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Sunday 28 February 2010

US lawmaker seeks to punish Myanmar on Suu Kyi

WASHINGTON — The United States on Friday criticized Myanmar's Supreme Court for not releasing Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, with one lawmaker saying the time had come to tighten sanctions.

The military-ruled nation's highest court rejected an appeal by the democracy champion to be freed from house arrest. The verdict comes ahead of elections which have raised deep suspicions among the opposition and overseas.

"We condemn the Supreme Court's decision," a State Department official said, saying that Aung San Suu Kyi was being held under house arrest "for purely political reasons."

The official, who by protocol could not be named, said that the United States "strongly" urged Myanmar to free other political prisoners and allow them to participate fully in the political process.

Representative Joe Crowley, a Democrat who has long championed Aung San Suu Kyi, said the time had come for the United States to implement tighter sanctions that target military leader Than Shwe's regime.

"Aung San Suu Kyi's 14-year imprisonment has been a sham from day one," Crowley said.

"The cruel military junta must face consequences for violating the human rights of the Burmese people," he said, using Myanmar's former name of Burma.

The United States last year opened dialogue with Myanmar as part of the Obama administration's policy of reaching out to adversarial regimes.

The Obama administration argued that the previous tactic of isolating Myanmar had failed, although it said it would only ease sanctions in return for progress on democracy.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for most of the past two decades since her National League for Democracy swept 1990 elections. The junta plans to hold fresh elections later this year.

The opposition leader had her incarceration lengthened by 18 months in August after being convicted over a bizarre incident in which a US man swam to her lakeside home.

Tuesday 23 February 2010

To include Myanmar language support in Windows

ေနာက္ပိုင္းအသစ္ထြက္မည့္ Microsoft Windows operating systems ေတြမွာ Myanmar language တစ္ခုအေနနဲ႔ ထည့္သြင္းေပးရန္ Microsoft ေကာ္ပိုေရးရွင္းသို႔ စာျဖင့္စုေပါင္းေပးပို႔ ေတာင္းဆိုမည့္ အစီအစဥ္ တစ္ခုအား Myanmar's NET မွ အေကာင္အထည္ ေဖာ္ေဆာင္႐ြက္ေနျခင္း ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္းသိရသည္။

လူဦးေရ ၅ သိန္းေက်ာ္ရွိသည့္ ဘာသာစကားကို Microsoft Windows တြင္ ထည့္သြင္းေပးရမည္ ဆိုေသာ official policy ရွိသျဖင့္ ထိုအခ်က္ေပၚမူတည္ၿပီး Mr Bill Gates ႏွင့္ Mr Steve Ballmer တို႔ထံသို႔ စာပို႔ေတာင္းဆိုသြားမည္ ျဖစ္သည္။ Microsoft ဌာနခ်ဳပ္တြင္ အလုပ္လုပ္ကိုင္ေနေသာ ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးမ်ားမွလည္း ကူညီေဆာင္႐ြက္ေပးသြားမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ Microsoft Windows ကြန္ျပဴတာအသံုးျပဳသူ လူဦးေရ ၅ သိန္းေက်ာ္မက ရွိေသာ္လည္း အေမရိကန္မွ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို စီးပြါးေရးပိတ္ဆို႔ထားမႈေၾကာင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို software မေရာင္းရသျဖင့္ ျမန္မာဘာသာ ထည့္သြင္းရန္ မလိုဟု Microsoft မွ ခံယူထားေၾကာင္း Myanmar's NET စာမ်က္ႏွာတြင္ ေရးသားေဖာ္ျပထားပါသည္။

ျမန္မာေတြကြန္ပ်ဳတာနည္းပညာမွာ အျမန္ဆံုးတိုးတတ္ျပီး နိုင္ငံတကာကို ယွဥ္နိုင္ဖို႔အတြက္ Microsoft ရဲ႕ Windows Operating systems ထဲမွာတခါထဲပါ၀င္ထည့္သြင္းလာေပးဖို႔အတြက္ လက္မွတ္၀ိုင္း၀န္းေရးထိုး ကူညီေပးနိုင္ရန္ ေအာက္ပါလင့္သို႔ သြားေရာက္ႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း ေဖာ္ျပလိုက္ပါသည္။
http://myanmar-myanmar.net/microsoft/

