Hkler Lah to Koh Day on 18 January 2011. The same day, 140 men and women from Klaw Mee Der area were forced to carry food along the road from Pa Leh Wah to Klaw Mee Der and act as human minesweepers by IB 102. On 11 Feb 2011, 5 men from Play Hsa Lo were forced to carry loads and act as minesweepers between Play Hsa Lo and Tha Pyin Nuint by IB 102. The unit's commander is Myint Thine Win.

Finally, during these operations the Burma Army has blocked the car road from Toungoo city to Hkler Lah camp. By doing this, the Burma Army has prevented villagers to go to the city to trade.

Burma Army strategy
The motive of BA for this increased activity in Toungoo District is still unknown. However, one possibility is that it is a sign of coming attacks in the area. The large shipments of food - needed for prolonged activity -- are a strong sign for this. Still, the food movements are on a small scale, making it difficult to come to a firm conclusion of the military's intentions.

Further abuses in other areas
In Papun District, the Burma Army is using forced labor to transport supplies from the Salween River.
(BNN/FBR)

Burma Army Shells and Burns Village in Northern Karen State

2011-03-27T22:37:00.002+06:30

On February 25, 2011, at 3:10am, Burma Army troops from Pla Ko Camp shot 7 mortar rounds at Teh Boh Plaw village, Luthaw Township, Muthraw District. From 7:30 to 9:30am, they fired more mortar rounds and also used an RPG and machine guns as they entered the village and rice field. They burned one rice field shelter belonging to Saw Pah Teh, age 30, who lost belongings worth 50,000 Baht (US$1,600), and also burned one straw hut belonging to Saw La Kay and his possessions. The troops, more than 200 in number, left the village at 1pm. The villagers ran away to nearby villages such as Htee Baw Kee and Teh Boh Hta. An FBR team is now helping these displaced people.

Myanmar: Relief aids supplied to earthquake victims

2011-03-27T22:35:00.000+06:30

YANGON, 26 March- Relief and Resettlement Department under the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement provided emergency items such as temporary relief tents, tarpaulins, blankets, Mamee instant noodle sachets, rice, dried fishes, fish cans, men's and women's wear, towels and utensils to the victims who have been in distress due to earthquake centering near Loimwe of Shan State (East). The relief items were supplied by military aircraft yesterday and today. Arrangements are being made to provide further relief items for the victims.

Suu Kyi's party seeks talks with Myanmar's generals

2011-03-27T22:34:00.000+06:30

YANGON (Reuters) - The party of Myanmar's pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, called on Sunday for talks with the country's military rulers to clear up "misunderstandings" before a new government takes office.

The National League for Democracy (NLD) reiterated its demand for talks with the military, known locally as the "Tatmadaw," to seek the release of more than 2,100 political prisoners and a bigger role for democratic forces in the country's future.

"It is urged that dialogue be held urgently to eliminate the misunderstandings between the democratic forces and the Tatmadaw," the NLD said in a statement.

"The authority should create fair political conditions by holding politically meaningful dialogue and releasing all political prisoners unconditionally."

The call is likely to fall on deaf ears as the authoritarian junta prepares to make way for a civilian government it has hand-picked to maintain its half-century grip on power.

The regime has used everything in its power, from deadly force to contentious court rulings, to sideline the NLD and its supporters since its landslide election win in 1990, which the military ignored.

Suu Kyi was released from a seven-year detention in November last year and wants to start a process of national reconciliation involving the army, pro-democracy groups and ethnic militias that have fought the military for decades.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner has been given unprecedented freedom since her release but her calls for dialogue have been ignored.

74 die in Burma, toll may rise

2011-03-26T04:46:00.001+06:30

A powerful earthquake that toppled homes in northeastern Burma has killed at least 74 people, amid fears that the toll will mount as conditions in more remote areas become known.

The earthquake, which measured 6.8 on the Richter scale, struck on Thursday night.

It was centred just north of the town of Tachilek in the mountains along the Thai border, and it was felt as far away as Bangkok and the Vietnamese capital Hanoi.

Burma state radio announced yesterday that 74 people had been killed and 111 injured in the earthquake, but it was updating the total frequently. It said that 390 houses, 14 monasteries and nine government buildings were damaged.

The state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported that 15 houses collapsed in the town of Tarlay, where state radio said 11 were killed and 29 injured.

Another two people were killed in Tachilek, including a four-year-old boy. It said six people were injured.

In Chiang Rai, the quake has also damaged houses, hospitals, buildings and historical sites.

The top of the 88-metre high brick ancient pagoda, Wat Phra That Chedi Luang, the tallest pagoda in Chiang Rai, collapsed and a pagoda containing a Buddha relic at Wat Phra That Chom Kitti, both in Chiang Saen district, has subsided and is tilted at 30 degrees.

The symbolic umbrella at the top of the pagoda was also damaged.

Public Health Minister Jurin Laksanavisit said the earthquakes damaged six hospitals in Chiang Rai. The damage at the Chiang Rai Prachanukhroh Hospital was most serious.

A 55-year-old woman, Hong Khamping, was killed when a concrete wall of her home in Mae Sai district in Chiang Rai collapsed on her.

Sura Khunkhongkhaphan, the director of Mae Sai Hospital, said five Burmese patients from Tachilek had been admitted.

Pagaimas Viera, chairman of the Thai-Burmese Cultural and Economic Committee, said the earthquakes shook her duty-free shop and hotel building in Tachilek violently.

Many products on display, particularly liquor, had fallen down. At her hotel, the Mekong Delta Boutique, glass window panes broke.

Most guests staying in hotels in Mae Sai also checked out from their hotels right after the earthquakes that also caused an electricity blackout in the district, said Ms Pagaimas.

The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand insisted the quake did not damage Thai dams, including the Srinakarind dam in Kanchanaburi located near the Srisawat faultline.
(bangkokpost)

74 die in Burma, toll may rise

2011-03-26T04:46:00.000+06:30

Over 3,700 Burmese Fishermen Still Missing, Presumed Dead

2011-03-26T04:42:00.000+06:30

Of the 7,000 fishermen that were swept into the Andaman Sea during a tropical storm on March 14-16, a total of 3,374 have now been rescued, according to a source close to the Myanmar Marine Fishing Association (MMFA).

The remaining 3,700 are still missing. Nearly two weeks since 400 fishing vessels were overturned or destroyed in 70mph winds, little hope remains of anyone else surviving.

“There are currently about 400 fishing vessels at sea trying to rescue survivors of the storm,” said the source. “So far, more than 3,700 fishermen have been rescued and brought to Rangoon.”

Burma's state media reported on March 22 that naval ships, large fishing vessels and local fishing boats had jointly rescued 3,374 fishermen. While 3,152 have already gone home, 222 fishermen remain under government care, the report said, adding that the rescued fishermen had been provided medicine, clothes and food.

The tropical storm occurred off the Irrawaddy delta coast close to areas such as Bogalay and Laputta which were severely hit by Cyclone Nargis in May 2008.

“We already listed 7,000 people as missing at sea along with their vessels,” said an official from the Botahtaung Thanlyin naval compound. “But that figure does not include those people living in littoral areas. So the number of dead may be higher.”

He and other navy officers confirmed that more than 200 bodies had already been recovered from the sea.

“The majority of boats that were overturned were carrying local fishermen,” said the MMFA source. “Fishing vessels from Rangoon are generally larger, stronger and better equipped to resist the storm.”

Naval sources have estimated that the majority of missing fishermen are from Irrawaddy Division and Mon State.

State press reported that the Total E & P Myanmar Co. was involved in the rescue process. The company compensated each storm survivor with 20,000 kyat (US $20), medicine, clothes and other personal supplies, and arranged transportation for them.

However, a Rangoon-based journalist told The Irrawaddy that he was refused permission to talk to the survivors. “We [several Rangoon reporters] tried to talk with the storm refugees, but were not allowed.

The authorities sent them home right away. They even sent guards to accompany them to make sure they went straight home.”

State-run Myanmar Alin reported on March 13 that 100 houses and 38 huts in Rangoon and 20 houses in Irrawaddy Division were destroyed by the torrential winds.

Burma's Department of Meteorology and Hydrology reported on March 14 that the region would experience heavy winds and rain with some thunder and lightning, but did not predict the tropical storm.
(Irrawaddy)

6.8-magnitdue Quake Strikes Shan State

2011-03-26T04:40:00.001+06:30

RANGOON — A 6.8-magnitude earthquake has hit northeastern Burma—Shan State.

The quake struck near the Southeast Asian country's borders with Thailand and Laos, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) from the northern Thai city of Chiang Rai.

The northern Thai city sustained a little damage, according to Thai television.

There were no immediate reports of damage from the Burmese side, a remote area where communications, even in the best of times, are difficult.

The 6.8-magnitude quake was just six miles (10 kilometers) deep, according to the US Geological Survey.

At that strength and depth, it said 600,000 people could feel shaking anywhere from strong to violent. It added that since buildings in the area are considered vulnerable, moderate to very heavy damage could be expected.

Buildings swayed in Bangkok, about 480 miles (770 kilometers) south of the epicenter.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the quake was located too far inland to create a destructive wave.
(Irrawaddy)

After Suu Kyi’s Release, Dangerous Time Sets In

2010-11-16T23:02:00.000+06:30

BANGKOK — A dilapidated colonial villa on the banks of the Inya Lake in Rangoon, Burma’s largest city, has regained its identity as a home—instead of a prison—following the Saturday release of Aung San Suu Kyi, the icon of the military-ruled country’s democracy movement.

Yet it is not the first time that this change of identity has taken place. The 65-year-old Nobel Peace laureate’s release from house arrest by the junta brought to an end her seven-year stretch of political isolation, which began after pro-regime thugs attacked Suu Kyi and her supporters in central Burma in May 2003.

Suu Kyi, the daughter of Burma’s independence hero Aung San, has been granted freedom twice before since her first imprisonment in her ancestral home in July 1989. The freedoms granted to her by the military leaders of Burma, or Myanmar, were never permanent.

Thus, this early, as Suu Kyi takes her first tentative steps as a free Burmese citizen after spending 15 of the past 21 years as a prisoner in her home, concern is already being expressed about whether her freedom will be short- lived.

"This is a very dangerous period," says Khin Ohmar, chairwoman of the Network for Democracy and Development in Burma, a umbrella organization of Burmese political activists in exile. "The regime is not releasing her out of respect that she has an important role to play in Burma’s political process and national reconciliation."

The regime’s record over the past two decades feeds such worries. The junta’s reclusive strongman, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, has strengthened the military’s numbers and issued an order that has crushed any hint of political freedom and democratic sentiment.

"In the last 20 years, every single move by the regime has been to its benefit," Khin Ohmar explained during a telephone interview from the Thai- Burma border. "It has always been a part of their control strategy. They have never changed."

Some former political prisoners even worry for Suu Kyi’s life now that she has the liberty to go around in public. "We are concerned that she may be rearrested on some charge or attacked by government thugs," said Bo Kyi, joint secretary of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in Burma (AAPP), a group that campaigns for the rights of jailed political dissidents. "She has been attacked before."

Suu Kyi’s long spells as a political prisoner and how she has been treated once free have shaped these deep doubts about the junta’s motives. "There is no rule of law in Burma," Bo Kyi, himself a former political prisoner, told IPS. "The regime’s motives are never sincere."

Suu Kyi has been a thorn in the side of Burma’s military rulers since her return to the country in early 1988 to take care of her ailing mother. Her arrival after a long absence abroad coincided with a pro-democracy uprising that year against a military regime that had been in power since a 1962 coup.

The political neophyte was soon propelled into being a star of the country’s young democracy movement, drawing hundreds of thousands of supporters to a mass political rally she addressed in late 1988 in Rangoon. Soon after, she helped found the National League for Democracy (NLD) to contest the 1990 general election, the first multi-party poll in 28 years.

Yet her freedom was short-lived as the military leaders—who had already crushed the 1988 pro-democracy uprising where 3,000 people were killed—discovered the power of Suu Kyi’s message of democracy and non-violence. She was forced off the streets and imprisoned in her home almost a year before the 1990 elections, beginning her first stretch under house arrest that lasted six years.

But Burmese voters had other ideas. They gave the NLD a thumping majority, some 82 percent of the seats in the national legislature, in that 1990 poll. But the junta refused to recognize the results, setting into motion a long acrimonious relationship between those armed with the guns and those who derived strength from non-violent democratic sentiments.

"It is asymmetrical politics that you started to see in Burma after Suu Kyi arrived on the scene," said a Rangoon-based political analyst. "You had the powerful, heavily armed military against a woman leading a movement that stood for peaceful political change through democracy."

"She deserves credit for making the democracy movement in Burma a non- violent one and helping to keep it that way," the analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told IPS.

"The anti-regime forces could have easily turned violent out of frustration and years of suppression."
Her stature in the past two decades has also gone beyond the country’s majority Burman ethnic community and reached the country’s patchwork of ethnic minority communities that have been at war and have endured decades of oppression under the grip of a Burman-dominated military.

Analysts have credited Suu Kyi and the NLD for getting the ethnic minorities to feel part of the movement for political change, though their push for tripartite talks between the regime, the pro-democracy movement and the ethnic minorities.

Among these groups are the Karen, one of the largest ethnic nationalities whose rebel forces have been waging a separatist struggle for six decades. "We are very happy to see Aung San Suu Kyi freed after so many years," said Zipporah Sein, general secretary of the Karen National Union. "She is very important for the ethnic groups and for the people of Burma because of her struggle for rights."

irrawaddy

Junta Censors Suu Kyi News

2010-11-16T22:57:00.000+06:30

RANGOON — The state-controlled censorship board in Burma, the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD), has ordered domestic media to carry limited news about Aung San Suu Kyi, according to sources.

Media groups inside Burma were keen on reporting the most interesting news concerning Suu Kyi's release from house arrest, her public speech on Sunday, but were largely unable to do so due to restrictions by the PSRD.

“We were unable to run a large photo of Suu Kyi and could only use the size that we were allowed to use. We were also not permitted to use her photo on the front page. We wanted to carry news about her release on the front page, but the PSRD didn't allow us to do so,” said a reporter in Rangoon.

He said in printing excerpts from Suu Kyi's first public speech in seven and a half years, the PSRD only allowed statements that it thought were positive and banned sentences such as, “People should be active in politics,” and “People have to stand up for their rights.”

“It would be politically beneficial to the general public if her full speech could be printed. People will know that they have to work in unison to reach their goal—democracy,” said an editor from a Rangoon-based private news journal.

The PSRD also reportedly did not allow the media to mention the fact that Suu Kyi said her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), would focus on political activities.

News journals were only able to report that Suu Kyi was released from house arrest and gave a public speech to her supporters.

At a press conference at NLD's headquarters on Sunday, when asked what she thought if the PSRD prevented domestic media from reporting about her, Suu Kyi said she would think nothing has changed even after the election.

Despite the regime's news restrictions on Suu Kyi, the sales of most of the news journals that carried her picture reportedly went up.

“True and Flower journals published on Sunday, and today's Weekly Eleven journal had very good sales because they carried Suu Kyi's photo and news. People asked for news about her before they bought it. Some bought journals because they said they wanted to keep them,” said a shop owner in Rangoon's Mayangone Township.

Burmese went to Internet websites, international televisions and exiled media to pick up more information on Suu Kyi, the daughter of Burma's independence hero, Gen Aung San. She was greeted by tens of thousands of supporters and well-wishers on Saturday, the day she was released, and on Sunday, when she gave a public speech.

irrawaddy

Political Prisoners' Families Have Little Hope of Amnesty

2010-11-16T22:56:00.000+06:30

While welcoming Aung San Suu Kyi's release from house arrest, families of Burma's other political prisoners hold out little hope that their loved ones will soon also be free.

Suu Kyi, the most famous of Burma's more than 2,000 political prisoners, asked people on Sunday to pray for their release after she was allowed to leave her Rangoon home for the first time in more than seven years.
Ma Nyein, sister-in-law of the popular satirist Zarganar, said she and other members of his family held out little hope that his 35-year prison sentence would end early, pointing out that Suu Kyi had been made to serve her full term.

Zarganar, who is held in Myitkyina prison in Kachin State, was imprisoned because of his involvement in the humanitarian relief effort in the Irrawaddy Delta after Cyclone Nargis devastated the region in May 2008.

Win Maung, father of imprisoned 88 Students Group member Pyone Cho, said Suu Kyi had so much to do now it would be difficult for her to concentrate on working for the release of the political prisoners.

“She has more important issues than politician prisoners,” said Win Maung.
Pyone Cho is serving a 65-year sentence in remote Kawthaung prison in Taninthariyi Division for his involvement in the anti-government uprising in 2007.

Aung Tun, younger brother of the prominent 88 Generation Students Group leader Ko Ko Gyi said there was little Suu Kyi could do to persuade the regime to free the political prisoners.

Like Pyone Cho, Ko Ko Gyi is also serving 65 years sentence, in remote Monghsat prison in Shan State, for his involvement in the anti-government uprising in 2007.

Tate Naing, secretary of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a Burmese human rights group based on the Thai-Burmese border, told The Irrawaddy on Monday that the regime had no interest in freeing prisoners who had been working for democracy and human rights.

“The freedom of political prisoners is directly proportional to the political situation inside and outside the country. If the political movement inside the country grows and the international community exerts more pressure the political prisoners have more chance of being freed,” said Tate Naing.

irrawaddy

Leaders of Armed Ethnic Groups Support Suu Kyi

2010-11-16T22:55:00.000+06:30

Leaders of several of Burma's armed ethnic groups voiced support for freed pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, saying she is the appropriate person to lead an attempt at national reconciliation.

“We are very happy to hear that she is going to work for national reconciliation and a second Panglong conference. We believe that she is the right person for the task because there are many people in Burma and the international community who support her,” said Nai Hang Thar, the secretary of the New Mon State Party, an armed ethnic ceasefire group.

Maj Sai Lao Hseng, spokesperson for the Shan State Army-South (SSA-S), said, “We believe that she can work towards unity among the Burmese people and ethnic minorities.”

Suu Kyi is the one person suitable to organize the process of reconciliation in Burma and a second Panglong conference that includes ethnic minorities, said Sai Lao Hseng.

Upon her release on Nov. 13 after more than seven years under house arrest, Suu Kyi told thousands of cheering supporters that she first wanted to listen to the people before resuming new political activity and wished to form a strong “people's network.”

An official of the United Wa State Army (UWSA) in Panghsang, southern Shan State, said, “I personally support her efforts for democracy. We also want Burma to be a peaceful country.”

He also said that armed conflict between the Burmese government and ethnic groups will not end unless the government solves the conflict peacefully by political means.

Similarly, Suu Kyi said in response to a question at her press conference on Sunday that the ethnic conflicts should be solved peacefully, not by military means.

Zipporah Sein, the general secretary of the Karen National Union (KNU), said that even though the KNU and other armed ethnic groups engage in armed struggle, they wish to move in the same direction as Suu Kyi, who promotes nonviolent means.

“Suu Kyi is attempting to achieve democracy and change in Burma. Her goal is the same with ours,” she said.

Zipporah Sein also said that she believes the Burmese people will join Suu Kyi and the opposition political movement will be stronger.
“People will not sit and watch. They will join her as they have been waiting for her for so long,” she said.

Armed ethnic groups have been fighting for autonomy, self-determination and equality against the Burmese government since the country gained independence from Britain in 1948.

Tension between the government and the armed ethnic ceasefire groups that rejected the junta’s border guard force (BGF) has been mounting since April 2009, when the junta ordered the militias to join the BGF.

These tensions recently spiked when fighting between government troops and a splinter Karen rebel group, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army's Brigade 5, erupted last week in several towns on the Thai-Burmese border, forcing more than 20,000 civilians to seek refuge on Thai soil for one night.

DKBA Brigade 5, led by Col Saw Lah Pwe, has rejected the BGF. Saw Lah Pwe said in a recent statement that he will join hands with Aung San Suu Kyi and fight for democracy, albeit by different means.

James Lum Dau, the deputy chief of foreign affairs in the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), a cease-fire group that also rejected the BGF, said, “Ethnic conflict can be only solved by political means.”

irrawaddy

Resumption of Fighting Sparks Further Exodus

2010-11-16T22:54:00.000+06:30

More than 400 villagers fled late on Sunday night from the town of Valley, which straddles the Thai-Burmese border, following a resumption of hostilities between Burmese government forces and breakaway Brigade 5 of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), according to Thai authorities.

A report released by the Thai government on Monday said that the clash between the DKBA Brigade 5 led by Col Na Kham Mwe, also known as Saw Lah Pwe, and Burmese government forces has prompted about 400 Thai and Burmese nationals in North Valley sub-district, Tak Province, to flee their homes and take temporary refuge in the compound of a local government building a few miles away.

The town of Valley straddles the border from Burma's Kawkareik Township to Ban Valley in Thailand's Phop Phra District in Tak Province, and is made up of Thai, Burmese and Karen people. It lies only a kilometer away from the site of the clash which, so far, has claimed heavy casualties on both sides. An influx of thousands of refugees into Thailand is expected over the next few days, according to the report.

One resident in Valley was wounded by a mortar during the exchange on Sunday, said the Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG).

A villager told the KHRG that some locals who attempted to cross into Thailand to escape the fighting have been prevented by the Thai army. Civilians remain at risk as the conflict continues, said the KHRG report.

Deputy Thai army spokesman Sirichan Nathong told The Bangkok Post on Monday that some 150 Burmese nationals who crossed into Thailand following the clashes will probably be sent back later that same day.

A combined force of Thai army soldiers, Border Patrol Police and provincial administrative staff reinforced the border at Phop Phra and led the escaping Karen group to safer places, according to reports.

Several representatives from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Thailand Burma Border Consortium and some NGOs visited the refugees in Baan Valley and provided them with food on Monday.

Thai human rights groups, including the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand, were due to hold a meeting in Bangkok on Monday to discuss the situation surrounding the border conflict.

irrawaddy

40 Burmese Troops Wounded by Karen Rebels

2010-11-16T22:53:00.001+06:30

About 40 Burmese government troops who were wounded in a series of attacks by Karen rebels were taken on Monday evening to a military base near Three Pagodas Pass, according to Mon sources in the area.

Thu Rain, a resident in Three Pagodas Pass Township, said that government forces from Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) 284 and 270 were attacked twice on Saturday by the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) stationed in Brigade 6, and again on Sunday by breakaway troops from Brigade 5 of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA).

According to a local source, many of the government troops who were wounded had retreated and stepped on landmines after being forced by KNLA forces toward a minefield outside Kyauk Kwe village, some 20 km from Three Pagodas Pass.

The wounded soldiers were put in a truck and taken to the Burmese army base in Three Pagodas Pass. Sources said it is still unknown how many government soldiers were killed in the three attacks.

The sources said government soldiers from LIB 284 conscripted 15 Mon civilians on Saturday from Tha Thein village to work as porters, carrying their supplies and military equipment. The soldiers threatened to burn down the village if the conscripts refused to comply, according to an eye witness. Villagers in the area had earlier refused to work as porters after the Burmese army battalion was attacked by the KNLA on Saturday.

The 15 villagers were forced to carry military supplies to Three Pagodas Pass, a mountainous walk of about four hours.

Seven Burmese army battalions totaling more than 1,000 troops have been deployed near Three Pagodas Pass after the town was seized by DKBA Brigade 5 on Nov 8. The seven battalions are under the control of the Southeast Military Regional Command based in Moulmein in Mon State and Military Operations Command, based in Tavoy, Tenasserim Division.

Local observers said they believed that the Burmese army had brought in reinforcements to launch a major operation against the troops from DKBA Brigade 5 who are currently stationed at a base near the town.

The situation in Three Pagodas Pass was said by observers to be “more stable” since the clashes between the breakaway Karen faction and government troops last week. However, local residents said they still fear further hostilities could break out at any time as the KNLA and DKBA Brigade 5 are coordinating their attacks on the Burmese army in the area.

Clashes between the Karen rebels and Burmese troops have increased near Three Pagodas Pass since Karen soldiers ambushed government reinforcements en route to Three Pagodas Pass.

The Thai army has announced that it will not allow Burmese villagers to cross the border again if hostilities resume. Observers say this policy is a result of a request by the Burmese government to the Thais to deny shelter to Burmese refugees, and a Burmese demand that the Thai authorities pay 100,000 baht (US $3,000) compensation for any Burmese citizen killed on Thai soil.

Meanwhile, further north in Shan State, conflict has resumed on Tuesday between Burmese government forces and the Shan State Army-North.

irrawaddy

Suu Kyi's TV Appearance a Boon to Burmese

2010-11-16T22:52:00.001+06:30

In a scene that was repeated throughout Burma, shop owner turned on the TV at his home on Friday when he heard of Aung San Suu Kyi's impending release.

“I turned on the DVB [Democratic Voice of Burma] satellite broadcast on Friday evening and on Saturday we watched TV the whole day waiting to see her face,” he said, adding that many people came to his home to watch the event.

Ko Kyaw, a resident of Bogalay Township in the Irrawaddy Delta, said many of Bogalay's residents gathered at local tea shops, restaurants and other roadside shops waiting for news and images of Suu Kyi's release or turned on their shortwave radios to hear the news.

Ordinary citizens and government officials alike could not contain their happiness when they finally saw Suu Kyi appear on TV after 5 p.m on Saturday, he said.

“I feel that she [Aung San Suu Kyi] is a bright star for the future of our country,” he said, adding that people clapped when Suu Kyi finally appeared.
Ma Hnin, another housewife who owns a family tea shop in Bogalay said: “The whole family and many friends came to the tea shop to watch it.”

“ I’m so happy to see she [Suu Kyi] is free,” said Ma Hnin, adding that passers by also gathered at the tea shop to watch and continued to discuss her release long after the broadcast was over.

Other residents in Bogalay confirmed that houses with satellite TV were packed with people watching the news of Suu Kyi's release.

Despite official bans on receiving banned satellite news channels and shortwave radio broadcasts, the military government has been unable to block TV signals and prevent people from watching channels like the Oslo-based DVB.

“I felt hope returning after we had lost it for so many years,” said Ko Kyaw after he finally saw Suu Kyi on TV.

“We had lost sight of her since Depayin massacre,” he said, referring to the notorious incident when an attempt to assassinate Suu Kyi took place on the outskirts of Depayin Township in Sagaing Division, Central Burma, on May 30, 2003.

The attack was launched by pro-junta thugs who were members of the Union Solidarity and Development Association and the Swan Ah Shin militia, who blocked the road to prevent the convoy of vehicles from escaping the ambush.

Though more than 70 of her followers reportedly died in the ambush, Suu Kyi escaped but was arrested later in the day. She remained under house arrest from that day until her release on Saturday.

Bogalay residents said that some of the townspeople went to Rangoon in order to see Suu Kyi on Nov. 12, the day before she was released, and several thousand gathered outside her house from places as far away as Mandalay, 400 miles [640 kilometers] to the north, when she was freed on Nov. 13. Their only aim was to cheer her and support her.

Than Zaw, a Burmese migrant worker in Bangkok, said many migrant workers were delighted and cheered at the news of Suu Kyi's release.

