Re: Burma Policy Review
Dear Secretary Clinton:
We write to you again about the human rights and political situation in Burma and the current US policy review. We believe it is important for the US government to conclude the policy review you announced in February so that American policy and strategy towards Burma will be clear to all concerned. We also believe that as intractable as the situation in Burma may seem, the United States does have options that could have a positive impact on the human rights and political situation in Burma.
As you know, Burma remains one of the most repressive countries in the world. There are strict limits on basic freedoms of expression, association, and assembly. The intelligence and security services are omnipresent. Censorship is draconian. More than 2,100 political prisoners suffer in Burma's squalid prisons. These prisoners include many members of the political opposition, courageous protestors who peacefully took to the streets in August and September 2007, and individuals who criticized the government for its poor response to Cyclone Nargis in May 2008. All have been sentenced after sham trials, summary hearings that often take place in the prisons themselves. The recent conviction of Aung San Suu Kyi on ridiculous charges reminded the world of the despotic nature of the military government that has been in power since 1962.
At the same time, military abuses connected to armed conflicts in ethnic minority areas continue. Human Rights Watch has for many years documented the recruitment and deployment of child soldiers, the use of forced labor, and summary killings, rape, and other abuses against minority populations, including the Rohingya, Chin, Shan, and Karen. Recent attacks against Shan and Karen communities have once again led to large-scale displacement of ethnic communities and needless death and hardship. Fighting between the Burmese army and ethnic militias has also driven thousands of refugees from northern Shan state into China.
In addition to rampant violations of civil and political rights, corruption and mismanagement have meant that under military rule Burma has become one of the poorest countries in Asia. The government seems to care little for the basic welfare of its people; to give but one example, while the Burmese government received an estimated US$150 million per month in gas export revenue in 2008, its last announced annual budget to address its AIDS crisis in 2007 was a mere $172,000. While most Burmese struggle to subsist, the country's leaders have the comfort of "5 star" lives of luxury generated through corruption from the plunder of the country's natural resources.
There is no mystery in the military's long-term intentions, as the ruling junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), has been totally open about its plans to stage-manage an electoral process that will ensure continued military rule with a civilian face. Burma's generals have learned from their resounding defeat by Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy in 1990 and periodic protest movements that it cannot risk staging a credible election (indeed, last year the government announced a 98 percent turnout and a 92 percent vote in favor of a new constitution, just months after the 2007 street protests that rocked the country). They doubtlessly hope that this will mollify the United States, European governments, and other countries that oppose military rule, end the pressure from ASEAN states to make progress on political reform and national reconciliation, and encourage large-scale international aid flows.
Based on the experience of the 2008 referendum, the harsh prison sentences handed down to activists, the lack of serious dialogue with the political opposition and Burma's many ethnic groups, the stonewalling of United Nations and ASEAN efforts to discuss political and human rights issues, the lack of any reform measures, and the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi on ridiculous charges, it is clear that there will be no meaningful change in the political direction of the country before or after the 2010 elections unless concerned governments and international bodies take steps to change the SPDC's calculations.
We recognize the scale of this challenge. The military government has close relations with its neighbors China, India, and Thailand, and has large revenue streams from these countries from the sale of gas, timber, gems, and other natural resources. China, Russia, and even South Africa have protected the government from action at the United Nations Security Council. In short, while much of the world sees Burma's rulers as isolated, ruthless, and despised, from the SPDC's perspective it has influential friends in the region that provide massive resources through the purchase of energy and other commodities, and shield Burma from concerted action at the UN, ASEAN, and other international fora on subjects like effective arms embargoes or targeted sanctions.
We largely agree with your statement that "the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn't influenced the Burmese junta," but that "reaching out and trying to engage them hasn't influenced them either." We suggest that the policy review should, therefore, aim at making more effective all three prongs of US policy - diplomacy, sanctions and humanitarian aid - and not placing one ahead of the others.
Diplomacy
On diplomacy, as a starting point there should be no wishful thinking or illusions that more conciliatory talk from the US and others will somehow cause Burma's senior leadership to alter its plans. It is committed to remaining in complete control, whether through managed elections or the current system. Yet, as in other countries with which the Obama administration is now talking or attempting to open better lines of communication, Human Rights Watch supports US government efforts to speak to the Burmese government at the highest levels. While it is far from clear that the Burmese leadership has any interest in meaningful discussions with the US or any other critical actors, such a policy would remove the perception that the US and others are not willing to engage or be reasonable. Should the leadership be willing to have serious talks, there is nothing to be lost from talking so long as the US stands by its principles to uphold the basic human rights of the Burmese people.
But a couple of cautions: first, it is important that more intensive diplomacy does not lead into the trap of making improved relations the primary goal of US policy. The protection of the rights of Burmese and a genuine and credible political reform process needs to be the primary goal for US policy.
Second, the US should keep in mind that the Burmese officials who normally speak to foreigners - whether the foreign minister or the functionaries involved in the post-Nargis reconstruction - have no real authority in the government and are probably as scared of Than Shwe and other senior leaders as anyone else. Many foreign diplomats and others who have invested a great deal of time and energy in pursuing relations with the second tier of leadership have told us that it was time largely wasted. Those who do have the authority - Senior General Than Shwe, Vice-Senior General Maung Aye, Lt. General Thura Shwe Mann, Prime Minister Thein Sein, and key regional commanders - usually don't engage with outsiders. Talking to the deputy health minister and mid-level civil servants can be useful in facilitating humanitarian relief and resolving discrete practical problems on the ground. But it is not a way of addressing the fundamental issues in the country or causes of friction between Burma and the US.
On key political matters, the engagement that has taken place thus far has not been very meaningful and in some cases has even been counterproductive. During the crackdown following the 2007 demonstrations, for instance, diplomatic action merely allowed the SPDC to buy time and pretend that it was engaged in serious discussions. For example, the efforts of the UN Secretary-General's special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, have failed to achieve anything of substance. The situation has devolved to the point that at times getting a visa or a short meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi was treated as a success, with the unintended but predictable consequence of being used by the SPDC for its own propaganda. Ban's most recent visit also failed to achieve anything of substance; he was not even allowed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi and was given empty promises to release political prisoners.
Human Rights Watch recommends that the United States appoint its own special envoy, as called for in the Block Burmese JADE Act of 2008. That envoy should have a direct line to the Secretary of State and specific instructions to engage in a principled way with the SPDC and other key bilateral and multilateral actors. Vigorous diplomacy is needed with China, India, Thailand, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia and other influential actors to ensure that new revenue streams are not made available to the government.
We also encourage you to consider the establishment of a Burma Contact Group or some form of multilateral grouping to meet and regularly discuss diplomatic engagement with the Burmese government on a range of issues. This could have the effect of converging the views and policies of China, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, the EU and UN, and gradually minimize the ability of the SPDC to play states off against each other. There is considerable common ground on a range of issues, including the need for political reform and credible elections involving the political opposition, concern over Burma's trafficking in heroin and methamphetamines, and the need for a regional approach to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Such a grouping would, of course, have to be predicated on the US sticking to its principles and not engaging in diplomatic horse-trading on core issues of reform.
As the United Nations has long been the focal point for diplomacy on Burma, we urge the US to support the continuation of a special envoy of the secretary-general. It is crucial that the secretary-general and the special envoy not get sucked into the game of access or high-level meetings being the goal or a sign of progress. The envoy must be an individual with the principles, skills, and backing of the international community to make an impact.
Sanctions
There is now a strong and even emotional debate on sanctions against Burma. Some argue that sanctions have not had any discernible impact on the military government and should be lifted. Others argue that for political and technical reasons they have never been properly implemented and, therefore, more pressure should be applied by imposing sanctions on additional companies and individuals, and also by encouraging countries and institutions that have not imposed sanctions to do so.
Part of the problem is that this debate tends to treat all sanctions as the same, when in fact they should be differentiated. In our work in various countries around the globe, we have found that properly imposed targeted sanctions can be effective in bringing about improvements in human rights. Targeted sanctions include arms embargoes and restrictions on military assistance, travel bans on individuals, financial sanctions on individuals and entities, and investment and trade sanctions that are specifically focused on companies or economic sectors of greatest concern.
Perhaps the most effective of these are financial sanctions, which we urge the United States to expand, strengthen, and fully implement. The United States has authorities it is not yet using - for example, to deny foreign banks access to the US financial system if they are holding targeted Burmese accounts or otherwise undermining US measures, and going after transactions by the oil and gas authority, the key revenue-generating entity in Burma. This requires the dedication of intelligence resources and continual monitoring and adjustment by US officials - another reason why it's important to have a senior envoy in place.
Targeted sanctions don't impose hardship on ordinary people, but do provide leverage if effectively implemented. One approach to make targeted sanctions more effective is for the US to take the lead in coordinating efforts among the US, EU, Switzerland, Australia, and Canada to target key individuals, both military and civilian, who bear responsibility for abuses; their business interests; and the individuals and entities whose considerable financial support of the SPDC could undermine these sanctions. These individuals are at the apex of the system inside Burma and susceptible to this kind of pressure. More effective coordination could also lead to greater support from other key states such as Japan and Singapore. EU states have been noticeably slow to implement full financial sanctions; the US should first set a good example and then press European countries to follow suit. Slow implementation by the US and poor coordination internationally have undermined financial and other sanctions, and kept them from realizing their potential.
Human Rights Watch also believes the US should pursue openings for targeted military sanctions through the UN Security Council's agenda on children and armed conflict. The Security Council has stated in two resolutions (SC Res. 1539 and Res. 1612) that it will consider bans on the export and supply of small arms, light weapons, and other military equipment and assistance to parties that refuse to end their recruitment and use of child soldiers. The Burmese military retains thousands of children in its ranks and has been identified repeatedly since 2002 by the UN secretary-general for its continued recruitment and use of child soldiers. While the imposition of sanctions by the Security Council against Burma has proven nearly impossible, the children and armed conflict agenda provides a useful avenue for stronger Security Council action. A credible threat of military sanctions can be used as leverage to gain concrete improvements in ending the widespread recruitment and use of children as soldiers.
While we strongly support targeted measures, Human Rights Watch recognizes that generalized sanctions are less likely to be effective and may hurt large numbers of ordinary people, while not having significant impact on governments in targeted countries. In the case of Burma, the existing ban on garment imports has had no discernible impact on the SPDC. We think the US ban on all imports from Burma as it applies to garments should, at the right time, be suspended, lifted, or phased out -- so long as the exporting companies and their contractors meet international labor standards, these companies and associated individuals are not themselves targeted for sanctions because of their close ties to the generals, and the companies in question are not otherwise directly linked to the SPDC or armed forces.
However, in light of the sham trial of Aung San Suu Kyi and the lack of political reform, we do not think now is the right time to change these sanctions, as it would send the wrong signal to the SPDC, suggesting that the United States or others have lost their will or commitment to keep up the pressure for democratic reform. Further, it is critical that when the import sanctions as they apply to garments are suspended, lifted, or phased out that this take place only at the same time that new, more effective, targeted sanctions are imposed on key individuals and types of business activity that sustain the regime and existing related sanctions are strengthened.
Aid
On humanitarian aid, Human Rights Watch has long called for increased assistance to deal with acute humanitarian needs in Burma. US funding should increase. But, again, some cautions. First, the cause of Burma's humanitarian problems is not a lack of available resources. Burma has made gas deals with Thailand that provides the government its largest source of revenue, worth approximately $2 billion annually. A new deal to supply natural gas to China via an overland pipeline will significantly add to that sum. Burma's leaders also count on large earnings from sales of gems and timber, and ongoing hydroelectric projects are expected to generate additional lucrative export revenue.
Despite these large revenue sources, the military government spends next to nothing on the welfare of its people. The largest share of the state budget is allocated to the military, as much as 40 percent, while combined social spending is estimated to be a paltry 0.8 percent of GDP for 2008/09, making public expenditures on health and education in Burma among the lowest in the world. Huge numbers of Burmese live in grinding poverty, brought upon by decades of government economic mismanagement and corruption. For this reason, the suggestion that Western business investment in Burma would somehow open up the country is fallacious. Foreign investment in Burma is concentrated on the extraction of natural resources and building of hydropower projects. The resulting revenues are largely squandered, stolen, or used for military spending instead of to meet humanitarian and development needs, ,thereby resulting in the strengthening of those in power and robbing the Burmese people of their patrimony.
Donor discussions with the SPDC over the provision of humanitarian assistance should not neglect the government's ability to contribute substantially to such assistance. Donors should also remember that the purpose of humanitarian aid is humanitarian - to keep people alive and healthy - not political. No one should expect humanitarian aid itself to have a significant political effect in opening up the country or changing the government's policies. Donors will also need to stress the importance of transparency and accountability in the delivery of humanitarian aid, including the need for approaches that strengthen civil society rather than existing corrupt power structures and that respond to the views and needs of ordinary people.
The SPDC does not want to be totally dependent on China. For this reason, it also wants assistance from the US, EU, and Japan. Development aid is a very important incentive for change in Burma. However, we do not believe development aid from the US or other countries should be made available until there is significant political reform, progress on human rights, better governance, and the possibility of consulting civil society and local communities in setting development goals. Likewise, World Bank lending for development should also not be resumed until these conditions are met. Unfortunately, the SPDC gives priority to development projects that are "vanity projects" for its leaders, facilitate abusive military campaigns, and help generate funds to strengthen military rule, when what is needed is development that would alleviate the poverty and deprivation of ordinary citizens.
Helping the Burmese people is one of the most difficult and intractable problems the world has faced in recent decades. We don't underestimate the challenge, but we think a revitalized approach with strong US leadership can make a significant difference in the years ahead.
Sincerely,
Kenneth Roth
Executive Director
Thursday, 10 September 2009
An 'Election' Burma's People Don't Need
An 'Election' Burma's People Don't Need
By U Win Tin
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Much attention has been focused on Sen. James Webb's recent visit to my country and his meetings with Senior Gen. Than Shwe and incarcerated Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi. I understand Webb's desire to seek a meaningful dialogue with the Burmese ruling authorities. Unfortunately, his efforts have been damaging to our democracy movement and focus on the wrong issue -- the potential for an "election" that Webb wants us to consider participating in next year as part of a long-term political strategy. But the showcase election planned by the military regime makes a mockery of the freedom sought by our people and would make military dictatorship permanent.
In our last free election, the Burmese people rejected military rule in a landslide, awarding our National League for Democracy party more than 80 percent of the seats in parliament. Yet the military has refused to allow the NLD to form a government. In the 19 years since that election, Burmese democracy activists have faced imprisonment, intimidation, torture and death as they have peacefully voiced demands for justice, individual and ethnic rights, and a democratic form of government that is representative of all Burma's people.
While never ending our struggle for democracy, the NLD has continually sought to engage the regime and open a dialogue -- based on peace and mutual respect -- that could address Burma's critical political as well as social problems. Make no mistake -- these two issues are linked. Burma was once the rice bowl of Asia. Today, because of the regime's destructive economic policies and its use of oppression to maintain military rule, Burma is a shattered, poverty-stricken country.
The regime is seeking to place a veneer of legitimacy on itself through showcase "elections" and claiming that "disciplined democracy" will be instituted next year. Yet in May 2008, just days after a massive cyclone devastated Burma and killed more than 100,000 people, the regime used a farcical process to claim that 93 percent of voters chose to adopt a constitution that permanently enshrines military rule and prevents those with undefined "foreign ties" from holding public office -- catch-all provisions that would bar Suu Kyi and democracy activists from seeking office.
Some international observers view next year's planned elections as an opportunity. But under the circumstances imposed by the military's constitution, the election will be a sham. We will not sacrifice the democratic principles for which many millions of Burmese have marched, been arrested, been tortured and died to participate in a process that holds no hope whatsoever for bringing freedom to our country.
The demands of the NLD are reasonable. In April we issued another declaration to encourage engagement with the military that called for the release of all political prisoners, a full review of the constitution, reopening of all NLD offices and the right to freely organize. The regime's answer is the continued jailing of Suu Kyi and 2,000 other activists, massive military offensives against ethnic groups and the enforcement of rules to gag democracy.
How can the international community play a meaningful role? First, officials such as Webb should stop fear-mongering about China. His language about containing China, and working with Burma's regime to do so, is based on an outdated and unrealistic thesis. Suu Kyi rejected such notions by informing Webb that "we will not deal with anyone with fear and insecurity. We will deal with anyone, China, America, India, equally and friendly. As we can't choose our neighbors, we understand that we need to have a good relationship with China." Second, the NLD encourages other countries and international organizations to engage with Burma's military leaders to persuade them to engage with us and Burma's ethnic groups. The United States and many other nations have imposed sanctions on Burma. That is their decision and in keeping with their justified solidarity with the democratic values that we all hold so dear. If the regime genuinely engages with the NLD and ethnic representatives, releases political prisoners, ceases attacks against ethnic minorities and takes additional steps to build a true democratic state, these sanctions will be repealed at the right time.
In the meantime, let no one doubt our resolve. The NLD is a reflection of Burmese society. We will not be cowed or coerced into participating in a fatally flawed political process that robs the Burmese people of the freedom for which we struggle. We stand ready to engage, but we are more than willing to continue our struggle for the democratic values that so many have given their lives and their freedom to achieve.
U Win Tin is a member of the Central Executive Committee and a founder of Burma's National League for Democracy party. He was a political prisoner from 1989 to 2008.
Letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the Current Burma Policy Review
September 9, 2009
Related Materials: Burma: US Should Complete Policy Review
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
US Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520
By U Win Tin
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Much attention has been focused on Sen. James Webb's recent visit to my country and his meetings with Senior Gen. Than Shwe and incarcerated Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi. I understand Webb's desire to seek a meaningful dialogue with the Burmese ruling authorities. Unfortunately, his efforts have been damaging to our democracy movement and focus on the wrong issue -- the potential for an "election" that Webb wants us to consider participating in next year as part of a long-term political strategy. But the showcase election planned by the military regime makes a mockery of the freedom sought by our people and would make military dictatorship permanent.
In our last free election, the Burmese people rejected military rule in a landslide, awarding our National League for Democracy party more than 80 percent of the seats in parliament. Yet the military has refused to allow the NLD to form a government. In the 19 years since that election, Burmese democracy activists have faced imprisonment, intimidation, torture and death as they have peacefully voiced demands for justice, individual and ethnic rights, and a democratic form of government that is representative of all Burma's people.
While never ending our struggle for democracy, the NLD has continually sought to engage the regime and open a dialogue -- based on peace and mutual respect -- that could address Burma's critical political as well as social problems. Make no mistake -- these two issues are linked. Burma was once the rice bowl of Asia. Today, because of the regime's destructive economic policies and its use of oppression to maintain military rule, Burma is a shattered, poverty-stricken country.
The regime is seeking to place a veneer of legitimacy on itself through showcase "elections" and claiming that "disciplined democracy" will be instituted next year. Yet in May 2008, just days after a massive cyclone devastated Burma and killed more than 100,000 people, the regime used a farcical process to claim that 93 percent of voters chose to adopt a constitution that permanently enshrines military rule and prevents those with undefined "foreign ties" from holding public office -- catch-all provisions that would bar Suu Kyi and democracy activists from seeking office.
Some international observers view next year's planned elections as an opportunity. But under the circumstances imposed by the military's constitution, the election will be a sham. We will not sacrifice the democratic principles for which many millions of Burmese have marched, been arrested, been tortured and died to participate in a process that holds no hope whatsoever for bringing freedom to our country.
The demands of the NLD are reasonable. In April we issued another declaration to encourage engagement with the military that called for the release of all political prisoners, a full review of the constitution, reopening of all NLD offices and the right to freely organize. The regime's answer is the continued jailing of Suu Kyi and 2,000 other activists, massive military offensives against ethnic groups and the enforcement of rules to gag democracy.
