Embassy Donates to Migrant Crash Fund – The Irrawaddy
April 8th, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21103
BANGKOK—In a departure from policy, officials from the Burmese embassy in Bangkok have made a small official contribution to a fund for victims of the truck crash on Monday in Thailand’s Samut Sakorn District that killed 6 Burmese and injured more than 60.
According to Preeyaporn Khankumnere, a project coordinator with the Human Rights Development Foundation who works closely with the affected Burmese migrant workers, an officer from the embassy went to the hospitals where the injured are being treated, and initially offered to donate 1,000 baht (US $35) to some of the injured. According to Preeyaporn, some of the injured have left hospital already, though others are in a serious condition.
When informed that migrant workers had already set up a fund to raise money for the injured, the Embassy official instead made a lump 16,000 baht ($560) donation to the fund. (more…)
Burma’s old wine in new bottles – Sunday Business Post
March 27th, 2011
http://sbpost.ie/news/world/earthquake-adds-to-burmese-woe-55315.html
Simon Roughneen in Bangkok. As Burma comes to terms with an earthquake on Thursday evening that killed at least 75 people, the country’s seemingly never-ending political crisis goes on. Speaking to German media last week, opposition figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi asked European countries not to remove sanctions on the country’s rulers unless significant reforms are undertaken. “Sanctions must remain in place. Sanctions should only be lifted when something has changed here”, said the 1991 Nobel peace laureate.
European Union member-states, including Ireland, will decide whether to retain the measures at the bloc’s annual review of Burma policy next month. Suu Kyi’s comments came days after she met with a group of EU-country diplomats about sanctions on Burma.
Think-tanks such as Chatham House – which is part-funded by Total and Chevron, companies with energy investments in Burma – have spoken against the measures, saying that the establishment of a new parliament signals that there is some hope for reform in Burma, which has been ruled by the Army since 1962. (more…)
After an earthquake, confusion over storms in Burma – RTÉ World Report
March 27th, 2011
http://www.rte.ie/news/player.html?worldreport#programme=World%20Report
“We all ran outside, our windows fell in, the walls are cracked, most of the buildings in the town have been damaged”
That was the account given over the phone by a man in Tachilek in Burma’s Shan State, close to the epicentre of Thursday evening’s 6.8 earthquake. The disaster caused damage in northern Thailand, with one woman killed near the border with Burma.
By Saturday afternoon the death-toll in Burma itself was over 70, but, as ever, the lack of reliable information from inside the country means that it is difficult to gauge the full extent of the destruction, in a hilly and remote region. (more…)
Freedom of association laws a litmus test for ‘new’ Burma – The Irrawaddy
March 25th, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21011
BANGKOK—After a one-day strike by factory workers in Rangoon earlier this week proceeded unimpeded by Burmese police, thoughts are turning to the possible introduction of trade union legislation in the military-ruled country.
The recent downing of tools by around 500 mostly female workers at a Rangoon shoe factory follows a number of strikes during 2010 in a country where large public gatherings are rare and peaceful dissent is usually not tolerated. (more…)
Gene Sharp: Why Burmese Resistance Has Failed So Far – The Irrawaddy
March 22nd, 2011
The Irrawaddy speaks to Dr Gene Sharp, the author of a handbook on how to topple dictatorships, about the failure of Burma’s opposition to achieve this goal after more than two decades. Aung San Suu Kyi is a moral leader, but not a strategist, says Dr Sharp, who, looking to events elsewhere, adds that while Egyptian protestors followed the blueprint quite well, Libya’s rebels might have gotten in over their heads.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/interview_show.php?art_id=20981
He has been called the man who toppled Mubarak, a description he says demeans what he sees as a wholly-Egyptian uprising against authoritarian rule. Before that, he was the victim of a whispering campaign in which his work was alleged to be a US front for regime-change in the guise of citizen uprisings. He calls those allegations ‘a joke’ and reminds that he went to prison in the US for civil disobedience there.
