The Canadian Link to Burma

Within a few days Canadians will hear an outrageous news about a Canadian link to Burma. I will translate it from a journal. wait and see.

I Love This Article!!

Armed Intervention Debate Goes Online [Commentary]
By Aung Zaw
November 28, 2007

The debate on humanitarian intervention and covert operations to remove Burma’s regime leaders isn’t just a domestic talking point but is increasingly being taken up on Internet Web sites, in the media and even in US congressional hearings.

In what was regarded as a “pointed remark” at the height of the September crackdown, Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, for instance, warned the Burmese military dictators of the potential consequences of their actions.

Some observers say the Burmese people would definitely welcome any foreign liberation troops that could remove regime leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe and his regime in Naypyidaw—a sitting target for air strikes.

“If you slaughter the monks and those calling for democracy, when your regime falls, and it will fall, you will be pursued to every corner of the globe like the Nazi criminals before you,” said the hawkish legislator from California.

Exactly two years previously, in September 2005, Rohrabacher suggested pressuring the Burmese regime with the “threat of military intervention.”

In testimony before the Asia and Pacific Subcommittee of the House of Representatives International Relations Committee, Rohrabacher urged US support for all attempts by the Burmese people, including revolutions and covert operations, to topple the regime.

Aside from hot air, some serious thought has been—and is being—given to the possibility of an invasion to remove the hated regime.

The London-based independent think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), said on May 19, 1993, that a better case could be made out for the UN to intervene in Burma than in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The IISS said that UN intervention in Burma "would have a clear aim: removing SLORC [the regime’s previous name, the State Law and Order Restoration Council], a finite end, and the support of the majority of the [Burmese] people."

Prince Khaled Sultan Abdul Aziz, commander of the Saudi contingent in the 1991 Gulf War, called for “Desert Storm” style action against Burma after he visited Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh in April 1992.

US Senator Joe Lieberman suggested in an article in the New York Daily News in October that the Bush administration should be asked to “actively investigate how else our military and intelligence capabilities can be used to put additional stress on the regime.”

William Kristol, founder and editor of the Weekly Standard, a hawkish writer who advocated the war on Iraq, wrote in The Washington Post on October 7: “What about limited military actions, overt or covert, against the regime's infrastructure—its military headquarters, its intelligence apparatus, its rulers' lavish palaces? Couldn't such actions have a deterrent effect, or might not they help open up fissures in the regime? Have we really done all we can to avert the disaster that is unfolding?”

Isn’t it ironic that Burma, preparing now to celebrate the 60th anniversary of its independence, now generates debate about a new invasion from outside?

Some observers say the Burmese people would definitely welcome any foreign liberation troops that could remove regime leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe and his regime in Naypyidaw—a sitting target for air strikes. But then what? After a few years of “liberation,” would Burma witness a new armed struggle to eject the invaders?

Burma is one of the countries identified by Condoleezza Rice as outposts of tyranny when she was appointed US Secretary of State in 2002. Cuba, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Iran and North Korea were the others. So far, some say, Burma is off the US radar screen.

On October 12, Ramzy Baroud, author and editor of the online magazine PalestineChronicle.com, posed the question: “So why aren't the US and Britain responding to the situation in Burma with the same determination that they exhibited for Iraq, and now Iran?”

In an article titled ‘Burma Is Not Iraq,’ Baroud criticized the West’s hypocritical stand: “Western leaders, aware of the criticism that awaits them, have paid the necessary lip service, but little else. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown decried the use of violence against protesters and demanded European sanctions. President Bush declared that Americans ‘stand in solidarity with these brave individuals’.

“Israel, on the other hand, denied its military links to the junta, despite much contradictory evidence. It justified its unwillingness to influence the situation on the grounds of nostalgia—Burma was the first South Asian country to recognize Israel.”

He continued: “If Iraq has been a lesson of any worth it is that the Burmese are much better off without American bombing raids or British napalm in the name of intervention. True reforms and democracy can only come from within, from the closed fists of the determined dispossessed. Indeed, Burma is not Iraq, and Thank God for that.”

These articles provoked some vigorous online feedback.

“Why is it that a guy who thinks US military action is always the answer is any more credible than the peacenik who thinks it never is?” fumed one reader of Kristoll’s article.

One letter writer contributed to the debate on the online Tiscali Forum: “So why aren't we proposing an invasion of Burma to remove the regime there? At the time of the Iraq war, we were told about the ‘moral case for regime change’ in Iraq. Well, isn't there a moral case for regime change in Burma? Why aren't the USA and UK sending a task force to liberate the people of Burma?”

The letter continued: “Burma has a long coastline, allowing many landing points for our forces. The western-friendly neighbors, India and Thailand, might allow our troops to invade from their borders. It should not be too difficult. What's the big difference between Iraq and Burma, then? Apart from the fact that Burma hasn't got huge oil reserves?”

A debate on the Helium website produced the opinion: “Fundamentally, Iraq was a country of interest to the US government, while Burma has long been off America's radar, as it's a highly secretive country. Burma has pursued a very low profile and made it difficult for people to visit. On the other hand, Saddam's Iraq pursued the limelight and enjoyed pushing the envelope. Saddam pursued a cult of personality and relished brinkmanship.

“There are many differences between Iraq and Burma, but the most important seem to be that Iraq had lots of oil, threatened Israel and insulted American leaders. Iraq had been a country of concern for years and it had lots of powerful enemies.”

Simon Taylor added a humorous slant to the debate on the Tiscali Forums Web site: “The leaders of Burma didn't try any funny business with George Bush's dad when he was in power. God hasn't told Bush to invade Burma. (YET)!”

Great Respect to our Monks who led the September Protest

Latest News from Yangon

Burma is back to normal, according to reliable sources, but small businesses connected to EU countries are likely to suffer in very near future. Many Expatriates who have investments in Yangon are ready to move to Chiang Mai; in next week, some of them will go to look at real estate there, some have already bought small condos.

Who will get benefit out of the EU sanctions? I am not so sure what is the agreement between the foreign companies and the regime. I think some companies may have been trying to avoid the tax as much as they could. If you have more informations or personal believe you can leave at comment section.

Dear folk,

There is a very touching article in klosayhtoo.blogspot.com, but written in Burmese. The article is all about torturing methods from notorious Burmese prisons. I am thinking of translating it into English in mid December.

Dear all, the following message is very important for those who do not understand much about Sanctions and who believe in what the Military Junta said, " Ordinary people are hurting because of the sanctions which is asked by Aung San Suu Kyi"!!
Anyway, I copied this from Moe Thee Zon's website. The original article written is written by Win Moe. If you want to read the entire article, please visit komoethee.blogspot.com


SPDC is cunning and shrewd. Do not forget they already outlived and out-maneuvered Razali and Kofi Annan. Few days ago SPDC tried to play politics by demanding that DASSK revokes her call for sanctions toward Burma�. It is a cunning assertion. The assertion intends to pitch her and the exiled groups against the people. She and the exiled groups never ask for an encompassing sanction that will hurt ordinary citizens of Burma. Neither there exist a sanction of that nature on Burma. After all, the international community is targeting only the SPDC's elites and its close associates with their respective sanctions. In other words, the international is acting and calling for isolating SPDC's elites and their close associates. It is not isolating Burma. We must see the difference clearly, especially the Burmese media outlets that are airing information into Burma. They should see and understand that difference---isolating Burma vs. isolating the SPDC.

The following is a project made by our classmates who specialized in Human Rights. So you all can look at the fact found with some references followed.
I put this subject as China's support to Burmese military junta is quite large. And we need International Support and understanding around the globe.

"Boycott China and 2008 Olympic"

China has long been synonymous with human rights abuses, both domestic and foreign. China has one of the highest ratios of death sentences per capita, due to a questionable judiciary system. A total of 68 crimes, including non-violent crimes such as robbery, serious drug offenses and tax fraud, are punishable by death. In 2004, a Chinese legislator estimated that 10,000 people were executed a year. This is exacerbated by the fact that Chinese trials do not meet human right standards. Defendants are presumed guilty until proven innocent, have restricted access to lawyers and evidence obtained via torture is considered valid by the court. In the case of human rights activist Chen Guangcheng in 2006, local police prevented his defence lawyers and wife from attending. The trial was completed in one day and the verdict was announced within a week, with Chen Guangcheng being found guilty and being sentenced to over four years in prison.¹

Even acts that do not break the Criminal Code are punishable, often by being sent to a “Re-education Through Labour” camp for a period of one to four years. RTL sentences are handed down by police without any kind of judiciary review and can be handed down for any act that the police deems to be disturbing social order. This includes innocuous acts, evidenced by a man being given a 2.5-year sentence after police searched his home and found literature about Falun Gong, a banned religion.

One of the most well known on-going abuses by the Chinese government is the systematic destruction of Tibet’s culture. Led by Mao Zedong, the Chinese army invaded Tibet in 1950 and quickly overcame a poorly equipped army, occupying Tibet ever since. In the five and a half decades since, it is estimated that the Chinese forces have destroyed over 6,000 temples and monasteries and killed over a million Tibetans, causing countless more, including the Dalai Lama, to flee into exile. The Chinese government has also given incentives to Chinese families to settle in Tibet. Coupled with the quarter of a million troops still stationed in Tibet, this means that Tibetans are now outnumbered by millions in their own land and have lower income, life expectancy and literacy rates than their Chinese counterparts.