How can the international community play a meaningful role? First, officials such as Webb should stop fear-mongering about China. His language about containing China, and working with Burma's regime to do so, is based on an outdated and unrealistic thesis. Suu Kyi rejected such notions by informing Webb that "we will not deal with anyone with fear and insecurity. We will deal with anyone, China, America, India, equally and friendly. As we can't choose our neighbors, we understand that we need to have a good relationship with China." Second, the NLD encourages other countries and international organizations to engage with Burma's military leaders to persuade them to engage with us and Burma's ethnic groups. The United States and many other nations have imposed sanctions on Burma. That is their decision and in keeping with their justified solidarity with the democratic values that we all hold so dear. If the regime genuinely engages with the NLD and ethnic representatives, releases political prisoners, ceases attacks against ethnic minorities and takes additional steps to build a true democratic state, these sanctions will be repealed at the right time.
In the meantime, let no one doubt our resolve. The NLD is a reflection of Burmese society. We will not be cowed or coerced into participating in a fatally flawed political process that robs the Burmese people of the freedom for which we struggle. We stand ready to engage, but we are more than willing to continue our struggle for the democratic values that so many have given their lives and their freedom to achieve.
U Win Tin is a member of the Central Executive Committee and a founder of Burma's National League for Democracy party. He was a political prisoner from 1989 to 2008.
Letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the Current Burma Policy Review
September 9, 2009
Related Materials: Burma: US Should Complete Policy Review
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
US Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520
နအဖ ဘာေတြ လုပ္ေနလဲ
နအဖ ဘာေတြ လုပ္ေနလဲ
“ထို႔ေၾကာင့္ဤသုိ႔” ဆိုတဲ့ ေျဖရွင္းခ်က္ေတြကို နအဖ စစ္အုပ္စု ေန႔တိုင္းနီးပါး မရပ္မနား လုပ္ေပးေနရတယ္။
တရုတ္ကို ဖားရတယ္၊ ကခ်င္ကို နားခ်ရတယ္၊ ၀ ကို ကတိေပးရတယ္၊ ျပည္သူကို လိမ္ေနရတယ္။
ကိုးကန္႔ကို တိုက္လိုက္တာ လြယ္ေပမယ့္ ေနာက္ပိုင္း ရွင္းရတာေတြက ပိုခက္ေနတယ္။
- နအဖ စစ္ေကာင္စီ ေၾကညာခ်က္ ၁/၂၀၀၉ ထုတ္ျပီး ရွင္းေနရတယ္။
- ကိုးကန္႔ေဒသမွာ စိတ္ၾကြေဆးျပားေတြ၊ စက္္ရံုေတြ၊ လက္နက္ေမွာင္ခိုလုပ္ငန္းေတြ ေတြ႔ရွိရေၾကာင္း (အခုမွ) ထုတ္ေျပာေနရတယ္။
ျပီးခဲ့တဲ့လ အထိက အဲဒီေဒသမွာ ဘိန္းအစားထိုးလုပ္ငန္းေတြ ေအာင္ျမင္ေနေၾကာင္း မူးယစ္ေဆး၀ါး ကင္းစင္ပေပ်ာက္ေနျပီျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း
ေဒသတည္ျငိမ္ေအးခ်မ္းေနေၾကာင္း နအဖ ေရးခဲ့ေျပာခ့ဲ့ေသးတယ္။ အခုမွ ျဗဳန္းစားၾကီး WYေဆးျပားေတြ ဘိန္းေတြ ေဆးေျခာက္ေတြ M 21 - 22 ေတြ ဘယ္ကထြက္လာလဲ။
- အခုလို ကိုးကန္႔ေဒသမွာ မူးယစ္ေဆး၀ါးကို အသည္းအသန္တိုက္ဖ်က္ေနေပမယ့္ အိမ္နီးခ်င္းႏုိင္ငံေတြ အေနာက္ အင္အားၾကီးႏုိင္ငံေတြက
သတိမျပဳမိတာ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္မွုမလုပ္ၾကတဲ့အေပၚ နအဖ ၀မ္းနည္းေနေၾကာင္း ေလွ်ာက္ေျပာ ေလွ်ာက္ေရး လုပ္ေနရတယ္။
- တရုတ္ျပည္ထဲေျပး၀င္သြားတဲ့ လူေတြကို ျပန္ျပီးလက္ခံဖို႔နဲ႔ နယ္စပ္ေဒသမွာ တည္ျငိမ္မွဳရွိဖို႔ တရုတ္အစိုးရကို ကတိေတြေပးေနရတယ္။
တရုတ္ႏြယ္ဖြား ကိုးကန္႔ေတြအေပၚ လူမ်ဳိးတံုး စစ္ဆင္တာ မဟုတ္ေၾကာင္း တရုတ္ၾကီး ကို ရွင္းျပတာ ေရႊနားေတာ္သြင္းတာ လုပ္ေနရတယ္။
- ထြက္ေျပးသြားတဲ့ အရပ္သားေတြရဲ ႔ပိုင္ဆိုင္မွုေတြကို စစ္တပ္က ယူငင္လုယက္ေနလို႔ ေျဖရွင္းခ်က္ေတြ ထုတ္ေန ရတယ္။
ဘယ္တုန္းကဖမ္းထားမွန္းမသိ ဘယ္ကမွန္းမသိတဲ့ လူေတြက သူခိုးတံဆိပ္ ကပ္ေပးျပီး တရားခံျပ လုပ္ ေနရတယ္။
ခ်င္းေရႊေဟာ္မွာ တရားခံေတြကိုဖမ္းခ်ဳပ္ထားေၾကာင္း ယခု ေထာင္ဒဏ္ ၂ ႏွစ္စီ ခ်လိုက္ေၾကာင္း စာလံုးမဲနဲ႔ေခါင္းၾကီးသတင္းေတြ ေဖာ္ျပေနရတယ္။
- အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္ဆဲထားတာ က်ဳိးေပါက္သြားတာမဟုတ္ေၾကာင္းနဲ႔ “၀” ေတြ “ကခ်င္” ေတြအေပၚ စစ္ေရးတိုက္ခိုက္ က်ဴးေက်ာ္မွဳေတြ လုုပ္မွာမဟုတ္ေၾကာင္း
၃ ၾကိမ္ထက္မနည္း ကတိေတြေပးေနရတယ္။ (၀ နယ္ကိုေတာ့ စစ္အင္အား ၃ ေသာင္းထက္မနည္း လက္နက္ၾကီး လက္နက္ငယ္ေတြနဲ႔ ၀ိုင္းပတ္ေနရာယူထားတယ္)
- သတင္းစာထဲမွာ “ေလာက္ကိုင္မွာသာတဲ့လ” လို “ကိုးကန္႔ေဒသ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းၿမဲ - စိမ္းလန္းစိုျပည္ စည္ကားဆဲ” လုိ ေခါင္းစဥ္မ်ဳိးေတြနဲ႔
အျမီးအေမာက္မတည့္တဲ့ ေဆာင္းပါးေတြ ေရးထည့္ျပီး တႏိုင္ငံလံုးသိေအာင္ ၀ါဒျဖန္႔ေနရတယ္။
- နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္အသြင္ေျပာင္းေရးလက္မခံလို႔ အခုလို ဘိန္းျပျပီး စစ္ေရးအရ ေျဖရွင္းလိုက္တာ မဟုတ္ရ ပါေၾကာင္း
ေျမာက္ပိုင္းက အပစ္အခတ္ ရပ္ထားတဲ့အဖြဲ ႔ေတြကို လုိက္ရွင္းျပေနရတယ္။
- သူခိုးလူမိျဖစ္သြားလို႔ ဘက္စံု ရွင္း လင္းပြဲေတြ လုပ္ေနရတယ္။
- ျမန္မာျပည္ ေတာင္ပိုင္းမွာ ကရင္ေတြကို အျပဳတ္တိုက္ဖို႔ ငါးၾကင္းဆီနဲ႔ ငါးၾကင္းေၾကာ္ေနတယ္။ ဒီေကဘီေအ ၀တ္စံု၀တ္
သစ္ခုတ္သမား အေယာင္ေဆာင္္ျပီး ကရင္ေတာ္လွန္ေရးနယ္ေျမထဲ၀င္ ကရင္ ကရင္ ျခင္း သတ္ခိုင္း ေနတယ္။
ကရင္ ကရင္ျခင္းသတ္ျပီး ျပန္လာတဲ့ ဒီေကဘီေအ တပ္မွဳးကို သံလြင္ျမစ္ထဲမွာေဖ်ာင္ခဲ့ဘူးတယ္။
- ေလာေလာဆယ္ သတင္းေပါက္ၾကားမွုျဖစ္ပြားသြားတဲ့အတြက္ ထိုးစစ္ကို ေခတၱရပ္ထားတယ္။ ကရင္အမ်ဳိးသား အစည္းအရံုးဘက္က
ထိုးစစ္ဆင္လာေတာ့မယ့္ သတင္းရလို႔ ဖာပြန္-ကမာေမာင္းလမ္းကို ျဖတ္ေတာက္ ပိတ္ဆို႔ ထားတယ္။
ဒီလမ္းက တပ္မဟာ ၅ ကို ထိုးစစ္ဆင္မယ္ဆိုရင္ အေရးပါတဲ့လမ္းျဖစ္ေနတယ္ ဒီလမ္းကေန ေထာက္ပို႔လုပ္ငန္းေတြသြားမယ္။
တိုက္မယ္ဆိုရင္ တိုက္ပြဲၾကီးေတြေတာ့ တုိက္မွာမဟုတ္။ ေျမာက္ပိုင္းအေရးက ပူပူေႏြးေႏြးရွိေသးတယ္။
ေျမာက္ပိုင္းမွာတပ္ေတြ စုပံုေအာထားရလို႔ တိုက္မွာမဟုတ္ဘူးဆိုတဲ့ အျမင္မ်ဳိးျဖစ္ေပၚ လာတဲ့ အခ်ိန္ကို နအဖ ေစာင့္ေနတယ္။
အလစ္အငိုက္မွာ တိုက္လိမ့္မယ္။
- ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ ေတာင္ပိုင္းမွာရွိတဲ့ ေတာင္ပိုင္း ၀ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ေတြကို ရန္စတာေတြလုပ္ေနတယ္။ စစ္တပ္က လားဟူ ျပည္သူ႔စစ္ ယူနီေဖာင္း၀တ္ျပီး
ကင္းလွည့္တာ ရွာေဖြစစ္ေဆးတာေတြလုပ္ေနတယ္။ ၀ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ေတြနဲ႔ ျပႆနာ တက္ ရင္ စစ္တပ္က လားဟူ ဘက္ကေန
ခ်က္ခ်င္းအားျဖည့္ေပးမယ္ေျပာျပီး ၀ ကို တိုက္ဖို႔ လားဟူကို ေျမွာက္ေပး ေန တယ္။ လားဟူ ျပည္သူ႔စစ္ တပ္ဖြဲ႔မွာ လူအင္အာ ၄၀ ၀န္းက်င္ရွိတယ္။
စစ္တပ္က ေနာက္ထပ္ လူအင္အား ၂၀ နဲ႔ လက္နက္ခဲယမ္း ေတြ ျဖည့္ ထားတယ္။
လူ ၅၀ - ၆၀ ေလာက္နဲ႔ ငါးစာ ခ်ထားတာ ငါးမွ်ားခ်ိတ္ကို ၀ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ ေတြ မျမင္ပါေစနဲ႔လို႔ နအဖ ဆုေတာင္းေနတယ္။
- ေတာင္းပိုင္း ၀ တပ္ ဖြဲ႔ဟာ ၀ ျပည္ တပ္မေတာ္ရဲ့ အသက္ေသြးေၾကာ တခုျဖစ္တယ္။ တရုတ္အစိုးရကို နအဖ က ကပ္ႏုိင္လို႔ တရုတ္ျပည္က
၀ ေတြ အေပၚ ေဆး၀ါး ရိကၡာ လက္နက္ခဲယမ္း မကူညီခဲ့ရင္ ေတာင္ပိုင္း၀ နယ္က လိုအပ္ခ်က္ေတြကို ထိုင္းနယ္ထဲကေန ျဖည့္ဆည္းႏုိင္တယ္။
ေတာင္ပိုင္း ၀ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ဟာ ၀ အမ်ဳိးသားေတြနဲ႔ ၀ တပ္မေတာ္ အတြက္ Logistics ျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ နအဖ က ေတာင္ပိုင္း၀ နယ္
ထိုင္းနယ္စပ္တေလ်ာက္ မွာ အင္အားတိုးခ်ဲ ့ခ်ထားျပီး ျဖတ္ေတာက္ဖို႔ ၾကံေနတယ္။ ထိုးစစ္အရလဲ အေရးပါတယ္။ ေတာင္ပိုင္း၀နယ္က
လွဳပ္ရွားနယ္ေျမအရ ေသးငယ္တယ္ အင္အားနည္းတယ္။ စစ္ျဖစ္ျပီဆိုတာနဲ႔ ေျမာက္ပိုင္း၀နယ္ကို စစ္ေရး အရ ျခိမ္းေျခာက္ထားမယ္၊
ေတာင္ေျမာက္အဆက္ျဖတ္မယ္၊ ေတာင္ပိုင္း၀ နယ္ကို သိမ္းမယ္ ဆိုတဲ့ စစ္ေရး ၾကံစည္ခ်က္ ရွိေနႏုိင္တယ္။
- ကိုးကန္႔ အေရးမွာ သင္ခန္းစာ ရသြားတဲ့ အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္ဆဲေရးအဖြဲ႔ေတြက ၾကိဳတင္ျပင္ဆင္မွဳေတြ လုပ္ထားၾကလို႔
ထင္သေလာက္ လြယ္ကူမွာမဟုတ္မွန္း နအဖ တြက္ခ်က္မိေနတယ္။ နအဖ အင္အားတိုးခ်ထားျပီး ဒုတ္ျပ ခဲျပ လုပ္ေနတာ
၀ လူထုက တအိမ္တေယာက္ စစ္ထဲလိုက္မယ္ဆိုတဲ့ ကတိေပးလိုက္သလို ၀ တပ္မေတာ္ စစ္ဦးစီး အဖြဲ႔ကလည္း
အသက္ေပး ကာကြယ္မယ္ဆုိတဲ့အတြက္ ေရွ႔တလွမ္းတိုးရမလား - ေနာက္ ျပန္ဆုတ္ရမလား ျဖစ္ေန တယ္။
- အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္ထားတဲ့အဖြဲ႔ေတြက ေျမြမေသ ဒုတ္မက်ဳိးလုပ္ေနတာ နအဖ အခံရခက္ေနတယ္။ နအဖ လက္ ေအာက္ခံ နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္ လုပ္တာထက္
ကခ်င့္လက္နက္ ကခ်င့္လက္ထဲမွာထားျပီး ကခ်င္ေဒသ ကိုယ္ပိုင္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးတပ္ဘဲ လုပ္မယ္ ဆိုတဲ့ ေကအုိင္အိုရဲ့ သေဘာထားနဲ႔
ေကအိုင္အို မဖ်က္ဘဲ ပါတီသစ္တခုဖြဲ႔ျပီး ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ၀ယ္မယ္ဆိုတဲ့ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ေၾကာင့္ နအဖ အငိုက္မိသြားတယ္။
ဒါကို လတ္တေလာ ေျဖရွင္းဖို႔ မရႏုိင္ ေသးဘူး။ နည္းလမ္းမေတြ႔ ေသးဘူး။ လတ္တေလာ မေျဖရွင္းႏုိင္ေပမယ့္ မူ အရ နအဖ လံုး၀ လက္မခံႏုိင္ဘူး ဆိုတာ သိသာထင္ရွားတယ္။
ကိုယ္ပိုင္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရး ကိုယ္ပိုင္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခြင့္ဆိုတဲ့ အသံုးအႏွုန္းမ်ဳိး နအဖ ေရးဆြဲ ထားတဲ့ ဖြဲ ႔စည္းပံုထဲမွာ မပါဘူး။
၆၃ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲ ေခၚတုန္းက ေန၀င္းစစ္အုပ္စုရဲ့ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ ဗိုလ္မွဴးၾကီးလွဟန္က ဗကပ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ေတြတင္တဲ့
ေတာင္းဆိုခ်က္ေတြနဲ႔ ပက္သက္ျပီး ႏွစ္လံုးထဲနဲ႔ ေဘာင္းဘီညပ္ခဲ့ဘူးတယ္။ ဗကပ ေတာင္းဆိုခဲ့တာက “တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ဳိးစုမ်ားအေပၚ စစ္ဆင္ေနမွဳ ရပ္ဆိုင္းရန္”
စစ္အုပ္စု ကိုယ္စားလွယ္က ဘာ တင္ျပလဲဆိုေတာ့ “တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ဳိးစုမ်ားအေပၚ“လို႔ မသံုးပါနဲ႔
ဘာေၾကာင့္လဲ ဆိုေတာ့ သူတို႔နဲ႔ ဘတျပန္က်ားတျပန္ တိုက္ေနရလို႔ပါတဲ့။
အခုလည္း “ကခ်င္ေဒသ ကိုယ္ပိုင္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးတပ္” ဆိုတာနဲ႔ ပါတ္သက္ျပီး နအဖ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ ဘာေတြေျပာရမယ္ဆိုတာ စဥ္းစားေနမွာျဖစ္တယ္။
- ေရွ ႔တန္းစစ္မ်က္ႏွာမွာ ျပႆနာေသာင္းေျခာက္ေထာင္ တက္ေနခ်ိန္မွာ - စစ္ေနာက္ပိုင္း ေဒသလို႔ ေျပာလို႔ရတဲ့
ရန္ကုန္ မႏၱေလး ပဲခူး ပခုကၠဴ မံုရြာ ျမင္းျခံ စစ္ေတြ ေမာ္လျမိဳင္ျမိဳ ႔ေတြမွာ ျမိဳ႔တြင္းလွုပ္ရွားမွဳေတြျဖစ္ေပၚလာေနေတာ့ နအဖ ေနာက္ေၾကာမလံုျဖစ္ေနတယ္။
- စက္တင္ဘာေရႊ၀ါေရာင္ေတာ္လွန္ေရး တေက်ာ့ျပန္ျဖစ္လာဖို႔ တာစူေနၾကသလို၊ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး
လွဳပ္ရွားမွဳေတြကလည္း အရွိန္တက္လာေနေတာ့ စစ္ေနာက္ပိုင္းေဒသေတြမွာလည္း စစ္အင္အားေတြ တိုးခ်ထားေနရတယ္။
- ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကိုေထာင္ခ်လိုက္လို႔ အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြက နအဖ အေပၚ အေရးယူမွဳ မူလီ ထပ္ၾကပ္ လိုက္တာကို အခံရခက္ေနတယ္။
ဒါ့အျပင္ ဒီအမွဳက ဒီမွာတင္ မျပီးဘဲ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က ျပန္ျပီး ခုခံ ေခ်ပ ခြင့္ေတာင္းတာ အယူခံတင္တာ ေရွ ႔ေနေတြနဲ႔ ေတြ ႔ဆံုခြင့္ေတာင္းတာေတြက
