Burma moves against opposition

BangkokPost.com from Agency reports

The Burmese military junta tightened the net on leaders of a rare string of protests on Thursday, raiding homes of known activists and their friends and distributing their photographs in a manhunt around Rangoon.

The regime also is employing menacing gangs of civilians to snuff out a rare wave of protests by pro-democracy activists against fuel price hikes, reports from Rangoon say.

The thugs have been unleashed even though the grind of everyday life, fear of being beaten up and a lack of belief in people's power as a weapon against a ruthless military junta suggest a string of protests by Burmese activists cannot snowball into a mass uprising.

On Wednesday, three trucks, each carrying about 20 tough-looking young men, were parked on either side of the road, watching for any protesters. About 20 plainclothes security officials roamed nearby sidewalks at the intersection, a traditional site for protests.

No demonstrations were known to have taken place on Wednesday in Rangoon, although there were reports of protests in two or three other towns. Information about them could not be independently confirmed.

Dozens of people have been detained, including several prominent pro-democracy activists many of whom are members of detained opposition leader Aung san Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy.

Demonstrations triggered by soaring prices began on Aug 19 and have continued almost daily - although they have dwindled from a few hundred people to a few dozen - and despite strong-arm tactics by the junta to supress them.

Tension was especially high at Hledan Junction in Burma's biggest city of Rangoon, where security officials and their civilian auxillaries clamped down on Tuesday on a protest within minutes of its start.

They pushed through crowds of onlookers to rough up about 15 demonstrators before tossing them into waiting trucks to take them away for detention, witnesses said.

While the protesters have shown no sign of giving up, analysts said they did not expect the momentum to last as the general public remained afraid to join in.

"The struggle thus far is one-sided, with numbers, organisation and will in the hands of the rulers," said Josef Silverstein, a Burma expert and retired professor of Rutgers University in New Jersey.

The Eureopean Union (EU) on said it was concerned about recent arrests of leading activists and the "decision to detain individuals who were exercising their right to peaceful demonstration." (Agencies)