“We hope that she can do better for the country and there will be more improvements,” said.Than Zaw, one of an estimated 2 million Burmese migrants work in Thailand.

“We are willing to return and work in Burma if the economic system in Burma improves,” he said.

In an interview with the BBC, Suu Kyi said the people of Burma want a better life, security and freedom and since her release Suu Kyi has vowed to listen to the voice of the Burmese people and work with all democratic forces.

Ko Kyaw said that if Suu Kyi had not been under house arrest when Cyclone Nargis hit Burma in May 2008, she might have been able to channel significantly more humanitarian aid and relief supplies from the international community freely into the hands of affected civilians.

Bogalay was in one of the hardest-hit areas by Cyclone Nargis, which left more than 130,000 people dead and affected around two million lives. The Burmese government did not permit the immediate entry of international humanitarian aid in the wake of the cyclone.

irrawaddy

Junta Leaders Look Grim After Suu Kyi’s Release

2010-11-16T22:51:00.000+06:30

Are Burma's top generals having second thoughts about releasing pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Saturday?

That's the impression that many Burmese are getting from the latest image of junta supremo Snr-Gen Than Shwe and his deputy, Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye, to appear in the state-run press.

The picture—the first to be published since Suu Kyi was freed on Saturday—shows the two men seeing off Prime Minister Thein Sein at Naypyidaw airport on Monday, as Thein Sein departed to attend a pair of regional conferences in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

All three men look tense, in contrast to photos from just a few weeks ago, when the generals appeared more relaxed and confident, according to local observers.

“When Than Shwe welcomed the prime minster back from the Asean Summit in Hanoi on Oct. 31, he looked quite comfortable, and Maung Aye even smiled,” said one Burmese observer in Rangoon who spoke on condition of anonymity.

At the time, the generals were just one week away from holding an election that they seemed quite confident of winning. However, the subsequent round of international condemnation of the polls, which allegedly involved widespread vote-rigging, has probably made them less self-assured.

But it is Suu Kyi's release, and the jubilant reaction that it has unleashed among ordinary Burmese and in the international community, that has probably done the most to increase their uneasiness.

Tens of thousands of cheering people turned out on Saturday evening to see Suu Kyi and listen to her first words in public since she was placed under house arrest in 2003. The crowds were even larger the next day, when she went to the Rangoon headquarters of her National League for Democracy (NLD).

According to Burmese military intelligence sources, however, the regime was not unprepared for the sudden upsurge in activity among pro-democracy forces and their supporters. The sources said that authorities in Naypyidaw and Rangoon have been ordered to monitor Suu Kyi’s activities since she was released.

In Rangoon, Maj-Gen Tin Ngwe, the chief of Bureau of Special Operations-5, Maj-Gen Kyaw Swe, the chief of Military Affairs Security, and Brig-Gen Tun Than, the commander of Rangoon Regional Military Command, are reportedly in charge of keeping an eye on Suu Kyi and the opposition.

However, Rangoon mayor Aung Thein Lin of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and police chief Brig-Gen Khin Yi have also reportedly been assigned to keep an eye on the opposition’s activities in the wake of Suu Kyi's release.

The sources added, however, that doing Suu Kyi's surveillance detail has presented a bit of a dilemma for the security officers in charge. In all of her public appearances, Suu Kyi has been surrounded by massive crowds of supporters, presenting a spectacle that could only make the top generals wonder if it was a mistake to let her go free.

“All the photos in front of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s house and at the NLD headquarters showed thousands of people, so it was quite difficult to send them to Naypyidaw,” said an intelligence official in Rangoon.

Whatever their misgivings, Suu Kyi made an effort on Tuesday to assure the generals that she was not their enemy.

“I don't want to see the military falling. I want to see the military rising to dignified heights of professionalism and true patriotism,” she told the BBC in an interview.

Although Suu Kyi's release has received considerable attention in the international and Burmese exiled media and on the websites of private journals in Rangoon, the state-run media has been almost completely silent, apart from one brief report on Sunday.

Private journals in Rangoon have complained that some reports about Suu Kyi for their print editions have already been banned by the regime's draconian censorship board, resulting in delays in publication.

irrawaddy

Shan rebel leader concerned about The Lady’s security

2010-11-16T22:48:00.000+06:30

Lt-Gen Yawd Serk, leader of the anti-Naypyitaw Shan State Army (SSA) ‘South’, in response to Burma’s pro-democracy Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s call for “a second Panglong conference”, says he is still worried about her security and whether she will be able to hold the “21st century Panglong conference” because she will be under 24-hour surveillance by the ruling military junta.

“Her release doesn’t mean she can do everything she wants. It has limitations. So I am not sure whether she can move around freely or not because she will be followed by the ruling military either directly or indirectly,” Yawd Serk said.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, at the public gathering held yesterday, said that she is willing to call a 21st century “Panglong Conference” as mentioned earlier in 1989.

“I am therefore concerned how much she will be able to work for the ethnic peoples,” he said.

Nevertheless, Yawd Serk urged all people from Burma including ethnic nationalities to protect Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and continue supporting her because she is the only one who can lead the way in the implementation of the Panglong Agreement, which was signed between her father Aung San, who represented the Burmans, and leaders of Shans, Kachins and Chins in 1947.

“The root cause of the political problems in Burma is that the Panglong Agreement has been neglected and violated by the military junta. The problems between the ethnic groups and the Burmese Army will never come to an end if the Agreement is still ignored,” said Lt-Gen Yawd Serk.

“But to implement it, only Daw Aung San Suu Kyi can play the central role. Without Suu Kyi, nobody is going to believe the junta.”

The Panglong Agreement promises “Full autonomy in internal administration” and “rights and privileges which are fundamental in democratic countries.”

According to him, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi also needs to promote participation of the ethnic nationalities to build a genuine union. “Without ethnic participation, it will be difficult to resolve the problems of Burma.”

bni

Canada renews sanctions on Burma following Su Kyi's release

2010-11-14T06:47:00.001+06:30

OTTAWA, (Xinhua) -- Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Saturday that Canada will continue to keep sanctions against Burma even Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest the same day.

"I am pleased that Aung San Suu Kyi has finally been released from house arrest in Burma," Harper said in a statement."Those sanctions will remain in place."

Harper, who is in Yokohama, Japan for the APEC summit, said that Canada stands resolutely with Burma's democratic forces and like-minded members of the international community in the quest to restore civilian government to the Burmese people.

"We continue to call on the Burmese authorities to release all political prisoners and allow the meaningful political participation of all Burma's opposition and ethnic groups," he added.

Suu Kyi, who has spent 15 of the past 21 years in detention without trial, was freed by the government of Burma after her latest 7? years term of house arrest expired and after a general election was held in Burma.

In December, 2007, Canada granted Suu Kyi honorary Canadian citizenship and imposed the tough sanctions against Burma to " indicate its condemnation of the regime's complete disregard for human rights and its repression of the country's democratic movement."

Measures of the sanctions include a ban on all goods imported from Burma into Canada and exported from Canada to Burma, excepting only the export of humanitarian goods; a freeze on assets in Canada of any designated Burmese nationals connected with the Burmese State; a ban on new investment in Burma by Canadian persons and companies.

They also cover a prohibition on the provision of Canadian financial services to and from Burma; a prohibition on the export of any technical data to Burma; a prohibition on Canadian- registered ships or aircraft from docking or landing in Burma; a prohibition on Burmese-registered ships or aircraft from docking or landing in Canada and passing through Canada.

xinhuanet

Nasaka agents monopolize river transport

2010-11-14T06:35:00.000+06:30

Maungdaw, Arakan State: Two agents of Burma’s border security force (Nasaka) have taken control of Maungdaw’s border river transport, according to a trader who asked not to be named.

“In Maungdaw, we have a boat owner’s association, which supervises how members operate their boats in the public transport sector,” said an official of the organization.

“Boats travel from Maungdaw along the river to villages including Ngakura, Mingalagyi Kyein Chaung, Taungbro, and others, and they go one by one each day. But the main income route is from Maungdaw to Teknaf,” the official said.

“That route is now controlled by two agents of Nasaka.”

“We have to pay 100 taka for a one-way trip from Teknaf to Maungdaw on a Bangladeshi boat, but the Burmese boat charges 4,500 kyats one way (more than 300 taka),” said Anu Meah, a trader from Teknaf.

A traveller en route to Bangladesh for medical treatment complained that the boats operated by the two Nasaka agents leave from Maungdaw too late to make it convenient for passengers to continue travelling to Chittagong, adding that alternate boats were more expensive.

“If we want to travel on a Bangladeshi boat, we have to pay more money, 150 taka, to pass and get permission from authorities, but we will arrive early enough to continue on to Chittigong.”

KALADAN PRESS

Heroin traffickers elected in Burma

2010-11-14T06:34:00.000+06:30

Mae Sot, Thailand: Six successful candidates backed by the junta in Burma’s controversial elections last weekend were heavily involved in drug trafficking, a crime expert says.Of the six, Liu Guoxi, 75, had the most senior role: managing drug profits with the knowledge of the military junta, said Bertil Lintner, an expert on transnational crime in south-east Asia.

”He was running heroin for years and years for the Kokang,” said Mr Lintner, the author of Brothers: The Criminal Underworld of Asia. ”Liu was a sort of accountant – it was his job to look after funds from the drug business.”
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The Kokang are a largely ethnic Chinese group in northern Burma. Last year the Burmese government attacked Kokang leaders, accusing them of drug running. Peng Jiasheng, the Kokang leader at the time, fled across the border into southern China, seeking refugee status.

”Basically, the Burmese government – while [Peng] supported them – didn’t have any problem with him running heroin,” Mr Lintner said. ”But when he refused to join a proposed Border Guard Force to incorporate various ethnic militias, the Burmese government turned against him.

”It was only then that they called him a drug trafficker.”

After last Sunday’s elections, the issue of the Border Guard Force – opposed by ethnic minority nationalists – has become a highly charged factor in sparking armed clashes along the Thai border with ethnic Karen forces.

This comes as Thai law enforcement agencies warn of an increasing flow of methamphetamines from ethnic armies in Burma seeking to raise money to buy weapons.

Mr Lintner said yesterday that while opium is no longer grown around Kokang, heroin production continues with poppies acquired elsewhere.

Liu Guoxi was described in the 1990s, in an article in the respected magazine Far Eastern Economic Review, as a drug kingpin. Last year he was made the deputy to Bai Xuoqian, who became Kokang leader after Peng Jiasheng was overthrown.

Security experts on the border said people with drug connections had been elected to some of the 14 regional parliaments, as well as to the national parliament.

The ethnic nationalist Shan Herald website named six people involved in drugs who were elected to the Shan State North legislature, in an area notorious for the drug trade.

burmanet

UN refugee agency signals more fighting in Myanmar

2010-11-14T06:33:00.000+06:30

Geneva — The UN refugee agency said on Friday that most of the 15,000 people who fled from Myanmar earlier this week have returned from Thailand despite renewed post-election fighting near the border.
A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Adrian Edwards said fighting reportedly erupted again overnight after the Thai army cleared their return, with the potential for more clashes around the Myanmar villages of Maekata and Halokani.

“As of today most of the 15,000 Myanmar refugees who fled into Thailand earlier this week have returned across the border,” Edwards told journalists.

Sites in northern Thailand’s Tak province emptied by Wednesday while all 3,000 refugees further south in Sanghklaburi had disappeared by early Friday, he added.

“In the light of the confused situation and the risks to safety, UNHCR is advocating with the Royal Thai government that refugees be given further time before being encouraged to return home,” Edwards said.

UN human rights experts on Friday expressed concern about the impact of the earlier fighting and reiterated calls for the release of “over 2,200 prisoners of conscience” including jailed opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

“The elections were billed as one of the final elements of the so-called seven-step roadmap to democracy,” the four experts said in a joint statement.

“However, the renewed clashes and resulting humanitarian crisis as civilians fled to a neighbouring State highlight the many unresolved challenges that Myanmar faces,” they added in a statement.

“True democratic transition will require genuine dialogue with all stakeholders including Aung San Suu Kyi, and the various ethnic minorities that were excluded from the electoral process.”

The statement was made by the Special Rapporteurs on human rights in Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, on the right to freedom of opinion, Frank La Rue, on human rights defenders, Margaret Sekaggyawas, and the chairman of the working group on arbitrary detention, El-Hadji Malick Sow.

burmanet

The Sydney Morning Herald: Australian film crew deported from Burma

2010-11-14T06:31:00.000+06:30

Australian authorities have raised concerns with Burma about the deportation of two Australian journalists from the country.The Australian film crew were arrested and taken to a Burma airport by local authorities to be deported on Thursday night, despite the fact they held long-stay visas.

The crew was working on a documentary about independent media in South-East Asia, including the Myanmar Times newspaper and its Australian editor Ross Dunkley.
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A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) spokesman said consular officials in Rangoon met the pair before they left and confirmed their well-being.

But the department says it holds concerns about the pair’s deportation.

“We have raised the matter at a senior level in Rangoon, stressing that, in keeping with the provisions of the Vienna Conventions, we expect the Burmese authorities to advise the Australian Embassy immediately if an Australian citizen is detained by them,” the spokesman said.

Reporting from Burma is notoriously difficult for journalists and many have been arrested and deported during the recent election period.

burmanet

SWAN denounces Burma Army build-up and rape in central Shan State

2010-11-14T06:25:00.001+06:30

Shan Women's Action Network
SWAN strongly denounces the Burma Army build-up around the Shan ceasefire area in Ke See township, central Shan State, which led to the rape of a young disabled woman on the eve of the November 7 election.

Since November 3, more than 1,000 new troops have been deployed from other parts of Shan State to areas adjacent to territory of the Shan State Army-North (SSA-N) First Brigade. These troops have been conducting patrols and hunting out villagers suspected of supporting the SSA-N 1st Brigade, which refused to become a Border Guard Force under the Burma Army.

On November 6, a fully armed 10-man patrol from Mong Nawng-based LIB 286, led by Major Win Zaw Latt, searched the village of Wan Nawng New, about five miles north of Mong Nawng. One of the troops raped a 25-year-old disabled woman who was alone in her house with her two-year-old niece.

The soldier tied up the woman’s hands and feet, and then bound her hair to one of the house posts before raping her. Neighbours heard her screams but did not dare come to her aid until after the patrol had left the village. No one dared complain about the crime, and the woman herself has fled the village in fear of repercussions.

SWAN is gravely concerned at the fate of this woman, and of other civilians in this area, who are being deliberately targeted under this new military campaign against the SSA-N.

SWAN has repeatedly documented the systematic use of sexual violence by the Burma Army, and is appalled that even just before the election, when the eyes of the entire world were on Burma, troops dared openly commit rape. This is a clear sign that the impunity enjoyed by the Burma Army for sexual violence is set to continue.

“We strongly urge the international community not to recognize the Burmese generals’ new proxy government,” said SWAN spokesperson Nang Moan Kaein. “It is tantamount to legitimizing the Burma Army’s crimes, and will condemn women in Burma to continued systematic sexual violence.”

Suu Kyi Still Burmese Idol

2010-11-14T06:12:00.000+06:30

Burma’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s popularity appears to be increasing in the wake of a general election widely rejected as a sham and her release from house arrest on Saturday after a total of 15 years and 20 days in detention out of the past 21 years and four months.

When she appeared above the wall of her guarded compound, at least 3,000 supporters had come out to her lakeside house in the hope of catching a glimpse of her. It was an iconic moment in Burma's history.

Members of her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), and journalists who came to see her said more and more people were heading in the direction of her house as word spread that she was to be released. Observers said more Suu Kyi supporters turned out on Saturday than on the occasions of her two previous releases, in 1995 and 2002.

“I was there when she was released in May 2002,” Yar Zar, an NLD youth member said. “There weren't the number of people then that are here today. It's not only NLD members, but other people have come today as well.”

Suu Kyi, 65, was released at around 5 pm on Saturday while thousands of her supporters waited outside her house. Observers realized she was about to be released when three vehicles entered her compound and riot police began dismantling the barbed wire from around her compound. Then, executive members of the NLD went into the compound.

A few minutes later, the riot police withdrew and thousands of her supporters ran toward the gate to await their leader.

“I have been waiting for this day for seven years,” said one supporter. “I am so happy that she is now freed. She is like my mother. She is our mother.”

Suu Kyi’s latest term of detention term began back in May 2003 when her convoy was brutally ambushed by junta-backed thugs who were members of the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) which was transformed for the election into the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

Shortly after her release was confirmed, Suu Kyi greeted the crowd and gave her first public speech in years. “We must work together to achieve our goal,” she began. “We have not seen each other for so long. We have so much to talk about,” she added. “Come to the office [of the NLD] tomorrow at 12:00 pm,” she concluded after a few minutes.

This evening, she is expected to meet with party leaders and then to meet with foreign diplomats at the lakeside home, said NLD sources. One of the NLD's leaders, Ohn Kyaing, said earlier the party had been organizing for her release since Friday.

NLD sources also said Suu Kyi will visit party secretary U Lwin at his home on Saturday evening as his wife passed away on Friday.

Even after she went back into her house, the crowd waited, others turned up, and people cheered.

“She is the Burmese people’s leader. She is our leader. I am also glad to know she has been released this afternoon,” said Khin Maung Swe, a leader of the National Democratic Force, the splinter group of the NLD. He added that the junta released Suu Kyi only after they manipulated the election.

A day before Suu Kyi’s release, Burma's state-run media reported that the USDP had won the Nov. 7 election.

Representatives of several ethnic armed groups, such as the United Wa State Army and the Kachin Independence Organization, said they welcomed Suu Kyi’s release and hoped she would play a significant role for ethnic minorities' rights in the country.

Ironically, even military sources in Naypyidaw and Rangoon expressed delight that the Nobel laureate was finally free.

irrawaddy

Brigade 5 Cease-fire Talks Break Down

2010-11-14T06:11:00.001+06:30

MAE SOT, Thailand — Cease-fire talks between leaders of the armed ethnic splinter group, Democratic Karen Buddhist Army Brigade 5, and Burmese army commanders broke down on Thursday afternoon.

The commander of the DKBA Brigade 5, Col. Saw Lah Pwe, said that he had withdrawn from talks under Thai army mediation and requested Burmese army commanders not to reinforce their units to Myawaddy and Three Pagodas Pass. He also said he ordered his troops to maintain the cease-fire, but said that he had instructed them to open fire if government forces attacked them first.

A minor exchange of gunfire had broken out earlier on Thursday morning in Three Pagodas Pass in southern Karen State, said DKBA sources.

“The Thai authorities want to see an end to the fighting,” said Maj. Cha Mu Say of Brigade 5. “They want a stable border and that's why they initiated cease-fire talks.”

Sources said that Thai authorities may also be unhappy with the clash as it totally shut down border trade on Monday and Tuesday.

Thai officials said that the conflict could reduce the value of trade at the key crossing to between 20 billion and 24 billion baht this year from an earlier projection of 30 billion, according to The Bangkok Post.

Trade was totally halted since the weekend when the fighting broke out in Myawaddy. However, a border closure had, in fact, limited trade since July.

Banpot Kokiatcharoen, the chairman the of Tak Chamber of Commerce, told The Bangkok Post that the Mae Sot-Myawaddy crossing was a significant source for transporting Thai consumer goods into Burma.

Markets, restaurants, shops and stalls began reopening on Wednesday around the Thai-Burmese Friendship Bridge connecting Myawaddy and Mae Sot after refugees began returning home to Myawaddy.

DKBA sources said that the conflict could reignite at any time.

DKBA Brigade 5 troops has pulled its troops out of Three Pagodas Pass and Myawaddy, and are now positioned around the two towns.

Government troops have reinforced and taken control over Myawaddy while several battalions under Light Infantry Battalion 22 were sent to Three Pagodas Pass to stabilize the situation, said sources close to the Burmese police.

Some observers said the Monday clash was based on border trade, but others pointed to the ongoing border guard force (BGF) issue. The DKBA's Brigade 5 is the the only DKBA unit to reject the junta’s BGF order.

irrawaddy

Artillery Fire Continues at Three Pagodas Pass

2010-11-14T06:10:00.001+06:30

The Burmese Army and a splinter group of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) exchanged artillery fire in the Thai-Burmese border area of the Three Pagodas Pass early on Thursday.

A Thai border guard official said at least 30 rounds were fired between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m.

DKBA troops reportedly took control of Phayathonzu but were then forced out, taking up positions outside the town. They were reinforced on Wednesday by about 500 soldiers of the breakaway DKBA Brigade 5, who had taken part in an unsuccessful attempt to occupy the Burmese-Thai border town of Myawaddy, about 120 miles north.

Burmese reinforcements were also reported to be on their way to the Three Pagodas Pass area.

Despite the continuing fighting and the threat of more clashes, many refugees returned to their homes after assurances from Thai authorities that it was safe to go.

Burma's state TV is describing the DKBA faction engaged in the fighting as insurgents belonging to the Karen National Union (KNU), the only non-ceasefire armed Karen rebel group. Although the DKBA accepted the government's border guard force plan (BGF) earlier this year, the faction currently engaged in the fighting rejected it.

Observers said regime propaganda was trying to mislead people into believing that all DKBA troops had accepted the BGF plan.

On Wednesday, the KNU and five other ethnic armed groups reportedly formed a new alliance to fight with the regime troops, increasing the specter of a renewed civil war during the few days after Burma's first election in 20 years.

irrawaddy

Junta Expels Documentary Film Makers

2010-11-14T06:07:00.001+06:30

Two Australian journalists making a documentary for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in Burma have been arrested and deported, according to ABC news.

The journalists were making a film about independent media in Southeast Asian countries and had focused on the Rangoon-based Myanmar Times and its Australian editor, Ross Dunkley.

The journalists had long-stays visas for Burma but they were arrested and deported at the wish of the Burmese authorities, the ABC said.

Filmaker Hugh Piper, who was deported on Thursday night along with producer Helen Barrow, told reporters in Bangkok that he first learned of the deportation order when visiting the office of the Myanmar Times.

“There were a couple of guys inside the Myanmar Times newspaper who liaise with the government and they said 'you need to now return to your hotel where you'll be met by various officials from the immigration department who are going to escort you to the airport and expel you,'” Piper said.

Piper, who is now in Bangkok, said they were deported from Burma because of the sensitivity over foreign reporting on the country's election.

Speaking to the Irrawaddy on Friday, a Rangoon-based journalist said: “I’ve heard that the Australian crews were reporting on the election, which is why they have been deported. Every foreign journalist is tracked by intelligence officials, so the authorities know everything they have done.”

A Japanese journalist, Mr. Toru Yamaji who sneaked into Myawaddy on the Thai-Burmese border on election day was arrested by the authorities on Nov. 7 and deported on Nov. 9.

According to the ‘Press Freedom Index 2010’ published by Reporters Without Borders, an organization which fights for press freedoms around the world, Burma is one of the five worst countries suffering from restrictions on the freedom of press.

irrawaddy

Ethnic Conflict Spreads to Shan State

2010-11-14T06:06:00.001+06:30

The cease-fire in Shan State between the Shan State Army-North (SSA-North) and the Burmese army has been broken after a series of clashes in Mong Hsnu Township in southern Shan State.

SSA-North officials have told The Irrawaddy that the armed Shan cease-fire group has fought a series of skirmishes with Burmese Infantry Battalion 33 in the area, the latest being a two-hour skirmish on Thursday evening.

“The Burmese troops broke the cease-fire,” said an SSA-North Brigade No. 1 official on condition of anonymity. “Fifty soldiers from the Tatmadaw [Burmese army] sneaked up and attacked us.”

A villager in Mong Hsnu said that the fighting started five days ago and that troops from the SSA-North had passed through his village.

SSA-North Brigade No. 1 is based in Kehsi Township in southern Shan State. Brigade No. 3 is based in Mongyai Township in northern Shan State, and Brigade No. 7 is based in Hsipaw Township, which is also in the northern part of the state.

Saengjuen Sarawin, an editor with the Shan Herald Agency for News, told The Irrawaddy on Friday that the Tatmadaw had been passing down instructions to their troops to launch attacks on the SSA-North since Sept. 1.

“What I think is that this clash is not an offensive action by the Tatmadaw, but a military strategy to seal the way out of southern State State,” he said.

The SSA-North signed a cease-fire agreement with the Burmese regime in 1989. The original agreement allowed the Shan militia to retain arms and granted them several business concessions, particularly in logging and tax collection.

Last year, however, Burmese commanders began pressuring all the ethnic cease-fire groups to transform their battalions into border guard forces (BGFs); their latest deadline for the SSA-North expired on April 22.

Sources have said that the SSA-North is likely to split into two factions due to a disagreement over whether to join the military regime's BGF plan.

An SSA-North official emphasized that they expect more hostilities in the area and that they are ready to respond to any attack.

“The Burmese government forces have reinforced to about 1,000 soldiers in the region,” he said. “Tensions are high.”

He pointed out that local people were cut off from fleeing to the Thai border and that villagers could face ill-treatment and torture at the hands of the Tatmadaw.

The Burmese regime signed cease-fire agreements with several ethnic groups over the past 21 years—including the SSA-North, the United Wa State Army, the Kachin Independence Organization, the Kokang army (officially called the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army), and the Mongla-based National Democratic Alliance Army.

However, since the regime tried to implement a BGF plan in eastern Burma, tensions have mounted and the ethnic armies have formed alliances against the Tatmadaw.

irrawaddy

Government Troops Secure Myawaddy

2010-11-14T06:05:00.001+06:30

A joint force of Burmese government forces and a newly formed border guard force (BGF) unit have begun conducting door-to-door searches of houses belonging to members of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) Brigade 5 in Myawaddy on Saturday, seizing arms and anything deemed suspicious, according to DKBA Brigade 5 sources.

“They searched every known house of Brigade 5 soldiers, including mine,”said Maj. Cha Mu Say. “They seized all arms and equipment, including any uniforms they found.”

“The government soldiers were also looking for members of Brigade 5,” said a source close to the Burmese police in Myawaddy. “They heard that a few Brigade 5 soldiers are still hiding in the town.”

The sources said that Burmese soldiers and the BGF unit, which is composed of former DKBA soldiers, were securing the town in preparation for another assault by Brigade 5, which has an estimated troop strength of some 1,000 men.

Brigade 5 is led by Col. Saw Lah Pwe, and it is the only DKBA brigade that has rejected the Burmese junta's BGF plan. On Sunday, the day of the country's first general election in 20 years, the splinter group seized key positions in the border town of Myawaddy. In the days that followed, a series of clashes between Brigade 5 and Burmese government troops saw some 20,000 local residents fleeing across the border to Thailand to escape the fighting. Most have now returned home.

On Wednesday, government troops burnt down houses belong to Brigade 5 members, including a house belonging to Saw Lah Pwe, which reportedly served as the Brigade 5 headquarters and was located on a hilltop opposite Thailand's Amphur Phop Phra in Tak Province.

Sources in Mae Sot said that Lt-Col Saw Kyaw Thet—who leads Brigade 5's Battalion 902—plans to launch a fresh assault on government positions in Myawaddy.

Over the past week, separate clashes have also broken out in Three Pagodas Pass and Kyarinseikyi in southern Karen State. Brigade 5 troops say they captured Burmese Capt Thet Naing during the fighting, but later released him.
Several battalions from Burma's Light Infantry Division 22 have been sent to Three Pagodas Pass as reinforcements and to secure the town.

