Regarding the matter, a memorandum would be served to the CM of the State and Prime Minister of India in protest against the border fencing works and if the government continues with its works of border fencing, series of intense agitation would be launched in collaboration with CSOs of the State, he cautioned. The 68 children, recruited previously and sent to different military command areas, were handed back to their parents on Wednesday. All other under-age child soldiers from the army are expected to be discharged within 18 months, the military authorities said.
Assistance is being provided to the freed children by the military to pursue education and get job with healthcare extended to them. It was the fourth time the Myanmar military discharged child soldiers on Wednesday.
The first release took place in September when 42 under-age children were handed back. A group of 24 was released in February , with another 42 discharged in July Myanmar and the United Nations started engagement in a dialogue on issues related to child soldiers five years ago, agreeing to the appointment of a high level officials from the Ministry of Social Welfare to engage with the UN Country Team and especially the UN Children's Fund on all issues related to children and armed conflict, as well as the setting up of a monitoring mechanism to find out the real situation in the country regarding child soldiers with a task force established.
Myanmar has made efforts and worked for ensuring not to recruit minors for military service, promising continuous supervision over the personnel concerned to ensure that they do not accept minors. In June , Myanmar and the United Nations signed a landmark agreement in Nay Phi Taw for the release of children from the country's armed forces.
The new plan of action set out concrete and time-bound activities to ensure the separation of children from the Myanmar armed forces and to prevent further recruitment and use of children under age. In November , Myanmar government and the United Nations Children's Fund signed a basic cooperation agreement for a 5-year national-level project for the development of children in the country. Brang Yong and Lahpai Gum, two Kachin men accused of supporting armed rebels and attacking national interests, appeared before a regional court last week.
Both men were accused of violating laws on association with unlawful groups. Kachin has been the scene of intermittent conflict between rebel and government forces. Myanmar marked Thursday as the 25th anniversary of pro-democracy protests squashed violently by the military regime. Myanmar in held democratic elections, earning praise from the international community. Violence in Kachin, as well as communal conflict in western Rakhine state, have brought renewed criticism from some members of the human rights community.
The Irrawaddy reports the government has released dozens of prisoners caught up in the fighting in Kachin this year. During uprising his reports helped bring the mass protests against military rule and their subsequent brutal crackdown by the army to world attention. He came to Myanmar via Thailand and Bangladesh, interviewing students and members of the public. He was subsequently blacklisted from returning to the country and after the military crack-down he stayed in Bangladesh to keep in touch with sources from Myanmar.
His trip will take ten days and he has arranged to meet with people he encountered and interviewed back in His reporting provides an important outside witness account of this landmark event in Myanmars history.
He has since worked as a correspondent between and throughout Asia. Gunness reported on the Iraq crisis and became a spokesman for the UN during the war in Yugoslavia. He worked for 23 years as a reporter and producer for the BBC. From yesterday, trucks from Myawaddy have resumed transportation of goods. Trucks from Yangon have also arrived Myawaddy, an official from Myawaddy border trade point told Mizzima on August 8.
Food and basic supplies for flood victims in Karen state are also being delivered. The cross-border trade will return to its usual state within a few days. Now transportation has reached its normal condition.
At the moment, we still have leftover imported goods and we will order more Thai goods after we run out of them, Nay lin Myit, a Thai goods trader from Myawaddy, told Mizzima.
Due to heavy rainfall, all transportation routes from Myawaddy border trade area were closed since August Importation of major goods from Thailand such as food stuffs and electrical goods were suspended. Likewise, banks in Myawaddy Township were also forced to close down. Some Rohingya asylum seekers broke the locks on two rooms and then tried to storm the centre's secure front door in southern Phang Nga province, where many have been held for months, police told AFP.
He said police fired water cannon through the gated front door to prevent the refugees, who are all men, leaving and "to calm them down". A local official requesting anonymity confirmed the incident, adding the Rohingya men want to come out "for prayers for Hari Raya" -- as the festival of Eid, marking the end of the Muslim holy month, is known locally.