Burma protests continue

Our Correspondent

30 August 2007

A boost in energy prices has some Burmese in the streets. For how long? Photo by Ralf-André Lettau Driven by sudden five-fold fuel and commodity prices and the continuing deterioration of the country’s educational system, protests in Burma appear to be spreading outside of Rangoon to other cities and taking on an increasingly political hue despite heavy-handed crackdowns by the country’s military and allied gangs of thugs. The protests have only a distant chance of success, but despite the detention of dozens of pro-democracy supporters, they appear to be growing in the face of fears that the soldiers could start shooting at any time. Leaders from the 1988 student protest movement, many of them jailed for more than a decade, are back on the streets along with protest leaders from even earlier periods. Military leaders have called on the clergy in Buddhist temples to quell the protests. Nonetheless, scores of Buddhist monks joined a protest in the port city of Sittwe Tuesday as bystanders clapped from roadsides and apartments. In Akyab, the capital of the southeastern state of Arakan, 200 monks took to the street to protest the fuel increases. The presence of the monks, the country’s only real moral authority given the corrupt and brutal government, may be especially disturbing to the ruling junta in the devoutly Buddhist country. So far, 10 days of arrests have failed to stop the protests over price increases that have left many without even the money to get to work. In at least three provincial towns, where government security isn’t as tight, hundreds of people have marched in the streets, so far only to official warnings. It remains to be seen how far the demonstrations will go. In 1988 protests against then-military dictator General Ne Win built to a point where Rangoon and much of the country was completely outside government control. It will take more than a few hundred scattered protesters to create that kind of momentum, especially when the memories of the wholesale slaughter of protesters in September 1988 by the current junta remain fresh. But the military, which has been resupplied with modern weapons as a result of its energy revenues, particularly from China and India, is likely more powerful than ever. Although though more than 100 people have been arrested so far, protesters have continued to defy the threat of torture and prison. The question now, analysts say, is whether other parts of society will also take to the streets of the impoverished country. "The problem is the activists alone cannot continue this. They will be arrested and arrested until they disappear," Thailand's former ambassador to Burma, Asda Jayanama, told Agence France Press. In 1988, when the military retook the streets of Rangoon on September 18, hundreds, if not thousands, died, according to activists, diplomats and journalists. Asia Sentinel Executive Editor A. Lin Neumann was one of the few journalists to witness the carnage of September 1988 first hand: “They put machine gun emplacements on pedestrian flyovers and raked the streets with gun fire. Soldiers trapped students in a square by the US Embassy and killed people in the cross fire. The gunfire went on for days and the hospitals ran out of morphine and medicine. We later saw trucks filled with bodies leaving the city. It was impossible to know how many died.” Student leaders were imprisoned, with hundreds more escaping into the jungle, where their influence increasingly waned with the passing years. The shootings instilled a visceral aversion to protest. It is questionable if the popular mood is changing. Burma analyst Win Min told AFP that activists believe they have popular support, but that he was unsure if the public was ready to risk their lives by joining the protests. In Rangoon Tuesday, about 50 activists gathered near a bus stop close to the former campus of Yangon University on the north side of the country’s main city, but plainclothes police and pro-junta goons broke up the group after only 10 minutes, witnesses said. Su Su Nway, an activist who was awarded the John Humphrey Freedom Award by the Canada-based group Rights and Democracy after having been arrested in 2005 and 2007, was said to have narrowly escaped a violent pro-junta mob that broke up the demonstration she was attending at Hledan Market in Rangoon’s Kamaryut Township. She was reportedly dragged by the mob but escaped. “It was terrible,” she told reporters. “I shouted at them that we were peacefully demanding the prices of commodities be reduced for people, including soldiers and police.” As an example of the changing atmosphere, the long-dormant All Burma Federation of Student Unions, many of whose members were either imprisoned or driven out of Burma, announced it would resume its struggle against the country’s military government. “Today we reestablish the ABFSU to take on the shifting roles of former students in a new generation to fight for freedom, justice and the building of a democratic country,” a spokesperson for the group, who gave his name as Kyaw Ko Ko, told the Burmese exile magazine The Irrawaddy on Tuesday. The student union’s activities go back decades, earning admiration for its role in opposing British colonial rule, and the rise of Burma’s military dictators. Kyaw Ko Ko said the group is now organizing among university and high school students in Rangoon and other major cities. In addition, the pro-democracy 88 Generation Students Group, whose members led the 1988 uprising, have also become active. Although Burma’s captive media reported that only 56 people have been arrested during the protests, Thailand-based political dissidents on Monday said it was at least 100. Min Ko Naing, considered Myanmar’s most prominent pro-democracy advocate after detained opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, was arrested on August 19. “In the last week, the 88 Generation Students group leaders and other opposition political parties have held protests,” said Kyaw Ko Ko, who currently studies economics at a university in Rangoon. “It is important that we students and the general public join them to stand up for the people of Burma.” According to Irrawaddy, the government said only that authorities were interrogating those taken into custody. Most of those arrested have already spent more than a decade in prison.

Watchdogs hit media harassment by Myanmar junta

TWO media rights watchdogs yesterday condemned heavy-handed tactics used by Myanmar's military regime to prevent journalists from reporting on a rare series of anti-government protests.

For more than 10 days, pro-democracy supporters have staged protests against a massive hike in fuel prices that has left many struggling to afford even the bus fare to get to work.

The protests have spread to key provincial cities, despite the arrests of more than 100 activists, including some of the nation's top pro-democracy leaders.

"The military's response to the wave of protests against price increases since August 19 has again been heavy-handed repression, intimidation and censorship of Burmese journalists," Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association said. "Despite the violence by the military and their bully-boys, reports and pictures of the demonstrations are being seen abroad. This testifies to the courage of the Burmese journalists and demonstrators," they said.

Police and pro-government militia have tried to stop photographers from taking pictures of the protests in Myanmar, which was formerly known as Burma.

Plainclothes security agents armed with spades and iron bars have been threatening and insulting journalists at the scene, the groups said. AFP

Burmese pro-democracy ‘Working Group’ created to approach China

Irrawaddy: - Lalit K Jha
Thu 30 Aug 2007
Filed under: News, International

Eminent Burmese intellectuals, academicians and political activists in exile have formed a 16-member “Working Group on China” to seek Chinese government help in shaping the future of Burma.

The group, formed during the “Burma Policy Consultation Conference” which ended on Friday in Ottawa, Canada, will create an action plan on strategy to approach China on how best to use its influence to create a popular government in Burma.

The plan represents a shift in strategic thinking, in that it recognizes China’s increased influence and role in supporting the regime.

