Kachin civilization dated back to B.C; a Jinghpaw researcher

Kachin civilization dated back to B.C; a Jinghpaw researcher

The Kachin Post / July 07, 2009

The case against Myanmar sanctions

Arno Kopecky

Yangon — From Saturday's Globe and Mail, Saturday, Jun. 20, 2009 03:57AM EDT

Were the trial of the world's most poignant embodiment of peaceful resistance not so real, Aung San Suu Kyi's recent misfortunes could have sprung from the pages of a novel.

A diabetic Vietnam veteran swims across a lake in the dead of night, eludes the guards watching over a nation's long-imprisoned leader and spends the night in her mansion, only to be plucked from the water in mid-escape the next evening and sent to prison along with “the Lady.”

Ms. Suu Kyi's interminable house arrest over 13 of the past 19 years was supposed to expire at the end of May, in time for yesterday, her 64th birthday. Instead, the democracy advocate – who was elected president of Myanmar (formerly Burma) in a landslide 1990 vote, but never permitted to take office by the ruling junta – stands charged with breaking the terms of her detention, in a trial that will resume on Friday after being suspended last month.

Her sentence seems a forgone conclusion: five more years in jail.

Equally predictable, though, has been the international community's corresponding verdict: further isolation for Myanmar, a fate parallel to that suffered by its heroine.

Yesterday in Brussels, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that European Union nations had agreed to mark Ms. Suu Kyi's birthday by stepping up sanctions against Myanmar. He called for her “immediate, unconditional release,” and described her trial as “absurd and contemptible.”

The United States has already extended its sanctions, after the Obama administration briefly contemplated a more moderate approach, like the strategy of engagement that it has been advocating for Iran. Kurt Campbell, the incoming top U.S. diplomat to East Asia, said last week that Ms. Suu Kyi's rearrest “makes it very difficult to move forward” with that goal.

And Ms. Suu Kyi would be the first to ask him not to. She has led the call for sanctions, maintaining that engagement with Myanmar's generals can only strengthen them. Turn the screws of hardship tight enough, the argument goes, and eventually the oppressors will either back down or be overthrown by their victims.

With her integrity and sacrifice, she has won virtually every Western government, including Canada's, over to her logic. In April, Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier boasted of imposing “the toughest sanctions in the world” on Myanmar.

But something few people discuss in public is that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate's high-minded politics are increasingly out of touch with the more pragmatic approach of many relief workers in her country. Their view of sanctions has been tempered by experience over the two decades since Ms. Suu Kyi was first locked away.

Not only is the regime's grip on power as strong as ever, they say, but the net of sanctions meant to squeeze the junta has expanded to snare humanitarian aid as well, depriving innocent citizens of crucial assistance.

To the doctors caring for a burgeoning population of people with AIDS, or the development workers struggling to build schools in the country's numerous conflict zones, the most relevant statistic about Myanmar is not its rank as the second-most-corrupt nation in the world, but the amount of foreign aid it receives – $3 a head, about a 20th of the amount sent to Laos or Sudan.

Sanctions on any intransigent dictatorship are meant to be selective.

Canada's Foreign Affairs Department explicitly notes “certain humanitarian exemptions” to the ban on goods and services moving between the two countries. If you want to send medical supplies or money via the Red Cross, for instance, you can – though you'll need a special permit.

Don't expect to get any logistical help from the Canadian embassy in Myanmar, because there isn't one. This reflects the government's own choice – legislated or otherwise – to avoid the moral labyrinth of delivering aid into tyranny.

A rare exception occurred after Cyclone Nargis decimated Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta last spring. As part of the global outpouring that followed, the Canadian International Development Agency sent a one-time, $26-million package of emergency relief. But despite desperate appeals from the United Nations and other agencies still working there, we've not sent a penny since.

We're even less likely to now, said Harn Yawnghwe, executive director of the Euro-Burma office in Brussels, despairing that “anyone proposing more humanitarian aid will face strong political opposition.”

Inside or out?

Peter Gillespie is the program manager for Inter Pares, a Canadian non-governmental organization that has provided health care to refugees outside Myanmar since 1991, despite Canadian bureaucratic obstacles that discourage NGOs from operating there, a practice he defends by pointing to the quarter-million patients Inter Pares reaches every year.

“Our work is having enormous impact,” he said. But working within the country itself would be another matter.

