3 posts tagged “military”

>- People are uprising
>- Even peaceful monks cannot resist their bulliness anymore
>- Many Burmese people inside outside want to kill junta more
>- The world is also watching and pressuring
>- Junta top two old men are also getting old and suffering diseases
>- Murderer PM Soe Win also died
>- UN, Mr. Gambari seem to make buffers between junta and opposition
>
>Have a successful talk for Burma [Myanar] !
>
>Burma's junta sets terms for talks with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
>********************************************
>Rangoon - Burma's junta on Thursday announced that it was ready to
>start reconciliation talks with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi if she
>would stop her "confrontation" tactics and support of sanctions against
>the country.
>http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2007/10/05/headlines/headlines_300
>51397.php
>
>A state-run television broadcast Thursday night said Senior General
>Than Shwe, who heads the junta, had made these conditions known to
>visiting United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari.
>
>Gambari's visit to Burma, which ended Tuesday, included separate
>meetings with Than Shwe and Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize
>laureate who has spent the past four years under house arrest in
>Rangoon.
>
>UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has suggested in New York that
>Gambari's trip was far from successful, casting doubt on the Burma TV
>announcement which may be designed to cast blame for failed
>negotiations on Suu Kyi, analysts said.
>
>Gambari was sent to Burma to assess the country's political situation in
>the aftermath of a brutal crackdown on peaceful monk-led protests in
>Rangoon against the military's 45-year reign in the country.
>
>The crackdown sparked international condemnation, even from Burma's
>South-East Asian allies, and calls for renewed efforts to force a political
>resolution to Burma's political stalemate, which has pitted an
>entrenched military regime against the forces of democracy for the past
>17 years.
>
>Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) Party won the 1990
>general election by a landslide, but has been blocked from power since
>by the military who claimed Burma was not ready for civilian rule
>because of its security threat from ethnic minority insurgencies.
>
>In 1995, the regime began to draft a new constitution to address the
>country's power-sharing issues, but the military-controlled process was
>dubbed a sham by the NLD and most western observers, who claimed it
>was designed to keep the generals in power indefinitely.
>
>The National Convention process to draft the principles for a new
>constitution was wrapped up on August 20.
>
>The conclusion to the 14-year-old efforts was swiftly overshadowed by
>a groundswell of protests against the doubling of fuel prices imposed on
>August 15.
>
>The anti-inflation protests were picked up by Burma's 400,000- strong
>monkhood in early September and grew into a barefoot Buddhist
>rebellion that shook Rangoon between September 18 and 27.
>
>The peaceful movement was extinguished by a brutal crackdown on
>September 26-27 that left 10 dead, according to government sources.
>The actual death toll is believed to be much higher.
>
>Since last week's crackdown, thousands of dissidents have been
>arrested.
>
>In the same broadcast announcing its terms for talks with Suu Kyi,
>Burma public TV claimed that of the 2,093 arrested, some 692 had
>already been released.
>
>Nearly all Western governments and multinational donors ended their
>aid programmes to Burma in 1988, after the army's brutal suppression
>of a pro-democracy movement that year that left an estimated 3,000
>dead.
>
>The US later imposed sanctions against US companies, prohibiting them
>from doing business with Burma.
>
>The European Union has imposed visa sanctions against the junta's
>leaders but stopped short of stopping their companies from doing
>business in the country.
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've been receiving emails from a friend of mine whose family is from Burma, telling more about the situation there. I've pasted them below, so read them. Then go to the website I posted in the entry before last, just a little down the page, and sign the petitions.

>Subject: Some Fact from Yangoon
>
>We just got phone call with our sister living in Yangon about a few hours
>ago.
>
>We saw on BBC world, saying that 200 monks were arrested. The true picture
>is far worse!!!!!!!!!
>
>For one instance, the monastery at an obscure neighborhood of Yangon,
>called Ngwe Kyar Yan (on Wei-za-yan-tar Road, Yangon) had been raided early
>this morning.
>
>A troop of lone-tein (riot police comprised of paid thugs) protected by the
>military trucks, raided the monastery with 200 studying monks. They
>systematically ordered all the monks to line up and banged and crushed each
>one's head against the brick wall of the monastery. One by one, the
>peaceful, non resisting monks, fell to the ground, screaming in pain. Then,
>they tore off the red robes and threw them all in the military trucks (like
>rice bags) and took the bodies away.
>
>The head monk of the monastery, was tied up in the middle of the monastery,
>tortured , bludgeoned, and later died the same day, today. Tens of
>thousands of people gathered outside the monastery, warded off by troops
>with bayoneted rifles, unable to help their helpless monks being
>slaughtered inside the monastery. Their every try to forge ahead was met
>with the bayonets.
>
>When all is done, only 10 out of 200 remained alive, hiding in the
>monastery. Blood stained everywhere on the walls and floors of the
>monastery.
>
>Please tell your audience of the full extent of the fate of the monks
>please please !!!!!!!!!!!!
>
>'Arrested' is not enough expression. They have been bludgeoned to death !
>
>Aye Aye
>Hong Kong