Microsoft Corporation has official policy to include language support for all languages over 500,000 users. For various reasons, Myanmar language has not been included in Microsoft Windows. Please sign this petition asking Microsoft to include Myanmar language in Windows in next versions. We will print out and send this list of requests and send to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmar of Microsoft Corporation.

ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္က တိုက္ပြဲေခၚသံ

မေန ့ညက စစ္ေတြ မွာ ေက်ာင္းသား သပိတ္ၾကီးက ညၾကီး သန္ေခါင္မွာ စတင္ ျဖစ္ပြားသြားတယ္လို ့သိရတယ္။ စစ္ေတြၿမိဳ႕ ေ၀သာလီကြင္း ဗ်ိဳက္ေတာ ဆရာေတာ္ ဦးသုမဂၤလာ တရားပြဲ အျပီးမွာ တက္ေရာက္လာတဲ့ လူထု ပရိသတ္ က မခံမရပ္နိင္ျဖစ္ျပီး ဆႏၵျပပြဲျဖစ္ပြား သြားရျခင္း ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဆရာေတာ္က သန္းေရႊမိသားစု နဲ ့လက္တစုပ္စာ လူတစုက ျမန္မာ တနိင္ငံလံုးက သံယံဇတေတြကို ဂုတ္ေသြးစုတ္ ေနမႈေတြကို ထုတ္ေဖၚ ေျပာဆို သြားတယ္။ ရခိုင္ ျပည္နယ္က သဘာ၀ ဓါတ္ေငြ ေတြထြက္ျပီး ရခိုင္ျပည္နဲ ့တျပည္လံုးမွာ မီးမရိွ၊ ေရမရိွ၊ ေလာင္စာမရိွတဲ့ အေျခအေနေတြကို ေဟာၾကား သြားတယ္လို ့ဆိုပါတယ္။

ေက်ာင္းသား လူငယ္ေတြ အေနနဲ႔ ၈၈ တုန္းက ေက်ာင္းသားေတြ ကို အတုယူၾကဖို ့ ေဟာၾကား သြားတယ္။ တရားပြဲ အျပီးမွာ ေက်ာင္းသား ၁၀ ဦးႏွင့္သံဃာ ၂ ဦးက စတင္လံႈ ့ေဆာ္လိုက္ရာက ဆႏၵျပပြဲ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ေက်ာင္းသား ေရႊေစတီဘုရား အထိ ခ်ိီတက္တယ္။ ရဟန္းပ်ိဳသမဂၢ နဲ ့ေက်ာင္းသား သမဂၢက ဦးေဆာင္တယ္။ တေျဖးတေျဖးနဲ ့လမ္းေဘးက ၾကည့္ေနတဲ့ သူေတြကပါ ပူးေပါင္းလာတဲ့ အတြက္ အင္အား သံုးေထာင္ခန္႔ ျဖစ္သြားတယ္လို႔ သိရတယ္။

ဆႏၵျပ ေနစဥ္မွာ ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားက
လွ်ပ္စစ္မီး - ရရိွေရး ဒို ့အေရး၊
နအဖ စစ္အစိုးရ အလုိမရိွ၊
၂၀၁၀ အလိုမရိွ လို ့ေၾကြးူေၾကာ္ ဆႏၵျပၾကတယ္။