“There are two fundamental questions,” Mr. Gillespie said. “First, can aid be delivered into the country in an accountable way that does not strengthen the regime? And second, is it possible for NGOs to operate within the country without significant impediment from the junta? The answer to both these questions is no.”

Yet in northeastern Kachin state, where a brisk heroin trade flourishes among the savage jade and gold mines of the Himalayan foothills, I met a foreign doctor who felt otherwise. Hidden away in the mountains surrounding Myitkyina, Kachin's verdant capital, are towns with HIV rates of 90 per cent; he described the “shooting galleries” he saw fuelling the epidemic there.

“I saw a place where men lined up outside a hut, and inside was a plastic sheet with a hole cut through the middle,” said the doctor (who asked not to be named, to protect his work). “You'd go in, stick your arm through the hole, and a man on the other side would inject you with heroin. He used the same needle all day.”

The doctor began a needle-exchange program that went through 160,000 needles in a month. All this in a part of Myanmar that foreigners are officially banned from visiting.

“Everything here is done unofficially,” he told me. “The authorities tend to see us as the enemy, and so local administrators are afraid to give us permission for anything. They often sympathize with us, but they know it could cost them their job to help us. So we try to just do things without asking, and usually this works – if you don't ask permission, no one stops you.”

But can humanitarian aid go beyond saving lives to help effect the kind of change that sanctions have failed to produce? Absolutely, said David Tegenfeldt, a senior adviser to the Vancouver-based Hope International Development Agency. His personal history is closely tied to Myanmar's.

Mr. Tegenfeldt was born in Yangon (then Rangoon) to missionary parents who developed close ties with the Kachin ethnic minority, who are mainly Christian. In 1962, the military regime kicked all missionaries out of the country and Mr. Tegenfeldt's family returned to America; he moved back to Myanmar in 1994 at the urging of Kachin leaders who had just signed a ceasefire with the junta and wanted his help in rehabilitating their war-torn communities.

“When I arrived, there were just four registered NGOs in the entire country,” he recalled. “There has been a huge proliferation since then, to the point where there's almost no part of Myanmar that NGOs don't operate.”

What these groups can do, he argued, is help to lay the groundwork by encouraging social networks among communities with a history of conflict – something Myanmar has in abundance.

Wind of change

Such an opportunity came in the wake of the worst storm in Myanmar's history. On May 2, 2008, 200-kilometre-an-hour winds tore across the Irrawaddy Delta region in Myanmar's southwest corner, whipping up a four-metre storm surge that pulsed through the entire river system and drowned 140,000 people; a million more had everything but the clothes on their back washed into the Andaman Sea.

Cyclone Nargis brought Myanmar to the world's attention, not least because of the junta's initial refusal to accept international help. Planes laden with food and medicine languished at the Bangkok airport for weeks; many supplies that did make it through were pilfered by the military and sold in the markets for profit.

But something else happened too: Private citizens and NGOs already inside the country, local and foreign, responded to the crisis with a spec-

tacular effort that kept the imperilled survivors alive. Among them was the Metta Foundation, a local group working in Myanmar's post-conflict zones since 1994.

“We were lucky to have a presence in the delta already,” Seng Raw, its executive director, told me. A serene and soft spoken woman in her 60s, Ms. Raw explained that Metta had established relations with 231 delta villages after the 2004 tsunami, which killed about 60 people there.

“This meant we knew exactly where to deliver supplies and who to give them to. The government did not try to stop us – we've been doing this throughout the country for 15 years, and we know how to get things done.”

A year later, her organization is busy building schools and homes, replanting mangrove forests and conducting countless other projects whose costs and achievements are accounted for in Metta's annual report down to each mosquito net.

Critically, this work is being delivered through local leaders drawn together from the delta's patchwork of ethnic communities. “People who never before co-operated now see it as a matter of survival.”

By fostering these relationships, organizations such as Metta breathe life into civil society. But, of course, it isn't the junta that pays the group's way. When I asked if Metta relies on foreign donors, she smiled as though I'd asked if the sky was blue. “How else could we survive?”

Widening the conversation

The week before I met David Tegenfeldt in Yangon, he had been in Washington to plead with government representatives for an increase in strategic aid. He was tentatively promised one, from $3-million to $21-million a year.

What's more, he urged his audience to open a dialogue with the junta. “History teaches us that isolating a country has never been an effective tactic,” he told me, repeating his pitch to Congress.

