Baby steps for Burma? – ISN
February 16th, 2012
U Win Tin, senior member of the NLD, speaks at re-opening of the party's Mandalay office (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
YANGON – Speaking in Bangkok prior to his visit to Burma in January, US Senator John McCain described the array of recent reforms undertaken by the country’s government as “unimaginable a year ago.”
Since September last year, the Burmese government has amnestied around five hundred political prisoners, relaxed media restrictions, passed laws allowing the formation of trade unions and public protests, and – in apparent concessions to public unease – put the brakes on two controversial multibillion dollar infrastructure projects backed by Chinese and Thai investors.
On the streets of Yangon, shops openly sell Aung San Suu Kyi T-shirts, an act impossible a few months ago and perhaps testimony to a tentative new openness. Even the Sauron-like eye of Burma’s pervasive spy network seems to have been relaxed, with recently-released political prisoner Min Zeya telling me, “We are being watched, but it’s not like in the past, when it would not be possible to be interviewed by a foreign journalist in a public place.” (more…)
Burma’s human rights commission rules out conflict-zone investigation – The Irrawaddy
February 15th, 2012
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=23037
BANGKOK — The chairman of Burma’s National Human Rights Commission said on Tuesday that it was premature for the newly established body to investigate allegations of human rights abuses in ethnic minority areas.
“The national reconciliation process is political,” said Win Mra, the chairman of the NHRC, speaking at a press conference at Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday afternoon. He added that “to investigate into conflict areas would not be appropriate at this time.”
The NHRC recently visited war-torn Kachin State in Burma’s north and urged both the government and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) “to engage in a dialogue process.” (more…)
3 blasts hit Thai capital, Iranians held – Los Angeles Times
February 14th, 2012
Four people are hurt in the incident a day after Israelis were targeted elsewhere.
REPORTING FROM BANGKOK AND NEW DELHI — Three explosions rattled downtown Bangkok on Tuesday, a day after bombers targeted Israeli embassy staff in India and Georgia, and police announced that at least one of the suspects in Thailand’s capital is an Iranian national.
Israeli officials quickly blamed Iran for the afternoon blasts, which authorities said injured the Iranian and four Thais.
“I would like to ask the people not to panic,” Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said as security was stepped up throughout the Thai capital. “The authorities have now arrested an attacker.”
Thai police said an explosive device detonated in a home rented by Iranians in downtown Bangkok’s Sukhumvit Road area. Two men in the house managed to escape while a third reportedly tried to flag a taxi, which refused to stop given his bloodied condition. (more…)
NDF feeling vindicated by NLD about-turn – The Irrawaddy
February 13th, 2012
Khin Maung Swe (front and right) at NDF HQ in Rangoon (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=23023
Party spokesman Khin Maung Swe says his party was right to run in the 2010 election, but still wants a rapprochement with the NLD. He says that the parties are on the same page on the Burma’s Constitution. “It is not democratic. It must be revised,” he said, echoing recent remarks by Aung San Suu Kyi.
RANGOON—For Burma’s hard-pressed political parties, small and ramshackle offices are the norm, and for the National Democratic Force (NDF), the narrow four-story house in a Rangoon suburb is no exception.
Party banners hang either side of the new Republic of the Union of Myanmar flag outside the building, a 20-minute taxi journey from the city’s downtown, but otherwise it looks just like the rest of the row of houses lined along the gravel-covered street.
Upstairs, former political prisoner and party leader Khin Maung Swe confers with colleagues about preparations for the upcoming April 1 by-election, when the party will attempt to add to its 16 seats in Burma’s Upper and Lower Houses of parliament. (more…)
Myanmar’s former political prisoners weigh next steps ahead of polls – Christian Science Monitor/RTÉ World Report
February 11th, 2012
http://www.rte.ie/news/av/2012/0212/worldreport.html# – radio report
Mya Aye and Pyone Cho in conversation in Yangon last week (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
YANGON – “I felt nothing, really, when I was told I was to be released,” says Mya Aye, one of Myanmar’s best-known political prisoners, who was among some 300 detainees freed on Jan. 13 in a surprise release.
The amnesty came after an October release of more than 200 political prisoners by what seems to be a reform-inclined Myanmar government. The releases are being taken as a signal that the government is on a gradual transition to democracy after five decades of military rule.
But Mr. Mya Aye, as with most of his generation of activists who are now free, isn’t too impressed. As Myanmar (Burma) prepares for April 1 elections in the military-dominated parliament, activists are mulling over what to do. “Our arrest was because of politics and so was our release,” he says.