နအဖ ၊ ၾကံဖြတ္ႏွင့္ ရဲ မ်ားက ဆႏၵျပသမားမ်ားကို ႏွိမ္နင္းရန္ ေရာက္လာၾကတယ္။ ဦး၀ိစာရ ပန္းျခံနဲ ့ မီးစက္ ဂြ ဆံုေတြမွာ ေနရာ ယူျပီး လူစု ခြဲခိုင္းတယ္။ ဆႏၵျပ သမားမ်ားက ေသြးထြက္ သံယိုမႈ မရိွခင္မွာ ေအာင္ျမင္စြာ ဆုတ္ခြာ ေပးလိုက္တယ္လို ့သိရတယ္။ မနက္ဖန္ က ျပန္စမယ္၊ မၾကာခင္ ျပန္ဆံုၾကမယ္။ မေၾကာက္ၾကနဲ႔ ရခို္င္ေသြး နီတယ္ေဟ့ စသျဖင့္ တဦးနဲ ့တဦး အခ်ိန္ အခ်က္ ေပးသြားၾကတယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။ ရခိုင္ ျပည္နယ္ လူထု ဆႏၵျပပြဲနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔ ျမန္မာ ႏိုင္ငံလံုး ဆိုင္ရာ ရဟန္းပ်ိဳ သမဂၢ ဥကၠဌ - ဆရာေတာ္ အရွင္ ေခမာစာရ က '' ဒီ ဆႏၵျပပြဲၾကီးဟာ ၂၀၁၀ အတြက္ ပထမဆံုး လႈပ္ရွားမႈၾကီးျဖစ္ခဲ့ျပီ၊ ဒီလိုလႈပ္ရွားမႈေတြဆက္တိုက္ျဖစ္လာလိမ့္မယ္။ ဘာျဖစ္ လို႔လည္း ဆိုေတာ့ စစ္အစိုးရ လက္ေအာက္မွာ ျမန္မာ တျပည္လံုးဟာ ဒုကၡ အတိကို ေရာက္ေန ၾကရျပီ။ ျပည္သူေတြ ဒုကၡေတြ ပင္လယ္ေ၀ ေနရတာ၊ ျပည္သူေတြ ကပ္တဲ့ ဆြမ္းပူ ကြမ္းပူ ကို ဒို႔ ရဟန္းေတြ ဘယ္မွာ မ်ိဳလို႔ ၾကမလဲ ။ သံဃာေတြက တိုက္ပြဲ၀င္ဖို ့ ပိုင္းျဖတ္ထား ျပီးပါျပီ '' လို ့အမိန္ ့ရိွပါတယ္။ ဆရာေတာ္ဟာ ၁၉၈၈ ခုနစ္ ဒီမိုကေရစီ လႈပ္ရွားမႈၾကီးမွာ တက္ၾကြစြာ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ခဲ့တဲ့ သံဃာ တပါး ျဖစ္ျပီး ၈၈ တံုးက ထင္ရွားခဲ့တဲ့ အေထြေထြ သပိတ္ ေကာ္မတီမွာ နယက ဆရာေတာ္ တပါး ျဖစ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ မနပုေလာ ေတာ္လွန္ေရး နယ္ေျမမွာ ကရင္မ်ား၊ ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားႏွင့္ အတူ တေလွ်ာက္လံုး လက္တြဲ တိုက္ပြဲ၀င္ခဲ့တဲ့ ဆရာေတာ္ တပါး ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္ ေျပာင္းေရး ၀ႏွင့္ စစ္အစိုးရ တင္းမာ

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စစ္အစိုးရ တာ၀န္ရွိသူ မ်ားႏွင့္ “၀” ျပည္ ေသြးစည္း ညီညြတ္ေရး တပ္မေတာ္ (UWSA) ေခါင္းေဆာင္ တခ်ဳိ႕တို႔က နယ္ျခားေစာင့္ တပ္အသြင္ ေျပာင္းေရး အတြက္ မူအားျဖင့္ သေဘာတူညီ ထားေသာ္လည္း ဆက္လက္ ေတြ႔ဆံု ေဆြးေႏြးရန္ ႏွစ္ဘက္ တင္းမာ ေနၾကသည္။

ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ တေနရာတြင္ စစ္ေရးျပ ေလ့က်င့္ေနေသာ UWSA တပ္ဖြဲ႕၀င္မ်ား

စစ္အစိုးရဘက္မွ စစ္ဖက္ဆုိင္ရာ လုံၿခဳံေရးအဖြဲ႔ အႀကီးအကဲ ဒုတိယ ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီး ရဲျမင့္က ၀တပ္ဖြဲ႔ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဦးေပါက္ယူ ခ်မ္းကုိ ေဖေဖာ္၀ါရီလ ၁၄ ရက္ေန႔၌ လားရႈိးၿမိဳ႕တြင္ လာေရာက္ ေတြ႔ဆံုရန္ အေၾကာင္းၾကားခဲ့ၿပီး ၀တပ္ဖြဲ႔က ျငင္းဆန္ခဲ့သည္။

အလားတူပင္ ၀တပ္ဖြဲ႔ကလည္း ၎တို႔ ဌာနခ်ဳပ္ျဖစ္ေသာ ပန္ဆန္းၿမိဳ႕သို႔ ယခုလ ၂၀ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ လာေရာက္ ေတြ႔ဆံုႏိုင္ရန္ ဒု ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီး ရဲျမင့္အား ျပန္လည္ ဖိတ္ၾကား ထားသည္ကုိ ယမန္ေန႔ အထိ အေၾကာင္း ၾကားျခင္း မရွိဘဲ ႏွစ္ဘက္ တင္းမာေနျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။

“အစိုးရ ဘက္က ပန္ဆန္းကုိ ဖုန္းနဲ႔ ေျပာတယ္၊ လာရႈိးၿမိဳ႕ အထိ ဥကၠဌ ေပါက္ယူခ်မ္းကို လာေတြ႔ဖို႔ ေျပာတယ္၊ အဲဒါကုိ ဥကၠဌ ေပါက္ယူခ်မ္းက က်ေနာ္ ေနမေကာင္းဘူး၊ မသြားႏိုင္ဘူး၊ ခရီးက ေ၀းတယ္၊ လမ္းက ၾကမ္းတယ္၊ ျဖစ္ႏိုင္ရင္ ပန္ဆန္းဌာနခ်ဳပ္ကုိ လာပါ ၂၀ ရက္ေန႔ လာႏိုင္တယ္ေပါ့၊ ေဆြးေႏြးမယ္၊ အဲဒါကုိ ယေန႔ အထိ အစိုးရ ဘက္က တစံုတရာ အေၾကာင္း မျပန္ဘူး”ဟု သွ်မ္းသံေတာ္ဆင့္ သတင္းစဥ္မွ ဦးစိန္ၾကည္က ဧရာ၀တီသို႔ ေျပာသည္။

ယင္း သို႔ေတြ႔ဆံု ေဆြးေႏြးရန္ ကမ္းလွမ္းမႈ ႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ၀တပ္ဖြဲ႔၀င္မ်ားက အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံမွ အလိုရွိေနသည့္ ၀ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ၈ ဦးထဲတြင္ ဥကၠဌ ေပါက္ယူခ်မ္း ပါ၀င္ေနသည့္ အတြက္ စစ္အစိုးရအေပၚ သံသယရွိေနေၾကာင္းလည္း ၎က ဆိုသည္။

အပစ္ရပ္ တုိင္းရင္းသား အဖဲြ႔မ်ားအားလုံး နယ္ျခားေစာင့္ တပ္အျဖစ္ အသြင္ေျပာင္းေရးကုိ ယခုလကုန္ ေနာက္ဆုံးထားၿပီး ျပဳလုပ္ ရန္ စစ္အစုိးရက ညႊန္ၾကားထားေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

