11.04.2008

Burma Accuses Bangladesh of Intruding in Burmese Waters

11/4/2008

Sittwe: Burmese authorities in Sittwe have accused to Bangladesh navy ships of entering Burmese waters on Monday morning for an hour before returning to Bangladesh territory, said an official from Number 18 Navy based in Sittwe on the condition of anonymity.

He said, "There are three Bangladesh navy ships near Burma's water and of those, two entered Burmese waters at 8 am on Monday, while one ship waited in Bangladesh waters to see out the situation."

However, Burma's ships did not respond to the Bangladesh ships' actions, even though they intruded into Burmese territory, he added.

A source close to the Burmese navy in Sittwe said that one Bangladesh navy ship traveled about eight miles into Burmese waters, while another traveled about four miles into Burmese waters.

According to local sources, navy ships from both countries are still deployed to the site of the territorial dispute, and they are closely watching each other at sea.

Bangladesh accused Burma of sending three ships into Bangladesh waters - one is a hydrocarbon exploration vessel and two are warships that escorted the exploration vessel into Bangladesh territory on Saturday.

The Bangladesh government summoned Burma's ambassador, U Pe Than U, to the foreign ministry office yesterday to convey Bangladesh's protest over the intrusion to Burmese authorities.

Bangladesh will send a high-powered delegation to Burma on Wednesday to attempt to solve the problem.

An analyst said that the Burma's intrusion into Bangladesh waters angered Bangladesh authorities because they had recently proposed to Burma that the two countries resolve their maritime boundaries peacefully. During this same proposition, Burma's navy ships entered Bangladesh waters to explore for oil and gas.

The disputed area between Burma and Bangladesh is located 60 miles southwest of St. Martin Island, which is located at the mouth of the Naff River. Both Bangladesh and Burma have proclaimed that the waters in question fall within their own territory.

Bangladesh and Burma send warships into Bay of Bengal

Tensions escalate over gas resources lying beneath the bay's sea floor

Bangladesh and Burma, two of the world's poorest nations, have sent warships into the Bay of Bengal amid escalating tensions over a vast disputed gas find.

Bangladesh said today it had sent a British-made frigate, the BNS Kopothakka, to join three other warships some 30 miles south of Saint Martin Island, a palm fringed smudge of sand. The Burmese authorities estimate that 14 trillion cubic feet of gas lies beneath the sea floor.

The military-backed government in Dhaka, which is preparing to transfer power through elections, has said it will take "all possible measures" to protect its nation's assets. The country is also sending its top foreign civil servant to meet with the military junta in Burma.

The row was sparked by the appearance of a Burmese exploration ship escorted by a flotilla of naval boats that skirted the edge of the island last week.

Bangladesh insists the disputed waters fall within its territory and has demanded the Burmese ships withdraw until a maritime boundary can be established through talks.

This is the same argument used by the junta in Rangoon to defend its ships. The senior official from Burma's foreign ministry told Reuters: "We have no reason to stop the exploration activities since these blocks are located in our exclusive economic zone. We will go ahead with it."

Analysts say the two impoverished nations both want to control as much of the energy rich Bay of Bengal as possible. However, Burma's regime has come to view hydrocarbon wealth as essential for its survival – making a looming clash with Bangladesh a potentially dangerous flashpoint.

In the last year, Burma earned $2.6bn from selling gas. Not only can the military generals buy off bigger neighbours such as China and India, the exports insulate the country from western sanctions.

A report by the Asian Development Bank earlier this year, warned sales of natural gas were creating growing trade surpluses and a valuable buffer for Burma's ruling generals.

