Influential Governments Should Reject Sham Process

(New York, March 10, 2010) – Newly issued laws in preparation for 2010 elections in Burma are designed to exclude the main opposition party and ensure a victory for the ruling military, Human Rights Watch said today.

The ruling State Peace and Development Council today released the Political Party Registration Law, which includes provisions barring prisoners from being members of political parties. The law effectively excludes more than 2,100 political activists currently imprisoned on politically motivated charges, including Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD). Provisions included in the law instruct any party wishing to register to expel members currently serving prison terms. A party that fails to do so will lose its registration and be unable to contest the elections.

“The new law’s assault on opposition parties is sadly predictable,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “It continues the sham political process that is aimed at creating the appearance of civilian rule with a military spine.”

Yesterday the military government released the first of five laws in preparation for long promised polls in 2010, whose official date has yet to be announced. The Political Party Registration Law states that, “A prisoner may not be a member of a political party.” The law also requires existing political parties, such as the NLD, which won the 1990 elections, re-register within 60 days of March 10.

Human Rights Watch believes that there are 429 members of the NLD currently imprisoned, including 12 members elected to parliament in 1990. Aung San Suu Kyi will be effectively barred because she is currently serving a term of house arrest following her conviction in 2009 on politically motivated charges of permitting an intruder into her house in Rangoon while she was under house arrest imposed since 2003. Human Rights Watch is calling for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners in Burma through its 2,100 in 2010: Free Burma’s Political Prisoners campaign.

“The law requires the NLD to choose between participating in the elections and keeping its leader and hundreds of its unjustly imprisoned members,” said Adams. “This is a choice that no political party should have to make and is a transparent attempt to knock the main opposition party out of the running.”

Other laws reportedly to be released this week include provisions for the upper and lower houses of parliament and the 14 regional parliaments as outlined in the 2008 constitution.

The release of the laws is the penultimate step in the military government’s long drawn out “Road Map to Disciplined Democracy,” a repressive process that has seen political parties deregistered and in some cases outlawed, and thousands of activists sent to prison.

The NLD overwhelmingly won the last elections held in Burma in 1990 with more than 80 percent of the seats and 60 percent of the popular vote. The ruling junta ignored the result and announced plans to write a new constitution, which began in 1993 and only concluded in September 2007. The new constitution, released in 2008 and endorsed by an implausible 92 percent of the population in an orchestrated referendum in May 2008, grants sweeping powers to the military. These include one-quarter of lower house seats and one-third of upper house seats in the parliament reserved for serving military officers, as well as immunity for military personnel from civilian prosecution and the reservation of key ministerial portfolios to serving military officers.

The United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for “the release of all political prisoners, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and their free participation in the political life of their country; the commencement of dialogue between the Government and opposition and ethnic stakeholders as a necessary part of any national reconciliation process; and the creation of conditions conducive to credible and legitimate elections.” Close allies of Burma, including China, have called for an inclusive political process.

“Any optimism that these elections will usher in a period of change in Burma is cynically misplaced,” Adams said. “The Burmese government is demonstrating contempt for the democratic process, the people of Burma, and international opinion, including its friends in China, India, and ASEAN, who have asked for an inclusive political process.”

To view the Human Rights Watch report, “Burma’s Forgotten Prisoners,” please visit:

http://www.hrw.org/free-burmas-prisoners

To view the Human Rights Watch World Report 2010 Burma chapter, please visit:

http://www.hrw.org/en/node/87392

For more information please contact:

In London, Brad Adams (English): +44-20-7713-2767; or +44-7908-728-8333 (mobile)

In New York, Elaine Pearson (English): +1-212-216-1213; or +1-646-291-7169 (mobile)

In Washington, DC, Tom Malinowski (English): +1-202-612-4358; or +1-202-309-3551 (mobile)

In Brussels, Reed Brody (English, French, Portuguese, Spanish): +32-498-625786 (mobile)

In Thailand, David Mathieson (English): +66-87-176-2205 (mobile)

In Bangkok, Sunai Phasuk (English, Thai): +66-81-632-3052 (mobile)

As U.S. prepares greater outreach to Burma, a Marylander is the junta’s latest victim

By Elaine Pearson

October 2, 2009

Published in The Baltimore Sun

In June, Gaithersburg resident Kyaw Zaw Lwin traveled from Thailand to New York to deliver a petition to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s special adviser on Burma. The petition, with 680,000 signatures, called on the secretary-general to exert pressure for the release of more than 2,000 political prisoners.

Now, in a tragic twist – and as the Obama administration moves forward with a new policy of increased engagement with Burma – Mr. Zaw Lwin, a U.S. citizen who often goes by the name Nyi Nyi Aung, has disappeared into a Burmese jail cell himself. (Although the ruling junta changed the country’s name in English from Burma to Myanmar in 1989, I and most supporters of freedom and human rights there prefer the original name.)

On Sept. 3, Mr. Zaw Lwin flew to Rangoon, where Burmese authorities arrested him on arrival. Returning to Burma, which he left in 1988, may seem a little crazy. Mr. Zaw Lwin works for the Free Burmese Political Prisoners Now campaign in Thailand; his mother and two cousins are serving lengthy prison terms in Burma for participating in the peaceful demonstrations in 2007.

“His mother, his cousins and so many friends in prison was a nightmare for Nyi Nyi,” Wa Wa, his fiancée, who remains in Maryland, told me. “His mother got very sick. He felt badly about it; he worked passionately for their freedom.”

