Obama says "change has come to America"

• Supporters Ecstatic By Historic Win CBS 3 Philadelphia
• Play Video Video: McCain gives 'dignified'concession speech KTVK 3TV Phoenix
• Play Video Video: '08 winner's daunting "to do" list Reuters

CHICAGO (Reuters) – President-elect Barack Obama told cheering supporters on Tuesday "change has come to America" and called on Americans to back a spirit of unity to attack the country's pressing challenges.

Obama congratulated defeated Republican John McCain for the long, hard campaign that he fought. He called on Americans to support a "new spirit of sacrifice."

"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there," he said.

Analysis: Next up after Obama win, governing

By LIZ SIDOTI
Associated Press Writer

AP Photo/M. Spencer Green

Advertisement

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Now the hard part. Barack Obama essentially came out of nowhere, beat the Democratic establishment, conquered doubts about his experience and overcame questions about his race to be elected the first black president after a grueling campaign that lasted nearly two years.

As president-elect, he faces three immediate challenges: confronting the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression, determining the next steps in two lingering wars, and leading his Democrats, including liberals expecting that the change he promises will come instantly. It won't.

On the heels of a campaign in which cash wasn't a concern, Obama must tackle all of those tasks with no room in the budget as the nation heads for a painful, perhaps long-lasting, recession.

No new president has faced so much since Franklin Delano Roosevelt - and even he didn't have two wars on his plate.

Roosevelt had four months to come up with programs to address the Great Depression before he took office on March 4, 1933.

Obama gets just 2 1/2 to put together his government; inauguration is Jan. 20.

He will chart the country's course against this dreary backdrop: Unemployment is at 6.1 percent and predicted to rise as high as 7.5 percent next year; pessimistic consumers have curtailed borrowing and spending; home foreclosures are rampant; Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security face huge financial problems; and, 152,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq more than five years after the initial invasion, while 32,000 are in Afghanistan in the sixth year of the war against terrorism.

With Democrats expanding their majorities in both the House and Senate, Obama will have to figure out how to lead a country that's more conservative than liberal while trying to satisfy the left wing of his party. He will face demands for a quick withdrawal from Iraq. He's promised withdrawal, but carefully.

From the outset, how Obama acts to deal with these conditions will set the tone for his presidency.

Voters got an early glimpse of his style last month when Wall Street collapsed, stocks fluctuated and the government intervened. He struck a cautious stance and deferred to lawmakers dealing directly with the problems. He was deliberative and careful in his response - perhaps just the approach voters were seeking after eight years of what critics call President Bush's cowboy approach.

Yet, Obama may be blamed for recession woes despite the fact that he inherited the mess from Bush. The troubles are on Obama's watch now even if there's little he can do about them. The president in power always suffers when the economy tanks. Just ask the first President Bush in 1992.

Indeed, coming in with a big victory doesn't guarantee success.

Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson won with 61 percent of the vote in 1964. He won his Great Society programs in his first two years but his administration essentially collapsed in the final two with the escalation of the Vietnam War.

In choosing Obama as the 44th president, the nation took a historic leap beyond its legacy of slavery and toward healing racial tensions just four decades after the tumultuous Civil Rights movement.

Politically, Obama's election amounted to a wholesale rejection of the status quo after eight years of Bush and Republican rule.

Voters were willing to take a chance on a relative newcomer to the national stage. Obama is a 47-year-old black man from Chicago with a liberal voting record who is in just his first Senate term and has offered few specifics on how he would govern.

Culturally, Obama's victory was so much more for a nation on the verge of becoming a true melting pot; government estimates say white people will no longer make up a majority of Americans by 2042.

The son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, Obama's call for change created a movement at a time of great upheaval in the country. And, that proved to be a large enough force to overcome lingering prejudices.

To be sure, the economy proved a powerful motivator.

Preliminary exit poll results showed that six in 10 voters named it as their top issue, far more than other problems named including Iraq and terrorism. Obama was leading among this group. And, nearly all voters - nine in 10 - said the economy was in bad shape and said they were worried about the economy's direction. Obama had the advantage among these voters, too.

Four in 10 said their family financial status was worse than four years ago - the highest number to report that in a presidential race since at least 1992. Nearly three quarters of this group voted for Obama.

Race didn't appear to be much of a hurdle.

Nearly one in 10 whites said race was an important factor in selecting a candidate, though only a tiny fraction said it was the most important factor. In both groups, about six in 10 were voting for McCain.

Obama won nearly half of the white vote while nearly all blacks and two in three Hispanics supported him.

Although Obama played down his skin color, it played a part in his general election strategy. Minorities, as well as youth, were identified early on as a key demographic to register and court.

It appeared to work.

Obama was the overwhelming choice of the one in 10 voters who went to the polls for their first time Tuesday. One in five of the new voters was black, almost twice the proportion of blacks among voters overall. Another one in five of the new voters was Hispanic. About two-thirds of them were under 30 years old.

All - whites, blacks, women, Hispanics, young people, Democrats, Republicans and independents - will have high expectations for Obama's presidency.

US Voters Come Out in Big Numbers for Historic Election

Polls are open across the United States as voters line up to choose a new president and members of Congress. High turnout is reported at many polling stations. The last major preference polls showed Democrat Barack Obama with a significant advantage over Republican John McCain. VOA's Brian Wagner reports from Florida, one of several key states the candidates are hoping to win.

Line of voters waiting to cast ballots in New Orleans, 04 Nov 2008

Voters streamed into libraries, government buildings and schools to cast ballots in an election many voters are saying is the most significant in the nation's history.

Some polling stations in eastern states like New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania reported long lines of voters who gathered before dawn to cast ballots.

Election officials say they expect massive turnout on Election Day, and they are asking voters to be patient and brace for possible delays.

Virginia resident Renu Ahluwalia got in line early Tuesday, and said she would arrive late to her job at the Department of Homeland Security "I just started my wait, but I was told it was up to an hour. I think no matter what time you came the lines were going to be long, but it is exciting. I am making up the hours later in order to come out here this morning," she said.

Officials in New Jersey said they were giving paper ballots to some voters because of problems with electronic voting machines. Other areas encountered minor problems, but officials voiced no major concerns.