DKBA Brigade 5 sources said its leaders ordered them to cease hostilities and observe a cease-fire on Friday and Saturday; however, expectations are high that conflict will resume.

Tension between Saw Lah Pwe' unit and the Burmese authorities has been mounting since Brigade 5 rejected the order to transform its battalions into BGF units under Burmese army command in April 2009.

Other major ethnic cease-fire groups, including the United Wa State Army and the Kachin Independence Organization, have also rejected the BGF order and preparations for conflict are currently underway.

irrawaddy

Suu Kyi's Son Granted Visa to Visit Burma

2010-11-14T06:03:00.001+06:30

Suu Kyi's younger son, Kim Aris, has been granted a visa to travel to Rangoon, where his mother is expected to be released on Saturday. The visa was granted by the Burmese Embassy in Bangkok after previous applications over past years were rejected. If Suu Kyi is released, it will be the first reunion with her son for 10 years.

irrawaddy

Burmese and Shan troops face off in fresh battle

2010-11-14T05:59:00.000+06:30

Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Fresh armed clashes broke out on Thursday between Shan troops and the Burmese Army near Wan Hai, Kesi Township, in northern Shan State, according to a Shan source.

The firefight kicked off when a unit of the Light Infantry Division (LID) 33 ran into a patrol from Battalion 24 of the Shan State Army-North (SSA-N) in the early evening. The battle lasted for 45 minutes from around 5.15 p.m., but details of the casualties on both sides were unavailable at the time of reporting.

The incident occurred at Kunkieng-Wanlwe, three miles (around five kilometres) west of Wanhsaw, a village near Wanhai, the SSA-N’s main base, the Shan Herald Agency for News reported.

According to the source: “Burmese troops are encroaching on our territory and the shooting took place in the jungle, not on the highway, because we put our security men there.”

Meanwhile, Burmese troops from Kunhing and Mongnawng townships in southern Shan State and Namlan and Hsipaw townships in northern Shan State reportedly moved forces troops into the Wanhai area, controlled by SSA-N Brigade 1 at Kesi Township, the source said.

Around 1,500 to 2,000 Burmese troops were already in the area, he said. The deployed Burmese troops were avoiding highways or well-travelled paths, change in tactics, making their way through the jungle to set up bases on mountains. This was carried out in the apparent belief of gaining a tactical advantage against the opposing ethnic groups.

The source added, LID 33 had already passed through the first checkpoint of the SSA-N and were about to enter the second before reaching to the main base of the SSA-N, when SSA-N troops confronted them and the clashes started.

SSA-S (non-ceasefire group) spokesman Sao Lao Hseng said: “The purpose of sending reinforcements against the 1st Brigade of the SSA-N is to cut off the communication lines between the SSA-N and outsiders, typically from the United Wa State Army (UWSA). It is to … block any outside assistance if fighting breaks out between the SSA-N and the Burmese troops.”

Tension between the ceasefire groups and Burmese troops has become explosive since ceasefire groups rejected being brought under Burmese Army command within the junta’s Border Guard Forces.

The frequency of clashes between SSA-N and Burmese troops has risen greatly since September, when Burmese troops launched the first of three attacks on the group.

Recently however the SSA-N had formed a military alliance with five other ethnic armed opposition groups in Chiang Mai, Thailand last week. The alliance comprises the Kachin Independence Organisation, New Mon State Party, and Shan State Army North (SSA-N); and non-ceasefire groups, the Karen National Union, the Karenni National Progressive Party and the Chin National Front.

The formation of the alliance was aimed at assisting each other if a member group was attacked by the Burmese Army.

mizzima

One down and 2,199 other prisoners to go

2010-11-14T05:50:00.000+06:30

Aung San Suu Kyi has been freed, but Human Rights Watch estimates that 2,200 people continue to languish in Burmese prisons.

The figure has more than doubled since the 2007 anti-government protests and 350 political activists have been jailed since October 2008.

Among those currently imprisoned by the Burmese junta are:

- Labour activist Ma Su Su Nway, who was arrested on Nov 13, 2007, while attempting to put up an anti-government poster. A year later, she was sentenced to 12 years and six months, later commuted to eight years and four months. She is serving her sentence in the remote Kale Prison, 680km from Rangoon.

- U Gambari, one of the monks who led the September 2007 ''Saffron Revolution'' protests. The regime sentenced U Gambari to 68 years in jail, 12 to be served as hard labour.

- Min Ko Naing, a leader of the 1988 student uprising and chair of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions and a believer in non-violent civil disobedience protests against military rule. After a series of court hearings, he was sentenced on Nov 11, 2008, to 65 years in jail.

- Zargana is the stage name of U Thura, Burma's most famous comedian. After the devastation of Cyclone Nargis in 2008, Zargana organised aid deliveries to people in 42 villages. He received threats from the military to stop. He was arrested on June 4, 2008 and sen tenced to 59 years' imprisonment, later reduced to 35. He is serving his sentence in a one square metre cell in the remote Myitkyina Prison in Kachin state in northern Burma.

- Nilar Thein was a high school student when she first took to the streets in 1988 to protest for political change in Burma. She was jailed for two months in 1991.

In 1996, she was arrested again for protesting against the government and jailed for nine years. Despite the harsh jail terms, she refused to stop protesting for change. In August 2007, she marched with her husband, Kyaw Min Yu, to protest high fuel costs. Her husband was arrested on Aug 21, 2007. After avoiding arrest for a year, Nilar Thein was captured on Sept 10, 2008. On Nov 11, 2008, she and 13 other political activists, including her husband, were sentenced to 65 years in jail.

Burma has 44 prisons and at least 50 labour camps, depending on the regime's infrastructure projects. Many of the jails do not have hospitals, and at least 12 of them do not have a doctor.

The regime jails political prisoners in remote areas to obstruct family members from visiting and delivering food and medicine.

Human rights groups working to free the prisoners say those arrested are rarely charged. They are held, interrogated and tortured for days or months without access to lawyers or family in secret detention centres, jails or police cells. When prisoners are finally taken to court, it is usually behind closed doors or locked prison gates without legal representation.

bangkokpost

Junta offers reward for capture of Karen army leader, dead or alive

2010-11-14T05:48:00.000+06:30

TAK: The Burmese government is offering a cash reward for information leading to the arrest of Col Na Kaw Muay, leader of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA).

A military source from the Thai-Burmese border in Tak's Phop Phra district said the Burmese intelligence agency has offered a reward worth millions of kyat (1 kyat equals about 4.6 baht) for information leading to the capture, dead or alive, of Col Na Kaw Muay.

The Burmese military-led government has branded him a rebel and a criminal for instigating unrest and leading the recent attack on Myawaddy, the source said.

The Burmese government said the DKBA's actions have also affected Thai-Burmese ties as shells landed on Thai soil during the fighting between Burmese troops and Karen rebels, the source said.

The source said the DKBA has just revamped its structure and promoted Col Na Kaw Muay to the rank of major general.

Under the DKBA's structure, three new units in charge of tactical operations have been set up with a total of 10 battalions of troops.

Each unit has a commander holding the rank of colonel.

The first unit comprising three battalions covers areas opposite Kanchanaburi's Sangkhla Buri district. The second unit of three battalions will operate in areas bordering Phop Phra and Mae Sot districts of Tak.

The third unit, with four battalions, is responsible for patrols, guerrilla tactics and sabotage operations. It will operate in southern areas in Myawaddy and near Myawaddy's special economic zone and in Kawkareik.

Burmese troops yesterday raided the homes of relatives of DKBA soldiers led by Col Na Kaw Muay on the banks of the Moei River in Myawaddy, military sources said. At least 20 various firearms and a lot of ammunition were seized.

Meanwhile, the border situation in Mae Sot and Phop Phra districts of Tak was calm yesterday.

Tight security was in place at a camp in Tha Song Yang district of Tak sheltering Burmese civilians, mostly Karen, fleeing the fighting between Karen rebels and Burmese government forces.

Entry into and departure from the camp has been strictly controlled to ensure it will not be used as a base to stir unrest in Burma.

bangkokpost

Nobel committee invites Suu Kyi to Oslo

2010-11-14T05:41:00.000+06:30

Oslo, Nov 14 (DPA) Norway's Nobel committee Saturday invited Aung San Suu Kyi to Oslo to make a belated acceptance speech for the peace prize she won 19 years ago but did not pick up.

The Myanmar opposition icon was honoured in 1991 for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights, but was unable to travel to Scandinavia because she was under house arrest.

She also feared she would not be allowed to return to Myanmar, and asked her husband, who has since died, to accept the prize on her behalf.

The head of the Nobel committee, Thorbjrn Jagland, said he would seek a guarantee from the government in Yangon that Suu Kyi would be allowed back if she visited Oslo.

'I don't believe she would leave the country without first obtaining such a guarantee, Jagland told the Norwegian news agency NTB.

Her release Saturday after a decade-and-a-half of house arrest was good news for political prisoners all over the world, he said.

This year's peace prize was warded to Liu Xiaobo, who is serving an 11-year prison term in his native China for his commitment to democracy.

The Norwegian committee believes neither Liu nor his wife Liu Xia will be allowed to travel to Norway for the award ceremony Dec 10.

sify

Aung San Suu Kyi Release Sparks Celebration, Caution

2010-11-14T05:31:00.000+06:30

Aung San Suu Kyi's release from house arrest in Burma, also known as Myanmar, has sparked worldwide celebrations among supporters of the long-time pro-democracy activist. But her supporters are also cautious in noting the daughter of Burma's assassinated independence leader, Aung San, has been previously released before being detained again.

Members of the Burmese community in France as well as supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi immediately took to the streets to display their relief.

Mireille Boisson was among the protesters in Paris. "As you can guess, it can only be joy right now. It can only be joy for all of us who have been fighting for so long, for her, for the Burmese population who support her, we are really full of joy. But at the same time we are very cautious. I mean, we rejoice now in the moment and we want her to be safe and we ask the Burmese authorities to guarantee her safety," she said.
In Washington, a lawyer who tries to assist some of the hundreds of pro-democracy Burmese activists who are in jail, Jared Gensler also expressed caution about Aung San Suu Kyi's release. "She has been out three times before and nothing has changed in the country. In fact, in recent years, there has not been any indication from the military regime that it intends to compromise in any way whatsoever by engaging in any sort of dialogue with her," he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released a statement saying she joined billions of people around the world who are welcoming the release of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

The statement also called on Burma's military leaders to make her release unconditional so she can travel and take part in politics without restriction.
The 65-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi, who led the National League for Democracy to the most votes in 1990 elections which were then ignored, has been under house arrest for most of the past 20 years.

Her release Saturday from her home in Rangoon comes after November elections in which the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party won in a landslide, but opposition parties who decided to compete were able to gain some seats in parliament and in local legislative assemblies.

voa

Aung San Suu Kyi Released from House Arrest

2010-11-13T18:29:00.000+06:30

A Burmese official says democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest has been lifted.

Hundreds of journalists, diplomats and supporters of the Nobel peace laureate rushed her Rangoon home as police removed barricades and military officials entered the house to read an official release order.

The release comes seven years after Burma's military government detained her. Aung San Suuu Kyi has spent 15 of the last 21 years under some sort of detention.

Adding to the atmosphere in secretive Burma was a sharply increased security presence in Rangoon, with truckloads of riot police cruising the streets.

Her release came six days after Burma's first election in two decades.

The military's political party already has claimed a majority of seats in both houses of parliament, in voting that Western leaders and human rights activists say was fraudulent and aimed at ensuring continued military rule with a civilian face.

Aung San Suu Kyi's release raises immediate questions about how much freedom the military rulers will grant her. Her followers say she will not accept any conditions on release. Her lawyer says she would resume political activities.

Her party won a landslide victory in the last Burmese election in 1990, but the military rulers refused to let it take power. Now, some analysts think the military might view Aung San Suu Kyi's release as a way to soften overseas criticism of last Sunday's election.

The rulers did not allow international observers to enter Burma to watch the voting, but there were reports of punishment being meted out to those who voted against the military's political party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party.

voa

WHO says Burma's border towns at risk of malaria

2010-11-10T22:24:00.000+06:30

Burma's border towns with Thailand are highly risk of deadly malaria which urgently needed containment, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday.

Malaria is one of the major public health in Burma with around 40.6 million people out of 59 million population at risk, said Dr Leonard Ortega, Medical Officer of WHO Country Office in Burma.

Vulnerable people are mostly in rural, forestry and border areas, which are far from public health care service, he said.

nationmultimedia

Japanese Reporter Recalls Arrest in Myawaddy

2010-11-10T22:20:00.000+06:30

TOKYO — A Japanese journalist arrested in Burma while trying to cover its elections says he was locked up in a room that looked like a pigpen, but shed tears of joy when fellow inmates thanked him for coming to report on the country.

Toru Yamaji, 49, a reporter with the Tokyo-based APF news agency, also said he heard shots fired in skirmishes between ethnic rebels and Burmese government troops during his three days of detention.

Yamaji was detained Sunday on the eastern border of the military-ruled country, and freed Tuesday. A Japanese diplomat quoted Burmese officials as saying he was freed because of the "mutual friendly relations between the two countries."

Foreign reporters were not granted visas to cover the Nov. 7 election in Burma, which has been widely seen as rigged to favor the ruling junta's proxy party.

Yamaji said he had barely entered the country for an hour when he was surrounded by four men who said they were secret police and took him to a police station near the border.

"I was in a solitary room in what looked like a pigpen covered with bars," Yamaji said in a statement released by APF.

Inmates in a nearby cell were political prisoners, including a pro-democracy activist who had been imprisoned since 1995, and they thanked him for doing journalistic work that could help their cause, according to Yamaji.

"I was so happy I cried," he said.

The military, which has ruled Burma since 1962, continues to hold some 2,200 political prisoners, including pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Yamaji said officers threatened to keep him for five or seven years. Skirmishes broke out between ethnic rebels and government troops, and shots were fired into his building, filling him with fear, he recalled.

But Yamaji said he had no regrets because during the hour in the border city of Myawaddy before he was detained he was able to see for himself that voter turnout was low, despite contrary claims by the government. Very few people were entering voting booths while crowds thronged the streets, he said.

Yamaji works for the same agency as Japanese video journalist Kenji Nagai, who was shot and killed in 2007 while covering a pro-democracy uprising in Rangoon.

irrawaddy

Other Ethnic Militias May Join Battle

2010-11-10T22:18:00.000+06:30

Additional battles may flare-up in and around Myawaddy and the Three Pagodas Pass area because other armed ethnic groups may come to assist the breakaway Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) Brigade 5, led by Col Saw Lah Pwe, according to a military observer.

DKBA Brigade 5 took control of government buildings in the border town of Myawaddy on Sunday, then attacked government troops and burned government buildings in Three Pagodas Pass on Monday.

Since Monday morning, DKBA Brigade 5 troops have been engaged in armed conflict with Burmese government troops and, in the case of Myawaddy, DKBA Brigade 999 troops who have joined the junta's border guard force (BGF).
Burma's state-run television is now describing the DKBA Brigade 5 faction as “insurgents” belonging to the Karen National Union (KNU), the only non-ceasefire armed Karen rebel group.

“If the military government continues their attack, we cannot avoid fighting. We will cooperate and fight together,” said Maj Saw Hla Ngwe, the KNU's Joint-Secretary 1. “We didn’t divide territory by ethnic group within this area. Every group is working based on an understanding [we have with each other]. So we have to prepare for war.”

Government troops retook major areas of Myawaddy on Monday afternoon and the town is currently quiet. But fighting has continued in the Three Pagodas Pass area and junta troops also seized and burnt down the DKBA Brigade 5 headquarters based on a Burmese hill located opposite Thailand's Amphoe Phop Phra, Tak Province, and forced the ethnic militia to abandon its base.

Fighting is expected to increase if junta troops continue to attack DKBA Brigade 5 in the Three Pagodas Pass area because, in addition to the KNU, the Karen Peace Force, led by Col Thu Mu Heh, and the New Mon State Party armed ethnic group are both based in the area and may join in the fight.

According to a report by the Associated Press, Nataphon Wichienprerd, governor of Thailand's Kanchanaburi province, said casualties in the fighting at Three Pagodas Pass included a 9-year-old Burmese girl shot by government soldiers who died in a Thai hospital, and a 13-year-old Burmese girl shot by Karen guerrillas who died on the spot.

Nataphon said about 3,500 refugees sheltered on Thai territory Tuesday night, with assistance provided by Thai and international organizations including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In addition, villagers who live near the Brigade 5 headquarters fled across the border to Thailand seeking temporary security when the headquarters were attacked.

Although most DKBA troops agreed to join the BGF earlier this year, Brigade 5 rejected the plan. Observers said the regime is now using propaganda to mislead people into believing that all DKBA troops have accepted the BGF plan.

irrawaddy

Refugees Trickle Back to Mae Sot Amid Safety Concerns

2010-11-10T22:17:00.000+06:30

MAE SOT, Thailand — Almost all of the thousands of people who fled the Burmese border town of Myawaddy on Monday have returned, but many still fear for their security following an outbreak of hostilities between Burmese troops and ethnic rebels earlier this week.

Thai authorities said that most of the estimated 20,000 refugees had been repatriated by Wednesday morning, after the their Burmese counterparts, led by Col Khin Maung Htay, assured them that the situation was under control.

However, it appears that while fears of renewed attacks by a breakaway faction of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), which seized control of Myawaddy on Sunday, have abated, many residents of the town have returned to Thai side of the border to avoid being used as porters by the Burmese army.

“The town was silent when we went back this morning, but there were soldiers searching for explosive devices. Then we heard the soldiers wanted porters, so we come back to the Thai side,” said Han Sein (not his real name), a retire civil servant from Myawaddy, speaking to The Irrawaddy on the bank of the Moei River, which separates Thailand and Burma.

“I saw that some of the shops—particularly the phone shops—had been looted, but I have no idea who did it,” he said, adding that this was the worst incident he had experienced since moving to Myawaddy in 1992.

While many local residents have returned to the town to check their property, many others say they are still too worried about their personal safety to remain there.

“After I got back to my house, I cooked some rice. Then I saw that some people were running away to escape being recruited as porters, so I also came back to Thailand,” said Daw Yee, 74. “I am worried about my home, but right now, safety is my main concern.”

Many who have returned to the Thai side of the border have taken shelter in local monasteries or in houses near the river. Others are said to be hiding in the woods around the Thai border town of Mae Sot.

“I feel the situation in the town is still uncertain. That's why I decided to come to Thailand this morning,” said Ba Maung, 84, who was taken to the Mao Tao clinic in Mae Sot after he arrived on the Thai side. “I was at a monastery during the fighting on Monday.”

Thai soldiers at the Thai-Burmese Friendship Bridge between Mae Sot and Myawaddy said they could understand why the refugees were nervous. “The opposite side of the river is too quiet. It's not normal. Something could happen at anytime,” said one Thai sergeant at the bridge.

However, local authorities in Mae Sot are struggling to deal with the influx of thousands of refugees and are eager to see the situation return to normal as quickly as possible. Thai officials and NGO workers said there were only 13 toilets for about 20,000 refugees who arrived on Monday and Tuesday.

“I want to thank the Thai people and authorities,” said Daw Yee. “I understand that it is quite difficult to take care of thousands of refugees.”

According to international NGO workers and Thai officials who spoke to The Irrawaddy on condition of anonymity, Thai authorities have not been happy with the slow pace of the response to the crisis by international aid agencies, including the UNHCR, the UN's refugee agency.

“There was a meeting between Thai officials and aid agencies on Monday evening. Some arguments occurred then,” said a foreign NGO worker in Mae Sot.

Meanwhile, officials in Myawaddy said that a list had been made of all those who fled to Thailand during the incident. One official in the town said the order to make the list came from the Southeast Regional Military Command.

irrawaddy

Election Reignites Ethnic Tensions

2010-11-10T22:16:00.000+06:30

The seizure of two Burmese border towns by ethnic rebels is a significant move in the ethnic armed struggle of the past 20 years, and the latest attacks this week are a byproduct of the junta's controversial election on Sunday and are likely to spark other clashes.

On Sunday morning while Burma went to polls, troops of the 5th Brigade of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) entered Myawaddy and seized government buildings in the town which borders Mae Sot, Thailand. The following morning, DKBA rebels seized another township, Three Pagodas Pass, opposite Sankgkhlaburi, Thailand.

“We heard that the Burmese military regime forced the residents of Myawaddy to vote. People didn't want to go, and we heard that the junta threatened them with guns. So, we deployed our troops in Myawaddy for security,” said Col Saw Lah Pwe, commander of the 5th Brigade.

“The election will not bring democracy to the people of Burma and equality for ethnic minorities. It is not real democracy. The regime only shed their skin,” the rebel fighter, known as Bo Mustache for his mustache, told The Irrawaddy in an interview hours after his troops seized the town.

Burma has had dozens of ethnic armed groups and at least 17 have signed cease-fire agreements after the current regime took power in 1988. But, other ethnic groups, including the Karen National Union (KNU) and Shan State Army (South), have continued to fight regime troops, demanding autonomy in their ethnic areas.

Troops of Col Saw Lah Pwe were part of the DKBA when it broke away from the KNU and signed a cease-fire agreement with the government in 1995. But last year, when the regime pushed all cease-fire groups to transform into a border guard force under the control of the government, Saw Lah Pwe's troops broke away from the DKBA, after it agreed to transform into a border guard force. The latest attacks by Saw Lah Pwe's troops are believed to have received support from the KNU.

The sham election on Sunday has reignited old war zones along the border. But it is even more alarming that the ongoing attacks in Karen State will probably spread to other ethnic areas. The worst scenario could lead to a full-fledged civil war.

Almost all major ethnic groups have had their own armies ever since Burma gained independence from Britain in 1948,

“This latest fighting is not a new development considering our country's history of decades-old armed ethnic strife,” said Dr. Manam Tuja, the former vice chairman of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), a cease-fire group based in northern Kachin State near the Chinese border.

“But I think this [current fighting] is a consequence of the government's border guard force plan and also of other domestic problems,” said Tuja, whose party, the Kachin State Progressive Party (KSPP), was not recognized by the junta's Union Election Commission to contest the election. It is believed that his party and two other Kachin parties were rejected because the KIO has resisted the border guard force order.

Though cease-fire agreements have been in place since the early 1990s, stability and peace has never been restored in many ethnic areas. Due to ongoing instability and sporadic clashes between ethnic groups and the government, as many as 150,000 ethnic refugees have sought shelter in at least nine refugee camps along Thailand's border for decades. Last year, government attacks on the ethnic Kokang army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, on the China-Burma border, sent 37,000 Kokang-Chinese refugees fleeing to China. The clash was a result of the Kokang army's rejection of the junta's border guard force plan.

Ethnic and pro-democracy leaders, including detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, have shared an idea that a genuine dialogue between the military government and ethnic and opposition leaders could solve the problems of ethnic areas and lead to national reconciliation. The junta rejected the idea.

Last October, only two weeks before the election, a group of ethnic leaders and politicians who opposed the general election called for a second Panglong conference to establish a federal system that would allow equality and democracy in ethnic areas. The 1947 Panglong agreement, reached by the late national leader Aung San and ethnic leaders, led to the independence to Burma.

But such a conference is unlikely to be repeated in the foreseeable future. Whether Suu Kyi will be allowed to play a political role after her release from house arrest is unknown, and other ethnic leaders, including Shan leader Hkun Htun Oo, have served lengthy prison terms. The government has never allowed those leaders to sit at the same table to discuss the country's problems.

The election itself reignited ethnic tensions and the unfair results are highly likely to increase those tensions.

“Tension is high between the KIA [the military wing of the KIO] and the government,” Tuja told The Irrawaddy. “These issues have been resolved through military means for decades. More bloodshed will occur, since there is little chance of a peaceful solution to these issues.”

irrawaddy

Myanmar refugees return but agencies prepared for another influx

2010-11-10T22:14:00.000+06:30

MAE SOT, 10 November 2010 (IRIN) - Although almost all the 20,000 refugees from Myanmar who fled to Thailand on 8 November following post-election violence have now returned home, aid groups on the Thai border are prepared for another round of violence.

"We have contingency plans in place and there is now extra mobilization," Leonard Buckles of the Thailand Burma Border Consortium told IRIN from Mae Sot on 10 November.

The main camp, Base 369 of the Thai Border Patrol Police in Mae Sot district of Tak province - the scene of the major humanitarian relief effort following Myanmar's 7 November elections - was completely empty by 10 November.

But tensions remain high between ethnic Karen forces and the Myanmar army. "We are preparing for attacks by the SPDC [Myanmar government soldiers]," said Colonel Ner Dah Mya, a commander of the Karen National Liberation Army, one of the many ethnic forces fighting the Myanmar government. "We are expecting more fighting and that more refugees will be crossing into Thailand."

9 year old girl killed during fighting at Three Pagodas Pass

2010-11-10T22:02:00.000+06:30

WCRP: A 9-year-old girl was hit in the spine and killed by shrapnel from an explosion at around 4pm yesterday in Three Pagodas Pass. The explosion was caused by a shell fired from a State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) mortar at Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) rebels and landed on the ground amidst civilians caught between the two forces while attempting to escape from the fighting.

A monk at the monastery located near to where the girl was hit explained, “DKBA soldiers were near to the village and the SPDC were outside the village. The SPDC soldiers are firing on them with very big weapons. The girl was near to the DKBA soldiers. This is how we know that she was hit by the SPDC soldiers and not the DKBA.”

The girl and her mother had spent the previous night at the monastery for safety and were attempting to flee to the mountains to escape the fighting when they found themselves caught in the crossfire between SPDC and DKBA forces.

The girl did not die immediately and though her mother attempted to take her to the Thai border in the hopes of getting medical treatment, the fighting continued for another hour and a half, preventing them from moving. By the time the fighting had eased at around 5:30pm it was too late.

Fighting broke out between the SPDC and DKBA splinter groups in Myawaddy and Three Pagodas Pass after the elections held on 7 November. The DKBA has enjoyed relatively friendly relations with the SPDC since they broke away from the Karen National Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Karen National Union, in 1994 and signed a ceasefire agreement with the SPDC. After the elections held last Sunday, however, which were widely condemned as a sham designed to maintain military rule with a civilian front, a number of DKBA splinter groups engaged in heavy fighting with government troops and took control of key locations in Myawaddy and Three Pagodas Pass.

Tens of thousands of refugees have flooded across the border into Thailand to escape the fighting.

rehmonnya

Escalation of civil war looms

2010-11-10T21:57:00.000+06:30

Washington, DC – As fierce fighting broke out between the military regime and some ethnic forces in Karen state recently, the possibility of an escalation of civil war looms in ethnic minority areas. The U.S. Campaign for Burma (USCB) calls on the UN Security Council to take effective action to pressure the regime to pursue a peaceful solution through an all-inclusive political dialogue and the UN General Assembly to establish a Commission of Inquiry to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity in Burma as a necessary preventative measure.“The situation in Burma is now on the verge of chaos as the military regime completed its sham elections on Sunday with an aim to install a permanent military dictatorship in the country under the disguise of a so-called civilian government”, says Aung Din, former political prisoner and Executive Director of USCB, based in Washington, DC. Widespread fraud, voter intimidation, cheating, and irregularities were reported throughout the country. It is clear that the authorities, election commission and the regime’s party the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) worked together to secure victories for their USDP candidates. While the ‘official’ election results have not been announced, USDP leaders already claimed that their party won over 80% of the contested seats, about 60% of the total. Combined with 25% of the seats which will be appointed by the Commander in Chief, the military and its proxy party the USDP will control over 85% of the seats in the Parliaments (both national and state/regional levels), and they will crush any voices from the so-called opposition MPs.