Due to the strict regulation by the government, it is extremely hard for the Chinese people to learn about any of these instances of abuse. All domestic press organizations come under the government’s own Central Propaganda Department. Journalists are given low basic wages, but are able to obtain sizable bonuses by writing pieces that the CPD deem to be in keeping with the party line. On the flip side, newspapers are subject to a penalty point system that can result in the newspaper being shut down if they print too many articles considered detrimental to a “peaceful social environment.” Hundreds of websites, such as Amnesty International and other human rights sites, are also blocked by China’s internet service providers at the request of the government.

China’s foreign policy in regards to Darfur, Burma and North Korea also demonstrates numerous instances of human rights abuse and has led to the Beijing 2008 Games being nicknamed the “Genocide Games.” By arming and financing Sudan, China is playing a large role in what is widely considered the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21^st century having seen hundreds of thousands killed and millions more forced from their homes. China is the single largest supplier of weapons to the Sudan government. Not only has it provided advanced weaponry, such as AK-47s, helicopters, tanks and bombers to Khartoum, but it has also built three arms factories in Sudan itself, effectively speeding up the massacre of the people of Darfur. China is also Sudan’s largest trading partner and foreign investor, as well as the recipient of the majority of Sudanese oil. It is estimated that 70% of oil profits are used directly on weapons and providing armament to Sudan’s army and the Janjaweed.²

China has also limited the international response to Darfur. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China has the right to veto any resolution that passes before it. China has repeatedly used this right to veto any economic sanctions that the United Nations has tried to place on Sudan’s government.

China’s actions were repeated once more after the Burma’s ruling junta cracked down on peaceful demonstrations by Buddhist monks in September. China is again the most important investor in Burma, with an estimated $2 billion in annual business between the nations. China is also the main supplier of weaponry and other military resources to the ruling party³. They are also believed to have been Burma’s major supplier ever since the failed 1988 pro-democracy demonstrations, which saw an arms embargo placed on Burma by European nations. China has also provided political safety to Burma by blocking a UN Security Council resolution to condemn the crackdown on the monks.

Equally disturbing is the repatriation of North Korean refugees. Under the North Korean Criminal Code, defectors are considered traitors and “shall be committed to a reform institution for no less than seven years. In cases where the person commits an extremely grave offense, he or she shall be given the death penalty…”⁴ This is in violation of the 1951 United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees, which forbids the repatriation of refugees who will face persecution at home.

The prisoners are subject to horrendous conditions, including lengthy interrogation, violence and torture. They are also given little food and no medial care, leading to many deaths. Perhaps most repugnant is the treatment of pregnant women who are brought to these camps. The women are all asked if they are pregnant; if so, they are forcibly given an abortion shot that causes a miscarriage. Afterwards, the women are forced back to work. If the baby manages to survive the shot, it is either left to die or the woman is given a plastic sheet in her cell with which to suffocate her own child.⁵

Understandably, the human rights conditions in China were a major concern for the International Olympic Committee when it came to choosing what nation would host the 2008 Olympic Games. As mentioned, one of the main human rights reservation of the IOC was China’s death penalty record. Among a study of 76 nations, China had the 6^th highest number of death sentences per capita, due in large part to the fact that 68 crimes are punishable by death, including many non-violent crimes such as robbery and tax fraud. China announced that the Supreme People’s Court would review all death sentences. Prior to this announcement, lower courts could issue death sentences without the decision being approved by a high court. Some Chinese analysts believe that this could reduce the number of executions by up to 30%.⁶

While this is regarded as a positive step, there are still concerns about the lack of transparency in the Chinese judiciary system. China does not publish official statistics on death sentences and executions, so it is difficult to ascertain whether the reforms are having a major effect, leading to substantial differences in reports on the number of people executed. To attempt to assuage the doubters about free speech, China signed the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees freedom of expression. China also pointed out to the IOC that Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution states "Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession, and of demonstration."

In keeping with these statements, China’s Olympic Bid Committee promised that the foreign media would be granted complete freedom in China, with permission to travel anywhere and interview any willing citizen or public official.

While these proposed improvements are positive, the preparations for the Olympics have also created a number of major human rights problems. The promise of media freedom is fine in theory, but has had a shaky implementation. A survey by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China showed that journalists were detained on 38 occasions in a two-year span for covering sensitive subjects, such as HIV/AIDS, environmental issues and land disputes. These journalists have also reported being harassed and intimidated by government officials and anonymous thugs who are suspected of being undercover police officers. There is also a double standard since these new freedoms do not apply to domestic journalists. As such, Chinese translators, sources and assistants are at even more risk and are constantly monitored by the government to ensure that they are not straying from the official propaganda line, under threat of imprisonment. Additionally, China has increased regulation of domestic broadcasts and has blocked more websites and blogs than ever before, including those of NGOs such Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Human Rights In China.

Beijing has also taken some ethically questionable steps to make the city appear “cleaner.” Most notable among these steps is detaining and imprisoning those who the government deems unsavoury, including those associated with unlawful advertising or leafleting, unlicensed taxis, unlicensed businesses, vagrancy and begging. These people are arrested without any charges, trial or hearing and are sent to “Re-education Through Labour” camps. Another step is the relocation of families that live in areas that are to be used for Olympic venues. A human rights group estimates that 1.5 million Chinese have been forced to leave their homes. They are given paltry compensation and can face incarceration and even torture if they resist. Additionally, the state workers currently building the Olympic sites are overworked and are barely paid enough to cover living expenses, although China predictably diverts attention from these problems.

1 Amnesty International, China: The Olympics countdown – Failing to keep human rights promises

2 2008 Beijing Olympics' International Community, Darfur, <http://www.2008olympicsbeijing.org/darfurchina.htm>

3 Washington Post, The Saffron Olympics

4 Amnesty International, Korea: Persecuting The Starving - The Plight of North Koreans Fleeing to China, <http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGASA240032000?open&of=ENG-PRK>

5 New York Times, Defectors From North Korea Tell of Prison Baby Killings,

6 Amnesty International, Briefing On Human Rights Concerns In China

Journalist U Win Tin behind Bars

No one is allowed to say "We are starving"

Before the popular uprising in September 2007, there were a few people holding signs "please try to bring down the commodity prices". Those protesters who demonstrated alone or small groups were arrested and apparently tortured in notorious prisons. The most famous activist is Ko Htin Kyaw who started solo protest and small group protest; he is now believed to be in notorious Insein prison, apparently being tortured severely.

According to a well-known social and political activist U Win Naing, there are at least 150,000 people having only one meal a day in Yangon alone.

Sanctions or Mismanagement?

As everyone knows, poverty has been going on in Burma since after 1962. The junta has always been pointing out the sanctions as major reason for putting Burma into poverty. Actually, if the junta has enough knowledge and were capable to maintain reasonable thinking they would find sanction is not the source of poverty, because Burma has potential natural resources and still making hundred of millions dollars every year. Again, the junta believe sanctions were decided by DASSK. In fact, DASSK is not the one who decide whether Burma be sanctioned.

The main reason of poverty and starvation in Burma is mismanagement of the military leaders and corruption. To explain more about the mismanagement, the junta has no clue about today business world. Many of the army officials were graduated from May Myo military university, not from Business school. The worse, most ministers in Burma are retired army officials. Consequently, there are a lot of unsolved problems in many civilian administration. And the corruption has been the worst case. They may refute about corruption, of course. But, they cannot when they were caught red-handed. For instance, many overseas bank account s of Burmese army officials and their relatives were often frozen in different western countries, such as England, United States and Australia. For example, almost four hundred army officials of bank accounts were frozen in Great Britain three and half years ago. Recently, Australia froze the account of 422 military officials and their allies. Where did they get the money from? Burmese embassies around the globe going after ordinary citizens for tax, but not to those who never work overseas and declare their foreign bank account. Why they don't want to put the money in Burmese National Banks? Don't they know investing in Burma is much more important than anything? If the junta , itself asking the Burmese overseas citizens to invest money in Burma, why do they invest their money in western countries? If Than Shwe hates west world, why did he let his people and his families to keep the money in west countries?

For General Than Shwe, he should be much better controlling his people and family rather than arresting innocent citizens who protest because of the starvation.

Why ASEAN and China defending Burma?

Why ASEAN and China are defending Burma?