Voters cast their ballots at Centreville High School in Clifton, Virginia, 04 Nov. 2008

Near Washington, American University law student, Angela Edmond, was part of a volunteer team working to make sure all people qualified to vote are able to do so. "There was only one problem with a man whose wife had applied for an absentee ballot, and she didn't receive it and she was given a hard time inside. She should be able to vote provisionally, but we're not sure, so we are waiting to see when she comes out," she said.

In Miami, college student Paul Torres, said he voted for Obama because of his economic policy, even though he considers himself a Republican. "It was not really a hard decision in this election, because I see people on television saying McCain is going to fix this. But he has the same strategies as George Bush," he said.

Fellow student Andres Suarez said he raced to the polls to vote for John McCain before his morning classes. "I voted today, very early in the morning. It was about an hour and a half [wait], but compared to other friends who waited five hours, it was not that bad," he said.

Voters use benches to fill their ballots in Calais, Vermont, 04 Nov 2008

Long delays were common in Florida and some of the 29 other states that held early voting in recent weeks. Officials say early turnout was unprecedented with more than 40 million Americans casting their ballots before Election Day.

On the final day of campaigning, Barack Obama spoke to thousands of supporters in Virginia - a state no Democrat has won since 1964. "I've just got one question for you, Virginia. Are you fired up? Are you ready to go? Fired up? Ready to go? Fired up? Ready to go? Fired up? Ready to go? Virginia, let's go change the world. Thank you and God Bless the United States of America," he said.

Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and his wife Michelle, cast their votes at a polling place in Chicago, 4 Nov. 2008

Senator Obama is spending Election Day with his family in Illinois, before a major rally in Chicago later in the day.

Senator McCain is in his home state of Arizona after making a whirlwind tour of several crucial states on Monday.

At a rally in Indiana, he pointed to some polls showing that he held a narrow lead over his opponent. "We've got the momentum. We've the momentum my friends. We've got it!"

Final national polls showed the presidential contest was narrowing, but Obama held a comfortable lead of between five and 11 points.

Democrats also are expected to make gains in Congressional voting, which includes all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 in the 100 member Senate.

Most projections have Democrats expanding their current 36 seat House advantage by at least 20. Potential losses could give Democrats their strongest majority in 18 years, putting Republicans far below their current 199 seat minority.

Democrats would like to widen their current narrow 51-49 margin of control in the Senate to or near a 60-seat majority that could make it easier to win votes on legislation.

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

• Randeep Ramesh
• guardian.co.uk,
• Tuesday November 04 2008 12.47 GMT
• Article history

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

Source: Christian Aid - UK

Judith Melby

Website: http://www.christianaid.org.uk

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.

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. ]

Background information

Briefings

Myanmar cyclone - [Who works where]

Topics

Hurricanes and cyclones Talking points Working in Relief

Facts & figures

Myanmar (formerly Burma)

Related articles

Breaking stories

Americas Cuba says economy to grow 4 percent this year Source: Reuters (1 day ago)

Asia MYANMAR: Agencies warn of continuing recovery Source: IRIN (1 day ago)

AlertNet insight

Asia BOOK REVIEW: Why our climate change solutions are a mirage Author: Megan Rowling (41 days ago)

Aid agency news feed

Africa UK MUST LEAD ON REGIONAL POLITICAL SETTLEMENT FOR EASTERN CONGO Source: Christian Aid - UK (1 day ago)

Blogs

Africa AID WORKER DIARY: Crisis in eastern Congo
Author: Michel Mungungu (1 day ago)

Maps

Americas MAP: Flooding in Central America (satellite image) Source: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (1 day ago)

Del.icio.us | Digg | NewsVine | Reddit

• Latest images

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

Get your own at Scribd or explore others:

နာမႈကူညီေရးအသင္း အေဆာက္အအံုကို တိုင္းေကာင္စီအမိန္ႛျဖင့္ ဖ်က္သိမ္းခိုင္း

Document 1

Get your own at Scribd or explore others:

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. ႏိုင္ငံေရးအမႈမ်ား ေဆာင္ရြက္သူ ေရွ႕ေနႏွစ္ဦး တရားစဲြခံရျပန္ၿပီ ဖနိဒါ တနလၤာေန႔၊ ႏုိဝင္ဘာလ 03 2008 22:08 - ျမန္မာစံေတာ္ခ်ိန္ ခ်င္းမုိင္။ ။ အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမုိကေရစီ အဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္၀င္မ်ား၏ အမႈမ်ားကုိ ကူညီေပးေနသည့္ ဗဟုိတရား႐ုံးခ်ဳပ္ ေရွ႕ေန ဦးေအာင္သိန္းႏွင့္ ဦးခင္ေမာင္ရွိန္တုိ႔အား လႈိင္ျမိဳ႕နယ္ တရား႐ုံးက ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္လ ၃၀ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ တရားစြဲဆုိလုိက္သည္။ အက်ဥ္းက်ခံေနရသည့္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား အမႈသည္မ်ားက တရား႐ုံးေတာ္ကုိ အယံုအၾကည္ မရွိေတာ့သျဖင့္ သူတို႔၏ ေရွ႕ေနပါ၀ါမ်ား ႐ုပ္သိမ္းလုိက္ေၾကာင္း တရားသူၾကီးထံ တင္ျပရာ လႈိင္ျမိဳ႕နယ္ တရားသူၾကီး ေဒၚေအးျမိဳင္က တရား႐ုံးကုိ မထီမဲ့ျမင္ျပဳမႈျဖင့္ တရားစြဲဆုိလိုက္ျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။ "သူတုိ႔ႏွစ္ေယာက္ကုိ ရန္ကုန္ ဗဟုိတရား႐ုံးခ်ဳပ္ကေန တရား႐ုံးအား မထီမဲ့ျမင္ျပဳမႈ - ဥပေဒပုဒ္မ ၃ အရ တရားစြဲဆုိထားတယ္လုိ႔ သိရတယ္" ဟု အန္အယ္ဒီ ေျပာခြင့္ရပုဂၢိဳလ္ ဦးဥာဏ္၀င္းက ေျပာသည္။ အမည္မေဖာ္လုိသူ ဗဟုိတရား႐ုံးခ်ဳပ္ေရွ႕ေနတဦးကလည္း "ေထာင္အာဏာပုိင္ေတြက ေထာင္၀င္ခြင့္ မေပးဘူး။ တရား႐ုံးခ်ဳပ္က စြဲထားတာ။ လႈိင္ျမိဳ႕နယ္ တရားသူၾကီးကေန တရား႐ုံးကုိ မထီေလးစား လုပ္တယ္ဆုိျပီး တရားစြဲလိုက္တယ္။ သမၼာန္စာလည္း ပုိ႔ထားျပီ" ဟု ေျပာသည္။ ႏွစ္ဦးစလံုးအား တရား႐ုံးမွ ယခုလ ၆ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ႐ုံးခ်ိန္းရက္ ေပးထားသည္။ ေအာက္တုိဘာလ ၃၀ ရက္ေန႔က စမ္းေခ်ာင္းျမိဳ႕နယ္ တရား႐ုံး၌ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအမႈတခု လုိက္ပါေဆာင္ရြက္ေနစဥ္ တရားသူၾကီးက သတိထားေနရန္ႏွင့္ ေႏွာင့္ယွက္မႈျဖင့္ ေထာင္ဒဏ္ ခ်ခံရႏုိင္သည္ဟု ေရွ႕ေန ဦးခင္ေမာင္ရွိန္အား ၿခိမ္းေျခာက္ခဲ့ၿပီးေနာက္ ယခုလို တရားစဲြဆိုမႈ ေပၚေပါက္လာျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။ အလားတူပင္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အမႈမ်ားကို ေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးေနသူ လူငယ္ေရွ႕ေန ကုိညီညီေထြးကိုလည္း ျပီးခဲ့သည့္လ ၁၇ ရက္ေန႔က ေျမာက္ပိုင္းခရိုင္တရား႐ုံးက သမၼာန္စာ ေပးပုိ႔ကာ ၃၀ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ႐ုံးခ်ိန္းေပးခဲ့ေသာ္လည္း ႐ုံးခ်ိန္းရက္ မတုိင္ခင္ ၂၉ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ဖမ္းဆီးခဲ့သည္။ ေျမာက္ပုိင္းခ႐ုိင္ တရားသူၾကီး ဦးေသာင္းညြန္႔က တရား႐ုံးေတာ္ကို မထီေလးစားျပဳမႈ - ပုဒ္မ ၂၂၈ ျဖင့္ ကုိညီညီေထြးကို ေထာင္ဒဏ္ ၆ လ ခ်မွတ္ျပီး၊ တၿပိဳင္တည္း တရားစဲြခံရကာ ထြက္ေျပးတိမ္းေရွာင္ေနသည့္ ေရွ႕ေန ကိုေစာေက်ာ္ေက်ာ္မင္းကိုမူ ဖမ္း၀ရန္းထုတ္ထားသည္။ ျပည္ပအေျခစိုက္ ျမန္မာလူငယ္ေရွ႕ေနမ်ား ဥပေဒ အက်ဳိးေဆာင္လုပ္ငန္း - Myanmar Youth Lawyers Law Firm က ႏိုင္ငံတကာ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ဖက္ဒေရးရွင္း - International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) ႏွင့္ ႏွိပ္စက္ျခင္းမ်ားကုိ ဆန္႔က်င္သည့္ ကမၻာ့အဖြဲ႔ၾကီး - OMCT ထံ ေရွ႕ေန ကိုညီညီေထြးအား ကိုယ္ကာယ၊ စိတ္ဓာတ္ေရးရာ တစံုတရာ ထိခိုက္ျခင္းမ်ဳိး စစ္အာဏာပိုင္မ်ားက မျပဳလုပ္ေရးအတြက္ အာမခံရန္ႏွင့္ ခ်က္ခ်င္း ျပန္လႊတ္ေပးရန္ ေတာင္းဆိုေပးေစလိုေၾကာင္း ယမန္ေန႔က ေၾကညာခ်က္တရပ္ ထုတ္ျပန္ခဲ့သည္။ ကိုညီညီေထြးႏွင့္ ကိုေစာေက်ာ္ေက်ာ္မင္းတို႔ အပါအ၀င္ ျမန္မာျပည္အတြင္းရွိ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ကာကြယ္ျမႇင့္တင္သူမ်ားကုိ တရားဥပေဒအဆင့္ အပါအ၀င္ မတရားျပဳခ်က္မ်ားကို ရပ္တန္႔ရန္ႏွင့္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ေၾကညာစာတမ္းႏွင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ အတည္ျပဳျပဌန္းထားသည့္ ႏုိင္ငံတကာ စာတမ္းမ်ား၏ စံခ်ိန္မ်ားႏွင့္အညီ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးႏွင့္ အေျခခံလြတ္လပ္ခြင့္မ်ားကို အာမခံေပးရန္လည္း ေျပာဆုိခဲ့သည္။ FIDH သည္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ေၾကညာစာတမ္း၊ ႏုိင္ငံသားႏွင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအခြင့္အေရး သေဘာတူစာခ်ဳပ္ႏွင့္ စီးပြားေရး၊ လူမႈေရးႏွင့္ ယဥ္ေက်းမႈ အခြင့္အေရးဆိုင္ရာ သေဘာတူစာခ်ဳပ္ပါ အခြင့္အေရးမ်ားကို ေလးစားလိုက္နာရန္ ၾကိဳးပမ္းေဆာင္ရြက္ေနသည့္ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖြဲ႕ျဖစ္သည္။ ထို႔အျပင္ ကုလသမဂၢ၊ ယူနက္စ္ကို၊ ဥေရာပေကာင္စီတို႔တြင္ အၾကံေပးအဆင့္ျဖင့္ ေဆာင္ရြက္လ်က္ရွိၿပီး၊ အာဖရိက လူသားႏွင့္ ႏိုင္ငံသားအခြင့္အေရး ေကာ္မရွင္တြင္ ေလ့လာသူအျဖစ္လည္း ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနသည္။ ေရွ႕ေန ကုိညီညီေထြးႏွင့္ သူ လိုက္ပါေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးေနသည့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား ကိုရန္ႏိုင္ထြန္း၊ ကိုေအာင္မင္းႏိုင္ (ခ) မီးေသြးႏွင့္ ကိုမ်ဳိးေက်ာ္ဇင္တို႔၏ ေလွ်ာက္လဲခ်က္မ်ားအား စစ္ေဆးျခင္းမျပဳဘဲ ျပစ္ဒဏ္ခ်မွတ္လုိက္ျခင္းသည္ ဥပေဒအရ မွားယြင္းျပီး ျပစ္မႈက်င့္ထံုးဥပေဒပုဒ္မ ၄၈၂ ပါ ျပဌာန္းခ်က္ကို ခ်ဳိးေဖာက္ရာေရာက္သည္ဟု ေရွ႕ေန ကိုဖုိးျဖဴက ယခုလို ေျပာသည္။ "ျမန္မာျပည္က ေရွ႕ေနေရွ႕ရပ္ေတြဟာ တရားစီရင္ေရးမွာ လြတ္လပ္စြာ အမႈလိုက္ပါေဆာင္ရြက္ခြင့္ ဆံုး႐ႈံးေနပါတယ္။ အမႈသည္ကိုယ္စား တင္ျပခြင့္၊ ေလွ်ာက္ထားခြင့္၊ ေဆာင္ရြက္ခြင့္ကို ပိတ္ပင္ခံေနရပါတယ္။ ၁၈၈၀ ခုႏွစ္ ေရွ႕ေနလိုက္သူမ်ား အက္ဥပေဒ ပုဒ္မ - ၈ ကို ခ်ဳိးေဖာက္ခံေနရပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ ဥပေဒႏႈန္းစံတရပ္ျဖစ္တဲ့ ၁၉၉၀ ေရွ႕ေနမ်ားအတြက္ အေျခခံမူေတြအရလည္း ညီၫြတ္မႈ မရွိပါဘူး" ဟု သူက ေျပာဆိုလုိက္သည္။