Police said they would allow five of the detainees out at a time "but all of them still want to leave" prompting the angry stand-off. Many of the asylum-seekers have been locked up in the overcrowded and reportedly insanitary centre for several months, prompting rights groups to call for their release.
Thousands of Muslim Rohingya boat people -- including women and children -- have fled the former junta-ruled country since Buddhist-Muslim clashes a year ago in the state of Rakhine in western Myanmar. Those who arrived in Thailand have been "helped on" by the kingdom's navy towards Malaysia -- their destination of choice -- or detained as illegal immigrants.
Thailand initially said the asylum-seekers would be allowed to stay for six months while the government worked with the UN refugee agency UNHCR to try to find other countries willing to accept them. But overseas help has not been forthcoming so far, leaving the refugees in limbo, and separated from their families. Tan urged Thai authorities to "urgently" transfer them to shelters that will allow families to be reunited and provide "greater freedom of movement".
Read More Min Ko Naing, a prominent student leader in , spoke at the commemoration. But the truth would be revealed at last. It shows that how courageous people those joined today commemorate this special day, the student leader said.
It is a huge shift from previous years, when the military government banned any public mentions of the bloody crackdown, in which more than 3, people died.
Since a nominally civilian government took power in , Burma has released hundreds of political prisoners, reduced government censorship, and allowed democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi to successfully run for parliament. Earlier, activists laid wreaths at Rangoon's Sule Pagoda, the site of the initial crackdown.
Dozens of protesters also marched peacefully through Rangoon. Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign UK says despite recent reforms, Burma's government has never held accountable those responsible for the deaths. There is no process of justice, accountability, truth or reconciliation at all," he said. However, Farmaner said that increased openness is reflected in the government's willingness to allow what he calls unprecedented commemorations of the protests.
Basically, you've got the same people in charge, and you've got many of the same issues - people arrested for peacefully protesting, the Burmese army still attacking ethnic minorities," he explained. People can talk more openly about the problems, but at the same time those problems are not being fully addressed.
The New York-based group called the issue an "unaddressed open wound that challenges the government's rhetoric of reform. In the past, no remembrances will be allowed to mark the anniversary in Burma, and heavy police security will be seen in big cities especially in Rangoon Yangon around Shwedagon Pagoda to fend off any protests.
This time of Silver Jubilee, students and people from all walks of life mark the historic peoples revolution by saluting the fallen heroes around the country especially in the big cities such as Rangoon and Mandalay. Members of Myanmar's prominent 88 generation students group hold wreaths during a march to mark the 25th anniversary of Myanmar's pro-democracy uprising in Yangon, Myanmar, Thursday, Aug.
The uprising against the year socialist military dictatorship which spread nationwide on Aug. Concurrently, two ministers of President Thein Seins government unusually attended an event on Wednesday to mark the 25th anniversary of the blood-spattered uprising. The uprising was cracked down on 8- by the then-ruling military junta in which Thein Sein and several senior military officers in existing quasi-civilian government were guilty commanders in the previous regime blamed for various brutalities and human right violations.
In September , Burmas then dictator General Ne Win made mismanagement with downgrading general economy by abruptly revoking certain value of the currency notes.
As a superstitious man, he wanted only 45 and 90 kyat denomination notes in circulation. He made such foolish decision, because they were divisible by nine, which he considered a lucky number for his destiny. However, cancelling existing currency notes which people keep as their savings were done away with overnight. Protests in relation to the swelling economic catastrophe were started by students of Burma, particularly in Rangoon.
On 13 March , students protesting in front of the Rangoon Institute of Technology ran into the security police plus military personnel and some students including Phone Maw, a fourth year engineering student, were shot dead.
The students death provoked more and more mass protests, which draw ordinary citizens and Burmas much revered monks together with the avant-garde students. Myanmar activists hold a protesting poster in front of the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, on Wednesday, Aug 8, During this time, dissenting newspapers were freely brought out, banners of fighting-peacock were flying everywhere, coordinated demonstrations were held and many democratic speakers appeared in public meetings.