As expected, Burma will be under the continued military rule and escalating violence. Those political parties, who had believed that they could bring about change in the country by participating in the election, have begun to say that they would not recognize the elections’ results. The people of Burma who were forced to polling stations and whose votes were manipulated by the regime continue to challenge military rule. Ethnic minorities whose fundamental rights were denied by the regime’s constitution and election are attempting to protect their population from the regime’s abuses. On Election Day, a Karen armed group, called the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), which was allied with the regime in the past, attacked the regime’s troops in two important towns on the Thai-Burma border, “Myawaddy” and “Three Pagodas”, and seized these towns for two days. During the severe fighting, both sides used heavy artillery and forced tens of thousands of residents to flee to Thailand. Several bridges connecting these towns and other parts of Burma were destroyed by the DKBA soldiers, who attempted to block the regime’s troops marching toward the areas.

Other ethnic resistance groups, such as the Karen National Union (KNU), the New Mon State Party (NMSP) and the Karen Peace Council (KPC) also helped DKBA in fight the Burmese Army. Other powerful ethnic resistance armies operating on the China-Burma border, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the United Wa State Army (UWSA), and the Shan State Army (South) (SSA-South) are also putting their troops on alert and preparing to respond if they are attacked by the regime’s troops. They all have refused to participate in the elections and to put their troops under the direct command of the regime in the name of Border Guard Forces. They recently formed a military alliance.

“This is the time for members of the United Nations to adopt a resolution to establish a UN Commission of Inquiry to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity in Burma during the ongoing UN General Assembly. This is essential and urgent to prevent further crimes perpetrated by the military regime as an escalation of civil war is almost unavoidable,” said Aung Din. “I also call on the UN Security Council to take effective action to demand the regime stop its violence against the people and start negotiations with democracy forces led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and ethnic representatives for a peaceful solution in Burma,” Aung Din continues

burmanet

Cyclone starves 86,000 of income

2010-11-10T21:54:00.001+06:30

More than 86,000 are “without any hope of cash” in coastal areas of Arakan state nearly three weeks after cyclone Giri flattened houses and destroyed farmland.According to UN estimates, at least 16,187 hectares of rice paddy were destroyed when the cyclone slammed in Burma’s western coast on 22 October. Initial reports put the number of those affected at around 260,000, with more than 80,000 left homeless.

IRIN news agency quoted Sanaka Sanarasinha, deputy resident representative at the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Burma, as saying that 40 to 50 percent of the area was no longer harvestable.

Rice is the staple crop in Burma and, despite witnessing a massive fall in production since its heyday in the 1930s, remains a major export commodity. The cyclone hit at the very time harvesting was due in Arakan state, destroying the only source of income for thousands of people.

Figures released by the Burmese government’s Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) show that rice exports fell from 750,000 tonnes in the first six months of 2009 to just over 270,000 this year.

In contrast to scathing condemnation of the Burmese junta’s reluctance to allow aid to the Irrawaddy delta following cyclone Nargis in 2008, there have been no reports that food and medicine to the Arakan region have been blocked.

Following Nargis, which destroyed an estimated 1.75 million hectares of farmland, or 30 percent of the wet season rice area for Burma, the junta attracted further criticism for continuing to export rice at the same levels as prior to the disaster.

The UN Development Programme has put the figure needed for reconstruction of affected Arakan state areas over the coming three months at $US6-7 million.

In the worst-hit town of Myebon, more than 10,000 houses were destroyed, according to the Myanmar Information Management Unit (MIMU). Only 10 percent of those households are now in camps.

dvb

Karen retreat Three Pagodas Pass border town after one night siege

2010-11-10T21:52:00.000+06:30

Three Pagodas Pass – A combined force composed of the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) have retreated from the border town on the Burma side near to Three Pagodas Pass after a one night siege against the Burmese Army stationed there.

The spokesperson of KNU’s 6th Brigade, Padoh Hte Nay, told a Kaowao reporter that the Karen took control of the border town on Monday and destroyed the Burmese government’s offices in the town.

The military and government offices including the Special Branch (SB), Agriculture, Forestry, and Post and Telegraph Departments were all burnt down by the rebel groups on Monday, November 8, the day after the first General Election in Burma in 20 years.

A Kaowao reporter from the Thai side of the border town reported that about 120 troops from the Burmese Army Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) No. 283 and 60 troops from the LIB No. 405 failed to defend the town and government employees and officers were forced to retreat from the area. The combined forces of the Karen rebels seized nine arms from the Burmese Army.

“The DKBA troops entered the border town from different directions surprised the Burmese government troops, who fled the town shortly after. The DKBA troops gained control of the area around noon,” said Nai Lun, a town resident.

Meanwhile, the DKBA troops attacked the Myawaddy border town in Burma opposite Maesot, Tak Province. The attack was led by Colonel Saw Lah Pwe (Bo Nha Khan Mwe) of the DKBA Brigade No. 5 who rejected orders to join other DKBA troops, who had transformed into a Border Guard Force (BGF) under the Burmese Army’s command.

As of November 9 on Tuesday morning, the DKBA troops retreated from the town and many civilians have now started to return home. About 4000 town residents including women and children had crossed over to the Thai side yesterday fearing that the Burmese army troops would return during the night to launch an offensive against the Karen rebels. Local civilians were taking refuge at the Plain Japan village which is under New Mon State Party’s control.

Mi Khaing, a Three Pagodas Pass resident said, “We packed our belongings and crossed the border into Thailand because the Karen soldiers told us to leave for our safety”.

According to a military observer who lives in Sangkhlaburi, the TPP area is difficult for the Burmese Army to reinforce their troops unless they have air power to back up their ground troops. According to an earlier report, the Karen troops had planned to attack during the General Election in Burma on Sunday, November 7, 2010.

kaowao

Few voters at poll stations without foreign diplomats

2010-11-10T21:50:00.000+06:30

On election day the polling stations, where diplomats were allowed to observe voting, were crowded with voters but some polling stations, where diplomats could not reach, had very few voters. It had only police and USDP members, according to polling officers.

“Nobody seemed interested in the election. Police and the USDP members came to the polling station. Less than 100 voters came to vote at each station,” an observer from Pankan village-tract in Loikaw township said.

Indian Ambassador to Burma Dr. Villur Sundararajan Seshadri, Deputy Secretary of the Chinese embassy in Yangon Mr. Xu Tao and First Secretary of Laos embassy in Yangon Mr. Vangparo Sipaseuth were allowed to observe voting in some polling stations in Karenni State.

State Election Commission officials led the diplomats visiting Loikaw township. The diplomats visited polling station no. 1 in high school no. 1 in Naungyar A ward, polling station no. 1 in middle school no. 2 in Naungyar B ward, polling station no.1 in high school no.1 in Min Su ward in Loikaw.

Voters went back from half way to the polling station that the diplomats could not reach, according to a local from Sanpya (6) mile village in Deemawso township said.

“I did not go anywhere as I was afraid of being arrested. I did not want to vote for any party,” a local, who did not vote from Deemawso town said.

The junta-backed USDP and the NUP, which is a heritage party from Gen. Nay Win’s days, contested the elections in Karenni State.

kantarawaddy

USDP claims victory in Myanmar

2010-11-10T21:46:00.001+06:30

‘INSUFFICIENTLY INCLUSIVE’:Although world leaders found the election to be fatally flawed, China welcomed it as an integral part of a seven-step road map to democracy

The Myanmar military’s political proxy claimed an overwhelming victory yesterday in an election condemned as a sham by the West, as fresh fighting erupted between rebels and government forces.

Pro-democracy parties urged the authorities to act against “cheating” during the poll, in which the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) enjoyed major financial and campaigning advantages.
“We have won about 80 percent of the seats. We are glad,” said a senior USDP member who did not want to be named.

The vote appeared to have gone largely according to the junta’s plans, but clashes between -government troops and ethnic minority soldiers on Monday triggered an exodus of about 20,000 people into neighboring Thailand.
At least three civilians were killed when heavy weapons fire hit the town of Myawaddy in Karen State, an official in Myanmar said. Local residents said yesterday that Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) rebels had retreated into surrounding forests pursued by government forces.

The army-backed party — formed by Prime Minister Thein Sein and other former military top brass who shed their uniforms for the vote — said turnout was more than 70 percent, despite muted activity seen at many polling stations.
Opposition parties -complained about widespread reports of irregularities, particularly with advance ballots.

Than Nyein, chairman of the National Democratic Force (NDF) said the party, created by former members of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, appeared to have won only about 10 percent of the more than 160 seats it contested.

“Our country has lacked dignity in the world so we wanted to restore our pride with a fair election. I’m very sorry because these acts could further harm the dignity of our country,” he said.

Thu Wai, chairman of the Democratic Party, said that when people were allowed to vote freely they had supported his party.

With 25 percent of the seats in parliament reserved for military appointees, the two main pro-junta parties needed to win just 26 -percent of the elected seats to secure a majority.

US President Barack Obama led international criticism of the vote.
“It is unacceptable to steal an election, as the regime in Burma [Myanmar] has done again for all the world to see,” he said in a speech to the Indian parliament on Monday.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the vote ”insufficiently inclusive, participatory and transparent,” his spokesman said.
Myanmar’s ASEAN neighbors, however, welcomed the poll as a “significant step forward.”
China applauded the military junta yesterday for holding a weekend election.
“This is a critical step for Myanmar in implementing the seven-step road map in the transition to an elected government, and thus is welcome,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei (洪磊) told reporters.

taipeitimes

Burma - Junta uses Internet upgrade to centralize and reinforce online controls

2010-11-10T21:44:00.001+06:30

Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association are worried by last month’s announced launch of the “first national web portal” by Yatanarpon Teleport, a government-controlled information technology company based in Yatanarpon Cyber City, a would-be “silicon valley” 70 km east of Mandalay.

Billed by the military government as a huge step forward, this new Internet infrastructure will almost certainly be used to reinforce surveillance and repression of Burmese Internet users while reserving the fastest and best-quality access for the government and military, according to “National Web portal – development or repression,” an exclusive report written by local experts at the request of the two organizations.
By using fiber-optic cable, the new Internet infrastructure will increase the available bandwidth from 1.285 Gbps to 3.145 Gbps, which will allow voice communications (VoIP) and television over Internet (TVIP).
Burmese Internet users will be allocated to three Internet service providers instead of two under the system that has existed until now. One will be reserved for the defence ministry, one for the government and one for the public. This digital segregation means that the authorities will now be able to partially or totally block the public’s access without affecting access for the government or military.
Until now everyone used the same ISPs. As a result, when the authorities disconnected the Internet during the 2007 Saffron Revolution to prevent civilians from sending photos and video of the ensuing crackdown, the government and military were also cut off. The new architecture will also allow the defence ministry to directly control Internet traffic at the point of entry into Burma.

The government and military will almost certainly enjoy better Internet speed and performance than the public because the three ISPs will each get an equal share of the total bandwidth and yet the number of users on the “public” ISP will be much higher.
The cost of the new service will be reflected in higher charges to the public, which is likely to slow the growth of Internet penetration (currently around 2 per cent) in a county where the average monthly wage is 20 euros and Internet cafés charge 0.40 euros an hour to go online.

By offering an email service called Ymail and an instant messaging and VoIP service called Ytalk as alternatives to Gmail and Gtalk, Yatanarpon Teleport is trying to make it even easier for the authorities to monitor online communications.
The military government’s control of the public’s ISP will anyway allow it to use sniffers and DNS spoofing to capture data packets and confidential user information without anyone realizing. As a result, its ability to spy on members of the public and dissidents while they are connected to the Internet, and thereby restrict online free expression, will be reinforced.

Because of its massive filtering of websites and the frequent drastic Internet slowdowns at times of unrest, Burma is already one of the 12 countries that Reporters Without Borders has branded as “Enemies of the Internet.” Burma’s Internet law, called the Electronic Act, is one of the most repressive in the world. The junta regards netizens as its enemies. Two of them, Nay Phone Latt and Zarganar, are currently serving long jail terms for speaking out online.

rsf.org

Burma Campaign UK: Burmese political prisoner in election protest hunger strike

2010-11-10T21:43:00.000+06:30

Kyaw Kyaw Naing, a jailed member of the National League for Democracy, has gone on hunger strike to protest against sham elections being held today in Burma, according to Burma Campaign UK sources.Kyaw Kyaw Naing is in Pa-an prison in Karen State, Burma, began his hunger strike at 8am on Saturday 6th November.

No information has been received about his wellbeing since he started the hunger strike.

Kyaw Kyaw Naing said in a message; “I will go on hunger strike to support the Vote No campaign of the NLD, to object to the Nargis Constitution which will maintain the dictatorship in power for the long term, and to oppose the Giri election.”

Burma’s 2008 Constitution has been dubbed the Nargis Constitution, and Burma’s generals went a ahead with a rigged referendum on the Constitution just days after the devastating Cyclone Nargis hit Burma, killing around 140,00 people and affecting more than 2.5 million. Cyclone Giri hit Burma on 22nd October and has affected 400,000 people.

Kyaw Kyaw Naing, who is around 40 years old, is serving a 14 year prison term.

There are more than 2,200 political prisoners in Burma. Many are held in appalling conditions, denied proper food and medical care.

“Even in jail democracy activists are doing what they can to resist the dictatorship and its sham election,” said Mark Farmaner, Director at Burma Campaign UK. “Now the election is over the UN should redouble its efforts to secure the release of all political prisoners. “

burmanet

Burma’s druglords become lawmakers

2010-11-10T21:38:00.000+06:30

Six well-known druglords in Burma, who represented the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), are among those selected on the 7 November elections, according to sources in Shan State North.

Two of them, Liu Guoxi, candidate of USDP who ran for a seat in upper house at Northern Shan State’s Constituency No.11 and Bai Xuoqian, a candidate for state legislature in Laogai Constituency No.2 won their seats automatically as there were no rivals in their areas, a source from the Sino-Burma border said.

Liu Guoxi, 75, was dubbed as a drug kingpin in the Far Eastern Economic Review during the mid 90’s. He is deputy of Bai Xuoqian, who ascended to the leadership of Kokang, following the overthrow of his predecessor Peng Jiasheng by the Burma Army last year.

The other four are U Myint Lwin, U Ti Khun Myat, U Kyaw Myint and U Keng Mai, the junta-backed local militia chiefs, who are notorious among local people as drug dealers in Shan State North’s Kutkhai, Muse and Namkham townships.

Myint Lwin and U Ti Khun Myat were from Kutkhai, both contested for State legislature in Kutkhai.

U Myint Lwin, aka Wang Guoda, 60, is Kokang Chinese chief of Tamoeng-ngen militia group and U Ti Khun Myat, 57, is the leader of 600-strong Kutkhai militia and was one of the shareholders of Myanmar Mayflower Bank which was terminated for washing black money into white money a few years ago.

U Kengmai is from Muse and U Kyaw Myint is from Namkham.

U Kengmai, 50, is chief of 200-strong Mongpaw militia unit in Muse, who has been “elected” for the State legislature in Muse Constituency No.2.

According to local election watchers and voters, Kengmai won the seat with the help of the local election commissions and local authorities.

shanland

Burma junta set to free Aung San Suu Kyi

2010-11-10T21:34:00.000+06:30

VOTER anger may ignite if the Nobel laureate remains locked up.

THE Burmese junta says it is preparing for the release of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi after international condemnation of last weekend's election and fears that a delay could spark demonstrations.

"We haven't got any instructions from superiors for her release yet," a government official told AFP yesterday. "But we are preparing security plans for 13 November."

Trenchant international criticism of Burma's first general elections in 20 years is believed to have helped Ms Suu Kyi's chances of freedom. Analysts predicted the regime would use her release to deflect attention from claims of vote fraud and ballot box stuffing.

Her lawyers said she was due to be released on Saturday, and many believe that voter frustration could explode into civil unrest if she remains locked up.

Win Min, an exiled Burmese academic who in 1988 helped lead the student revolt in Burma, told The Australian the regime would probably permit the democracy champion to speak to the media.

Now 65, Ms Suu Kyi has spent 15 of the past 21 years under house arrest, most recently because an uninvited US man swam across Inya lake to visit her last year. "They can use Suu Kyi to neutralise criticism," Mr Win Min said. "They will have to allow her to talk, and I think she will be ready to talk. She spoke to the press when she was released in 1995, and in 2002. She will do that this time."

Ms Suu Kyi would probably refrain from discussing her future plans, he added, but she was likely to comment on the elections. The deeply unpopular Union Solidarity and Development Party, a proxy regime party top-heavy with former generals, has unofficially claimed victory with more than 80 per cent of the votes.

Its rivals have conceded defeat, but party leaders publicly complained about the "so-called advance votes" and "fraud".

Several have formally complained to the election commission, and the military-aligned National Unity Party is preparing legal action. Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy convincingly won the 1990 election, but the result was annulled by the ruling military regime.

More recently the NLD was formally dissolved and it boycotted the elections. Nyan Win, NLD spokesman and one of Ms Suu Kyi's lawyers, said the party had already listed members who would speak to her after her release. "We will draw up a plan for the future after she meets with these people," he was quoted as saying, adding the NLD had not been told when she would be released.

A breakaway NLD offshoot, the National Democratic Front, was trounced in last weekend's polls after late ballot box stuffing whittled away early wins. The victorious USDP was always in a commanding position, fielding candidates in almost all 1159 districts, while the NDF, although it was the largest opposition party, could stand only 164 candidates.

Meanwhile, thousands of Burmese refugees who fled over the border into Thailand to escape battles that erupted this week between the Burmese military and rebel fighters have begun to return to the town of Myawaddy and surrounds.

theaustralian

Burma's Suu Kyi 'refuses release with conditions

2010-11-10T21:30:00.000+06:30

Burma's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi will not accept conditions on her freedom if the ruling generals release her on Saturday when her house arrest term expires, her lawyer says.

"[Ms Suu Kyi] will not accept a limited release," Nyan Win said.

The junta has not said if the 65-year-old - who has spent much of the past 21 years in detention - will be released.

It comes as the main military-backed political party says it has won the country's first election in 20 years.

A Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) official said on Tuesday the party had won 80% of the vote. Official results have yet to be released.

Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party boycotted the poll, and was effectively dissolved for refusing to take part.

Ms Suu Kyi has called on her supporters to expose electoral fraud, Nyan Win told Reuters.

Speaking of her possible release he said: "[It] must be unconditional... As we all know, she never accepted limited freedom in the past."

The election is the first since 1990, when the NLD secured an overwhelming victory but was never allowed to take power.

The junta says the election marks the transition from military rule to a civilian democracy.

However, many Western governments and human rights groups have said the election was neither free nor fair.

But analysts say that - although deeply flawed - the election could mark the start of a process of democratisation, by giving opposition lawmakers a voice, however limited, in the institutional decision-making process.

Acrimonious split
Under election rules drafted by the generals, political prisoners were barred from registering.

The NLD was faced with expelling Ms Suu Kyi and more than 400 members in prison.

Ms Suu Kyi said taking part on such terms was unthinkable.

Should party members participate in the election, "the party would have no dignity", she was quoted as saying by Mr Win, who is also an NLD spokesman, in the run-up to the election.

The NLD has split internally, with some members deciding to compete as the National Democratic Force (NDF), arguing it made more sense to be involved in the process, however flawed.

The division has become acrimonious, with some activists accusing the NDF of betraying the long struggle for a true democracy.

Analysts say that if Gen Than Shwe decides to release Ms Suu Kyi, it will be to try to further divide the opposition.

If the NDF does well at the polls, Gen Shwe may release her on the assumption that she will attack them and dissipate their momentum.

Ms Suu Kyi's detention was extended by 18 months in August last year over a strange incident in which a US man swam uninvited to her lakeside home in Rangoon.

Her detention expires on 13 November, but some fear Burma's military regime may find a reason to extend it.

bbc

Four Burmese Army battalions despatched to Kayan areas

2010-11-10T00:29:00.000+06:30

The Burmese Army has despatched four battalions to Kayan areas to prevent saboteurs causing damage, local sources said.

Battalions under the Regional Control Command -- LIB No. 337 from Loikaw Township, IB 421 from Moebye, LIB 223 from Palaung and Division 85 from Laykaung region in Madalay province have been sent to reinforce troops in Kayan areas, the sources said.

Sources close to Burmese officials said that more Burmese troops have been deployed in Kayan areas for fear of five saboteurs enterning the region. Five youth activists are alleged to have planned bombings in Nayphidaw, the sources said.

Khon Rawbinsan, a spokenperson of the Kayan National Generation Youth, said “The five student activists’ leader is Chai Chai and we heard he led saboteurs and moved to Kayan land.”

The Burmese military claims to have moved four batallions in Kayan areas for a month, though the LIB 337 battalion claims it is for two weeks.
The Burmese Army has deployed battalions in Phyichaw, Kyotchaw Phulaw, Kasan, Taungtan, Laydukaw, and Bawkahta in Kayan areas.

The areas are close to where the Kayan Newland Party is located, which rejected the Burmese regime’s proposal to transform to BGF.

A KNP soldier said “To provide security to Kayan people, we are prepared if clashes begin between us and Burmese Army troops.”

bnionline

Burmese army 'in control of Myawaddy'

2010-11-10T00:11:00.000+06:30

Burmese authorities say that government troops have pushed ethnic Karen rebels out of Myawaddy, Third Army commander Wannatip Wongwai said on Tuesday.

The Burmese army claimed to have forced the soldiers of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) from the Burmese border town, opposite Mae Sot district, and to have taken control of the town, he said.

However, refugees who have fled across the border into Thailand will not be pushed back to Burma until it is confirmed that the area is cleared and safe.

No more Burmese civilians will be allowed to enter Thailand, except for those living North of the Thai-Burmese Friendship Bridge, he said.

bangkokpost

Myanmar, Russian companies to jointly explore oil, gas

2010-11-10T00:10:00.000+06:30

Myanmar and Russian oil companies will jointly explore crude oil and natural gas in Shwe U-ru block (B-2) in Homelin township in Sagaing region, the local Weekly Eleven News reported Tuesday.

The project will be implemented by Myanmar's private Htoo Group companies and the Closed Joint Stock Oil Company "Noble Oil" of the Russian Federation.

At present, there are about 47 inland crude oil and natural gas fields with 12 others being extended.

Besides the onshore areas, Myanmar has abundance of natural gas resources in the offshore areas.

Since 2006, other three Russian oil companies have been engaged in oil and gas exploration in Myanmar under respective contracts. The first Russian company, which is JSC Zarubezhneft Iteraaws along with the Sun Group of India, has been exploring oil and gas at block M-8 lying in the Mottama offshore area under a production sharing contract with the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) signed in September 2006.

The latter two Russian companies -- Silver Wave Sputnik Petroleum Pte Ltd and the Silver Wave Energy Pte Ltd of Kalmykia have been drilling Zeebyutaung test well-1 at the inland block B-2 in Pinlebu township of northwestern Sagaing region under another similar contract reached in March 2007.

There has been seven foreign companies operating onshore, including Essar Oil Ltd, Focus Energy Ltd, MPRL Exploration and Production Private Ltd, Goldpetrol, CNOOC, Sinopec Oil Company and Chinerry Assests, according to statistics.

peopledaily

Kachin Leader Warns of Possible Further Bloodshed

2010-11-10T00:07:00.000+06:30

Burma is now at the point where tensions could further escalate into bloodshed unless a peaceful resolution is achieved between the regime and all stakeholders, said a Kachin leader who was barred from standing in the Sunday election on grounds of his former links to the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO).

“Without all relevant parties being able to find peaceful solutions, the military showdowns will occur again. Those who suffer most from lack of peace would be the public,” said Dr. Manam Tuja, the former vice chairman of the KIO, the political wing of the Kachin Independence Army in northern Burma, commenting on the continuing election violence in the Burmese border town, Myawaddy.

“This latest fighting is no new development considering our country's history of decades-old armed ethnic strife,” he said.
“But I think this is a consequence of the government's border guard force (BGF) plan and also of other domestic problems in that area such as the government's restrictions on the import of cars across the border. We are waiting to see what impact this will have on all other issues.”

The 8,000-strong KIA has formally declared its rejection of the regime's BGF plan, which aims at assimilating all armed ethnic groups under its direct command. The result was widely believed to be connected with the regime's rejection of Tuja's Myitkyina-based Kachin State Progressive Party (KSPP) along with two other Kachin parties from participation in the election.

Tuja's subsequent application to run as an individual candidate was also not successful, because of a law denying registration to any party involved with groups declared to be unlawful associations.

Citing security concerns, the regime also announced that the election would not take place in several townships and villages in Kachin, Karenni, Karen, Mon and Shan states, including four townships in the Wa self-administered division.

But in elections on Sunday, Tuja went to the polling station in Myitkyina and voted for a political party which he said is believed to be able to realistically work towards better changes in the country. He didn't disclose his choice.

“I am one of the leading committee members of the government's National Convention (NC). I participated in the final stage of the NC and I have supported the seven-step road map all along. So I had to support the election, which is a part of that,” Tuja said.

After the KIA's ceasefire with the regime in 1994, Tuja represented the Kachin public throughout the regime-orchestrated National Convention which produced the controversial 2008 Constitution.

In its Aug. 30 statement, the KIA declared that it will surrender its arms if the Burmese union is formed on the basis of the 1947 Panglong Agreement which provided the basis for a federal union in the aftermath of the country's independence from British rule in 1948.

Following that declaration, the regime referred to the group as “insurgents,” the first time it used such designation since the ceasefire and its troops subsequently raided the KIA liaison offices in Myitkyina.

“Tension is high between the KIA and the government,” Tuja said. “These issues have been resolved through military methods for decades. More bloodshed would occur since there is little chance of peaceful solution to these issues. That's why I am advocating only political solutions.”

Declining to comment on the widespread vote fraud which marred the election, Tuja said he believed that the Burmese regime would continue with its road-map plan.

”The government's party would dominate the new government and the parliament with its road map plan unchanged,” he said, adding that he would be delighted to hear of the release of Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi if the regime releases her as scheduled on Saturday on the expiry of her latest term of house arrest.

“I want all the stakeholders in a dialogue at the same table. That's what I wish to see.” he said.

irrawaddy

Burma Fighting Cools on Thai Border

2010-11-10T00:06:00.000+06:30

Fighting between Burma's military and an ethnic militia has cooled down and Thai authorities are sending home more than 10,000 people who fled the violence. But many who fled are worried about further clashes.

Scores of people Tuesday evening head across the Moei River from Mae Sot, Thailand, going home to Burma, just a day after escaping fighting there.

