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15 February 2008 - DVB-TV NEWS

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14 February 2008 - DVB-TV NEWS

NEWS UPDATE(FEB 14)

General Secretary Mahn Sha (right) of KNU pictured with Gen Bo Mya at Karen Revolution Day in 2005. (Photo: Htein Linn)


Karen Rebel Leader Assassinated
By SAW YAN NAING
Thursday, February 14, 2008.

Mahn Sha, the general secretary of the Karen National Union (KNU) was shot dead on Thursday afternoon at his home in Mae Sot, Thailand, according to KNU sources.
David Takapaw, the joint-secretary of the KNU, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday that Mahn Sha was shot by two unknown gunmen on Thursday at about 4:30 p.m. in his home near the center of Mae sot.
The only eye witness, a Karen girl, said, “Two men climbed the stairs of his home and said ‘good evening’ (in Karen language) to Mahn Sha. Then they shot him twice in the left side of his chest. He died immediately.”
The two men arrived in front of the house in a black car, while the other people were downstairs.
Mahn Sha was general secretary of the KNU, which has faced serious internal conflicts since the death of its charismatic leader, Gen Saw Bo Mya, in December 2006.
Majoring in history at Rangoon University in 1962, Mahn Sha joined the Karen movement in the jungle at the Thai-Burmese border as soon as he finished his studies. He was seen as one of the leading lights in the KNU and was being groomed to take over the troubled KNU leadership. He was 64.
The KNU has been plagued with recent conflicts. Last year, Maj Gen Htain Maung, former leader of the KNU’s 7th Brigade, signed a ceasefire agreement with the Burmese military regime. This was seen as yet another blow to KNU leaders who lost their fortified headquarters at Manerplaw to the Burmese army in 1995.
There have recently been several attacks and assassination attempts between mainstream KNU members and the breakaway 7th Brigade, now known as KNU/KNLA Peace Council.
Last month, Colonel Ler Moo, the son-in-law of breakaway leader Htain Maung, was killed in a bomb attack while sleeping at a communications office near the group’s headquarters. He had earlier survived an assassination attempt in April 2007 while crossing the Moei River by boat.
Mahn Sha was involved in ceasefire talks with the Burmese military regime in the past. He was highly respected among both ethnic and Burman allies. The Burmese regime saw him as a strong leader in the KNU who repeatedly called for genuine political dialogue.
He is survived by two daughters and a son.

Burmese Junta Warns INGOs
By WAI MOE
Thursday, February 14, 2008.

The relationship between the Burmese government and international health NGOs (INGOs) is like a doctor and “a patient with a tumor,” a government health official told INGOs during a meeting in Naypyidaw.
According to a document obtained by The Irrawaddy recently, the meeting on January 11, chaired by Dr San Shwe Win, the deputy director general of the public heath department, involved the ministry of health and INGOs.
San Shwe Win said that INGOs have to follow four basic principles: “non-political, non-religion, nonprofit and nongovernmental.”
Ministry officials and 14 INGO representatives based in Burma attended the meeting. Three INGO health groups, including Medecins Sans Frontieres—Switzerland, were absent.
One of the central issues was the INGOs use of junta-backed “coordination committees” to channel aid and services into the country.
During the meeting, the government distributed copies of the national planning ministry guidelines on INGOs, which was issued in February 2006.
Members of coordination committees are to be drawn from junta-backed social organizations such as the Union Solidarity and Development Association, the Myanmar National Working Committee for Women Affairs and, at the township level, the Auxiliary Fire Brigades and Veterans Association. The Burmese language version of the guidelines say that one of the duties of a township coordination committee is to monitor project teams and ensure that their activities don’t go beyond the stated scope of their mission.
Ministry officials said NGO staffers can only travel to a field mission with a “travel authorization” from the Ministry of Defense—Army. Applications involve various steps and take time. No permission, no travel, said the guidelines document.
The Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria cancelled its aid program in Burma in 2005, saying travel regulations prevented it from accomplishing its mission.
INGO workers have to apply for travel authorization two weeks in advance and if a trip is cancelled, it must be reported in advance as well.
No travel permits can be issued for short-term consultants or trainers from abroad, said officials.
INGOs also have to provide specific plans, purposes and the location of activities. Activities such as observation or monitoring will not to be accepted, said ministry officials.
The document said INGO projects in Burma will be reduced from five years to one year, and INGOs must renew their projects 3 to 6 months in advance because agreements between INGOs and Burmese officials must be approved by the ministry of national planning, ministry of revenue and attorney general of Burma.
All INGOs foreign staff who apply for a visa must indicate the period of time they will stay in the country and a reason.
Ministry officials cautioned INGOs about conducting surveys and research and advised them to keep such work to a minimum, calling it a “very sensitive issue.”
“Encourage utilization of the existing information from other NGOs,” said the document.
San Shwe Win chided some INGOs for what he called a double standard between foreign NGO staffers and ministry liaison officers. He said foreigners sometimes stayed in expensive hotels while liaison officers stayed at more moderate hotels.
“We do not request special facilities for them,” said San Shwe Win, but everyone should stay in the same hotel.