On 26 August, Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of independence icon Aung San who had come back to Burma to look after her ailing mother, made a speech at Shwedagon Pagoda where roughly half million supporters appeared and subsequently she became the public figure of the democracy movement. Eventually, General Ne Win resigned as ruling socialist-party boss on 23 July.
However, he made a last warning that when the army shoots, it shoots in a straight line. On 18 September, the military seized power supporting General Ne Wins words. Soldiers gunned down protesters using automatic rifle. They sprayed bullets into crowds of dissidents. Hundreds of activists were taken away in army-trucks and most of them were never seen again. According to observers, analysts and Human rights watchers declared that more than 3, innocent citizens were killed.
Since her initial arrest, she has been allowed only a few brief years of freedom. Since that time on, thousands of political prisoners have been came under arbitrary arrests and thrown into jail under unfair laws and trials in the absence of their lawyers.
The military governments penal code allows imposing excessive sentences against political activists. For instance, article 5 j of the penal code allows authorities to impose 7 to 20 year prison terms on anyone who joined in peaceful protest or showing different opinion against the regime.
Another article provides an indefinite prison term for criticizing the authorities policies or behaviors. According to international legal standard, all political prisoners have committed no crime at all. So, for the current President Thein Sein government, releasing of political prisoners should be the first and foremost of the political reform urgently requires today. Subsequently, the above mentioned undemocratic laws must be done away with as a necessity for change.
According to critics and watchdogs, the 7 November election, won by the military-backed political proxies, was flawed by widespread complaints of vote rigging and the exclusion of the party led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who was released from house arrest shortly after the polls. If Thein Sein government has decided to stick to the political reform course, it must pledge to amend the undemocratic Constitution with respect to the self-determination of the ethnic people.
Moreover, the government has to acknowledge the burning desires of the people participated in democracy movement. Although the successive military-backed rulers try to eliminate the history of peoples democracy movement, their attempts are in vain. In the same way, they also do their utmost to do away with the peoples demands in the movement. But, it is also with little hope as yet. Therefore, President Thein Sein should honor the historic uprising as a cornerstone of the countrys democracy foundation.
Moreover, he needs to take accountability for the bloodshed crackdown on the pro-democracy insurrection as the students call an apology from the government. Some 5, people crammed into a convention centre and thousands more watched large television screens outside to witness a landmark ceremony recalling the mass student protests 25 years ago that were brutally crushed by the then-junta.
The event, attended by members of the opposition and ruling parties, diplomats and Buddhist monks, comes amid sweeping changes in Myanmar since the end of outright military dictatorship two years ago. We have to move forward," opposition leader Suu Kyi told the crowd, listing the tasks still to be completed in the fast-changing nation, including country-wide peace, constitutional reform and rule of law.
On August 8, widespread student-led demonstrations against Myanmar's military rulers were brutally suppressed in an army assault in Yangon. But they marked the start of a huge popular uprising against the junta. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets across the country calling for democracy, in protests that came to a brutal end the following month with an army crackdown that killed more than 3, Suu Kyi, who had been living in London but returned to Yangon in to nurse her sick mother, was quick to take a leading role in the pro-democracy movement, delivering speeches to the masses at Yangon's Shwedagon Pagoda.
The Nobel laureate, who spent much of the following two decades under house arrest until she was freed just after controversial elections in , is now an MP as part of sweeping reforms under a new quasi-civilian regime that came to power in Other changes that have seen the country lauded by the international community have included freeing hundreds of political prisoners -- many of whom were jailed for their roles in the rallies -- and ceasefires with major ethnic rebel groups.
Ko Ko Gyi, a key figure in the protests and a leader of the 88 Generation activist group, said campaigns to push Myanmar further on the path to democracy should maintain "the spirit" of the student rallies.