REGIME IN BURMA STILL RESTRICTING ACCESS AFTER CYCLONE NARGIS

03 Nov 2008 15:08:00 GMT
Judith Melby
Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.
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Six months after Cyclone Nargis caused massive devastation in Burma Christian Aid says the country will require assistance for the foreseeable future. There is still a need for more permanent housing and disaster preparedness training; access to clean drinking water in the upcoming dry season is also a major concern. 'Cyclone Nargis made it easier for humanitarian agencies such as Christian Aid which has a longstanding partnership with local organisations to work in Burma. We have been able to deliver assistance in an effective and accountable way,' says Ray Hasan, Christian Aid's head of programme policy for the region. 'But despite concessions made in the Irrawaddy Delta after the cyclone, the junta's restrictions on humanitarian access continue to obstruct aid workers in Burma,' continues Mr Hasan. Christian Aid partners say that the majority of the people affected are still unable to start the process of rebuilding their lives. Resources remain limited and restrictions on freedom of movement are still in place. To date Christian Aid has spent more than one million pounds in Burma on emergency aid and improved conditions for a quarter of a million people. Immediately following the cyclone partner organisations provided water containers and purifiers, food rations, emergency shelter, household items and clothing, and basic medicines. Work is now proceeding with recovery work. A Christian Aid partner is providing 12 villages with goats and pigs and support to the fishing industry. Boats and nets are being distributed and 50 permanent shelters are being constructed. 'The progress is surprising, everyone seems to be employed in constructing houses,' says an engineers working with one partner organisation. 'We don't need to motivate the people here. They like to work together and they are looking after each other.' Christian Aid has made disaster reduction training a priority; learning how to respond to disasters is essential to avoid the massive damages suffered by Burma from the cyclone in May. 'In June we sent two engineers to visit our partner organisation in Orissa, India to learn about disaster response training,' says Mr Hasan. 'Our work in Orissa in training communities and building cyclone -resistant shelters has saved thousands of lives there.' An engineer who travelled to India said: 'We have brought back blueprints of designs which we have adapted for our local situation. 'We need to modify these designs further. The priority right now is to meet the urgent needs for rebuilding peoples' lives, both in terms of providing shelter but more importantly the spirit of community in the face of disaster.' Christian Aid says pressure must be maintained on the regime to ensure unrestricted access to the affected areas and that the needs of the most vulnerable communities affected by Nargis are prioritised. 'But it is also imperative that the donor community recognises the role of civil society in Burma and ensures local organisations are adequately funded. Thus far they have been most effective in responding to the crisis and they are crucial to the future development of Burma,' says Mr Hasan.

[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]

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A boy looks out of his house built of bamboo and thatch in Latkhitekun, a village south of Yangon, October 28, 2008. Most cyclone survivors say prices of construction materials like ...

အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ ဗဟိုအလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္အဖြဲ႕ အစည္းအေ၀းျပဳလုပ္

အမ်ိဳးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဴပ္(အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ)၏ ယမန္ေန႔က က်င္းပသည့္ ဗဟိုအလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္အဖြဲ႔ စံုညီအစည္းအေဝး တြင္ အန္အယ္လ္ဒီပါတီတြင္း ႀကံဳေတြ႔ေနသည့္အခက္အခဲမ်ားကို သံုးသပ္ေဆြးေႏြး ၾကေၾကာင္းသိရသည္။

အဆိုပါ အစည္းအေဝးပြဲတြင္ မၾကာေသးခင္က စစ္အစိုးရ အက်ဥ္းေထာင္မွ ျပန္လည္ လြတ္ေျမာက္လာ သည့္ သတင္းစာ ဆရာႀကီး ဦးဝင္းတင္ႏွင့္ အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ လႊတ္ေတာ္အမတ္ႏွင့္ ဗဟိုအလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္ အဖြဲ႔ဝင္ တဦးျဖစ္သူ ဦးခင္ေမာင္ေဆြတို႔လည္း တက္ေရာက္ခဲ့သည္။

ဦးခင္ေမာင္ေဆြက“ အခ်ိန္က ၃နာရီေက်ာ္ပဲၾကာတယ္၊ အန္ကယ္တို႔မရွိခင္ ပါတီကိုဘယ္လိုသယ္ေဆာင္ လာခဲ့တယ္ ဆိုတာရယ္၊ ေနာက္ေၾကာင္းျပန္ေျပာတယ္၊ လူငယ္ကိစၥလည္း အနည္းနည္း ေဆြးေႏြးျဖစ္ပါ တယ္” ဟု ေျပာသည္။