Pope to visit Burma

The pope indicated during a recent visit by Archbishop Bo of Burma that he is ready to make a stopover in the totalitarian country on his way to another Asian country.

Monday, November 03, 2008

By UCA News

Pope Benedict XVI says he is ready to make a stopover in Myanmar if he visits another Asian country, Archbishop Charles Maung Bo of Yangon told UCA News in Rome.

Archbishop Bo met the pope privately on Oct. 23.

The previous week, the Salesian prelate, general secretary of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Myanmar, issued a surprise invitation to Pope Benedict during the archbishop's five-minute intervention at the Synod on the Word of God.

Looking at the pope on Oct. 14, he concluded with the words: "Holy Father, from the time of St. Peter till today, no Holy Father has visited Myanmar. Our warmest welcome to Myanmar!" The synod burst into spontaneous applause when he finished, participants recalled.

Nine days later, Archbishop Bo was in the pope's private library as part of the ad limina visit every bishop is expected to make once in five years to report to the pope and Vatican officials on the situation in his diocese and country.

sponsored by

Related Articles

Asia

Christians console Burmese leprosy victims

St. John's Leprosy Asylum in Mandalay was founded by the Catholic Church but was nationalized in 1962. Lepers find solace in Christian faith and help from clergy.

Muslim minority persecuted in Burma

Leaders of the Rohingya Muslim people of Burma say that the totalitarian regime is taking away their identity. The state also persecuted Christians and Buddhists.

"The Holy Father at once pointed out that I had invited him to Myanmar during my synod intervention," Archbishop Bo said. During their private conversation, he recalled, Pope Benedict made it clear "he would be ready to make a short visit to Myanmar if he chooses to visit one of the countries in Asia."

The archbishop found the pope's calmness and "clear mind" impressive amid a busy schedule with numerous visitors. The pontiff was interested in the rehabilitation work the Church was involved in after cyclone Nargis, as well as the general situation in Myanmar.

The Yangon archbishop had not been able to join the other bishops from Myanmar when they made their ad limina visits as a group at the end of May, because he was leading the Church relief efforts in the aftermath of the cyclone that he says killed nearly 150,000 people. He estimated Nargis displaced another 2 million people.

Myanmar has a population of 53 million people, 85 percent of whom are Buddhists, 6 percent Christians and 4 percent Muslims. Of the 3 million Christians, about 700,000 are Catholics. The military has been running the country since 1962 and has suppressed pro-democracy movements.

A Vatican official told UCA News, "It should be stated clearly that there is no persecution against Christianity or Catholics in Myanmar." He also pointed out that even though the Holy See and Myanmar do not have diplomatic relations, the Bangkok-based apostolic delegate to Myanmar can freely visit the country and meet bishops, who also are allowed to travel to the Vatican.

A Church source clarified that Myanmar's Catholic Church enjoys freedom to worship but is not allowed to work freely in the fields of education and health care. "Nor can it express its position on sociopolitical questions in accord with the Church's social teaching," the source said in Rome.

Pope Benedict has made 10 foreign trips since his election in April 2005 -- six European countries and Turkey, which straddles Europe and Asia, as well as Australia, Brazil and the United States. At the close of the synod on Oct. 26, he announced a plan to visit the African countries of Angola and Cameroon in March 2009.

Asia, excepting Turkey, is thus the only continent Pope Benedict has not visited or announced plans to visit, but his remark about being ready to visit Myanmar were he to go to another Asian country suggests he is considering this possibility.

Earlier this year, Cardinal Jean Baptiste Pham Minh Man of Ho Chi Minh said he hoped Pope Benedict would visit Vietnam in 2010, for the 350th anniversary of its first two apostolic vicariates and the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the local Church hierarchy.

Like Myanmar, Vietnam does not have diplomatic relations with the Holy See. A Vatican official said this alone does not present a problem. He cited Pope John Paul II's visit to Mexico in 1979, when that country and the Holy See had no diplomatic ties.

According to Vatican diplomatic sources, a papal visit requires an invitation from the local bishops' conference and the national government's invitation or willingness to receive him, since he is a head of state.

