Posts Tagged ‘Burma’
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
11/3/10
A new election law unveiled by Burma’s ruling military yesterday bars pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from running in upcoming elections, forcing her own political party to say they would have to expel her. The Political Parties Registration Law, published in official newspapers, excludes anyone convicted by a court of law from joining a political party, and may push Ms Suu Kyi out of her National League for Democracy.NLD spokesman Nyan Win said: “I have noticed that we have to expel Daw Suu. Their attitude is clear in this law. I was extremely surprised when I saw this. I did not think it would be so bad.” US envoy Kurt Campbell said in Kuala Lumpur yesterday: “I think it would be fair to say what we have seen so far is disappointing and regrettable.” Aung Thein, a lawyer who has defended activists in the country, called the law “absolutely undemocratic and unfair”.
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Tags: Burma, Human Rights
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Monday, March 8th, 2010
Lucy Turnbull; 8/3/10
Australian women should never settle for anything less than full equality and equal pay for equal work. On International Women’s Day, we should also cast our minds to the unsatisfactory fact that there are not nearly enough senior women managers, chief executives or directors of our large corporations. But we should also look beyond our shores. All Australians should reflect on the lives of women who are permanently marked by deep and deepening tragedy and injustice – women such as Aung San Suu Kyi and countless thousands of Burmese women. For decades Suu Kyi, her Burmese sisters and ethnic minorities have undergone systematic cruelty – political persecution and imprisonment in her case, and in the case of her Burmese sisters, acts of criminal brutality: torture, rape, and displacement at the hands of the military dictatorship. There will be “elections” in Burma this year. But we should not be fooled into believing they will be free or fair.
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Tags: Burma, UN, Women
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Saturday, March 6th, 2010
Sian Powell; 6/3/10
A courageous documentary about the Burmese junta’s crackdown in 2007 is up for an Oscar It’s a long arc from the grinding misery of military oppression to the razzle-dazzle of Hollywood, but “Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country” is a favourite to win Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards (to be held on day night and screened in Australia on Monday). And hidden, imprisoned or clandestinely at work, Burma’s covert video journalists will be at the glittering ceremony, in spirit at least, cheering the film home.
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Tags: Burma, Terrorism
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Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
26/1/10
Myanmar’s military government is reportedly planning to release opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi when her current term of house arrest ends in November. According to Reuters news agency, three sources say the plan was mentioned at a meeting last week attended by Myanmar’s home minister, Major General Maung Oo. He reportedly also said that Tin Oo, vice-chairman of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) and a former defence minister, would be freed next month. He has been held in jail or under house arrest for more than a decade.
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Tags: Burma, Human Rights, Terrorism
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Friday, January 1st, 2010
1/1/10
Myanmar has agreed to take back some 9,000 Muslim Rohingya refugees currently living in camps in Bangladesh, the Bangladeshi foreign minister says. Mohamed Mijarul Quayes said after meeting his Myanmar counterpart that the two sides had agreed to begin returning the Rohingya to Myanmar as soon as possible. Human-rights groups have said the Rohingya face religious persecution and abuses from Myanmar’s military government which does not recognise the group as an ethnic minority. Many have complained they face beatings and arbitrary arrests, as well as restrictions on movement, education and employment. Thousands of Rohingya began fleeing Myanmar in the late 1970s and Bangladesh says there are currently about 28,000 living in camps in the southeast of the country
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Tags: Bangladesh, Burma, Human Rights, Migrants & Refugees
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Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
Wa Wa Kyaw; 30/12/09
Early on September 3, my phone rang. I picked up, thinking it might be my fiance, Nyi Nyi Aung, who was visiting family in Bangkok, Thailand. But it was Nyi Nyi’s brother. Nyi Nyi, he said, had boarded a plane to our native Burma earlier that day, hoping to visit his mother, who has cancer. But according to friends waiting at the baggage claim, he never arrived. In all likelihood, agents of the military junta seized him. Nyi Nyi is an American citizen, I thought. How could this happen? Then, it hit me: I might never see him again. I called the US embassy in Rangoon; I wrote to our congressional representatives. And I waited. On September 20, 17 days after Nyi Nyi disappeared, the junta acknowledged his arrest. The charge, according to the state-run newspaper, was “plotting riots and sabotage”. I felt sick but not surprised: although Nyi Nyi has always been a nonviolent activist, the junta will say anything to justify its actions. Then, after the embassy was allowed a brief visit, I learned the worst: he was tortured. He was denied food for over a week. Kicked in his face. Beaten on his back. Not allowed to sleep.