The first day’s closed-door session was conducted entirely in Burmese.

The next day’s session will be conducted in English and include speeches by several Canadian government officials. At the end of the conference, an “Ottawa Declaration” will be announced, which organizers say could shape the pro-democracy’s movement’s relationship with the world’s largest Communist government.

“We are not against China. We want to have a strong relationship with China,” Tin Maung Htoo, the executive director of the Canadian Friends of Burma told The Irrawaddy at the end of the first day’s deliberations.

“We would tell them [the Chinese] that they should think of the future and not about the present alone. We are sure that the military is not going to rule Burma forever and democracy will be established in Burma sooner or later. So China
needs to think and take into account all these things.”

Prominent speakers on the first day included Nyo Ohn Myint, the head of the foreign affairs department of the National League of Democracy, Thailand; Kyaw Zan Thar, a prominent Burmese journalist; Harn Yawnghwe, the director the Euro-Burma Office, Belgium; Htun Aung Kyaw, the chairman of Civil Society of Burma, USA; Than Khe, the chairman of All Burma Students’ Democratic Front, Thailand; Than Aung, the chairman of Burma Watch International, Thailand; Zaw Oo, an economist; Nay Htun Naing, the director of the NLD, Korea; Naw Seng, the director of the Kachin Affairs Office, North America; and Soe Myint of the Mizzima News Agency.

A paper, “The China-Burma Conundrum” by the editor of The Irrawaddy, Aung Zaw, was read in his absence. The paper reflected the general feeling among conference participants that China may hold an important key to resolve the political deadlock in Burma.

Conference participants were quick to point to several positive signals Beijing has sent to pro-democracy leaders. Beijing recently hosted a rare meeting between Washington and Naypyidaw officials. China has reportedly encouraged the junta to conclude the constitutional drafting process and, most recently, Chinese officials held meetings with ethnic leaders and exiled activists from Burma to discuss their views of the National Convention and other issues.

“Current China policy towards Burma may be viewed as a reality approach based on support for the regime to keep its major share of influence,” said Nyo Ohn Myint, head of the foreign affairs committee of the NLD (Liberated Area). He said China may not want to weaken the Burmese government during any “transitional period.”

In his opening remarks, Tin Maung Htoo recalled a statement by NLD leader Suu Kyi who said many factors are essential for change, and Western economic sanctions alone are not enough.

“One of the crucial components necessary for change in Burma is the positive role China and other regional powers can play in the process of reconciliation and political transition,” he said. “Prompt action should be taken to encourage China’s support, while at the same time taking care not to abandon self-reliance.”

Raising our Fighting Peacock Flag as high as we can

All Burma Federation of Student Unions:
Thu 30 Aug 2007

Historically, ever since the 1920 student boycott and first student strike, Burmese students have been at the forefront of every movement for political change in Burma. In 1936, the second student strike took place, and a third in 1938, which was called the 1300 affair (so named after the year of its occurrence in the traditional Burmese calendar). Through all of these early student protests, the passion of the students to fight for freedom and justice alongside their countrymen was enshrined.

Students hold three basic ideals for the well-being of the world, namely freedom, justice and equality. In accordance with these ideals, students always play an important role in solving any political or economic crisis. For instance, students were instrumental in the fight for independence. After the independence struggle, students played an important role in the democratization of Burma. During Burma’s long ordeal under successive military dictatorships, students have concurrently fought for democracy, human rights, freedom and justice in their attempts to wipe dictatorships from Burma and from the world.

Now, even as the Burmese people suffer from socioeconomic disruptions, our country continues in its political stalemate. The youth in Burma have faced many troubles studying, our people suffering are countless humiliations and difficulties. We believe that we, the students, are the children of the people. So, we should be united to fight against dictatorship and try to solve the current crisis in Burma.

On 7 July, 1962, our historic student union building was demolished by Ne Win’s military government and along with it, our student unions were eliminated. However, our All Burma Federation of Student Unions emerged once again during the pro-democracy uprising of the “Four Eights Affair”, which was led by our students.

In the current era, our students, led by 88 generation student groups, give recognition to the suffering of the people through peaceful walking demonstrations. Peaceful demonstrations which are brutally cracked down on by the military and military-backed pro-junta thugs. As students, even our ability to attend school has gravely deteriorated under the current regime. So, as is fitting of our fighting student spirit, we believe that we need to be at the forefront of the current movement to restore democracy in Burma.