Burma's army appears to have retaken control of the town Myawaddy, after clashes with an ethnic Karen militia sent thousands streaming into Thailand to escape the violence.

The Thai government says Myawaddy is safe now and the refugees can go home.

Khin Ohmar, coordinator of the Burma Partnership coalition, says many who fled the fighting told her they did not feel safe to go back. She says some crossed over to Burma and then, not feeling safe, returned to Thailand.

"I just wish that the Thai government, Thai authorities, didn't send them back today, at least not today," she said. "It's too soon to be certain whether they will be safe or not."

Indeed, some boats ferried people to Burma, and then came back to Thailand fully loaded with people.

Earlier Tuesday, thousands of men, women, and children were sheltering under blue tents erected on a soccer field next to a Mae Sot border patrol police station.

Ma Aye Aye Po tries to soothe her crying baby. She says she wants to return home to Burma with her family and children, but she is worried the fighting may not be over.

She says they have never had to flee from a battle field, they have never seen Myawaddy look like a battle field. She says they have heard gunfire before, but never had to run away. She says this situation was the worst.

Myawaddy resident Daw Ommah says she and her family were separated as they fled the violence, and she is anxious to make sure they are safe.

She says if the situation really cools down, she would like to go back. But, she says, she heard from a friend that up until 5 Tuesday morning there was still gunfire. So, she is a little worried.

In Mae Sot Tuesday, security appeared better.

There were fewer soldiers on the streets than Monday when gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades spilled over the border, injuring eight people.

But shops near the bridge remained closed and few people ventured onto the streets near the border.

The fighting erupted Sunday as Burma's military government held its first election in two decades, which it says will help restore democracy after five decades of military rule.

A military-backed party Tuesday said it won a majority, fueling criticism that the vote was engineered to keep the military in power.

The army says it must retain a significant role in the government to keep various ethnic minority militias from trying to divide the country.

voa

Japanese reporter detained in Myanmar freed

2010-11-10T00:04:00.000+06:30

TOKYO -- A Japanese reporter arrested while trying to sneak into Myanmar to cover its first elections in 20 years was released Tuesday and sent back to Thailand.

Toru Yamaji, 49, a reporter with the Japan-based APF news agency, was freed Tuesday afternoon and sent by boat back to where he entered the military-ruled country from northern Thailand.

Foreign reporters were not granted visas to cover the Nov. 7 election, which has been widely seen as rigged to favor the ruling junta's proxy party. Yamaji was detained Sunday in Myawaddy, on Myanmar's eastern border with Thailand.

APF, a Tokyo-based news organization, confirmed Yamaji's release in a statement Tuesday. Yamaji crossed the Thai border by boat and called to say he was in good health late Tuesday, APF said.

A Japanese diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, said Myanmar officials told his embassy the reporter was freed in recognition of the "mutual friendly relations between the two countries."

Myanmar has been ruled by the military near-continuously since 1962, and rebellions by its ethnic minorities predate its independence from Britain in 1948.

The U.N. and human rights groups have detailed killings, rape, torture, forced labor and burning of villages in Myanmar as the regime tries to deny the rebels support from the civilian population. Thailand already shelters a quarter-million ethnic minority refugees from brutal campaigns by the Myanmar army.

Anti-government parties claim Sunday's poll was blatantly rigged. Khin Maung Swe, chief of the anti-government National Democratic Force, accused the junta's proxy party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, of using every possible method to steal the vote, and said it was "sure to win 90 percent if they continue to cheat in such manner."

Though most election results had not yet been released, there was little doubt the junta-backed USDP would emerge with an enormous share of the seats, despite widespread popular opposition to 48 years of military rule.

washingtonpost

Pro-Military Party Claims Almost 80 Percent of Votes in Burma Election

2010-11-10T00:03:00.000+06:30

A party allied with Burma's military appears to have captured most of the seats in national elections. But the largest pro-democracy parties and rights groups accused the military government of openly manipulating the vote.

Burma's pro-democracy parties conceded defeat Tuesday after the largest pro-military party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, said it had won up to 80 percent of the parliament seats being contested.

The National Democratic Force and the Democratic Party both said they had lost Sunday's election.

On Tuesday at least six parties lodged complaints with the election commission, claiming state workers were forced to vote for the pro-military parties.

Cheery Zahau, a coordinator with the Human Rights Education Institute of Burma, says the group's research supported the allegations.

"USDP really forcing people to join the party and once they join the party they tell the people they must vote for the party or otherwise their [rights] will be taken away, they will lose their job and they will face problems … they will be forgotten basically in the society, in the community," Zahau said.

Rights groups, Burmese democracy activists and much of the world have dismissed the election as a sham because of campaign laws that hampered opposition candidates.

The military government, however, says the election, the first in 20 years, is part of a plan to create a civilian government after nearly 50 years of army rule.

Under the 2008 constitution a quarter of the parliament seats were set aside for the armed forces, even before the election.

Human Rights Watch spokesman Sunai Pasuk says the outcome is unlikely to improve Burma's political and economic climate.

"It doesn't matter what the result will become, " Sunai said, "no matter how big the margin of the victory that the military backed party will achieve, this election is a sham from the beginning. It is not even a real electoral contest. It doesn't matter how many votes the military backed party has gained it will not lead to any improvement in the situation in Burma."

But Chulalongkorn political science professor Thitinan Pongsudirak says while the election was flawed, it could open the way for new political voices.

"These elections may provide yet in the medium-term going forward some movement, some new dynamics that could lead to some kind of opening," Thitinan said. "It's unlikely to be a full-fledged democracy like many people hope but some change. The last 20 years of a classic military regime, dictatorship, we have to hold out a little bit of hope."

The National League for Democracy won the last election in 1990. But it was never allowed to take power, and some of its leaders, including Aung San Suu Kyi, have spent most of the years since under arrest.

The results come as clashes along Burma's border with Thailand between ethnic militia and the army appeared to die down. Fighting Sunday and Monday in the Burmese town of Myawaddy forced thousands of Burmese to flee into Thailand seeking temporary shelter. But Tuesday evening, most were heading home after the Thai government said it was safe.

voa

Surrender is Out of the Question

2010-11-10T00:01:00.000+06:30

Col Saw Lah Pwe is the commander of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army's (DKBA) Brigade 5, which broke away from the DKBA when the DKBA leadership agreed to join the Burmese military government’s border guard force (BGF).

DKBA Brigade 5 is positioned near the Thai-Burmese border in the area of Myawaddy and the Three Pagodas Pass. On Sunday, the DKBA launched a surprise incursion into Myawaddy and took temporary control of several government buildings, and on Monday, fighting between the DKBA and government troops broke out in and around the town. Also on Monday, the DKBA attacked government troops in the Three Pagodas Pass area and burned government buildings. The fighting has sent thousands of refugees fleeing across the border to Mae Sot, Thailand.

Saw Lah Pwe spoke with Saw Yan Naing of The Irrawaddy on Tuesday.

Question: What is the reason you entered the town of Myawaddy on Sunday and seized government buildings?

Answer: We heard that the Burmese military regime forced the residents of Myawaddy to vote. People didn't want to go, but we heard that the junta threatened them with a gun. So we started to deploy our troops in Myawaddy for security.

Q: How is the Burmese government pressuring you?

A: The Burmese authorities told me that they will give me 500 cars and other business opportunities if I agree to join the BGF. They pressured monk U Thuzana [a monk highly influential in the DKBA] to visit me and ask me to accept the BGF. When nobody could persuade us to join, the regime told us to leave Myawaddy. They said they don’t want to see us any longer. But I told them we will not leave. This is our Karen land, so Karen people must live in it. There is no way to leave.

They told me they will give me everything I want if I accept the border guard force. I told them I work for the people. The responsibility of our troops is to protect the people.

Q: What do you think about Burma's election?

A: The election will not bring democracy to the people of Burma and equality for ethnic minorities. It is not real democracy. It is the way they [the junta generals] shed their skin. People don’t support this election. It is not truth. The international community needs to come and observe what is really happening in ethnic areas. They should come and solve the problem.

Q: Other DKBA brigades accepted the BGF. Your Brigade 5 is the only brigade that rejected it. What do you think about the BGF?

A: The BGF is the way the regime will eliminate and manipulate our Karen people. We will uphold four principles of our Karen resistance leader Saw Ba U Gyi [the assasinated Karen resistance hero] until we win the battle.
The four principles of Saw Ba U Gyi are:
• Surrender is out of the question.
• The recognition of the Karen State must be complete.
• We shall retain our arms.
• We shall decide our own political destiny.

Q: You have been operating under a cease-fire agreement with the Burmese government for 15 years. What you do think is the government’s perspective on the ceasefire agreement? Are they serious about the cease-fire?

A: The regime asked us to come and cooperate with it. We cooperated for years with the aim of peace and in the interests of our people. But they don’t want peace.

They don’t respect the agreement. They are not honest about the ceasefire agreement. They are not honest with their people or the ethnic minorities. They will only manipulate and eliminate us. Under their rule, we can only breathe, but can’t survive.

Q: Compared to the Burmese government, you have few soldiers. How will you counter the government troops?

A: We pull our troops out of Myawaddy and deploy outside the town.

We will change our military strategy and focus on using guerrilla warfare tactics against them. We also have back-up troops that will provide military assistance to us.
Q: Will the Karen National Union help you?

A: We have been in contact with them.

Q: Do you think the Burmese government will further negotiate with you to join the BGF?

A: I don’t think so. Their tone is not good. They are still reinforcing their troops.

irrawaddy

Over 400 Karen from Wor Lay flee to Thailand

2010-11-09T23:56:00.001+06:30

Shelling by the Burmese Army has led to over 400 Karen from Wor Lay village in southern Myawaddy district feeling to Thailand today after four shells landed near the village, according to villagers.

“The Burmese Army shelled four times from heavy weapons at places where the DKBA soldiers were positioned. The shells, however, did not land inside the village. Villagers started fleeing and over 400 Karen fled to Thailand,” a Wor Lay villager said.

Burmese Army’s tactical strategic command 3 under the MOC 8 fired the shells. Until mid-day today, there has been exchange of gunfire between the DKBA and the Burmese Army in Wor Lay area, according to Maj. Saw Kyi Aung of KNLA battalion no. 201.

According to villagers remaining in Wor Lay village, Burmese Army soldiers are gathering at the football ground in the village. Even though they have not shot at villagers they plan to burn down the houses of DKBA members including Brigadier Gen. Saw Lar Pwe.

A KNU brigade commander confirmed to KIC that the Burmese Army shot at the house of Bri. Gen. Saw Lar Pwe this morning.

bni

Fighting continues at Myawaddy

2010-11-09T23:31:00.000+06:30

IMNA : Fighting that began yesterday at Myawaddy Township between the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), brigade 5 and Burmese government troops is still on-going, causing many Myawaddy residents to flee to the Thai side of the border.

Today, reports say heavy weaponry was fired three times by the DKBA and rocket-propelled grenades (RPG), type 81, were fired back four times by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC, Burmese government troops).

Nearly 400 villagers from Waylee village fled to the Thai side. Villagers from Par Luu village have also fled due to their nearness to Major Saw La Bol’s DKBA military base.

“Now refugees have arrived gradually and increasingly all the time. Yesterday there were about 20,000 refugees that fled to the Thai side,” explained one person who provided aid to those fleeing the fighting. He explained, “the refugees cannot go back to Myawaddy right now because of the unrest. So I think they will stay here [on the Thai side] for a week.”

NGOs, including the Overseas Mon Women’s Organization (OMWO), the UN, teachers from the Mon School in Myawaddy, and other Mae Sot residents have provided clothes and food for the refugees.

Currently, in Myawaddy, SPDC reinforcements have been arriving and they are setting up more SPDC bases around Myawaddy, explained one traveller who arrived in Myawaddy yesterday.

bnionline

Burmese junta sweeps away resistance in Karenni areas

2010-11-09T23:29:00.000+06:30

In the run-up to Burma's first national elections in 20 years, BBC Newsnight's Sue Lloyd-Roberts travelled undercover in the country, posing as a tourist, to take the political temperature.

In this film she reports from the border between Eastern Burma and Thailand on how the Burmese generals are dealing with the ongoing resistance from Burma's ethnic minorities and making money at the same time.

bbc

20,000 Myanmar refugees start heading home

2010-11-09T23:27:00.000+06:30

YANGON, Myanmar -About 20,000 refugees from Myanmar headed home Tuesday after fleeing to Thailand as fighting followed a general election that is certain to keep Myanmar’s military and its allies in power.

The incident underlined Myanmar’s vulnerability to unrest following the country’s first election in two decades on Sunday, which was billed by the ruling junta as a key stage in its self-proclaimed road to democracy.

Privately, officials of the junta’s proxy party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, have boasted of winning 75 percent to 80 percent of the vote, even though just a handful of official results have been announced. Political opponents say the sweeping victory will be won through cheating, and are joined by Western nations in decrying the vote as manipulated and unfair.

Thai authorities said Tuesday that Myanmar officials assured them the situation had stabilized in Myawaddy, a border town where ethnic Karen guerrillas attacked Sunday. The refugees who fled to nearby Mae Sot, in Thailand’s Tak province, were all expected to be sent home by late Tuesday, said provincial governor Samard Loyfar.
However, fighting continued at Three Pagoda Pass, another Myanmar border town 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Myawaddy, said Thai officials.

Nataphon Wichienprerd, governor of Thailand’s Kanchanaburi province, adjacent to the town, said fighting continued late Tuesday between 40 and 50 guerrillas of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army and 180 Myanmar government troops.
He said casualties included an 9-year-old Myanmar girl shot by government soldiers who died in a Thai hospital, and a 13-year-old Myanmar girl shot by Karen guerrillas who died on the spot.

Nataphon said about 3,500 refugees would shelter on Thai territory Tuesday night, with assistance provided by Thai and international organizations including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

In the first official mention of the incidents, Myanmar state television Tuesday night said the attackers were with the Karen National Union, an ethnic rebel group fighting against the government for decades.

The report said three people were killed and 20 injured in Myawaddy. Five others — including three soldiers and a policeman — were killed in Three Pagoda Pass. Five people inside Thailand were also wounded Monday by stray gunfire, it said.
Myanmar has been ruled by the military near-continuously since 1962, and rebellions by its ethnic minorities predate its independence from Britain in 1948. Ethnic guerrilla armies chafe at the prospect of further tightening of control by the army.
Anti-government parties claim the polls were blatantly rigged. Khin Maung Swe, chief of the anti-government National Democratic Force, accused the junta’s proxy USDP of using every possible method to steal the vote, and said it was “sure to win 90 percent if they continue to cheat in such manner.”

The country’s second biggest party, the National Unity Party — an outgrowth of the political machine of the late strongman Gen. Ne Win now associated with big business interests — joined the chorus of critics, even though it is generally seen as closer to the junta than to the country’s pro-democracy movement.
“The election process is absolutely unfair,” said 82-year-old retired Brigadier Aye San, a senior party official who claimed there had been many cases of election fraud and malpractice.

The NUP had run 995 candidates to the USDP’s 1,112, giving it hope it could pick up supporters in constituencies where it was the only alternative to the junta-backed party.

Though most election results had not yet been released, there was little doubt that as the only party running practically everywhere, the junta-backed USDP would emerge with an enormous share of the seats, despite widespread popular opposition to 48 years of military rule. At stake are 1,159 seats in the two-house national parliament and 14 regional parliaments. The largest anti-government party, the NDF, contested just 164 spots.
President Barack Obama said Monday it was unacceptable for Myanmar’s government to “steal an election,” and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the voting was not inclusive enough and lacked transparency.

The West and the U.N. have long been critical of Myanmar’s military regime, especially for its poor human rights record.
But not everyone was so critical of the election.

“This is a critical step for Myanmar in implementing the seven step roadmap to transitioning to an elected government and thus is welcome and affirmed,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Tuesday. Beijing is the junta’s staunchest ally.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Myanmar belongs, welcomed the vote as a “significant step forward,” Vietnamese Foreign Minister Pham Gia Khiem said in a statement as the group’s chair.
Sunday’s election was the first in Myanmar, also known as Burma, since a 1990 vote won by pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, which was barred from taking power and boycotted the new polls.

Suu Kyi’s term of house arrest is supposed to expire Saturday, though the junta has kept silent over whether it will grant her freedom.
Several human rights groups warned of possible civil war as ethnic groups are pressured by the government to accept a new constitution that offers them little autonomy. Several groups that field potent guerrilla armies refused to take part in the election.

“If the dictatorship goes ahead with plans to attack all armed groups refusing to surrender, today’s fighting will be the equivalent of a first small skirmish,” the group Burma Campaign UK said Monday in a statement.
The U.N. and human rights groups have detailed killings, rape, torture, forced labor and burning of villages in Myanmar as the regime campaigns to deny the rebels support from the civilian population. Thailand already shelters a quarter-million ethnic minority refugees from brutal campaigns by the Myanmar army.

burmadigest

USDP’s Aung Zaw Win returns to Naypyidaw in defeat

2010-11-09T23:24:00.000+06:30

Maungdaw, Arakan State: The leading Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) candidate in northern Arakan State, Aung Zaw Win, left for Naypyidaw this morning as news spread that unofficial results show a sizable victory for the National Democratic Party for Development (NDPD), according to an election watchdog group in Maungdaw.

No official announcements have been made yet about the outcome of the elections, but Election Commission and township authorities in Maungdaw admitted on Monday that the NDPD won in 90 out of 105 village tracts.

“The NDPD still won with 8,500 votes in Maungdaw north and 6,000 votes in Maungdaw south than USDP.”

“We worked very hard for the Union Solidarity and Development Party to win in northern Arakan State, but we were not successful,” said an election commission official who asked not to be named.

Meanwhile, leading USDP candidate Aung Zaw Win said he had been called back to Naypyidaw, the watchdog group said.

“It is not true that he was summoned back to Naypyidaw. He chose to return because his party suffered such a defeat at the hands of the NDPD, which he was unable to control in Maungdaw,” said a local elder.

“He went to Naypyidaw to meet his business partner Brigadier General Soe Shin of the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), who is close to Senior General Than Shwe, to discuss the voting in northern Arakan State,” the elder added.

Aung Zaw Win’s departure comes just a day after Burma held its first election in more than 20 years, and after widespread voter intimidation and violations of election law were reported throughout the state.

“He must celebrate the victory in the elections in Maungdaw as he had said. Now why has he left without celebrating and why is the commission office not declaring the election result?” asked a local from Maungdaw.

But, the USDP supporters are announcing the victory in the election with the slogan “We come from Rangoon to fight to win in election and enter “Rakhine Muslim”, the local said.

An organizer for the National Democratic Party for Development (NDPD) said election officials and candidates of the junta-backed USDP forcibly removed opposition officials from polling stations where they were to serve as monitors.

The organizer added that Aung Zaw Win visited a polling station at the State Middle School in Maungdaw and others in Maungdaw to persuade arriving voters to cast their ballots for his party, in clear violation of the election law.

Authorities also reportedly arrested NDPD candidate Khin Maung Myint, also known as Enayet Ullah, on interfering in a polling booth to object to USDP’s rigging.

“He is still in custody in Maungdaw police station,” said an NDPD organizer.

Other sporadic reports emerged of NDPD supporters from Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships being detained on Election Day.

A politician from Maungdaw said USDP candidates and local authorities have not employed similar tactics against the Rakhine community, which has largely shown support for the National Unity Party (NUP).

bnionline

Junta held storm victims’ aid as ransom for votes –

2010-11-09T22:36:00.000+06:30

Chiang Mai – Regime officials in Burma’s west threatened to cut aid to victims of Cyclone Giri if they failed to vote for the main junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, a party source said last night.
Mizzima received reports late yesterday that people struggling in areas devastated by the cyclone had been among the latest victims of junta-USDP voter coercion. Giri hit western Burma on October 22, killed at least 50 dead and displaced 70,000.

Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP) spokesman Thein Tun Aye told Mizzima last night that “in the storm-affected areas, especially in Myebon, we’ve lost all seats, but in other townships, we won a landslide victory”.

He said: “Our candidates told us the authorities, especially the western military commanders, told all the elders and the villagers to vote for the USDP, not our Rakhine Party [RNDP] … and that if the villagers voted for the RNDP they would not receive any provisions or any help.”

The USDP had clearly taken advantage of the vulnerability of voters in areas affected by Cyclone Giri, he said.

Chapter three of the Union Election Commission Law, section eight, provides that: “The duties and powers of the commission are as follows … postponing and cancelling the elections in constituencies in which free and fair election could not be held due to natural disaster or situation of regional security”.

Before the polls, the RNDP had asked junta officials to postpone voting in the state to enable storm victims to recuperate and rebuild their homes. Its calls were ignored.

The pre-election junta had used the electoral laws’ powers to postpone voting in areas of Kachin, Karenni, Karen, Mon and Shan states, and yet had deemed it inappropriate in Arakan, where 400,000 people were reportedly affected by the cyclone.

mizzima

Reporter Shot in Myawaddy Fighting

2010-11-09T22:34:00.000+06:30

A Burmese reporter in Myawaddy Township was shot and critically injured on Tuesday while covering the fighting between an anti-government Karen group and Burmese government troops.

Thein Htun, 39, a reporter for the Rangoon-based Hmu-gin (Crime) journal was shot near a city administration building, sources said. He is being treated at Myawaddy hospital.

He sustain a servere wound, a witness at the scene told The Irrawaddy.

According to local residents, the father of Than Dai, who is a candidate of the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, was shot dead by Democratic Karen Buddhist Army soldiers when fighting broke out in the town on Monday.

At least three people have died and 29 people have been injured since Monday and “many of the injured at Myawaddy hospital are women,” said a source.

More than 20,000 Burmese have sought refuge across the border in Thailand's Mae Sot District.

The English language Bangkok Post on Tuesday quoted Third Army Commander Wannatip Wongwai as saying that all refugees are expected to return home by Tuesday evening.

Lt-Gen Wannathip said the Burmese side had reported that the situation in Myawaddy was under control.

Some refugees returned home on Tuesday morning, according to the newspaper.

irrawaddy

DKBA Brigade Leader Rejects Election Result

2010-11-09T22:33:00.000+06:30

Col Saw Lah Pwe, commander of the breakaway Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) brigade now locked in conflict with the Burmese Army in the Burmese border town of Myawaddy, told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday that Sunday's election was a sham that would not bring democracy to Burma.

Heavy fighting broke out between troops of the colonel's Brigade 5 one day after the election, and by Tuesday morning Burmese Army forces had reportedly retaken some of the positions occupied by DKBA soldiers.
Fighting between Brigade 5 troops and Burmese Army forces was also reported on Monday from the Three Pagodas Pass area of the Burmese-Thai border.

The clashes in and around Myawaddy sent an estimated 10,000 Karen refugees in search of safety in neighboring Thailand on Monday and more crossed the border on Tuesday. However, Thai authorities in Mae Sot said on Tuesday morning the fighting appeared to have died down and preparations were being made to repatriate the refugees.

Saw Lah Pwe's force broke with the rest of the DKBA after rejecting the regime's plan for a Border Guard Force (BGF). The core DKBA accepted the plan, which calls for armed ceasefire groups to disband and join the BGF.

Sunday's election was dismissed as a sham by Saw Lah Pwe, who said: “They [the regime] only shed their skin. They forced people to vote in this election.”

Related Links: Mae Sot Burdened by Thousands of Burmese Refugees

irrawaddy

Kachin People Have Had Enough of War

2010-11-09T22:32:00.000+06:30

SAM PAI, Kachin State – Born and raised during one civil war, 50-year old Dee Rum doesn't want to see another. He still has vivid memories of how he and his family ran for their lives when Burmese troops attacked Kachin soldiers in their village.

“I don’t want to see one more civil war,” said Dee Rum (not his real name) in his village, Sam Pai in Winemaw Township. “I’m worried so much, thinking what if another war breaks out again in our area.”

Sam Pai—a two hour journey by motorbike from Myitkyina, the Kachin State capital—is situated in an area controlled by the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO).

It's a small community of about 100 homes, a tranquil, green village with a mountain backdrop. Like everywhere in Kachin State, people are afraid war between the Burmese Army and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) could break out any time and disrupt their lives.

The KIA and its political base, the KIO, are holding out against regime pressure to disband their army and join the planned Border Guard Force (BGF).

The regime is warning the KIO that unless it agrees to the BGF life could return to the time of the civil war that plagued the region until a ceasefire was signed in 1994.

The Kachin were among the ethnic groups who signed the 1947 Panglong agreement leading to Burma's independence.

The agreement promised the Kachin they could secede from the new federation of Burma after 10 years, but when they tested that right they met only opposition from the government. In 1961, a guerrilla war broke out that continued for the next 33 years.

Though the brutal war has been on pause for the past 16 years, the recent threats by the junta have provoked alarm among the Kachin and led to preparations for a possible renewal of hostilities.

The KIA has been stiffening its forces with new recruits, while the KIO has been handing out arms for villagers to defend themselves in case of attack.

The villagers still remember raids by Burmese soldiers who looted their homes and set them on fire.

“At night we couldn’t sleep soundly,” said one resident of Tanphre village. “When Burmese soldiers came into our village, we had to run into the forest or climb the mountain barefoot. It's a very painful memory”

A former KIO official warned that war now would be “much worse” than 33 years ago. “Both sides should solve the problem in a peaceful way,” he said.

Kachin State borders China and local politicians say the Chinese government should urge the Burmese regime not to act recklessly. Kachin traders fear that if war breaks out their businesses will suffer badly.

Dee Rum, said it now depended on the regime whether or not war would break out. He served eight years with the KIA and, like most (if not all) Kachin, he wants peace.

“We can only pray now,” said the former KIA soldier.

irrawaddy

Junta Censors Election Fraud News

2010-11-09T22:31:00.000+06:30

RANGOON — The censorship board in military-ruled Burma, the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD), has said that media may not publish or air reports about nationwide vote rigging in Sunday's election, according to sources.

An editor from the PSRD reportedly said opposition candidates told domestic media about vote rigging in the election, which was dominated by the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), but the PSRD will not allow media groups to carry such reports.

“The PSRD told us that with regard to election news, we would be allowed to carry only official news issued by the Union Election Commission (EC). A PSRD editor said that even news about voters casting their ballots wouldn't be permitted, or if we said the turnout was low,” said a production editor at a private news journal.

On Monday, Weekly Eleven, a private news journal in Rangoon, carried an apology to its reader saying that the journal regretted not being able to publish a 12-page special report on the election as it had planned.

The Weekly Eleven website, which has published timely information on the election, was reportedly inaccessible on Monday evening..

Reporters inside Burma said that based on unofficial election results, the USDP seems to have won the vast majority of the seats in parliament, and the domestic media will likely face more censorship challenges in the future.

“Since the USDP-led government will rule the country, it is pretty sure the PSRD will remain active. There will be no freedom of information and literature, and the journalism situation in Burma could be worse,” said a reporter in Rangoon.

Many domestic reporters confirmed that they were not allowed to report freely on polling day and media and private citizens were prevented from entering polling stations across the country while the ballot count was underway.

An independent candidate for a parliament seat told The Irrawaddy that news journals should be permitted to carry extensive information about the election in the post-election period.