အပစ္ရပ္ အဖဲြ႔မ်ားတြင္ အင္အား အႀကီးဆုံးျဖစ္သည့္ UWSA တပ္ဖြဲ႔က နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္ ဖြဲ႔စည္းလွ်င္ စစ္အစုိးရဘက္မွ ဒုတိယ တပ္ရင္းမႉး ရာထူးတခုသာ ပါ၀င္ခြင့္ ျပဳမည္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သေဘာထား ေပးထားသည္။

ရွမ္းျပည္ ေတာင္ပုိင္းရွိ ၀မ္ဟုန္ေဒသအား ကုိယ္ပုိင္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခြင့္ရ ေဒသတခု အျဖစ္ သတ္မွတ္ေပးရန္ ၎တုိ႔၏ ေတာင္းဆုိခ်က္ကုိ စစ္အစုိးရက ပယ္ခ်ထားသည္။

UWSA သည္ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ အေရွ႕ပုိင္း ေဒသတြင္ အေျခစုိက္ လႈပ္ရွားလ်က္ရိွသည္။ ယမန္ႏွစ္က အတည္ျပဳခ့ဲသည့္ “ျပည္ ေထာင္စု သမၼတ ျမန္မာ ႏုိင္ငံေတာ္ ဖဲြ႔စည္းပုံ အေျခခံ ဥပေဒ” တြင္လည္း ဝ ေဒသကုိ ကုိယ္ပုိင္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခြင့္ရ ေဒသအျဖစ္ ထည့္ သြင္း ျပဌာန္းထားၿပီး ျဖစ္သည္။

အေျခခံဥပေဒတြင္ “ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ရိွ ဟုိပန္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္၊ မုိင္းေမာၿမိဳ႕နယ္၊ ပန္ဝုိင္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္၊ နားဖန္းၿမိဳ႕နယ္၊ မက္မန္းၿမိဳ႕နယ္ႏွင့္ ပန္ဆန္း (ပန္းခမ္း) ၿမိဳ႕နယ္တုိ႔ကုိ ခရုိင္ႏွစ္ခရုိင္ဖဲြ႔ၿပီး “ဝ” ကုိယ္ပုိင္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခြင့္ရတုိင္း” အျဖစ္ ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။ အဆုိပါ သံလြင္ျမစ္ အေရွ႕ ဘက္ျခမ္းမွ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ ၆ ခုမွာ တရုတ္ ျမန္မာ နယ္စပ္တြင္ တည္ရိွသည္။

စစ္အစုိးရ၏ နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္ ေျပာင္းလဲဖြဲ႕စည္းေရး အစီအစဥ္သည္ ၿပီးခဲ့သည္ႏွစ္ ဧၿပီလမွ စတင္ခဲ့ၿပီး ယခုအခ်ိန္အထိ ကခ်င္ျပည္သစ္ တပ္မေတာ္ (NDA-K) ၊ ကရင္နီျပည္ လူမ်ဳိးေပါင္းစံု ျပည္သူ႔ လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး တပ္ဦး (က လလတ) ႏွင့္ ကုိးကန္႔ အထူးေဒသ(၁) စသည့္ အဖဲြ႔ ၃ ဖဲြ႔သာ နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္မ်ားအျဖစ္ ေျပာင္းလဲခဲ့သည္။

၁၉၈၉ ခုႏွစ္မွစတင္၍ စစ္အစိုးရႏွင့္ အပစ္အခတ္ ရပ္စဲထားေသာ တိုင္းရင္းသား လက္နက္ကိုင္ အဖြဲ႕ေပါင္း ၁၇ ဖြဲ႕ရွိသည္။

Monday 22 February 2010

Burma's Kachin army prepares for civil war


KIA cadets training
Kachin military leaders know they are outnumbered by the Burmese army

By Alastair Leithead
BBC News, Laiza, northern Burma

The sharp sound of loading and unloading weapons and the barked orders of the sergeant-major cut through the mountains of northern Burma as the young cadets are put through their morning drills.

Their discipline is good, their uniforms smart and there is little doubting their sense of purpose or patriotism towards the red and green flag with crossed machetes they proudly wear on their right shoulders.