သတင္းမီဒီယာေတြ ေပၚ တေက်ာ့ ျပန္တက္လာေတာ့ နအဖ စိုးရိမ္ေနတယ္။ အစကေတာ့ ေက်းဇူးရွင္ၾကီး ယက္ေတာ၊ ခုက် ဂ်ဳိေမႊတဲ့ ယက္ေတာ တဲ့ နအဖ စစ္အုပ္စုေျပာေနျပီ။
- နအဖ ဘက္က ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဥပေဒနဲ႔ ႏုိင္ငံေရးပါတီ ဥပေဒေတြကို ခုခ်ိန္ထိ မထုတ္ျပန္ႏုိင္ေသးတဲ့အေပၚ ေအးလြင့္တို႔ အုပ္စုေတြကပါ စိတ္မရွည္ေတာ့ဘူး။
ခပ္တည္တည္နဲ႔ဆိုင္းဘုတ္ေထာင္ ရံုးဖြင့္ျပီး စည္းရံုးေနၾကျပီ။ နအဖ ဘက္ကလည္း အနည္းဆံုးေတာ့ (ဒီခ်ဳပ္ မပါရင္ေတာင္) အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္ထားတဲ့အဖြဲ႔ေတြ
တိုင္းရင္းသားေတြ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ၀င္မွ ျဖစ္မယ္ဆိုတဲ့ လ်ာထားခ်က္ရွိေလေတာ့ ျငိမ္းအဖြဲ႔ေတြကို အရင္ျငိမ္းေအာင္လုပ္ေနရတယ္။
- အခုလို အခ်ိန္မွာ အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖဲြ႔ခ်ဳပ္က တရား၀င္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးပါတီတခုရဲ့ လြပ္လပ္စြာ စည္းရံုး လွဳပ္ရွား ခြင့္ေတြကို ခြင့္ျပဳဖုိ႔ ေတာင္းဆိုလိုက္တဲ့အခါမွာ နအဖ
အေတာ္ မေၾကမနပ္ျဖစ္သြားတယ္။ အရွဳိက္အထိုးခံလိုက္ ရတယ္။ ဒီခ်ဳပ္ဘက္က ဒီေတာင္းဆိုမွဳကို ႏိုင္ငံေရးတိုက္ကြက္တခုလို တိုးခ် ဲ႔လုပ္ကိုင္လာခဲ့ရင္ဆိုတဲ့
စိုးရိမ္ခ်က္ နအဖ မွာ ျဖစ္ေပၚေနတယ္။ ဒီခ်ဳပ္ရဲ့ေတာင္းဆိုခ်က္ကို ဆူပူမွဳေတြ လုပ္ေတာ့မယ္။ လူထုအံုၾကြမွုေတြ ျဖစ္ေတာ့ မယ္ဆိုတဲ့ အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္နဲ႔ ပယ္ခ်ဖို႔ ၾကံစည္ေနတယ္။
- အံုၾကြမွဳေတြက တကယ္ျဖစ္လာေတာ့မယ့္ အလားအလာေတြရွိေနျပီ။ ျဖစ္လာဖို႔ တာစူေနျပီ။ အခုတေခါက္ျဖစ္ လာရင္ အရင္လို ထိမ္းႏုိင္မွာမဟုတ္ဘူး။
မျဖစ္ခင္ ၾကိဳျပီး ရွင္းပစ္ဖို႔ နအဖ အမိန္႔ထုတ္ထားတယ္။ တျပည္လံုး စစ္မ်က္ႏွာျဖစ္ေနျပီ။ ေနရာတိုင္း လက္နက္ကိုင္ေတြခ်ထားရတယ္။
တျပည္လံုး လူဖမ္းပြဲေတြ လုပ္ေနတယ္။ သံဃာေတြကို ဖမ္းေနတယ္။ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြကို ဖမ္းေနတယ္။ ေလာက္ေလးဂြ တပ္ေတြ ဖြဲ႔ေနတယ္။
- နအဖ အေၾကာက္ဆံုးက ေရႊ၀ါေရာင္ေတာ္လွန္ေရးအျပီးမွာ ေခတ္စားလာတဲ့ ျမိဳ႔ျပေပ်ာက္ၾကား အယူအဆနဲ႔ ျမိဳ႔ျပ ေပ်ာက္ၾကား လွဳပ္ရွားမွဳ။
ျမိဳ႔ျပေပ်ာက္ၾကား မီးဒုတ္ ကိုင္လိမ့္မယ္။
ျမိဳ ႔ျပေပ်ာက္ၾကားရဲ ့ အဓိက ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္က ရန္သူ႔ေနာက္ေက်ာမွာ လွဳပ္ရွားတယ္။
ရန္သူ႔စစ္ေနာက္ပိုင္းေဒသေတြမွာ အဖ်က္လုပ္ငန္းေတြလုပ္တယ္။ ရန္သူ႔ ပစၥည္းေတြ ဖ်က္ဆီးပစ္တယ္။
ဂိုေထာင္ေတြ မီးတိုက္ပစ္တယ္။ ေမာ္ေတာ္ယဥ္ေတြ မီးရွဳိ ႔ပစ္တယ္။
ရန္သူ႔ သတင္း ေပးေတြ သစၥာေဖာက္ေတြကို ဆံုးမပစ္တယ္။
ျမိဳ ႔ျပယဥ္ေက်းမွဳထဲက ျမိဳ ႔ျပေပ်ာက္ၾကားေတြ ေပၚထြက္လာမွာ နအဖ အစြမ္းကုန္ ေၾကာက္ေနတယ္။
ေတြးေလေလ တစိမ့္စိမ့္ေၾကာက္ေလေလဘဲ။
(သားေဆြ)
“ထို႔ေၾကာင့္ဤသုိ႔” ဆိုတဲ့ ေျဖရွင္းခ်က္ေတြကို နအဖ စစ္အုပ္စု ေန႔တိုင္းနီးပါး မရပ္မနား လုပ္ေပးေနရတယ္။
တရုတ္ကို ဖားရတယ္၊ ကခ်င္ကို နားခ်ရတယ္၊ ၀ ကို ကတိေပးရတယ္၊ ျပည္သူကို လိမ္ေနရတယ္။
ကိုးကန္႔ကို တိုက္လိုက္တာ လြယ္ေပမယ့္ ေနာက္ပိုင္း ရွင္းရတာေတြက ပိုခက္ေနတယ္။
- နအဖ စစ္ေကာင္စီ ေၾကညာခ်က္ ၁/၂၀၀၉ ထုတ္ျပီး ရွင္းေနရတယ္။
- ကိုးကန္႔ေဒသမွာ စိတ္ၾကြေဆးျပားေတြ၊ စက္္ရံုေတြ၊ လက္နက္ေမွာင္ခိုလုပ္ငန္းေတြ ေတြ႔ရွိရေၾကာင္း (အခုမွ) ထုတ္ေျပာေနရတယ္။
ျပီးခဲ့တဲ့လ အထိက အဲဒီေဒသမွာ ဘိန္းအစားထိုးလုပ္ငန္းေတြ ေအာင္ျမင္ေနေၾကာင္း မူးယစ္ေဆး၀ါး ကင္းစင္ပေပ်ာက္ေနျပီျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း
ေဒသတည္ျငိမ္ေအးခ်မ္းေနေၾကာင္း နအဖ ေရးခဲ့ေျပာခ့ဲ့ေသးတယ္။ အခုမွ ျဗဳန္းစားၾကီး WYေဆးျပားေတြ ဘိန္းေတြ ေဆးေျခာက္ေတြ M 21 - 22 ေတြ ဘယ္ကထြက္လာလဲ။
- အခုလို ကိုးကန္႔ေဒသမွာ မူးယစ္ေဆး၀ါးကို အသည္းအသန္တိုက္ဖ်က္ေနေပမယ့္ အိမ္နီးခ်င္းႏုိင္ငံေတြ အေနာက္ အင္အားၾကီးႏုိင္ငံေတြက
သတိမျပဳမိတာ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္မွုမလုပ္ၾကတဲ့အေပၚ နအဖ ၀မ္းနည္းေနေၾကာင္း ေလွ်ာက္ေျပာ ေလွ်ာက္ေရး လုပ္ေနရတယ္။
- တရုတ္ျပည္ထဲေျပး၀င္သြားတဲ့ လူေတြကို ျပန္ျပီးလက္ခံဖို႔နဲ႔ နယ္စပ္ေဒသမွာ တည္ျငိမ္မွဳရွိဖို႔ တရုတ္အစိုးရကို ကတိေတြေပးေနရတယ္။
တရုတ္ႏြယ္ဖြား ကိုးကန္႔ေတြအေပၚ လူမ်ဳိးတံုး စစ္ဆင္တာ မဟုတ္ေၾကာင္း တရုတ္ၾကီး ကို ရွင္းျပတာ ေရႊနားေတာ္သြင္းတာ လုပ္ေနရတယ္။
- ထြက္ေျပးသြားတဲ့ အရပ္သားေတြရဲ ႔ပိုင္ဆိုင္မွုေတြကို စစ္တပ္က ယူငင္လုယက္ေနလို႔ ေျဖရွင္းခ်က္ေတြ ထုတ္ေန ရတယ္။
ဘယ္တုန္းကဖမ္းထားမွန္းမသိ ဘယ္ကမွန္းမသိတဲ့ လူေတြက သူခိုးတံဆိပ္ ကပ္ေပးျပီး တရားခံျပ လုပ္ ေနရတယ္။
ခ်င္းေရႊေဟာ္မွာ တရားခံေတြကိုဖမ္းခ်ဳပ္ထားေၾကာင္း ယခု ေထာင္ဒဏ္ ၂ ႏွစ္စီ ခ်လိုက္ေၾကာင္း စာလံုးမဲနဲ႔ေခါင္းၾကီးသတင္းေတြ ေဖာ္ျပေနရတယ္။
- အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္ဆဲထားတာ က်ဳိးေပါက္သြားတာမဟုတ္ေၾကာင္းနဲ႔ “၀” ေတြ “ကခ်င္” ေတြအေပၚ စစ္ေရးတိုက္ခိုက္ က်ဴးေက်ာ္မွဳေတြ လုုပ္မွာမဟုတ္ေၾကာင္း
၃ ၾကိမ္ထက္မနည္း ကတိေတြေပးေနရတယ္။ (၀ နယ္ကိုေတာ့ စစ္အင္အား ၃ ေသာင္းထက္မနည္း လက္နက္ၾကီး လက္နက္ငယ္ေတြနဲ႔ ၀ိုင္းပတ္ေနရာယူထားတယ္)
- သတင္းစာထဲမွာ “ေလာက္ကိုင္မွာသာတဲ့လ” လို “ကိုးကန္႔ေဒသ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းၿမဲ - စိမ္းလန္းစိုျပည္ စည္ကားဆဲ” လုိ ေခါင္းစဥ္မ်ဳိးေတြနဲ႔
အျမီးအေမာက္မတည့္တဲ့ ေဆာင္းပါးေတြ ေရးထည့္ျပီး တႏိုင္ငံလံုးသိေအာင္ ၀ါဒျဖန္႔ေနရတယ္။
- နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္အသြင္ေျပာင္းေရးလက္မခံလို႔ အခုလို ဘိန္းျပျပီး စစ္ေရးအရ ေျဖရွင္းလိုက္တာ မဟုတ္ရ ပါေၾကာင္း
ေျမာက္ပိုင္းက အပစ္အခတ္ ရပ္ထားတဲ့အဖြဲ ႔ေတြကို လုိက္ရွင္းျပေနရတယ္။
- သူခိုးလူမိျဖစ္သြားလို႔ ဘက္စံု ရွင္း လင္းပြဲေတြ လုပ္ေနရတယ္။
- ျမန္မာျပည္ ေတာင္ပိုင္းမွာ ကရင္ေတြကို အျပဳတ္တိုက္ဖို႔ ငါးၾကင္းဆီနဲ႔ ငါးၾကင္းေၾကာ္ေနတယ္။ ဒီေကဘီေအ ၀တ္စံု၀တ္
သစ္ခုတ္သမား အေယာင္ေဆာင္္ျပီး ကရင္ေတာ္လွန္ေရးနယ္ေျမထဲ၀င္ ကရင္ ကရင္ ျခင္း သတ္ခိုင္း ေနတယ္။
ကရင္ ကရင္ျခင္းသတ္ျပီး ျပန္လာတဲ့ ဒီေကဘီေအ တပ္မွဳးကို သံလြင္ျမစ္ထဲမွာေဖ်ာင္ခဲ့ဘူးတယ္။
- ေလာေလာဆယ္ သတင္းေပါက္ၾကားမွုျဖစ္ပြားသြားတဲ့အတြက္ ထိုးစစ္ကို ေခတၱရပ္ထားတယ္။ ကရင္အမ်ဳိးသား အစည္းအရံုးဘက္က
ထိုးစစ္ဆင္လာေတာ့မယ့္ သတင္းရလို႔ ဖာပြန္-ကမာေမာင္းလမ္းကို ျဖတ္ေတာက္ ပိတ္ဆို႔ ထားတယ္။
ဒီလမ္းက တပ္မဟာ ၅ ကို ထိုးစစ္ဆင္မယ္ဆိုရင္ အေရးပါတဲ့လမ္းျဖစ္ေနတယ္ ဒီလမ္းကေန ေထာက္ပို႔လုပ္ငန္းေတြသြားမယ္။
တိုက္မယ္ဆိုရင္ တိုက္ပြဲၾကီးေတြေတာ့ တုိက္မွာမဟုတ္။ ေျမာက္ပိုင္းအေရးက ပူပူေႏြးေႏြးရွိေသးတယ္။
ေျမာက္ပိုင္းမွာတပ္ေတြ စုပံုေအာထားရလို႔ တိုက္မွာမဟုတ္ဘူးဆိုတဲ့ အျမင္မ်ဳိးျဖစ္ေပၚ လာတဲ့ အခ်ိန္ကို နအဖ ေစာင့္ေနတယ္။
အလစ္အငိုက္မွာ တိုက္လိမ့္မယ္။
- ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ ေတာင္ပိုင္းမွာရွိတဲ့ ေတာင္ပိုင္း ၀ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ေတြကို ရန္စတာေတြလုပ္ေနတယ္။ စစ္တပ္က လားဟူ ျပည္သူ႔စစ္ ယူနီေဖာင္း၀တ္ျပီး
ကင္းလွည့္တာ ရွာေဖြစစ္ေဆးတာေတြလုပ္ေနတယ္။ ၀ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ေတြနဲ႔ ျပႆနာ တက္ ရင္ စစ္တပ္က လားဟူ ဘက္ကေန
ခ်က္ခ်င္းအားျဖည့္ေပးမယ္ေျပာျပီး ၀ ကို တိုက္ဖို႔ လားဟူကို ေျမွာက္ေပး ေန တယ္။ လားဟူ ျပည္သူ႔စစ္ တပ္ဖြဲ႔မွာ လူအင္အာ ၄၀ ၀န္းက်င္ရွိတယ္။
စစ္တပ္က ေနာက္ထပ္ လူအင္အား ၂၀ နဲ႔ လက္နက္ခဲယမ္း ေတြ ျဖည့္ ထားတယ္။
လူ ၅၀ - ၆၀ ေလာက္နဲ႔ ငါးစာ ခ်ထားတာ ငါးမွ်ားခ်ိတ္ကို ၀ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ ေတြ မျမင္ပါေစနဲ႔လို႔ နအဖ ဆုေတာင္းေနတယ္။
- ေတာင္းပိုင္း ၀ တပ္ ဖြဲ႔ဟာ ၀ ျပည္ တပ္မေတာ္ရဲ့ အသက္ေသြးေၾကာ တခုျဖစ္တယ္။ တရုတ္အစိုးရကို နအဖ က ကပ္ႏုိင္လို႔ တရုတ္ျပည္က
၀ ေတြ အေပၚ ေဆး၀ါး ရိကၡာ လက္နက္ခဲယမ္း မကူညီခဲ့ရင္ ေတာင္ပိုင္း၀ နယ္က လိုအပ္ခ်က္ေတြကို ထိုင္းနယ္ထဲကေန ျဖည့္ဆည္းႏုိင္တယ္။
ေတာင္ပိုင္း ၀ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ဟာ ၀ အမ်ဳိးသားေတြနဲ႔ ၀ တပ္မေတာ္ အတြက္ Logistics ျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ နအဖ က ေတာင္ပိုင္း၀ နယ္
ထိုင္းနယ္စပ္တေလ်ာက္ မွာ အင္အားတိုးခ်ဲ ့ခ်ထားျပီး ျဖတ္ေတာက္ဖို႔ ၾကံေနတယ္။ ထိုးစစ္အရလဲ အေရးပါတယ္။ ေတာင္ပိုင္း၀နယ္က
လွဳပ္ရွားနယ္ေျမအရ ေသးငယ္တယ္ အင္အားနည္းတယ္။ စစ္ျဖစ္ျပီဆိုတာနဲ႔ ေျမာက္ပိုင္း၀နယ္ကို စစ္ေရး အရ ျခိမ္းေျခာက္ထားမယ္၊
ေတာင္ေျမာက္အဆက္ျဖတ္မယ္၊ ေတာင္ပိုင္း၀ နယ္ကို သိမ္းမယ္ ဆိုတဲ့ စစ္ေရး ၾကံစည္ခ်က္ ရွိေနႏုိင္တယ္။
- ကိုးကန္႔ အေရးမွာ သင္ခန္းစာ ရသြားတဲ့ အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္ဆဲေရးအဖြဲ႔ေတြက ၾကိဳတင္ျပင္ဆင္မွဳေတြ လုပ္ထားၾကလို႔
ထင္သေလာက္ လြယ္ကူမွာမဟုတ္မွန္း နအဖ တြက္ခ်က္မိေနတယ္။ နအဖ အင္အားတိုးခ်ထားျပီး ဒုတ္ျပ ခဲျပ လုပ္ေနတာ
၀ လူထုက တအိမ္တေယာက္ စစ္ထဲလိုက္မယ္ဆိုတဲ့ ကတိေပးလိုက္သလို ၀ တပ္မေတာ္ စစ္ဦးစီး အဖြဲ႔ကလည္း
အသက္ေပး ကာကြယ္မယ္ဆုိတဲ့အတြက္ ေရွ႔တလွမ္းတိုးရမလား - ေနာက္ ျပန္ဆုတ္ရမလား ျဖစ္ေန တယ္။
- အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္ထားတဲ့အဖြဲ႔ေတြက ေျမြမေသ ဒုတ္မက်ဳိးလုပ္ေနတာ နအဖ အခံရခက္ေနတယ္။ နအဖ လက္ ေအာက္ခံ နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္ လုပ္တာထက္
ကခ်င့္လက္နက္ ကခ်င့္လက္ထဲမွာထားျပီး ကခ်င္ေဒသ ကိုယ္ပိုင္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးတပ္ဘဲ လုပ္မယ္ ဆိုတဲ့ ေကအုိင္အိုရဲ့ သေဘာထားနဲ႔
ေကအိုင္အို မဖ်က္ဘဲ ပါတီသစ္တခုဖြဲ႔ျပီး ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ၀ယ္မယ္ဆိုတဲ့ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ေၾကာင့္ နအဖ အငိုက္မိသြားတယ္။
ဒါကို လတ္တေလာ ေျဖရွင္းဖို႔ မရႏုိင္ ေသးဘူး။ နည္းလမ္းမေတြ႔ ေသးဘူး။ လတ္တေလာ မေျဖရွင္းႏုိင္ေပမယ့္ မူ အရ နအဖ လံုး၀ လက္မခံႏုိင္ဘူး ဆိုတာ သိသာထင္ရွားတယ္။
ကိုယ္ပိုင္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရး ကိုယ္ပိုင္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခြင့္ဆိုတဲ့ အသံုးအႏွုန္းမ်ဳိး နအဖ ေရးဆြဲ ထားတဲ့ ဖြဲ ႔စည္းပံုထဲမွာ မပါဘူး။
၆၃ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲ ေခၚတုန္းက ေန၀င္းစစ္အုပ္စုရဲ့ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ ဗိုလ္မွဴးၾကီးလွဟန္က ဗကပ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ေတြတင္တဲ့
ေတာင္းဆိုခ်က္ေတြနဲ႔ ပက္သက္ျပီး ႏွစ္လံုးထဲနဲ႔ ေဘာင္းဘီညပ္ခဲ့ဘူးတယ္။ ဗကပ ေတာင္းဆိုခဲ့တာက “တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ဳိးစုမ်ားအေပၚ စစ္ဆင္ေနမွဳ ရပ္ဆိုင္းရန္”
စစ္အုပ္စု ကိုယ္စားလွယ္က ဘာ တင္ျပလဲဆိုေတာ့ “တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ဳိးစုမ်ားအေပၚ“လို႔ မသံုးပါနဲ႔
ဘာေၾကာင့္လဲ ဆိုေတာ့ သူတို႔နဲ႔ ဘတျပန္က်ားတျပန္ တိုက္ေနရလို႔ပါတဲ့။
အခုလည္း “ကခ်င္ေဒသ ကိုယ္ပိုင္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးတပ္” ဆိုတာနဲ႔ ပါတ္သက္ျပီး နအဖ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ ဘာေတြေျပာရမယ္ဆိုတာ စဥ္းစားေနမွာျဖစ္တယ္။
- ေရွ ႔တန္းစစ္မ်က္ႏွာမွာ ျပႆနာေသာင္းေျခာက္ေထာင္ တက္ေနခ်ိန္မွာ - စစ္ေနာက္ပိုင္း ေဒသလို႔ ေျပာလို႔ရတဲ့
ရန္ကုန္ မႏၱေလး ပဲခူး ပခုကၠဴ မံုရြာ ျမင္းျခံ စစ္ေတြ ေမာ္လျမိဳင္ျမိဳ ႔ေတြမွာ ျမိဳ႔တြင္းလွုပ္ရွားမွဳေတြျဖစ္ေပၚလာေနေတာ့ နအဖ ေနာက္ေၾကာမလံုျဖစ္ေနတယ္။
- စက္တင္ဘာေရႊ၀ါေရာင္ေတာ္လွန္ေရး တေက်ာ့ျပန္ျဖစ္လာဖို႔ တာစူေနၾကသလို၊ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး
လွဳပ္ရွားမွဳေတြကလည္း အရွိန္တက္လာေနေတာ့ စစ္ေနာက္ပိုင္းေဒသေတြမွာလည္း စစ္အင္အားေတြ တိုးခ်ထားေနရတယ္။
- ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကိုေထာင္ခ်လိုက္လို႔ အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြက နအဖ အေပၚ အေရးယူမွဳ မူလီ ထပ္ၾကပ္ လိုက္တာကို အခံရခက္ေနတယ္။
ဒါ့အျပင္ ဒီအမွဳက ဒီမွာတင္ မျပီးဘဲ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က ျပန္ျပီး ခုခံ ေခ်ပ ခြင့္ေတာင္းတာ အယူခံတင္တာ ေရွ ႔ေနေတြနဲ႔ ေတြ ႔ဆံုခြင့္ေတာင္းတာေတြက
