Burma-Bangladesh Maritime Talks Begin
11/16/2008

 

An 11-member Burma team led by Deputy Foreign Minister U Maung Myint
arrived yesterday in Dhaka to discuss the maritime demarcation boundary
with their Bangladesh counterparts, according to an official report.
The talks between the two neighboring countries began today in Dhaka
under the name "technical committee-level talks with a view to adopt a
method of demarcation".

The technical committee-level talks between the two countries on the
maritime boundary first began on 30 March this year in Dkaha, after
having stalled for 22 years.

The Bangladesh technical committee went to Rangoon in September 2008 for a second round of talks.

This is the third time the technical committees of the two countries
will sit for talks at the conference hall of the foreign ministry. The
Bangladesh team will be led by Deputy Secretary of the Foreign
Ministry, MAK Mahmud.

MAK Mahmud said, "Myanmar's trespass on Bangladesh waters is not on our
agenda. We shall focus on setting a method of principles for
delimitation. If we reach a consensus over the issue the tension will
ease automatically."

He also said the equal-distance method of demarcation is applicable for
two countries facing each other, but it will not work for adjoining
countries like Bangladesh and Burma.

Bangladesh claims that its maritime boundary is at 92 degrees, 17
minutes, 30 seconds East Longitude per the Territorial and Maritime
Zones Act of 1974.

Tension between the two neighboring nations mounted earlier this month
after Bangladesh Navy forces sent warnings to the Burmese warships and
an exploration rig that had crossed Bangladesh's maritime boundary.

Bangladesh accuses the Burmese warships and oil and gas exploration rig
of intruding into Bangladesh waters in the Bay of Bengal. The Burmese
ships completed the oil and gas exploration in Bangladesh's claimed
territory, in deep-sea blocks 8-13, in disregard for the Bangladesh
Navy warnings.

Afterward, Burma withdrew its warships and the rig from the disputed
waters, but tension over the border still remains between the two
countries.

By Hla Hla Htay in Rangoon
September 16, 2008 09:51pm

(From www.news.com.au)

BURMA'S detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has accepted food rations for the first time in a month, after her doctor found her so weak that he placed her on a drip.
The doctor administered intravenous fluids on Sunday to the 63-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner, who has been confined to her lakeside Rangoon home for most of the last 19 years, an official said.

"She accepted her food supplies Monday evening, after she was given a drip by her doctor, who found that she was too weak on Sunday," the official said.

Her lawyer Kyi Win yesterday described her as "malnourished" after she had refused to accept her daily rations since August 16.

Her National League for Democracy (NLD) party released a statement today saying that she was not staging a hunger strike, but was eating "thriftily" from the small supplies stored in her home.

However, the NLD said that her health was weakening because she had given most of the stored food to her ailing housekeeper.

"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was eating thriftily because she gave her food to her housekeeper, Daw Khin Khin Win, who is not in good health," the statement said, using an honorific before her name. "Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's health is weakening."

Khin Khin Win and her daughter stay voluntarily in the home to care for the woman known in Burma simply as "The Lady". The maid's daughter was hospitalised on Friday with kidney problems.

Concerns for Aung San Suu Kyi's health have mounted over the last month.

The lawyer Kyi Win has also denied that she was on a hunger strike, but said she had stopped accepting food deliveries to press for greater human rights.

Her action came amid a rare series of meetings with Kyi Win to discuss filing a formal legal appeal against detention.

Kyi Win has also been in talks with military officials on loosening the terms of her confinement, by allowing her to receive magazines and letters from her family, or allowing her maids to move freely in and out of her home.

The Burma official said that Aung San Suu Kyi had been allowed to receive copies of news magazines such as Time and Newsweek, but so far she had not been allowed to receive any messages from her family.

She has had no communication from her two sons since 2003, according to NLD.

Both the government official and NLD spokesman Nyan Win said that she would likely meet with the junta's liaison officer later this week, if her strength improves.

"We hope there will be some progress and good results after the meeting," Nyan Win said.

"We are also expecting to develop to higher-level talks between Daw Suu and senior leadership from this dialogue."

Aung San Suu Kyi has refused to meet with anyone other than her lawyer and her doctor since early August, declining to hold talks with visiting UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari and with the liaison officer, Labour Minister Aung Kyi.