The voice of ASEAN was very loud at the beginning of ASEAN summit; surprisingly to hear what Ong Keng Yong told reporters, "Myanmar is part of our family and it is the principle involved". Ong continued, "Our approach is not to take such a confrontational, drastic action, especially when it doesn't yield good results. His explanation seem to be quite reasonable if there was nothing happened in Burma. "Not only ASEAN rejected US's proposal to expel Burma from its team, but also canceled Gambary's briefing on Burma's subject in the summit.
It seem like ASEAN does not care the fact that military government brutally crackdown on recent peaceful protest. It is just because the members of ASEAN, themselves are brutal to their own citizens just like the junta? Or they have some other reasons hiding behind to do so? Why Myanmar is so important to ASEAN? Basically, if there is relationship, because there is an interest. As everyone knows, now Burma became the richest in Asia in term of natural gas. Recent news from different sources indicated that India, China, Thailand and many others are competing to buy natural gas. Among them, Junta's favorite is China, as it has been very supportive to Burma's regime since 1962. Most importantly, China always defended Burma along with its ally, Russia. In early 2007, UN security council meeting, China used double veto to defend the junta on the proposal of American and its allies. Consequently, Burmese activists living inside and abroad confronted Chinese embassies all over the world to condemn Chinese's action toward Burma's policy. It was not a good sign for China as it is going to have Olympic game in 2008. People worldwide are also encouraged to boycott 2008 Olympic. Despite China is powerful country for some reasons, it is still suffering economically.

However, the world has been changing than ever. 21st century is not the time Chinese army crashed their student activists in Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. China may want to improve its image by showing its tendency toward Burma's democratic reform. Moreover, China recently denied that they have no self interest on Burma's issue. The Chinese leaders may be the best who knows what they are doing!! The world is watching what they said and what they do are the same!

Popular Dream of Today Burmese

This is from Irrawaddy online magazine. (sorry for not asking permission)

Apocalypse Naypyidaw!

By Yeni and Aung Zaw
November 22, 2007

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After living for decades under a military-ruled Burma and witnessing the junta’s bloody crackdown on monks and innocent people on the streets in September, many Burmese have begun calling for—not diplomacy—air strikes and international intervention.

No, it’s not a joke. And it’s not just the exiled Burmese who are saying this—it’s those inside Burma as well.

An artist’s impression on striking at Than Shwe’s residence in Naypyidaw

Here are some of the excerpts from Burmese people who broached the subject with The Irrawaddy during and after the September crackdown.

U Pinyazawta, a leading monk from the Alliance of All Burmese Buddhist Monks, told The Irrawaddy by phone from his hiding place in Burma: “We need a foreign army to protect us,” he said, referring particularly to UN troops.

Some Burmese were even more straightforward.

“We need air strikes,” said a prominent editor and CEO of a successful privately-run publication in Burma.

He claimed many Burmese would welcome military intervention. “This is our hope,” he said. “The regime is unyielding. We have to teach them a lesson or two.”

However, it is commonly understood that most foreign observers and policy makers who are involved in Burma would simply shake their heads at the proposal.

The desire for a forceful regime change in Burma is nothing new. During the invasion of Iraq, American diplomats and US embassy staff in Burma are believed to have received a number of letters asking: “When are you coming to Burma?”

In September 2003, in a lively talk at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand in Bangkok, Ross Dunkley, editor of the semi-official newspaper, Myanmar Times confirmed that all the Burmese people he had met—whether they were taxi drivers or office workers—wanted to see an invasion. “They all want George W Bush and the UN to come into Myanmar [Burma] with a whole lot of guns and airplanes and jets and solve the problem. They believe that’s possible,” said Dunkley.

Indeed, if diplomacy and sanctions are doomed to failure, the best solution ordinary Burmese folk can think of is humanitarian intervention and air strikes.

Instead of smart sanctions, they say, “smart missiles” are the readymade solution to Burma’s ills—and as quickly as possible!

The image of Snr-Gen Than Shwe and his cadres being pounded by F-16 fighter jets in their ivory tower in Naypyidaw is perhaps a wishful fantasy widely shared among ordinary Burmese who have lived under the military government since 1962.

A Rangoon-based journalist said that he admired how the US taught Libya's Muammar el-Qaddafi a lesson he would never forget when they launched air raids on Tripoli in 1986, killing dozens of civilians, including Qaddafi's adopted daughter.

“Now Than Shwe’s compound in Naypyidaw is just a sitting target—if we hit him, there will be little collateral damage," said the journalist, angered after seeing Information Minister Brig-Gen Kyaw Hsan lecturing UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari on early November.

It’s therefore ironic that, in 2005, Than Shwe relocated the capital to Naypyidaw, near Pyinmana in central Burma. Analysts at that time said that it was because of advice from a soothsayer coupled with his fears of foreign invasion.

Nowadays, Than Shwe’s new house in new capital can be viewed clearly on Google Earth.

In February 2006, a “Top Secret” document obtained by The Irrawaddy revealed that Burma’s military leaders were fearful of a possible attack or invasion by the US, and were closely monitoring Thailand, which is one of the US’s most important allies in the region.

The document indicates that junta leader Than Shwe warned that the country must be guarded against a plan of destruction drawn up by the US Central Intelligence Agency. It did not say what that plan was.

The government document also revealed that if the US bombs Rangoon, or second city Mandalay: “We have to make sure to kill all NLD members.” The NLD, winners of the 1990 elections, would otherwise be used as US stooges, the document suggests.

However, Aung Naing Oo, a political analyst in Thailand, said that dialogue is the best solution; not an air strike.

“There are options,” the exiled Burmese analyst said. "Diplomacy and dialogue are the best answer to our problems.”

The other options, Aung Naing Oo said, include a fully-fledged engagement with the regime, dropping all sanctions and pressure.

And if these measures still didn’t yield any results?

“Humanitarian intervention and air strike,” he said.

Aung Naing Oo considers humanitarian intervention to be the last option on the table. “It would only take a small budget to take down Than Shwe.”

Firing missiles in from the US fleet in the Indian Ocean toward the dictator’s compound in Naypyidaw could break down many obstacles, he concluded. “And might open the doors that are currently closed to the reconciliation process in Burma.”

Several Burmese living inside Burma would unquestionably concur. And Burma analysts often conclude that military intervention or air strikes would be economical compared to the deep Western pockets that would be needed to fund Burma’s democracy movement.

On October 3, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman wrote in the New York Daily News: “The Bush administration should also actively investigate how else our military and intelligence capabilities can be used to put additional stress on the regime.”

He continued: “The junta has tried to cut off the ability of peaceful demonstrators to communicate to the outside world through the Internet and cell phone networks; we should be examining how the junta's ability to command and control its forces throughout the country might itself be disrupted.”

So far, the attack on Burma’s brutal regime takes place only on Hollywood’s silver screen. Two years ago, Hollywood movie “Stealth” was launched worldwide but banned in Burma. Why? The film included an air strike on terrorists in Rangoon.

Diplomacy will continue, as will mind-numbing debate on sanctions and constructive engagement. But the Burmese people, who have suffered long enough under the regime, now want those “smart missiles.”

How do we consider our lives in Burma?

Life is so precious to lose or even to suffer!! I started to consider this very seriously only when I settle down in Canada. For those who used to live in abusive countries, even expatriate staff, get used to with the abuses. I still remember, one day, the CNN was showing mine workers in US trapped underground and how emergency teams tried to save the lives of those who were in critical situation. Suddenly, my husband said" these Americans make big things about the case, they should see how Chinese miners came out of the mine end of the working hours". His comment shocked me how people adapt to abusive system. I, myself wondered why western governments care so much about their people, at the beginning of my arrival in Canada.

Today is very cold. The temperature went down to -1. The snow started to fall since yesterday, but very light snow. Yet, my son is so happy to see the snow expecting to play when it is becoming in big amount.

Will Buddhism disappear from Burma?

တင္းဳကပ္တဲ့ ကန္ႚသတ္ခဵက္ေတၾေဳကာင့္ သံဃာေတာ္ေတၾ ခရီးသၾားလာေရး ခက္ခဲ

2007.11.20

ရန္ကုန္႓မိႂႚလယ္ သိမ္႒ကီးေဈးေဘးမႀ စက္တင္ဘာ ၂၄ရက္ေနႛက စီတန္း ႔ကခဵီ လႀည့္လည္ေနေသာ သံဃာေတာ္မဵား ဴဖစ္ပၝသည္။ (Photo: RFA)

စက္တဘႆာ သံဃာအေရးအခင္း ႓ပီးတဲ့ေနာက္ပုိင္း တုိင္းဴပည္အတၾင္း သံဃာေတာ္ေတၾ သၾားလာတာကုိ စစ္ေဆးေမးဴမန္းတာေတၾနဲႚ ခရီးသၾားလာမႁေတၾအေပၞ တင္းဳကပ္မႁေတၾဴပႂလုပ္တဲ့အတၾက္ သံဃာေတၾအေနနဲႚ အေတာ္ကေလး စိတ္မခဵမ္းမသာ ဴဖစ္ေနတယ္လုိႚ သတင္းရရႀိပၝတယ္။

နယ္ကေန ရန္ကုန္ကုိ ခရီးသၾားရင္ ကားနဲႚသၾားသၾား ရထားနဲႚသၾားသၾား ရန္ကုန္ဂိတ္ဆုံးကုိ ေရာက္တာနဲႚ သံဃာေတာ္ေတၾဟာ လုိရာကုိသၾားခၾင့္မရဘဲ စစ္ေဆးေမးဴမန္းတာေတၾကုိ နာရီနဲႚ ဳကာေအာင္ ခံဳကရတယ္လုိႚ ဆုိပၝတယ္။