Oh - Burmese Students! It is our time to fulfill our historical responsibility which has been handed over from previous generations. We, united and organized - our historic All Burma Federation of Student Unions.

Now as then, we, the All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU) vow to the people of Burma to fight for student rights, human rights, democracy, freedom and justice, and for the greater good, without regard for our own lives.

“If there be students, there must be student unions”

Central Organizing Committee
All Burma Federation of Student Unions

* This statement was written and distributed in Burma.*
—— Translated by ABFSU-FAC (Unofficial Translation) ———

Junta 'frees prisoners for anti-protest mobs'

By Daniel Howden
Published: 29 August 2007

Burma's military junta has been freeing prisoners from jail and then recruiting them to bolster gangs that have been used attack pro-democracy activists on the streets of Rangoon, campaigners and diplomats say.

Before last week's protests, the government released hundreds of prisoners in preparation for the arrest of dozens of activists whoa are campaigning against the country's soaring inflation and lack of political process, it is claimed.


Sources suggest, although there is no proof, that the prisoners may have been recruited to join the shadowy Swan Aah Shin or "capable strong person" organisation."It's an underground organisation and I don't know who would admit to it existing, but it exists and it exists in force, and it has been evident over the last week," one diplomat told Reuters.

"Basically, they are junta-backed thugs. They come from anywhere, and are the unemployed underclass. And they've been really effective - they are threatening. Everywhere you go, there are groups and truckloads of grubby-looking men looking bored and looking for a fight."

The claims came as campaigners again took to the streets of Rangoon yesterday but were only able to march a short way before being set upon by pro-government gangs. Many were punched as they were dragged away and thrown into waiting trucks.

A former political prisoner, Su Su Nway, took part in the protest but managed to escape arrest in a taxi with several colleagues. "Peaceful protests are brutally cracked down upon and I want to tell the international community that there is no rule of law in Burma," she told reporters.

Although she has a heart condition, the 35-year-old said she believed it was her duty to join the protests since so many other activists had been arrested and detained by the government last week. About 60 are believed to still be in jail. "I will continue to stand in front of the public and I am ready to face government persecution," she said.

Campaigners have said that, in the past week, the government has been boosting its military forces in the capital, raising fears that troops could be used against protesters - much as they were in 1988 when scores of people were killed.

So far, however, the government has been using the Swan Aah Shin, believed to be organised by the military-created Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA). While the Swan Aah Shin operates mainly in Rangoon, the USDA and its networks of informers cover the provincial parts of the country.

Meanwhile, Buddhist monks were among up to 300 people who took part in a separate protest yesterday in the city of Sittwe, capital of Burma's western Rakhine State. A report on the website of Democratic Voice of Burma, an opposition radio station based in Norway, said the protest had lasted for at least an hour without government interference.

CSW calls for fasting and prayer for Burma

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) today announced plans for a day of fasting on Tuesday 4 September and a day of prayer on Sunday 9 September in response to the current crisis in Burma. These actions are being organised in conjunction with Burma Campaign UK.

Over the past ten days some of the biggest demonstrations in a decade have been taking place in Burma. Hundreds of people have marched peacefully almost every day since 19 August in protest at the military regime’s decision to raise fuel prices by 500 per cent.

In response to the peaceful protests, the regime has launched a brutal crackdown. Over 100 people have been arrested so far. Demonstrators, including women, have been beaten up with iron rods and bamboo sticks by the police and the junta’s proxy mobs. Almost all the leading pro-democracy activists have been detained, and may be sentenced to up to 20 years in jail. Amongst those arrested are Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi – two leaders of the pro-democracy movement in 1988 when thousands of peaceful protestors were massacred by the regime. They have already served 16 and 15 years in prison respectively during which time they endured terrible torture.

CSW’s National Director, Stuart Windsor, said: “We are calling for Christians around the country to join in a special day of prayer on Sunday 9 September at the request of Burmese exiles and campaign groups. We urge churches to include Burma in their Sunday service intercessions that day. We encourage people to pray for the release of those arrested, for action by the international community, and for meaningful dialogue between the regime, the democracy movement and the ethnic nationalities. We also support calls for a global hunger strike on Tuesday 4 September. We encourage Christians to fast and pray on 4 September in solidarity with the people of Burma who continue to show extraordinary courage and dignity, risking attack, arrest, torture and even death to protest peacefully at the injustice of the military regime.”