Now Mr. Zaw Lwin, 40, shares their fate. Over the last two years, the number of political prisoners in Burma has doubled. They include people from all walks of life. While the democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, is a worldwide symbol of the struggle against repression, at least 2,100 other political prisoners quietly and invisibly languish in Burma’s squalid jails.

Ruled by a shadowy group of generals since 1962, Burma remains one of the world’s most repressive states, without a free press, with tight restrictions on freedom of assembly, expression and association, and a refugee crisis sparked by military abuses against ethnic minorities.

The U.N. and the international community have long been concerned about Burma’s intransigence. Unfortunately, U.N. action has been ineffectual. For years, Burma’s generals have run rings around senior U.N. officials, stonewalling efforts by the U.N. to discuss political and human rights issues, and managing to broker endless rounds of meaningless dialogue in the place of tangible results.

At a June 18 news conference in New York, Mr. Zaw Lwin said, “Mr. Ban Ki-moon, my message is simple: Your words show you take this issue seriously. But now I want to see what action you will take to secure the release of my family and all Burma’s political prisoners.”

On Sept. 16, in a bizarre public relations stunt perhaps meant to appease the U.N. secretary-general ahead of September’s General Assembly, Burma’s military leaders announced an amnesty of some 7,113 convicted criminals – but just over 100 were political prisoners. As the journalist Eine Khine Oo told the media on her release: “I was nearly due to be released anyway. … I was doing my reporting job. I don’t think I was wrong.” Meanwhile, fresh arrests of monks, political activists and human rights defenders like Mr. Zaw Lwin keep happening.

Although Mr. Zaw Lwin has yet to be charged (his trial was due to start Thursday but has been postponed), the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper claims he confessed to terrorist acts. (This is the propaganda mouthpiece of the government that claims it has no political prisoners.) A U.S. consular officer who visited Mr. Zaw Lwin in prison told his family that he described physical torture, including beatings and food and sleep deprivation.

On Sept. 24, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that “to achieve democratic reform, we will be engaging directly with the Burmese authorities.” High-level diplomacy by the U.S. is welcome, as long as the U.S. stands by its principles to uphold the basic rights of the Burmese people. The same applies to the U.S. government’s dealings with Burma’s friends and protectors.

To secure the release of Kyaw Zaw Lwin – and fellow political prisoners he risked everything to free – the U.N. and the U.S. must be prepared to exert pressure on countries like China, Russia, India and ASEAN member states. Trying to overcome the Burmese government’s self-imposed isolation is a laudable goal, but engagement should mean no reluctance to exert pressure on the senior leadership.

Sanctions alone may not work, but silence and sweet-talking this regime does not work either.

Elaine Pearson is deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

According to a report, the plantation of poppies commenced from early June in Phai Sat, Ai Sit, Hai Cin, Mualpi and other villages, near the border of Tonzang Town and India’s Manipur State.

All the plantation costs were provided for by Chinese tycoons and all the security concerns were taken care of by Meitei insurgencies. In fact, they are planning to build a heroin factory in that area.

Regarding the matter, an official of the Zomi Revolutionary Army (ZRA) said, “It is true. Chinese business tycoons and Meitei insurgent groups are cultivating poppy in the Indo-Myanmar border areas, but it is not a huge plantation.”

Meanwhile, the Burmese military junta restricted the villagers of Tonzang sub-township Cikha Town, from going to the Indo-Burma border areas, where the poppies were planted.

Our villagers are afraid to go to the poppy plantation areas, which covers a lot of acres, so the Burmese Army has forbidden them from trespassing and has threatened them claiming that if a person disobeyed the order, he would be shot.

Although the exact acres of poppy plantation cannot be calculated, it might occupy at least 500 acres, a local person said.

Khonumthung News

http://www.khonumthung.com/chinese-tycoons-meitei-insurgents-cultivate-poppy-in-upper-chin-state/

The Burmese military authorities have forcibly taken away most of the relief material, meant for local Chin people, who had suffered due to a fire in their village last April. The relief material had been supplied by their supporters from abroad.

According to a report, the Aizawl-based Women’s League of Chin Land (WLC) had provided relief material to the villagers of Hmunpi Kawn of Tidim Town, Chin State in western Burma. These villagers had suffered damages due to a fire last April. However, the Burmese military authorities have grabbed half of the relief material meant for the villagers.

The WLC had collected some donations, including books, pencils, pens, peanuts, sugar and medicines from Aizawl-based Burmese organizations, and then they had given it to the villagers of Hmunpi Kawn, in the first week of June 2009.

However, military personnel from IB 269, based in Tidim have taken away half of the relief items, as they claimed that the relief materials were given by illegal organizations.

“When we reached the village, we met the village headman and gave all the relief materials, after that we returned to the border area. However, the military personnel heard about us and they went immediately to the village and took half of the relief material,” a woman, who went to the village and is a member of WLC said.

A local said, “It is very sad. The military personnel do not think of helping others, despite our village being reduced to rubble. Such an attitude will not be in evidence in other countries, I think. Not only that, they even tried to arrest those who had come to our village to give us the relief material.”

The SPDC government has no policy to help its countrymen and rarely accepts relief from other countries. In Chin state, the authorities have ordered the people not to accept any aid from outside the country, so some organizations abroad provide aid for famine-affected people and for victims of fire secretly.

The authorities have earlier also stolen many relief funds and materials meant for the victims of Cyclone Nargis from the Irrawaddy Delta areas in May 2008, with the help of the government controlled Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) and higher authorities.

Khonumthung News
http://www.khonumthung.com/junta-grabs-relief-meant-for-fire-victims/