သတင္းမီဒီယာေတြ ေပၚ တေက်ာ့ ျပန္တက္လာေတာ့ နအဖ စိုးရိမ္ေနတယ္။ အစကေတာ့ ေက်းဇူးရွင္ၾကီး ယက္ေတာ၊ ခုက် ဂ်ဳိေမႊတဲ့ ယက္ေတာ တဲ့ နအဖ စစ္အုပ္စုေျပာေနျပီ။
- နအဖ ဘက္က ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဥပေဒနဲ႔ ႏုိင္ငံေရးပါတီ ဥပေဒေတြကို ခုခ်ိန္ထိ မထုတ္ျပန္ႏုိင္ေသးတဲ့အေပၚ ေအးလြင့္တို႔ အုပ္စုေတြကပါ စိတ္မရွည္ေတာ့ဘူး။
ခပ္တည္တည္နဲ႔ဆိုင္းဘုတ္ေထာင္ ရံုးဖြင့္ျပီး စည္းရံုးေနၾကျပီ။ နအဖ ဘက္ကလည္း အနည္းဆံုးေတာ့ (ဒီခ်ဳပ္ မပါရင္ေတာင္) အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္ထားတဲ့အဖြဲ႔ေတြ
တိုင္းရင္းသားေတြ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ၀င္မွ ျဖစ္မယ္ဆိုတဲ့ လ်ာထားခ်က္ရွိေလေတာ့ ျငိမ္းအဖြဲ႔ေတြကို အရင္ျငိမ္းေအာင္လုပ္ေနရတယ္။
- အခုလို အခ်ိန္မွာ အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖဲြ႔ခ်ဳပ္က တရား၀င္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးပါတီတခုရဲ့ လြပ္လပ္စြာ စည္းရံုး လွဳပ္ရွား ခြင့္ေတြကို ခြင့္ျပဳဖုိ႔ ေတာင္းဆိုလိုက္တဲ့အခါမွာ နအဖ
အေတာ္ မေၾကမနပ္ျဖစ္သြားတယ္။ အရွဳိက္အထိုးခံလိုက္ ရတယ္။ ဒီခ်ဳပ္ဘက္က ဒီေတာင္းဆိုမွဳကို ႏိုင္ငံေရးတိုက္ကြက္တခုလို တိုးခ် ဲ႔လုပ္ကိုင္လာခဲ့ရင္ဆိုတဲ့
စိုးရိမ္ခ်က္ နအဖ မွာ ျဖစ္ေပၚေနတယ္။ ဒီခ်ဳပ္ရဲ့ေတာင္းဆိုခ်က္ကို ဆူပူမွဳေတြ လုပ္ေတာ့မယ္။ လူထုအံုၾကြမွုေတြ ျဖစ္ေတာ့ မယ္ဆိုတဲ့ အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္နဲ႔ ပယ္ခ်ဖို႔ ၾကံစည္ေနတယ္။
- အံုၾကြမွဳေတြက တကယ္ျဖစ္လာေတာ့မယ့္ အလားအလာေတြရွိေနျပီ။ ျဖစ္လာဖို႔ တာစူေနျပီ။ အခုတေခါက္ျဖစ္ လာရင္ အရင္လို ထိမ္းႏုိင္မွာမဟုတ္ဘူး။
မျဖစ္ခင္ ၾကိဳျပီး ရွင္းပစ္ဖို႔ နအဖ အမိန္႔ထုတ္ထားတယ္။ တျပည္လံုး စစ္မ်က္ႏွာျဖစ္ေနျပီ။ ေနရာတိုင္း လက္နက္ကိုင္ေတြခ်ထားရတယ္။
တျပည္လံုး လူဖမ္းပြဲေတြ လုပ္ေနတယ္။ သံဃာေတြကို ဖမ္းေနတယ္။ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြကို ဖမ္းေနတယ္။ ေလာက္ေလးဂြ တပ္ေတြ ဖြဲ႔ေနတယ္။
- နအဖ အေၾကာက္ဆံုးက ေရႊ၀ါေရာင္ေတာ္လွန္ေရးအျပီးမွာ ေခတ္စားလာတဲ့ ျမိဳ႔ျပေပ်ာက္ၾကား အယူအဆနဲ႔ ျမိဳ႔ျပ ေပ်ာက္ၾကား လွဳပ္ရွားမွဳ။
ျမိဳ႔ျပေပ်ာက္ၾကား မီးဒုတ္ ကိုင္လိမ့္မယ္။
ျမိဳ ႔ျပေပ်ာက္ၾကားရဲ ့ အဓိက ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္က ရန္သူ႔ေနာက္ေက်ာမွာ လွဳပ္ရွားတယ္။
ရန္သူ႔စစ္ေနာက္ပိုင္းေဒသေတြမွာ အဖ်က္လုပ္ငန္းေတြလုပ္တယ္။ ရန္သူ႔ ပစၥည္းေတြ ဖ်က္ဆီးပစ္တယ္။
ဂိုေထာင္ေတြ မီးတိုက္ပစ္တယ္။ ေမာ္ေတာ္ယဥ္ေတြ မီးရွဳိ ႔ပစ္တယ္။
ရန္သူ႔ သတင္း ေပးေတြ သစၥာေဖာက္ေတြကို ဆံုးမပစ္တယ္။
ျမိဳ ႔ျပယဥ္ေက်းမွဳထဲက ျမိဳ ႔ျပေပ်ာက္ၾကားေတြ ေပၚထြက္လာမွာ နအဖ အစြမ္းကုန္ ေၾကာက္ေနတယ္။
ေတြးေလေလ တစိမ့္စိမ့္ေၾကာက္ေလေလဘဲ။
(သားေဆြ)
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
"ဥပေးခ်ိန္ခြင္လွ်ာ ဘယ္ဖက္ကို အေလးသာ"
တရားဥကေဒစိုးမိုးေရးနဲ႕ရပ္႐ြာေအးခ်မ္းသာယာေရးဆိုတာကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕သနပ္ပင္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ကုလားေခ်ာင္းၾကီးေက်း႐ြာ အပိုင္ကိုခ်န္လွပ္ျပီးထားေလသလား။ ႐ြာရဲ႕ေသာက္ေရကန္သစ္ေဘးမွာ ၾကက္ပြဲက တခ်ိန္းခ်ိန္း ၊႐ြာအနီးလယ္ယာေတြမွာလည္း ႏြားတိုက္ပြဲက တစ္႐ုန္း႐ုန္းဒီလို ဥပေဒမဲ့ေလာင္းကစား၀ိုင္းေတြ ႐ွိမွေတာ့ခိုးမႈ ၊ လုယက္မႈ စတဲ့ ဒုစ႐ိုက္မႈေတြကလည္း ေရတြက္မဆုံးေပါ့၊ ဒီေလာင္းကစား၀ိုင္းေတြကို ေငြေၾကးေကာက္ခံျပီး ခြင့္ျပဳေပးေနတဲ့လူေတြ ကိုလည္းၾကည့္ဦး ။ေက်း႐ြာ ဥကၠ႒ ဦးထြန္းတင္၊အဖြဲ႕၀င္ ဦးတင္စိန္ ႏွင့္ ကူညီပါေရေစဆိုတဲ့ ဒုရဲအုပ္ ေက်ာ္ေက်ာ္ ႏိုင္ ၊ ဘယ္သူ႕ကိုပိုင္သလဲေတာ့ မသိဘူး ဘယ္ေနရာတိုင္တိုင္ ဂ႐ုမစိုက္ဘူးဆိုဘဲ။ ႐ြာသူ ႐ြာသားေတြကေတာ့ မိမိတို႕ရဲ႕ေက်ာင္းေနအ႐ြယ္ကေလး ေတြ ဒီေလာင္းကစား၀ိုင္းေတြေၾကာင့္ အက်င့္စာရိတၱပ်က္ျပားမွာကို စိုးရိမ္ေနၾကရျပီး ႐ြာရဲစခန္းကို တိုင္ေတာ့လည္း ဒုရဲအုပ္ ေက်ာ္ေက်ာ္ႏိုင္ ကိုယ္တိုင္က အေရးယူခ်င္တိုင္း ယူလို႕မရဘူးတယ့္။ အနိမ့္ဆုံးအာဏာပိုင္ ႏွာေစးေနေတာ့လည္း အျမင့္ဆုံး အာဏာပိုင္ျပည္ထဲေရး၀န္ၾကီး႒ာန ေနျပည္ေတာ္ကို လိပ္စာတပ္ ၿပီး (၈.၀၆.၂၀၀၉) ေန႕ရက္စြဲနဲ႕ တိုင္ၾကားစာေပးပို႕ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ တိုင္ၾကားစာမွာ ႏြားတိုက္ပြဲရဲ႕ ေန႕ရက္ ၊ တိုက္ႏြားရဲ႕ အမည္ ၊ က်င္းပသည့္ေနရာ ၊ ေလာင္းေၾကးေငြကအစ အတိအက် တိုင္ၾကားထားျပီး တိုင္ၾကားသူေတြကလည္း တိုင္ၾကားမႈမမွန္ဘူးဆိုရင္ သူတို႕ကို အေရးယူေဆာင္႐ြက္ဖို႕ သူတို႕အမည္ေတြနဲ႕လက္မွတ္ေရးထိုးတိုင္ၾကားခဲ့တာပါ။ ဒီကိစၥနဲ႕ ပါတ္သက္ၿပီး (၂၁.၀၆.၂၀၀၉ ) ရက္ေန႕မွာ တိုင္ၾကားသူေတြနဲ႕ ရယက လူၾကီးက ေ႐ြးခ်ယ္ ၿပီးလႊတ္တဲ့ ႐ြာသားတစ္ခ်ိဳ႕ကို ပဲခူးခ႐ိုင္ ဒုစ႐ိုက္ ႏွိမ္ႏွင္းေရးအဖြဲ႕ က ပဲခူးျမိဳ႕မွာ ေခၚယူေမးျမန္းစစ္ေဆးခဲ့ေပ မယ့္ ယခုအခ်ိန္ထိ တစုံတစ္ရာ မွ်အေရးယူေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္း မ႐ွိသည့္အျပင္ တုိင္ၾကားသူမ်ားက ပင္ျပန္လည္စိုးရိမ္စရာမ်ား ျဖစ္ေနရသည့္ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ အၾကီးအကဲ လူၾကီးမင္းမ်ား အေနျဖင့္ ရပ္႐ြာေအးခ်မ္းသာယာေရး ႏွင့္ ဥပေဒ စိုးမိုးေရးကို အမွန္တကယ္ အလို႐ွိပါက ဥပေဒ ခ်ိန္ခြက္လွ်ာကို ဥပေဒ ေဖာက္ဖ်က္သူမ်ား ဖက္မွ အေလးသားမေပးၾက ပါနဲ႕ လို႕သတိေပးလုိက္ပါရေစ။
ကုလားေခ်ာင္း႐ြာသား
Than Shwe’s Ultimatum
October 2nd has become the iconic day of reckoning for General Than Shwe of Burma. According to sources within Burma Than Shwe has until 12 noon on October 2, 2009 to make a formal apology for the incarceration, beating and murder of Buddhist monks during a peaceful demonstration. If he refuses he will be excommunicated from the Buddhist faith. In essence Than Shwe will be stripped of his most powerful weapon in keeping a nation divided, religion. If he is no longer a Buddhist he can no longer purport the need to rape and murder Christians under the banner of Buddhism.
Without Buddhism to hide behind he will have to find a new excuse for his continued campaign of Burmanization and the wholesale slaughter of all ethnic minorities in Burma. It still astounds the imagination how he managed to justify torture, rape and murder then claim to be Buddhist in the first place. But with a woefully inept United Nations and the continued impotent response from the so called free world, Than Shwe continues his exercise in eugenics unabated. Many corporate controlled media groups have also turned a deaf ear on the plight of Burma for the most part as well.
The October 2nd deadline was proclaimed by the monks yet very little has been mentioned about it in the mainstream press. In the meantime the Burmese military has been beefing up its forces “just in case” of a new and more powerful uprising. Timing is everything since Than Shwe has opened up the battlement lines to the north and has declared war on ceasefire groups who refuse to be border cops. It’s ironic that Senator Jim “One World Order” Webb was making nice with Than Shwe while his goons advanced on Kokang and other ethnic groups. He should have taken a stroll in one of the many under supplied and over filled refugee centers along the border, provided they are not being shelled by the Burmese military.
With the help of the “liars press” bold faced lies about the meeting circulated around the world as Webb made libelous statements about Daw Aung Suu Kyi. John “the moron” Yettaw made grandiose and thinly veiled lies about his encounter with Aung Suu Kyi then made public his book writing aspirations. I can see the book store now, protesters all around with posters and chants. Then there is John making a hasty retreat out the back door. Daw Aung Suu Kyi has long since decried the false and lascivious statements the dumb duo made. As far as Burma’s democracy was concerned, Jim’s visit was a giant step backward. Yettaw’s visit was catastrophic but “with no regrets”, in his words.
With Daewoo investing billions in Burma as of this writing it is clear the worldwide corporate agenda quietly moved forward. Burma, locked in the throws of indentured servitude, continues to be raped by outsiders. Than Shwe betrayed Burma sold her to the corporate world, the ultimate money laundering scheme. Globalization is colonization on a planetary scale and Burma is to rich in natural resources to ignore. It is obvious the fate of Burma has been determined by others. Than Shwe is just a pawn and a scapegoat to the ones who bought him years ago. In all reality sanctions have not been honored from the corporate world. Merger after merger internationally has laced a web of unscrupulously divisive criminals who’ve also managed to bypass U.S. monopoly laws.
Of the top 100 economies of the world at least half are corporations. Imagine corporations with a GDP larger then 80% of the nations of the world. One day you will drive around in a cute Nano by Tata Motors of India. Just don’t forget that Tata Motors is building a facility in Burma for the sole purpose of building medium to heavy trucks for Burma’s Military. The cute little Nano would be soaked in human blood and the suffering of an enslaved nation. The corporate web is all encompassing though. Two English institutions, Land Rover and Jaguar, now share the tainted resume’ in epic human carnage for Tata Motors is their parent company. From Mrs. Beasley’s Cookies to that cool Daewoo big screen TV, corporations doing business with Than Shwe stock our shelves. So when people say sanctions have not worked it’s because they were not enforced in earnest in the first place. In our complacency we’ve become unwitting benefactors of tyranny not only in Burma, but around the world. Lusting for the cheapest price we forget the price that is paid in human suffering.
The world has done nothing to ease Burma’s pain. The cowardly United Nations has exercised selective justice and all but ignored Burma year after year. Feel good speeches, fruitless visits and spineless sanctions have bought the people of Burma nothing but more broken promises. Now the monks of Burma have made their position known as they take destiny into their own hands. Than Shwe must apologies to the Buddhist Monks for the cruel treatment and murder of holy people from a faith he proclaims to be. He has until October 2nd of 2009 at 12 noon Rangoon time. If he ignores this request he will be excommunicated from all of Buddhism. In turn the junta has increased surveillance and security around monasteries and Buddhist enclaves across the country. The fuse has been lit as a nation under siege braces for the future. And the world is oblivious.