From Dictatorship to Democracy is perhaps his best-known and most-influential work. Renowned as a handbook for strategic non-violent protest around the world, it originated in Dr Sharp’s work with Burmese opposition and ethnic groups in the early 1990s, and was intended as a blueprint for the liberation of the country from military rule. (more…)
Blatter’s Burma trip part of re-election campaign? – The Irrawaddy
March 19th, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20970
BANGKOK – With Asian Football chief Mohammed Bin Hammam yesterday announcing his candidacy for the Presidency of world football’s oft-derided governing body FIFA, incumbent Sepp Blatter is making sure he presses the flesh in his likely rival’s backyard. Blatter visited Laos on Thursday, after trips to Timor-Leste and, controversially, Burma, where he met with the country’s new President Thein Sein, a former General and Prime Minister under the country’s military junta.
Speaking Kuala Lumpur on Friday, Qatar’s Bin Hammam announced his intention on Friday to challenge the Swiss holder of football’s top administrative job. ”Today after careful study, consultation and consideration, armed with my love and passion for football, believing that our game is about fair competition, I have decided to contest,” the Asian Football Confederation president said, giving himself a 50-50 shot at winning. (more…)
India’s influence anxiety in Burma – The Irrawaddy
March 16th, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20947&Submit=Submit
India is losing out to China in Burma, but New Delhi could still be downplaying military assistance to Burma amid rumours of a new bilateral arms deal
BANGKOK – In his 1973 The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry, Harold Bloom explains how poetic creativity is inevitably constrained by precursors and predecessors, whom would-be writers – subconsciously at least – emulate after reading. The outcome is that artist anxiously tries – unsuccessfully for the most part, save for a few stellar exceptions – to overcome this influence and forge an original vision.
Save for the licence sometimes deployed to spin the self-interest involved, there is little that is poetic about the commercial and strategic bidding war taking place in Burma, as neighbouring countries vie for influence in the one-time “breadbasket of southeast Asia”, these days more the region’s mine for oil, gas, gemstones, hydropower and timber.
Eager to acquire some of these resources to bolster its growing economy, India is consciously anxious about the influence wielded by China in Burma, according to newly-released U.S diplomatic cables. (more…)
Burma’s mysterious human rights body – The Irrawaddy
March 15th, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20938
BANGKOK — In 2007, just weeks after the Saffron Revolution against military rule in Burma and in the midst of an army crackdown on monks and other protesters, the Burmese regime established the Myanmar Human Rights Body (MHRB). The MHRB accepts “complaints and communications from those whose human rights are reportedly being violated, carrying out necessary investigations and taking proper actions although they are not included in the mandate of the Body,” according to the Burmese government’s submission to the January Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Asked about the body, National Democratic Front (NDF) Chairman Dr Than Nyein said that “the human rights organizations set up by the old government have not done anything.” Than Nyein—whose party hopes to push an amnesty in the new Parliament for Burma’s 2,189 political prisoners as well as Burmese exiles—added that “we have not considered raising the issue of human rights institutions in Parliament just now.” (more…)
Burma Sanctions Debate Intensifies- The Irrawaddy
March 9th, 2011
Despite recent calls from international think tanks for an end to sanctions on Burma, Western governments remain reluctant to change their policy, even as they increase aid to the country.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20902
BANGKOK — The Burma sanctions debate has intensified in recent weeks since the National League for Democracy (NLD) concluded that the various measures implemented by Australia, Canada, the European Union and the United States should remain in place until the Burmese government adopts political and economic reforms of its own.
Either side of the Feb. 8 NLD statement, well-known international think-tanks such as Chatham House—which lists Burma-invested oil companies such as Total and Chevron as backers—and International Crisis Group have weighed in, saying that sanctions should be removed as they have failed to loosen the Burmese military’s hold on power and have compounded the poverty experienced by the majority of the country’s people.
The Association for Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) has similarly called for an end to Western sanctions on one of its ten member-states, while other leaders such as Timor-Leste President Jose Ramos-Horta have also come out against the measures. (more…)
Toys for the boys or a real arms race? – The Irrawaddy
March 7th, 2011
China’s 12.7 percent hike in military spending for 2011 could add impetus to a preexisting arms-buying spree in Southeast Asia, where other factors are also fueling a dramatic increase in defense spending.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=20885
BANGKOK — China’s announcement of a 12.7 percent hike in military spending for 2011 could add impetus to a preexisting arms-buying spree in Southeast Asia, after a year in which Beijing’s growing assertiveness over disputes such as the South China Sea alarmed a number of countries in the region.
Overall, military or defense spending has increased by 50 percent in Southeast Asia since 2000, according to data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). (more…)