Home | News| Rights & Wrongs: Burma, Niger, Migrant Workers and More Rights & Wrongs: Burma, Niger, Migrant Workers and More

Juliette Terzieff | Bio | 03 Nov 2008
World Politics Review

BURMA LEADER MARKS 13 YEARS OF IMPRISONMENT -- The first lady of Burmese politics, pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, marked 13 years under house arrest on Oct. 25, as supporters around the world continued their calls for her release. Australia's The Age called the date a prominent illustration of the "bitter tyranny" existing in Burma, noting that "the Lady's unjust imprisonment is a powerful reminder of a brief moment of freedom realized by Burma's people and the dream that remains unfulfilled." The anniversary happened to coincide this year with the seventh Asia-Europe summit meeting, a major gathering of government representatives from over 40 countries, who used the occasion to issue a united call for the release of Suu Kyi as well as hundreds of other political prisoners in Burma. "This is a significant breakthrough," said Mark Farmaner, director of the Burma Campaign U.K., in a press release. "It is the first time we have had Europe and Asia come together in this way to demand real political progress in Burma." The international community has been increasingly vocal towards Burma in recent weeks, as frustration over a lack of progress combines with the possibility of a December visit to to the country by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Ban's envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, has made repeated trips to Burma in a bid to convince the ruling military junta to improve rights protections and to restore some measures of democracy. The release of Suu Kyi is viewed by many as the single most powerful statement the junta could make to prove its willingness to reform. Despite a few instances of lip service (see Brian McCartan's WPR briefing) and a much-maligned "system overhaul," the junta has shown little inclination to address the world community's concerns. While Suu Kyi's long struggle to return democracy to Burma has won her admirers around the world and resulted in her selection for the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, there has been persistent grumbling among younger Burmese that non-violent engagement has achieved little -- especially after the ruling junta's brutal crackdown on monk-led protests last year. It is a dilemma the Dalai Lama has also had to contend with in recent years as younger Tibetans increasingly consider negotiating with China futile. But whereas the Dalai Lama can directly engage and encourage his supporters to follow the path of non-violence, Suu Kyi is all but cut off from the world. EUROPE HONORS CHINESE DISSIDENT -- Imprisoned Chinese human rights and democracy activist Hu Jia won this year's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought on Oct. 23 in an obvious rebuke by European parliamentarians of China's rights record. The Sakharov prize is awarded by the European Parliament in honor of Andrei Sakharov, a Soviet physicist, pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient. Past winners include former Kosovo Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi, former U.N. chief Kofi Annan (along with the U.N. staff) and Nigerian human rights lawyer Hauwa Igrahim. "Hu Jia is one of the real defenders of human rights in the People's Republic of China. The European Parliament is sending out a signal of clear support to all those who support human rights in China," Hans-Gert Pottering, president of the European Parliament, said of the decision. Virtually unknown only a couple years ago, Hu Jia has since emerged as an internationally recognized rights advocate and become a significant thorn in Beijing's side as a result. Chinese authorities had Hu in their sights for some time, placing him under house arrest (along with his wife and infant daughter) throughout 2007, before arresting him in December 2007, one month after he'd highlighted connections between China's worsening rights situation and the Beijing Olympics in a video presentation to the European Parliament. In April 2008, Chinese courts sentenced Hu to three-and-a-half years in prison for "inciting to subvert state power," setting off persistent international calls for his release. Hu was repeatedly named as a likely winner of the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize but lost out to former Finnish president and career peacemaker, Martti Ahtisaari, disappointing many in the human rights community who were looking to the Nobel committee to send a strong message to Beijing. ADVOCATES SEEK GREATER ATTENTION FOR MIGRANT WORKERS -- International human rights groups and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for greater attention to migrant workers' rights last week, as reports of migrant worker-related incidents multiplied around the globe. On Oct. 29, a migrant worker died at the hands of a half dozen assailants on a train in Mumbai, the latest in a string of deadly outbreaks of violence in India's northeast in recent weeks. Tensions between urban and rural dwellers have been steadily rising in recent years, as impoverished Bangladeshis from across the border and Indian villagers leave rural areas in droves hoping to cash in on the country's growth. Urbanites accuse the newcomers of taking away jobs, and radical Hindu politicians have been widely blamed for stoking the flames of violence. Meanwhile in Jordan, Amnesty International called on lawmakers to pass legislation that would more strictly define employment terms for domestic migrant workers, setting standards for working hours, rest time and treatment of those facing abuse. Tens of thousands of migrant women -- many from East and Southeast Asia -- work in Jordan, with the majority facing some sort of emotional or physical abuse. East and Southeast Asian governments also found themselves facing reprimands over their failure to protect migrant workers, a group particularly vulnerable to abuse, in a report released jointly (.pdf) on Oct. 23 by 16 United Nations and aid agencies. "Governments in the region are trying to manage the supply of and demand for migrant workers in a way that meets market needs and minimizes irregular migration. While progress is being made in this regard, opportunities for regular migration remain limited, and employer and migrants react by working outside the existing legal framework," the report said. One of the greatest sources of potential abuse lies in the system of commercial trade in migrant workers, in which job hunters pay agencies to secure employment and provide transit. In many cases, workers are transported illegally or trapped into debt bondage with little recourse for help. The report also noted a rise in the number of female migrants in the area and urged countries to take additional steps to increase gender-sensitive protections. NIGER CONVICTED IN SLAVERY CASE -- Anti-slavery activists the world round cheered last week's verdict by the Economic Community of West African States' (ECOWAS) Community Court of Justice finding Niger guilty of failing to protect a young girl from being sold into slavery. Hadijatou Mani was sold into slavery at age 12 in 1996, after which she regularly suffered emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Her main tasks were related to housework, but Mani was also used as a "wahiya" (sex slave), producing three children for her master. Mani, the child of a slave, faced the threat of stigma and discrimination for publicly challenging the system but considered it a risk worth taking to secure her family's future. "It was very difficult to challenge my former master and to speak out when people see you as nothing more than a slave. But I knew that this was the only way to protect my child from suffering the same fate as myself," she said. Slavery remains a serious problem in many parts of Africa -- including Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Mauritania and the Sudan -- despite legislation prohibiting the practice, with tens of thousands of people languishing in circumstances beyond their control, doomed to watch their children's lives follow the same path. In Niger alone, rights activists believe that as many as 45,000 people are currently living as slaves with no rights and little protection, despite a 2003 law aimed at dismantling the tradition. Activists hailed last week's ruling as a major victory for anti-slavery efforts, and expressed hope that the court's decision will set a precedent adopted by other judicial institutions. Juliette Terzieff is a journalist who specializes in human rights. Her regular WPR column, Rights & Wrongs, appears every other Monday.

Junta Invites Gambari to Visit Burma Again

By LALIT K JHA

Monday, November 3, 2008

---

UNITED NATIONS — Burma’s military junta has invited United Nations Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari to visit the country either in the last week of November or early next month, according to UN sources.