The situation of the country today is a result of the people's movement. Although we have not reached the situation we want, we are at the beginning of the road," he told AFP. Earlier, hundreds of people watched some 50 campaigners march through downtown Yangon in an unauthorised procession that irked local law enforcers. Marchers refused to halt when the head of police in the area asked them to stop.
Police allowed them to continue, standing aside but taking pictures of those involved. We are just walking," said Tun Tun Oo, a year-old businessman who was a student protester in Activists also laid wreaths at Sule Pagoda in the centre of Yangon, which was at the heart of the August 8 crackdown.
Win Min, a former student protester, said the scene in the area 25 years ago was "the worst and most unforgettable of my life". The Religions for Peace Myanmar organisation believes this is also a good way to showcase unity among various faiths.
Myanmar has seen pockets of communal violence recently, and various non-governmental organisations are looking at ways to ease sectarian tensions. Religions for Peace Myanmar feels it is not about preaching the different beliefs. Instead, it is to lead by example to show the citizens that different religious leaders are collaborating for the benefit of the people.
Aye Lwin, chief convener at The Islamic Centre of Myanmar, said: "The religious leaders, intellectuals, we've been holding seminars, workshops, prayer meetings.
We are getting along very well. We need to trickle down to the grassroots level because there were some people who are trying to have this hate campaign.
So we need to clarify all these things and prove practically that these allegations are not true. More significantly, it was held in a room with people from different religions. She said: "I thank them for bringing the message of peace here. We have different religions with different beliefs. But now, I'm happy all religions have come together to experience harmony.
It is hoped the people will go back to their village and forge closer friendships and understand that they can all live together in harmony no matter what religion they belong to. The participants also agreed that religious leaders must continue to spread the message of the importance of understanding and tolerance among their followers. They can give the message easily to the people. Especially for me, being a priest, in giving the homily and during the mass, we can give this message to them so that they may accept.
Resolving religious conflicts is part and parcel of Myanmar's political growth and development and it is something the international community is watching closely. Washington remains concerned about human rights abuses against ethnic minorities and the role of the army in Myanmar despite democratic reforms that have seen a shift from decades of authoritarian rule. The reforms have led to a dramatic improvement in U.
President Barack Obama issued Wednesdays executive order to extend the gems ban because wide-ranging sanctions legislation lapsed when it was up for renewal in late July. The original sponsor, senior Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, announced in May he would not seek to extend the legislation because of Myanmars democratic progress.
McConnell was for years one of the harshest critics in Congress of Myanmars military rulers and a fervent supporter of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act he sponsored had imposed a broad ban on all imports from Myanmar. Obama waived its provisions in November other than on gems.
Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said in a statement Wednesday that it is part of the administrations efforts to promote responsible trade and investment in support of Burmas reform process. Engaging Myanmar has been a rare area of agreement between Obama and McConnell, largely because of Suu Kyis support for building relations with Thein Seins reformist government.
The Republican senator is also supportive of the administrations intent to gradually build ties between the U. But other U. Rhodes said the administration was maintaining the ban due to continuing concerns, including with respect to labor and human rights. Kachin activists last month wrote to Obama and congressional leaders complaining that Myanmars central government retains control of ruby and jade mining concessions in Kachin and northern Shan State.
Some 10, Kachin people have been displaced by fighting in the gem-rich area of Hpakant as Myanmar troops sought to secure control of gem mining interests, the activists said. Despite the U. Myanmar is one of the worlds biggest producers of jade and by some estimates, source of up to 90 percent of its rubies. Thursday marks the 25th anniversary of the so-called Generation '88 pro-democracy movement in Myanmar.
Hundreds of people were killed when the military regime responded with force to the protests. Hugo Swire, British foreign minister for Asian affairs, said the anniversary is an opportunity to memorialize those who fought for democracy in Myanmar, known then as Burma.
Some protest leaders visited recently with British officials. Swire said their freedom to do so is a testament to political reforms in Myanmar, which started with general elections in The United Nations and members of the human rights community have expressed concern about Myanmar's reform agenda given ongoing violence and political abuses.
