Thursday, 18 February 2010
Burmese Soldier who became Democracy Activist
Burma Soldier Trailer 11/2009 from Anne Sundberg on Vimeo.
Trailer 4:30 trt. Burma Soldier feature documentary, directed by Nic Dunlop, Annie Sundberg, Ricki Stern
A LeBrocquy Fraser / Break Thru Films production
contact +1 212 675 6568 annie@breakthrufilms.org
Burmese Soldier who became Democracy Activist
Burma Soldier Trailer 11/2009 from Anne Sundberg on Vimeo.
Trailer 4:30 trt. Burma Soldier feature documentary, directed by Nic Dunlop, Annie Sundberg, Ricki Stern
A LeBrocquy Fraser / Break Thru Films production
contact +1 212 675 6568 annie@breakthrufilms.org
story of a former junta member and Burmese soldier
Burma Soldier - excerpt from feature documentary from Anne Sundberg on Vimeo.
The powerful story of a former junta member and Burmese soldier who risks everything to become a pro-democracy activist.
A LeBrocquy Fraser / Break Thru Films Production
Thanks to Dr Lun Swe Blogspot
NLD-Ethnic Groups Share Common Center
BANGKOK — The perceived divide between the “mainstream” Burmese opposition led by the National League for Democracy (NLD) on the one hand, and groups representing ethnic minorities on the other, is “artificial and contrived,” according to an Amnesty International researcher.
Noting that the 2007 protests known as the “Saffron Revolution” were started by monks in Rakhine, Benjamin Zawacki, a researcher on Amnesty's Southeast Asia team, said that the presence of a substantial number of ethnic minorities in the NLD suggests that the ethnic groups share many common grievances with the Burmese opposition, and see common ground in addressing these issues.
Ethnic Karen women leave a refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border to return to Burma. About 30,000 Karen entered Thailand in June 2009 to flee fighting between rebel groups and the government. (Photo: Reuters)
“While ethnic minorities have their own issues with the Myanmar [Burma] government, a shared experience of oppression infuses links between the opposition and ethnic groups,” Zawacki said.
Zawacki spoke at a press conference in Bangkok on Tuesday, to launcha new Amnesty report “The Repression of Ethnic Minority Activists in Myanmar.” The document is based on interviews with more than 700 representatives of ethnic groups, with interviews taking place in Bangladesh, China, Thailand and other countries neighboring Burma.
It focuses on the seven main ethnic groups in Burma, those identified as making up a majority in their eponymous state, namely the Arakan, Chin, Kachin, Shan, Karenni, Karen and Mon. Ethnic minorities make up between 35 to 40 percent of the country's population, with at least 135 ethnic groups living inside Burma. Burmese make up the majority of the country's people.
Ten political parties have registered to participate in the upcoming election in Burma, according to a junta. However, the NLD and the major parties representing ethnic minorities have not indicated that they will take part.
The junta has ordered that ethnic militias, many of which are linked to political parties, stand down and become part of the state border force prior to the elections.
Burma recently marked its Union Day, commemorating the signing of the Panglong Agreement in 1947. Gen Aung San and leaders of some of the ethnic minorities agreed to establish a form of federal union in which the non-Burmese minorities would have substantial local autonomy. When the military seized power in 1962, it justified the coup by dismissing the Panglong agreement and the federation principle as code for ethnic groups trying to separate from Burma.
The report also discussed the reaction by the Burmese regime to people caught working with media groups. It recounted the 2008 shooting of a 17- year-old Mon boy accused of passing information to exile media groups, saying this type of draconian reaction affected both Burmese opposition and minority groups.
Recalling the lack of information that characterized the 2008 Constitution referendum, with the document published a mere weeks before the vote, without any minority language translation, Zawacki said he doubted that the 2010 elections would be free and fair: “International media and observers must be given access, and the election laws and dates must be published and disseminated widely, well in advance of the polling date,” he said.
However, a lack of international will and monitoring mechanism could stymie any hopes that the upcoming elections will be credible, or will lead to a better relationship between the government and minority groups.
“The Asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights has no investigative power, but we request that it do everything within its mandate to address violations of international human rights law in Myanmar,” said Zawacki.
Southeast Asia and China should frame ethnic relations in Burma with regard to regional stability. After six decades of on-off war between the mainly military governments of Burma and ethnic groups, millions of migrant workers and refugees have flooded into neighboring countries and unless the internal conflicts are resolved, more of the same can be expected.