Your Devil’s Advocate
Buffalohair
ဆုိင္သည္ ဗဟန္းၿမိဳ႕နယ္၊ ကမၻာေအး ဘုရားလမ္း၊ ခ်င္းေခ်ာင္းနန္းေတာ္ ေရွ႕ရွိ ယဥ္ေက်းမႈ ၀န္ႀကီးဌာနပိုင္ ေျမတြင္ မၾကာမီ လပိုင္းကမွ ငွားရမ္း ဖြင့္လွစ္ထားသည့္ Seven Corners ေကာ္ဖီဆိုင္ ျဖစ္သည္။ စားသုံးသူမ်ား ႀကိဳးမ့ဲ အင္တာနက္ အသုံးျပဳႏုိင္သည့္ ေကာ္ဖီဆုိင္လည္း ျဖစ္သည္ဟု ဆုိသည္။
ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္ သီတင္းပတ္ ၃ ပတ္ခန္႔က ဖုိးလျပည့္က ဆုိင္ရွိ ပစၥည္းႏွင့္ မွန္မ်ားကို ရိုက္ခြဲရန္ ေစခိုင္းခဲ့ျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္ ဟု သိရွိရသည္။
ထိုသို႔ရိုက္ခြဲစဥ္ “ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ အတြင္းေရးမွဴး တာ၀န္ ယူထားတဲ့သူေတြရဲ႕ သားသမီးေတြက ဒီလို ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ပိုင္ ေျမေပၚမွာ စီးပြားေရး လုပ္စားရသလား” ဟုပါ ေျပာဆုိရန္ ေျမးျဖစ္သူက ညႊန္ၾကားခဲ့သည္ဟု အရာရွိေဟာင္း တဦးက ေျပာၾကားသည္။
ထိုသို႔ ရိုက္ခြဲ ဖ်က္ဆီးခုိင္းသည့္ ကိစၥမျဖစ္မီ ရက္ပိုင္းအလိုတြင္ အဆိုပါ ဆိုင္သုိ႔ ဖုိးလျပည့္ ေရာက္ခ့ဲၿပီး က်ပ္ ၅ေထာင္တန္ ေကာ္ဖီ ေသာက္လိုေၾကာင္း မွာၾကားခ့ဲသည္ဟု ဆုိသည္။
၀န္ထမ္းမ်ားက ဆုိင္တြင္ ၃ေထာင္ေက်ာ္တန္ ေကာ္ဖီသာ ရိွေၾကာင္း ရွင္းျပခ့ဲၿပီး ထုိ ေစ်းအႀကီးဆုံး ေကာ္ဖီကုိသာ ေရာင္းခ်ေပးခဲ့သည္ဟု ဆုိသည္။ ဖုိးလျပည့္က က်ပ္ ၅ေထာင္ ေပးေခ်ၿပီး ထြက္ခြာသြားခဲ့သည္ဟု သိရသည္။ ထုိအျဖစ္အပ်က္ ေနာက္ပုိင္းတြင္ ဆုိင္ကုိ ဖ်က္ဆီးမိန္႔ ေပးခ့ဲျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္ဟု ဆုိသည္။
ဆိုင္ရွိမွန္မ်ား ရိုက္ခြဲခံရၿပီးေနာက္တြင္ ဆိုင္ပိတ္ထားသည္ကုိ ေတြ႔ရသည္။ ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္ သီတင္းပတ္ကုန္တြင္ ဆိုင္ အေဆာက္အဦးကိုပါ အျမန္ ဖ်က္သိမ္းလ်က္ရွိသည္ကို ေတြ႕ရသည္။
ဆုိင္ကုိ နအဖအဖြဲ႕ အတြင္းေရးမွဴး ၁ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီး သီဟသူရ တင္ေအာင္ျမင့္ဦး၏ သား၊ အမ်ိဳးသားစီမံကိန္း ႏွင့္ စီးပြားေရးဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးတိုးတက္မႈ ၀န္ႀကီးဌာန ၀န္ႀကီး ဦးစိုးသာ၏သား တုိ႔ အပါအ၀င္ ၅ဦး အစုစပ္ ဖြင့္လွစ္ၾကျခင္းျဖစ္သည္ဟု သိရသည္။
အျခား သီးျခား အတည္မျပဳႏိုင္သည့္ သတင္း တရပ္ အရ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီး ေျမးျဖစ္သူႏွင့္ ဆက္ႏြယ္သည့္ ကုမၸဏီက ကုန္ပစၥည္း တင္သြင္းခြင့္ ပါမစ္ ေလွ်ာက္ထားရာတြင္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီး သီဟသူရတင္ေအာင္ျမင့္ဦးက ပယ္ခ်သည့္အတြက္ ယခုလို လုပ္ေဆာင္ရန္ ေစ့ေဆာ္ခဲ့ျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္ဟု ဆိုသည္။
ယခု အျဖစ္အပ်က္သည္ မၾကာေသးမီ ႏွစ္မ်ားက ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးေဟာင္း ေန၀င္း၏ နာမည္ေက်ာ္ ေျမးျဖစ္သူ ေက်ာ္ေန၀င္းနွင့္ အေပါင္းအပါမ်ား ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ရွိ ကလပ္မ်ားတြင္ ရမ္းကားခဲ့သည့္ အျဖစ္အပ်က္မ်ားကို ျပန္လည္ သတိရေစၿပီး၊ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီး ေျမးျဖစ္သူက အဆိုပါ ေက်ာ္ေန၀င္းတို႔၏ ေနရာကို ၀င္ယူသည့္ သေဘာ ျဖစ္ေနသည္ဟု ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕မွ သတင္းေထာက္ တဦးက ေ၀ဖန္ ေျပာဆိုသည္။
နအဖ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီး၏ သားသမီးမ်ား ပိုင္ဆိုင္သည့္ စီးပြားေရး လုပ္ငန္းမ်ား ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕တြင္ပင္ မ်ားစြာ ရွိေနသည္။ အလားတူပင္ ဒုတိယတန္း ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား ျဖစ္သည့္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးမ်ား၊ ဒုတိယဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးမ်ား၏ သားသမီးမ်ားလည္း နယ္ပယ္အသီးသီးတြင္ စီးပြားေရး လုပ္ကိုင္လ်က္ ရွိၾကသည္ကို စီးပြားေရးနယ္ပယ္မွ လုပ္ငန္းရွင္မ်ားက သိရွိၾကသည္။
J Donuts ေကာ္ဖီဆိုင္ဆိုလွ်င္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီး၏ မယားပါသား ဦးထြန္းႏိုင္ေရႊ ပိုင္ဆုိင္ၿပီး၊ ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ စူပါမားကက္ နယ္ပယ္တြင္ အေအာင္ျမင္ဆံုး ျဖစ္သည့္ စီးတီးမတ္ အုပ္စုမွာလည္း ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီး၏ သားသမီးမ်ားက ရွယ္ယာ အမ်ားစုကို ပိုင္ဆိုင္သည္ဟု အမည္မေဖၚလိုသည့္ အေကာက္ခြန္ ၀န္ထမ္းေဟာင္း တဦးက ေျပာဆိုသည္။
အဆိုပါ ၀န္ထမ္းက အျခားစီးပြားေရး လုပ္ငန္းရွင္မ်ား အေနျဖင့္ ျပည္ပမွ ဇိမ္ခံပစၥည္း၊ အစားအေသာက္မ်ား တင္သြင္းရန္ ခက္ခဲခ်ိန္တြင္ စီးတီးမတ္အတြက္ ကုန္ပစၥည္းမ်ားကို စစ္တပ္ အမည္ခံထားသည့္ ကုန္ေသတၱာမ်ားျဖင့္ တင္သြင္းခဲ့ၿပီး မည္သည့္ အေကာက္ခြန္၊ ေထာက္လွမ္းေရးမွ ဖြင့္ၾကည့္ စစ္ေဆးရန္ မ၀ံ့ရဲၾကဟု ဆိုသည္။
Thanks to the sender
Tuesday, 8 September 2009
Bogyoke Aung San Poem
ဒို႔အဖိုး
လူ႔ေလာကထဲ သူေနခဲ့ရတာက
၃၂ ႏွစ္ ၅ လ ၆ ရက္ ထဲရယ္ပါ။
၁၃-၂-၁၉၁၅ မွ ၁၉-၇-၁၉၄၇
နတ္ေမာက္ ဦးေသာဘိသေက်ာင္း
ေရနံေခ်ာင္း အမ်ိဳးသားေက်ာင္း
ရန္ကုန္တကၠသိုလ္ေတြမွ ပညာဆည္းပူးခဲ့၊
၁၉၃၄ ေက်ာင္းသားသမဂၢအမႈေဆာင္နဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံေရးဘ၀စတင္၊
ႏိုင္ငံေရး လုပ္သက္ ၁၃ ႏွစ္
အဓိက ျဖတ္သန္းမႈေတြက
သမဂၢ၊ တို႔ဗမာ၊ ရဲေဘာ္သံုးက်ိပ္၊ ဖဆပလ
အဓိက ေအာင္ျမင္မႈကေတာ့
ျမန္မာ့လြတ္လပ္ေရး သို႔မဟုတ္ စတုတၴျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေတာ္)
အရပ္ ပုပု
မ်က္ေမွာင္ ကုတ္ကုတ္
ပိုသီပတ္သီ အညာသား။
ဘီေအ ေက်ာင္းသား
စကား မေျပာ
ေျပာရင ္မရပ္
ညႇင္းသိုးသိုး အ႐ိုးခံ
ေခါင္း အမာဆံုး
ဇြဲ အရွိဆံုး
စိတ္ဓာတ္ အျပင္းထန္ဆံုး လူသား။
သူမသိ နားမလည္တာေတြက အမ်ားသား
ေရ မကူးတတ္ဘူး
စက္ဘီး မစီးတတ္ဘူး
စႏၵရား မတီးတတ္ဘူး
သီခ်င္းေကာင္းေကာင္း နားမေထာင္ခဲ့ရဘူး
မိန္းမ မပိုးတတ္ဘူး
ဘိလပ္ျပန္သန္းကို ေမရွင့္သီခ်င္း ဆိုခိုင္းခဲ့သူ
ခ်စ္ရတဲ့ နာစ့္မေလးၾကည္ကို လူငွားနဲ႔ ပိုးခဲ့ရသူ
ဗြီအိုင္ပီဆိုတဲ့ စာတန္းကို အလြန္စက္ဆုပ္ရြံရွာသူ
လမ္းေဘးမွာ ေက်ာက္ေက်ာေရေသာက္တဲ့ ၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္
မဂၤလာေဆာင္မွာ ခဲဖိုးေတာင္းတာ နားမလည္တဲ့သူ
လြတ္လပ္ေရးကို စဥ္းစားရင္း စစ္ဖိနပ္ ေျပာင္းျပန္စီးတဲ့သူ
လြတ္လပ္ေရးကို စဥ္းစားရင္း ဆံပင္ညႇပ္မၿပီးခင္ ထထြက္သြားတဲ့သူ
ေတြ႕ခ်င္လြန္းလို႔ လမ္းမွာတားတဲ့ ရြာသားေတြနဲ႔
အတူ လမ္းေဘးမွာ အေၾကာ္စားတဲ့ ၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္
သူ႔ကုိယ္သူ ျပည္သူတစ္ေယာက္အျဖစ္ခံယူတဲ့ ၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္
"ၾကည္...ပဲျပဳတ္နဲ႔ နံျပားရရင္ စားခ်င္တယ္"
မိန္းမကို မနက္စာျပင္ခိုင္းတဲ့ သူ႔ရဲ႕ ကမၻာေက်ာ္စာ
ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္အဆင့္ရဲ႕ အမွားနဲ႔ သာမန္ရဲေဘာ္အဆင့္ရဲ႕ အမွန္ကို
ကြဲကြဲျပားျပားသိတဲ့သူ
လူငယ္ဘ၀၊ လူ႔ဘ၀ရဲ႕ စည္းစိမ္အရသာေတြ
ခံစားဖို႔ အခ်ိန္မရခဲ့တဲ့သူ
သူ႔ျဖတ္သန္းမႈမွာ
လြတ္လပ္ေရးဆိုတာ တစ္ခုတည္းနဲ႔
ပကတိ ႐ိုးရွင္းသန္႔စင္ခဲ့တဲ့သူ
သူ႔ကို ဒဂုန္တာရာက ကင္ပြန္းတပ္
ေအာင္ဆန္း သို႔မဟုတ္ အ႐ိုင္းတဲ့။
လုပ္သက္က ခပ္ႏုႏု
ေက်ာင္းသား ေပါက္စ
သခင္ ေပါက္စ
စစ္သား ေပါက္စ
ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမား ေပါက္စ
ဘ၀ေတြက အဖံုဖံု
အသက္က ၃၀ မရွိ တရွိ။
ဒီေအာင္ဆန္း လက္ေတာက္ေလာက္ေလးကို
ဘာ့ေၾကာင့္
ေနမ၀င္ အင္ပါယာႀကီး ဒူးေထာက္ခဲ့ရပါသလဲ...။
တကယ္ဆိုေတာ့
ငါတို႔ ေအာင္ဆန္းက
နယ္နယ္ရရ မဟုတ္-
႐ိုးသားတဲ့ ျမန္မာေတြထက္ပို
႐ိုးသားတဲ့ ေအာင္ဆန္း
သတၱိေျပာင္တဲ့ ျမန္မာေတြထက္ပို
သတၱိရွိတဲ့ ေအာင္ဆန္း
စြန္႔လႊတ္ရဲတဲ့ ျမန္မာေတြထက္ပို
စြန္႔လႊတ္ျပတဲ့ ေအာင္ဆန္း၊
ဒီလို ေအာင္ဆန္း
သူ႔ေသြးသား အ႐ိုးအခ်ဥ္ေတြ အားလံုး
လြတ္လပ္ေရး တစ္ခုတည္းနဲ႔ အၿပီး
စုစည္းတည္ေဆာက္ျပတဲ့ ေအာင္ဆန္း
တကယ့္အ႐ိုးခံ ေအာင္ဆန္းေပါ့။
ဒီေအာင္ဆန္းကို
လြတ္လပ္ေရးလမ္း၀မွာ ဘြားကနဲ ျမင္လိုက္ရ႐ံုပဲ
ေအာင္ဆန္းရဲ႕ဆရာေတြ မႈိင္း၊ ျမ၊ ခ်ိဳတို႔ကအစ
""ငါတို႔ အားကိုးပါရေစ"" ဆိုလာၾက၊
ေရွးဘိုးဘြားမိဘျပည္သူေတြက
""ငါတို႔ကယ္မယ့္ မင္းေလာင္းေပၚၿပီ"" ၿပံဳးေပ်ာ္ၾက
လူငယ္ေသြးေသာက္ျမန္မာေတြက
""ငါတို႔ စြန္႔ပါရေစ"" ဆိုၿပီး ေရွ႕ထြက္လာၾက
စုၾက၊ ႐ံုးၾက၊ စည္းလံုးၾက
တကယ့္ဗမာေတြ
မဟာေအာင္ဆန္းအေနာက္က
ျပည္သူ႕ ဒီလႈိင္းလံုးႀကီးေတြရဲ႕
တ၀ုန္း၀ုန္း ႐ိုက္ခတ္သံဟာ
အဲဒီအခ်ိန္က ၀ိတိုရိယဘုရင္မႀကီးကိုေတာင္
အိပ္မက္ေတြ ေအးခဲေစခဲ့သေပါ့။
ေအာင္ဆန္းေရွ႕ေရာက္ရင္
ရွမ္းေတြက ရွမ္းစကားမဆိုၾက
ကခ်င္ေတြကလည္း ကခ်င္စကားမဟၾက
ေအာင္ဆန္းကို ယံုၾကည္စြာနဲ႔
သူတို႔ သခင္အျဖစ္ သိမွတ္ျပဳၾက
အားလံုးေသာ တိုင္းရင္းသားေတြ။
ဒီျပည္လံုးကၽြတ္အားကို စုစည္းႏုိင္ခဲ့လိုလည္း
အဂၤလိပ္ေတြက ဒီေအာင္ဆန္းလက္ေတာက္ေလာက္နဲ႔
တစ္စားပြဲထဲ ၀ိုင္းခဲ့ၾကေပါ့
အကင္းပါးသူေတြပီပီ
မတိုက္မီက ႐ံႈးေနတဲ့ ဒီစစ္ကို
ဒင္းတို႔ မတိုက္၀ံ့ၾက
မ်က္ႏွာမပ်က္ ေအာင္ျမင္စြာ ဆုတ္ခြာမယ့္လမ္းကို
သူတို႔ ေရြးခဲ့ၾက
ေအာင္ဆန္းနဲ႔အေတြ႕မွာ။
ယံုၾကည္အားကိုးတဲ့
မ်က္လံုးေပါင္း သန္း ၆၀
ေအာင္ဆန္းမွာ ရွိတယ္
လြတ္လပ္ေရးကို တ႐ႈိက္မက္မက္ေတာင့္တတဲ့
ႏွလံုးသားသန္း ၃၀ ေအာင္ဆန္းမွာရွိတယ္
ေအာင္ဆန္းေသဆို ေသျပ၀ံ့တဲ့သူ
ေအာင္ဆန္းမွာ တျပည္လံုးရွိတယ္
ဒီ မ်က္လံုးႏွလံုးအသက္
ဗို႔အားသိန္းသန္းခ်ီ မီးဆလိုက္အားေတြနဲ႔
ေနမ၀င္အင္ပါယာကို ျပတ္ျပတ္သားသား လွမ္းထိုးလိုက္တဲ့အခါ
အေျခာက္တိုက္ ဘ၀င္ျမင့္ေနသူေတြ
အားလံုး အရည္ေပ်ာ္သြားခဲ့ၾက။
ဘယ္ရာဇ၀င္မွာ ခင္ဗ်ားတို႔ ေတြ႕ဘူးလဲ။
ဂ်ပန္ဆိုတာ မႏူးမနပ္မဟုတ္ဘူး။
အဂၤလိပ္ဆိုတာက ေ၀လာေ၀း
သူငယ္ႏွပ္စားမဟုတ္။
ဒင္းတို႔ေတြေတာင္ ရေအာင္ စည္း႐ံုးႏိုင္တဲ့သူ
ေအာင္ဆန္း
ဒီေအာင္ဆန္းက စစ္ကို မလို
ဒါေပမဲ့ ရရင္ရ မရရင္ခ် ဆိုတာ ေအာင္ဆန္း၀ါဒ
လြတ္လပ္ေရးကို အျမန္ဆံုးလိုခ်င္ေနတဲ့
အဲ့ဒီအခ်ိန္ ျပည္သူေတြရဲ႕
တစ္ဦးတည္းေသာ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္
ငါတို႔ ေအာင္ဆန္းေပါ့။
ေအာင္ဆန္း
ဒီအခ်ိန္ဆို
၉၃ ႏွစ္ရွိၿပီ
ေအာင္ဆန္းေျပာမယ္
အဘိုးရဲ႕စကား နားေထာင္...။
""မေမ့နဲ႔
မင္းတို႔
ကေန႔ ႐ူေနတဲ့ ေလဟာ
ငါတို႔
မေန႔က ေခၽြးစက္ေတြဆိုတာ
မေမ့နဲ႔
မင္းတို႔
ျမန္မာဆိုတဲ့ စကားတစ္ခြန္းကိုရဖို႔
ငါတို႔
ဘံုးေဘာလေအာ က်ဆံုးေပးခဲ့ရတာ
မေမ့နဲ႔
မင္းတို႔
ကမၻာ႔ေျမပံုေပၚတက္ႏိုင္ဖို႔
ငါတို႔
အေလာင္းေကာင္ေတြဆင့္ၿပီး ထမ္းတင္ေပးခဲ့တာ
မေမ့နဲ႔။""
ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးတိုင္းမွာ
အေဖႏွစ္ေယာက္ရွိတယ္
တစ္ေယာက္က
ကိုယ့္ေသြးသားအေဖ
က်န္တစ္ေယာက္က
ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးကို ေမြးေပးတဲ့အေဖ
ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးရဲ႕အေဖ
ျမန္မာ့အေဖ
ေအာင္ဆန္းေပါ့။
က်ဳပ္အေဖနဲ႔အဖိုးဟာ ေအာင္ဆန္းသားေတြ
ေအာင္ဆန္းက က်ဳပ္အဖိုး
က်ဳပ္သားက ေအာင္ဆန္းရဲ႕ျမစ္ေပါ့
သူ႕အဘိုးကို သူ လြမ္းတတ္ေနၿပီ
သူ႕သားက်ရင္လဲ သူ႕အေဘးနဲ႔
ေပးေတြ႕ႏိုင္ဖို႔
အခုကတည္းက အေသအခ်ာ
က်ဳပ္ မွာထားရအံုးမယ္။
Thanks to sender- Zaw Zaw (Malaysia)
လူ႔ေလာကထဲ သူေနခဲ့ရတာက
၃၂ ႏွစ္ ၅ လ ၆ ရက္ ထဲရယ္ပါ။
၁၃-၂-၁၉၁၅ မွ ၁၉-၇-၁၉၄၇
နတ္ေမာက္ ဦးေသာဘိသေက်ာင္း
ေရနံေခ်ာင္း အမ်ိဳးသားေက်ာင္း
ရန္ကုန္တကၠသိုလ္ေတြမွ ပညာဆည္းပူးခဲ့၊
၁၉၃၄ ေက်ာင္းသားသမဂၢအမႈေဆာင္နဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံေရးဘ၀စတင္၊
ႏိုင္ငံေရး လုပ္သက္ ၁၃ ႏွစ္
အဓိက ျဖတ္သန္းမႈေတြက
သမဂၢ၊ တို႔ဗမာ၊ ရဲေဘာ္သံုးက်ိပ္၊ ဖဆပလ
အဓိက ေအာင္ျမင္မႈကေတာ့
ျမန္မာ့လြတ္လပ္ေရး သို႔မဟုတ္ စတုတၴျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေတာ္)
အရပ္ ပုပု
မ်က္ေမွာင္ ကုတ္ကုတ္
ပိုသီပတ္သီ အညာသား။
ဘီေအ ေက်ာင္းသား
စကား မေျပာ
ေျပာရင ္မရပ္
ညႇင္းသိုးသိုး အ႐ိုးခံ
ေခါင္း အမာဆံုး
ဇြဲ အရွိဆံုး
စိတ္ဓာတ္ အျပင္းထန္ဆံုး လူသား။
သူမသိ နားမလည္တာေတြက အမ်ားသား
ေရ မကူးတတ္ဘူး
စက္ဘီး မစီးတတ္ဘူး
စႏၵရား မတီးတတ္ဘူး
သီခ်င္းေကာင္းေကာင္း နားမေထာင္ခဲ့ရဘူး
မိန္းမ မပိုးတတ္ဘူး
ဘိလပ္ျပန္သန္းကို ေမရွင့္သီခ်င္း ဆိုခိုင္းခဲ့သူ
ခ်စ္ရတဲ့ နာစ့္မေလးၾကည္ကို လူငွားနဲ႔ ပိုးခဲ့ရသူ
ဗြီအိုင္ပီဆိုတဲ့ စာတန္းကို အလြန္စက္ဆုပ္ရြံရွာသူ
လမ္းေဘးမွာ ေက်ာက္ေက်ာေရေသာက္တဲ့ ၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္
မဂၤလာေဆာင္မွာ ခဲဖိုးေတာင္းတာ နားမလည္တဲ့သူ
လြတ္လပ္ေရးကို စဥ္းစားရင္း စစ္ဖိနပ္ ေျပာင္းျပန္စီးတဲ့သူ
လြတ္လပ္ေရးကို စဥ္းစားရင္း ဆံပင္ညႇပ္မၿပီးခင္ ထထြက္သြားတဲ့သူ
ေတြ႕ခ်င္လြန္းလို႔ လမ္းမွာတားတဲ့ ရြာသားေတြနဲ႔
အတူ လမ္းေဘးမွာ အေၾကာ္စားတဲ့ ၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္
သူ႔ကုိယ္သူ ျပည္သူတစ္ေယာက္အျဖစ္ခံယူတဲ့ ၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္
"ၾကည္...ပဲျပဳတ္နဲ႔ နံျပားရရင္ စားခ်င္တယ္"
မိန္းမကို မနက္စာျပင္ခိုင္းတဲ့ သူ႔ရဲ႕ ကမၻာေက်ာ္စာ
ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္အဆင့္ရဲ႕ အမွားနဲ႔ သာမန္ရဲေဘာ္အဆင့္ရဲ႕ အမွန္ကို
ကြဲကြဲျပားျပားသိတဲ့သူ
လူငယ္ဘ၀၊ လူ႔ဘ၀ရဲ႕ စည္းစိမ္အရသာေတြ
