At the moment, U Than Shwe is in Singapore for the medical treatment according to the online news. Well,  Singapore should be the best place and only option for such purpose for myanmar military high ranking officials as they are not allowed to come to europe and USA.

08-Jan-07

MYANMAR junta leader Than Shwe has been receiving treatment at one of Singapore's top public hospitals, according to an embassy employee who declined to give details of the leader's medical condition.

"He's at Singapore General Hospital," the employee, who declined to be identified, told Reuters on Friday.

One member of staff at Singapore General Hospital told Reuters on Sunday that Senior General Than Shwe, 73, had already been discharged and only his family remained at the hospital.Full story

The Myanmar Embassy in Seoul refused to issue a visa on January 5, 2007 to former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung, who wants to travel to the military junta-ruled country to meet the country’s detained democracy advocate, Aung San Suu Kyi. Full story

Gen. Bo Mya, a longtime leader of Myanmar's largest guerrilla group, died on 24.12.2006

Bo Mya died at a private hospital in western Thailand near the Myanmar border, according to the group's spokesman, David Thaw.

He  was buried on Tuesday at his last Thai-Burmese border-based stronghold, Pu Bo Mya Plaw (also know as Mu Aye Pu).About 10,000 people—both friend and foe—attended the funeral, including Thai army officers and a Burmese army representative, Col Myat Htun Oo.

 

Gen Bo Mya, life-long freedom fighter and for 24 years leader of the Karen National Union, died on Sunday morning at a hospital in the Thai border town Mae Sot. The 79-year-old general had been suffering from diabetes and age-related illness.

Bo Mya's  biography on Wikipedia

A top United Nations official has met with detained Burmese pro-democracy leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon, but no details of their talks have been released. U.N. Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs Ibrahim Gambari is on a four-day mission to Burma.

Gambari has been tasked by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan with persuading the generals who rule Burma to take what a U.N. spokesman called "tangible steps forward" on human rights, democratic reform and national reconciliation. MORE:::http://voanews.com/english/2006-11-11-voa6.cfm

The five -- Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi, Htay Kywe, Min Zeyya and Pyone Cho -- have all spent at least a decade in prison for their role in the uprising, which was violently suppressed by the military. Full story

Myanmar's junta said it has arrested five former student dissidents in the past week to prevent unrest and terrorist attacks, in its first explanation for a crackdown on pro-democracy activists, official media reported Tuesday.

Everybody knows these students never do terrorist attacks, but myanmar army does. They exploded bombs in Yangon a few years ago, leaving many deaths and casualities. After that generals started a blame game. ""Insurgents came to Yangon and did those destructive activities""......What a dodggy government
 

UN lists Burma as global peace threat 

NEW YORK — The party of Aung San Suu Kyi at the weekend welcomed a United Nations (UN) decision to add Burma to its list of nations that represent a threat to international peace and security.

A divided UN Security Council voted on Friday to add Burma to its formal list of global hot spots for the first time — deeming the junta government a threat to international peace and security.

National League for Democracy spokesman Nyan Win said that putting Burma on the security council’s agenda could help the push for national reconciliation of the country.

 

Ten countries, including the US, voted in favour of adding Burma, also known as Myanmar, to the council agenda, while China, Russia, Qatar and the Democratic Republic of Congo voted against it. Tanzania abstained.

The military has run the country since 1962, ignoring a 1990 landslide election victory by the National League for Democracy — the party led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. She has been in prison or under house arrest since May 2003.

US ambassador to the UN John Bolton said Burma also deserved attention due to its illegal drugs trade, high HIV/AIDS rates and human rights record.

But the Chinese ambassador to the UN, Wang Guangya, said it was “preposterous” to argue any nation threatened international peace and security simply because it faced those problems.

“Everyone thinks that the security council is a panacea, that it could do everything, but I think that is not the case,” Wang said.