မဳကာေသးမီကမႀ နယ္ကေန ရန္ကုန္ကုိ သာနာ့ကိစၤနဲႚ ခရီးသၾားခဲ့တဲ့ ဆရာေတာ္တပၝးက အခုလုိ အမိန္ႚရႀိပၝတယ္။

ဆရာေတာ္တပၝး။ ။ "အားလံုးသံဃာေတၾ စိတ္ဆင္းရဲေနဳကတယ္၊ ဦးဇင္းတုိႛအပၝအဝင္အားလံုး၊ အားလံုး၊ တဴပည္လံုးပၝပဲ ဟိုတုန္းကလည္း သိတဲ့အတုိင္းပဲေလ၊ အဳကမ္းဖက္ထားတဲ့ ကိစၤေတၾသိပၝတယ္၊ အဲဒီတုန္းကေတာ့ အဳကမ္းေပၝ့၊ အခုဟာက အႎုနည္းနဲႛ ႎႀိပ္စက္ေနတယ္လုိႛ ေဴပာရမႀာပၝပဲ၊ ဘာဴဖစ္လုိႛလည္းဆုိေတာ့ ပင္နဲရုိးလာတဲ့အခဵိန္မႀာ နယ္ကေနရန္ကုန္ကုိ ခရီးသၾားမယ္ဆုိရင္ ကားဂိတ္ကုိေရာက္ရင္ ထမင္းေဳကာ္တနပ္ ကပ္တယ္ ေငၾ ႎႀစ္ေထာင္ေပး႓ပီး ဴပန္လၿတ္တယ္၊ နယ္ကုိ ဴပန္ခုိင္းတာ၊ ရထားမႀာ ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ ဴပန္ေတာ့မလၾတ္ဘူး စစ္ေဆးတယ္ တနာရီေလာက္ စစ္ေဆးတယ္လုိႚ ဳကားတာေပၝ့။ အခုကုိယ္တုိင္ ခရီးေရာက္တဲ့ အခၝဳကေတာ့ စစ္ေဆးတာ ၄၅ မိနစ္ေလာက္ဳကာတယ္၊ စိတ္ေတာ့ဆင္းရဲစရာပဲ အကုန္လံုး အဲဒီထဲမႀာ ႎုိင္ငံေတာ္အဆင့္တုိႚ၊ တုိင္းအဆင့္တုိႚ၊ ႓မိႂႚနယ္အဆင့္တုိႚ အကုန္လံုး သံဃာ့အဖၾဲႚအစည္းက ဆရာေတာ္႒ကီးေတၾလည္းပၝတယ္။ ဝၝ႒ကီးမႀန္းမသိ ဒီသံဃာေတၾက ဘယ္လုိသံဃာေတၾမႀန္းမသိ စစ္ေဆးေမးဴမန္းခံရေတာ့ ဆရာေတာ္႒ကီးေတၾလည္း အလၾန္ႎႀလံုး မသာမယာဴဖစ္ဳကတယ္လုိႛ ဆရာေတာ္႒ကီးေတၾနဲႛ အတူသၾားတဲ့ ဦးဇင္းကုိယ္တုိင္သိရ တယ္ေပၝ့။"

စစ္ေဆးေမးဴမန္း႓ပီးလဲ၊ သၾားခၾင့္မဴပႂေသးဘဲ သၾားေရာက္မယ့္ေကဵာင္းက သံဃာေတၾကေန ဟုတ္မႀန္ေဳကာင္း အာမခံ လက္မႀတ္ေရးထုိးေပးမႀ သၾားရတယ္လုိႛ ဆုိပၝတယ္။

ဒီလို ဘုရားအာဏာစက္နဲႛ ရဟန္းဴပႂထားတဲ့ သံဃာေတာ္ေတၾကုိ ဟုိသံဃာကအတု ဒီသံဃာက အစစ္စသည္ဴဖင့္ စစ္ေဆးတာေတၾ၊ ဖမ္းဆီးတာေတၾဟာ မသင့္ေလ႖ာ္ဘူးလုိႚ ဆရာေတာ္ကအမိန္ႚရႀိပၝတယ္။

ဆရာေတာ္တပၝး။ ။ "အဲဘုရားရဲႚအာဏာေတာ္ကုိ အာဏာသိမ္းလိုက္႓ပီလုိႚ ခံစားရတယ္၊ အာဏာသိမ္းတယ္ဆုိတဲ့ေနရာမႀာလည္း ဒၝကသိသာထင္ရႀားေအာင္ ေဴပာတာပၝ၊ သိမ္းလုိႚေတာ့မရပၝဘူး၊ ဦးဇင္းတုိႚ ရဟန္းေတၾကုိ ကံေဆာင္႓ပီးေတာ့မႀ ခက္ခက္ခဲခဲ ဴပည့္စံုဴခင္းတရားေတၾ ဝတၨႂဴပည့္စံုဴခင္း၊ သိမ္ရဲႚဴပည့္စံုဴခင္း၊ ကမၳဝၝစာရဲႛဴပည့္စံုဴခင္း၊ ပရိသတ္ရဲႚဴပည့္စံုဴခင္းတုိႛစတာေတၾကုိ သံပတၨိလုိႛေခၞပၝတယ္၊ အဲဒၝမႀ ကံေဆာင္လုိႛရ႓ပီးေတာ့ ရဟန္းဴဖစ္ရတယ္၊ ဒီရဟန္းေတၾကုိ သူတုိႛရဲႛအာဏာကုိ ထိပၝးလာတဲ့ အခၝမႀာ ဒၝကရဟန္းအစစ္မဟုတ္ဘူး ဒၝကရဟန္းအတုလုိႛ ဒီလုိေဴပာဆုိတာဟာ ဘုရားရဲႚအာဏာေတာ္နဲႚ ရဟန္းဴဖစ္ရတဲ့ ရဟန္းေတၾကုိ ရဟန္းမဟုတ္ပၝဘူးလုိႚ ေဴပာတာ ဒၝဟာဘုရားရဲႚအာဏာေတာ္ကို သိမ္းတယ္လုိႚ ဦးဇင္းတုိႚခံစားရတယ္။"

သံဃာေတၾကေန အေကာင္းဴမင္ေစဴခင္တယ္ဆုိရင္ အခုလုိ သံဃာထုအေပၞ ဖိႎႀိပ္ကန္ႚ သတ္မႁေတၾဴပႂေနမယ့္အစား သံဃာေတၾကုိ လၾတ္လၾတ္လပ္လပ္ သၾားလာခၾင့္၊ သီတင္းသုံးခၾင့္ဴပႂဴခင္းအားဴဖင့္ စည္းရုံးပၝလုိႚလည္း အဳကံေပးလုိေဳကာင္း ဒီဆရာေတာ္က အမိန္ႛရႀိပၝတယ္။

Burmese Migrant Workers Shot to death!!

မန္မာအလုပ္သမား ၅ ဦး မဲေဆာက္အနီး အသတ္ခံရ႓ပီး၊ မီးရႁိႚအေလာင္းေဖဵာက္ခံရ

2007.11.20

ထုိင္းႎုိင္ငံ၊ ဘန္ေကာက္႓မိႂႚအနီး မဟာခဵႂိင္တၾင္ ဴမန္မာအလုပ္သမား ၂ ဦး ငၝး၊ ပုဇၾန္မဵား ေရၾးခဵယ္ေနပံုဴဖစ္ပၝသည္။ (Photo: RFA)

ဴမန္မာအလုပ္သမား ၅ ဦးကို ပစ္သတ္႓ပီး၊ အေလာင္းေဖဵာက္မႁအတၾက္ ထိုင္းႎုိင္ငံသားတခဵိႂႚကို ရဲက ဖမ္းဆီးလိုက္ပၝတယ္။ ထိုင္းရဲက ဒီအမႁကို ဆက္လက္ စံုစမ္းစစ္ေဆးေနပၝတယ္။

အသတ္ခံရတဲ့ ဴမန္မာအလုပ္သမား ၅ ဦးဟာ ေဴပာင္းခင္းအလုပ္သမားေတၾ ဴဖစ္ဴပီး၊ ႎိုဝင္ဘာလ ၉ ရက္ေနႛက အသတ္ခံရတာ ဴဖစ္ပၝတယ္။ သူတိုႚကို ေဴပာင္းအိပ္ေတၾ ခိုးယူမႁနဲႚ စၾပ္စၾဲ႓ပီး၊ ေဴပာင္းခင္းပိုင္ရႀင္က သတ္ဴဖတ္တာလိုႚ ထုိင္းသတင္းေတၾက ေရးပၝတယ္။ တခဵိႂႚကေတာ့ ဒီဴမန္မာအလုပ္သမားေတၾဟာ ေဴပာင္းခင္းမႀာလဲ အလုပ္လုပ္၊ ေဴပာင္းခင္းပိုင္ရႀင္ရဲႚ ခၾင့္ဴပႂခဵက္နဲႚ သူပုိင္လယ္ေဴမေပၞမႀာ ပဲခင္းတခင္း စိုက္ထားတယ္လိုႚ ဆိုပၝတယ္။ ဒီပဲခင္းက ၅ ဧကေလာက္ ရႀိဴပီး၊ ဒီပဲေတၾကို ေရာင္းရင္ ဘတ္ေငၾ ၅ ေသာင္းေလာက္ ရႎိုင္တဲ့အတၾက္ ဒီ ေငၾရလိုမႁနဲႚ သူတိုႛကို ခုလို သတ္လိုက္တာလိုႚ တခဵိႂႚကလည္း ယူဆဳကပၝတယ္။