Aung San Suu Kyi's NLD won a landslide victory in a 1990 election but the junta never allowed it to take office. The military has ruled Burma since 1962.

8/13/2008

Five detainees who were arrested on the 20th anniversary of the 8-8-88 uprising in Taungup are currently missing, as family members do not know where they are being detained by the authority, said one family member.

"We went to Thandwe prison yesterday to see them but the authorities at the prison denied that there are any youths from Taungup who were arrested recently," said the relative.

According to a local source, the authority brought the youths to Thandwe, a district town in southern Arakan, soon after they were arrested by police in Taungup.

"We received information from high officials that they are in Thandwe, but they are not there. Now I have heard the authority has detained them at army headquarters in Taungup. I am really worried about the reason why authorities have detained them at army headquarters," he said.

A source from the NLD youth wing in Taungup said over the phone that the authority has detained the five demonstrators at Sakhaka 5, the military Operation Command, based in Taungup.

A youth said, "We are preparing to send a letter to high officials here to request their release immediately. If no, we will be carrying out our plan to demand our colleagues' release."

The five missing detainees are Ko Moe Nay Soe, Ko Than Lwin, Ma Ni Ni May Myint, Ko Khin Maung Maung, and Ko Maung Maung Thet. They were arrested by the police on 8 August while they were marching in the streets of Taungup in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the 8-8-88 uprising in Burma.

Never Forget 13th August!!!

Never Forget 13th August!!!

Never Forget 13th August!!!

BLOODY 13 AUGUST
By Khine Mongan

It was Sunday on 13 August 1967. The day was cloudy unlike other wet August days in Sitetway (Sittwe), the capital of Rakhine State in Western Burma. General Ne Win was at the helm of the Burmese junta ruling the country.

The capital town is situated at the mouth of the Kalandan River that flows into the Bay of Bengal. Hundreds of people marched along is roads and streets, each of the protester held a banner, and cried out “Rice, rice, - give us rice”, “We Rakhine don't eat boiled rice”, and “Down with the military regime”. At that time the Burmese junta started selling rotten boiled rice to tackle the artificial famine created by themselves in Rakhine State.

Each year, Arakan (Rakhine) produce rice abundantly: in one working year Arakan harvests enough rice for three years. That August, the rice warehouses in every township were full of rice. But the Burmese junta would not sell enough rice to the people of Rakhine State. Disregarding the local needs, the junta exported the whole supply of rice stored in the government warehouses to foreign countries. The farmers received only 8% of the actual open-market price of rice for their rice sales to the regime. Hundreds of people: children, old people, pregnant women, workers and farmers died of diseases caused by malnutrition resulting from hunger. This happened in Rakhine State, also known as Dhanyawaddy the Land of rice!

At that time I was a student midwife in the Akyab General Hospital (now, Rakhine State Hospital, Sittwe). That Sunday was a day off for me. I went into the downtown area to join the protesters, but I failed to join them, as I did not know the exact location of the demonstration. So I went to see my family, and my mother explained what had happened the night before.

The rice mills and warehouses are on the Satt-ro-gya, a tributary creek of the Kaladan River. Many people had already gone there to force the rice warehouses open, my mother said. Hungry people started raiding the rice warehouses and taking the rice bags away. My 12-year-old brother had merely collected 3-4 kgs of rice when the army and navy arrived.

The gun-toting uniformed men caught some demonstrators from the spot. My brother fled and got on to a boat that operated by a rope: he was swinging from the end of a rope to cross the stretch of water and reach the other bank. One soldier saw him and pushed him into the water. Luckily he was able to swim across the creek. He had to hide from the view of the military and move surreptitiously from one house to another before he got home at midnight all wet and with about one kg of rice in his possession.

My mother fearing all the arrests and insecurity told me to go back to the student nurses’ hostel. We, students, were not allowed to go out of our homes after 6 pm. I got to the hostel at about 3:30pm. The military to bring the situation under control, stopped people from going to the rice mills and storage areas. The protesters defied the ban, marched on shouting slogans to open the warehouses. Finally, as the hungry people desperately needed rice and kept trying to reach the storage areas braving the repeated warning by the military, the junta ordered the soldiers to shoot. More than a hundred people, including women and children, were gunned down. The military just loaded the severely wounded into trucks and nothing of them has ever been heard. Many of the wounded never reported to the hospital but took medical treatment secretly for fear of arrests.