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Tags: Burma, Human Rights
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Friday, November 20th, 2009
20/11/09
The United Nations has urged Thailand to end the three-year detention of nearly 160 ethnic Hmong from Laos. The Geneva-based UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) also asked the government to allow the Hmong to be moved to several western countries. The UN agency said the Hmong detainees have been recognised as refugees deserving asylum, and should be allowed to resettle in western countries. But Thai authorities insist that they are economic migrants, and are holding them in two cells at the immigration detention centre in Nong Khai on the Mekong River border with Laos.
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Tags: Burma, Human Rights, Thailand
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Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
Nicolas Haque; 4/11/09
The construction of a barbed wire fence along Myanmar’s border with Bangladesh has only increased the suffering of the Muslim Rohingya minority. Hundreds of thousands have fled to Bangladesh, with most of them living in makeshift camps, unrecognised, and unwanted.
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Tags: Bangladesh, Burma, Human Rights
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Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
Nicolas Haque; 27/10/09
On Myanmar’s side of the Naf River that marks border with Bangladesh, labourers are hard at work building a fence that will prevent them fleeing persecution. They will not be paid for their work. Instead the men, who come from the persecuted Rohingya ethnic group, have been coerced into erecting the 230km long fence by the threat of violence against their families. The Rohingyas are a distinct ethnic group from Myanmar’s Rakhine State. The authorities in Yangon have refused to recognise them as citizens and they have been persecuted for their cultural difference and practice of Islam. For many, life in Myanmar has become so difficult that they have fled across the border to Bangladesh. Over the past year 12,000 Rohingyas have been caught crossing the border illegally. Now they are being forced to build a fence to prevent such escapes.
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Tags: Burma, Refugees & Migrants
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Saturday, October 3rd, 2009
3/10/09
Judges have rejected an appeal by pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi against her extended house arrest. A divisional court in Rangoon upheld the Nobel laureate’s conviction in August over a bizarre incident in which an American man swam uninvited to her home, earning her an extra 18 months in detention. ”The appeal was rejected but we will take it to the High Court,” said Ms Suu Kyi’s lawyer and the spokesman for her National League for Democracy Party, Nyan Win. In August, a court at Rangoon’s notorious Insein prison sentenced the frail 64-year-old to three years’ hard labour but junta chief Than Shwe reduced that to 18 months’ house arrest.
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Tags: Burma, Human Rights
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Thursday, September 17th, 2009
17/9/09
The number of political prisoners in military-ruled Burma has doubled to more than 2200 in the two years since a crackdown on protests. The Human Rights Watch report said activists, Buddhist monks, journalists and artists had all been detained and “sentenced to draconian prison terms after unfair trials” for involvement in the 2007 protests and helping people after the devastating Cyclone Nargis in 2008. HRW said that more than 100 people have been detained in recent months in Burma.
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Tags: Burma, Terrorism
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Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009
Michael Sainsbury; 2/9/09
Over 500 people may have been killed in the first flair up of violence between the Burma¿s ruling military junta and the Kokang ethnic minority – hundreds more than official estimates – with Chinese people who fled last week unable to adopted country facing the loss of their livlihooods as attacks against Chinese people rise. The situation in the Burmese northern Shan state remains incredibly volatile with thousands of Burmese troops streaming into the area with large numbers stationed at the border of Wa territory, the region’s best armed minority which boasts as many as 30,000 armed troops and who are regularly named as the area’s biggest drug producers. The Burmese are focusing a possible attack on the United Wa Army on the town on Mending which has a population of about 10,000 and is only 30 minutes drive from the Chinese border town of Qingshiu tjhat serves as the primary crossing point for the Wa.