ဒီ ဴမန္မာအလုပ္သမား ၅ ဦး အသတ္ခံရေနရာကေတာ့ ထိုင္းႎုိင္ငံ မဲေဆာက္႓မိႂႚကေန ၂၄ ကီလိုမီတာေဝးတဲ့၊ ကဵယ္ဒီခၾပ္ရၾာမႀာ ဴဖစ္ပၝတယ္။ ဒီရၾာကို တဴခားသတင္းေထာက္ေတၾနဲႚအတူ သၾားေရာက္စံုစမ္းခဲ့တဲ့ ဦးခင္ေမာင္စိုးက သူဴမင္ခဲ့၊ သိခဲ့တာေတၾကို မေနႚက ခုလို ရႀင္းဴပပၝတယ္။

ဦးခင္ေမာင္စုိး။ ။ ႎုိဝင္ဘာလ ၉ရက္ေနႛ ည ၉နာရီေလာက္မႀာ လာေခၞတယ္၊ လယ္ကၾင္းထဲကေခၞသၾား႓ပီး ေတာစပ္မႀာ ပစ္သတ္လုိက္တယ္၊ သတ္႓ပီးေတာ့ အဲဒီအေလာင္းကုိ ေနာက္တေနႚမႀာ မီးရိႁႚတယ္၊ ကားတာယာေတၾပံု႓ပီး မီးရိႁႚတယ္၊ အရုိးေတၾကုိ အထၾန္းအိမ္နဲႚ မလႀမ္းကမ္းမႀာ ေတာင္ေဴခမႀာရႀိတဲ့ ေကဵာက္တၾင္း႒ကီးတတၾင္းရႀိတယ္၊ အဲဒီကဵင္းထဲကုိ သၾားခဵတယ္ သၾားခဵဘိုႚဖမ္းသၾားတဲ့ ဴမန္မာအလုပ္သမား ၅ ေယာက္အဴပင္ ေနာက္ထပ္ ၂ ေယာက္လည္းပၝေသးတယ္။ အဲဒီဴမန္မာ ၂ေယာက္ကုိ အ႔ကင္းအကဵန္ေတၾကုိ ပလတ္စတစ္ အိတ္ထဲထည့္႓ပီးေတာ့ တၾင္းထဲပစ္ခဵခုိင္းတယ္၊ အဲဒီဴမန္မာအလုပ္သမား ၂ေယာက္ကုိ ထုိင္းရဲက မိ႓ပီ၊ အဲဒီ ၂ ေယာက္က အလိႁင္နဲႛ အေကဵာ္တဲ့ အဲဒီအလိႁင္က သူႚေရႀႚမႀာ ဘယ္လုိပစ္သတ္တယ္ဆုိတာ ေဴပာပၝတယ္။

အလိႁင္။ ။ ကဵေနာ္က သူတုိႚနဲႚမလႀမ္းမကမ္းမႀာေပၝ့ေနာ္ သူတိုႚ ေသနတ္နဲႚပစ္သတ္တာပဲ ဘာေသနတ္လည္းဆုိတာ ကဵေနာ္တုိႚက အမဵႂိးအစားေတာ့မသိဘူး ႒ကႂိးခဵည္ထား႓ပီးမႀ ေသနတ္နဲႚပစ္သတ္တာ။

သူတုိႚကေဴပာတာေတာ့ ပစ္သတ္တဲ့လူက ၃ ေယာက္တဲ့ ထုိင္းရာဇဝင္ လူဆုိးေတၾလုိႚေဴပာတယ္။ ေသနတ္ အတုိ ၂လက္ အရႀည္တလက္ ပၝတယ္လုိႚေဴပာတယ္။

ထိုင္းရဲက ဒီအမႁကို ဆက္လက္ စစ္ေဆးေန႓ပီး၊ ဴပစ္မႁ ထင္ရႀားရင္ ေသဒဏ္အဴပစ္ေပးႎုိင္တယ္လိုႚ ဆိုပၝတယ္။

အသတ္ခံရသူ ဴမန္မာအလုပ္သမား အထၾန္းရဲႚ ဇနီးနဲႚ အရၾယ္မေရာက္ေသးတဲ့ ကေလးကို၊ သူတိုႛရဲႚ လံုဴခံႂေရးအတၾက္ မဲေဆာက္မႀာ ရႀိတဲ့၊ ဴမန္မာအသိုင္းဝိုင္းက ေစာင့္ေရႀာက္ေပးထားတယ္လိုႚလည္း သိရပၝတယ္။

ထိုင္းႎုိင္ငံမႀာ ဴမန္မာအလုပ္သမား ၂ သန္းေလာက္ ရႀိ႓ပီး၊ အဓိကအားဴဖင့္ ငၝးဖမ္းလုပ္ငန္း၊ စိုက္ပဵိႂးေရးလုပ္ငန္းနဲႚ စက္ရံုေတၾမႀာ လုပ္ေနဳကတာပၝ။ သူတိုႛတေတၾဟာ ထိုင္းႎုိင္ငံသားေတၾ မလုပ္ခဵင္တဲ့ လုပ္ငန္းေတၾမႀာ လုပ္ကိုင္ေနဳက႓ပီး၊ အလုပ္ရႀင္ေတၾရဲႚ အႎိုင္ကဵင့္မႁအမဵိႂးမဵိႂးကို ခံေနဳကရတယ္လိုႚလည္း လူႚအခၾင့္အေရးအဖၾဲႚေတၾက ေဴပာဳကပၝတယ္။

Thanks to Ko Htyke for his contribution!!

I have already listened to the Tayar daw of Ashin Nya Nait Thara and ashin Caw Wi Da. What a brilliant monks!! All these tayar daws are now available in famous website of Ko Htike. Many overseas Burmese, including me, appreciate of Ko Htike's contribution.

NO NEWS, NOTHING SO FAR

So far, there is no news for change in Burma, no hope, nothing. Than Shwe is just buying his time and his wife Kyaing Kyaing and thier children are doing shopping as usual. What about other important officials like Maung Aye and Shwe Man? They are nothing more than follower of Than Shwe.

It is extremely frustrating to think of those who are surviving in terrible situation inside the country!! If this continue like this, what are we going to do?

The interest between ASEAN and US makes it clear!!

No US-Asean free trade with Burma present

Singapore (dpa) - Current political conditions in Burma make a free-trade deal between the United States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations impossible in the near term, US Trade Representative Susan Schwab said.

The relationship "can't be business as usual," she said as Asean readied for Tuesday's signing of a landmark charter giving the 40-year-old regional grouping legal status and committing the members to pursuing human rights, democracy and a blueprint for economic integration by 2015.

Asean leaders recognize that the bloc's reputation and credibility have been undermined by the situation in military-ruled Burma, where troops fired on peaceful protesters in September, killing at least 15.

Schwab, who is on a two-day visit to Singapore, met Monday with economic ministers to discuss progress made under the US-Asean Trade and Investment Framework Arrangement, signed a year ago.

"The issue of Burma did come up, and I expressed our concern," she told reporters. "Asean has special responsibility when it comes to the situation in Burma."

Despite the US Senate's unanimous vote Friday, urging Asean to suspend Burma until the regime shows respect for human rights, Asean is dealing with the issue within the "family."

Asean leaders have called off a planned summit briefing by UN Special envoy Ibrahim Gambari, scheduled for Wednesday, after Burma objected.

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, in the city-state's capacity as Asean chairman, said Burma made it clear that it prefers to deal directly with the United Nations, and Asean leaders respect its wishes.

Singapore had invited Gambari to brief Asean leaders and their counterparts from China, India, South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

The US has a free-trade agreement with Singapore. It also has trade and investment framework arrangements (TIFA) with Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Malaysia.

Ten-member Asean signed a TIFA deal in August 2006, regarded as a precursor to liberalizing trade.

"The fact that we have a TIFA with Asean means we have the potential for creating the building blocks down the road," Schwab said.

Asean includes Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Burma.

Junta “eliminating” soldiers who fired on monks!!

Junta “eliminating” soldiers who fired on monks

Yangon (AsiaNews) – Repression in Myanmar is now turning against the army that carried it out. Reliable sources in the country told AsiaNews that rumours are circulating Mandalay and Yangon according to which the junta is physically “eliminating” the soldiers that shot at monks and protesters in late September in anti-regime demonstrations in order to get rid of evidence and witnesses should they be called to account for ordering the violence.

In a brief announcement on state TV, the junta said that people involved in the demonstrations caused by fuel price hikes are still being detained. Out of 2,927 people arrested, 468 remain in prison. However, these numbers refer only to people taken into custody on September 26 and 27 when tension was at its peak. Since then the military has continued to arrest opponents by using photos taken during the marches to identify people. Unofficial estimates put the number of those in prison at over 6,000.