The sources told The Irrawaddy that decision makers at the UN’s headquarters in New York have yet to make a call on whether to accept the invitation, as they want to make sure that Gambari’s next visit doesn’t end as abysmally as the last one in August.

During his August visit, Gambari met neither the country’s military ruler, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, nor the popular leader of the country’s pro-democracy movement, Aung San Suu Kyi, whose refusal to appear for talks with the envoy was seen as a sign that his efforts have lost the confidence of the opposition.

Critics also pointed to the regime’s refusal to make any concessions on the UN’s demands for political reform and the protection of human rights as evidence of Gambari’s faltering performance.

The invitation was extended to Gambari during a recent luncheon meeting with Kyaw Tint Swe, the Burmese regime’s ambassador to the UN. No fixed dates were set for the proposed visit.

Reliable sources said that Gambari’s trip, if it goes ahead, will be used by the UN to prepare for a visit to Burma by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who was initially scheduled to travel to the country in December.

A December visit by the UN chief looks unlikely, however, as the regime has given no indication that it will meet the world body’s demands for democratic change and the release of political prisoners.

Ban lasted visited Burma in May, several weeks after Cyclone Nargis devastated the Irrawaddy delta, to break a deadlock over the regime’s refusal to allow foreign aid workers into the country.

It is believed that Gambari and top UN decision makers are demanding that the junta make a firm commitment to achieving substantive progress before deciding on exact dates for his next visit.

UN officials believe that a repeat of the August debacle would be a major setback to the world body’s efforts in this Southeast Asian nation, which has been ruled by the military for nearly half a century.

Officials said that the Burmese junta and the UN are currently engaged in negotiations over various aspects of Gambari’s visit. Prominent among these are the list of leaders and officials Gambari would have access to during his trip, and assurances from the regime that it is willing to take new steps in the right direction.

ၾကားသမွ်ုျမင္သမွ်အခ်ိဳးမက်တာေလးေတြ

"နတ္ဝတ္ပုဆိုးတိမ္မီးခိုး"

ကိုေတာသားစာေလးႏွစ္ပုဒ္ေလာက္ေရးလိုက္တာအခ်ိဳ႕ကေျပာၾကတယ္…….

ကိုေတာသားကမွန္တာေတြသိပ္ေရးတယ္……..ဘာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ထိမ္းထိမ္း

သိမ္းသိမ္းေလးေရးသင့္တယ္လို႕ဆိုပါတယ္…..ကိုေတာသားမွာလဲ

ေျပာစရာရွိပါတယ္……အဲလိုထိမ္းသိမ္းခဲ့လို႕ႏွစ္ႏွစ္ဆယ္ၾကာေနတာလို႔ပါ။

စဥ္းစားၾကည့္ၾကပါစာဖတ္သူမ်ားခင္ဗ်ာ…မေရးေတာ့မသိၾက……မေျပာေတာ့မထိမ္းသိမ္းၾက……မေဝဖန္ေတာ့မျပဳျပင္ၾက…….ဒီလိုသာဆိုရင္ေတာ့ဇတ္

ေမ်ာႀကီးျဖစ္ေနေတာ့မေပါ့။

ဒီလူေတြနဲ႔ဒီလူေတြဆိုတာက..ေထာင္ထဲမွာရတာေလးမွ်စားၾက…ေသနတ္က်ည္ဆံၾကားထဲတူတူတိုက္ပြဲဝင္ခဲ့ၾက……ဖမ္းဆီးႏွိပ္ကြပ္မူေတြၾကားထဲမွာ

ေက်ာခ်င္းကပ္အသက္ေပးၿပီးရပ္တည္ခဲ့ၾကတာ………………..ဒီက်မွသာ

ဘာပိုးေတြကူးတယ္မသိ။

အဆင္ေျပသူကအေသြးအေမြးေတြႀကီးၾက……အဆင္မေျပသူေတြကလမ္းေဘးေရာက္ၾက…..ေကာင္းၾကေတာ့ပါ့မလားခင္ဗ်ာ…….ကိုေတာသားၾကားဘူးခဲ့တဲ့

နတ္ဝတ္ပုဆိုးတိမ္မီးခိုးပံုျပင္ထဲကလိုေတာ့မျဖစ္ၾကေစလိုပါဘူး…….

ၾကားဘူးသူေတြရွိယင္လဲသီးခံၿပီးေက်ာ္ဖတ္ေပးပါ။

ေရွးတုံးကတိုင္းျပည္တခုကိုလူလိမ္ႏွစ္ေယာက္ေရာက္လာၿပီး..

ဘုရင္ႀကီးရဲ႕ဘုန္းတံခိုးေၾကာင့္

နတ္မင္းမ်ားကနတ္ပုဆိုးဆက္သလိုက္ပါတယ္လို႔တင္ေလွ်ာက္ပါသတဲ့……

ခၽြင္းခ်က္ကဘုန္းရွိသူမ်ားသာျမင္ရဆိုသကိုခင္ဗ်………ဘုရင္ကလဲသူ

မျမင္ရေတာ့ဘုန္းမရွိဘူးဆိုထီးနန္းခ်ခံရမွာေၾကာက္..မူးမတ္မ်ားကလဲ..

မျမင္ရဘူးဆိုရာထူးျပဳတ္မွာေၾကာက္…ဒီေတာ့..ဘုရင္ႀကီးမွာအဲဒီ…မရွိတဲ့…

ပုဆိုးႀကီးဝတ္တဲ့ကိန္းေရာက္ပါေပါ့…မူးမတ္မ်ားကလဲေပၚေတာ္မူေနပါၿပီဘုရားလို႕

မေျပာရဲ….ဆင္စီးၿပီး……တုိင္းခန္းလွည့္လယ္တဲ့အခါ..တိုင္းသူျပည္သားမ်ားကလဲမေျပာရဲ……ဘုန္းမရွိသူလို႕အထင္ခံရမွာေၾကာက္ၾကသကိုး……ဒီဇတ္လမ္းက….ေရႊပန္းတန္းလန္းနဲ႕ငါးႏွစ္သားေလးဆီေရာက္မွ.."ဟာဘုရင္ႀကီးကအေနာ့့္