Children’s Day should be a time for smiles and celebrations.
(Photo: Pat Brown/The Irrawaddy)


Children’s Day Nothing to Celebrate in Burma
By MIN LWIN
Wednesday, February 13, 2008.

Today is Children’s Day in Burma, commemorating the birthday of Gen Aung San, the founder of the Burmese armed forces and hero of Burmese independence. However, the current military leaders in Burma would rather erase his name from the history books and forbid his birthday being celebrated altogether.
“Gen Aung San’s story is genuine and honest,” said a former teacher from a primary school in Rangoon. “Something that is sorely absent among the current leaders.”
She said the authorities even removed a poem that was written about Aung San from primary text books. “Aung San’s birthday was erased by the military government when they took power in 1988,” she added.
“The name of Aung San always aroused excitement among young students, because teachers often taught stories about Aung San, his life and his sacrifice,” a Rangoon resident said.
But nowadays, teachers do not tell their students stories about Aung San for fear of reprisals.
A civil servant from Rangoon said that Aung San’s name has all but been erased from Burmese life. He is barely mentioned in the state-run media or in secondary school textbooks. Burma’s rulers no longer say they are following Aung San’s path, and the once elaborate Martyrs’ Day celebrations have been drastically curtailed.
According to a Rangoon resident, the reason the current military leaders want to keep Aung San at a distance is because of his daughter, Suu Kyi. Her presence in the country sits uncomfortably with the junta leaders. They regard her as their chief enemy.
However, the Township Peace and Development Council in Rangoon has given permission for the National League for Democracy to mark Burmese Children’s Day at their headquarters in Rangoon.
Whether celebrating Children’s Day is symbolic or not, the fact is that life expectancy and health conditions for Burmese children are increasingly worse since the military government took power in 1988.
In 2007, Burma’s child mortality rate was the fourth highest in the world, eclipsed in Asia only by Afghanistan, according to a UNICEF report in January.
According to Dr Osamu Kunii, a nutrition expert in Burma, between 100,000 to 150,000 children under five years of age die every year in Burma. That’s between 270 and 400 daily—and many are dying from preventable diseases.
Poverty, the economic crisis and instability in Burma drives more and more children in search of jobs. Some work from 5 a.m. until late at night in tea shops, bars and factories, often earning just 7,000 kyat ($ US5.72) per month.
A resident in Rangoon told The Irrawaddy recently that the amount of street children in the former capital is now increasing. “Many children aged between 4 and 13 are begging on the streets. Some young children are carrying babies and begging. Some street children look for plastic in the rubbish bins and dumps and some go fishing every day for their daily survival,” she said.
According to reports, sometimes street children who can’t produce ID are recruited into the Burmese army.