ခံစားဖို႔ အခ်ိန္မရခဲ့တဲ့သူ
သူ႔ျဖတ္သန္းမႈမွာ
လြတ္လပ္ေရးဆိုတာ တစ္ခုတည္းနဲ႔
ပကတိ ႐ိုးရွင္းသန္႔စင္ခဲ့တဲ့သူ
သူ႔ကို ဒဂုန္တာရာက ကင္ပြန္းတပ္
ေအာင္ဆန္း သို႔မဟုတ္ အ႐ိုင္းတဲ့။
လုပ္သက္က ခပ္ႏုႏု
ေက်ာင္းသား ေပါက္စ
သခင္ ေပါက္စ
စစ္သား ေပါက္စ
ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမား ေပါက္စ
ဘ၀ေတြက အဖံုဖံု
အသက္က ၃၀ မရွိ တရွိ။
ဒီေအာင္ဆန္း လက္ေတာက္ေလာက္ေလးကို
ဘာ့ေၾကာင့္
ေနမ၀င္ အင္ပါယာႀကီး ဒူးေထာက္ခဲ့ရပါသလဲ...။
တကယ္ဆိုေတာ့
ငါတို႔ ေအာင္ဆန္းက
နယ္နယ္ရရ မဟုတ္-
႐ိုးသားတဲ့ ျမန္မာေတြထက္ပို
႐ိုးသားတဲ့ ေအာင္ဆန္း
သတၱိေျပာင္တဲ့ ျမန္မာေတြထက္ပို
သတၱိရွိတဲ့ ေအာင္ဆန္း
စြန္႔လႊတ္ရဲတဲ့ ျမန္မာေတြထက္ပို
စြန္႔လႊတ္ျပတဲ့ ေအာင္ဆန္း၊
ဒီလို ေအာင္ဆန္း
သူ႔ေသြးသား အ႐ိုးအခ်ဥ္ေတြ အားလံုး
လြတ္လပ္ေရး တစ္ခုတည္းနဲ႔ အၿပီး
စုစည္းတည္ေဆာက္ျပတဲ့ ေအာင္ဆန္း
တကယ့္အ႐ိုးခံ ေအာင္ဆန္းေပါ့။
ဒီေအာင္ဆန္းကို
လြတ္လပ္ေရးလမ္း၀မွာ ဘြားကနဲ ျမင္လိုက္ရ႐ံုပဲ
ေအာင္ဆန္းရဲ႕ဆရာေတြ မႈိင္း၊ ျမ၊ ခ်ိဳတို႔ကအစ
""ငါတို႔ အားကိုးပါရေစ"" ဆိုလာၾက၊
ေရွးဘိုးဘြားမိဘျပည္သူေတြက
""ငါတို႔ကယ္မယ့္ မင္းေလာင္းေပၚၿပီ"" ၿပံဳးေပ်ာ္ၾက
လူငယ္ေသြးေသာက္ျမန္မာေတြက
""ငါတို႔ စြန္႔ပါရေစ"" ဆိုၿပီး ေရွ႕ထြက္လာၾက
စုၾက၊ ႐ံုးၾက၊ စည္းလံုးၾက
တကယ့္ဗမာေတြ
မဟာေအာင္ဆန္းအေနာက္က
ျပည္သူ႕ ဒီလႈိင္းလံုးႀကီးေတြရဲ႕
တ၀ုန္း၀ုန္း ႐ိုက္ခတ္သံဟာ
အဲဒီအခ်ိန္က ၀ိတိုရိယဘုရင္မႀကီးကိုေတာင္
အိပ္မက္ေတြ ေအးခဲေစခဲ့သေပါ့။
ေအာင္ဆန္းေရွ႕ေရာက္ရင္
ရွမ္းေတြက ရွမ္းစကားမဆိုၾက
ကခ်င္ေတြကလည္း ကခ်င္စကားမဟၾက
ေအာင္ဆန္းကို ယံုၾကည္စြာနဲ႔
သူတို႔ သခင္အျဖစ္ သိမွတ္ျပဳၾက
အားလံုးေသာ တိုင္းရင္းသားေတြ။
ဒီျပည္လံုးကၽြတ္အားကို စုစည္းႏုိင္ခဲ့လိုလည္း
အဂၤလိပ္ေတြက ဒီေအာင္ဆန္းလက္ေတာက္ေလာက္နဲ႔
တစ္စားပြဲထဲ ၀ိုင္းခဲ့ၾကေပါ့
အကင္းပါးသူေတြပီပီ
မတိုက္မီက ႐ံႈးေနတဲ့ ဒီစစ္ကို
ဒင္းတို႔ မတိုက္၀ံ့ၾက
မ်က္ႏွာမပ်က္ ေအာင္ျမင္စြာ ဆုတ္ခြာမယ့္လမ္းကို
သူတို႔ ေရြးခဲ့ၾက
ေအာင္ဆန္းနဲ႔အေတြ႕မွာ။
ယံုၾကည္အားကိုးတဲ့
မ်က္လံုးေပါင္း သန္း ၆၀
ေအာင္ဆန္းမွာ ရွိတယ္
လြတ္လပ္ေရးကို တ႐ႈိက္မက္မက္ေတာင့္တတဲ့
ႏွလံုးသားသန္း ၃၀ ေအာင္ဆန္းမွာရွိတယ္
ေအာင္ဆန္းေသဆို ေသျပ၀ံ့တဲ့သူ
ေအာင္ဆန္းမွာ တျပည္လံုးရွိတယ္
ဒီ မ်က္လံုးႏွလံုးအသက္
ဗို႔အားသိန္းသန္းခ်ီ မီးဆလိုက္အားေတြနဲ႔
ေနမ၀င္အင္ပါယာကို ျပတ္ျပတ္သားသား လွမ္းထိုးလိုက္တဲ့အခါ
အေျခာက္တိုက္ ဘ၀င္ျမင့္ေနသူေတြ
အားလံုး အရည္ေပ်ာ္သြားခဲ့ၾက။
ဘယ္ရာဇ၀င္မွာ ခင္ဗ်ားတို႔ ေတြ႕ဘူးလဲ။
ဂ်ပန္ဆိုတာ မႏူးမနပ္မဟုတ္ဘူး။
အဂၤလိပ္ဆိုတာက ေ၀လာေ၀း
သူငယ္ႏွပ္စားမဟုတ္။
ဒင္းတို႔ေတြေတာင္ ရေအာင္ စည္း႐ံုးႏိုင္တဲ့သူ
ေအာင္ဆန္း
ဒီေအာင္ဆန္းက စစ္ကို မလို
ဒါေပမဲ့ ရရင္ရ မရရင္ခ် ဆိုတာ ေအာင္ဆန္း၀ါဒ
လြတ္လပ္ေရးကို အျမန္ဆံုးလိုခ်င္ေနတဲ့
အဲ့ဒီအခ်ိန္ ျပည္သူေတြရဲ႕
တစ္ဦးတည္းေသာ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္
ငါတို႔ ေအာင္ဆန္းေပါ့။
ေအာင္ဆန္း
ဒီအခ်ိန္ဆို
၉၃ ႏွစ္ရွိၿပီ
ေအာင္ဆန္းေျပာမယ္
အဘိုးရဲ႕စကား နားေထာင္...။
""မေမ့နဲ႔
မင္းတို႔
ကေန႔ ႐ူေနတဲ့ ေလဟာ
ငါတို႔
မေန႔က ေခၽြးစက္ေတြဆိုတာ
မေမ့နဲ႔
မင္းတို႔
ျမန္မာဆိုတဲ့ စကားတစ္ခြန္းကိုရဖို႔
ငါတို႔
ဘံုးေဘာလေအာ က်ဆံုးေပးခဲ့ရတာ
မေမ့နဲ႔
မင္းတို႔
ကမၻာ႔ေျမပံုေပၚတက္ႏိုင္ဖို႔
ငါတို႔
အေလာင္းေကာင္ေတြဆင့္ၿပီး ထမ္းတင္ေပးခဲ့တာ
မေမ့နဲ႔။""
ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးတိုင္းမွာ
အေဖႏွစ္ေယာက္ရွိတယ္
တစ္ေယာက္က
ကိုယ့္ေသြးသားအေဖ
က်န္တစ္ေယာက္က
ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးကို ေမြးေပးတဲ့အေဖ
ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးရဲ႕အေဖ
ျမန္မာ့အေဖ
ေအာင္ဆန္းေပါ့။
က်ဳပ္အေဖနဲ႔အဖိုးဟာ ေအာင္ဆန္းသားေတြ
ေအာင္ဆန္းက က်ဳပ္အဖိုး
က်ဳပ္သားက ေအာင္ဆန္းရဲ႕ျမစ္ေပါ့
သူ႕အဘိုးကို သူ လြမ္းတတ္ေနၿပီ
သူ႕သားက်ရင္လဲ သူ႕အေဘးနဲ႔
ေပးေတြ႕ႏိုင္ဖို႔
အခုကတည္းက အေသအခ်ာ
က်ဳပ္ မွာထားရအံုးမယ္။
Thanks to sender- Zaw Zaw (Malaysia)
Monday, 7 September 2009
ပထမအႀကိမ္၁၉၉၀ျပည့္ကာလ
မႏၱေလးမွာ ဆြမ္းေလာင္းလွဴစဥ္ကေပါ့
န အ ဖစစ္တပ္ ပစ္သတ္လုိ႔ဇီဝိန္ေႂကြ
သံဃာေတြေသေၾကၾက
ရုိင္းစုိင္းယုတ္မာစဥ္ကေပါ့
ဒုိ႔တေတြေခါင္းငုံ႔မခံ
တြန္းလွန္မယ္ဆုိၿပီး
ဘုရားေပးတဲ့ကမၼဝါ
ပတၱနိကၠဳဇၨနာကုိ
စုေပါင္းကာရြတ္ဆုိၾက
သပိတ္ေမွာက္ခဲ့ၾကေပါ့
ဒါေပမယ့္မ်ဳိးယုတ္န အ ဖ
သံဃာကုိပစ္ကာသတ္
တိပိဋကပါမက်န္လပ္ခံရ
ဆရာေတာ္ေတြေထာင္ထဲစံရေပါ့
ဒုတိယအႀကိမ္
၂၀၀၇ စက္တင္ဘာကာလ
သူတုိ႔ ရက္စက္ယုတ္မာစဥ္ကေပါ့
တုိ႔တေတြလုံးဝလက္မခံ တြန္းလွန္မယ္ဆုိၿပီး
သပိတ္ေမွာက္ကမၼဝါ ပတၱနိကၠဳဇၨနာကုိ
စုေပါင္းကာရြတ္ဖတ္ၾက
ေမတၱာပုိ႔ခ်ီတက္ဆႏၵျပၾကေပါ့
ဒါေပမယ့္ န အ ဖ ဘယ္သူ႔ကုိမွမခ
မာန္မာနေတြေထာင္ကာႂကြၿပီး
ေသနတ္နဲ႔ပစ္သတ္ ရက္ရက္စက္စက္
ညွင္းပမ္းႏွိပ္စက္ ယုတ္မာေနၾက
သံဃာေသြးေတြ ေက်ာင္းသားျပည္သူေသြးေတြ
ေျမမွာခၾကရေပါ့
ဒီလုိသာတသက္လုံး ခံခဲ့ၾကရင္
ဒုိ႔သာသနာ ဒုိ႔ျပည္ရြာကုိ
မိစာၦေတြလက္ ဝကြက္အပ္ရေတာ့မယ္
လာမည့္စက္တင္ဘာ ဆယ့္ခုႏွစ္ရက္ေန႔
ဒါဟာ န အ ဖ ကုိေပးခဲ့မန္႔ဒိတ္
ဖမ္းဆီးထားသံဃာမ်ားကုိ ခြ်င္းခ်က္မရွိ
ခ်က္ခ်င္းလႊတ္
မိမိမွားယြင္းေၾကာင္းျပန္ေတာင္းပန္
ဒီႏွစ္တန္ဒင္းတုိ႔ လက္မခံက
လာမည့္စက္တင္ဘာ ၁၈.၉.၂၀၀၉ ရက္ေန႔
တတိယအႀကိမ္သပိတ္
အဆုံးသတ္တုိက္ပြဲ
ဒုိ႔ဆင္ႏႊဲၾကမယ္
ရဟန္းသံဃာ ေက်ာင္းသားျပည္သူ
အားလုံးအသင့္ျပင္ထားၾက။ ။
ေရးသားသူ။ ။ မင္းသုည (ကြန္းျခံကြန္း)
စစ္ေခြးေတြရဲ႕ ေသနတ္ေျပာင္း
ကုိမေၾကာက္ဘဲ ျပည္သူတစ္ရပ္လုံး
ကသာ ပါဝင္ဆင္ႏြဲမယ္ဆုိရင္
ဒီစစ္အာဏာရွင္အစုိးရ ေခြး
ေျပးဝက္ေျပး ေျပးရမွာပါ။
အခုစက္တင္ဘာမွာ တုိက္မယ့္
သပိတ္တုိက္ပြဲမွာ တုိင္းရင္း
သားျပည္သူတစ္ရပ္လုံး ပါဝင္ဆင္
နြဲၾကဖုိ႔ ႏွဳိးေဆာ္အပ္ပါသည္။
ကုိယ္နဲ႔မဆုိင္သလုိမေနၾကပါႏွင့္။
ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံသူ/သား အားလုံးမွာ
တာဝန္ရွိပါသည္။
Respectfully
Si Thu Aung
Health Coordinator
Burma- Workers' Rights Protection Committee
Email:
http://www.malaysiaburma.blogspot.com
Mobile: +6012 347 0026
Strategic Outlook of 2010 and the Role of Moderates in Burma Conflict
Strategic Outlook of 2010 and the Role of Moderates in Burma Conflict
by Min Zaw Oo
Thursday, 29 January 2009 11:29
Key Points
1. The west-driven support to Burma's pro-democracy movement has reached its limit.
2. The regime has maintained its intuitional apparatus to crackdown domestic oppositions after the monk-led protest and the Cyclone Nargis.
3. The military is facing dilemma to proceed to the transition in 2010 because of the distrust of the oppositions and the lack of civilian partnership.
4. Factional mobilizations can lead to instabilities after 2010.
5. Conflict prevention based on reconciliation and nation-building should be priority after the coming election.
6. The emergence of moderate political forces is critical to promote reconciliation after 2010.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Burmese regime has claimed to hold a new election in 2010 to facilitate a formation of a civil-military government in accordance with the military-orchestrated constitution which was approved in a widely slated referendum held last year. The prospect of the new election is a moral and strategic dilemma to the oppositions, especially the National League for Democracy (NLD) and its supporters who are entrenched in their upholding of the NLD's victory in the eighteen-year-old election.
Any proponent of the new election will undoubtedly find it hard to make a moral advocacy without risking an inadvertent endorsement of the reprobated constitution. However, the participation of moderate pro-democracy forces in the 2010 election is strategically sound and practically necessary to avoid instability and foster much-needed reconciliation for Burma's political and ethnic crises. This essay addresses why the 2010 election is important, and how the moderates can nurture reconciliation after 2010.
The State of the Opposition Movement
Before we think of the future, we should honestly assess our pro-democracy opposition movement, especially its west-driven support.
The attack on Aung San Suu Kyi's motorcade in Depayin and the crackdown on the NLD in 2003 marked a turning point in the conflict. The Depayin incident was also an enlightening moment for some opposition members to re-evaluate their strategies in Burma's protracted conflict.
The Depayin clampdown invigorated ferocity and anguish among the Burmese opposition communities. The emotional instinct called for escalation of the conflict to punish the military's onslaught on the NLD. Furious responses from the international community, including the abrasive condemnations coming from the US senior official, appeared to convince Burmese oppositions that their supporters in the west were ready to boost up Burma's opposition movement beyond rhetoric and miniscule financial supports.
Nevertheless, Burma's pro-democracy movement was merely a moral case for the west. Moral concern is usually inferior to strategic needs in international relations.
Even the Bill Clinton's administration approved about $ 100 million to support the Iraqi oppositions in 1998.1 Compared to this amount, less than $10 million of US funding, including the money to assist refugees and humanitarian programs, was a drop in an ocean of need to boost up an opposition movement.
The Depayin crackdown revealed the reality of the international support to the pro-democracy movement. A few exiles had reached a conclusion on the international front—the west-driven support to Burma's pro-democracy movement has exhausted its capacity in the international system.
On the political front, the NLD explicitly called for the intervention of the United Nations Security Council. The actual reason behind the NLD's SOS signal was its leadership's realization that the government had effectively clamped down the party's capacity to mobilize inside the country. While Aung San Suu Kyi and her able colleagues were under detention, the junta's restrictions had potently demolished the party's grassroots foundation.
The Burmese oppositions and their supporters in exile well heeded the NLD's distress call. Some activist lawyers in Washington prepared a lengthy and controversial appeal, commissioned by Former Czech President Vacláv Havel and noble laureate Desmond M. Tutu. The document argued that Burma under the military junta was a threat to regional stability although all neighboring countries refused to endorse this claim. Burma's threat to peace allegation came neither from the Pentagon nor the US intelligence community. It was a pure agenda from the activists using it as leverage to elevate pressure over the regime.
Despite the understanding in advance that such appeal at the UNSC would not survive, the US Congress and the Bush administration rode the flow of the activists' agenda. In contrast, the Clinton administration chose not to pursue the similar agenda at the UNSC after US ambassador to UN Madeleine Albright met Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in 1995 because of the same reason of an eventual failure. The result is the history.
Both the free Burma movement and the free Tibet campaign share the same fate. Both movements have been remarkably successful in awareness campaigns. However, awareness is only the first step to mobilize international support in transnational causes. The actual policy making depends on the willingness and capability of the international powers. Both free Burma and Tibet movements grind to a halt when their fates fall into the hands of the international system.