South Africa, he noted, was the only country in the world where sanctions could be said to have led to regime change, “and even there they were just one tool in a big toolbox that included all kinds of diplomatic engagement. You should never sacrifice your principles or stop criticizing, but criticism is only one part of the conversation.

“There are also constructive things to talk about. We are concerned with the environment – so is Myanmar. We are concerned about narcotics – so is Myanmar. Surely there is a common thread here that we could find a way to work together on.”

For now, however, Ms. Suu Kyi's renewed detention has dashed any such hopes. Canadian Friends of Burma, a lobby group, is urging that the junta's diplomats be expelled if she is not released.

On the question of aid, its executive director, Tin Maung Htoo, conceded by phone from Ottawa that “we should not let people die while we wait for a political solution.” But the problem, he said “is that any business you do in Burma, you have to deal with the junta.”

Should our refusal to do so persist, Ms. Suu Kyi's chronicle of a verdict foretold will all too likely lead to Myanmar's 100 years of solitude.

Arno Kopecky is a freelance journalist based in Vancouver.

It's not too late to rescue Burma from further tragedy It is time to treat Than Shwe as the war criminal that he is, and hold a commission of inquiry into crimes against humanity, writes Benedict Rogers. Benedict Rogers Published: 10:49AM BST 17 Jun 2009 telegraph.uk Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's imprisoned Democracy leader, will turn 64 on Friday Photo: Reuters Within the past month, two new shocking chapters of misery have opened up in Burma’s decades-long tragedy. The first is the trial, on ludicrously fabricated charges, of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who marks her 64th birthday this coming Friday. Now in the notorious Insein Prison, after over 13 years of house arrest, her trial is a blatant attempt by the regime to keep her locked up. Her continued detention is illegal under both international and Burmese law, according to the UN – which is why the regime has gone to such absurd lengths to find fresh charges. The second is the attacks within the past week on Ler Per Hur , a camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) in Karen State, Burma. Situated on the banks of the Moie river, opposite Thailand, Ler Per Hur has been home to more than 1,200 Karen IDPs who had fled the Burma Army’s attacks on their villages deeper inside Burma. Although it has twice been attacked before, it has for the past seven years provided a place of sanctuary and relative peace for those escaping the junta’s policies of forced labour, rape, torture, destruction of villages, crops and livestock, extrajudicial killings and conscription of villagers as human minesweepers. I know Ler Per Hur well. I have visited many times. The people there are my friends. I have ridden in their boats, walked through their vegetable patches, played with their children and talked with new arrivals. I have brought British and Irish politicians, including John Bercow , perhaps the next Speaker of the House of Commons, there. My mother has visited, and my sister , a professional musician, has played her violin there. Now, the inhabitants of Ler Per Hur and the surrounding area have had to flee for their lives. Over 5,000 Karen civilians are now encamped on the Thai side of the river, in urgent need of food, medicine and shelter, surrounded by the sound of mortars and RPGs. As Rainbow, a school teacher and a friend of mine, told the BBC : “Last week government troops attacked our camp. They were shelling every day … We can't go back because the military has taken over our camp. But we can't stay here for long either. We are illegal here … We can only hope that we'll be able to go home soon.” That hope, that they and the several million other Burmese refugees around the world will be able to go home soon, requires the international community to wake up. In recent years, abundant evidence has been provided of the extraordinary inhumanity of Burma’s ruling military dictator, Senior General Than Shwe. In 2007, his military beat, arrested, imprisoned and killed Buddhist monks and civilians participating in peaceful protests. Last year, he rammed through a rigged referendum on a new constitution, while denying humanitarian aid to the victims of Cyclone Nargis. Yet