TNI-BCN Burma policy briefing No. 5
February 2011

Following the shake-up of Burmese politics last year, the country’s military leaders now face the challenge of introducing a new system while ethnic tensions and exclusions remain.

Burma remains a land in ethnic crisis and political transition. In 2010 the military State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) laid out the landscape for a new era of parliamentary government. In 2011 the authorities face the challenge of introducing the new political system. Ethnic divisions and political exclusions, however, are emerging in national politics, threatening a new cycle of impasse and conflict.
A critical moment is approaching. A new political system is being introduced, and progressive decisions can yet be made. But uncertainty is increasing. Will the new government be the SPDC in new guise or will it be a platform from which ethnic peace and multi-party democracy can truly spread? The stakes could not be higher. The decisions made by Burma’s leaders in the coming year could well decide the country’s future for a generation Ethnic Politics in Burma: The Time for Solutions. Burma Policy Briefing Nr 5

If the report fails to load, go here

evidence of crimes against humanity in Burma’s Chin State

If the report fails to load, go here

evidence of crimes against humanity in Burma’s Chin State

If the report fails to load, go here

‘Beyond Section 10′ is a portrait of one Karen refugee in the run up to elections in Burma. Although he lives in a Thai refugee camp he has also served as a soldier in the KNLA since he was thirteen. He has recently become a father and as an increased level of fighting looms in the coming months he is torn for the first time between his love for his people and a desire to see his baby grow up.

The film is designed to highlight the plight of the Karen people and offer an accessible, human face to one of the victims of a brutal regime in a nation under persecution.

Mike Garrod is an English filmmaker who has worked on documentaries and drama since 2000 for broadcasters such as BBC, HBO, Sky and Al Jazeera. He is currently based in Stockholm and London and has been coming to Karen State since 2009. The film is currently being edited in London and is expecting a release in the summer.

Mike is putting out an appeal for footage that anybody can donate to the film and is especially interested in the following: Burmese news stories about the Karen and ethnic groups in general. Burmese news stories about the 2010 elections. Burmese movies depicting the Karen or other ethnic groups. International media news stories about the ethnic groups/elections. Footage of the Karen discussing elections. Karen festivals or holidays (new year?). Karen singing/music. Conflict footage inside Karen state. Burmese military parades.

Please contact through this site or mail@mikegarrod.com.

Mike Garrod

Health and human rights in Eastern Burma

This report summarises the data of a population-based survey which was undertaken to assess the health and human rights situation across parts of four states and two divisions that comprise the eastern states of Burma as a whole. A former survey was performed in 2004, the results of which were published in the report Chronic Emergency, which focused mainly on conflict zones within Karen, Karenni, and Mon States. This report builds upon the methodology of and issues dealt with in Chronic Emergency, and covers a much larger geographic area, including southern Shan State and Tenasserim Division. In addition, this survey covers a wider range of political and conflict contexts throughout eastern Burma, ranging from areas of ongoing low-level conflict, to areas of fluctuating control and others controlled by armed ethnic groups which have a ceasefire agreement with Burma’s military regime

If the report fails to load, go here

Repressive laws mark preparation for 2010 polls

Elaine Pearson, HRW deputy Asia director

  Rangoon, Burma

May 26, 2010

The 1990 elections sent a clear message to the Burmese military that the people wanted them out of power. The generals won’t make the same mistake twice. The past 20 years have been a stage-managed process to ensure the military controls the future parliament.

On the twentieth anniversary of Burma’s historic 1990 elections, the Burmese military government shows no signs of relaxing its stranglehold on power, Human Rights Watch said today.

Elections planned for 2010, the first in 20 years, appear designed to enshrine military rule with a civilian face, Human Rights Watch said.

“The 1990 elections sent a clear message to the Burmese military that the people wanted them out of power,” said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The generals won’t make the same mistake twice. The past 20 years have been a stage-managed process to ensure the military controls the future parliament.”