In the domestic front, the junta faced two major crises almost simultaneously within 8 months. The monk-led uprising brought thousands of people to the streets for the first time in eighteen years. Cyclone Nargis virtually destroyed the rice bowl of Burma in the delta region and killed over 130,000 people, marking it the worst natural disaster in Burma history. Nevertheless, the regime survived both crises.
The military proved its institutional capacity to shoot, arrest and torture even monks who are regarded one of the three most revered in Burmese society. The Cyclone deepened poverty and forced people to prioritize their economic survival over political dissatisfaction. The regime has successfully preserved its capacity to quash political challenges after two major crises.
The Limitations of the Military Junta
The major difference between Gen. Ne Win's military coup in 1962 and the current junta is the former's ability to consolidate its power by institutionalizing a one-party state 12 years after the military takeover. The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) successively claimed it was a coup d'état government. The nature of the current junta is transitional. Unlike Ne Win's coup, the current junta is not capable of institutionalizing its rule into a formal political system.
In addition, the regime is under constant pressures domestically and internationally although the junta is capable of withstanding them from pushing it to collapse or concede the oppositions' demands. The Depayin incident accelerated the regime's eventual end game, 7-step Road Map to a political transition.
The transition plan is based on the regime's orchestrated constitution which the junta forced through in a rigged referendum amidst the cyclone crisis in May 2008. According to the Road Map, the regime will hold a new election in 2010 and form a new government. The military will have 25 percent of seats in the Parliament, and the military's interests will be protected.
However, the interpretation of the constitution in practice will depend on the degree of participation by civilian politicians in the election and the authority of the elected representatives in the government. The constitution itself does allow elected members to hold substantial power in the new government. The legitimacy of the 2010 election depends on the participation of pro-democracy civilians and their roles in the new government.
The regime is also facing a dilemma based on three major concerns. First, the military is reluctant to open up political space for the civilian politicians to mobilize to contest in the election because the regime learned a hard lesson after it had released former student leaders and allowed them to organize their supporters. Their mobilization paved a way to the monk-led protest in 2007. The regime is very careful this time not to repeat the previous mistake.
Second, the regime is concerned with the repetition of the NLD's another victory in the 2010 election. The dominance of anti-military oppositions in the civilian portion of elected representatives will encourage the oppositions to challenge the military after the election. In other words, the military wants more 'moderate' opposition to contest in the election than the hard-liners. The release of student leaders in 2004 partially aimed at creating a so-called 'third force' between the NLD and the regime. However, the student leaders chose to take hard-line stance.
The regime's strategy appears to minimize the influence of hard liners, including the NLD, in the opposition movement. The recent arrests and severe jail-terms imposed on the activists are a part of the plan to steer clear hard-line elements before the election comes. On the other hand, an alternative third-force in the opposition movement is not in an organized form. Because of the nature of polarization in Burma's conflict, many moderate individuals are reluctant to engineer a third-force platform which is a politically derogative term for the Burmese oppositions.
Third, the regime is worried that the emerging civilian-led government would undermine the military's institutional interests. The military wants to avoid creating a Frankenstein monster by its own Road Map. The military therefore embedded protective clauses in the constitution to guarantee its own interests because of its distrust on civilian politicians.
Overall, the SPDC does not have viable civilian partnership in the new government after 2010. Lack of confidence on civilian politicians and amicable partnership has fostered siege mentality among the military leaders who cling onto the constitution and use suppression to safeguard their interests.
Civilian Forces in the 2010 Election
Depending on their roles and stance towards the coming election, there are four types of civilian politicians, in addition to the pro-military elements to contest the election. The majority of the oppositions strongly condemned the regime's road map. They will continue to reject the 2010 election and refuse to participate. These hardliners among the opposition movement are mostly in exile. Most hardcore activists inside the country have been placed under detention since the crackdown of the monk protests. The hardliners' voice will make little impact on the holding of the election.
The second type of oppositions sees the election as a step towards a confrontation with the military. Despite its call to recognize the result of the 1990 general election, the NLD is likely to participate in the 2010 election because it is the only option for Daw Suu's party to reclaim its legitimacy and remobilize its supporters after 2010. For many hardliners, including the Burmese Communist Party, the coming election is a tactical battleground for further escalation of the conflict.
The third political group views the coming election as an enticing opportunity to pursue their interests. Many ceasefire groups fall into this account. They will seek to strengthen their legitimacy through the existing electoral process regardless of the degree of fairness and freedom of the election. Some ceasefire groups are also inclined to transform into the fourth category, the third force.
Most individuals in the so-called third force inside Burma are non-NLD pro-democracy activists who disagree with the NLD's sanction-oriented policy and confrontation with the regime. They regard themselves moderates and share a view that the current NLD-led opposition movement is a failure. Many individuals in the third force include former political prisoners, elected representatives from the NLD, current leaders in NGOs, and environmental activists. Although they have not emerged as an institutionalized political force, they are likely to establish their political platform to contest the 2010 election.
Potential Instability after the 2010 Election
Under the current constitution, the likely polity in Burma is inclined towards illiberal democracy after 2010. Illiberal democracy is the most potent ingredient for instability when poor economic performance and factional mobilization characterize a new transition, according to the study of world-wide instabilities since 1955.2
Any new government, regardless of the forms of transition, will not be able to revive the country from current economic pauperization in a short term. Poverty will continue and quality of life remains poor after 2010. Economic destitutions are usually channeled towards political discontent. Under poverty, Burmese people will remain dissatisfied with the government as long as the military is a part of the ruling institution.
Illiberal democracy also expands political space for formerly suppressed oppositions who were deprived of political mobilization under the previous system. Economically dissatisfied public is vulnerable to political instigation stirring up unrests. The hardline oppositions will utilize newly emerging political space to mobilize poverty-stricken angry publics to pressure the new government. Their objective will aim to scrap the existing constitution and boot the military out of politics.
On the other hand, the military is likely to be politically defensive after the 2010 election while taking shelter under its brainchild constitution. The military's 25 percent of representatives in the parliament and its supporters will continue to preserve the military's institutional interests threatened by the oppositions' mobilization. Alternatively, the military may disenfranchise potential hardliners in the 2010 election and continue to deny their political freedom even after 2010. In both scenarios, the confrontation between the military and hardcore oppositions is likely to escalate after the election.
Another challenge for the post-2010 government is disarrangement and demobilization of ceasefire groups. Twenty-year old ceasefire has not addressed political settlement of fifteen major ceasefire groups whose strength reaches over 40,000 armed troops, approximately four-time larger than the size of Taliban in Afghanistan. Any misstep in the 2010 transition can trigger the revival of major armed conflicts in the country. The outbreak of wars will inevitably promote the role of military in Burma's politics.
Realistic Reconciliation after 2010
The only way to avoid potential instabilities, destructive confrontation and the revival of suppression is to purse realistic reconciliation after 2010. Reconciliation needs political space, common ground and readiness of both parties. The opposition's call for reconciliation in the past has failed because of the lack of all major premises.
The transition in post-2010 may not foster willingness to reconcile but will create political space to expand shared common ground where confidence can be restored among major parties in the conflict. In the past up to this point, both sides use 'reconciliation' merely as a political lexicon to take advantage over another while neglecting common grounds to cooperate on shared interests of the nation.
It will be the first time in 22 years both civilian politicians and the military representatives will be sitting under the same roof in the Parliament. It will also be the venue for both the military and civilians to interact in policy making and mutually envisioning the future. Against all odds, the transition in 2010 offers an opportunity to jumpstart confidence building to seek much need reconciliation for the country.
Realistically, the regime's Road Map is inevitable. The military will not drop its Road Map and seek an alternative political settlement with the opposition. Any political outcomes have to go through the military-led transitional process. In the past, the military is asked to sit down at a table set up by the opposition. It is now inexorable for the oppositions to proceed to the table prepared by the military.
The reconciliation after 2010 may not be an immediate tripartite dialogue among the military, pro-democracy oppositions, and ethnic minorities. The process will be likely initiated in phases, starting with the military and moderate political forces in the parliament and the government. The ceasefire groups in the political process can play a crucial role in steering the dialogue towards the issues of ethnic minorities.
Prevention of destructive conflicts and nation-building should be the priorities after 2010. These two critical processes are the indispensable steps towards successful democratization. Factional mobilization will be detrimental to any progress of liberalization and democratization. The grim truth about democratic transition is the fact that among 108 democratic transitions, only 12 countries have consolidated democracy since 1955.3 In many cases, instability follows transitions. Some countries fell back to some forms of autocracy. Many transitional countries are still struggling with factionalism.
Moderates Matter
Burma conflict is vastly factionalized, and the polarity between the military and the oppositions is deeply entrenched. The traditional opposition forces will likely take the path of confrontation with the military after 2010. Confidence building won't be materialized as long as both the civilian politicians and the military fail to cooperate in shared common interests, such as economic development, health care, security and public welfare. The essential approach is collaboration in common grounds instead of all-out confrontation.
As long as the junta sees no viable civilian partnership after 2010, the military will restrict the participation of civilian politicians in the coming election and their capacity to mobilize. The only civilian force willing to categorically cooperate with the military is moderate non-NLD pro-democracy activists who feel discontented with the status quo in the opposition movement. Although the military may not trust this so-called third force, it is the only viable civilian partnership the military needs to implement its Road Map.
The military and the third force share similar interests in development-related fields which can be the initial point of cooperation to foster confidence in civil-military relation. Pro-democracy orientation of the moderates can bridge the relationship between traditional oppositions and the military. The third force can function as a requisite buffer between both ends of hardliners by minimizing polarization in Burma conflict.
The major drawback of the potential third force in Burma is the lack of substantial leadership and institutionalization. The moderate force has not been able to organize its political platform and leadership structure to function as a feasible political institution. The election in 2010 will likely be a breeding ground to shape the structure of moderate force in Burmese politics. As long as the military's Road Map is the inescapable point for a change in Burma, the emergence of competent third force is strategically important to jumpstart reconciliation after 2010.
(Min Zaw Oo is a security analyst focusing on South and Southeast Asia region. He is also a PhD candidate at George Mason University, writing his dissertation on the analysis of 108 democratic transitions. Oo holds a MA in Security Studies, Georgetown University, and a MS in Conflict Analysis and Resolutions, George Mason University.)
by Min Zaw Oo
Thursday, 29 January 2009 11:29
Key Points
1. The west-driven support to Burma's pro-democracy movement has reached its limit.
2. The regime has maintained its intuitional apparatus to crackdown domestic oppositions after the monk-led protest and the Cyclone Nargis.
3. The military is facing dilemma to proceed to the transition in 2010 because of the distrust of the oppositions and the lack of civilian partnership.
4. Factional mobilizations can lead to instabilities after 2010.
5. Conflict prevention based on reconciliation and nation-building should be priority after the coming election.
6. The emergence of moderate political forces is critical to promote reconciliation after 2010.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Burmese regime has claimed to hold a new election in 2010 to facilitate a formation of a civil-military government in accordance with the military-orchestrated constitution which was approved in a widely slated referendum held last year. The prospect of the new election is a moral and strategic dilemma to the oppositions, especially the National League for Democracy (NLD) and its supporters who are entrenched in their upholding of the NLD's victory in the eighteen-year-old election.
Any proponent of the new election will undoubtedly find it hard to make a moral advocacy without risking an inadvertent endorsement of the reprobated constitution. However, the participation of moderate pro-democracy forces in the 2010 election is strategically sound and practically necessary to avoid instability and foster much-needed reconciliation for Burma's political and ethnic crises. This essay addresses why the 2010 election is important, and how the moderates can nurture reconciliation after 2010.
The State of the Opposition Movement
Before we think of the future, we should honestly assess our pro-democracy opposition movement, especially its west-driven support.
The attack on Aung San Suu Kyi's motorcade in Depayin and the crackdown on the NLD in 2003 marked a turning point in the conflict. The Depayin incident was also an enlightening moment for some opposition members to re-evaluate their strategies in Burma's protracted conflict.
The Depayin clampdown invigorated ferocity and anguish among the Burmese opposition communities. The emotional instinct called for escalation of the conflict to punish the military's onslaught on the NLD. Furious responses from the international community, including the abrasive condemnations coming from the US senior official, appeared to convince Burmese oppositions that their supporters in the west were ready to boost up Burma's opposition movement beyond rhetoric and miniscule financial supports.
Nevertheless, Burma's pro-democracy movement was merely a moral case for the west. Moral concern is usually inferior to strategic needs in international relations.
Even the Bill Clinton's administration approved about $ 100 million to support the Iraqi oppositions in 1998.1 Compared to this amount, less than $10 million of US funding, including the money to assist refugees and humanitarian programs, was a drop in an ocean of need to boost up an opposition movement.
The Depayin crackdown revealed the reality of the international support to the pro-democracy movement. A few exiles had reached a conclusion on the international front—the west-driven support to Burma's pro-democracy movement has exhausted its capacity in the international system.
On the political front, the NLD explicitly called for the intervention of the United Nations Security Council. The actual reason behind the NLD's SOS signal was its leadership's realization that the government had effectively clamped down the party's capacity to mobilize inside the country. While Aung San Suu Kyi and her able colleagues were under detention, the junta's restrictions had potently demolished the party's grassroots foundation.
The Burmese oppositions and their supporters in exile well heeded the NLD's distress call. Some activist lawyers in Washington prepared a lengthy and controversial appeal, commissioned by Former Czech President Vacláv Havel and noble laureate Desmond M. Tutu. The document argued that Burma under the military junta was a threat to regional stability although all neighboring countries refused to endorse this claim. Burma's threat to peace allegation came neither from the Pentagon nor the US intelligence community. It was a pure agenda from the activists using it as leverage to elevate pressure over the regime.
Despite the understanding in advance that such appeal at the UNSC would not survive, the US Congress and the Bush administration rode the flow of the activists' agenda. In contrast, the Clinton administration chose not to pursue the similar agenda at the UNSC after US ambassador to UN Madeleine Albright met Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in 1995 because of the same reason of an eventual failure. The result is the history.
Both the free Burma movement and the free Tibet campaign share the same fate. Both movements have been remarkably successful in awareness campaigns. However, awareness is only the first step to mobilize international support in transnational causes. The actual policy making depends on the willingness and capability of the international powers. Both free Burma and Tibet movements grind to a halt when their fates fall into the hands of the international system.
In the domestic front, the junta faced two major crises almost simultaneously within 8 months. The monk-led uprising brought thousands of people to the streets for the first time in eighteen years. Cyclone Nargis virtually destroyed the rice bowl of Burma in the delta region and killed over 130,000 people, marking it the worst natural disaster in Burma history. Nevertheless, the regime survived both crises.
The military proved its institutional capacity to shoot, arrest and torture even monks who are regarded one of the three most revered in Burmese society. The Cyclone deepened poverty and forced people to prioritize their economic survival over political dissatisfaction. The regime has successfully preserved its capacity to quash political challenges after two major crises.
The Limitations of the Military Junta
The major difference between Gen. Ne Win's military coup in 1962 and the current junta is the former's ability to consolidate its power by institutionalizing a one-party state 12 years after the military takeover. The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) successively claimed it was a coup d'état government. The nature of the current junta is transitional. Unlike Ne Win's coup, the current junta is not capable of institutionalizing its rule into a formal political system.
In addition, the regime is under constant pressures domestically and internationally although the junta is capable of withstanding them from pushing it to collapse or concede the oppositions' demands. The Depayin incident accelerated the regime's eventual end game, 7-step Road Map to a political transition.
The transition plan is based on the regime's orchestrated constitution which the junta forced through in a rigged referendum amidst the cyclone crisis in May 2008. According to the Road Map, the regime will hold a new election in 2010 and form a new government. The military will have 25 percent of seats in the Parliament, and the military's interests will be protected.
However, the interpretation of the constitution in practice will depend on the degree of participation by civilian politicians in the election and the authority of the elected representatives in the government. The constitution itself does allow elected members to hold substantial power in the new government. The legitimacy of the 2010 election depends on the participation of pro-democracy civilians and their roles in the new government.
The regime is also facing a dilemma based on three major concerns. First, the military is reluctant to open up political space for the civilian politicians to mobilize to contest in the election because the regime learned a hard lesson after it had released former student leaders and allowed them to organize their supporters. Their mobilization paved a way to the monk-led protest in 2007. The regime is very careful this time not to repeat the previous mistake.
Second, the regime is concerned with the repetition of the NLD's another victory in the 2010 election. The dominance of anti-military oppositions in the civilian portion of elected representatives will encourage the oppositions to challenge the military after the election. In other words, the military wants more 'moderate' opposition to contest in the election than the hard-liners. The release of student leaders in 2004 partially aimed at creating a so-called 'third force' between the NLD and the regime. However, the student leaders chose to take hard-line stance.
The regime's strategy appears to minimize the influence of hard liners, including the NLD, in the opposition movement. The recent arrests and severe jail-terms imposed on the activists are a part of the plan to steer clear hard-line elements before the election comes. On the other hand, an alternative third-force in the opposition movement is not in an organized form. Because of the nature of polarization in Burma's conflict, many moderate individuals are reluctant to engineer a third-force platform which is a politically derogative term for the Burmese oppositions.
Third, the regime is worried that the emerging civilian-led government would undermine the military's institutional interests. The military wants to avoid creating a Frankenstein monster by its own Road Map. The military therefore embedded protective clauses in the constitution to guarantee its own interests because of its distrust on civilian politicians.
Overall, the SPDC does not have viable civilian partnership in the new government after 2010. Lack of confidence on civilian politicians and amicable partnership has fostered siege mentality among the military leaders who cling onto the constitution and use suppression to safeguard their interests.
Civilian Forces in the 2010 Election
Depending on their roles and stance towards the coming election, there are four types of civilian politicians, in addition to the pro-military elements to contest the election. The majority of the oppositions strongly condemned the regime's road map. They will continue to reject the 2010 election and refuse to participate. These hardliners among the opposition movement are mostly in exile. Most hardcore activists inside the country have been placed under detention since the crackdown of the monk protests. The hardliners' voice will make little impact on the holding of the election.
The second type of oppositions sees the election as a step towards a confrontation with the military. Despite its call to recognize the result of the 1990 general election, the NLD is likely to participate in the 2010 election because it is the only option for Daw Suu's party to reclaim its legitimacy and remobilize its supporters after 2010. For many hardliners, including the Burmese Communist Party, the coming election is a tactical battleground for further escalation of the conflict.
The third political group views the coming election as an enticing opportunity to pursue their interests. Many ceasefire groups fall into this account. They will seek to strengthen their legitimacy through the existing electoral process regardless of the degree of fairness and freedom of the election. Some ceasefire groups are also inclined to transform into the fourth category, the third force.
Most individuals in the so-called third force inside Burma are non-NLD pro-democracy activists who disagree with the NLD's sanction-oriented policy and confrontation with the regime. They regard themselves moderates and share a view that the current NLD-led opposition movement is a failure. Many individuals in the third force include former political prisoners, elected representatives from the NLD, current leaders in NGOs, and environmental activists. Although they have not emerged as an institutionalized political force, they are likely to establish their political platform to contest the 2010 election.
Potential Instability after the 2010 Election
Under the current constitution, the likely polity in Burma is inclined towards illiberal democracy after 2010. Illiberal democracy is the most potent ingredient for instability when poor economic performance and factional mobilization characterize a new transition, according to the study of world-wide instabilities since 1955.2
Any new government, regardless of the forms of transition, will not be able to revive the country from current economic pauperization in a short term. Poverty will continue and quality of life remains poor after 2010. Economic destitutions are usually channeled towards political discontent. Under poverty, Burmese people will remain dissatisfied with the government as long as the military is a part of the ruling institution.
Illiberal democracy also expands political space for formerly suppressed oppositions who were deprived of political mobilization under the previous system. Economically dissatisfied public is vulnerable to political instigation stirring up unrests. The hardline oppositions will utilize newly emerging political space to mobilize poverty-stricken angry publics to pressure the new government. Their objective will aim to scrap the existing constitution and boot the military out of politics.