“What really happened on election day must be revealed. Otherwise, it is meaningless to say we are marching towards a new democratic country. In this election, vote rigging took place throughout the country. We were very wrong to trust the regime,” he said .

He said Aung San Suu Kyi predicted such a turn of events, and it is time for the general public, political parties and candidates who lost in the election to firmly stand behind Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy in order to oppose the military dictatorship in Burma.

A total of 3,071 party and independent candidates contested in the election, the first in 20 years, on Sunday. Reports of vote rigging were widespread throughout the country.

Meanwhile, there has been a news blackout on the current fighting underway between the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army and Burmese troops in the border city of Myawaddy. No reports have appeared in junta-run media.

irrawaddy

Junta Troops Retake Myawaddy as Residents Return

2010-11-09T22:30:00.000+06:30

MAE SOT, Thailand — Burmese junta troops have retaken control of the border town of Myawaddy after a splinter group of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) launched an urban warfare offensive there on Monday, according to Burmese officials.

The siege of Myawaddy, opposite Mae Sot on the Thai-Burmese border, sent thousands of local residents fleeing into Thailand. According to the latest reports, most have since returned to Myawaddy, despite concerns that fighting could resume.

Sources in Myawaddy said that at least 800 regime troops, some in armored personnel carriers, took part in an overnight operation to oust the DKBA Brigade 5 rebels. They were supported by a newly formed border guard force consisting of former DKBA troops under the command of junta allies.

“Troops of the DKBA splinter group pulled out after government troops, supported by border guard forces, launched an operation on Monday night,” said a government official in Myawaddy, speaking on condition of anonymity. “But further attacks are expected in the coming days.”

He said about six people had been killed since Monday, with another 30 injured. He denied rumors circulating on Monday that 30 people had been killed in Myawaddy since the fighting started.

The official also added that DKBA Brigade 5, under the command of Col Saw Lah Pwe, continues to use rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers to attack Burmese troops in the town.

“They launched dozens of RPG attacks on Monday and Tuesday morning, some of them landing on Thai soil, and there have been at least three more since they were forced out of Myawaddy,” said the official.

Despite claims that Burmese troops are now firmly in control of the town, many local residents remain concerned about the security situation. On Tuesday morning, many were still crossing the Moei River into Thailand.

“People were hiding for their lives in Myawaddy last night,” said Phyu Phyu, a woman who fled the Burmese border town on Tuesday morning with her 3-year-old daughter. “Last night we were hiding at a monastery in the town, along with hundreds of other Myawaddy residents.”

According to some who had crossed the border this morning, Thai security forces were blocking newcomers after allowing around 20,000 refugees to enter the country on Monday.

“The Thais did not accept us, so we have to go back and take refuge at the monastery again,” said a man who crossed the river into Mae Sot at 7 o'clock on Tuesday morning and returned to Myawaddy at noon.

Although most of the refugees had reportedly returned to the town by Tuesday evening, there were also reports that many remain stranded on the Thai side of the river bank.

Meanwhile, sources said that DKBA Brigade 5 troops have also pulled out of Three Pagodas Pass and positioned themselves outside of the town. The Burmese army is still reinforcing its troops in Three Pagodas Pass, the sources said.

Around 10,000 residents of the town have crossed the border into Sangklaburi, in Thailand's Kanchanaburi Province. According to sources, two refugees were injured and later died after an RPG hit them on the Thai side of the border.

About 80 Buddhist monks in Three Pagodas Pass have requested that DKBA Battalion 907 stop fighting, saying more clashes with Burmese troops will only destroy property and harm lives. The monks stood guard over civilian property on Tuesday night to prevent looting.

irrawaddy

Leaks precede election results in Myanmar

2010-11-09T22:24:00.000+06:30

(CNN) -- Word started leaking out Tuesday about the results of Myanmar's controversial weekend elections, though the country's military regime had yet to announce any numbers.

"I believe that the [military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party] could win between 80 to 90 percent of the whole parliament. And each smaller party would get few seats in order to make the parliament look like a true multiparty parliament," said an independent candidate who competed in the Yangon area. Yangon is the former national capital and is also known as Rangoon.

"This is a useless election," said the candidate, who spoke on condition of anonymity, because he feared for his safety.

"At first, we wanted to try running on this election, as we think that it could be an alternative way for democratic process for Myanmar," the disillusioned candidate said.

Sunday's elections -- the country's first in two decades -- drew fire from critics, who said the voting was aimed at creating a facade of democracy. The outcome is all but certain to favor the junta, critics say.

The regime refused to allow international monitors to oversee the elections and would not allow international journalists to cover the voting from inside the country. Journalists who reported from inside Myanmar had to do so surreptitiously.
The military junta also recently overhauled Myanmar's constitution in a way that critics say was aimed at tightening the regime's grip. The constitution now requires more than 100 military nominees in parliament.

Myanmar, also known as Burma, has been under military rule since 1962.
U.S. President Barack Obama strongly criticized the elections in a statement Sunday.
The elections, he said, "were neither free nor fair, and failed to meet any of the internationally accepted standards associated with legitimate elections. The elections were based on a fundamentally flawed process and demonstrated the regime's continued preference for repression and restriction over inclusion and transparency."
Leading democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi had rejected voting in the elections, her lawyer said.

"Since NLD is not participating in this coming election, she doesn't want to vote," her lawyer Nyan Win said in October.

The National League for Democracy, Suu Kyi's party, announced in March that it would not participate. A new law forced the NLD to choose between honoring Suu Kyi as its leader and risking the party being declared illegal, or ejecting Suu Kyi from the party and contesting the elections.
Suu Kyi's party won a landslide election victory in 1990, but the military junta rejected the results.

The regime recently passed a law that made Suu Kyi ineligible to run because of a court conviction. The Nobel laureate has called the law unjust.
Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. She has spent most of the past 20 years under house arrest.
Her supporters have said that her current conviction was a way to remove her from the election campaign.

A Myanmar court convicted Suu Kyi in August 2009 for breaching the terms of her house arrest after American John Yettaw swam uninvited to her lakeside house in Yangon and briefly stayed there. In February, a court rejected her appeal for release.
Suu Kyi's current house arrest is due to end in mid-November, but her lawyers are skeptical that the military junta will actually release her.
Before the voting, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that the junta had to release Suu Kyi and all other political prisoners to show that the elections were credible.

KIA monitors fighting between DKBA and Burmese Army

2010-11-09T22:23:00.000+06:30

The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) is closely monitoring the escalating fighting between the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) and the Burmese Army in southeastern Burma, near the Thailand border, KIA sources said.

Fresh fighting between Burmese troops and DKBA Brigade 5 began yesterday during the Burmese election when the DKBA, a splinter-group of the Karen National Union (KNU), entered the Burmese town of Myawaddy, and occupied key locations.

It has been reported that three civilians have been killed and more than 20 injured in the fighting in Myawaddy. Thousands of refugees are fleeing across the Moei River to Mae Sot, Thailand.

Reports say eight Burmese soldiers were captured by the DKBA.

Today, fighting also broke out further south at Three pagodas Pass, on the border with Thailand, where the DKBA is reportedly burning government buildings.

Artillery shells have fallen in Thailand at both locations.

KIA sources said it is closely monitoring the fighting between the two sides, and has put its troops in both Kachin State and Northern Shan State on alert.

The KIA, one of the strongest ethnic armies, is preparing for renewed civil war with the new military-controlled Burmese government, which will be formed after yesterday’s election.

On October 15, the Burman-led regime officially denounced the KIA as “insurgents”, and it broke its 16-year old ceasefire agreement with the Kachin armed group.

On November 5, the KIA, KNU, New Mon State Party (NMSP), Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP), Shan State Army-North (SSA-N) and the Chin National Front (CNF), created an alliance to form the “Federal Army”, which aims to restore a “genuine Federal Political System” in Burma, according to sources within the alliance.

The members of the armed ethnic alliance have agreed to fight together against the Burmese Army, if any of them is attacked.

Three hundred KNU troops are joining the DKBA in the fighting at Three Pagodas Pass.

However, the other members of the armed alliance have not yet commented on the fighting between the DKBA and the Burmese Army.

bnionline

Obama calls out India for abandoning Burma

2010-11-09T22:22:00.000+06:30

Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – On a ten-day tour of Asian democracies, US President Barack Obama has chastised Indian legislators for their lack of support for the democratic aspirations of their neighbours to the east in Burma.

Addressing a joint session of the Indian parliament today in New Delhi, the American Head-of-State, while congratulating India on many of its democratic traditions, singled out the lack of support for democratic rights in Burma as a platform of New Delhi’s at odds with the greater interests of flourishing democratic governance.

“When peaceful democratic movements are suppressed – as they have been in Burma, for example – then the democracies of the world cannot remain silent,” Obama related to his captured audience. “It is unacceptable to hold the aspirations of an entire people hostage to the greed and paranoia of bankrupt regimes. It is unacceptable to steal elections, as the regime in Burma has done again for all the world to see.”

India last month warmly welcomed Burma’s authoritarian leaders, inking a number of memoranda while drawing the ire of Burmese pro-democracy supporters.

“Faced with such gross violations of human rights, it is the responsibility of the international community – especially leaders like the United States and India – to condemn it,” continued Obama. “And if I can be frank, in international fora, India has often shied away from some of these issues.”

“As the world’s two largest democracies, we must never forget that the price of our own freedom is standing up for the freedom of others,” furthered the US Nobel laureate. Obama argued that it is the responsibility of countries such as the US and India to assist in strengthening democratic norms abroad, as well as home.

The remarks came on the heels of Burma’s first general election in 20 years, an event the political opposition, and the United States among others, has derided for failing to hardly meet any criteria of a free and fair polling.

Meanwhile, in New Delhi, a group of Burmese activists staged a sit-in-protest urging Obama and Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh to reject the results of the November 7 election and secure the release of Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Reacting to the speech of Obama, Jaya Jaitely, a long-time supporter of the Burmese democracy movement in New Delhi, says she is glad that Obama spoke as he did to India’s policymakers.

Nonetheless, despite Obama’s harsh words reserved for New Delhi’s silence in the face of gross democratic infractions in Burma, his address also held considerable praise for the status of the South Asian behemoth.

The US President lauded India for its electoral heritage, independent judiciary, rule of law and free press, contending that such an environment allows for all voices to be heard.

The varied messages from Obama, however, were only further complicated with his apparent green light to India to engage with Burmese leadership, a policy his administration had championed but has been unable to fulfill owing to staunch political opposition and a perceived unwillingness on the part of Burma’s generals to reciprocate.

Encouraging New Delhi to pursue dialogue with regional security and economic partners, Obama iterated: “Like your neighbors in Southeast Asia, we want India not only to ‘Look East,’ we want India to ‘engage East’ – because it will increase the security and prosperity of all our nations.”

The American president, while not specifically making reference to Burma’s alleged clandestine nuclear weapons programme, reminded Indian legislators of their shared responsibility in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

The speech occurred during Obama’s first trip to India. His current tour will also take him to Japan, South Korea and Indonesia. Obama previously entertained Singh during the first official state visit of his presidency.

bnionline

Myawaddy gun battle sends thousands of Burmese into Thailand

2010-11-09T22:20:00.000+06:30

Thousands of Burmese have fled to Thailand in the wake of the series of gun battles between the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) and the Burmese Army near the Myawaddy-Maesod Thai-Burma Friendship Bridge located on the Thai-Burma border.

“Now, many people are crossing the river to Thailand, including children in school uniforms and elderly people. At least, 10,000 people arrived in Thailand. Many crossed the river either by boat or swam across,” an eyewitness said.

Thai Border Guard forces took the Burmese refugees to nearby monasteries.

A number of artillery shells landed in Thailand.

“Two RPG shells landed in front of the customs office near the bridge in Thailand. Three people were injured, one of whom died,” he added.

The exchange of fire occurred between the DKBA Brigade No.5 led by Brigadier Gen. Saw Lar Pwe, who had rejected the junta’s proposed BGF, and the Burmese Army.

“They exchanged fire near the bridge. I saw one Captain and 10 Burmese soldiers walking near the bridge on the Burma side. They were watching the bridge from their hiding place,” the eyewitness said.

“Nine people have been killed in the clash. A trishaw driver and a woman were killed. Four people died after being taken to hospital. Another three people from a car washing shop were also killed,” he said.

The gunfight broke out in the morning and continued till 11 am and started again around 3 pm. It was worse in the evening.

Around 11 am, DKBA forces seized the government’s offices in ‘Three Pagoda Pass’ town, according to a local commander Maj. A One.

“We seized their SB office, Information Department, Forestry and MAS office. These offices are located in the middle of the town. We did not seize the police station because it is very close to Thailand,” he added.

According to a local, DKBA forces burnt down the government’s buildings but not many fled to Thailand from ‘Three Pagoda Pass’ town.

The polling station in Ward no. 4 was burnt down. Then the forestry office caught fire because the buildings are very close to each other. The other buildings started burning one after another.

Thai Border Guard Forces have been deployed along the border in the wake of the fighting in neighbouring Burma.

It was predicted that the Burmese Army would launch military offensives against ceasefire groups, which refused to transform to the BGF, after the election. Some ceasefire groups and some ethnic armed groups, which are not ceasefire groups, formed a military alliance on November 4 to take on the Burmese Army in the event of an attack.

bnionline

Thousands flee from Three Pagoda Pass Town, support and basic supplies a concern

2010-11-09T22:16:00.001+06:30

Due to fighting which began yesterday in Three Pagodas Pass town between the DKBA and local Burmese SPDC forces, an estimated 10,000 refugees have now fled over the Thai-Burma border, and into ceasefire NMSP controlled territory. These refuges, judging the fighting to be a sever threat, fled without personal belongings or supplies. As a result of this sudden exodus, refugee encampments on Thai side of TPP and in NMSP controlled territory are likely to suffer sudden shortages of food, shelter, mosquito nets, and even the most basic food supplies.

On November 8th, a day after the national election, fighting erupted at 10:45 AM between the local Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) battalion No. 907 troops led by Major Aye One with another unidentified DKBA battalion against the Burmese State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) No.283. Since then, four Three Pagodas Pass (TPP) residents estimate nearly 10000 people have left their homes during the armed clashes between the two groups. According to these witness most of the residents fled to the southern parts of TPP town where rubber plantations and orchards are located, while others fled to Jon-Kwee [Japanese Well] village and other places located in the NMSP controlled area. The majority of refugees so far have traveled to Jon-Kwee though it is 2 miles away, due to the greater security and support they get in NMSP territory, which currently retains its ceasefire with the SPDC. Alternatively, while residents were able to enter Thai side of TPP last night, the borders have been reclosed, leaving refugees only illegal crossings which effectively trap them in Thai territory, as they are placed under strict travel restrictions.

Mi Sam, a mother of three children, explained how she managed to flee from fighting between DKBA battalions and LIB. No. 283:

Yesterday around 11, when my two sons and I went back home from the market, we heard the gun and shell sounds; then we ran back to my home located in quarter No.4. At that time, most of my neighbors already left their homes. The gunshots were more and more, then, me and my three children ran without collecting anything from [our] home. Now, we want to go back and look at the condition of our home but many people suggested not doing that and no one dares to go back.

Ko Nyan Win, a snack shop owners whose home is located near the Sa Ya Pha (Burmese military intelligence) office, explained his fears after hearing the Sa Ya Pha office had been burned by the DKBA:

I am very worried [about] my house. When I left around 11:30 [AM], the DKBA burned down some government offices near my house. I also don’t know my shop’s condition. Most [people] got scared and ran away and as for my family, we had to leave everything behind.

According to a HURFOM field reporter, yesterday evening close to 5 PM, DKBA troops patrolled quarter to quarter announcing to remaining residents that after sunset DKBA soldiers would not be responsible for any accidental shootings that occurred when trying to differentiate between residents and Burmese troops.

At 7 PM yesterday evening TPP residents were still fleeing to Thai side for security. Thai authorities have given them temporary shelter first in a nearby temple, then later moving tem to a primary school that was further from the border and possible stray weapons fire.

Injuries
An accurate number of the wounded and casualties amongst civilians’ has been difficult to judge. HURFOM has been able to confirm at least two cases in which civilians have been injured. Early this morning, before 10 AM, a woman and two teenage girls stepped on a landmine crossing into Thailand from the Burmese side of TPP through an illegal DKBA checkpoint originally controlled by Cpt. Htoo Aung. No other refugees were with them, but they were found by Burmese civilians that had already reached Thai soil, and were taken to an unknown clinic. Also before 10 AM a group of 7 Burmese refugees were struck by a mortar shell after having fled TPP Burmese side in front of a Thai resort. 5 of the victims from the mortar attack were civilians while 2 were monks

Supply Shortages?
The major concern of the sudden exodus from TPP has been the volume of food and water available to residents fleeing. As refugee groups have been divided during their flight, mixed repots have come in about the number of refuges and the overall support they currently have. Numbers range between 9000 to 1000 over all in both NMSP controlled territory and on Thai side TPP. The break down is estimated to be 6000 in NMSP controlled territory and possibly 3000 on Thai Side TPP.

Nai Kon Tar, a truck driver from Three Pagoda town, explained his estimates of the refuges from the situation he witnessed so far:

Until now we have about 2500 people who have left their homes from the four quarters of Three Pagodas border town. Currently, the village is crowed with refugees included women, children and elderly persons. I guess another 6000 are now hiding in many rubber plantations outside of the town. The rest of another 2000 are temporary sheltered in TPP Thai soil. Most of these people who are currently here are factory workers [at factories] run by Thai businessmen.

While border-based support groups have reportedly been well coordinated, and local residents have provided some assistance, some refugees and witnesses predict there will be sever shortages of basic supplies if the displacement continues.

Nai Ong Pha, 44, a resident of Japanese Well village told HURFOM his concerns over how the large numbers of refugees would be supported:

For me I am worrying about the lack of food, drinking water and security because this village is much closer to the places where the fighting occurred. Right now, I have only saw some members of MSF [Belgium]. We need basic supports to survive here…because most [of the] refugees fled their homes with empty hands. Many children seem hungry and [are] crying as they have left their homes since this morning without having their morning time rice [lunch]. The NMSP’s relief team members came and surveyed the conditions. Hopefully they will come and assist [us] by tomorrow.
A mother with 2 children, who was temporarily sheltered in the Jon-Kwee Village, NMSP controlled area, described her concern of the lack of supplies:

As for me, I need to go back. It is very difficult to hide here as there are a lot of mosquitoes and bugs. My food will run out soon.

At the time of the writing of this report, HURFOMs reporters have confirmed that fighting has mostly stopped. However, the potential increase of Burmese troops to the area, and the possible involvement of the Karen National Union’s (KNU) Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) sets conditions that could lead to a significant increase in fighting with in the area, as well as compounds the number of residents who might additionally flee to either Thailand or NMSP controlled territory.

Refugees remain in Thailand and in NMSP controlled territory with no clear time frame of when they will be able to return home. This large number of displaced persons face a potentially sever risk from lack of basic shelter, mosquito netting, food, and water, if they remain unable to return home. HURFOM wants to highlight that while the Mywayddy/ Mae Sot area has seen significant attention and support, the areas around TPP also are in sever need of resource and medical support. The continued support of internationally based NGOs such as Thai Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), Medicine Sans Frontier (MSF) (Belgium), and the International Rescue Comity (IRC) is crucial at this time.

Lastly, given the obvious dangers these refuges have faced, and could face if returned to their homes before fighting is conclusively over, HURFOM hopes that the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) will exhaust all efforts in working with the Royal Thai Government (RTG) to insure that these refugees will continued to be supported until conditions improve.

rehmonnya

USDP Huge Victory Claim Challenged by Opposition Parties

2010-11-09T22:06:00.000+06:30

RANGOON — The Burmese junta's proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) claimed election victory on Tuesday, saying it had won about 80 percent of the seats.

Citing an unknown USDP senior official, Rangoon-based international news agencies on Tuesday reported that the USDP, formed by Prime Minister Thein Sein and other former top military officials who shed their uniforms to contest Sunday's election, had won broadly nationwide, although official results have not been released.

The USDP official also said turnout was more than 70 percent, despite eyewitness reports that few people had been seen at the polling stations.

According to sources close to Rangoon mayor Aung Thein Lin, who is also a USDP candidate, Burmese junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe ordered him to do whatever he had to in order to claim 70 percent of seats in Rangoon Division for the regime-backed party.

“So Aung Thein Lin ordered the township level election commissions to stop vote counting if the opposition was leading, and then extra ballot boxes with so-called advanced votes would arrive to turn the losers into winners,” one source told The Irrawaddy.

Many opposition politicians claim they were robbed of seats they had lawfully won.

According to initial results, opposition parties, especially the National Democratic Force (NDF), a splinter group of the National League for Democracy (NLD), won numerous seats in Rangoon, the largest city, and in other areas. Later, the election commission announced the seats had been won by the USDP.

“We won the voters' ballot, but we lost the official count,” NDF Chairman Than Nyein told The Irrawaddy. “We suffered an astounding defeat because of the so-called advanced votes. Those ballots arrived when USDP candidates were threatened with defeat. When we asked for the voters' list, the election commission refused.”

Ethnic minority groups and many candidates from the National Unity Party (NUP), the successor to late dictator Ne Win's Burma Socialist Program Party, added their voices to opposition complaints that the junta-backed party had cheated before and during the election.

Signs of voter intimidation were also reported by the Chin Human Rights Organization, which said that in a ward in Chin State in western Burma one of the polling stations was at an army checkpoint.

Applause for the election result came from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), whose current chairman, Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Gia Khiem said Asean welcomed the election “as a significant step forward in the implementation of the seven-point Roadmap for Democracy.”

The Vietnamese minister said Asean “is encouraging Myanmar [Burma] to continue to accelerate the process of national reconciliation and democratization, for stability and development in the country."

irrawaddy

Junta Troops Retake Myawaddy as Residents Return

2010-11-09T22:04:00.000+06:30

Footage shows scorched earth Karen state

2010-09-11T00:28:00.000+06:30

Footage has been released that shows the shocking aftermath of a recent scorched earth campaign by the Burmese army in eastern Karen state.

More than 900 people escaped into the surrounding jungle after the village of Dutado (or Tha Dah Der) in Hpapun district came under artillery fire on 23 July. A member of the Thailand-based Back Pack Health Worker Team was shot dead by troops, and the village was razed to the ground. Eye-witness reports said that the artillery fire lasted for around four hours.

The Burmese army left the village the following afternoon as the ruins of some 70 houses, a school and a church were left smouldering. A report released today by the Free Burma Rangers medical group said that “the troops occupied the village through the next day, burning, looting and killing livestock.”

Landmines had reportedly been laid to prevent anyone from returning, a tactic often used to assume indirect control over an area. Karen state is littered with landmines laid by both the Burmese army and armed opposition groups.

Graphic images have also been released of a similar incident that happened on 22 March this year in Nyaunglebin district of Bago division, which borders Hpapun. Villagers from Hoh Lu had been returning from a nearby village, when they encountered a number of Burmese troops from an army base close to Hoh Lu.

The troops opened fire, killing a five-month-old boy and another five-year-old. The mother of one of the children managed to escape. Specific details of the incident and the reasons for the killings remain unclear, but Karen civilians are regularly accused of collaborating with armed rebel groups in the border region, much of which is a shoot-to-kill zone.

Warning: this video contains distressing images. Footage and images contributed by Back Pack Health Worker Team.
Karen state has hosted one of the world’s longest-running civil wars as the Karen National Union (KNU) and its armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), vie for autonomy from the ruling junta. More than six decades of low-intensity conflict has forced millions from their homes, while villages are regularly burnt to the ground by the Burmese army.

The 12,000-strong KNLA’s wide support base in Karen state means that the Burmese army often exploits a perceived blurred line between civilian and KNLA collaborator, leading to incidents such as these where innocent children are killed. Junta chief Than Shwe, who has presided over Burma’s estimated 500,000-strong army, is now facing calls to be investigated for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

dvb

Hospital: Myanmar blasts kill at least 20

2010-04-15T20:22:00.000+06:30

Yangon, Myanmar (CNN) -- At least 20 people died and more than 70 others were injured when three blasts ripped through Yangon, Myanmar's largest city, a staff member at Yangon Hospital told CNN.

The explosions occurred during a water festival, part of the New Year celebration taking place in Myanmar and other southeastern Asian countries. People toss water on each other as part of a cleansing ritual during the celebration.
The government has issued a lower death toll, saying the number of dead stands at six. It said 70 people were injured in the incident, which occurred at 3 p.m. local time.
Myanmar, formerly called Burma, is under military rule and such blasts are rare. Yangon, Myanmar's former capital and the country's commercial hub, is generally a crime-free and calm city.

‘Wave of Arrests’ in Burma

2009-11-04T05:40:00.000+06:30

The ruling junta is again rounding up critics and activists, but the reasons are unclear.

BANGKOK—Burma’s military junta has stepped up detentions of its political opponents and social activists in recent weeks, with as many as 50 people arrested in the last month, according to activists and residents.

“In recent days, they have been arresting mainly journalists and former prisoners,” said Ko Tak Naing, secretary of the rights group Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners (AAPP), which is based in the Thai-Burmese border region.

“Amongst the journalists, we are certain at least 10 have been arrested,” he said.

“They are journalists such as Ko Soe Moe, Ko Nyi Nyi Tun, and Khan Min Htet, who have been arrested in the last few days.”

Reasons unclear

While activists and local people are unsure of the reason behind the apparent crackdown, some say it is linked to stepped-up security measures around the former capital, Rangoon.

Other reported detainees included two young journalists and seven young men who were actively involved in private relief efforts in the wake of last year’s devastating Tropical Cyclone Nargis.

Journalists Ko Thant Zin Soe from The Voice weekly magazine and freelance journalist Ko Paing Soe Oo are believed to have been detained around midnight on Oct. 27, sources in Rangoon said.

Further detentions were reported at Rangoon’s Cultural University, according to a resident there.

“They all live in the Sittaung housing estate in the Yuzana Garden city,” said a woman at the university.

“They were all students attending the university.”

At first the detentions were linked to the students’ failure to register as overnight guests, but local authorities denied carrying out any inspections in the area, she said.

“We don’t know why they say this. But they did take the youths away,” she said.

Nargis links

The seven students are all believed to have been working with a social organization called Lin Let Kyair, formed two years ago after Nargis killed an estimated 140,000 people.

Villagers in the worst-hit regions said they have been unable to rebuild their lives in the wake of the storm, which left millions with no home or livelihood.

Local and overseas aid workers said Burma’s ruling military junta deliberately blocked aid to victims of Nargis, and failed to ensure that fields were ploughed in time for the harvest. It has also jailed a number of private citizens, some of them well-known, for aiding cyclone victims.

Lin Let Kyair is a nonprofit voluntary social organization that has been helping victims in poverty-stricken villages to dig wells, build schools and libraries, and provide educational assistance for children.

New checkpoints

Rangoon residents said a series of checkpoints had been springing up around Rangoon in recent weeks, with travelers and former political prisoners under close surveillance.

“In recent days the police have been stopping cars and checking them out in front of the Tamwe High School,” said the Rangoon resident who lives near the Cultural University.

“They have been asked to open their trunks. Also at the entrance to Yuzana Garden they would stop cars and inspect the belongings of the occupants,” she said.