On May 27, 1990, surprisingly free and fair elections in Burma resulted in a resounding win for the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), which secured 60 percent of the popular vote and 80 percent of the parliamentary seats (392 out of 485). The NLD will not contest the 2010 elections because of new laws aimed to deter the opposition from running and the imprisonment of many party members, including NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Burma’s military government refused to recognize the result of the 1990 elections and claimed that the vote was only to form an assembly to draft a new constitution, not for a parliament. In the ensuing months, the military government arrested and imprisoned dozens of opposition parliamentarians, while scores fled Burma to seek refuge abroad.

The government’s tightly-controlled process of drafting a new constitution dragged on for 14 years. The ruling State Peace and Development Council announced its “Seven Step Road Map to Disciplined Democracy” in August 2003 as a renewed plan to complete the constitution and prepare for future elections. In many of his public speeches, the Burmese president, Senior-General Than Shwe, talked about moving the country to “discipline flourishing democracy” in which the military would have a central role.

Those who participated in the constitutional drafting process did so at great personal risk. Twelve members of parliament who won seats in 1990 remain in prison in Burma today, including 10 NLD members. Hkun Tun Oo, the leader of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, and Kyaw Min (aka Marmaud Shaoshu Arnolgula Haud), an ethnic Rohingya Muslim from Arakan state, were arrested in 2005 even though both had attended the national convention and tried to work within the military government’s reform process. Each was sentenced to long prison terms: Hkun Tun Oo received 93 years’ imprisonment for treason, and Kyaw Min received 47 years for immigration offenses.

The new constitution was approved by a nationwide referendum in May 2008, just weeks after the devastating Cyclone Nargis, in a process marked by intimidation and irregularities.

“The military junta has tried to erase the memory of the 1990 elections by imprisoning those who won and excluding political prisoners from the process,” Pearson said. “What the generals call ‘disciplined democracy’ is stage-managing a result and ordering the Burmese people to accept it.”

Human Rights Watch urged Burma’s close diplomatic and trade allies, particularly China, India, Russia, and Singapore, to exert pressure on the military government to pursue a genuinely open political reform process, and to not endorse the upcoming elections. Criticism of the electoral process has been recently voiced by the European Union Parliament in a resolution on May 19, by the United States Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific Curt Campbell during his recent visit to Burma, and by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Human Rights Watch called upon the international community to impose more calibrated and targeted sanctions on the Burmese leadership, the military, and their close business associates as the most effective way to pressure the military government ahead of the elections.

“Only the most cynical of governments could endorse Burma’s deeply flawed process,” Pearson said. “On the twentieth anniversary of a crushed election, Burma’s friends should insist on the immediate release of political prisoners and an inclusive and credible political process.”

Background information

Five electoral laws released in March 2010 set the ground rules for the election expected in late 2010. The Political Party Registration Law (SPDC Law No.2/2010, Chapter 1. 2(I)) prohibits political parties from having members who are currently serving prison terms or detention orders. These compelled the NLD to refuse to register their party for the 2010 elections, even though the party had struggled to retain its legal status for 20 years after it won the 1990 elections.

The newly formed Electoral Commission overseeing political party registration lacks independence since it is comprised of officials close to the State Peace and Development Council. More than 37 political parties have registered to contest the elections. These include the National Unity Party, which won 21 percent of the vote in 1990, several ethnic parties such as the Pa-O National Organization and Kokang Democracy and Unity Party, and a pro-government Wunthanu (Patriotic) National League for Democracy, comprised of some former NLD members.

In late April, the Burmese prime minister, Gen. Thein Sein, and more than 20 serving senior generals with ministerial portfolios, resigned from their military posts and registered the Union Solidarity and Development Party to contest the elections. The new pro-government party mirrors the mass-based social welfare organization Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), formed by the military in 1993 and now comprising more than 24 million nominal members nationwide. Paramilitary forces part of or associated with the USDA have been used to intimidate and harass the opposition, most notably in the violent attack against Aung San Suu Kyi’s motorcade in Depayin in upper Burma on May 30, 2003, and during the crackdown against monks and protesters in September 2007.

There are currently more than 2,100 political prisoners in Burma, including 428 members of the NLD arrested and sentenced since 1990, 253 monks, 282 student leaders, and prominent dissidents such as Min Ko Naing, Burma’s famous comedian and social activist Zargana, poets, bloggers, labor activists, and doctors. Human Rights Watch’s campaign 2,100 in 2010 aims to highlight the plight of these 2,100 prisoners and press for their unconditional release ahead of the elections.