၂၀၀၃ ခုႏွစ္္ ဒီပဲယင္းအေရးအခင္းျဖစ္ပြားၿပီးေနာက္ပိုင္း အာဏာပိုင္မ်ားက အယ္အယ္လ္ဒီ၏ နယ္ရုံးဖြင့္ခြင့္ ပိတ္ပင္ထား ျခင္း၊ တရားဝင္ အန္အယ္လ္ဒီဆိုင္းဘုတ္ တင္ခြင့္မရျခင္း၊ ရန္ကုန္ရွိ အဖြဲ႔ခ်ဴပ္ရုံးအပိတ္ခံရျခင္း၊ ျပည္သူမ်ားကလည္း အဖြဲ႔ခ်ဴပ္ အဖြဲ႔ဝင္မ်ားႏွင့္ဆက္ဆံရမွာကို ထိတ္လန္႔ၾကျခင္း၊ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္မ်ားရွိ အဖြဲ႔ဝင္မ်ား သည္လည္း သက္ဆိုင္ရာအာဏာပိုင္ မ်ား၏ တင္းက်ပ္မႈမ်ားေၾကာင့္ လြတ္လပ္စြာလႈပ္ရွားလုပ္ကိုင္ခြင့္မရျခင္း စသည့္ စစ္အစိုးရဖိႏွိပ္မႈမ်ားၾကားမွ လႈပ္ရွား လုပ္ကိုင္ေနရျခင္းမ်ားကို ယခုအစည္းအေ၀းတြင္ေျပာဆို ေဆြးေႏြးသည္ဟု လည္း ဦးခင္ေမာင္ေဆြကေျပာသည္။

ယင္း အစည္းအေ၀းတြင္ စစ္အစိုးရ က်င္းပမည့္ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာ ေဆြးေႏြးမႈ မရွိခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

“လက္ရွိစစ္အစုိးရ က ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို အတင္းဆြဲေခၚေနတဲ့ကာလမွာ၂၀၁၀ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို အဖြဲ႔ခ်ဴပ္အေနျဖင့္ စဥ္းစားႏိုင္ျခင္း မရွိေသးပါဘူး။ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္နဲ႔ သက္ဆိုင္ရာအာဏာပိုင္မ်ားက ႏိုင္ငံေရးျပႆနာေတြကို ႏွစ္ဦး ႏွစ္ဘက္တိုက္ရုိက္ေဆြးေႏြးခြင့္ရမယ္ဆိုရင္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲအပါအဝင္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး ျပႆနာ အားလံုးကို ေျဖရွင္းႏိုင္လိမ့္မယ္လို႔ က်ေနာ္တဦးတည္းအေနနဲ႔ယူဆပါတယ္” ဟု ဦးခင္ေမာင္ေဆြက ၎၏သေဘာထားကိုေျပာသည္။

မိထၳိလာၿမိဳ႕နယ္ရွိ အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ အဖြဲ႔ဝင္မ်ားကလည္း ႏိုဝင္ဘာ ၁ ရက္ေန႔က မိထိၳလာခရုိင္ အစည္းအေဝး ဆံုးျဖတ္အရ ေတာင္းဆိုခ်က္ ၃ခ်က္ကို ဗဟိုအလုပ္အလုပ္အမႈ ေဆာင္အဖြဲ႔သို႔ စာျဖင့္ေပးပို႔မည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း မိထၳိလာၿမိဳ႕နယ္ အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ အတြင္းေရးမႉး ေဒၚျမင့္ျမင့္ေအး ကေျပာသည္။

ေတာင္းဆိုခ်က္မ်ားမွာ“ဗဟိုအလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္အဖြဲ႔မ်ားကို တိုးခ်ဲ႕အားျဖည့္ ဖြဲ႔စည္းေပးပါရန္၊ တႏိုင္ငံလံုးရွိ အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ အဖြဲ႔ခ်ဴပ္မွ အေရြးခ်ယ္ခံ ျပည္သူ႔လြတ္ေတာ္ကိုယ္စားလွယ္မ်ားအားလံုးကို အစည္းအေဝး တရပ္ေခၚယူ က်င္းပေပးရန္၊ ဗဟိုလူငယ္အဖြဲ႔ျပန္လည္ ဖြဲ႔စည္းေပးရန္”တို႔ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ေဒၚျမင့္ျမင့္ေအး ကေျပာသည္။

ေဒၚျမင့္ျမင့္ေအးက ဆက္လက္ၿပီး “ေလာေလာဆယ္အေနအထားအရ တဘက္အာဏာရွင္နဲ႔ ယွဥ္ၿပိဳင္ႏိုင္ဖို႔ က က်မတို႔ ပါတီမွာ အင္အားရွိဖို႔လိုတယ္။ ဗဟိုကအားရွိမွ က်မတို႔ေအာက္ေျခကအားရွိမယ္။ ဗဟိုက အစည္းအေဝးေခၚမယ္။ ဗဟိုကို အင္အားျဖည့္ဆည္းမယ္၊ အားမာန္ပါမယ့္ညြန္ၾကားခ်က္ေတြလုပ္ႏိုင္မွ က်မတို႔ေအာက္ေျခကလုပ္ႏိုင္မယ္။ က်မတို႔ပါတီက အားရွိမွ ေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးေရးလမ္း ေၾကာင္းေပၚ
ေရာက္မယ္” ဟုလည္း ေျပာသည္။