The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders said Thursday it was frustrated by the arrest of three pro-democracy leaders in Myanmar. It said Ko Htin Kyaw, leader of the Movement for Democracy Current Force, and his supporters face three years in prison for insulting the state during a July protest. The rights group described the measure as evidence of "judicial harassment.
In , the military began to loosen its grip on the country, increasing civil freedoms and offering some political and economic opportunity for citizens. But some are wondering whether the country can truly transition to democracy if it fails to reconcile with its brutal past.
This week marks the 25th anniversary of a violent chapter in the country's history: the nationwide democracy uprising of Aug. Despite being rich in resources, the country went into a long period of economic stagnation following a military takeover.
It reached the point where people were unwilling to even mention the name of the dictator," Ne Win, says Burt Levin, the American ambassador in Rangoon at the time. More From Radio Diaries Read more, including biographies of the individuals heard in the story,.
Demonstrators march on a street in downtown Rangoon in August Students, civil servants, monks and others joined the protests that summer. Thousands of people marched on the streets of Rangoon, the capital at the time, and in cities and towns around the country. Demonstrators sang the national anthem and chanted slogans like, "End the military dictatorship! Daw Aye, Daw Aye! Our cause, our cause! To set up democracy: Daw Aye, Daw Aye!
Shortly before midnight on Aug. Despite this, demonstrations continued to grow and spread throughout August. Suu Kyi, the daughter of Burmese independence leader Aung San, was in the country by coincidence. She had lived abroad most of her life and had returned to Burma only in March to take care of her ill mother.
Student activists convinced her to join the movement and, on Aug. Here, she meets in March with protesters who oppose a copper mine backed by Chinese investors. She supports the mining project. Both men are former military officers, leading their Southeast Asian nations along a sometimes rocky path to democracy. A Myanmarese girl carries away a tin roof in Meiktila, Myanmar.
Violence between Buddhists and Muslims in March destroyed large areas of the town and left thousands of Muslims homeless. But he, like many in the crowd of half-million that day, was convinced by the time Suu Kyi was finished talking. The democracy movement finally had its leader. Long-ruling dictator Ne Win had stepped down in late July, but most Burmese understood that he remained the master behind his replacements in the regime.
As the protests continued through the summer, the rulers promised multiparty elections, but this failed to satisfy the demonstrators. By September, much of the government administration had collapsed as civil servants, police units and even some soldiers joined the protests.
Activists organized citizens to take up a number of basic government tasks. Student leaders and a handful of older politicians began to build what they hoped would be the foundation of a transitional government. The following day the military began a coordinated crackdown across the country. Another 3, Burmese were put in prison, and some 10, activists had fled the country. Looking To Elections In In , the military government finally held the elections first promised in And, to everyone's surprise, they were considered free and fair.
The government ignored the results and rounded up a number of opposition politicians, including Suu Kyi. She spent years under house arrest. She was released in , and, last year, was elected to parliament along with a handful of other members of her National League for Democracy. She's planning to run for president in the nationwide elections planned for Many students who first became activists in spent much of the last 25 years in jail or in exile.
Today they're continuing their democracy and human rights work. Edited by Deborah George and Ben Shapiro. About five thousand people crammed into a convention centre on Thursday and thousands more watched large television screens outside to witness a landmark ceremony recalling the huge student protests that were brutally crushed by the then-junta.
Win Kyu, left, and his wife Khin Htay Win hold a portrait of their year-old daughter Win Maw Oo, who was killed during the protests. The photo behind them of their badly injured daughter came to symbolise the brutality of the crackdown. Photo: AP It was aimed at further propelling democratic reforms. Advertisement Activists expressed jubilation at the scale of the event, but urged even more people to join in.
It's just a few if you compare with the people who participated in the democracy uprising 25 years ago. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets across the country calling for democracy, in protests that came to a brutal end the following month with an army crackdown that killed more than Myanmar has undergone sweeping political changes since a quasi-civilian regime replaced junta rule in Reforms have included the freeing of hundreds of political prisoners many of whom were jailed for their roles in the rallies and the welcoming of democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi and her party into parliament.