For more information, please contact Penny Hollings, Campaigns and Media Manager at Christian Solidarity Worldwide on 020 8329 0045, email pennyhollings@csw.org.uk or visit www.csw.org.uk.

CSW is a human rights organisation which specialises in religious freedom, works on behalf of those persecuted for their Christian beliefs and promotes religious liberty for all.

Courage in Burma: Pro-democracy protesters dare to take to the streets. Will the world respond as bravely?

The most striking feature of the remarkable protests taking place across Burma for the past 10 days is that they are taking place at all. That Southeast Asian nation is ruled by one of the world’s most repressive and brutal regimes, led by dictator Than Shwe. Those who dare speak out risk imprisonment and torture not only for themselves but for their relatives. Yet since Aug. 19, hundreds of men and women, students and Buddhist monks, have peaceably taken to the streets across Burma to protest economic mismanagement and political oppression. Scores have been swept into prison; many more have been beaten by government-sponsored thugs. Min Ko Naing, released in November 2004 after 15 years in prison for leading pro-democracy protests in 1988, took to the streets again — and is once again in prison, facing a possible 20-year sentence for a nonviolent demonstration.

What response does such courage call for from the outside world? A lot more than we’ve seen so far, that much is certain. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s special envoy for Burma has been missing in action, and Mr. Ban himself belatedly issued a mealy-mouthed statement that “encourages all parties to avoid any provocative action.” Meaning what? That 50 million Burmese citizens — disenfranchised, impoverished and press-ganged into involuntary servitude — should refrain from “provoking” the regime by exercising their inalienable right to assemble and speak out?

The U.N. Security Council should be at the forefront of global demands for an end to repression in Burma. The military junta has been responsible for a kind of slow-motion Darfur. More than 3,000 villages in eastern Karen state have been razed, more than 1.5 million people displaced. Soldiers routinely bayonet peasants’ pots so that they cannot cook and will go hungry. If this isn’t a fit subject for the Security Council, it’s hard to know why the organization exists.

The Bush administration and first lady Laura Bush in her own right have been far more impassioned about Burma. Yet the United States, too, should have learned by now that rhetoric is not enough; a strategy is needed. Unlike so many dictatorships, Burma (called Myanmar by its junta) has a legitimate political authority waiting in the wings: Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy won a landslide electoral victory in 1990. She has been under house arrest for most of the years since. Now the administration needs to make clear to other nations with influence in Burma — China, India, Thailand and Singapore, to name a few — that a democratic transition there is a U.S. policy priority and a prerequisite for peace and stability in Asia. As former South African archbishop Desmond Tutu told The Post, when “the courageous people of Burma, in spite of the viciousness of the military junta,” are ready to come out by the thousands, “we in the free world cannot stand by.”

The regime’s violent path to a “flourishing democracy”

Irrawaddy: - Aung Zaw
Thu 30 Aug 2007

The rare demonstrations in Rangoon and beyond are persistent and are likely to continue for some time. But since the regime has arrested and detained several key activists and prominent former student leaders, including Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi, who led the 1988 uprising, the fragile movement is increasingly faced with the question: who will lead the public and what direction will it take?

The peaceful marches in Rangoon started shortly after Min Ko Naing and prominent activists returned from a religious ceremony at the home of late veteran politician Col Kyi Maung marking the third anniversary of his death.

The “return home” march was spontaneous and caught the attention of curious onlookers, including security officials. After the march, Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi spoke to the Washington-based radio station Radio Free Asia.

According to the many Burmese at home and abroad who listened to the interview, Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi spoke out articulately and powerfully but made no call for action to topple the regime. At one point in the interview, Ko Ko Gyi pointed out that the army was enjoying double rights at the military-sponsored National Convention, due to be completed soon.

Perhaps the generals could not accept such criticism. A series of articles in The New Light of Myanmar, the regime’s mouthpiece, contained several forewarnings by government propagandists of a possible showdown and “punishment.”

The regime leaders might have thought it was time to contain Min Ko Naing and other activists because they were the only group whose boldness and defiance were increasingly gaining international attention and recognition. Indeed, if the regime leaders intended to force through their “road map,” Min Ko Naing and his group were a thorn in the their side.