၎အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ ဗဟိုအလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္စံုညီအစည္းအေဝးကို ေန႔လယ္၁နာရီမွ၄နာရီခြဲအထိ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ ၿပီး အပတ္စဥ္ တနလၤာေန႔တြင္ က်င္းပမည္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္းလည္းသိရသည္။

ေမြးရာပါႏုတ္ခမ္းကြဲေနသူ ကေလးမဵားကို ထိုင္းနယ္စပ္တြင္ ခြဲစိတ္ကုသေပး


2008
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နာမႈကူညီေရးအသင္း အေဆာက္အအံုကို တိုင္းေကာင္စီအမိန္ႛျဖင့္ ဖ်က္သိမ္းခိုင္း

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Two more defence lawyers prosecuted ႏိုင္ငံေရးအမႈမ်ား ေဆာင္ရြက္သူ ေရွ႕ေနႏွစ္ဦး တရားစဲြခံရျပန္ၿပီ

by Phanida
Monday, 03 November 2008 23:01

Chiang Mai – The Hlaing Township court came down heavily and prosecuted advocates Aung Thein and Khin Maung Shein on October 30. They were representing NLD party members facing trial.

The Hlaing Township court judge Daw Aye Myaing prosecuted them for contempt of court after the two lawyers withdrew criminal power granted by their political prisoner clients to represent them in court.

"We learnt that the two lawyers were prosecuted under section 3 of the 'Contempt of Court Act' by the Supreme Court in Rangoon', NLD spokesman U Nyan Win said.

"The prison authorities didn't let them enter the prison where their cases are being heard. They were prosecuted by the Supreme Court and Hlaing Township Court on contempt of court charges. Summons was served to them" an advocate said on condition of anonymity.

The court fixed the hearing for November 6.

The judge of Sanchaung Township Court threatened U Khin Maung Shein on 30 October, while he was representing his clients at the court, by saying that he could be prosecuted and imprisoned with disruption of judicial proceedings and warned him to take care. After which he was prosecuted.

Similarly young lawyer Ko Nyi Nyi Htwe was summoned to face trial on October 17 and the hearing was fixed for October 30 by the North District Court. But he was arrested on October 29 before the trial date. The North District Court Judge U Thaung Nyunt sentenced Ko Nyi Nyi Htwe to six months in prison under section 228 of the Penal Code and declared Ko Saw Kyaw Kyaw Min as an absconder, after which he issued an arrest warrant against him.

Exiled based 'Myanmar Youth Lawyers Law Firm' and 'International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) and 'World Organization against Torture' OMCT released a statement yesterday calling for immediate release of Ko Nyi Nyi Htwe and demanded guarantee of his physical and psychological well being by the junta.

The statement also demanded an end to all acts of harassment - including at the judicial level - against Mr. Nyi Nyi Htwe and Mr. Saw Kyaw Kyaw Min as well as against all human rights defenders in Burma, in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and other related international instruments in guaranteeing the human rights and fundamental rights which are in force in Burma.

The Observatory, a FIDH and OMCT venture, is dedicated to the protection of Human Rights Defenders and advocacy group for UDHR, Civil Rights and Political Rights conventions, Economic Social and Cultural Rights conventions.

Furthermore this group is acting at an advisor level in the UN, UNESCO and EU and also acting as observer in Africa Human Right and Citizen Right Commission.

The lawyer Pho Phyu said that sentencing lawyer Nyi Nyi Htwe and his clients -- political prisoners Yan Naing Tun, Aung Min Naing a.k.a. Meethway (charcoal) and Myo Kyaw Zin without hearing the complaint submitted by them is violation of section 482 of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC).

"Lawyers in Burma do not enjoy freedom during judicial proceedings. Their rights to submitting the complaint arguing in court on behalf of their clients are being deprived. Section 8 of '1880 Lawyers' Act' is being violated. And also the judicial proceedings are not in accordance with the internationally accepted norm of 1990 Legal Counsels", he said.