Sitting across the room in Mya Aye’s upstairs apartment is Pyone Cho, an old friend. Both men took part in student demonstrations against military rule in 1988 – an uprising that was crushed by the Army, which gunned down an estimated 3,000 civilians.
The repeated arrests and releases (more…)
Aung San Suu Kyi hits the campaign trail in Myanmar – Christian Science Monitor
February 7th, 2012
Aung San Suu Kyi speaks at Pathein on Tuesday morning (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
PATHEIN, MYANMAR – Tens of thousands of Burmese came out today to greet opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on her first campaign trip since becoming an official candidate for April’s parliamentary elections.
In another example of the loosening-up in the long-time military-ruled country, neither the iconic opposition leader nor the crowds in two towns in the south she visited appeared to meet any hindrance from authorities.
It was her first time in the region in more than 20 years and comes on the heels of a spate of reforms by Myanmar’s government, including the mass release of hundreds of political prisoners and the loosening of restrictions on the press.
Addressing a raucous crowd, estimated at more than 40,000, in Pathein, the regional capital of the rice-growing Irrawaddy region on the southern coast, Suu Kyi said that if elected to parliament – the same entity she once boycotted after being prevented from running for office – she could help “make changes in the constitution, to have the rule of law and to work for internal peace.” (more…)
Censors lighten their touch on Myanmar’s media – Christian Science Monitor
February 7th, 2012
Myanmar’s press has long been heavily restricted. But as the government promotes reforms, articles about just-released political prisoners and upcoming elections are getting printed
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2012/0207/Censors-lighten-their-touch-on-Myanmar-s-media
Inside the Myanmar Times in Yangon (Photo: Simon Roughneen
YANGON – Ko Ko Gyi unrolls a copy of the Messenger, one of 30 privately owned news magazines in Myanmar (Burma), and points – with an expression of disbelief – to a prominent picture of himself on the front page.
“I never imagined a Burmese paper could have a cover story with a full-page photo of me,” he says, holding up the magazine during an interview at one of Yangon’s many tea shops.
Mr. Ko Ko Gyi was one of some 300 political prisoners released in a Jan. 13 amnesty by the government. The article goes into the details of what it was like for him to spend 18 years in jail after taking part in pro-democracy protests in Yangon in 1988.
“It is not so long since such coverage would not have been possible here,” says U Myint Kyaw, editor of Yangon Press International, an online-only news start-up in the country’s main city.
Since 1962, Myanmar’s dictatorship has jailed the opposition, beat up monks, denied aid to disaster victims, and run scorched-earth campaigns against ethnic minorities. For the past four years, it has been ranked among the world’s five worst jailers of the press. (more…)
NLD looks to youth before April by-election – The Irrawaddy
February 6th, 2012
Naing Ngan Lin (left) at NLD HQ in Rangoon (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22981
RANGOON – Criticized in the past for an apparent reluctance to promote younger members, Burma’s National League for Democracy (NLD) has lined up some youthful candidates for the country’s April 1 by-elections.
At the party’s Rangoon headquarters, amid the din of volunteers packing party literature and selling paraphernalia, such as newly cast mugs and still sticky NLD t-shirts, sits Phyu Phyu Thin, a well-known HIV/AIDS activist and former student protester. She says that her experience assisting some of Burma’s HIV and AIDS afflicted motivated her to get involved in politics.
“Before, the government tried to stop us from educating people about HIV/AIDS, and the local authorities still sometimes interrupt our work,” said the 39 year old. (more…)
What’s going on in Burma? – RTÉ: Today with Pat Kenny
February 3rd, 2012
On the line from Burma earlier today..
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/todaywithpatkenny/2012-02-03.html - audio link on right-hand side of page
Myanmar’s about-face: 5 recent reforms – Christian Science Monitor
February 3rd, 2012
YANGON – Since 1962, Myanmar’s dictatorship has jailed the opposition, beat up monks, denied aid to disaster victims, and run scorched-earth campaigns against ethnic minorities. That may be changing, however. Here are five key changes the regime has made in just a matter of months:
1.Free and fair elections
April 1, 2012, is the date Myanmar’s military-backed civilian government has set aside for parliamentary by-elections.
Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi – forced to live under house arrest for years – is slated to run, along with other candidates from her National League for Democracy (NLD) Party.
If the vote is free and fair, as Myanmar’s president, Thein Sein, has promised, it could go a little way in helping to democratize the government. The United States says it will reduce sanctions after April 1, if the elections are fair. But the key test is what comes after that. (more…)