After recent attempts by the Thai government to repatriate Karen refugees who fled an attack by the junta backed-DKBA last June, Amnesty International urged Bangkok to respect international human rights norms, particularly the principle of non-refoulement.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17826
Noting that the 2007 protests known as the “Saffron Revolution” were started by monks in Rakhine, Benjamin Zawacki, a researcher on Amnesty's Southeast Asia team, said that the presence of a substantial number of ethnic minorities in the NLD suggests that the ethnic groups share many common grievances with the Burmese opposition, and see common ground in addressing these issues.
Ethnic Karen women leave a refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border to return to Burma. About 30,000 Karen entered Thailand in June 2009 to flee fighting between rebel groups and the government. (Photo: Reuters)
“While ethnic minorities have their own issues with the Myanmar [Burma] government, a shared experience of oppression infuses links between the opposition and ethnic groups,” Zawacki said.
Zawacki spoke at a press conference in Bangkok on Tuesday, to launcha new Amnesty report “The Repression of Ethnic Minority Activists in Myanmar.” The document is based on interviews with more than 700 representatives of ethnic groups, with interviews taking place in Bangladesh, China, Thailand and other countries neighboring Burma.
It focuses on the seven main ethnic groups in Burma, those identified as making up a majority in their eponymous state, namely the Arakan, Chin, Kachin, Shan, Karenni, Karen and Mon. Ethnic minorities make up between 35 to 40 percent of the country's population, with at least 135 ethnic groups living inside Burma. Burmese make up the majority of the country's people.
Ten political parties have registered to participate in the upcoming election in Burma, according to a junta. However, the NLD and the major parties representing ethnic minorities have not indicated that they will take part.
The junta has ordered that ethnic militias, many of which are linked to political parties, stand down and become part of the state border force prior to the elections.
Burma recently marked its Union Day, commemorating the signing of the Panglong Agreement in 1947. Gen Aung San and leaders of some of the ethnic minorities agreed to establish a form of federal union in which the non-Burmese minorities would have substantial local autonomy. When the military seized power in 1962, it justified the coup by dismissing the Panglong agreement and the federation principle as code for ethnic groups trying to separate from Burma.
The report also discussed the reaction by the Burmese regime to people caught working with media groups. It recounted the 2008 shooting of a 17- year-old Mon boy accused of passing information to exile media groups, saying this type of draconian reaction affected both Burmese opposition and minority groups.
Recalling the lack of information that characterized the 2008 Constitution referendum, with the document published a mere weeks before the vote, without any minority language translation, Zawacki said he doubted that the 2010 elections would be free and fair: “International media and observers must be given access, and the election laws and dates must be published and disseminated widely, well in advance of the polling date,” he said.