“They are doing the same at the Central Mall, and in Rangoon at the traffic light at the front of the [opposition National League for Democracy] office,” she added.

Authorities were also keeping a close watch on the activities of 7,000 former prisoners, especially those who were political prisoners, who were released in a recent amnesty.

“Their houses have been specifically picked for search and inspection by the police,” she said.

Original reporting in Burmese by Ingjin Naing and Son Moe Wai. Burmese service director: Nancy Shwe. Translated by Soe Thinn. Written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

rfa

25 percent of Shan families forcibly relocated

2009-11-04T05:39:00.000+06:30

More than a quarter of families in Burma's northeastern Shan state were forcibly relocated in the past year, while nine percent of families had at least one member injured by a landmine, a US health academic said.

A further 24 percent of families had one member taken by Burmese troops for forced labour, according to Professor Chris Beyrer, from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The findings were reported to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee during a testimony on US policy to Burma last week.

While much of the rhetoric surrounding the policy shift has focused on Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's 2,100 political prisoners, Beyrer said that attacks on ethnic nationalities in the Karen and Shan states "are the second major cause for concern in Burma today".

Attacks by Burmese troops in Shan state, Burma's largest state with a population of nearly five million, had been particularly intense, with 39 villages targeted and 10,000 villagers forcibly displaced as "part of a systematic and widespread scorched earth campaign".

The findings of investigations into landmine injuries in Shan state were among the highest rates ever documented, he said.

Burma's state expenditure on healthcare is amongst the lowest in the world. Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) estimates that $US0.70 per capita per year, or 0.3 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), is channeled into the health sector.

The volatile Shan state, which borders China, was the scene of heavy fighting in August and September between government troops and an armed ethnic group from the Kokang region.

The fighting, which erupted following rising tension over the government's proposals to transform ethnic armies into border guard militias, forced some 37,000 refugees into China.

Beyrer said that the attacks on ethnic groups were part of the government's preparation for the 2010 elections.

"The junta is creating new humanitarian emergencies with its current campaign for political control of ethnic areas and destabilizing its border regions with China," he said.

"Burmese refugees continue to flee not only into China, but to Thailand, India, Bangladesh and Malaysia, making this a truly regional concern."

Reporting by Francis Wade
reliefweb

Protracted displacement and militarisation in Eastern Burma

2009-11-04T05:38:00.000+06:30

As the sixtieth anniversary of the Geneva Conventions is recognized, the relevance of international humanitarian law continues to b challenged by the Burmese junta. Despite ratifying these rules of war, the Burmese Army persists in indiscriminately attaching civilians and causing massive displacement with apparent impunity.

The Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC) has been collaborating with ethnic community-based organisations to document internal displacement in eastern Burma since 2002. This year's survery updates information about the scale and distribution of displacement in 38 townships and reviews trends through analysis of interviews with over 3,100 households between 2005 and 2009. It also includes a conflict assessment based on community consultations in areas of ongoing fighting as well as ceasefire areas.

reliefweb

Arrests of Burmese journalists on the rise

2009-11-04T05:37:00.000+06:30

Around 20 journalists and entertainers have been arrested in the past month while many more have gone into hiding, a reporter at a Rangoon-based news journal said.

Burmese government authorities appear to have targeted relief workers and journalists involved with the Lin Latt Kyae ('Shining Star') relief programme for cyclone Nargis victims.

"About 20 people, including entertainers, writers and press workers, have been arrest so far," said the reporter, speaking under condition of anonymity.

He said that 12 people were arrested on Wednesday, including staff members from The Voice, Foreign News, Favourite, Pyi Myanmar and Kandarawaddy journals.

Fear of further arrests has shaken Burma's media community, which is often targeted during government crackdowns on dissent.

Now is a particular sensitive time in Burma as the ruling junta prepares for elections next year, despite pressure from the international community to release all political prisoners prior to polling.

"These people were not involved in any political activity," said the reporter.

"There are many more missing but it is not confirmed that they have been arrested. Three junior journalists from my publication are in hiding."

A wider investigation by the government into post-cyclone relief work appears to be underway, with people involved in unofficial financial brokering also being called in for interrogation.

The investigations being conducted may be linked to overseas donations and relief work in cyclone hit areas, the reporter said.

"They are trying to trace where and how the money came to the relief teams," he said. "They want to know if the money came from the opposition groups overseas."

The New York-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) today "strongly condemned" the arrest on Wednesday of freelance journalist and blogger Pai Soe Oo, reportedly a member of Lin Latt Kyae.

"Burma's military government claims to be moving toward democracy, yet it continues to routinely arrest and detain journalists," said Shawn W. Crispin, CPJ's senior Southeast Asia representative. "Reducing international pressure should require demonstrable improvements in press freedom."

San Moe Wei, secretary of the Burma Media Association, said that the numbers of journalists being arrested in the run-up to elections would likely increase.

"The government doesn't like its operations exposed to foreign media so I'm sure we'll see many more," he said.

Reporting by Than Win Htut and Francis Wade

reliefweb

Myanmar: The people nobody wants

2009-11-04T05:36:00.000+06:30

The plight of the Burmese Rohingya made headlines in early 2009 when Thai security forces were accused of pushing migrant boats out to sea. With ASEAN establishing a new human rights body and a US delegation visiting Burma, what chance is there for improvement for a stateless people? Simon Roughneen writes for ISN Security Watch.

By Simon Roughneen for ISN Security Watch

At its 15th summit held in Thailand two weeks ago, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations inaugurated the ASEAN Intergovernmental Human Rights Commission. It is the first time that the 10-state bloc has given institutional recognition to human rights.

What that means in practice is unclear. The body will merely promote human rights, and cannot sanction offenders or protect victims. With the Burmese junta nominating a representative to the 10-member commission, along with states such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, which have less-than-stellar records in this area, it seems the new body is there to pay lip service rather than act decisively.

Action for sure is needed. Malaysia does not recognize refugees as a category; communist Vietnam continues to make life hard for religious groups; and the majority of Burmese struggle under a military dictatorship.

Standing out for the wrong reasons

But of all the ethnic groups in the region perhaps one stands out as suffering the most. The Rohingya are a Muslim minority in western Burma, living mainly in Rakhine State close to the border with Bangladesh. Muslims make up around 4 percent of the country's total population, and a majority of Burmese Muslims describe themselves as 'Rohingya.'

The Rohingya number about two million people. Approximately 800,000 remain in Burma and 200,000-400,000 in Bangladesh. An estimated half million live in the Middle East as migrant workers, with around 50,000 in Malaysia.

Some are thought to be descendants of migrants who came east from what is now India and Bangladesh during British colonial rule. Others believe the Rohingya descend from Arab traders who settled in Rakhine more than 1,000 years ago. It is impossible to say exactly who came from where and when, but the Burmese junta maintains that the Rohingya are not among the country's 135 recognized ethnic groups.

Since 1982, Rohingya have been denied citizenship. The Rohingya do not have an automatic right to education or work. They need permission to travel even a few miles between villages in Rakhine, much less move freely around Burma. The junta throws a cascade of red tape around marriage, requiring Rohingya to obtain a variety of authorizations before being issued a ‘marriage permit,’ which may take years.

It doesn't end there. Burma's army has targeted almost all of the ethnic groups living along the country's mountainous borderlands, from the Wa and Karen near Thailand, to the Shan on the Chinese frontier, to the Chin living close to India and Bangladesh. These groups have all established powerful militias that have carved out de facto autonomous zones for themselves, in many cases funded by smuggling and drug trafficking, and have to some extent, been able to protect their people from the army.

Defenceless and nowhere to go

However, the Rohingya have remained defenseless. Multiple accounts of torture, summary execution, arbitrary arrest and detention, rape, destruction of homes, forced relocation and eviction, confiscation of land and property and so on, have been given by refugees fleeing to Bangladesh, Thailand and Malaysia.

The situation for Rohingya gets worse, as the junta's resource wealth increases. Since the early 1990s, the number of battalions in western Burma has jumped from three to over 40. The soldiers often live off the land, expropriating property and implementing forced labor projects. The region is close to offshore oil and gas fields, which the junta needs to boost revenues and fund its military expansion. The junta has the biggest army in Southeast Asia, despite having only around one-fifth the population of Indonesia's estimated 250 million, by far the largest country in the region.

The most important new development is the Shwe gas field off the coast of western Rakhine. In December 2008, the Chinese energy company PetroChina signed a 30-year lease with the Burmese to buy natural gas piped from this field, in a consortium involving Indian, Thai, South Korean, Chinese and Burmese interests. Moreover, another pipeline will run from the coast, into western China, transporting crude oil from the Middle East. China wants that pipeline to avoid sending all its oil traffic from the Middle East and Africa through the Straits of Malacca, which it feels are vulnerable to pirates, and to US naval blockade, should relations between Washington and Beijing get testy.

Bangladesh hosts 28,000 Rohingya in two refugee camps supervised by the UN. An estimated 200,000 – 400,000 live outside camps without access to international protection or humanitarian assistance. Many Rohingya have been pushed back into Burma, only to return to Bangladesh.

In recent weeks, a maritime and land border dispute between Burma and Bangladesh has reopened. The Burmese junta is building a border fence between the two countries, and in a cruel twist, is coercing Rohingya into building the fence. According to Bangladeshi media, the junta is hoping to keep the Rohingya that have fled to Bangladesh from being pushed back by Dhaka.

K Mrat Kyaw, editor of Narinjara, a Bangladesh-based news service for Rohingya, told ISN Security Watch that “Bangladesh authorities would like to push back the Rohingya to Burma before the fence is completed.”

Precarious survival conditions in Bangladesh and the closure of other migration routes to the Middle East have resulted in Rohingya moving by boats toward Malaysia via Thailand. This has led to international outcry over reports that Thailand's ‘push-back’ policy involved security forces pushing boat loads of Rohingya into international waters. Indian and Indonesia naval vessels later found drifters and survivors who said they were sent to sea by Thai security officials.

Thailand believed the Rohingya to be economic migrants, rather than refugees, and many of the men were fined for illegal entry as they had no papers – which of course they could not get in the first place given that Burma does not grant them citizenship.

Malaysia is listed by the US State Department as one of the world's places of concern for human trafficking and refuses to sign any refugee conventions. However, it is the destination of choice for Rohingya fleeing Burma, and that Rohingya are willing to pay to be smuggled there says a lot.

As Shu Shi of Malaysian human rights group SUARAM put it to ISN Security Watch, “Basically, the Malaysian authorities treat all the refugees equally badly.”

Little hope

Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, which lobbies for the Rohingya, tells ISN Security Watch that she “hopes the Rohingya issue will be addressed” when a high-level US delegation visits Burma on 3 and 4 November as part of the new 'engagement' policy with the junta.

ASEAN passed the buck on this issue at its 14th summit in February 2009. With ASEAN chair Thailand in the spotlight over the ‘push-backs,’ the bloc delegated the Rohingya issue to the Bali Process, a regional forum on human trafficking and related issues. However, this grouping has not come up with any solutions so far.

The recent 15th ASEAN summit in Thailand made no mention of the Rohingya issue, which could return to the international spotlight soon. Seasonal winds make it easier to travel from Bangladesh and Burma to Thailand by boat from October onward. It is likely that more Rohingya will arrive on Thailand's shores in the coming months, given the border wrangles between Burma and Bangladesh. However, it is not clear whether neighboring states will be more welcoming of Rohingya this time around.

Despite ASEAN’s new human rights commission, member-states Thailand, Malaysia and Burma have not ratified the UN Refugee Convention nor enacted domestic refugee legislation. The same applies to Bangladesh, which is not an ASEAN member.

This means these host countries do not abide by the principle of non-refoulement – which stipulates that refugees cannot be sent back to their home country if it is clear that they face persecution.

Chris Lewa told ISN Security Watch, “I have little hope that the ASEAN human rights body will make any difference to the Rohingya, or to human rights in general in Southeast Asia – at least not for the foreseeable future.”

Simon Roughneen is an ISN Security Watch senior correspondent, currently in Southeast Asia. His website is www.simonroughneen.com.

reliefweb

Eastern Burma: another Darfur?

2009-11-04T05:30:00.001+06:30

New Delhi (Mizzima) –At least 75,000 people became refugees and more than half a million were internally displaced in eastern Burma in the past year, following increased militarisation, which strongly indicates crime against humanity comparable to the situation in Darfur, said a consortium of humanitarian assistance groups.

Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), an alliance of 12 aid organizations, in a new report titled "Protracted Displacement and Militarisation in Eastern Burma" released on Thursday said, threat to human security has been mounting as Burma’s ruling junta continues militarisation in areas of ethnic minorities.

“The process of militarisation has been on in Burma for decades, and this is the continuation of the tactics of controlling the population by moving the Burmese Army into these [ethnic] areas and taking control by moving people to relocation sites,” Sally Thompson, deputy director of the TBBC told Mizzima on Friday.

Thompson said, militarisation in ethnic areas have been continuing and is likely to further increase in the run up to the junta’s elections in 2010, as the regime pressurises ethnic armed rebels to transform into the Border Guard Force (BGF).

Since 1996, the TBBC said, over 3,500 villages, including 120 communities between August 2008 and July 2009, in eastern Burma have been destroyed and forcibly relocated.

The highest rates of recent displacement were reported in northern Karen areas and southern Shan State with almost 60,000 Karen villagers hiding in the mountains of Kyaukgyi, Thandaung and Papun Townships, and a third of these civilians fleeing from artillery attacks or the threat of Burmese Army patrols during the past year, the TBBC said in a statement.

In Shan state, a similar situation prevails with nearly 20,000 civilians from 30 Shan villages forcibly relocated by the Burmese Army in retaliation against Shan State Army-South (SSA-S), an ethnic Shan armed rebel group, in operations in Laikha, Mong Kung and Keh Si Townships.

In late August, conflict between Burmese Army troops and Kokang rebels in Northern Shan State forced over 30,000 Burmese refugees to flee to China.

Thompson said in July, a joint military campaign launched by the Burmese Army and its ally the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), against the Karen National Union (KNU), an ethnic Karen armed group, forced up to 4,000 people to flee to Thailand.

“We expect to see this pattern continuing in the ethnic and border areas as we approach the [2010] elections,” Thompson said.

The TBBC, which has been helping Burmese refugees since 1984, is currently providing food and shelter to more than 150,000 Burmese refugees living in nine camps along the Thai-Burma border.

With increasing conflicts in Burma and the arrival of more refugees, Thompson said these refugees will have no place to return until Burma has national reconciliation through dialogue.

Thompson added that the junta’s planned elections is unlikely to bring stability as it will have no credibility without the release of political prisoners including Aung San Suu Kyi and allow their participation.

But until there is any significant political change that can ensure the return of refugees and internally displaced people, the international community, particularly neighbouring Thailand should continue providing assistance including shelter and food.

The TBBC, which currently is supported by 15 donor countries, also urged the international community to increase their support as with the number of refugees arriving on the Thai-Burma border, and increasing prices, it is facing difficulties in consistently supporting the refugees.

mizzima

Eleven injured in explosion in Taungup, Arakan

2009-11-04T05:28:00.002+06:30

New Delhi (Mizzima) – Eleven people were injured in an explosion in Sarpyin Village of Taungup Township in Burma’s western Arakan state on Sunday evening, local residents said.

A local in Sarpyin told Mizzima on Monday that a loud noise was heard at about 8 p.m. (local time) on Sunday. Eleven people were injured in the blast. Three were taken to hospital as they sustained severe injuries.

“The noise was extremely loud, but no casualties have been reported so far. The victims were taken to Taungup hospital. Eight of the 11 sustained minor injuries. Three, who had serious injuries, are hospitalised as in-ward patients,” the local added.

While it is still not clear what kind of explosives caused the blast, the local added that the police have apprehended a suspect.

“We have been ordered to investigate,” an official at the Taungup Township police station told Mizzima.

The police officer, however, declined to provide further details.

An official at the Taungup hospital did not answer a call.

Arrested poet Khant Min Htet untraceable

2009-11-04T05:28:00.001+06:30

New Delhi (Mizzima) – The whereabouts of poet Khant Min Htet, also the layout designer of Rangoon based Ahlinkar Wutyee Journal, picked up by the police about two weeks ago from his home, is still not known, his family said.

The Special Branch (SB) of the police arrested him on October 22 from his home in Thaketa Township. Four days after his arrest, a four-member SB team came to his home again and searched his house. They seized some CDs from his home and a computer hard disk from his journal office.

"They just said that they are taking him for questioning but we still do not know his whereabouts. The family is terribly worried," father of Khant Min Htet and Padauk Pwint Thit Editor-in-Chief Maung Sein Ni told Mizzima.

His family felt his arrest has something to do with politics but the authorities did not disclose anything about it, his family said.

The Thailand based 'Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners-Burma' (AAPP-B) said that at least 41 political activists including members of the Cyclone Nargis volunteer relief workers group 'Lin Let Kye' were arrested in Rangoon last month.

DKBA Extorts Money and Food Supplies from Karen State Villagers

2009-11-04T05:24:00.001+06:30

HURFOM: On September 9, 2009, The Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA)’s Battalion No. 906 under Captain Ye Myint, based in Dagon Taing village in Kawkareik District, Karen State, asked the residents of nearby village Kwankataung to collectively give the battalion 57 baskets of rice. Kwankataung village is located between Kyainnseikyi Town and Dagon Taing village, east of the Winyaw river.
HUFROM’s field reporter learned that while the Kwankataung village residents were collecting the rice for the battalion, Captain Ye Myint changed his mind and asked them instead for a sum of 300,000 kyat, twice the amount the villagers were able to pay. The extortion fee was eventually settled at 150,000 kyat, as well as a smaller amount of foodstuffs.

Phoe Tar, a 35 years old Kwankataung villager, said, “The Captain did not like our rice’s bad quality and asked for money instead of us giving the rice to them. They asked for 300,000 kyat. Our villagers couldn’t afford that amount of money to give them immediately. So, we negotiated with the captain and gave them half the amount of money they asked. In addition, we also had to give them 15 baskets of rice.”

Kwankataung village contains a variety of ethnicities, but the largest group living in the village is ethnic Burmese, and the village contains about 200 households Most of families located in the village rely on farming or fishing for their survival, although this year’s heavy rains have flooded many of the village’s paddy fields. 40% of the village’s population are fisherman. During the summer, most of the villagers farm summer paddies. The amount of money demanded by the DKBA is thus a huge blow to villagers already struggling to survive this year’s torrential rains.

Kyaw Aye Doe, a 44 year old farm worker from Kwankataung village said, “Most of resident’s do not know where they will get a meal for tomorrow. Our children don’t get snacks, even though there is not even enough rice for them to eat. Our children are malnourished. The DKBA also knew about our situation but they forced our resident give them the rice and money. They just want to kill our villagers by acting like that.”

According to Saw Nay Doe, 37 years old, “I have paid 4,000 Kyat for [my portion of the] extortion money for the DKBA’s troops. At the moment, one of my wife’s relatives lent me that money. I have to work hard to get money for paying him back. Before, DKBA’s troop just collected 1 bulge of rice (0.25 Kilogram). Now, we have lost both rice and money. I feel very sad for my children because they don’t have enough food. I don’t want to live under armed force anymore. But I don’t know how we will get out from this plight.”

“The DKBA’s troops always rely on the area residents. If they don’t have money in their packages, they just point gun at resident’s heads and ask for money and food. That’s the reason the troops are increasing. It’s very nice for opportunist people in the area,” he added.

rehmonnya

LIB No. 556 uses KNU activity to justify human rights violations in Palaw Township, Margue District

2009-11-04T05:23:00.001+06:30

HURFOM, Palaw: According to HURFOM reporters, the Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) No. 556 has been using rumors of KNU activity in Palaw Township, Margue Distirct, to arrest, threaten, and extort money from the residents of various villages throughout Palaw Township. The majority of the reports that HURFOM received centered around the village of Pawkataw, where a string of violent arrests commenced two weeks ago during a Christian church service.
One Pawkataw villager said, “On October 18, 2009, the LIB No. 556, led by Lieutenant colonel Min Htet Kyaw, entered Pawkataw village after clashing [with the KNU] near that village. The troops arrested the people they saw in the streets and beat them, after that they called to the residents who were praying in church to come out, and they beat them too, and arrested them. At that time, the village headman lost consciousness, and preacher bled from the head. They arrested all people [from the church] and took them back to Khelmar village, and later to Palaw town.

Daw Sein Yee, 52, a Pawkataw villager and the relative of a woman who had been arrested by LIB no. 556 told HURFOM’s reporter, “On the way back to Khelmar [where the battalion is based] village, they ran across 7 people on their way – 2 of Burman-Indians and 5 Burmans. They [the troops] interrogated them and beat them. The troops released the women and children that accompanied the group of 7 men, 3 mothers and 2 children, midway back to Khelmar village. But they arrested the men and took them first back to Khelmar, and then to Palaw Township.”

Daw Sein Yee added, “When they arrived at Palaw town, they asked the residents questions about [KNU] fighting near their village [Palaw town]. Because the town residents didn’t know exactly which [KNU} group, or who the group was led by, the LIB no. 556’s Lieutenant Colonel commanded his troops to beat these people [from Palaw town] up too, but at the end of the day all of the people that had been arrested were released. A villager named Saw Kyaw Lay got a very bad injury from being beaten by the troops. He had to go to Palaw hospital for his injury.”

HURFOM’s reporters learned that the LIB no. 556 troops intimidated the Pawkataw village headman, the headman’s secretary and a villager named U Paw. The troops reportedly informed the three that if the LIB. No 556 encounters them [the headman and his cohorts] near Pawkataw a second time, they will be killed. The headman, his secretary, and U Paw have since departed from Pawkataw village.

According to HURFOM’s reporter, when LIB No. 556 entered the Pawkataw village, they also extorted money from a few villagers, aside from their arrests at the Christian church. According to interviews, the troops extorted 300,000 kyat from a villager named Daw cherry; a ring [a piece of jewelry] and 100,000 kyat from a villager named Naw Mu Sey; and food and other goods from a villager named Ma Thu Nay Chel. The troops also reportedly took roughly 150,000 kyat worth of housing materials and 100,000 kyat in cash from a villager named Naw Kar Htuu; the troops stole housing materials from a villager named Saw Phee Shwe; finally, the troops also stole 200,000 kyat worth of housing materials and 120,000 kyat in cash from a villager named Naw Dar Shi. Pawkataw villagers informed HURFOM’s reporter that after collecting the housing materials, money, and other goods they had extorted, the troops intimated that any further rumor of KNU activity near Pawkataw village would result in the villagers’ deaths.

rehmonnya

Living conditions for displaced villagers and ongoing abuses in Tenasserim Division

2009-11-04T05:18:00.001+06:30

Tenasserim Division is Burma's southernmost region, bordered by the Andaman Sea to the west and Thailand to the east. Fairly narrow and never more than 60 miles (97 kilometres) across, the 400 mile (644 kilometre) long division constitutes a narrow peninsula, shared with Thailand and pointing towards Malaysia. The northern end of the division, Kaw Te Hgah Township, has received extensive international coverage for abuses related to the Yadana and Yetagun gas projects,[1] both owned by international energy companies, as all well as the government-owned Kanbauk to Myaing Kalay gas pipeline.[2]

Abuses in areas of Tenasserim Division south of the pipeline area have received little coverage, however, belying the degree to which human rights continue to be consistently violated by the Burma Army. [3] In 1996, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) [4] began forcibly relocating thousands of villagers to government-controlled areas. A decade later, villagers still living in these sites, as well as villagers in previously existing villages in nearby areas, report exploitative abuses including forced labour, arbitrary 'taxation,' movement restrictions and punishment as alleged supporters of the Karen National Union (KNU). Because of abuses such as these, thousands of villagers and internally displaced people (IDPs) continue to pursue life hiding in areas not under State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) control. These villagers report that they are targeted by the Burma Army, which works to create living conditions so untenable that villagers are forced to move to villages under SPDC control.

Life for villagers evading SPDC control

Tenasserim Division is home to relatively fewer displaced villagers in hiding when compared with other Karen areas, such as the northern districts of Toungoo, Nyaunglebin and Papun. More than 3,050 people remain in hiding throughout Ler Mu Lah and Te Naw Th’ri Townships, [5] however, and villagers continue to report abuses similar to those suffered by IDPs hiding elsewhere in Karen State. SPDC Army soldiers patrol non-SPDC controlled areas for IDPs, destroying plantations, hill fields, homes and food stores. Patrols in Tenasserim Division also operate on a shoot-on-sight policy, and villagers report being shot at by the Burma Army while working at their farms and plantations, while walking and staying inside their villages. The SPDC also continues to make extensive use of unmarked landmines, as does the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA, the armed wing of the KNU), though to a lesser degree.

On September 2nd 2009, for instance, a group of 11 IDP villagers were attacked as they returned from their hill fields near Ht--- village, Ler Mu Lah Township, Tenasserim Division. At 4:00 pm, the group, along with a KNLA escort, encountered 100 soldiers from SPDC Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) #557, which opened fire upon sighting them. All but one of the villagers were able to safely flee. The 11th, Saw G---, was wounded in the leg, but was able to escape after the KNLA soldier stayed behind to fire on and delay LIB #557. Villagers told KHRG that they found the dead body of the KNLA soldier the next day.

Like IDPs elsewhere in Karen areas, villagers hiding in Tenasserim Division continue to employ a variety of strategies to resist abuse by the SPDC army, including using flight to avoid SPDC-control and advanced preparation of hiding sites and food storage to make this evasion more effective. [6] Below is an extended quote from Naw R---, who lives in N--- village, Te Naw Th'ri Township, in which she describes her experience fleeing from Burma Army patrols and the measures she and her husband have since taken to prepare for future flight. The interview took place during May 2007; it has not previously been published by KHRG:

"Because of the operation of SPDC soldiers we dare not to live in our own village. We always have to move to another new place. We're afraid of them [SPDC soldiers] because if they see us they might use us as porters or shoot us. I came to escape here at N--- village last year... We had to swim and cross the river from N--- village to Ht--- village because our boat was broken. We slept in Ht--- village for one night; we were in trouble, and there were no places to sleep... [The next day] SPDC soldiers came to this village [Ht---] and started to shoot at the villagers. We were very worried and had to [leave and] find our own safe place. I couldn't carry my children and bags. It was raining a lot so we couldn't run very far. Pa Ht--- [her neighbour] could carry just one blanket. We had to run as fast as we could. We almost lost our way. There were five families altogether. One of my neighbours lost his child because he had to carry things and his three children also. After that we became separated in groups and couldn't find each other... We ran without stopping until we reached a safe place. It was beside the stream. There was no food this time. Mosquitoes kept biting us. I felt very sad for my children. A leech bit my husband. We stayed hiding ourselves here until we knew that the SPDC soldiers had gone away from us... Regarding the issues [described above], we decided to build a secret hut for our family deep in the jungle. If the soldiers come, then we run immediately to our own hut."