Along with arrests and torture, the military’s propaganda campaign continues. By organising pro-regime rallies, the junta is trying to turn the population against Western countries, which it holds responsible for the crisis and the monk-led movement.

“The authorities are forcing every village to send 400 to 500 residents to join these [pro-junta] rallies,” said some farmers from the area Sagayng area, just north of Mandalay. “Anyone who tries to avoid taking part in the march runs the risk of spending months in jail or paying stiff fines. This happened yesterday to us, but we still won’t shout the slogans the military imposed on us.”

Sometimes people are summoned in stadiums or public spaces at 5 am and forced to wait until 8 am “when some officials arrive to read speeches full of attacks against Europe and pro-democracy activists in order to educate participants.”

During these rallies in the city of Monywa, some ethnic Burmese were forced to wear clothes identifying them as members of local ethnic minorities in order to show that these groups supported the government.

Many monks have found refuge in villages which are now surrounded by soldiers days and night. “Some monks are wearing civilian clothes to avoid visibility,” some residents in the Mandalay area said. “But they also wear a yellow string as an arm band to show that they are not giving up their role.”

The international community also continues to put pressure on the generals to stop arrests, release prisoners and start talking to the opposition. Japan, one of the junta's biggest aid donors, announced it was cutting off US$ 4.7 million in funding. The European Union has also increased its sanctions. And US President George W. Bush is threatening new measures against the junta.

Thailand, where UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari began his new Asia tour, has proposed a regional forum with China and India to push the Burmese government to implement democratic reforms.

Yesterday in Malaysia Gambari only got “support” from the members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) for the UN Myanmar mission.

Malaysia Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said there would be no threat of sanctions or suspension from ASEAN.

Is another trick of the psychological warfare expart?

Is it another trick of the psychological warfare expert?

According to the different news coming from reliable sources, many people are now realizing that Than Shwe will never negotiate with democracy icon, DASSK. Despite giving promises to UN, the regime is doing their best to arrest activists everyday. It is understandable that he doesn't want to move out of the best position he ever achieved.

The big question here is, if he does not want to negotiate, why is he bothering DASSK's meeting with Aung Kyi? Is Than Shwe still trying to cheat 60 millions people or the international community; may be both? In fact, he does not need to. The entire army, legitimide use of violence, is in his hand and therefore everyone has to accept what ever he is doing. However, for those who are willing to see any little improvement to save the entire country are still trying to think of the situation positively despite daily arrests keep going on.

It is too bad now that no one knows what DASSK discussing with Aung Kyi every time she meet him. It seems like this turns out the same situation during Khin Nyunt's era. On the other hand, the entire country is suffering in his hand and desperately wishing to get rid of him and his regime.

One of the coldest day!!

We are now entering into a real winter. The temperature went down to 0 or less. Snowing started yesterday and I could hear my son preparing to play in the snow.

To be Buddhist in Contemporary Society

To be Buddhist in Contemporary Society

Pracha Hutanuwatr *

Buddhism during the first eighteen years of my life was very concern with ritual and magic rather than content. I grew up in a fruit orchard environment in the Bangkok suburbs where I went to government primary school located in a local monastery but had little contact with the monks residing there. The main memories I have of monastery activities were big funeral and ordination ceremonies that included fun-filled events such as movies, folk music and theatre shows. We kids liked to go to the monastery for that. In our classroom we were also given an envelope for donations twice or trice a year for yellow-robe offering (kathina) or forest-robe offering (pha pa).

My mother ran a small business in a market in central Bangkok, my father looked after us six siblings at home. My parents were both second generation overseas Chinese with the father coming from China and the mothers born in Siam [Thailand]. My mother''s religious belief was a mixture of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. All were of popular type. My father was more agnostic but went along with my mothering ancestor worship and other ceremonies in the Chinese way. As I understand from my mother in those days, all the ceremonies were for the prosperity of the family. Only late in her life did she get into the meditative aspect of Buddhism and Taoism. Buddhism for her was to visit monks she believed had special power that they put into amulets and statues to help our business. She also consulted a blind Chinese astrologer intensively and this helped her cope with the hardship of bringing up six children to be well fed and educated.

At school Buddhism was taught as one subject among others mostly with old-fashioned teachings who made Buddhism very boring. We had to memorise a lot of principles for the exam. We did three minutes of chanting in the morning before going into class and in primary school a longer chanting on Friday afternoons. We did not understand what we chanted.

So until I was eighteen Buddhism did not have a deep impression on me, despite three years in my early teens when I attended a Buddhist Sunday school and enjoyed the friendship of the monks who taught us. I remember during this time I challenged him that there are no more enlightened beings in the world today. He quoted the Buddha saying ''As long as there are those who practice the eightfold path, the world will not be without the enlightened one''.

However the real ethos of my first two decades was to get rich and move-up. Both at home and school we were brought up to compete with each other. The whole society was dominated by the Americanisation process of the ''development era''. It was a kind of uneven continuation of the previous 100 years of ''mordanisation''. Through the radio, television and billboards all over the countries, the Government intensively propagated the motto ''Good education brings good money and happiness'' or ''Work is money, money is work''. This was the time when the American adviser to the Thai government asked the dictator Sarit to forbid the monks to teach contentment saying this would make the country backward.

So we grew up with the idea that we had to get rich and move out of this orchard neighbourhood. A good life was one with a lot of money, big house and big car. My elder brother had to help my mother earn a living during daytime and he went to night school. He studied hard, went to university and got a Fulbright scholarship for a Ph.D. in the USA. He was our role model when we were young. So we all worked hard at school except my elder sister who had to work hard with my mother to earn our living and send us all to school. She did not even get a chance to go to primary school. I got into a prestigious high school in Bangkok by merit where competition was extremely intensive as all the ''best'' from all over the country would come here as a gateway to a prestigious future. It was clear here that to compete was a virtue.

However, at the end of 60''s and the beginning of 70''s a wave of student awakening crept into my school. I intensively read Buddhadasa, a monk who gave life to contemporary Buddhism and his teaching washed away the Thai version of the American dream in my head nearly completely. Then when I went to university the student movement moved left and Buddhadasa had no ready-made answer for social change, so I shifted to the left and became deeply involved with the underground Thai Marxist-Maoist movement for 3 years. At the same time the new left intellectuals above ground also appeared to me personally. At the end of the 3rd year of Marxism I got completely disillusioned as it seemed to me that we spent more time fighting each other than the fight for the cause of social justice and ecological well-being we first aspired to. In early 1975 I quit the youth wing of the Communist Party of Thailand.

Supported by Ajarn Sulak Sivaraksa and other friends who formed the ''Ahimsa Group'' I became a Buddhist monk. My original intention was for two weeks but I ended up eleven years in robes. It became an attempt to come to terms with my disillusionment and to explore my Buddhist roots. I spent the first four years moving around forest monasteries searching for meditation teachers all of whom were very traditional and conventional and spent the last seven years with Buddhadasa who was very unconventional.

Three important things I learnt during this decade:

(1) Coping with the enemy within: no escapism. For me the Buddha designed the life of a monk so that one cannot escape from oneself especially if one tries to live a monk''s life as original designed. You have to face your own self without any escape. As activists, our enemy was always out there but now you start to see all those whom you have accused, the dictator, the capitalist, the reactionary, the conservative, the feudalist, they are all inside you and you have to learn to live and cope with them and tame them step by step with a lot of sense of humour otherwise you go crazy.

(2) Joy unlimited: The other very important thing I learnt was meditation. One can find quite a sensational joy just by meditation and not that deeply actually. Daily meditation is like spring water for daily spiritual thirst and if used wisely this also reinforces the abovementioned self-recovery.

(3) Some synchronicity: Though I could not swallow Marxist philosophical ideas any longer, I had not abandoned the morality of social justice and ecological concern. I am on the left in the conventional political spectrum. Buddhist studies and meditation, at least under the guidance of Buddhadasa and Sulak Sivaraksa did not undermine this aspect of my life rather reinforced and refined it. Thus, the third big portion of my time was spent on understanding the complications of modern society.

For a rebel to have in a real sense is not easy. That''s why my first four years as a monk were quite restless. Although I tasted some deep joy of meditation, most monks, some were good meditation teachers, did not really related to my way of thinking. To have a good friend or teacher includes a lot of surrendering of your ego and accepting your teacher''s spiritual authority. Ajarn Buddhadasa was so generous for my endless questions and arguments. He used these arguments to sharpen my understanding of Buddhism skillfully. Though he pitied me when I told him that I wanted to leave the monkhood for a woman I lived, we became and remained goodfriends even when I left him to disrobe.

Even as a monk, I maintained a regular relationship with Ajarn Sulak as another close teacher who tamed me in many other aspects outside Ajarn Buddhadasa''s concerns, especially the understanding of com plex modern society and the complications of urban activist psyche. Both of them trained me to challenge and accept, accept and challenge spiritual authority. It was so wonderful for a young seeker.

I disrobed in 1986 to be rejected by the woman I loved and to be humbled by my inability to use Dhamma to cope with the pain of my ego. I became a womanizer for a number of years creating a lot of pain to many people and myself. It may seem that the former is the cause of the latter - but this might not be so as I am of lustful temperament since I was young.