It was about 4 o’clock: the Akyab General Hospital was very quiet. The view of the Kaladan River from the hospital offered spectacular scenery. The Principal Surgeon’s house and the nurses’ quarters compound were to the right in front of the hospital. We noticed truckloads of soldiers on the road. Soon the soldiers rounded off the roadside, the hospital compound, the Principal Surgeon’s house and the nurses’ quarters. Everywhere we saw guntoting soldiers none was allowed to go on the road or to the hospital. The trucks stopped at the entrance of the hospital one by one. The soldiers, who were standing in their trucks, got off when we saw the trucks full of wounded people. Some women ran towards the hospital, but the soldiers held them at gunpoint. People came running and tried to pull the women away. The women refused to go back shouting at the top of their voice.

We saw the wounded people were being carried into the hospital, then the trucks drove away with some wounded people still inside. WHY? HOW MANY? WHO were THEY? We asked ourselves awestruck. We then realized that those people were already dead. I wanted to go there to help, but only on-duty nurses were allowed to go into the hospital. I could not sleep the whole night, and got up early next morning and went to the hospital.

There were many wounded people in the overcrowded surgical ward, the eye ward, the Buddhist-monks’ ward, and the gynecological ward. They were lying on beds, on the floor, on the trolleys and there was a long line in front of the operation theatre and X-ray room. In the gynecological ward, there were no beds, no mattresses. All wounded people were lying on the floor with no space left. It was very difficult even to step around. They were all men. The female patients had been moved to the nurses’ sickroom. It was the busiest day of my training life: pushing trolleys and wheelchairs from place to place, from ward to ward with wounded and groaning people. The nurses, the students, the doctors and all of the hospital staff were restless, on duty the whole day and until midnight. From early morning, crowds of people gathered in front of the hospital, looking for their missing sons and daughters, husbands and fathers. They looked at the inpatients’ list and dead people’s list. Many people were missing. No one knew how many people were dead and wounded. The government stated that only 21 people were killed. The list of the dead only included those who died in the hospital.

We heard that the critically wounded, senseless and dead or presumably dead were picked up and drove away out of the city and buried in undisclosed grounds. Slowly words came out from the soldiers’ quarters that even many of the people who gained consciousness and shouting for help in the trucks were buried alive to ensure that the true story of what happened that day and how many were killed remains undisclosed.

The Rakhine people each year remember with heavy hearts the mass killings on that day, remembering the atrocities and the ethnic cleansing of the Burmese junta perpetrated ever since upon their own people. The women hope that if their missing husbands and sons were alive today they would have taken up guns against the repressive, inhuman and racist Burmese military junta to clinch freedom.

8/11/2008

Dhaka: Three men arrived on Friday in Bangladesh after deserting their posts with Nasaka, the infamous border security force based in western Burma.

The three were identified as Thwe Naing, Private No. TA 360757, Zaw Myo Tun, Private No. 360756, and Aung Than Win, Private No. 353584. They were serving at Nasaka headquarters in Kyi Kan Byint in Maungdaw.

Ko Zaw Myo Tun said, "We were tortured by officials in Nasaka and the officials also urged us to oppress the local people. We do not want to oppress people, so we deserted from Nasaka."

The three men are now sheltering in Bangladesh and are preparing to apply as refugees with the UNHCR office there.

"We are preparing to seek safety as refugees with UNHCR if we have the chance, because we are worried about our security here," he said.  According to a local source, most Nasaka men ranked as privates are facing hunger as their salaries are insufficient for their survival, and many men have deserted Nasaka due to this hardship.

He said, "The monthly salary is only 21,000 kyat for a Nasaka man, but in Maungdaw, the price of ordinary rice is 25,000 kyat a [50-kilogram] sack. All private Nasaka men are facing hunger due to their salary being inadequate for their daily survival."

"[Hunger] is also another reason for us to desert from the law enforcement of Nasaka," another deserter Ko Thwe Naing added.

Many Nasaka men on the western border are now involved in many sectors of corruption in order to get extra money from outside their jobs to maintain their daily life.