Kachin majority rejects regime’s order to disarm

Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – A majority of participants at a congress of ethnic Kachin groups has rejected disarming despite a Burmese military junta threat to end the ceasefire between the two sides, a spokesman said. Meanwhile, the main Kachin militia are gearing up for war, a soldier told Mizzima.


Women soldiers of the Kachin Independence Army parade in the ethnic group’s Sino-Burmese border stronghold of Laiza. The militia is gearing up for war with the Burmese Army as a junta-imposed deadline for it to disarm approaches next Wednesday, a KIA source said on Friday, August 27, 2010. Photo: Mizzima

The junta deadline for the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) to reply to its order for the group’s estimated 20,000 troops to disarm is September 1. The congress opened today in the Kachin stronghold of Laiza, a town near the Chinese border in Burma’s far north, and will end tomorrow (Saturday).

The 140 delegates from 18 districts who attended the congress all passed on their views that the KIO should retain its arms, one of the participants aid.

“The congress will continue tomorrow as we haven’t made a final decision. The aim of today’s meeting was just to collect the opinions from the delegates. From my point of view, we shouldn’t hand over our guns to the junta,” the KIO spokesman said.

Delegates from the KIO’s armed wing, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), were absent because they were preparing for war, a KIA soldier told Mizzima.

The deadline was delivered on Sunday at a meeting between the junta’s main negotiator with ethnic armed groups, Military Affairs Security chief Lieutenant General Ye Myint, and KIO delegates, at the Burmese Army’s Northern Command headquarters in Myitkyina, the state capital. He told the KIO that if the KIA failed to surrender its arms in the time allotted, the ceasefire would end.

Ye Myint went on to meet Zone Teet Yame from the junta’s Border Guard Force (BGF) and Lasang Aung Was from the people’s militia and told them to arrest former KIO staff from the beginning of next month, an officer from the militia, who attended the meeting, said on condition of anonymity.

The KIO had said it would neither contest nor disturb the forthcoming elections on November 7.

It held a meeting with Kachin leaders and Christian leaders to gain their input from August 14 to 16, views that will be taken into account while reaching the final decision at this weekend’s congress.

In the last month, Ye Myint has been touring the country, pressuring armed ethnic ceasefire groups to bring themselves under junta command within the Burmese Army’s BGF and imposed the same September 1 (next Wednesday) deadline on the New Mon State Party (NMSP).

Last Friday he told United Wa State Army leaders in Tangyang that the junta would send the army into four townships in Wa-controlled territory the same day as security for electoral commissioners. The Wa leaders said they would defy the move.
http://www.mizzima.com/news/inside-burma/4299-kachin-majority-rejects-regimes-order-to-disarm.html

Burma's ailing dictator resigns military post

Burma's reclusive and ailing dictator, Than Shwe, has resigned his military post, exiled Burmese media have reported, paving the way for him to become president in Burma's government after the elections.

Shwe, the despot who has brutally ruled south-east Asia's poorest country as commander-in-chief of the armed forces since 1992, yesterday handed control of the army to his adjutant general. However, the 77-year-old will remain head of the Burmese government.

More than a dozen other senior military officers also resigned, in an ominous sign for the country's forthcoming elections. Inside Burma, Shwe's resignation of his military role is being seen as a significant step towards ensuring he and his military cadres remain in charge after 7 November's national elections, the first to be held in Burma for two decades.

"I think this means only one thing – he wants to be president," a source inside Burma told the Guardian.

The country's new constitution says the presidency can only be held by a civilian, but it does insist the president and vice-president "shall be well acquainted with the affairs of the Union, such as … the military".

The junta's second-in-command, Maung Aye, also resigned, as did the regime's numbers three and four. It is understood they will stand as candidates for the junta's largest proxy party, the Union Solidarity and Development party (USDP), in constituencies in the capital, Naypyidaw.

An unnamed military official said 15 senior army officials had resigned their posts, but did not confirm that the junta's leader was among them. But a second source told agencies the resignations went right to the top: "All top leaders have given up their military positions."

It is the second major reshuffle since April, when 27 senior military figures, including the prime minister, Thein Sein, resigned to lead the USDP.

Burma's last elections, in 1990, were won overwhelmingly by the main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi. But the junta refused to recognise the result and Aung San Suu Kyi has spent most of the past two decades in detention.

Her party is boycotting the poll after she was excluded from participating by new election laws which forbid people in custody from running for office. She is due to be released less than a week after the 7 November election.

Supporters of the polls say any move towards democracy, however flawed, is an improvement on the current military rule. Thirty-seven non-regime parties have registered for the elections, but few have a national presence and none have the money or influence of the pro-regime party and its proxies.

But critics of Burma's "road map to democracy", including Britain, the US and the UN, have dismissed the election as a sham, saying the poll will only entrench and formalise military rule.

"We don't regard the forthcoming elections as being a legitimate expression of public opinion," Jeremy Browne, a Foreign Office minister, said in Bangkok last month. "We continue to have a very strong view the situation in Burma is unacceptable."

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/27/burma-dictator-resigns-military-post