As a layperson, I worked under the ethos of socially engaged Buddhism under the leadership of Ajarn Sulak. We have been doing all sorts of projects and activities, local, regional, international, many of which are my own initiatives. I had plenty of room to breathe my teacher''s leadership has not shadowed my growth. The overall aim being to enhance the values of cooperation and compassion over competition, simplicity and local cultures over consumer-mono culture, social justice over exploitation, living in harmony with nature over conquering nature, inclusive over exclusive. We also work with non-Buddhist friends with deep respect for each other.

For me to be a Buddhist means firstly to reject the aims of life promoted by the present society to have more power, wealth, recognition or sensual pleasure. On the contrary we should aim to reduce the existential suffering of others and ourselves by reducing our cravings either in the form of greed, lust, hatred or self-importance. But this is just one aspect. We have to also reduce greed, hatred and wrong values in the society by changing the structural violence in society at the same time.

Relief work, though useful in any society, alone is never enough to reduce the suffering of the world. This is the difference between Buddhists who understand the present society and those who do not. Each year the social welfare department and the high-class charity foundations in Siam go out to the countryside or the slums in big city and provide cloths or food for the poor or stationary for the poor children. Most of the people involved do not realise their way of life is the cause of the poverty. They do not understand that poverty can often be reduced by reorganising the economic structure in a way that wealth is more justly distributed in society. We can reorganise economics so that the concept of dana (sharing) and karuna (compassion) are the core of the system instead of the maximization of profit and competition. Or if the education and the media stop brain-washing the rural people and forest dwellers that their way of life is inferior to the city dwellers, and if these institutions start promoting respect of cultural diversity and respect for local culture, a lot of those who are classified as ''poor'' will be able to live a self-reliant life with dignity and don''t have to depend on the donation of the upper-class and government departments.

We take the structural issues seriously because firstly the present structure is the result of and reproduces wrong view and unwholesome thoughts. These include pursuit of endless economic growth, the conquering of nature, the over emphasis on individualism (or collectivism in the case of Soviet model experiment). In other words these wrong views are the cause of the increasing greed, hatred and illusion in society. Hence a natural increase of suffering. Secondly, as the social structure is humanmade, it is the out come of policy makers, government, inter-government or TNCs, so it can be changed by public opinion and political will.

Moreover, when the majority of public opinion has not changed we can create new experiments, new ventures, and new social innovations to show that alternatives are possible and stimulate social reform in different areas. The Buddha actually did this when he established the Sangha during his lifetime.

For me a meaningful Buddhist life in this contemporary world needs to be based on the application of wisdom and compassion both for inner work and outer work. If you work only for inner change, emphasise only on vipassana and keeping your personal precepts, you escape from social responsibility and avoid all the suffering around you. Your meditation on loving kindness and compassion could be a fake. If you work only for social change, you escape from responsibility of dealing with the negative and cultivating positive aspects of consciousness that is part of the collective consciousness. External and internal work complements each other for a more healthy society and more enlightened individual.

As I also believe that the path to this goal of enlightenment is a slow sloppy process, not unlike the slope from the ''shore to the centre of the ocean, we have to pay a lot of attention to how we live our daily life and try to have a glimpse of enlightenment here and now. This would not have been possible without the intensive training I had during my years as a monk. St that time I was young enough to endure the hardship of intensive sitting and walking meditation. So the path to enlightenment should start when you are young enough. Young people should be ambitious in this aspect. Taming the dragon within need to a lot of psychical and mental strength. Side by side with this meditation we need to train ourselves to look at things around us from a non-self perspective. This changing of perspective needs a lot of practice too at least for a period in one''s life which will make it easier to bring it into our daily life. Without practice, philosophising about non-self can be very self-deceptive and harmful. A lot of so-called Buddhists fall into this trap without awareness of it.

A non-self perspective is a radical way of looking at everything beyond all kinds of conventional frames of reference and even beyond the concept of non-self itself. A good book on the subject can help as a first step, a good spiritual teacher can help tremendously then we have to work it out for ourselves individually. As the Buddha said when we know only we know that we know.

As I have a lust temperament, I find the keeping the third precept difficult. Even though since my marriage, I have stopped sleeping around with many women, I still enjoy women''s companionship and I have more women friends than men. I have been training myself to welcome getting old as it helps the hormones to be less active. I also still enjoy eating meat with some feelings of shame from time to time but not guilt. However, training oneself in precepts is as important as in meditation and wisdom though it is as hard and also a gradual process to achieve. Even we try and fail we have to keep on trying and failing with a lot of compassion and sense of humour. Without the latter two elements you can become selfrighteous as the ego will creep into your trying to be good.

As to earning my living, I am that the dilemmas have reduced as I have a strong community and as time goes by. I have discovered some of my potential and am quite content using it for the benefit of others in my social change work. From a Buddhist perspective; to work for the benefit of others will benefit your-self. As you offer your thoughts and energy to help others with the right frame of mind, you are also cultivating the seeds of enlightenment within you. For me working for social change is part of a part to enlightenment. But again this is not easy. Your ego will always jump in and take possession of the good work you do for others and spoil it. For me at least this happens from time to time. One always has to be cautions. Learning to disown our good deeds is a good practice.

One thing that I find very helpful is to regularly visit who suffer, for example those who claim to be our target groups. If we sit and work in the office for too long or jet around to meet other people of the same sort too much, our heart can get lost even though our mind still articulates our mission. Visiting the poor, the excluded, the protesters, the slums, the handicapped and the forest dwellers helps the flowering of our compassion. We can also learn a lot of wisdom from these people as suffering makes them wise and some of them live a much more sustainable life than those of us who preach it. When we were young and got confused easily, visiting them helped clarify our direction. Now I visit them to gain wisdom and develop my compassion and pull me down to earth.

However as a non-enlightened being, there are times in daily life that our minds are clouded. I am not always a happy bunny. Whenever that happens, I take that state of mind as a visit of a great teacher to show me the areas in my heart that needs to be cultivated, to show me where the non-self perspective has not been sufficiently applied. As life goes by if we can see affliction and confusion reduced, we can bow to ourselves.

There are other time when the comparing mind pops in to say ''hello dear, you don''t have as gig a house as your friends, you don''t have as much power and position as this one, or you are not as famous as that one''. I would that comparing mind with a gentle smile and respond humorously ''Thanks, but I don''t need your nagging. I am who I am. I enjoy my work. I enjoy my friendship, I have a good family and community and I have enough for my life. I accept and sometimes enjoy the challenge of life as causes and conditions arise. Sometime I even go for a challenge. My life here and now is precious. I enjoy exploring and expanding my potential and I don''t need a sense of lack to do that. I am good enough and I do not need to compare. Thank you very much. If you are not sure you can visit me again. Bye!''

I will talk to this comparing mind as many times as needed with a lot of love and gentleness. He seems to come to visit me less often as time goes by.

As for the basic needs of life I go for a minimum principle but not scarcity. Besides enjoying working a lot I go to a good movie from time to time. Once in a while I go to a bad one. I go for beach holidays most years and immerse myself with the sea. I go for a forest walk every year. I often read good novels that touch the deeper part of my heart and good non-fiction that stimulates my intellectual curiosity increases my understanding of complicated social issues. I enjoy the companionship of good friends and close relatives and walks in nature.

Though I still have a clear sense of what ideas are right or wrong, I am less attached to the rightness and wrongness of them and able to listen to people of different opinions with understanding and if needed with patience. However, I have a clear sense that I am treading on a right path but knowing that this is not the only path.

All in all, to be a Buddhist in contemporary society, I am aware that my society is based on a wrong view (miccha ditthi) and I have to resist the mainstream way of life which promotes greed, violence, individualism, competition. I cannot wait until the dawn of a new society to live a good Buddhist life so, here and now, I have to find and create alternatives that based on the Buddhist values of compassion, generosity, justice, living close to nature and peace. I have to live a life that Ieads to the reduction of my existential afflictions. An important part of doing that is to embark on a challenging and meaningful work to shift the society to move towards right view. I like to think of myself as a small bodhisattva whose mission to transform my consciousness and to change the structure of society is one. ( I copied it fro rakhapura online magazine, sorry for not asking permission)

I would prefer to die than being a Burmese soldiIer!!