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What happened in Burma recently showed the world about the level of
>cruelty Burmese Generals can commit; actually, what the world saw last
>week was just the tip of an ice-barge of the crimes against humanity and
>attempted genocide committed, and still being committed more and more,
>inside Burma by the military regime.
>
>In 1988 the regime came to power killing up to 3000 innocent
>pro-democracy student demonstrators. In 1996 many more student activists
>were killed, injured, arrested and tortured during their second uprising
>against the regime. In 2003 about five hundred followers of Daw Aung San
>Suu Kyi were brutally beaten to death by regime's plain-clothed soldiers
>and thugs during Depayin Massacre. Many thousands of political prisoners
>detained during those uprisings are still in jail suffering
>ill-treatments.
>
>And now again, hundreds of peaceful Buddhist Monks and their devotees,
>who dared to speak out about people's poverty inside the country, have
>been shot dead on the spot during their demonstrations, and also
>bludgeoned to death during the raids on Buddhist Temples and Monasteries
>by soldiers. Many Monasteries and the Buddha statues inside have been
>destroyed. Thousands of Monks and their devotees are now in detention
>centres, and many of them are being tortured everyday.
>
>And in ethnic minority areas, Burmese army has been burning down
>villages, uprooting ethnic tribes, raping their women and girls, killing
>and torturing their sons and husbands, looting their crops, using them
>all frequently as forced labourers, porters and human mine-sweepers.
>
>Previously, because no reporter is allowed into Burma, the world failed
>to get a glimpse of what was really happening, and so the regime could
>hide evidences of their heinous crimes. But recently, as mobile phones,
>digital cameras and email become available, civilian journalists, albeit
>amateur, start effectively spreading out information and photo and video
>evidence of regime's cruelties to the outside world. During last week's
>crisis, unprecedented large volume of photographic records of regime's
>bloody crack down on peaceful Buddhist Monks came to world's attention.
>
>The civilian journaliss run a very dangerous risk in capturing and
>sending out these photographic records of regime's crimes against
>humanity. They did it with a hope that the outside world will do
>something to stop such inhumanities happening again in Burma, and else
>where. So, we need to systematically archive and compile them and
>prepare a case of crimes against humanity to indict Burmese SPDC
>military regime in International Criminal Court.
>
>Even in South Africa, people are bringing justice now to those
>responsible Apartheid regime leaders. Also in Cambodia, the justice has
>come to Khmer Rogue leaders for human rights crimes they committed in
>the past. Justice had also been done on Saddam Hussein and his henchmen.
>Justice has also been done on Serbian genocide war criminals. The Nazi
>and Fascist leaders were also brought to justice for their crimes after
>world war II. Now, former dictators like Pinochet, Robert Taylor and
>Fuji Moiré have all been indicted for their crimes. So why not
>justice be brought upon Burmese military dictators? Are Burmese people a
>race so inferior than other people that they do not deserve a justice?
>
>Here we need to consider three points.
>
>The first point is that a fair and legal justice is not a revenge. It
>serves two important purposes of giving a  sense of justice in general,
>as well as a deterrence for all would-be-dictators.
>
>The second point is that it takes time and a tremendous international
>effort to bring dictators to justice. But eventually dictators must face
>justice under the international law in International Criminal Court.
>It's a MUST.
>
>The third point is that without an eventual justice a permanent peace
>will not be established. Say, for example, if opposition politicians get
>a power sharing agreement with the regime in Burma, they may be quite
>eager to forgive regime Generals, as they get what they want "The
>POWER". But in such a situation can former victims of regime's cruelties
>be perfectly happy? Without a proper justice, ethnic minority victims of
>regime's attempted genocide will still be hating majority Burmans,
>leading to frequent clashes in the future. Without justice being done,
>generations upon coming generations of students may feel a grudge
>against generations upon coming generations of soldiers and military
>personnel in Burma. Without a proper justice, the recent victims of
>regime's latest crack down on Buddhist religion will not be very much
>satisfied. They will have feelings of a serious lack of justice.
>
>Without proper justice being done, a complete and permanent peace will
>not be possible.
>
>So, here, we urge international community to start taking serious
>efforts to indict Burmese military regime, for their attempted genocide
>on ethnic minorities in Burma and for their human rights crimes on
>pro-democracy activists, students, Monks and Buddhist devotees, at the
>International Criminal Court.
>
>
>     …
>. . . . .
>
>
>. . . . .
>
>INFORMATION
>
>BURMA DIGEST is published as a free publication by BURMA DIGEST Ltd.
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And finally, watch this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX2BSwShDyI
>

Sign the petition now to help save Burma.