One surprise vote was Japan, which sided with the US. It previously argued that Burma was an Asian problem. Reuters

This article was taken from http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/world.aspx?ID=BD4A273231

 

Why was bloody China  against the decision? Thousands of Burmese refugees in Burma's neighbouring countries are strong evidence showing instabily of region. Recently, opportunists in Thailand has made a human zoo in which a Burmese tribe Padand people are grouped for tourist attraction.

Long-neck refugees get Thai "human zoo" treatment
By Noppawan Bunluesilp

MAE HONG SON, Thailand (Reuters) - For the past two decades, hundreds of ethnic Padaung "long-neck" people from military-ruled Myanmar have enjoyed relative peace and security as refugees in the hills of northern Thailand.

But plans to consolidate three Padaung villages into a single refugee settlement are intensifying concerns among human rights workers about their exploitation as a tourist attraction.

Already, busloads of foreigners on "eco-tourism" trips pile into the remote villages every day to pose beside the Padaung "giraffe women", so-called for their elongated necks propped up on layers of brass coils.

Some visitors -- and some Padaung -- say the tours are more akin to trips to a human zoo.

"I'm happy when lots of tourists come here and I have a good time with them, but when I think harder about it, they are coming because we are strange and that gives me mixed feelings," said 21-year-old Ma Ri, who fled the former Burma 10 years ago.

Unfortunately, say refugee rights campaigners, Thailand's exploitation of its hill-tribe communities is as old as the hills themselves.

"Thai people, I'm sorry to say, are insensitive to their minorities, and the hill-tribe minorities have always been a money attraction," Senator Kraisak Choonhavan told Reuters.

"If you look at advertisments for the north, you find countless pictures of all these colourful peoples and yet there has been no progress" in integrating them into Thai society, he said.

As well as citing security concerns, government officials in Mae Hong Son province, 920 km (570 miles) north of Bangkok, say the new settlement is vital to preserving ancient Padaung culture.

However, they also concede that ancient culture means tourist dollars.

"We will encourage each group to brainstorm how they could conserve their traditions to attract tourists to come, see and feel it for real," provincial governor Direk Ghonkleeb told Reuters.

Although all the other camps housing the 140,000 Myanmar refugees in Thailand are closed to outsiders, tourists pay between 250 and 500 baht ($13.30) each to enter Padaung villages.

However, the women themselves, who are officially barred from leaving the villages, receive only a fraction of that -- often as little as 1,500 baht a month -- and have to supplement their income selling trinkets and postcards.

(c) Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

This article: http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1378522006

 

I am really pleased our Su Su Nway has been awarded

 

Su Su Nway wins 2006 John Humphrey Freedom Award

Aug 31, 2006 (DVB) Burmese pro-democracy activist Su Su Nway, who courageously challenged the ruling military junta's use of forced labour and won a historic court ruling against the regime last year, is the winner of Rights & Democracy's 2006 John Humphrey Freedom Award.

Su Su Nway, 34, from Htan Manaing Village, Rangoon Kawmoo Township, came to the world's attention last year for her inspiring individual efforts to see the junta's representatives in her village brought to justice for forcing her and her neighbours to repair a road without pay. Su Su Nway's determination paid off last year when a judge sentenced the village Chairman and a deputy to eight months in prison under an untested law passed in 1999 that bans compulsory labour. The verdict was the first ever against the military regime's long-standing practice of forced labour.

But a few months later, she was tried for “insulting and disrupting a government official on duty,” and sentenced last October to 18-months in the notorious Rangoon Insein Prison. Su Su Nway, who suffers from a heart condition, endured nine months in Insein before authorities finally bowed to international pressure and released her on June 6, 2006 .

Rights & Democracy presents the John Humphrey Freedom Award each year to an organization or individual from any country or region of the world, including Canada , for exceptional achievement in the promotion of human rights and democratic development. Named in honour of John Peters Humphrey, a McGill University law professor who prepared the first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Award includes a speaking tour of Canadian cities to help increase awareness of the recipient's human rights work.