ဘီဘီစီ “ငပြၾကီး”မဟုတ္ အစစ္အမွန္“ငပြၾကီး”သန္းေရႊဟုေျပာ၍ စစ္သည္တဦး ေသဒဏ္ခ်မွတ္ခံရ 11/18/2007

ခိုင္မင္းမူ(နိရဥၥရာ) စစ္ေတြအေျခစိုက္ ေထာက္ပံ့ပို႕ေဆာင္ေရးတပ္ရင္းမွ စစ္သည္တဦးက ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ လက္ရွိျဖစ္ေပၚေနမႈမ်ားမွာ သန္းေရႊ“ငပြၾကီး”ေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္သည္ဟု ေျပာၾကားျခင္းေၾကာင့္ မၾကာေသးမီက ေသဒဏ္အျပစ္ေပးခံရေၾကာင္း သတင္းရရွိသည္။ အဆိုပါ ေသဒါဏ္အခ်ခံရသူမွာ စစ္ေတြအေျခစိုက္ အမွတ္ (၈၂၈) ေထာက္ပံ့ပို႕ေဆာင္ေရး တပ္ရင္းမွ တပ္ၾကပ္ေအာင္ႏိုင္ျဖစ္သည္။ တပ္ၾကပ္ေအာင္ႏိုင္မွာ ယခင္က အန္အလ္ဒီပါတီ၏ လုပ္ရပ္မ်ားကို ေထာက္ခံအားေပး မႈေၾကာင့္ တပ္တြင္းအခ်ဳပ္ ႏွစ္ၾကိမ္က်ခံဖူးသူျဖစ္ျပီး ရာထူးအခ်ခံထားရသူျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။ ယခုျဖစ္စဥ္ႏွင့္ပတ္သတ္ျပီး အဆိုပါတပ္ရင္းမွ အမည္မေဖာ္လိုသူ စစ္သည္တဦးက “ဆႏၵျပတာေတြ ျဖစ္ကတည္းက တပ္ရင္းမႈက အရာရွိစစ္သည္အားလံုးကို ခဏခဏတန္းစီျပီး ဘီဘီစီနဲ႕တျခားသတင္းဌာနေတြက သန္းေရ“ငပြၾကီး”လုပ္ထားတာေၾကာင့္ တိုင္းျပည္ အခုလိုျဖစ္ေနတာဟု မဟုတ္တာေတြေလ်ာက္ေျပာေနတယ္္ဟု တပ္ရင္းမွဴးကေျပာပါတယ္၊ အဲလိုေျပာအျပီးမွာ သန္းေရႊ“ငပြၾကီး”လုပ္တာေတြကို ကမၻာကသိေအာင္ ဘီဘီစီ-ဗြီအိုေအ တို႕က ျဖစ္ရပ္မွန္ သတင္းေတြ လႊင့္ေပးေနတာပါလို႕ ဆရာေအာင္ႏိုင္က ေျပာပါတယ္၊ အဲဒီလိုေျပာတာနဲ႕ သူ႕ကို ခ်က္ခ်င္းဖမ္းယူ သြားပါတယ္ဟ”နိရဥၥရာသို႕ေျပာသည္။ တပ္ၾကပ္ေအာင္ႏိုင္၏ ျဖစ္စဥ္မ်ားမွာ တပ္ရင္းတည္ျမဲအမိန္႕မ်ားအရ ထူးျခားျဖစ္စဥ္၌ အက်ံဳး ၀င္၍ (၂၄)နာရီအတြင္း သက္ဆိုင္ရာ ကြပ္ကဲမွဴး စစ္ဌာနခ်ဳပ္မ်ားသို႕ ေၾကးနန္းပို႕ရျပီး စစ္သည္တရားခံအား တပတ္အတြင္း တိုင္းစစ္ဌာနခ်ဳပ္သို႕ အေရာက္ပို႕ရေၾကာင္း စစ္ဥပေဒႏွင့္စည္းကမ္းဆို္င္ရာ တပ္ၾကပ္ၾကီး စာေရးတဦးကဆိုသည္။ အဆိုပါ စစ္သည္မွာ တပ္မေတာ္ အက္ဥပေဒအရ တပ္တြင္းအခ်ဳပ္ျဖင့္ ျပီးဆံုးႏိုင္ေသာ္လည္း နည္းဥပေဒျဖင့္ တရားစြဲခံရေသာေၾကာင့္ ေသဒဏ္ခ်မွတ္ခံရျခင္းျဖစ္ျပီး ေသဒဏ္အမိန္႕ကို စစ္ဥပေဒခ်ဳပ္ရံုးမွ အထူးစစ္ခံုရံုးဖြဲ႕၍ ကာကြယ္ေရးဦးစီးခ်ဳပ္မွ ခ်မွတ္ရေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ အလားတူ ျဖစ္စဥ္မ်ား ေနာက္ထပ္ျဖစ္ပြားမႈမရွိေစရန္ တပ္ရင္းတပ္ဖြဲ႕မ်ားသို႕ အမိန္႕ညႊန္ၾကားစာမ်ားျဖင့္ အေၾကာင္းၾကားထားျပီျဖစ္ေၾကာင္းကို ၎မွဆက္လက္ေျပာၾကားသည္။ တပ္ၾကပ္ေအာင္ႏိုင္၏ စစ္သည္တဦး ရပိုင္ခြင့္အားလံုးအား တပ္မေတာ္ဘ႑ာအျဖစ္ သိမ္းယူသြားျပီး က်န္ရစ္သူမိသားစုအား မိမိေနရပ္သို႕ ျပန္ပို႕လိုက္ေၾကာင္း စံုစမ္းသိရွိရသည္။ ( I copied from Narinjara News Agency. Sorry for not asking permission)

Canadian's role toward Burma's democratic movement

Divestment must include all Canadian business interests in Burma

OTTAWA – NDP Foreign Affairs Critic Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre), criticized the Conservatives for taking half-measures against the junta regime in Burma, also known as Myanmar. “Half-measures against a dictatorship amount to half-compliance with the dictatorship” said Dewar.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Maxime Bernier announced a series of sanctions and a ban of new investments in Burma today. The measures do not cover current Canadian investments.

“What we need are concrete measures that divest all Canadian investment in Burma – not just a ban on new investments. It’s the only way to send a clear message to the junta that they must immediately relinquish power and hand it over to the Burmese democrats,” said Dewar, who held a press conference to call for tough financial action against the military junta last week.

Tin Maung Htoo, the Executive Director of Canadian Friends of Burma, was with Dewar last week and said, “Fourteen Canadian companies are listed as being active in Burma. However, many more Canadian companies and public pension funds have indirect investments in Burma through third parties – for instance the Canadian Power Corporation mines a gas deposit in Burma and pays hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties to the ruling military junta through the French oil company Total. The investment ban should cover all indirect investment as well.”

“While I welcome the steps taken in the right direction, this is not enough – the NDP would have cut the financial support the junta receives from investments currently held by Canadian corporations and public pension funds in Burma,” declared Dewar.

Dewar has tabled a motion in the House of Commons that called on the Canadian government to invoke the Special Economic Measures Act, divest all Canadian investments in Burma and ban ships flying Burma’s flag from calling on Canadian ports. “It is not only those who do direct business with Burma, but all companies with ties to Canadian corporations, public pension funds and individuals with investments in Burma who must divest,” said Dewar.

Tin Maung Htoo and Dewar have also called on the government to strengthen the Burmese democratic movement by hosting a gathering of the movement in Ottawa and providing it with material and intellectual support in its efforts toward democratizing Burma.

“Knowing what we know about the junta, business as usual in unconscionable,” concluded Dewar.

checking the news about homeland!!

It is extremely frustrating to read the news and to think of the situation there. When are we going to solve the problem? When are the going to give up? Many people are dying everyday, many are already dead....

What a day!!

Today was very windy and very cold. The computer in the car indicate that 3 degree, but with the wind it must have had less than 0 degree. Here in Canada, ability to drive a car is so important especially when there are children at home.

I was in the car ready to get out of the garage, but there is a funny sound coming out of the car. I was very worried. First, I did not know what to do; meanwhile there was a car coming into the garage and I realized my car was blocking it. So I turned off the car and turned it on again.Then the funny sound disappeared: thank God. Then I tried to give him a way by getting out of the garage. The problem was solved.

After I arrived at day care center, I found a parking at the same place. Just to get out of the car was freezing. Anyway, I took him and placed him in his seat belt. After he was well attached, he started to eat and drink what ever I brought from home. Then I started to drive.

Came back in front of the garage, I realized that another car key attached to the remote control to open the garage was missing. Where did I put??? I was getting so nervous...should I go back to the day care? here again, there is another car waiting behind to get into the garage. So, I need to back up...and let them go. They opened the garage with ordinary key card. Off course, I tried to follow them instead of looking for my remote... too late. I wasn't quick enough..So I back up again with all the frustration. I suddenly realized that rear wheel was on the side walk. My heart was beating so hard... Thank God again. It wasn't a major problem. But I really need to be careful with everything. I don't want to make any mistake as I don't have driving permit yet.

I found my remote after checking Thurain's bag. So I finally, back into the garage safe and sound.

Class poli 205, introduction to the International relationship

The presentations are made by different groups every week. It is amazing to see some Brilliant African origin students; many of them are good public speakers. Some of them, I have never seen before; they probably never showed up in the class. The professor told me there are 135 students in the class, but I barely see 60 people a week.

challenging study life

We just did our mid term part 2. The exam was not difficult, in fact rather easy. We were just confused with so many things to read.For me, the major challenge is "language". However, I am getting improve and feel that things are moving forward.

Every time I am frustrated I think about my people living in other part of the world. They face extreme difficulty, loosing everything including their lives. I still have hope one day I will be doing something for them.

life has changed ever since I lfet my homeland!!

It was in the mid November of 1999 when I left my homeland. I went back to Burma many times over within these years...I still miss the homeland and feel sorry for things I can't solve today.