However, a lack of international will and monitoring mechanism could stymie any hopes that the upcoming elections will be credible, or will lead to a better relationship between the government and minority groups.
“The Asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights has no investigative power, but we request that it do everything within its mandate to address violations of international human rights law in Myanmar,” said Zawacki.
Southeast Asia and China should frame ethnic relations in Burma with regard to regional stability. After six decades of on-off war between the mainly military governments of Burma and ethnic groups, millions of migrant workers and refugees have flooded into neighboring countries and unless the internal conflicts are resolved, more of the same can be expected.
After recent attempts by the Thai government to repatriate Karen refugees who fled an attack by the junta backed-DKBA last June, Amnesty International urged Bangkok to respect international human rights norms, particularly the principle of non-refoulement.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17826
ပုဆိုးအစိမ္း၀တ္ထားတဲ့ သူေတြက ဘယ္သူေတြလဲ ဟင္"
"အဲဒါ ၾကံ႕ဖြံ႔အဖြဲ႔၀င္ေတြကြဲ႕"
"ဟို ... အက်ႌအ၀ါ၊ ထမီအ၀ါ၀တ္ထားတဲ့ အမ်ဳိးသမီးေတြကေကာ ဘယ္သူေတြလဲ ေဖေဖ"
"အဲဒါက အမ်ဳိးသမီးေရးရာ အဖြဲ႔၀င္ေတြလို႔ ေခၚတယ္သားရဲ႕"
"ဟို ... အက်ႌနက္ျပာ၊ ေဘာင္းဘီနက္ျပာနဲ႔ လူေတြကေကာ"
"သူတို႔က အရန္မီးသတ္အဖြဲ႔၀င္ေတြကြဲ႔"
"ဟို ... အက်ႌအျဖဴ၊ ေဘာင္းဘီနက္ျပာ၊ ဦးထုပ္အျဖဴနဲ႔ လူေတြကေကာ ဘယ္သူေတြလဲ
ေဖေဖ"
"လမ္းျပပုလိပ္ေတြေပါ့ သားရဲ႕"
"အက်ႌအစိမ္း၊ ေဘာင္းဘီအစိမ္း၊ ဦးထုပ္အစိမ္းနဲ႔ လူေတြကေတာ့ စစ္သားေတြေနာ္
ေဖေဖ၊ ဟုတ္လား"
"ဟုတ္တယ္ကြဲ႔"
"အက်ႌအညိဳေရာင္၊ ေဘာင္းဘီအညိဳေရာင္၊ ဦးထုပ္အညိဳေရာင္နဲ႔ လူေတြက ရဲေတြလား
ေဖေဖ"
"ဟုတ္တယ္ေလ သားရဲ႕၊ ဘာျဖစ္လို႔ ဒီေလာက္ေတာင္ အေမးအျမန္း ထူေနရတာလဲ"
အဲဒီအခါမွာ သားျဖစ္သူ ေျပာလိုက္တဲ့စကားေၾကာင့္ အေဖျဖစ္တဲ့
သူေတာင္းစားႀကီးဟာ အံ့ၾသမွင္သက္မိသြား သတဲ့။ သားျဖစ္သူ ေျပာလိုက္တဲ့
စကားကေတာ့ …
"ေဖေဖ့ကို ၾကည့္ရတာ ပင္ပန္းလို႔ပါ ေဖေဖ၊ ေဖေဖလည္း
သူတို႔လို၀တ္စံုေတြ၀တ္ၿပီး ေတာင္းပါလား၊ အဲဒါဆို ပိုက္ဆံပိုရမွာ၊
သူတို႔ေတြ ပိုက္ဆံေတာင္းရင္ လူေတြက အမ်ားႀကီးထည့္တာ သားေတြ႔တယ္ ေဖေဖရဲ႕"
တဲ့။
"အဲဒါ ၾကံ႕ဖြံ႔အဖြဲ႔၀င္ေတြကြဲ႕"
"ဟို ... အက်ႌအ၀ါ၊ ထမီအ၀ါ၀တ္ထားတဲ့ အမ်ဳိးသမီးေတြကေကာ ဘယ္သူေတြလဲ ေဖေဖ"
"အဲဒါက အမ်ဳိးသမီးေရးရာ အဖြဲ႔၀င္ေတြလို႔ ေခၚတယ္သားရဲ႕"
"ဟို ... အက်ႌနက္ျပာ၊ ေဘာင္းဘီနက္ျပာနဲ႔ လူေတြကေကာ"
"သူတို႔က အရန္မီးသတ္အဖြဲ႔၀င္ေတြကြဲ႔"
"ဟို ... အက်ႌအျဖဴ၊ ေဘာင္းဘီနက္ျပာ၊ ဦးထုပ္အျဖဴနဲ႔ လူေတြကေကာ ဘယ္သူေတြလဲ
ေဖေဖ"
"လမ္းျပပုလိပ္ေတြေပါ့ သားရဲ႕"
"အက်ႌအစိမ္း၊ ေဘာင္းဘီအစိမ္း၊ ဦးထုပ္အစိမ္းနဲ႔ လူေတြကေတာ့ စစ္သားေတြေနာ္
ေဖေဖ၊ ဟုတ္လား"
"ဟုတ္တယ္ကြဲ႔"
"အက်ႌအညိဳေရာင္၊ ေဘာင္းဘီအညိဳေရာင္၊ ဦးထုပ္အညိဳေရာင္နဲ႔ လူေတြက ရဲေတြလား
ေဖေဖ"
"ဟုတ္တယ္ေလ သားရဲ႕၊ ဘာျဖစ္လို႔ ဒီေလာက္ေတာင္ အေမးအျမန္း ထူေနရတာလဲ"
အဲဒီအခါမွာ သားျဖစ္သူ ေျပာလိုက္တဲ့စကားေၾကာင့္ အေဖျဖစ္တဲ့
သူေတာင္းစားႀကီးဟာ အံ့ၾသမွင္သက္မိသြား သတဲ့။ သားျဖစ္သူ ေျပာလိုက္တဲ့
စကားကေတာ့ …
"ေဖေဖ့ကို ၾကည့္ရတာ ပင္ပန္းလို႔ပါ ေဖေဖ၊ ေဖေဖလည္း
သူတို႔လို၀တ္စံုေတြ၀တ္ၿပီး ေတာင္းပါလား၊ အဲဒါဆို ပိုက္ဆံပိုရမွာ၊
သူတို႔ေတြ ပိုက္ဆံေတာင္းရင္ လူေတြက အမ်ားႀကီးထည့္တာ သားေတြ႔တယ္ ေဖေဖရဲ႕"
တဲ့။
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