Consequently, thugs and security officials were sent into the streets to deal with the protests.

The junta’s gangs follow and intimidate demonstrators, often beating them and hurling them into waiting trucks. Women are also being beaten, prompting onlookers to angrily intervene and risk arrest themselves.

Anger is widespread over such brutality. Large crowds often make clear their disapproval of the strong-arm methods—“They were upset and angry,” said a Rangoon journalist who reported on the violent dispersal of one group of protesters.

The journalist told me that simmering dissent among the public is approaching boiling point. “If there is bloodshed or shootings, I think there will be uproar like in 1988,” he said.

Until recently, soldiers and riot police have not been seen in public, but thugs and hardcore members of the regime’s mass association known as the Union Solidarity Development Association, together with government security officials, are maintaining “order” on the streets.

This is not the first time the regime has applied such thuggish methods to break up peaceful demonstrations. There were several incidents of mob attacks on democracy activists as early as 1996 and 1997.

In May 2003, pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her convoy were attacked by junta-backed mobs in central Burma. The attack was at that time the most serious assault sponsored by the current military leaders, and received international condemnation.

Worldwide condemnation has also greeted the present government-sponsored excesses, but the regime continues to ignore world opinion.

The regime’s current campaign of violence was foretokened in a series of articles in the regime’s mouthpiece repeatedly warning Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi and other activists that they faced “evil consequences.” The warnings included ominous hints that death could await them.

One recent article penned by Ko Ke warned: “They will get punitive punishment imposed by the people soon. I think the punishment to be inflicted by the people on them may be much more severe than legal action they will face if they continue to commit such acts, and they even may meet their end.”

The article urged activists to be “considerate towards the aspiration of the people to participate in the building of a discipline-flourishing genuine democratic nation.”

Perhaps before the establishment of a “flourishing genuine democratic nation,” the Burmese have to experience the rod of “discipline”—the regime’s “Burmese way to Flourishing Democracy!”

Senators call for Security Council action on Burma

Mizzima News (www.mizzima.com)

August 30, 2007 - Two senior members of the United States Senate have called for an emergency sitting of the United Nations Security Council to address the growing crisis in Burma.

In a joint-letter released yesterday authored by Senators Mitch McConnell (R – Kentucky) and Dianne Feinstein (D – California), urges Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the State Department to seek an emergency sitting of the international body.

Regarding the gravity of the unfolding situation in Burma and the potential role of the Security Council in addressing the problem, the two Senators write that "at this critical juncture, words of support from the world's democracies are not enough."

We must "avail ourselves of this diplomatic forum [Security Council]; the brave people of Burma deserve no less," stated Senators McConnell and Feinstein in their correspondence with Secretary Rice.

The letter, in focusing attention on the brutal crackdown of peaceful protestors, singles out the arrests of 88 Generation leaders Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi as of special concern.

At a State Department Press conference yesterday, spokesperson Tom Casey, in response to a question regarding Burma strategy, remained noncommittal as to whether or not the United States would seek more concrete action relating to Burma.

In January of this year, a Security Council resolution, sponsored by the United States and condemning the Burmese regime's human rights record, was vetoed by permanent Security Council members China and Russia. In all, the resolution was approved by 9 of the 15 Security Council members.

Burmese authorities move to restrict news coverage of protests

New York —The Committee to Protect Journalists is gravely concerned about the Burmese government’s restriction of news coverage of recent nationwide protests over an August 15 government decision to end fuel price subsidies.

According to the Burma Media Association (BMA), plainclothes police and pro-government groups brandishing crude weapons have threatened, harassed, and physically assaulted a number of local journalists who have attempted to cover and photograph the protests and the government’s retaliatory crackdown. Police are believed to have arrested more than 150 protesters, including prominent members of the dissident 88 Student Generation group.

The military command meanwhile issued a ban against photographing the protests and security forces have been deployed to enforce it. An unidentified local Reuters journalist had his cameras seized by police on August 23 after he attempted to take pictures of junta-backed militias detaining a group of protesters, according to media reports.

“Not content with starving its people of information by restricting news distribution, the Burmese junta is now using intimidation and threats to prevent news gathering,” said Joel Simon, CPJ’s executive director. “Reporters have a right to cover the fuel protests in Burma without being set upon by plainclothes police and pro-government thugs. We call upon the Rangoon government to ensure that all journalists can work without harassment and censorship.”