rather than jolting the international community into serious action, these events appear to have increased muddled thinking among some. There are those in academia, diplomacy and major aid agencies who, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, argue that the regime shows signs of reasonableness and that all we need to do is lift sanctions and engage unconditionally. Perhaps, in some of their minds, a round of golf with the Generals would do the trick. It is as if the wind and rain of Cyclone Nargis swept through their brains – not removing the cobwebs that previously existed, but instead leaving a soggy mess behind. It gives a whole new meaning to the concept of ‘water on the brain’. The farcical trial of Aung San Suu Kyi, combined with the intensification of the offensive against Karen civilians, must surely be a wake-up call for those who have not previously heard the sirens ring. Than Shwe is not a man with whom we can simply have a nice chat. Significant pressure, far from being a cause of his intransigence, is the only language he understands. Sanctions, rather than being lifted, need to be tightened and more carefully targeted, to hit Than Shwe and his cronies. The United Nations Security Council must impose a universal arms embargo, and the European Union – which has at last issued a statement condemning the offensives in eastern Burma – should lead the charge. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon should make the release of political prisoners in Burma his personal priority, as called for in a petition signed by almost 700,000 people . And it is time to treat Than Shwe as the war criminal that he is, and hold a commission of inquiry into crimes against humanity , as called for by two previous UN special rapporteurs. Such steps should be given the sense of urgency the situation deserves, by invoking the UN’s ‘Responsibility to Protect’ mechanism. That would be the most appropriate way of marking Aung San Suu Kyi’s birthday. Moreover, humanitarian aid – both within the country and especially to the IDPs on the run in the border areas – must be increased. Those who criticize pressure accuse campaigners of opposing aid. It is time to nail that lie once and for all. I know of no Burma activist who has opposed humanitarian aid, provided it is properly channeled and reaches those who need it most, without benefiting the regime. Indeed, the Burma Campaign UK and Christian Solidarity Worldwide fought hard to get the British government to increase aid to Burma in 2007, a battle we won in the face of stiff opposition from some civil servants. So while we can debate the merits of other policies, I urge those who perpetuate the lie about aid to put away their childish games and accept that on the humanitarian issue, at least, there is significant common ground. Furthermore, if they really do care about the humanitarian crisis in Burma, I hope they will join me in calling for significant emergency aid to the IDPs and refugees newly displaced as a result of the current eastern Burma crisis. It is of course clear that Burma’s regional neighbours, notably China, India, Japan and the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), have a crucial role to play. Thailand in particular must see the offensives on its border, which may amount to attempted genocide, as the last straw. China should recognize that its reputation is seriously at risk if it continues to provide economic and diplomatic support for Than Shwe’s barbaric regime. They must join the US and the EU in urging UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to increase his efforts to bring change to Burma, and supporting initiatives at the Security Council. Burma’s political and humanitarian crisis surely ranks in the same category as North Korea, Sudan and Zimbabwe, and as such it must receive the attention it deserves and has for so long been denied. It is not too late to rescue Burma from further tragedy, nor is the international community’s already much-tarnished moral record irredeemable – but both hang in the balance. Benedict Rogers is a human rights activist working for Christian Solidarity Worldwide , which recently launched the Change for Burma! campaign. He is the author of A Land Without Evil: Stopping the Genocide of Burma’s Karen people (Monarch Books, 2004). He has travelled almost 30 times to Burma and its borderlands, and is currently writing a biography of Senior General Than Shwe.

