12.31.2008

A New Year’s Message to all the Peoples of Burma to Rise and be Free from Military Oppression



To all Burma citizens in the country and abroad:


Today is New Year’s Day, a day to celebrate, we wish you well, but our country is not well. We are still suffering under an oppressive military junta. No matter how many New Years may come, we will not be able to truly celebrate until we are free of tyranny.


Should we reflect on 2008, the devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis in May killed more than 100,000 in the Delta regions, and over a million were made homeless. The military junta’s response was appalling. It did not allow immediate humanitarian aid or aid workers to enter the country, despite the loss of tens of thousands of lives and the hundreds of villages that were wiped out during the cyclone. This callous and uncaring behavior of the junta exacerbated the situation, and caused even more deaths and suffering for the survivors of the disaster. This was their response to the overwhelming suffering of the peoples of Burma. How can we celebrate while such a brutal regime reigns terror over our nation?


Let us not forget that seven days after the disaster, in spite of the Buddhist tradition of honouring the dead seven days after death, the junta held their bogus referendum. Moreover, after the disaster and this bogus referendum, the military junta stepped up its brutal persecution of political activists, monks, social workers, bloggers and writers, and their lawyers, arresting many and giving out jail sentences from 20 to 65 years. These people were sent to remote prison camps away from their families.


Furthermore, this brutal and brazen military junta is bent on legitimizing itself by pushing on with its fraudulent national elections in 2010. For these and many more valid reasons, we your freedom loving fellow country folk, today, have formed the 2009 Collective Action Committee. We urge you to join us in this momentous struggle. Together we can free ourselves of oppression and tyranny. Rise people of Burma, be active according to your own capacity so that you will be able to impede the so-called elections of 2010.

The main aim of this committee is to impede the forthcoming bogus elections of 2010 in order to expose the very callous and cruel nature of the military rule that has afflicted our beloved motherland for so many decades.

Our committee’s motto is taken from the words of an NLD senior leader, who said:


“Seek not to escape from this conflict – but rather seek to confront it and break through it”.


Hence, we will act to free Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners so that we will be able to engage in genuine dialogue and to stop the military orchestrated, bogus election of 2010.


We shall assist as one active group, in order that all freedom loving people can actively participate in this struggle for freedom! To achieve the above ideas, we will render encouragement for unity, advice, and information to all our people for their political activities within the country and abroad.


We urge you to engage in undermining the aims of the junta. Do something on a daily basis that will hinder the junta’s program for their fraudulent election, whether you are an office worker, a civil servant or a soldier, do not follow the orders or rules that are given to you on a daily basis.


This will help us in our struggle to free our country from this oppressive, inhumane, brutal and unjust military regime.


We wish you all the best for this New Year.

2009 Collective Action Committee


For further information: Please contact to cacburma@gmail.com



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