Burmese people cast their votes in the 1990 elections.


Burmese Referendum: Here We Go Again...
By WAI MOE
Wednesday, February 13, 2008.

The referendum on a new Burmese constitution will be in May, but people are still in the dark about the exact election date and the contents of the constitution.
Many Burmese believe the election could meet the same fate as the 1973 referendum which was manipulated by the late dictator Ne Win, say Rangoon observers.
The last referendum in Burma was in 1973, which endorsed the 1974 socialist constitution. At that time, Ne Win’s regime declared that more than 99 percent of the voters supported the constitution, but critics say the results were rigged by the government.
Aye Thar Aung, an Arankan ethnic leader, told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday that a white box and a black box were at the polling station where he voted—a white box for a ‘Yes’ vote and a black box for a ‘No’ vote.
“I voted against the regime’s constitution in 1973. But when my township authorities declared the results, they said everyone voted ‘Yes,’” he said. “It means they cheated in the referendum. There were no independent or international observers to monitor the voting process.”
The current military regime also held a general election in 1990.
Aye Thar Aye, who was elected a member of parliament in the 1990 election, remembers harassment by authorities during the campaign.
“When I attempted to meet with people in Arankan State during that time, the authorities ordered boats not to take me and my team to campaign areas,” he said.
“But fortunately the voting system helped us and the voting allowed people to vote secretly,” he said. However, the election results were not honored by the regime, which refused to relinquish power.
On February 9, the junta announced the general dates for the referendum and nationwide election, in May and 2010 respectively. The referendum is the forth step in its road map to democracy.
“The approval of the draft constitution will be sought in a national referendum to be held in May,” Thiha Thura Tin Aung Myint Oo, Secretary 1 of the junta, said in the announcement.
The referendum on the constitution will be the second such election in Southeast Asia recently. Thailand held a referendum on a military-backed constitution in August 2007.
The coup organizers, who ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinwatara in September 2006, sent each household in the country a copy of the new constitution before the referendum. Seventy percent of the eligible voters turned out for the referendum, which passed with 56 percent of the vote.
The print media in Thailand provided extensive debate on the constitution’s merits. Thai broadcasting stations aired similar debates.
If the Thai constitution had failed in the referendum, the country would have returned to the 1997 constitution. In Burma, however, there has been no constitution for about two decades.
Also, open debate is not expected to occur in the Burmese referendum. No critical political debate has been allowed in the country since the coup by Ne Win in 1962. All daily newspapers are state-run or heavily censored. Many private journals and magazines are printed, but they will be prohibited from writing interpretive or commentary articles on the proposed constitution or political issues.
Observers see the Burmese junta’s referendum election as a move to ward off criticism from Western international community, and a way to shore up support from its closer allies, China, India and the Asean group countries.
A veteran Rangoon journalist who observed the 1973 referendum remembers that the socialist regime took a few years to hold the election.
“But now the referendum is only three months away,” he said. “So I don’t know what the junta will do or what will happen next.”
There are many unanswered questions, he said. “How can people participant in the constitution process?”

BURMA's CENSORSHIP BOARD

12 February 2008 - DVB-TV NEWS

NEWS UPDATE(FEB 12)

Members of Burma's opposition party National League for Democracy, wear traditional costumes of ethnic nationalities, stand in front of the party headquarters in Rangoon during the Union Day ceremony on Tuesday. (Photo: AP)

Union Day Protest in Rangoon
By SAW YAN NAING
Tuesday, February 12, 2008.