Burma needs no Border Guard Force; KIA chief-of-staff The Kachin Post / June 14, 2009 The chief-of-staff of Kachin Independence Army Maj-Gen. Gunhtang Gam Shawng said Burma does not need Border Guard Force in Kachin State to defend foreign enemies, according to the exclusive interview with The Kachin Post. “There is no job for military, expect the police along the border with China or India,” said Maj-Gen. Gunhtang Gam Shawng. “There would be no war with neighboring countries because we live and interrelate friendly with Chinese and neighbors.” The Kachin State is situated in northern Burma, bordering with India in the West, and China in the East. “It’s clearly saying that [Burma Army] just want to disarm [all ethnic armies] overnight,” said KIA chief-of-staff Maj-Gen. Gunhtang Gam Shawng. Burma Army introduced Border Guard Force plan to all ethnic cease-fire groups since May 2009. The plan intends to transform all ethnic armies to Border Guard Force before end of 2009. Meanwhile some leaders of Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), a political wing of KIA, have been discussing with Burmese junta representatives regarding the issue of Border Guard Force. There would be no better future for the Kachin revolution against successive Burmese regime, if the KIO accepts the Border Guard Force plan, said Maj-Gen. Gunhtang Gam Shawng. BGF plan has no political solution for Kachins. Burmese junta are trying to veil the truth of real situation in the country to international community by pointing out ethnic revolutionary groups as the arms groups which do not have political aims, said Maj-Gen. Gam Shawng. Burma army is insulting and disdaining the KIA by introducing the BGF plan. Gam Shawng said KIA stands for the interest of the Kachins and Kachinland. “We’ll never surrender,” according to the fifth code of conduct of Kachin Independence Army. Interview with KIA chief-of-staff Maj-Gen Gunhtang Gam Shawng The Kachin Post / June 14, 2009 San:-(1) Myen Hpyen Dap hpa majaw KIA hpe Border Guard Force ( Ga Jarit Sin Hpyen Dap ) de galai kau mayu ai rai? Htai:- Asan sha tsun ga nga yang, yet yet sha laknak bru la kau mayu ai lachyum sha re. Nye a ningmu hku nga yang, Miwa jarit (snr) Gala jarit ni hta balik bungli hta lai n’na hpyen bungli n nga ai. Miwa hte mung ahku ahkau, htinglup htingshang rai n’na nga pra nga ga ai she re. Hpyen byin wa na lam hpa n nga ai. Dai majaw jarit sin Hpyen Hpung tawn n ra, bungli hpa n nga ai. Dai majaw Jarit Sin Hpyen Hpung, Hpyen Dap ngu ai gabaw gaw bawnu ginsup ai lam sha she rai nhten ngu maram sawn ya ai. San:-(2) Myen Hpyen Dap a Border Guard Force masing gaw Wunpawng Amyu Sha ni a Rawt Malan hpe kade daram dingbai dingna jaw mai ai rai? Htai:- Myen Hpyen Dap a B.G.F masing hpe lama wa hkap la kau dat ai rai yang, Wunpawng Amyu Sha ni a Rawt Malan lam yang gaw Gam Maka n tsawm, Labau n tsawm ai hku tinang nan shabyin la kau dat ai hte bung mat na re. Hpa majaw nga yang, Mung Masa mahtai hpa mung n lu ai a majaw re. Dai ni du hkra mung masa tsun shaga bawngban ai lam tsep kawp rai n nga yu ai. Raitim, B.G.F masing hpe hpa baw rai nga ai lachyum hkawn hkrang ai rai yang Rawt Malan a matu n-gun pyi shabyin lu mai nga ai. San:-(3) Myen Hpyen Dap a B.G.F matsun gaw KIA hpe galai shai kau lu na kun? Htai:- Myen Dap a B.G.F galaw mu nga tsun pru wa lam hpe lama wa hkap la kau dat ai rai yang, KIA gaw Myen Dap sha tai mat n’na, KIA hkringhtawng n nga mat sana re. San:-(4) Myen Hpyen Dap a B.G.F matsun du wa ai shaloi KIA ningbaw