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Tags: Burma, China, Terrorism
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Saturday, August 15th, 2009
Greg Sheridan; 15/8/09
The sentencing of Aung San Suu Kyi to a further 18 months’ house arrest in Burma has angered the world and provoked condemnation from all Western nations. However, the Burmese government believes it was a mild sentence designed to encourage the Obama administration to change its sanctions-based policy of isolating Burma. Underneath the surface, an intense debate is under way in Washington over Burma policy. Burma is a nation of nearly 60million people, strategically located between China, India and Thailand. The last time it had a democratic election, nearly two decades ago, Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won. The Burmese generals never allowed her to take power. The US and Europe pursue tough sanctions against Burma, Australia applies basically token sanctions and most of Southeast Asia engages with Burma. Burma’s big two partners are China and India.
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Tags: Burma, Human Rights, USA
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Friday, August 14th, 2009
Peter Alford; 14/8/09
Burma’s reclusive head of state, Than Shwe, will meet a senior US senator who is helping shape the Obama administration’s Southeast Asia policy – a signal that, in spite of again imprisoning Aung San Suu Kyi, the regime could respond to American outreach. Senator Jim Webb, a strong critic of the sanctions-first approach of the previous two administrations, is expected in Burma this weekend during his fact-finding tour of Southeast Asia. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s East Asia and Pacific sub-committee, Senator Webb is likely to be talking to Than Shwe as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unofficial envoy. At the ASEAN regional forum in Phuket, Thailand, last month, Mrs Clinton called for “a creative way” of dealing with Burma, a full member of the Southeast Asian grouping, but hampered by US, EU and Australian trade, travel and investment sanctions.
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Tags: Burma, Human Rights, Thailand, USA
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Thursday, August 13th, 2009
13/8/09; (4 Items)
Burma’s democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi and her US co-defendant will appeal against their convictions, lawyers said yesterday as the ruling junta faced a global wave of anger over her extended detention. US President Barack Obama led worldwide outrage at the military regime’s decision on Tuesday to give Ms Suu Kyi another 18 months of house arrest, a verdict that shuts her out of elections next year. The UN Security Council ended an emergency meeting with no condemnation of the ruling generals, but Burma’s Asian neighbours issued a rare expression of disappointment at the opposition leader’s sentence. In Rangoon, Ms Suu Kyi’s lawyer, Nyan Win, said her legal team would appeal because they were “not satisfied” with the judgment, which stemmed from a stunt in which American John Yettaw swam to her lakeside house in May. A prison court sentenced her to three years’ hard labour after finding her guilty of breaching the terms of her detention, but Burmese leader Than Shwe commuted the punishment to 1 1/2 years under house arrest.
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Tags: Burma, Human Rights, Terrorism
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Wednesday, August 12th, 2009
12/8/09; (4 Items)
Bumese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been sentenced to a further 18 months of house arrest for receiving an eccentric American well-wisher in the home where she was being detained. The court in Rangoon’s Insein prison sentenced Ms Suu Kyi to three years’ hard labour, but it was immediately commuted to 1 1/2 years under house arrest by the leader of Burma’s military dictatorship, Than Shwe. John Yettaw, the American whose late-night swim to her lakeside home led to her trial, received a seven-year sentence with hard labour. The sentence will take Ms Suu Kyi out of the running for the elections that the Burmese junta has promised to hold next year, and will confirm many of its opponents’ suspicions that the charges against her were politically motivated to eliminate the symbol of the country’s long-suppressed democracy movement.
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Tags: Burma, Human Rights
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