In spite of the difficult conditions in which they live, villagers have also described attempts to maintain their sense of community. In the quote below, Saw B--- describes how he and other villagers from the T--- village area responded to 5 villagers being killed by landmines by holding a memorial service, in spite of danger from SPDC activity in their area. The interview took place in June 2007; it has not previously been published by KHRG:

"The situation here is very bad and unstable. SPDC soldiers put landmines around our paddy fields and betel nut plantations. Very recently, five villagers accidentally stepped on landmines and died. We did not even dare to go and carry them to the village. We were very upset by this, so we held a memorial service for them... The SPDC soldiers have lots of movement in this area. They never leave the villagers alive; they just shoot us when they see us. Even if we are not their enemies they shoot at us. Last year they came to our village many times. We had to flee and find our own safe places. But after they left we went back to our village. They [the SPDC soldiers] destroyed and burnt our paddy fields."

Life in SPDC-controlled villages and relocation sites

In September 1996, concurrent with an offensive against Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA, the armed wing of the KNU) positions in Tenasserim Division and Dooplaya District, the SLORC forcibly relocated thousands of villagers to government controlled relocation sites. Affected areas included more than 40 densely populated villages between the Andaman coast and Tenasserim River, from Palauk in northern Ler Mu Lah Township to Tenasserim Town in Te Naw Th'ri Township. Another 20 villages were forcibly located form areas south of Tenasserim Town. Villagers were ordered to relocate to sites near the north-south Tavoy-Mergui motor road, or near majority ethnic-Burman villages near the southern end of the Tenasserim River.[7]

More than ten years later, villagers in these relocation sites as well as other villages in SPDC controlled parts of Tenasserim Division report exploitative abuse and movement restrictions that make meeting livelihood needs intensely difficult. In the area around the Le Nya SPDC Army camp in Te Naw Th'ri Township, for instance, villagers report abuses including forced labour and cash payments for building army facilities. On September 5th 2009, SPDC soldiers from LIB #559 based in Le Nya under the command of officer Aung Myint Lin ordered the head of nearby M--- village to send them two porters to carry army equipment. The village head told KHRG after his village provided the porters that he had no knowledge of where they had gone.

Elsewhere in Te Naw Th'ri Township, on September 20th 2009 LIB #561 based at Tone Daw ordered villagers from T---, N--- and B--- village tracts to provide 40 porters. These village tracts are made up of a total of 20 villages, each of which was ordered to send two people. Before the porters were actually sent to Tone Daw, however, the villagers were informed that they should send cash payment for the hire of porters in lieu of sending actual people. The villages were instructed to collect a total of 1.6 million kyat (approx. US $1,516) and deliver it to the army camp at Ler Ker, Te Naw Th'ri Township. Villagers subsequently told KHRG researchers that they do not believe the money will be used for hiring porters. These villagers said that this kind of incident happens at least twice a year; they are required to both make payments allegedly for hiring porters, and work as unpaid porters themselves.

Residents of relocation sites have also complained of exploitative abuses, which weigh especially heavy because villagers at these sites live under restricted conditions that drastically limit their ability to support themselves, let alone meet SPDC demands for forced labour and arbitrary 'taxation.' At the H--- relocation site in the Le Nya area, for instance, villagers describe restrictions on their ability to access farm fields as well as conduct outside trade, regular demands for forced labour and cash payments. It has been over a decade since more than 430 households from 6 villagers were relocated to the H--- site in an SPDC-controlled area, but villagers report that they are still sometimes accused and beaten as if they are KNLA supporters. Though from June 2007, the extended quote below does a remarkable job describing the full gamut of abuses suffered by villagers in H---; in October 2009, everything described blow by Saw G--- is still accurate:

"All the villagers from L--- village area came down here [to H---]. No one is back there [at L---] because everybody left. If the SPDC sees villagers that stayed behind, they'll kill [them] all. They [the SPDC] will keep no one alive. At the upper area [near L--- village], they killed Saw P--- and Saw K---. There are still some hiding in the jungle. Some villagers from the relocation site ran away... They didn't have arrangements for us at the site [when we first arrived]. We had to build our own houses and look for our own food... If we are sick we have to buy the medicine and use it [ourselves, without a doctor]. They don't distribute medicine for us. If they [the SPDC] hear of some bad situation [activity by the KNLA], they come into the site and accuse the villagers of contacting outside people [the KNLA]. They pretend to be confident about what they say so people will be afraid of them. We have to be afraid of them. Sometimes they tortured people, but sometimes not...

We also have to pay the taxes. We have to pay for their office and for their battalion. Many things we have to pay for. I have many debts to pay. I had to pay 30,000 kyat [to the SPDC]. I couldn't collect [the money] from the villagers. I have to pay by myself [because he is the headman]. They [the SPDC] often come and collect money and we have to pay it... They've asked for so many things, I can't remember all of them... They've also often asked us to go and cut bamboo, make fences for them and dig the ground. We often have to go for loh ah pay. [8] It's not scheduled and it changes. Sometimes [the SPDC demands forced labour] once a week and sometimes twice a month. Sometimes for a whole month we don't have to go. Every time we go we have to bring our own food and equipment. They don't give us anything, but we have to give them food. We have to do their work, and give them our food... They often demand more than 15 people, 10 people has been the least that they've demanded... Even people who are seriously sick still have to pay money to be allowed not to go [and do forced labour]... We can't ask to be excused-if we do that, it's possible that they'll beat us dead...

I would like to let the world know that the SPDC demands a lot of money from the villagers and has asked villagers from L---, Hs---, and Gk--- to do forced labour. I can't say the date and year because I don't understand [calendrical] records.... They [the SPDC] restrict people trading food or other things. If they see people carrying lots of things with them, they arrest them and demand money... We can carry only 10 packets of coffee mix and some other small packets of MSG. When all of these are sold, we have to go again to get more. We have to go half an hour by boat to get these things and the cost of the petrol is more than what we can make from selling these things... Most of the prices for things are high... We want the prices to get lower. But now they're going up and up."

Conclusion"One thing that we would like to say and request to the SPDC is: 'please don't disturb us and stop killing us and using us as porters.' We don't want to stay under the control of SPDC soldiers... Now the animals here are gone because the SPDC soldiers took them as their own. We're so poor; we have nothing. Why do the SPDC soldiers keep collecting money from us, taking our properties and killing us? We don't know where to go next. We are already exhausted."

-Saw B--- (male, 38), T--- village, Te Naw Th'ri Township, Tenasserim Division (June 2007)

"The area [Te Naw Th'ri Township] is good for plantations and paddy. One big tin [12.5 kgs. / 27.6 lbs.] of paddy seed for sowing could yield 120 baskets of [harvested] paddy. It's a plain and nice place. The river is good and full of fish; [the jungle is] full of animals like elephants, deer, monkeys, buffaloes and other kinds of animals. If we look at all this, if it weren't for the SPDC abuses, life here would be plentiful."

-KHRG field researcher, Te Naw Th'ri Township, Tenasserim Division (July 2007)

Human rights conditions for villagers living in areas both inside and outside SPDC control in Tenasserim Division, particularly southern areas in Ler Mu Lah and Te Naw Th'ri townships, have received little coverage since the late 1990s. This is not an accurate reflection of the degree to which villagers in these areas suffer abuse at the hands of the Burma Army. In SPDC controlled villages and relocation sites, villagers continue to report livelihood conditions that are severely undermined by exploitative abuses such as forced labour and extortionate and arbitrary 'taxation.' At least 3,050 displaced villagers hiding in southern Tenasserim Division, meanwhile, continue to be subjected to the Burma Army's shoot-on-sight policy; villagers report that they are pursued by SPDC patrols, injured by landmines and attacked in their villages and as they work on their farms.

khrg

Hazardous Waste Contaminates Rivers near Rangoon

2009-11-04T05:16:00.000+06:30

RANGOON — Water pollution is nearing hazardous levels as waste water and chemicals from factories and industrial zones are increasingly discharged into the rivers around Burma's old capital, Rangoon.

"I would say the pollution is at its worst levels, but it is not too late if we can start containing it now,” said an environmental activist. “The main problem is waste water from the factories, which should only discharge waste water after systematic cleaning it. As it is now, the factories and distilleries just dump the waste water out as is."

The environmentalist, who asked not to be identified, monitors water pollution every three months in the Hlaing, Pegu and Nga Moe Yeik rivers, where 29 streams and watersheds are flowing into.

He said there are 14 industrial zones in Rangoon and a total of 4,388 industries and factories. Many of the industrial zones are along three main rivers, which discharge into the sea near Rangoon.

Chemicals and waste water from factories decrease the oxygen content in water and settle as sediment on the river bed.

A Rangoon-based zoologist, who also asked to remain anonymous, said pollution in the rivers endanger people who depend on the water for drinking and cooking and also fish and other aquatic life.

She said her studies found that some species of fish and prawn have disappeared from the Pan Hlaing and Hlaing rivers in recent years because of pollution.

"When I started my observation in 1990, I found 21 species of fish and three species of prawn in the Pan Hlaing River. In 2009, it was reduced to 18 species of fish and two species of prawn,” she said.

Hilsas (Hilsa ilisha) in the lower section of the Rangoon River has been declining, she said, and this year, she couldn’t find any hilsas migrating to spawn upstream in the Pegu, Hlaing and Pan Hlaing rivers during their usual mating season in February and March.

The governmental departments charged with managing water resources and rivers have said they are working to reduce water pollution and the discharge of dangerous waste and chemicals.

Meanwhile, the situation is rapidly deteriorating and poses a threat to humans and wildlife, said environmentalists.

irrawaddy

Bombs Damage TV Station, Gambling Businesses in Kokang

2009-11-04T05:15:00.000+06:30

At least 10 bombs exploded in the Laogai area, the Kokang capital in northern Shan State, on Saturday, an area now controlled by Burmese government troops, according to border sources.

Aung Kyaw Zaw, a former Communist rebel who observes Sino-Burma affairs from Yunnan Province in China, told The Irrawaddy on Monday that the bombs damaged a TV station, gambling casinos and other businesses.

The explosions occurred during the night. No reports of dead or injured were available.

Government authorities in Laogai said a relative of Peng Jiasheng, the former Kokang leader ousted by the junta, was believed to be responsible for the explosions.

However, Aung Kyaw Zaw said that the bombs might have been the work of a disgruntled faction of Kokang troops led by Bai Souqian and resulted from a power-sharing struggle within the group. The junta elevated Bai Souqian to the leadership position of Kokang troops following Peng Jiasheng’s ouster from power in September.

The bombings were the first in the Laogai region after the recent clashes between government troops and Kokang militia led by Peng Jiasheng, which forced thousands of refugees into China.

After his ouster, Peng Jiasheng told The Irrawaddy in an interview in September that the war between the government and his private militia will be long, and the conflict will be impossible to end soon. Sino-Burma border sources said Peng Jiasheng’s militia, led by his son, has been active in the region. The government accused Peng Jiasheng of operating an illegal drug network.

On the day the bombs went off, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was urging Burmese Prime Minister Gen Thein Sein to establish peace and stability along the Sino-Burmese border. They met at the 15th Asean Summit in Hua Hin, Thailand.

Wen told Thein Sein that Beijing “hopes that the Burmese regime will achieve stability, national reconciliation and development” in Burma, according to the China Ministry of Foreign Affairs Web site.

China pledged to provide more aid to Burma in order to strengthen its economy and trade, infrastructure, utilities, energy and other areas.

It was the highest level meeting between Chinese and Burmese officials since 37,000 Kokang Chinese refugees in Burma fled to China in September. At least two Chinese citizens were reportedly killed during the government offensive, and there was widespread looting by government troops of property owned by Chinese citizens.

irrawaddy

Eastern Burma ‘Comparable’ to Darfur: TBBC

2009-11-04T05:07:00.000+06:30

The growing instability in eastern Burma from ongoing military conflict is forcing thousands of ethnic people to become internally displaced persons (IDPs), according to a press release from the Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC) on Thursday.

The statement said at least 75,000 people in eastern Burma were forced to leave their homes during the past year, meaning the number of IDPs in the area now exceeds half a million. TBBC compared the scale of displacement to that of Darfur in eastern Sudan.

“After 25 years of responding to the consequences of conflict in eastern Burma, it is tragic to see the causes remain unaddressed and the situation is likely to further deteriorate during the next 12 months.” Jack Dunford, the executive director of TBBC said in the statement.

Bangkok-based TBBC, an umbrella group of aid agencies that supplies a high percentage of humanitarian aid to IDPs and refugees at the Thai-Burmese border, said that between August 2008 and July 2009, some 120 communities were destroyed, making a total of more than 3,500 villages and “hiding sites” in eastern Burma that have been destroyed or forcibly relocated since 1996.

The main threats to human security in eastern Burma are related to militarization, TBBC said. While military patrols and landmines are the most significant and fastest growing threats to civilian safety and security, forced labor and restrictions on movement are the most pervasive threats to livelihoods.

Duncan McArthur, a coordinator of emergency relief for the TBBC, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday: “The people don’t have any security and our survey indicates the situation is getting worse.

“We have documented the situation to highlight the ongoing problems for ethnic people in eastern Burma,” he said.

The northern Karen area and southern Shan State have the highest rates of recent displacement, according to the report. Almost 60,000 Karen villagers are in hiding in the mountains of Kyaukgyi, Thandaung and Papun townships, a third of who fled from artillery attacks or the threat of Burmese government troop patrols during the past year.

In Shan State, nearly 20,000 civilians from 30 villages were forcibly relocated by the Burmese government forces in retaliation for Shan State Army-South operations in Laikha, Mong Kung and Keh Si townships, said TBBC.

The statement said that the scale of displaced villages has been recognized as the strongest single indicator of crimes against humanity in eastern Burma

irrawaddy

Suu Kyi Unhappy with Restrictions

2009-11-04T05:05:00.000+06:30

RANGOON — Detained Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is unhappy about restrictions on the visitors she is allowed under house arrest, including members of her legal team and an architect needed to help repair her dilapidated lakeside home.

Nyan Win, one of her lawyers, said after meeting with her Thursday that she complained that the ruling military junta is infringing upon her rights.
Her complaint comes as the regime prepares for elections next year and seeks more recognition from the international community. The United States had isolated the junta with political and economic sanctions, but the Obama administration decided recently to step up engagement as a way of promoting reforms.

Suu Kyi "has asked us to send a letter to the authorities to allow all four lawyers to meet her at once and to meet the architect," said Nyan Win, who along with fellow lawyer Kyi Wynn met with her to discuss an appeal of her most recent sentence of house arrest.

"She said this is her personal right and authorities had no right to limit them," he said.

Suu Kyi said she would prefer to listen to the views of more lawyers and that she needs an architect to help repair the two-story house where she is confined, Nyan Win said.

The terms of Suu Kyi's current detention are less strict than her previous term of house arrest, when the only outsiders she was allowed to see were her doctor and, occasionally, visiting UN envoys.

Under an eight-point set of rules, Suu Kyi can now receive visitors with prior permission from the junta, has the right to medical treatment by doctors and nurses, and is allowed to see state-controlled newspapers and magazines and state-run television. She recently met with several foreign ambassadors stationed in Burma.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has spent 14 of the last 20 years in detention. In August, she was sentenced to an additional 18 months of house arrest for allowing an uninvited American to stay briefly at her home earlier this year.

The sentence, which ensured that she would not be able to participate in next year's elections, drew international condemnation.

Suu Kyi's legal team plans to appeal the sentence to the Supreme Court.

irrawaddy

Karen Fear Military Offensive near Planned Dam

2009-11-04T05:03:00.000+06:30

BANGKOK — With the annual monsoon rains ending, there is a growing fear among the Karen ethnic minority living along military-ruled Burma's eastern border of a dry season offensive. The most vulnerable are villagers residing in the vicinity of the controversial Hat Gyi dam.

The Burmese military will use its proxy force, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), to target the area along the Salween River that is essential to the Hat Gyi dam, environmentalists and human rights activists told IPS.

Besides driving out the unarmed Karen civilians, the offensive will also target the fifth brigade of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), currently camped along the Salween River, which flows past the border that Burma shares with Thailand, they added.

The KNLA is the armed wing of the Karen National Union (KNU), which has been waging Asia's longest separatist struggle—since 1949—to carve out an independent state for the Karen minority in Burma, also known as Myanmar. The DKBA is a breakaway group, splitting from the KNU in 1995 and joining forces with Burma's oppressive regime.

"The attacks in the fifth brigade area to defeat the KNU and clear the area for the dam will result in thousands of Karen fleeing across the Thai border as refugee," said David Thakerbaw, vice president of the KNU." It will lead to more human rights violations, adding more suffering to what the people have already endured."

"People in that area are opposed to the Hay Gyi dam for this reason," he added during a telephone interview from an undisclosed location along the Thai-Burma border. "The dam area will become more militarized; the Burmese army will bring in more troops to keep the site under their control."

Such a grim forecast stems from what happened in June, soon after the monsoon rains broke. The Tatmadaw, as Burma's over 400,000-strong military is called, launched an offensive with the DKBA, vanquishing the important seventh brigade of the KNU. The surprise attack forced over 4,000 already displaced Karens to flee into Thailand.

This onslaught and the link it had to the planned Hat Gyi dam, which the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) has agreed to partially finance, prompted the KNU to ask the Thai government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to withdraw Bangkok's support for the dam.

"There has been no proper survey to assess the environmental and social damage that the dam might cause," wrote General Tamla Baw, president of the KNU, to Abhisit in an early August letter.

"The building of the dam at this time would bring many thousands of the junta's troops who would perpetrate widespread human rights violations, such as forced labor, torture, extra-judicial executions, rape of women, looting of property (and) extortion."
"The plan of the (Burmese regime) is to control KNLA positions for providing security to the construction of the dam," revealed the letter, seen by IPS. "(This area) will become the centre for EGAT to transport construction materials to Yinbaing village, which is at the dam site."

"I would like to appeal to you and your government not to repatriate the Karen refugees in Thailand and not to initiate construction of the Hat Gyi dam," added Gen Tamla Baw.

The recent flow of Karen refugees from Burma added to the already 120,000 refugees who have been living in camps on the Thai side of the border for over two decades. Within Burma, the plight of the Karens is as dire. They are among the estimated 540,000 internally displaced people seeking refuge in forests and in the mountains after fleeing attacks by the Tatmadaw.

"The highest rates of recent displacement were reported in northern Karen areas and southern Shan Sate," the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, a humanitarian organization helping Burma's ethnic minorities fleeing into Thailand, revealed this week. "Almost 60,000 Karen villagers are hiding in the mountains of Kyaukkgi, Thandaung and Papun Township, and a third of these civilians fled from artillery attacks from Burmese army patrols during the past year."

The Karen, who make up an estimated seven million people of Burma's 56 million population, are one of the largest ethnic minorities in this South-east Asian nation. The Shan and the Kachin are among the other groups in a country that has a patchwork of some 130 ethnic communities.

Burma's military has been waging wars with nearly 20 ethnic rebel groups since it gained independence from the British colonizers in 1948.

The Karen and militants in the Shan area have refused to kowtow to the military regime—unlike the 17 other ethnic separatist movements that signed ceasefire agreements two decades ago—consequently denying the Burmese regime total control of its land area.

Burma's military regime has attracted interest from China and EGAT, Thailand's state-run power utility, to invest in a cascade of dams along the 2,800 kilometer-long Salween, the longest untouched body of water flowing through South-east Asia. Its source is the mountains of Tibet, then coursing through China's southern Yunan province, enters Burma, touches the Thai-Burma border, and then flows out into the Andaman Sea.

In June 2006, Burma's department of electricity, EGAT and China's Sinohydro Corporation, signed an agreement to build the Hat Gyi dam, which is expected to stand 33 meters tall. Much of its 1360 megawatts of power will be destined to quench Thailand's demand for energy.

"Thailand's involvement in this dam means that the roads with close and direct access to the Thai border have become important for the Burmese military. That is why the dam area was targeted in June," said Paul Seint Twa, the director of Karen River Watch, an environment group based along the Thai-Burma border. "The Burmese army needs to make the dam site more attractive to the Thai investors."

Till such attacks in June, the access road to the dam site was more circuitous—passing through central Burma—or through "areas held by the KNU, which controlled all movement," added Seint Twa during a telephone interview from the Thai-Burma border. "But even after the June attacks, the area is not completely under the Burmese army's control."

The heavy human and environment cost to build the dam is turning the heat on the Abhisit administration. "The government has not decided. It is waiting for recommendations from a committee set up to listen to the concerns," said Pianporn Deetes, the coordinator of Living River Siam, a Thai green group based in the northern city of Chiang Mai. "Activists want the government to halt this project, but EGAT wants it to be built."

The message to Bangkok from Thai environmentalists is the same as the Karen. "There is a link between the conflict and the dam," Pianporn told IPS. "Our field surveys show the area around the dam is becoming more militarized."

irrawaddy

Kachins to Meet US Delegation

2009-11-04T05:02:00.000+06:30

LAIZA, Kachin State—Representatives of Burma's ethnic Kachin State are en route to the capital, Naypyidaw, to attend a meeting on Wednesday with a US delegation led by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell. The delegation marks the first meeting between Kachin ethnic leaders and US officials since World War II.

The armed cease-fire group, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), previously expressed an interest in attending the meeting, but the military government denied it the opportunity to participate.

However, in a compromise arrangement, well-known Kachin peace brokers Rev Dr. Lahtaw Saboi Jum and Dr. Manam Duga will deliver the KIO's proposal for a federal system in Burma and represent the organization's official stance.

“We want to let them know we just want a real federal system,” said KIO Vice Chief of Staff Gen Gun Maw. “We are requesting they [the two Kachin delegates] talk about this on behalf of the ethnic minorities.”

Campbell has said the Obama administration will continue to press for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and for an end to conflicts with ethnic minority groups. Campbell has said he views US delegations as a means to facilitate genuine dialogue between the Burmese government, the democratic opposition and the ethnic minorities.

The delegation will meet individually with ethnic representatives and junta officials, and has requested to meet privately with Suu Kyi. US officials have stated they will not be meeting with junta Snr-Gen Than Shwe on this visit.

irrawaddy

Border Guard Deadline Passes Without Agreement

2009-11-04T05:01:00.000+06:30

The Burmese regime’s deadline for 17 cease-fire militia groups to accept the transformation of their troops into junta-controlled border guard forces passed on October 31 with a few militias accepting the order and stronger ones, such as United Wa State Army (UWSA) and Kachin Independent Organization (KIO), rejecting it.

Instead of opting for a military solution, the junta will likely focus on negotiations to persuade recalcitrant militias to accept the order, observers said.

According to Kachin sources, KIO Vice Chairman Gauri Zau Seng, KIA Vice Chief of Staff Gen Gun Maw and others are expected to meet with the junta's Northern Command in Myitkyina during the first week of November to discuss the latest proposal.

Ma Grang, a Kachin source on the Sino-Burma border, said KIO leaders will meet with Burmese authorities after they sent a letter in October demanding an agreement based on the spirit of the Panglong Agreement made with the Burmese government in 1947.

The Panglong Agreement, a one-page document, states the central government will not “operate in respect to the Frontier Areas in any matter which would deprive any portion of those areas of the autonomy which it now enjoys in internal administration.”

Kachin sources also said the internal autonomy promised to outlying ethnic areas has never been fully realized.

Junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe was reportedly very angry with the KIO letter, saying Kachin leaders did not understand the spirit of the Panglong Agreement, Ma Grang said.

The KIO leaders also said they wish to discuss whether its militia will become a border guard force or a Kachin Regional Guard Force with the new government after the 2010 election, he said.

Aung Kyaw Zaw, a former Communist and expert on issues along the Sino-Burma border said the Wa will continue negotiations.

A UWSA officer in the Wa capital Panghsang said, “the deadline is over but we have not reached agreement with the Burmese regime and will continue to negotiate.”

He said Wa leaders will hold talks about the border guard force issue with Lt-Gen Ye Myint, head of the junta’s Military Affairs Security, this month.

Though pressures on the UWSA have increased, major fighting seems unlikely at present.

A Wa official said Wa leaders meeting with a Burmese delegation led by the Commander of the Lashio-based Northeastern Region Command, Maj-Gen Aung Than Htut, in October demanded autonomy.

“Aung Than Htut said he will submit the request to his superiors,” he said.

Other ceasefire militias that rejected the border guard force order or remain undecided are the Shan State Army-North, the New Mon State Party, the National Democratic Alliance Army known as the Mongla militia, and the KNU/KNLA Peace Council.

The Mongla militia reportedly said they will hold talks with its military allies the UWSA before making a final decision over the border guard force order.

Mongla delegates who met with Lt-Gen Ye Myint on Oct 28 accepted the regime’s border guard force plan in principle, but they opposed a proposal to assign 30 junta military officials to each battalion, deployment of Burmese army battalions and staff in the Mongla region or any sudden changes to the Mongla region’s administration.

However, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) and several small militias such as the New Democratic Army-Kachin, the Kachin Defense Army, the Karenni National People’s Liberation Front and the Karen Peace Force have agreed to serve as border guard forces.

A source close to the DKBA said they reportedly signed an agreement with the regime to serve as a junta dominated border guard force before the deadline.

Since then DKBA troops have been cleaning up Karen National Liberation Army bases on the Thai-Burmese border, said the source.

Recently, some 700 DKBA troops were sent to KNLA Brigade 5 in Papun district and Brigade 3 in northern Karen State. The troops have seized several KNLA outposts since the deployment, the DKBA source said.

irrawaddy

US Delegation Arrives in Naypyidaw

2009-11-04T04:59:00.000+06:30

US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell arrived in Naypyidaw on Tuesday morning to hold a meeting with Burmese military government officials, the US embassy in Rangoon confirmed.

An official with the embassy who spoke on condition of anonymity because of protocol told The Irrawaddy that Campbell flew straight to the remote Burmese capital with three other State Department officials and that the flight arrived at 10:20 a.m. local time.

According to diplomatic sources, Campbell is accompanied by Deputy Assistant Secretary for Southeast Asia Scot Marciel, the US State Department’s Burma Officer Laura Scheible and another State Department officer.

The embassy official said that the US delegation is scheduled to stay in Naypyidaw all day on Tuesday to engage in direct dialogue with representatives of the Burmese regime before flying to Rangoon on Wednesday to meet pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as other opposition leaders and ethnic representatives.

Responding to a question as to whether Campbell will meet with junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe and Prime Minister Thein Sein, the embassy official said that he believed the delegation will meet with Thein Sein.

“But for sure, he [Campbell] is meeting with the people he met in New York during the time of the [UN] General Assembly. He will meet the same people he met then, but also with other people,” the embassy official added.

On Sept. 29 in New York, Campbell led a US delegation in talks with Burmese government officials, including a former Burmese ambassador to Washington, Minister of Science and Technology U Thaung,

To mark the arrival of Campbell in Naypyidaw, 50 civil society groups from Burma and other Asian nations urged the US to remain firm in its efforts to support genuine democratization and national reconciliation in the country.

In an open letter, the groups called for Campbell to ensure that the regime meets key benchmarks before next year’s election, including: the release of Suu Kyi and all political prisoners; an end to attacks against ethnic groups; an inclusive dialogue; and a review of the 2008 Constitution.

Speaking at the US Congress on Oct. 21 before his trip to Burma, Campbell said the US must be prepared to sustain efforts beyond the planned 2010 election. “Some day, a new generation of leaders in Burma will come to power,” he said.

irrawaddy