လိုပဲေရႊပန္းတန္းလန္းနဲ႔"လို႔……..ဆိုေတာ့မွပဲဇာတ္သိမ္းခန္းေရာက္ပါေတာ့တယ္။

ကၽြန္ေတာ့မိတ္ေဆြမ်ားကိုလဲ..ဆင္ေပၚမေရာက္ခင္အဲဒီလိုေရႊပန္းတန္းလန္းႀကီး

လို႔အေျပာမခံရေစခ်င္တာ..ကိုေတာသားရဲ႕ေစတနာပါ…ေဖၚလံဖားအႀကိဳက္

ေျပာတဲ့မူးမတ္အမ်ိဳးအစားထဲလဲကိုေတာသားမပါပါရေစနဲ႔…..ၿပီးေတာ့

ကိုေတာသားမွာကဖုန္းလဲရွိၿပီးသားပါ…ေသာၾကာေစ်းကငါးရာနဲ႔ဝယ္ထား

တာပါ…ဒါေၾကာင့္အခုထဲကေပၚေတာ္မူေနပါၿပီဘုရားလို႕ေလွ်ာက္ေနတာပါ…

ပုဆိုးျပန္မဝတ္ခ်င္လဲကိုယ့္သေဘာေပါ႔ခင္ဗ်ာ…..။

တကယ္ဆိုကိုေတာသားကကိုယ့္အခ်င္းခ်င္းေပါင္ကိုယ္လွန္ေထာင္း

ေနတာပါ………..

ကိုယ့္အခ်င္းခ်င္းေထာင္းေတာ့သာသာေလးေပါ့ဗ်ာ…သူမ်ားလာေထာင္းယင္

ဘယ္သက္သာပါ့မဘဲ…ခုနပံုထဲကလို…ဆင္ေပၚေရာက္မွဆိုေတာ့…လဲစရာပုဆိုး

ကလဲမပါ…ျပန္လွည့္ရတဲ့ခရီးကလဲအေဝးႀကီး…။

အဲ….တခုေတာ့ရွိသေပါ့…ကိုေတာသားေထာင္းမယ့္ေနရာမွာအနာစိမ္း

ေပါက္ေနတယ္ဆိုယင္ေတာ့..ႀကိဳေျပာထားလို႕ရပါတယ္ဗ်ာ..အခ်င္းခ်င္းေတြပဲ…

ကိုေတာသားဆီကိုဒီSaffrontowardကတဆင့္ေမးလွမ္းပို႔လိုက္ေပါ့။

ဗ်ာ….ကိုေတာသားဘယ္သူလဲဟုတ္လား….ဟုတ္ကဲ့…ေျပာျပမယ္ေနာ္…

ဒီမိုကေရစီရရင္ေပါ့..

ဟုတ္ကဲ့....ခဏေလးေတာ့ေစာင့္ပါေနာ္............................။

ကိုေတာသား(မဲေဆာက္)

မစၥတာ ဂန္ဘာရီ ျမန္မာျပည္လာရန္ စစ္အစိုးရဖိတ္ၾကား

ကမာၻ႔ကုလသမဂၢ အေထြေထြအတြင္းေရးမႉးခ်ဳပ္၏ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဆိုင္ရာ အထူးအႀကံေပးအရာရွိ မစၥတာ အီဗရာဟင္ ဂန္ဘာရီကို ယခုလေနာက္ဆံုးအပတ္ (သို႔မဟုတ္) ဒီဇင္ဘာလဆန္းပိုင္းတြင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသို႔ လာေရာက္ရန္ စစ္အစိုးရက ဖိတ္ၾကားလိုက္သည္။

မစၥတာ အီဗရာဟင္ ဂန္ဘာရီ (ဓာတ္ပံု - ေအပီ)

မစၥတာ ဂန္ဘာရီ ခရီးစဥ္ႏွင့္ပတ္သက္၍ အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံ၊ နယူးေယာက္ၿမိဳ႕ ကုလသမဂၢ ဌာနခ်ဳပ္ရွိ တာဝန္ရွိသူမ်ားက လြန္ခဲ့သည့္ ၾသဂုတ္လခရီးစဥ္ကဲ့သို႔ ထပ္မံႀကံဳေတြ႔မည္ကိုလည္း စိုးရိမ္လ်က္ ရွိသည္။

လြန္ခဲ့သည့္ ၾသဂုတ္လက မစၥတာ ဂန္ဘာရီ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသို႔ ေရာက္ရွိေနစဥ္ ကာလအတြင္း နအဖ စစ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မႉးႀကီး သန္းေ႐ႊႏွင့္ ေတြ႔ဆံု ခြင့္မရသကဲ့သို႔ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ကလည္း ေတြ႔ဆံုရန္ျငင္းပယ္ခဲ့သည္။

မစၥတာ ဂန္ဘာရီႏွင့္ စစ္အစိုးရ၏ ကုလသမဂၢကိုယ္စားလွယ္ ဦးေက်ာ္တင့္ေဆြ တို႔ ေတြ႔ဆံုခဲ့အၿပီး ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသို႔ လာေရာက္ရန္ ဖိတ္ၾကားခံရျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။ မစၥတာ ဂန္ဘာရီက ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသို႔ သြားေရာက္မည့္ ေန႔ရက္ အတိအက်ကိုမူ ထုတ္ေဖာ္ေျပာဆိုျခင္း မရွိေသးေပ။

မစၥတာ ဂန္ဘာရီ၏ ယခုအႀကိမ္ခရီးစဥ္သည္လည္း ၾသဂုတ္လခရီးစဥ္ကဲ့သို႔ မေအာင္ျမင္မႈမ်ားႏွင့္ ထပ္မံႀကံဳေတြ႔ရဦးမည္ဟု ကုလသမဂၢ အရာရွိမ်ားက ယံုၾကည္ေနၾကသည္။

လြန္ခဲ့သည့္ ၾသဂုတ္လ မစၥတာ ဂန္ဘာရီ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွျပန္သြားအၿပီး အတိုက္အခံပါတီျဖစ္သည့္ အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ အပါအဝင္ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီအင္အားစုမ်ားက ၎အား ေဝဖန္မႈမ်ားျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ၾကသည္။ မစၥတာ ဂန္ဘာရီ၏ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး ႀကိဳးပမ္းမႈမ်ားသည္ အလုပ္မျဖစ္၊ လက္ဆုပ္လက္ကိုင္ျပႏိုင္သည့္ တိုးတက္မႈတစံုတရာမရွိဟု အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ ပါတီက ေၾကညာခ်က္ထုတ္ျပန္ကာ ေဝဖန္ခဲ့သည္။