They are the next generation of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), and say they are not afraid to be the generation that fights in a civil war many fear may soon be upon them.

"The Union of Burma was formed on the basis of equality for ethnic people, but there has been inequality throughout history and we are still being suppressed," said cadet Dashi Zau Krang.

He is 26 and has a degree in business studies, but says inequality has stopped him getting a good job and driven him to join the military.



But he is not afraid.

"The Burmese army may be the strongest in South East Asia, while we are very few, but God will help us to liberate our people to get freedom and equality. This is our responsibility," he said.

It is a war the Kachin people do not want and one they cannot win.

But their generals believe a 17-year ceasefire could soon end as a Burmese army deadline approaches, demanding the forces merge or disarm.

They have already refused, and although their leaders are still pushing for a political solution, their commanders are preparing for the worst when time runs out at the end of February.

"I can't say if there will be war for sure, but the government wants us to become a border guard force for them by the end of the month," said the KIA's Chief of Staff, Maj Gen Gam Shawng.

"We will not do that, or disarm, until they have given us a place in a federal union and ethnic rights as was agreed in 1947."

The KIA and its civilian organisation have been allowed to control a large swathe of northern Burma as part of a ceasefire agreement with the country's ruling generals.

Trade with China

They provide power, roads and schools funded by taxes on the brisk trade from China as well as the jade and gold mines and teak.

But now soldiers are being recruited, veterans are being recalled and retrained, and an ethnic army is preparing to fight perhaps the biggest military force in South East Asia.

On the car radio are freedom songs, and at one of the training camps a course in traditional dance is being run - cultural nationalism and propaganda is strong.

Map locator

A BBC team travelled to an area in northern Burma controlled by the Kachin army and its civilian arm, the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO).

We were taken to training camps and outposts, but could not walk into Laiza town to talk to people on the street for fear of being seen by an extensive network of Burmese or Chinese government informers and spies.

It made forming a balanced view very difficult, but the determination and planning of the military was clear.

High on a vantage point above their headquarters, trenches are being dug and tree trunks are being hauled and hewn into gun turrets piled high with earth.

They can see the Burmese army positions from here and they know this will be just one of the front lines if fighting breaks out.

A well-oiled and highly polished large-calibre anti-aircraft gun is produced, standing on a tripod in a bunker overlooking the lush jungle valley.

Guerrilla war

The gleaming gun is a statement, a display for the visitors, but the small metal plane stencilled on the sights looks woefully optimistic.

They are organised and say they have heavy weapons, but we did not see them.

There are around two dozen ethnic groups in Burma, mostly scattered around its borders, and the biggest have been in various states of ceasefire or civil war over the past few decades.

Kachin dance with military theme
Traditional Kachin dances now take on a military theme

The KIA is one of the biggest. Their commanders say it includes 10,000 regular troops and 10,000 reservists, but it is impossible to know for sure.

The Burmese army is huge. It has an air force of sorts and artillery, and the KIA knows the only way to survive will be to withdraw into the jungle and fight a guerrilla war of attrition.

But civil war would create tens of thousands of refugees and create regional instability.

"If we are attacked the other ethnic groups will support us, as they know the same could happen to them," Gen Gam Shawng explained.

The nearby Wa ethnic group has tens of thousands of troops and resources funded by drug smuggling, and we were told a deal with them had been agreed.

Whether civil war comes here is now up to the Burmese government.

If they use this election year to solve what they see as the "problem" of the ethnic groups they will have a fight on their hands, and the region will have to deal with the consequences.

Burma VJ (2008)


Burma VJ (2008)

Using smuggled footage, this documentary tells the story of the 2007 protests in Burma by thousands of monks.

အဖက္ဖက္မွ အသက္ကိုစေတးၿပီး ရယူခဲ႔ေသာ မွတ္တမ္းမ်ားကို အထူးဂုဏ္ယူစြာျဖင့္ ေက်းဇူးတင္အပ္သည္