Meanwhile, state censors imposed a 10-day blackout of all news coverage of the protests, apart from the occasional propaganda piece in the pro-government New Light of Myanmar (Burma). All newspapers and magazines are censored by government authorities before publication, while all broadcast media outlets are tightly controlled and owned by the military government.

The Southeast Asian Press Alliance, a regional press freedom advocacy group, reported recent rolling blackouts for both cell phones and the Internet. Burma already maintains some of the world’s most comprehensive restrictions of the Internet, intended as a means of cutting off the flow of information to dissident publications outside the country. CPJ’s e-mails in recent days to journalists inside Burma all went unanswered.

Last year, CPJ named Burma as the second-most censored country in the world.

Contact: Shawn Crispin
e-mail: info@cpj.org
Telephone: + 66 81 488 4264 (in Bangkok)

CPJ is a New York–based, independent, nonprofit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide. For more information, visit www.cpj.org.

US officials, politicians urge UN action as Myanmar continues protest clampdown

American politicians issued urgent calls for Myanmar’s military government to stop its repression as the junta Thursday hunted down pro-democracy activists it blames for spearheading protests against rising fuel prices.

Two senior Senators and the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee called for the State Department to persuade the U.N. Security Council to hold an emergency meeting on human rights violations in Myanmar.

Senators Mitch McConnell and Dianne Feinstein wrote that the situation in Myanmar “merits a strong and meaningful response by our government,” and asked Rice to urge U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to report to the council about it.

The State Department said it would work at the U.N. and other forums to pressure the junta to release opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, and move to restore democracy.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Washington would “try and encourage others to speak out on this and those who may have influence with the Burmese regime to get them to do the right thing here and to do what has been so long overdue.” Burma is another name for Myanmar.

In Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, security was especially tight near City Hall and the busy market near Hledan Junction, where protests against fuel price hikes and rising consumer prices have been attempted over the last week and a half.

Truckloads of young, tough-looking government-hired enforcers directed by plainclothes security officials were parked at such key points, the occupants ready to pounce on anyone suspected of trying to spark unrest.

It has been a government tactic in the past to use members of the Swan-ah-shin and Union Solidarity and Development Association ostensibly a social welfare organization, but closely linked to the junta to assault and intimidate the junta’s opponents.

The USDA was linked to attacks against Suu Kyi and her party supporters in Yangon in 1997, and in northern Myanmar on May 30, 2003. The latter clash led to her detention, which the military said was for her own protection.

Several diplomats in Yangon have expressed concerns over the heavy-handed ways the government uses to snuff out the protests.

“I believe the junta does not use uniformed personnel because they don’t want to be blamed for their action. Now that they are using civilians, they can claim, as they have done in newspapers, that it was the agitated public that stop the protesters,” said a diplomat who did not want to be named because of diplomatic protocol.

The government has also ordered local officials and hotels to be on the lookout for key pro-democracy activists, sending out their names, photos and biographical information, said a local official who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.

“We have been instructed to inform higher authorities immediately if we sight any of these people in our area,” he said, adding that the list of dissidents includes at least one member of the 88 Generation Students group, the most active in carrying out non-violent anti-government protests. Most of its top members were arrested on Aug. 21, two days after staging the first of the current round of protests.

Those participating in almost daily protest attempts have dwindled from a few hundred people to a few dozen, as the junta employs the menacing gangs of civilians to manhandle protesters. Scores of people have been detained, though several key protest leaders remain at large.

In Washington, Congressman Tom Lantos on Wednesday decried the junta’s “widespread crackdown” on pro-democracy and human rights activists.

In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, he urged Rice to call for a U.N. Security Council briefing on Myanmar’s situation.

In 1988, public protests over rising rice prices were a prelude to a burst of major demonstrations. The current protests are nowhere near their scale.

Those protests, which sought an end to military rule that began in 1962, were violently subdued by the army. The junta held general elections in 1990, but refused to honor the results when Suu Kyi’s party won.

Statements of condemnation not enough, action needed

Mizzima News: – APSOC
Thu 30 Aug 2007

As the number or those detained in recent protests climbs over the 100 mark, a regional solidarity network is insisting that the international community come now to the aid and assistance of the people of Burma.

The Asia Pacific Solidarity Coalition (APSOC), in a statement released today, is calling for both the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the United Nations to act immediately in addressing the spiraling crisis and systematic arrests and torture inside Burma.

