Leaders of Burma's junta are reported to have resigned from their military posts, days before the deadline to register candidates in the country's first general election in two decades.Read More......
Some reports said junta leader Gen Than Shwe was among those to have stepped down, but other reports denied this.
Observers believe he may want to become civilian president after the election on 7 November.
Loud cheering broke out at a meeting of the leaders of Burma's main opposition party after they voted unanimously to boycott an upcoming election that has been widely condemned as unfair and undemocratic.Read More......
The decision will further undermine the credibility of the poll. All 113 delegates at yesterday's gathering of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) agreed not to register the party with the election commission, effectively preventing it from participation in the polls that are expected to be held in October.
Britain is backing moves to refer Burma's military leaders to the international criminal court for investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity. The move is part of a heightened campaign to force the junta to embrace genuine democratic reforms, diplomatic and government sources told the Guardian today.Read More......
In a tough démarche that will increase pressure on the isolated regime ahead of planned elections this autumn, Britain's ambassador to the UN said the UK supported a recommendation by the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma that The Hague-based international court opens a war crimes investigation.
Speaking after a security council meeting, Sir Mark Lyall Grant said the council's five permanent members were "not sufficiently unanimous" in their views to allow an ICC referral to happen immediately. But if such a proposal were tabled, he said, Britain would support it. Nearly 200 MPs have backed the referral campaign.
Myanmar's military rulers have barred pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from running in upcoming elections and may force her own political party to expel her under a new election law unveiled Wednesday.Read More......
The Political Parties Registration Law, published in official newspapers, prohibits anyone convicted by a court of law from joining a political party, making them ineligible to become a candidate.
It also instructs parties to expel members who are "not in conformity with the qualification to be members of a party," a clause that could force Suu Kyi's expulsion. Parties that don't register automatically cease to exist, the law says.
The Burmese military junta has earned almost $5bn from a controversial gas pipeline operated by the French oil giant Total and deprived the country of vital income by depositing almost all the money in bank accounts in Singapore, a new report claims.Read More......
Campaigners say Total has also profited handsomely from the arrangement, with an estimated income of $483m from the project since 2000. Campaigners say that the windfall from the Yadana pipeline, operated by Total and two other partners, has been so huge that it has done much to insulate the country's military rulers from the impact of international sanctions imposed over its human rights abuses. The report from EarthRights International (ERI), published today, argues that this makes Total and their partners a major factor in reinforcing the regime's intransigence. And it claims that while their people suffer some of the worst standards of living in Asia, with miserable state investment in health, education, infrastructure and everything else that affects the lives of ordinary people, the self-perpetuating military elite has grown obscenely wealthy.
The U.S. Embassy says an American man imprisoned for sneaking into the home of Myanmar's democracy leader has been flown out of the country.Read More......
John Yettaw, 53, was arrested after swimming to Aung San Suu Kyi's home and staying two days.
The embassy says Yettaw of Falcon, Missouri is headed to Bangkok, Thailand on Sunday on a military plane with U.S. Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia. The senator secured his release Saturday with a plea to Myanmar's ruling junta.
The first visit to Burma by a senior US official for more than a decade has triggered speculation that the Obama administration will attempt to steer the regime towards a new era of engagement.Read More......
Jim Webb, a Democratic senator from Virginia, arrived in Burma this afternoon, days after the country's junta sentenced the pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, to 18 months' house arrest.
Webb, who served in the Reagan administration but is now considered a close ally of Barack Obama, is expected to meet the country's leader, Senior General Than Shwe, in the country's remote capital Naypyidaw, tomorrow.
The French energy giant Total is at the centre of allegations that Burmese villagers are being used as forced labour to help support a huge gas pipeline that is earning the country's military regime hundreds of millions of dollars.Read More......
Testimony from villagers and former soldiers gathered by human rights workers suggests that Burmese soldiers, who provide security for the Yadana pipeline on behalf of Total, are forcing thousands of people to work portering, carrying wood and repairing roads in the pipeline area. They have also been forced to build police stations and barracks.
Humanitarian groups say they continue to face hurdles from Myanmar's military government in sending disaster experts and vital equipment into the country. As a result, only a trickle of aid is reaching the storm's estimated 2.4 million survivors, leaving many without even basic relief.Read More......
Aid groups are unable to provide 1.3 million survivors with sufficient food and clean water, while trying to prevent a second wave of deaths from malnutrition and disease, the U.N. said in its latest assessment report.
Commentary in the Myanma Ahlin newspaper said that while the country welcomed international aid, “Myanmar people are self-reliant and can stand on their own without foreign assistance.”Read More......