The Nobel laureate, who took part in Thursday's commemorations, rose to prominence during the protests. She had been living in London but returned to Yangon in to nurse her sick mother, and was quick to take a leading role in the pro-democracy movement, delivering speeches to the masses at Yangon's Shwedagon Pagoda.
The photograph, thrust to prominence when it ran on the cover of Newsweek, came to symbolise the defeat of a uprising in the nation then called Burma.
The revolts end cemented the power of the military, sent thousands of activists to prison and helped bring a future Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, to prominence. Only now, a generation after the events of the day known as 8. The door is only open a little bit, says Win, now 48, taking long pauses as he tries to find the right words. I want to talk, for the sake of history, and all those who died. In my heart, I feel like this is the right time.
But still I feel insecure. It is a story from so many nations that have struggled with the aftermaths of their own horrors. When is the right time to push long-hidden conversations into the open, to deal with the past, to cope?
Argentina faced this in the years after the Dirty War of the s, when the nation tried to move past decades of military oppression.
It happened in Cambodia, where the savagery of Pol Pots regime trained an entire nation to remain silent. It has happened repeatedly in modern China, where the Tiananmen crackdown remains a largely forbidden topic, and where even the half-century-old historical realities of the Great Leap Forward Mao Zedongs disastrous policies that led to widespread famine and the deaths of tens of millions in the late s and early s have come into the open only recently.
We avoided even making reference to it, said Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who was born and raised in China. Theres still a constant tug of war, between the censors and the people who want to tell the truth Subtly, gradually, though, this is beginning to change.
When change does come, though, where does it come from? How do fear and silence eventually get out of the way so that a country can openly discuss its own history?
The power of time Some of it is simply the power of time. Powerful politicians die. Historys traumatic events are eclipsed by more recent traumas. Small steps toward truth cascade into more. Eventually, details begin to emerge. The truth about famine, for example, had long been known in rough outlines outside China but was known inside the country by only the political elite and a handful of scholars.
In recent years, even the government has begun to acknowledge that Maos policies were partly to blame. Generations of pessimists Myanmar, like China, is a nation where dictatorial rule has become less harsh, though it remains far from truly democratic.
And Myanmars history has bred generations of pessimists. After Gen. Ne Win seized control in a coup, it went from being one of Asias wealthiest nations to one of the worlds poorest.
Resentment over Ne Wins corrupt and inefficient policies began to grow in and simmered until Aug. A civilian President, named amid the bloodshed, lasted less than a month before being ousted in a September 18 coup.
It was during protests that followed the September coup when Win Zaw, then a doctor at Yangons main hospital, heard that demonstrators had been shot by soldiers and needed medical help. Working with an older colleague, Saw Lwin, he repeatedly travelled by ambulance into the protest zone, carrying the injured to the hospital. On the third trip, as they rounded the corner on to Merchant Road, one of the citys main streets, they saw dozens of dead and injured demonstrators.
Blood was everywhere. The two doctors spotted a young girl, badly injured. Many of the fiercest protesters were students, and the girl was wearing the uniform of a high school student a dark wrap-around longyi and white blouse.
The shirt was almost completely red with blood. I listened carefully and found that her heart was still beating, Win said. She whispered, Brother, help me. Urging her not to give up, the two doctors ran with year-old Win Maw Oo to the ambulance. That is where Steve Lehman, a year-old American photographer, captured them, their fear and exhaustion obvious, their doctors coats flapping.
The girl would never see the photograph. She died the same evening. Weeks later, when the photo appeared on Newsweeks cover, Win Zaw feared there would be trouble. In , he was detained by the military, blindfolded, taken to an interrogation centre and held for five days. While he was not tortured, he was deeply shaken by the arrest. We hope you incorporate these Voice Banks into your music production process, either as main vocalists, or even just for background vocals.
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