Burma's Regime Resists HIV/AIDS Programmes

Inter Press Service (IPS)

BANGKOK, Aug 15 (IPS) - While a major international conference on HIV/AIDS opened Sunday in Canada with a message to help those affected by the disease, on this side of the globe, in Burma, the ruling military regime moved to arrest sufferers and campaigners.

On Friday night, a pioneering attempt by a group of Burmese living with HIV to conduct an awareness campaign in the South-east Asian country ended in 11 of them being arrested by the authorities in Rangoon. They were released on Monday after a police inquiry.

The victims were members of an informal group who had rallied under the banner, 'Friends with Red Ribbon', which symbolises the colour and design recognised internationally for the battle against AIDS. They were "planning to hold a Buddhist traditional merit making service for their friends who passed away with HIV/AIDS", revealed a news alert by the U.S. Campaign for Burma, a Washington D.C.-based organisation lobbying for human rights in Burma.

"There are about 52 members in this group. Some of them are former political prisoners," says Bo Kyi, joint secretary of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a group based along the Thai-Burmese border that campaigns to free the over 1,300 political prisoners in Burmese jails. "One member of this group, Than Lwin, who had AIDS, died two days ago."

The Red Ribbon group launched this effort to "educate the Burmese society about AIDS because they were feeling very isolated and vulnerable," Bo Kyi explained during an interview. "They were people with HIV from Rangoon and from other parts of the country."

This crackdown by the police -- on the grounds that the members had not got police clearance to stay overnight at the Buddhist temple in the Thingangyun township -- was not the first of its kind. In September last year, a house rented out in Rangoon to serve as a home offering care and counselling for people with HIV was also forced to close.

The weekend's action by the junta in Burma has prompted the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) to question the military regime's attitude towards combating the pandemic.

"This is not a very helpful course of action on the part of the Myanmar government," J.V.R. Prasada Rao, head of the Asia-Pacific office of UNAIDS, said during a telephone interview from Toronto, venue of the week-long 16th International AIDS Conference. "It sends a very negative message."

But doctors from Burma, familiar with the military regime's stance towards the virus and towards people afflicted with it, are hardly surprised. "There is very little support for the people with HIV to conduct advocacy programmes or awareness programmes in the open. You are not encouraged to work independently," Dr. Cynthia Maung, who runs the Mae Tao clinic in Mae Sot, along the Thai-Burmese border, told IPS. "Everything is controlled by the officials."

The junta's unsympathetic stance towards people with HIV in Burma adds to a growing list of concerns that have earned it notoriety. The current estimates by UNAIDS and other international agencies of people with HIV in Burma range from 360,000 to 610,000 people. The adult prevalence rate stood at between 1.3 percent to 2.2 percent people infected of the country's 50 million people.

"Myanmar has one of the most serious epidemics in the region," UNAIDS stated in its 2006 annual report earlier this year. The infection rates exceed those in the two other South-east Asian countries that had long been viewed as the epicentre of the deadly virus in the region -- Cambodia, which has a 1.6 percent adult HIV prevalence rate, and Thailand, which has a 1.4 percent adult prevalence.

But the Burmese regime -- which till late 2003 refused to admit to an emerging AIDS crisis and kept the issue hidden from the public -- appears reluctant to ease the pain of its suffering citizens.

In August last year, it succeeded, after imposing tough internal travel restrictions, to force the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to quit the country. At the time of its departure, the Global Fund, an international agency that offers grants to combat the world's three major killer diseases in over 125 countries, had committed to spend 98.4 million dollars over a five-year period in Burma. Of that, 54.3 million dollars was for AIDS-related initiatives.

This slash in funding for AIDS programmes came on the heels of a revelation by the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank, that Burma was the main source of all strains of HIV that had spread across a wide arc in Asia, with Kazakhstan, on one end, and southern Vietnam, on the other.