The state-run newspaper said that people in the delta could survive on “fresh vegetables that grow wild in the fields and on protein-rich fish from the rivers” if they could not get “bars of chocolate donated by the international community.”
A French government statement said navy ship Le Mistral was waiting some 13 miles outside Myanmar’s territorial waters, hoping to go in and unload its cargo of 1,000 tons of food — enough to feed 100,000 people for 15 days. The aid also includes shelters for 15,000 people, the statement said.Read More......
“The specifics of the delivery of this aid have not yet been defined,” the statement said, adding such details “will be the subject of negotiations” with Myanmar authorities, who are yet to authorize it to dock either in the delta or in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city.
The Red Cross estimated Wednesday that the cyclone death toll in Myanmar could be as high as 128,000 — a much larger figure than the government tally. The U.N. warned a second wave of deaths will follow unless the military regime lets in more aid quickly.Read More......
The grim forecast came as heavy rains drenched the devastated Irrawaddy River delta, disrupting aid operations already struggling to reach up to 2.5 million people in urgent need of food, water and shelter.
Doug Davenport, the regional campaign manager for the mid-Atlantic states, founded the DCI Group's lobbying practice and oversaw the contract with Myanmar in 2002.Absent the typhoon, these guys would still be working for McCain. Read More......
"Doug has tendered his resignation and we have accepted it," Jill Hazelbaker, McCain's communications director, wrote in a e-mail.
He joins former DCI Group CEO Doug Goodyear, who resigned yesterday from the post of convention CEO after Newsweek reported that DCI was paid more than $300,000 to represent Myanmar's ruling junta.
Desperate survivors cried out for aid on Thursday nearly a week after Cyclone Nargis killed up to 100,000 people, as pressure piled up on Myanmar to throw its doors open to an international relief operation.And this is why that matters:
The United States was still awaiting approval from Myanmar's junta to start military aid flights, but the U.N. food agency and Red Cross/Red Crescent said they have started flying in emergency relief after some delays.
Aid has barely trickled into one of the world's most isolated and impoverished countries, although experts feared it would be too little to cope with the aftermath of Nargis, which left up to 100,000 feared dead and one million homeless.Read More......
Myanmar's military government, already under criticism for abuses, is recruiting children as young as 10 into its armed forces, a U.S. rights group charged in a report released Wednesday.Read More......
Government recruiters target children because of "continued army expansion, high desertion rates and a lack of willing volunteers," the 135-page report by New York-based Human Rights Watch said.
"Military recruiters and civilian brokers receive cash payments and other incentives for each new recruit, even if the recruit clearly violates minimum age or health standards," it said.
Myanmar's military government stepped up its propaganda campaign against the United States on Sunday, accusing Washington of inciting last month's pro-democracy demonstrations in hopes of installing a puppet government.Yep, sounds like outside forces at work. Read More......
Demonstrations that began Aug. 19 over high prices for fuel and consumer goods grew into a broad-based movement for democratic reform that attracted tens of thousands of people in Yangon, the country's biggest city.
Embassies in the UK, Thailand, Australia and Singapore have all been targeted by the "Panties for Peace" campaign, co-ordinated by an activist group based in Chiang Mai, Thailand.Even the religious right crazies in America seem relatively normal compared to these people and that's no small task. (h/t - Bruce) Read More......
The manoeuvre is a calculated insult to the junta and its leader, General Than Shwe. Superstitious junta members believe that any contact with female undergarments - clean or dirty - will sap them of their power, said Jackie Pollack, a member of the Lanna Action for Burma Committee.
"Not only are they brutal, but they are also very superstitious. They believe that touching a woman's pants or sarong will make them lose their strength," Ms Pollack told Guardian Unlimited.
So far, hundreds of pairs of pants have been posted, according to another campaigner, Liz Hilton. "One group sent 140 pairs to the Burmese embassy in Geneva," she said.
China turned against the Burmese government last night and supported a UN security council statement rebuking the military regime for its suppression of peaceful protests, and demanding the release of all political prisoners.Read More......
The security council statement, which also called for "genuine dialogue" with the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, marked the first time that Beijing had agreed to UN criticism of the junta.
The statement did not threaten sanctions, but the significance of its unanimous support by all 15 members of the security council would not have been lost on Burma's generals, who had hitherto been able to count on China, a neighbour and key trading partner, to block UN censure.
A Myanmar opposition leader who was arrested during last month's mass protests against the junta died due to torture during interrogation, an activist group said on Wednesday.Read More......
TWITTER ACCTS
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
© 2010 - John Aravosis | Design maintenance by Jason Rosenbaum
Send me your tips: americablog AT starpower DOT net