More than 30 protesters dressed in the blue uniforms worn by prison inmates staged a protest in Rangoon on Tuesday, demanding the release of political prisoners and respect for UN resolutions on Burma.
The protesters gathered for about 40 minutes outside the Rangoon headquarters of the opposition National League for Democracy, where Union Day ceremonies were being held. Riot police and plain clothes security officials were deployed outside the building and took pictures of the protesters on film and video, but no arrests were made.
An eyewitness said the protesters held posters and flags of ethnic groups. They voiced dissatisfaction with the pace of national reconciliation and accused the regime of wasting time in arranging talks between NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi and a government mediator, Aung Kyi.
Hundreds of people, including NLD leaders and prominent ethnic leaders such as Cin Sian Thang and Aye Thar Aung took part in the Union Day celebrations, one of the participants reported.
Union Day marks the date of the Panglong Agreement signed by Burma’s central government and representatives of various ethnic groups, such as Shan, Kachin and Chin nationalities, on February 12, 1947. Burma subsequently gained independence from Britain on January 4, 1948.
The Burmese regime’s observance of Union Day took place in Naypyidaw, where junta leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe urged people to work for the emergence of a lasting State Constitution laid down by the National Convention.
Than Shwe also urged people to supports implementation of the “seven-step road map.” The third stage of the “road map”—drafting a state constitution—was under way, he said.
In a Union Day statement issued by the 88 Generation Students group on Tuesday, the regime was accused of violating the fundamental rights of Burmese and ethnic people and civilians in Burma even though the country had won its independence from colonial rule more than 60 years ago.
Soe Htun, a leading member of the 88 Generation Students group, told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday that the military government had ignored the crisis affecting the Burmese people, who lacked democracy, equality, self-determination and a federal union.
Soe Htun accused the regime of trying to implement a “one-sided constitution.” He urged the Burmese people to “cooperate in order to gaining democracy, equality and a federal union.”
The 88 Generation Students group pointed out that a three-way dialogue was the best way to solve the Burma crisis.
Last week, the Burmese military regime announced that general elections will be held in 2010 following a referendum this May on a new constitution being written under the junta's guidance and expected to entrench its role in government.

Asean Chief: Burma Charter Vote a First Step
By NOPPORN WONG-ANAN / REUTERS WRITER/ BANGKOK
Tuesday, February 12, 2008.
Burma's ruling generals should be given the benefit of the doubt if they are serious about moving the country toward democracy, Surin Pitsuwan, chief of Association of Southeast Asian Nations, said on Tuesday.
"It has to begin somewhere and now it has a clear, definite beginning," Surin said of the junta's planned May referendum on an army-written constitution, followed by elections in 2010.
"I think it is a development in the right direction," the former Thai foreign minister told Reuters on the sidelines of a business seminar in Bangkok.
The announcement by the military, which has ruled Burma in various guises since 1962, has been derided as a "sham" by the United States and pro-democracy activists who say the vote will be held in a "climate of fear."
Surin said the international community's growing frustration at Burma's intransigent generals was understandable, but he said they should be given a chance to fulfill their pledges.
"Everybody has their own agenda on the issue," said Surin, who leads one of the few international groupings that allow Burma into the club.
"We have to wait and see how things are going to develop and unfold. Whether these steps are going to lead to true national reconciliation which is what people inside have been asking for and the international community has been waiting for," he said.
The army held elections in 1990, but refused to hand over power to Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, which boycotted the constitution-drafting process while its leader remained under house arrest.
Although not yet completed, snippets of the charter revealed in state-controlled media suggest the army commander-in-chief will be the most powerful figure in the country, able to appoint key ministers and assume power "in times of emergency."
Surin said Burma's announcement would be discussed by Asean foreign ministers meeting in Singapore later this month.
"I am sure they will be very keen to ask some questions and to consult among themselves how they can contribute or help," said Surin, who was critical of Burma when he served as Thailand's foreign minister from 1997-2000.
Western governments have called on Burma's neighbors—Asean, India and China—to put pressure on the generals after they ordered the army to crush the biggest pro-democracy protests in 20 years last September.
Despite rare expressions of discomfort at last September's crackdown, in which at least 31 people were killed, Burma's neighbors refuse to contemplate sanctions, saying words are more effective tools.