On the other hand, the military is likely to be politically defensive after the 2010 election while taking shelter under its brainchild constitution. The military's 25 percent of representatives in the parliament and its supporters will continue to preserve the military's institutional interests threatened by the oppositions' mobilization. Alternatively, the military may disenfranchise potential hardliners in the 2010 election and continue to deny their political freedom even after 2010. In both scenarios, the confrontation between the military and hardcore oppositions is likely to escalate after the election.
Another challenge for the post-2010 government is disarrangement and demobilization of ceasefire groups. Twenty-year old ceasefire has not addressed political settlement of fifteen major ceasefire groups whose strength reaches over 40,000 armed troops, approximately four-time larger than the size of Taliban in Afghanistan. Any misstep in the 2010 transition can trigger the revival of major armed conflicts in the country. The outbreak of wars will inevitably promote the role of military in Burma's politics.
Realistic Reconciliation after 2010
The only way to avoid potential instabilities, destructive confrontation and the revival of suppression is to purse realistic reconciliation after 2010. Reconciliation needs political space, common ground and readiness of both parties. The opposition's call for reconciliation in the past has failed because of the lack of all major premises.
The transition in post-2010 may not foster willingness to reconcile but will create political space to expand shared common ground where confidence can be restored among major parties in the conflict. In the past up to this point, both sides use 'reconciliation' merely as a political lexicon to take advantage over another while neglecting common grounds to cooperate on shared interests of the nation.
It will be the first time in 22 years both civilian politicians and the military representatives will be sitting under the same roof in the Parliament. It will also be the venue for both the military and civilians to interact in policy making and mutually envisioning the future. Against all odds, the transition in 2010 offers an opportunity to jumpstart confidence building to seek much need reconciliation for the country.
Realistically, the regime's Road Map is inevitable. The military will not drop its Road Map and seek an alternative political settlement with the opposition. Any political outcomes have to go through the military-led transitional process. In the past, the military is asked to sit down at a table set up by the opposition. It is now inexorable for the oppositions to proceed to the table prepared by the military.
The reconciliation after 2010 may not be an immediate tripartite dialogue among the military, pro-democracy oppositions, and ethnic minorities. The process will be likely initiated in phases, starting with the military and moderate political forces in the parliament and the government. The ceasefire groups in the political process can play a crucial role in steering the dialogue towards the issues of ethnic minorities.
Prevention of destructive conflicts and nation-building should be the priorities after 2010. These two critical processes are the indispensable steps towards successful democratization. Factional mobilization will be detrimental to any progress of liberalization and democratization. The grim truth about democratic transition is the fact that among 108 democratic transitions, only 12 countries have consolidated democracy since 1955.3 In many cases, instability follows transitions. Some countries fell back to some forms of autocracy. Many transitional countries are still struggling with factionalism.
Moderates Matter
Burma conflict is vastly factionalized, and the polarity between the military and the oppositions is deeply entrenched. The traditional opposition forces will likely take the path of confrontation with the military after 2010. Confidence building won't be materialized as long as both the civilian politicians and the military fail to cooperate in shared common interests, such as economic development, health care, security and public welfare. The essential approach is collaboration in common grounds instead of all-out confrontation.
As long as the junta sees no viable civilian partnership after 2010, the military will restrict the participation of civilian politicians in the coming election and their capacity to mobilize. The only civilian force willing to categorically cooperate with the military is moderate non-NLD pro-democracy activists who feel discontented with the status quo in the opposition movement. Although the military may not trust this so-called third force, it is the only viable civilian partnership the military needs to implement its Road Map.
The military and the third force share similar interests in development-related fields which can be the initial point of cooperation to foster confidence in civil-military relation. Pro-democracy orientation of the moderates can bridge the relationship between traditional oppositions and the military. The third force can function as a requisite buffer between both ends of hardliners by minimizing polarization in Burma conflict.
The major drawback of the potential third force in Burma is the lack of substantial leadership and institutionalization. The moderate force has not been able to organize its political platform and leadership structure to function as a feasible political institution. The election in 2010 will likely be a breeding ground to shape the structure of moderate force in Burmese politics. As long as the military's Road Map is the inescapable point for a change in Burma, the emergence of competent third force is strategically important to jumpstart reconciliation after 2010.
(Min Zaw Oo is a security analyst focusing on South and Southeast Asia region. He is also a PhD candidate at George Mason University, writing his dissertation on the analysis of 108 democratic transitions. Oo holds a MA in Security Studies, Georgetown University, and a MS in Conflict Analysis and Resolutions, George Mason University.)
U.S. Needs 'New Formula' for S.E. Asia
U.S. Needs 'New Formula' for S.E. Asia, Sen. Webb Says Following Myanmar Visit
Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb talks about his unusual mission to reclusive Myanmar to secure the release of an American prisoner, and the other stops on his Asia tour.
MARGARET WARNER: For more than 10 years, the southeast nation of Myanmar, formerly Burma, has shut its doors to top American officials and foreign journalists. Most Americans' clearest images of Myanmar are stealthily filmed pictures of the government's repression of dissent. This was its violent crackdown two years ago on Buddhist monks who protested against the regime.
The U.S. and European Union have maintained economic sanctions on Myanmar for more than a decade, but China is investing heavily there. The country has been so closed off to the West that, after last year's devastating cyclone, which killed more than 80,000, it took immense international pressure to get any foreign aid into the country.
Yet the Burmese junta, which has been ruling for more than 50 years, did welcome Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia 10 days ago.
In quick succession, Webb met with the regime's reclusive leader, General Than Shwe, and then with Nobel Peace Prize-winner and leading democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi. Just days earlier, Suu Kyi had been convicted once again and her house arrest extended, triggering new street protests. The government imposed its latest punishment on her after an American, John Yettaw, swam across a lagoon and entered her house.
Yettaw, a Vietnam veteran suffering from epilepsy, had been sentenced to seven years' hard labor, but Webb gained his release. This week, Senator Webb authored an op-ed in the New York Times entitled, "We Can't Afford to Ignore Myanmar."
The senator's trip also took him to Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. I spoke with Senator Webb yesterday asked him why he thought the reclusive Burmese leader met with him, released the American prisoner, and let him talk with Suu Kyi.
Building 'a new formula' in region
SEN. JIM WEBB, D-Va.: The communications that went back and forth in preparation for our visit, there was a lot of, I think, testing on both sides going on beforehand, and I believe, though, all those things went into their decisions.
MARGARET WARNER: So...
SEN. JIM WEBB: The most important thing, actually, right now is that we have an opportunity here to try to construct a new formula, and it's vital for the interests of the United States in Southeast Asia that we re-engage across the Southeast Asian mainland.
We are in real danger of losing our position, with the expansion of China, with this whole series of countries that I visited.
MARGARET WARNER: Now, in an op-ed in the New York Times this week, you wrote that the U.S. should lift sanctions on Burma, and you said that the ultimate objective is to encourage Myanmar to become a responsible member of the world community, and you talked about having it under an open political system. In your meeting with General Shwe, did you see any evidence that he is interested at all in that kind of vision?
SEN. JIM WEBB: Probably. I don't want to characterize that meeting. I think the best thing for someone like myself is to leave the meeting where it was.
I made a series of observations and suggestions and recommendations to see how they respond following this visit. And there are a lot of ways that we can measure that.
And, by the way, another piece of this is, I'm not saying lift sanctions immediately. I'm saying we need to proceed immediately toward a formula where we can do that. By cutting off the United States and the European Union from Myanmar, as China is so heavily investing in the country, and we're seeing Myanmar now tilt away from our national interest. There's got to be a different way to do this.
MARGARET WARNER: Now, one of the leading pro-democracy in Burma groups says the U.S. should not offer the benefits of trade and investment to Burma, to Myanmar, until it takes real steps to open up its political system, that otherwise the U.S. would be just selling democracy down the river. What do you say to that?
SEN. JIM WEBB: I say, I share their objectives of moving toward a more open system. The question is how you get there.
And one of the interesting historical examples in that case is Vietnam itself. I was very strongly opposed to lifting sanctions on Vietnam after the Communists took over and how they treated the people who were with us.
But as other countries lifted their sanctions against Vietnam, it became more logical for us to do so, and, quite frankly, looking back on it, I think that was a key moment, in terms of beginning the process of opening up Vietnam.
The dissident groups that say you should have democracy first, really, I understand their frustrations, but they need to look at it a different way. Take what you can get and move toward democracy. That's the way you can bring change in Asia.
Regime's interest in the West
MARGARET WARNER: Now, you said "probably" you saw signs that the regime there is interested. I mean, can you be any more specific? Isn't it possible that they have no intention of making any real, concrete opening up to any other political party or to Aung San Suu Kyi's party?
SEN. JIM WEBB: Let's wait and see. I mean, the political party does exist. I had meetings in Burma, quite frankly, that I never could have had in Vietnam. If there would have been an opposition political party come and sit down and talk to me in Vietnam the way that they did in Burma, they'd have gone to jail.
So we need to take what we can get and see. My view is that there are other dimensions to lifting sanctions, and that is allowing people from Western cultures to interact on a daily basis with the people of Burma and, through those sorts of interactions, raising a level of consciousness so that you can have the right sort of interest, in terms of changing a system.
MARGARET WARNER: But then that gets back to the question of whether the regime is interested in having Western interaction with the people of Burma. I mean, they didn't indicate that after the cyclone last year.
SEN. JIM WEBB: They're a very isolated regime, geographically and otherwise. Because of the way that we have lost our contact with the people of Burma, there are very few people in this regime or in Burma who have had contact with the outside world, who have studied in our country or in European countries. So it's a process of breaking down a lot of barriers.
The only way you'll know is if we listen to them and begin to move forward. Clearly, what's been happening over the last 20 years, and particularly with the sanctions over the more than 10 years, has driven the people of Burma away from our type of society and isolated them from the rest of the world.
'Three strong recommendations'
MARGARET WARNER: And how did Than Shwe react when you suggested that Aung San Suu Kyi be freed from house arrest and that her party be allowed and encouraged to take part in next year's election?
SEN. JIM WEBB: I'm not going to characterize his reaction; I don't think it's appropriate. I laid out three strong recommendations in the meetings, all the meetings that I had there.
One was that they allow me to bring Mr. Yettaw home on humanitarian grounds. The other was that I be allowed a face-to-face meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi. And the third was that they allow her to be released from confinement and to participate in the progress -- political process.
Another piece of this, quite frankly, is whether her political party will participate in the process unless it is something that they believe is more even-handed.
And one point I should raise, with respect to the meetings with General Than Shwe, is that I communicated to them as clearly as I could that the rest of the world views their government through the way that they treat Aung San Suu Kyi and it was important for them to show more even-handedness there.
MARGARET WARNER: You are one of the few Americans who's been able to even get into Myanmar in recent years. What were your visual impressions? What did it look like?
SEN. JIM WEBB: It's a beautiful country. I've been there eight years before. Even eight years ago, you could see that it was starting to show wear and tear from its isolation from the rest of the world. It's much more graphic today.
But I really don't want to be one of those members of Congress who can drop into a country for two days and come out and give you some, you know, grand assessment. I had a lot more time in Burma eight years ago as a private citizen than I would have now.
MARGARET WARNER: Let me finally, before we end this, ask about Afghanistan. You're a Vietnam veteran. You opposed both the Iraq -- the first Gulf War and the Iraq war. Five months into President Obama's heightened commitment in Afghanistan, how do you think it's going?
SEN. JIM WEBB: I have a lot of concerns about the way we've articulated our national goals in Afghanistan. I've commuted them directly -- communicated them directly to General Petraeus, Admiral Mullen, Secretary Gates in different hearings. And I think that it is extremely important for us to be able to articulate the end point of our strategy, just as it was in Iraq, and the same thing I was saying in Iraq.
MARGARET WARNER: Many Democrats -- a growing number of Democrats are beginning to see and draw parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan. Do you see those parallels? Do they concern you?
SEN. JIM WEBB: It's a totally different situation, totally different situation. The challenge in both is to clearly articulate your strategy so that you will have an end point that you are working toward. And, quite frankly, I see that as less visible in Afghanistan than I saw it during the Vietnam War.
MARGARET WARNER: Senator Webb, thank you.
SEN. JIM WEBB: Thank you.
Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb talks about his unusual mission to reclusive Myanmar to secure the release of an American prisoner, and the other stops on his Asia tour.
MARGARET WARNER: For more than 10 years, the southeast nation of Myanmar, formerly Burma, has shut its doors to top American officials and foreign journalists. Most Americans' clearest images of Myanmar are stealthily filmed pictures of the government's repression of dissent. This was its violent crackdown two years ago on Buddhist monks who protested against the regime.
The U.S. and European Union have maintained economic sanctions on Myanmar for more than a decade, but China is investing heavily there. The country has been so closed off to the West that, after last year's devastating cyclone, which killed more than 80,000, it took immense international pressure to get any foreign aid into the country.
Yet the Burmese junta, which has been ruling for more than 50 years, did welcome Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia 10 days ago.
In quick succession, Webb met with the regime's reclusive leader, General Than Shwe, and then with Nobel Peace Prize-winner and leading democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi. Just days earlier, Suu Kyi had been convicted once again and her house arrest extended, triggering new street protests. The government imposed its latest punishment on her after an American, John Yettaw, swam across a lagoon and entered her house.
Yettaw, a Vietnam veteran suffering from epilepsy, had been sentenced to seven years' hard labor, but Webb gained his release. This week, Senator Webb authored an op-ed in the New York Times entitled, "We Can't Afford to Ignore Myanmar."
The senator's trip also took him to Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. I spoke with Senator Webb yesterday asked him why he thought the reclusive Burmese leader met with him, released the American prisoner, and let him talk with Suu Kyi.
Building 'a new formula' in region
SEN. JIM WEBB, D-Va.: The communications that went back and forth in preparation for our visit, there was a lot of, I think, testing on both sides going on beforehand, and I believe, though, all those things went into their decisions.
MARGARET WARNER: So...
SEN. JIM WEBB: The most important thing, actually, right now is that we have an opportunity here to try to construct a new formula, and it's vital for the interests of the United States in Southeast Asia that we re-engage across the Southeast Asian mainland.
We are in real danger of losing our position, with the expansion of China, with this whole series of countries that I visited.
MARGARET WARNER: Now, in an op-ed in the New York Times this week, you wrote that the U.S. should lift sanctions on Burma, and you said that the ultimate objective is to encourage Myanmar to become a responsible member of the world community, and you talked about having it under an open political system. In your meeting with General Shwe, did you see any evidence that he is interested at all in that kind of vision?
SEN. JIM WEBB: Probably. I don't want to characterize that meeting. I think the best thing for someone like myself is to leave the meeting where it was.
I made a series of observations and suggestions and recommendations to see how they respond following this visit. And there are a lot of ways that we can measure that.
And, by the way, another piece of this is, I'm not saying lift sanctions immediately. I'm saying we need to proceed immediately toward a formula where we can do that. By cutting off the United States and the European Union from Myanmar, as China is so heavily investing in the country, and we're seeing Myanmar now tilt away from our national interest. There's got to be a different way to do this.
MARGARET WARNER: Now, one of the leading pro-democracy in Burma groups says the U.S. should not offer the benefits of trade and investment to Burma, to Myanmar, until it takes real steps to open up its political system, that otherwise the U.S. would be just selling democracy down the river. What do you say to that?
SEN. JIM WEBB: I say, I share their objectives of moving toward a more open system. The question is how you get there.
And one of the interesting historical examples in that case is Vietnam itself. I was very strongly opposed to lifting sanctions on Vietnam after the Communists took over and how they treated the people who were with us.
But as other countries lifted their sanctions against Vietnam, it became more logical for us to do so, and, quite frankly, looking back on it, I think that was a key moment, in terms of beginning the process of opening up Vietnam.
The dissident groups that say you should have democracy first, really, I understand their frustrations, but they need to look at it a different way. Take what you can get and move toward democracy. That's the way you can bring change in Asia.
Regime's interest in the West
MARGARET WARNER: Now, you said "probably" you saw signs that the regime there is interested. I mean, can you be any more specific? Isn't it possible that they have no intention of making any real, concrete opening up to any other political party or to Aung San Suu Kyi's party?
SEN. JIM WEBB: Let's wait and see. I mean, the political party does exist. I had meetings in Burma, quite frankly, that I never could have had in Vietnam. If there would have been an opposition political party come and sit down and talk to me in Vietnam the way that they did in Burma, they'd have gone to jail.
So we need to take what we can get and see. My view is that there are other dimensions to lifting sanctions, and that is allowing people from Western cultures to interact on a daily basis with the people of Burma and, through those sorts of interactions, raising a level of consciousness so that you can have the right sort of interest, in terms of changing a system.
MARGARET WARNER: But then that gets back to the question of whether the regime is interested in having Western interaction with the people of Burma. I mean, they didn't indicate that after the cyclone last year.
SEN. JIM WEBB: They're a very isolated regime, geographically and otherwise. Because of the way that we have lost our contact with the people of Burma, there are very few people in this regime or in Burma who have had contact with the outside world, who have studied in our country or in European countries. So it's a process of breaking down a lot of barriers.
The only way you'll know is if we listen to them and begin to move forward. Clearly, what's been happening over the last 20 years, and particularly with the sanctions over the more than 10 years, has driven the people of Burma away from our type of society and isolated them from the rest of the world.
'Three strong recommendations'
MARGARET WARNER: And how did Than Shwe react when you suggested that Aung San Suu Kyi be freed from house arrest and that her party be allowed and encouraged to take part in next year's election?
SEN. JIM WEBB: I'm not going to characterize his reaction; I don't think it's appropriate. I laid out three strong recommendations in the meetings, all the meetings that I had there.
One was that they allow me to bring Mr. Yettaw home on humanitarian grounds. The other was that I be allowed a face-to-face meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi. And the third was that they allow her to be released from confinement and to participate in the progress -- political process.
Another piece of this, quite frankly, is whether her political party will participate in the process unless it is something that they believe is more even-handed.
And one point I should raise, with respect to the meetings with General Than Shwe, is that I communicated to them as clearly as I could that the rest of the world views their government through the way that they treat Aung San Suu Kyi and it was important for them to show more even-handedness there.
MARGARET WARNER: You are one of the few Americans who's been able to even get into Myanmar in recent years. What were your visual impressions? What did it look like?
SEN. JIM WEBB: It's a beautiful country. I've been there eight years before. Even eight years ago, you could see that it was starting to show wear and tear from its isolation from the rest of the world. It's much more graphic today.
But I really don't want to be one of those members of Congress who can drop into a country for two days and come out and give you some, you know, grand assessment. I had a lot more time in Burma eight years ago as a private citizen than I would have now.
MARGARET WARNER: Let me finally, before we end this, ask about Afghanistan. You're a Vietnam veteran. You opposed both the Iraq -- the first Gulf War and the Iraq war. Five months into President Obama's heightened commitment in Afghanistan, how do you think it's going?
SEN. JIM WEBB: I have a lot of concerns about the way we've articulated our national goals in Afghanistan. I've commuted them directly -- communicated them directly to General Petraeus, Admiral Mullen, Secretary Gates in different hearings. And I think that it is extremely important for us to be able to articulate the end point of our strategy, just as it was in Iraq, and the same thing I was saying in Iraq.
MARGARET WARNER: Many Democrats -- a growing number of Democrats are beginning to see and draw parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan. Do you see those parallels? Do they concern you?
SEN. JIM WEBB: It's a totally different situation, totally different situation. The challenge in both is to clearly articulate your strategy so that you will have an end point that you are working toward. And, quite frankly, I see that as less visible in Afghanistan than I saw it during the Vietnam War.
MARGARET WARNER: Senator Webb, thank you.
SEN. JIM WEBB: Thank you.
Sunday, 6 September 2009
Friday, 4 September 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