ningla langai hku n’na gara hku hkam sha ai rai? Htai:- Shanglawt Hpyen Dap (KIA) a Dap Awn Daju langai mi hku n’na n-yun bu na zawn nga ai. Grai yu kaji, Yu shagrit, Grai Roi kau hkrum sai ngu ai hku hkam sha ai. Tsun ga nga yang, Myen Dap mung American, Miwa Dap, maigan hpyen dap ni hte gasat gala yu ai mahkrum madup nga yu ai n re. Anhte zawn re Rawt Malan ni hte gasat gala yu ai sha re. Hpyen mahkrum madup hku nga yang lak lai shai ai ni n rai ma ai. Shanhte lu ai "Thu Ra Boit" nga ai ni maigan hpyen hte gasat n’na lu ai n re. Anhte hte gasat gala ai kaw si hkrung si htan shakut kau ra ai majaw lu ai she rai malu ai. Anhte hte tsun shaga ai lam hta mung Rawt Malan ni hpe gaw "U" (Salang) ngu ai hku sha tsun shaga lang ma ai. Kaja wa tsun ga nga yang, lahkawng maga dang ai gasat poi hte sum ai gasat poi nga ai hkrai sha re. Rai yang, teng man ai lam hpe magap kau n’na maga mi hpe Mung Masa pandung n nga ai, lan su kabrawng jawng ai laknak lang hpung zawn Mungkan hte Mung Shawa hpe kam hkra galaw ai masa sha re. San:-(5) Ya ten KIO hku n’na marai (7) lawm ai Dat Kasa Hpung hpaw nhtawm Myen Hpyen Dap a B.G.F matsun hpe jahkrup na hkyen nga ai. KIA hku n’na tinang Hpyen Dap kata hpyen masa hkyen lajang ai lam nga ai kun? Htai:- Ya yang tsun shapraw ai baw n re majaw n htai na nngai. San:-(6) Lama KIA hte Myen Hpyen Dap majaw byin wa ai rai yang, KIA gaw kaning re ai ladat ni hte aten kadun, aten galu matai htang na rai? Htai:- Htai n manu ai. San:-(7) Jinghpaw Wunpawng Amyu Sha ting gaw ya ten hta KIA hpe Border Guard Force galai kau na hpe n hkap la ma ai. KIA hku n’na Amyu Sha yawng a matu gara madang du hkra tsap ya lu na rai? Htai:- N’dai ga san hpe htai ga nga yang, Wunpawng Mungdan Shanglawt Hpyen Dap kaw n’na Mungdan hte Mungdan Sha ni a n’tsa e Hkam la ai Ga Sadi (5) a nambat (1) hta Mungdan hte Amyu, Mungdan Sha ni a n’tsa e Hta ni Hta na Sadi dung na, nambat (4) hta Asak Apnawng Mat Wa Sai ni a n’tsa Tut nawng Sadi Dung na lam hte (5) hta Galoi Mung Lak Nak N Jahkrat na ngu ai Ga Shaka tawn da chyalu re. San:-(8) Ya ten hta lama KIA n nga taw yang, Wunpawng Amyu Sha Yawng kaning re ai gam maka de du wa mai ai rai? Htai:- KIA n nga taw yang, Wunpawng Amyu Sha ni a Gam Maka gaw tinang a hkum makawp maga la na kawng n tu mat ai hte bung mat n’na roi kam ai hku roi sha hkrum ai amyu byin mat na re. Htunghking, Makam Masham, Laili Laika, Ga hte seng ai ahkaw ahkang lam ni grau ginlut tat sum mat wa n’na, Mungkan n’tsa e Mat Mat Ai Amyu Jahpan hta lawan du mat na shadu ai. San:-(9) Mungkan ting nga Wunpawng Amyu Sha ni hku n’na KIO/KIA de shagun hpaji jaw laika ni gaw ya ten na mabyin masa a matu kade akyu rawng ai rai? Htai:- N’dai lam hte seng n’na Mungkan ting hta ginru ginsa du nga ai Wunpawng Sha ni yawng a ra sharawng ai lam, dawdan ai lam hpe hkap la n’na shawng lam lahkam htawt na hku tinang Ginjaw kawn n’dau shabra lit jaw tawn chyalu re. Dai majaw Mung kata, Mung Shinggan nga pra nga ai Wunpawng Amyu Sha Yawng a lit mahtang re ai lam shaleng dat nngai. San:-(10) Maigan de nga ai Wunpawng Amyu Sha yawng hpe KIA hku n’na tinang Amyu Sha Lawt Lu Lam Lu hkra gara hku byin shangun mayu ai rai? Htai:- N’dai lam hte seng n’na:- (1) Myit hkrum ai lak nak hte myit hkrum ai ninggang lang nga ga. (2) IT prat re ai majaw n’dai laknak kaba hpe tang du hkra asung jashawn ga. (3) Jinghku tam, Jinghku lu hkra galaw ga. (4) Amyu hte Mung a Dan a ningsang magam bungli hta ra ahkyak wa yang ( ? ) ngu ai lam ni hpe myit nga, galaw nga chyalu rai na re ngu kam dat n’ngai.