Conditions in Burmese prisons are desperate, with torture and mistreatment, poor sanitation, inadequate health care, and irregular visits and food supplies from family members. More than 120 political prisoners are in poor health. Political prisoner Ko Kyaw Soe, age 39, died on May 19, 2010, in Myingyan prison near Mandalay due to prolonged ill-treatment in custody.

Burma: 20 years after 1990 elections, democracy still denied

ENDS

Beijing is reviving the idea of ‘empire’ with the launch of the world’s most ambitious high-speed rail line.

If the report fails to load, go here

State control and civil society in Burma after Cyclone Nargis

This report is based on extensive interviews with cyclone survivors, local and international aid workers, and other knowledgeable sources. It assesses the human rights impact of Cyclone Nargis and provides an often neglected human rights perspective on what is happening in cyclone-affected areas today. The last chapter of the report looks at the humanitarian situation in other parts of the country and the failure of the humanitarian opening in the Irrawaddy Delta to be replicated elsewhere.

If the report fails to load, go here

By NDF

  Burma

April 28, 2010

If the report fails to load, go here

Successıon strategy

www.ashleysouth.co.uk

By Ashley South

  Rangoon, Burma

April 26, 2010

The Burmese people are probably about to get their first chance to vote in twenty years. Things did not go well last time; the military prevented the winners taking power. Now, new groups are emerging to try to take advantage of the limited opportunities on offer. The Burmese military government issued five laws on March 8, providing a framework for elections which are likely to be held later this year. While a number of opposition activists and politicians will boycott the polls, others are preparing to participate in the first opportunity to vote since 1990. The elections are the brainchild of junta supremo, Senior General Than Shwe, and represent his ‘succession strategy’ – a way of easing himself out of the day-to-day running of the country, while ensuring that no single person can consolidate power, and represent a threat to his continued pre-eminence behind-the-scenes.

If the report fails to load, go here

Suspicious links to North Korea and high-tech procurements to enigmatic facilities

Institute for Science and International Security

  Rangoon, Burma

January 31, 2010

For several years, suspicions have swirled about the nuclear intentions of Burma’s secretive military dictatorship. Burma is cooperating with North Korea on possible nuclear procurements and appears to be misleading overseas suppliers in obtaining top-of-the-line equipment. Certain equipment, which could be used in a nuclear or missile program, went to isolated Burmese manufacturing compounds of unknown purpose. Although evidence does not exist to make a compelling case that Burma is building secret nuclear reactors or fuel cycle facilities, as has been reported, the information does warrant governments and companies taking extreme caution in any dealings with Burma. The military regime’s suspicious links to North Korea, and apparent willingness to illegally procure high technology goods, make a priority convincing the military government to accept greater transparency >>> Nuclear wannabe, suspicious links to North Korea and high-tech procurements to enigmatic facilities

If the report fails to load, go here

The impacts of spiralling drug addiction on Palaung women in Burma

The Palaung Women’s Organisation

  Northern Shan State, Burma

January 31, 2010

Once renowed throughout Burma as prosperous tea farmers, the Palaung in northern Shan State are increasingly succumbing to high rates of drug addiction. The addiction is devasting Palaung communities, with particularly harsh consequences for women, for whom the addiction of husbands and sons compounds the existing burdens of severe gender discrimition >>> Poisoned flowers

If the report fails to load, go here

Infectious diseases and human rights in Burma

Human Rights Center, University of California, Berkeley

  Rangoon, Burma

December 12, 2009

Decades of repressive military rule, civil war, corruption, bad governance, isolation, and widespread violations of human rights and international humanitarian law have rendered Burma’s1 health care system incapable of responding effectively to endemic and emerging infectious diseases.2 Burma’s major infectious diseases—malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis (TB)—are severe health problems in many areas of the country >>> The gathering storm

If the report fails to load, go here

Summary report on military engagements in KNLA areas

September 1 to 30, 2009

If the report fails to load, go here

VN:F [1.9.7_1111]

please wait...

Rating: 7.5/10 (2 votes cast)

VN:F [1.9.7_1111]

Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)