What adds to this troubling picture is Burma's high number of patients with tuberculosis (TB), which has become the leading killer of people afflicted with HIV. Burma has 97,000 new cases of TB every year, according to the World Health Organisation.

"Rather than helping people with HIV, the military regime tries to isolate them and create problems between them and the rest of the people who do not have HIV," says Bo Kyi, a former political prisoner, himself. "It does not want anyone to speak loudly about AIDS. If you do, you get into trouble."

Despite international calls for reform, the ever-defiant SPDC maintains control over Myanmar with an Orwellian hand. Secrecy and paranoia abound, while rubbing elbows with Asia’s powerhouse nations keeps the regime in charge.

more

HIV/AIDS Patients and Volunteers arrested in Burma

August 13, 2006

First attempt of a group of HIV/AIDS infected persons and volunteers, named themselves as "Friends with Red Ribbon"; to communicate with the larger society was ended with arrest and harassment by Burmese military regime on August 12, 2006. Red Ribbon is international symbol of HIV/AIDS.

These patients were planning to hold a Buddhist traditional merit making service for their friends who passed away with HIV/AIDS. As permitted by senior Monks from Maggin Buddhist Monastery in Thingangyun Township, Rangoon, they prepared to make a merit making ceremony on August 12, 2006, with the support of many friends, who are working to campaign for the awareness of this dangerous disease and educating people not to isolate these patients. On the night of August 11, 2006, many volunteers, including these patients gathered at Maggin Monastery and began to cook food for tomorrow event. Suddenly, Chairman and Secretary of Township Authority and members of USDA, about 100 people, came to the Monastery and asked the Monks for a parallel event tomorrow at the same time.

As they had to cook all night and to offer food to Buddhist Monks in the early morning of August 12, 2006, they had to stay at the Monastery overnight. They went to local authority office to report their overnight stay, but office was closed. Then, they met with Secretary of Township Authority at the Monastery and informed him about this and they were told to provide the list of those who would stay overnight. Therefore, they gave him a list of 11 persons, ten of them are volunteers and one is an AIDS patient. Later, Chairman of Local Authority came to the Monastery and they reported him directly about their overnight stay at the Monastery.

At 1:00 AM, authority asked their people, about 100, to leave the Monastery. Ten minutes later, local authority, USDA members and police raided the Monastery and arrested 11 persons, who were in the list. They were brought to Thingangyun Township Police Station and locked up there. They are charged that they failed to report their overnight stay.

Senior Monks from the Monastery were also summoned to Township Sanghas (Monks) Association and warned not to hold any event at the Monastery.

Next morning, when invited guests and over 30 HIV/AIDS patients arrived at the Monastery, they found unfinished food, unprepared event and friends missing. They tried to make that event summarily and then they went to Police Station to find their friends. As news spread around, hundreds of people came to the Police Station to meet with these 11 persons. Police are afraid of massive arrival at the Police Station and then they sent these 11 to three different police stations. Now, four of them are in Daw Pone Township Police Station, another four are in Pazungdaung Township Police Station and three are in Yankin Township Police Station. Their names are Than Naing, Yar Zar, Shwe Joe, Aye Naing, Au Bar, Mone naing, Kan Myint, Myo Thant, Soe Naing, Than Htut and Than Htike Aung.

Friends with Red Ribbon is comprised with 52 persons, most of them are AIDS patients and the rest are volunteers, who are trying to educate the society to warmly and kindly encourage these patients with kind heart instead of isolating them. This is their first attempt to make these patients, who are physically infected by this disease and mentally destroyed by their moral insecurity and depression, to be welcomed and encouraged by the larger society. But, Chairman of District Authority, Lt. Colonel Maung Maung Shein is aggressively against that kind of activities and these patients. He has threatened all volunteers and participants. He even threatened to shut down Tha Zin Clinic, established by an International NGO, AZG/ MSF (Holland).