မစၥတာ ဂန္ဘာရီသည္ ကုလသမဂၢ လက္ေထာက္အတြင္းေရးမႉးခ်ဳပ္တာ၀န္ယူထားစဥ္ ၂၀၀၆ ခုႏွစ္ ေမလ ႏွင့္ ႏို၀င္ဘာလ မ်ားမွစတင္၍ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသို႔ ၂ ႀကိမ္သြားေရာက္ခဲ့ၿပီး အေထြေထြအတြင္းေရးမႉးခ်ဳပ္၏ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဆိုင္ရာအထူးအႀကံေပး ပုဂၢိဳလ္တာ၀န္ျဖင့္ လြန္ခဲ့သည့္ႏွစ္ စက္တင္ဘာလမွ ယခုႏွစ္ ၾသဂုတ္လ ေနာက္ဆံုးအႀကိမ္အထိ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသို႔ ၄ ႀကိမ္ သြားေရာက္ခဲ့သည္။

ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ၿခံထဲက အမႈိက္ကုိ စည္ပင္သာယာလာသိမ္း ရန္ကုန္မွာႏုိင္ငံေရးေကာလာဟလထြက္

ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၏ ေနအိမ္ၿခံ၀င္းထဲမွ အမႈိက္မ်ားကုိ ႏုိ္၀င္ဘာ (၁) ရက္ ေန႔လယ္ပုိင္း၌ စည္ပင္သာယာ၀န္ထမ္းမ်ား လာေရာက္ရွင္းလင္းေနသျဖင့္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအရ တစုံတရာ အေၾကာင္းရွိမည္ထင္ၿပီး ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕တြင္ ေ၀ဖန္ခန္႔မွန္းေနၾကသည္။

မ်က္ျမင္သက္ေသမ်ား၏ ေျပာဆုိခ်က္အရ ႏုိ၀င္ဘာ (၁) ရက္ ေန႔လယ္ပုိင္း၌ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၏ ၿခံတခါးပြင့္ေနသည့္အျပင္ စည္ပင္သာယာ၀န္ထမ္းမ်ား ၿခံထဲမွထြက္လာသည္ဟု သိရသည္။

မ်က္ျမင္သက္ေသတဦးက “က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ တကၠသုိလ္ထဲမွာ ဘြဲ ့ႏွင္းသဘင္အခမ္းအနားကုိတက္ဖုိ႔ အဲဒီတကၠသုိလ္ရိပ္သာလမ္းကေန ျဖတ္သြားတာပါ။ အဲဒီမွာ ျမင္ခဲ့ရတာက ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ရဲ႕ ၿခံတံခါးကပြင့္ေနၿပီး စည္ပင္ အမႈိက္သိမ္းကားက ၿခံေရွ႕မွာ ရပ္ထားတယ္။ ေနာက္စည္ပင္၀န္ထမ္းေတြက ၿခံထဲကေနထြက္လာတာကုိ ေတြ႕ရတယ္” ဟု ေျပာသည္။

ထုိျမင္ကြင္းေၾကာင့္ ကုလအတြင္းေရးမႉးခ်ဳပ္ ဘန္ကီမြန္းလာႏုိင္သည့္အတြက္ အာဏာပုိင္မ်ားက ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္အိမ္ၿခံကုိ ေဆးသုတ္ ရွင္းလင္းေပေနသလား စသျဖင့္ ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕တြင္ ခန္႔မွန္းေ၀ဖန္ေျပာဆုိေနၾကသည္။

အဆုိပါကိစၥႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ အန္အယ္လ္ဒီ ေျပာခြင့္ရပုဂၢိဳလ္ ဦးဥာဏ္၀င္းကုိ ေခတ္ၿပိဳင္မွ ဆက္သြယ္ေမးျမန္းရာ ဦးဥာဏ္၀င္းက “(ေဆးသုတ္ အမႈိက္ရွင္းတာ) ဟုတ္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အဲဒါ စည္ပင္ကမဟုတ္ဘူး။ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ သူကိုယ္တိုင္ အစီအစဥ္နဲ႔ လုပ္တာပါ။ တံခါးေဆးသုတ္တာ ကိုယ့္အစီအစဥ္နဲ႔ ကိုယ္သုတ္တာ။ က်ေနာ္သိတာကေတာ့ ၿခံထဲကျမက္ပံုႀကီးကို စည္ပင္က လာယူတာျဖစ္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။ ေဒၚစုရဲ႕ အစီအစဥ္နဲ႔ ျမက္ေတြကိုရွင္းတယ္။ ၿခံထဲမွာ ရွင္းလိုက္ေတာ့ ျမက္ပံုႀကီးျဖစ္ေနတာေပါ့။ အဲဒါကို စည္ပင္က လာယူတာျဖစ္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။ က်ေနာ္ အဲဒီလိုပဲ နားလည္ထားပါတယ္” ဟု ေျပာသည္။

ယခင္ကလည္း ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ၿခံထဲမွ အမႈိက္မ်ားကုိ စည္ပင္သာယာမွ လာေရာက္ သိမ္းဖူးသည့္ သာဓကရွိေၾကာင္း၊ သို႔ေသာ္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္သည္ ၎၏ၿခံကုိရွင္းလင္းရာ၌ အျခားသူမ်ား လာေရာက္လုပ္ကုိင္ျခင္းကုိ လက္ခံေလ့မရွိေၾကာင္းလည္း ဦးဥာဏ္၀င္းက ေျပာသည္။

အာဏာပုိင္မ်ားက ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ေနအိမ္ေရွ႕ လမ္းပုိင္းကုိ မၾကာခင္က ျပန္လည္ဖြင့္ေပးလုိက္ေသာ္လည္း ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ေနအိမ္ေဘးတခ်က္ရွိ ယာဥ္တား ေမာင္းတန္မ်ားကုိမူ ျဖဳတ္သိမ္းျခင္းမရွိေသးေၾကာင္း မ်က္ျမင္သက္ေသမ်ားက ေျပာသည္။