Let's learn from the past!

June 11, 2009 at 2:00am

What happen to Kachin land today because we accepted and joined panglong agreement that is "Overall strategy of transition" for Kachins at that time hoping that one day we would have a separate Kachin State and full autonomy?

What happen to Kachin land today since we continued to engage in "Plan of Tactics"of those days? Never ending "Plan of Tactics" without a solid result for our people and our lands.

Do we think ourselves that we can outsmart with junta in playing politics? Do we really have the capacity to deal with regime? Are there men of integrity, and resources (even we have those, do we have stamina?) to play this game with junta?

Some outcomes are already foreseen.

We want to urge KIA/KIO leaders to "NOT ACCEPT THE PROPOSAL" made by junta. If you want to play politics, do play here how to find other means to avoid war and casualties while holding the principals and goals, standing against them. Non-cooperation with junta is the weapon to fight while the whole world is watching!

On transforming KIA/KIO

June 10, 2009 at 1:30am

It is more important for KIA/KIO to hang on to principals and beliefs. The time can change anything in Burma's politics. We will need to buy time to avoid arm conflicts and to avoid concessions. Junta is facing pressures from many fronts, the opposition groups, our fellow ethnic ceasefire groups, Asean, US and Europe. International's interest are growing because of Suu Kyi's case and I believe some changes will take place for Burma and its people in the near future. I think the timing for Junta is not right to face all battle fronts at the same time.

So I again would like to urge KIO/KIA to keep their guns to protect Kachins and our liberty. It will be a very different story to negotiate junta without guns and fire powers.

It is an irreversible process to transform KIO/KIA. It is an important chapter in KIA/O history and the Kachin history as a whole. Almost every Kachin families shared the struggles for freedom for the last 40-50 years for the worthwhile principals and goals. The goals are still clear. We need to have our own autonomy, our own liberty to choose our own destiny.

Resistance by being non-corporative with the junta is the mean to be used for now. Because the junta is much stronger power to fight. Stretching time for 2010 and beyond by Ko Kang is considerable as it gives manueverlity.

The junta, that invites for talks, is not a legitimate government. Will it be legitimate if there is any agreement made with junta in the future? Then the border security force will be just a border security force representing none. Even though becoming BSF is out of question, it will be hard to get out of its spirals and tricks once engaged. If not well prepared and not sured, it is best not to enter in a game. The credential of the opponent is what we should seriously considered. Let's "sung sung myit" on consequences of our decision on the people who bear the name "Kachin".

Tara n-nga mungdan kata na WP sha ni

Maroi nni hpa rai nga ai lo!!
Tara n-nga ai mungdan kata kaw nga pra ra ai anhte WP sha ni a shoi chyum sha ai lam ni rai nga ai.
Ndai zawn rai roi rip hkrum ai lam ni hpe nang ngai gara hku hkam jan lu na?
Lai sai ten ni hta mung anhte na lu ai, "Wunpawng Rawang numsha ni roi hkrum ai da!"
Rap ra ai tara hte teng man ai lam hpe gara hku tam mu lu na ta?

15 Year-Old Schoolgirl Gang-Raped And Mutilated by Burmese Soldiers
15 Aug 2008
Pictures available.

Burma Campaign UK sources have confirmed that Burmese Army soldiers have gang-raped and mutilated a 15 year old schoolgirl in Kachin State Burma. No action has been taken by the Burmese authorities to investigate and arrest those involved.

The incident took place on 27th July 2008 near Nam Sai Village, Bamaw District, Kachin State, northern Burma. The schoolgirl, Nhkum Hkawn Din, was attacked and killed on her way to bring rice to her brother, who was working on a paddy field on the family farm. Her family only realised that Hkaw Din was missing after her brother came back from the farm and asked his parents where she was. They searched for her all evening and reported her missing at 9pm.

After a three-day search her naked and mutilated body was found 200 meters from an army checkpoint. They first found her clothes, and then her slippers together with the basket that she carried on that day. A local witness testified that they had seen Burmese Army soldiers follow Hkaw Din on her way to the paddy field. After her body was found other witnesses testified that they had seen soldiers leave that area after the time she had disappeared.
http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/pm/weblog.php?id=P381


$500 Compensation to Family of Kachin Schoolgirl Raped and Killed
23 Aug 2008
The Burma Campaign UK has received reports that the family of a 15 year-old schoolgirl who was gang-raped, mutilated and killed by Burmese Army soldiers has been offered around $500 plus some food staples as compensation for the murder.

Local army commanders have now admitted that one of their soldiers carried out the attack, which took place on July 27th. However, local people are reportedly angry that the regime is pinning the blame on just one low ranking soldier, witnesses saw more than one soldier following the schoolgirl, including a local colonel. That colonel has now apparently been reassigned to another area.
http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/pm/weblog.php?id=P385

Hkungga jaw dat ai.

Myitkyina mare kaw na jawngma ni hpyen asuya hpe ninghkap ai lam "poster" ni hpe shakap nga ai lam na lu ga ai. Shang lawm ai jawngma yawng hpe hkungga jaw dat nngai law.
Amyu a matu share shagan ni nan rai nga ai.

Kani, nang hpam lusha koi gam ga!

No.4, Heroin, an enemy for us!

Kachin lands are for Kachins!

Stop building dam!

Stop force labor!