“ASEAN and the UN should do something more than releasing mild statements. The junta is launching a massive crackdown and the world should not simply sit-down and quietly watch the Burmese military regime drag, lock up and clobber its own people,” says APSOC Coordinator Gus Miclat in the release.

This sentiment is shared by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners – Burma (AAPP) which, on Monday, issued a statement appealing for concrete steps and definitive action by the United Nations Security Council to combat the recent cycle of wrongful and violent crackdowns by government security forces.

AAPP claims that the use of the word “interrogation” in the government press, regarding action taken against those recently arrested, is equivalent to admitting to a policy of state sanctioned torture.

“We know from firsthand experience that those arrested in Burma are always brutally tortured – both physically and psychologically – immediately upon arrest,” stated Tate Naing, AAPP Secretary. All those working with AAPP are themselves former political prisoners.

“The arrest of more than 100 protestors is a desperate attempt to quell people’s legitimate dissent over the arbitrary increase in fuel costs. This is overkill,” added Miclat.

Though the state run media reported that only 64 persons had been arrested from August 21st to 25th, AAPP has documented at least 100 arrests during that time span, in addition to 27 arrests occurring over the course of Monday and Tuesday of this week.

Both APSOC and AAPP warn that, without action, the situation stands to get only grimmer, with riot police and the army on standby, should junta-backed civilian forces fail to adequately suppress demonstrators.

APSOC and AAPP join a growing number of politicians and organizations around the world in calling for action by the United Nations Security Council in addressing the situation in Burma.

23 organizations call for ASEAN intervention in Burma

Believing it ASEAN’s responsibility as an international organization, and labeling the situation in Burma a threat to regional peace and security, a consortium of 23 organizations and individuals have drafted a letter calling for the immediate intervention of ASEAN onto the Burma scene.

The letter, following the 1st Regional Consultation on ASEAN and Human Rights, was addressed, Tuesday, to all ASEAN Heads of State except Senior General Than Shwe of Burma.

“We believe that the ASEAN is the most relevant body to address this issue,” states the letter.

The signatories state that ASEAN, to be considered a legitimate international organization, must acknowledge its responsibility to be “proactive” and “respond diplomatically” when crises occur such as what is taking place in Burma.

It is stated that the reaction of ASEAN to the unfolding events in Burma is of enhanced significance for ASEAN at this point in time, as it looks to turn a crucial corner in the drafting and adoption of an ASEAN Charter, in which the formation of a regional human rights body has already been agreed.

“Indeed, this should be a seen as a litmus test of ASEAN’s sincerity in pursuing democracy and human rights in the region,” reads the letter.

The meeting, held from August 26th to 28th in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, was organized by the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA).

Myanmar’s people say too scared, tired to rise against junta

Reuters: - Aung Hla Tun
Thu 30 Aug 2007

The grind of everyday life, fear of being beaten up and a lack of belief in people power as a weapon against a ruthless military junta suggest a string of protests in Myanmar will not snowball into a mass uprising.

“Of course, we’re scared. We are not only afraid of being arrested and tortured but also afraid of being starved,” Ko Kyaw Gyi, a worker at a construction site in the heart of the former capital, said on Wednesday.

“For most of us, daily survival is more important than anything else. The whole family has to toil the whole day to earn enough for two meals. If we join the protests, one thing we can be sure of is having to go without dinner.”

Besides intimidating the public with gangs of paid thugs in a crackdown on this month’s sporadic protests, the junta has also sought to neutralize students and Buddhist monks, backbone of a 1988 uprising crushed by the army with the loss of 3,000 lives.

Since 1988, university campuses have been moved to Yangon’s outskirts, making them easier to control, and the generals have warned abbots of consequences if the monasteries join this month’s rare outbreak of dissent at soaring fuel prices.

“You can see in our history that it was monks and students who played a leading role in our independence struggle. Workers, farmers and civil servants were just followers,” said one retired government worker who did not want to be named.

“At the moment, we can’t expect anything from both the monks and the students. The monks cannot move out of fear and most students are not as keen on politics as those in the past.” Underlining the point, the first to be arrested in last week’s crackdown on dissent in the former Burma were leaders of the 1988 student movement still seen as the voice of the ebullient youth.

Min Ko Naing, head of the so called “88 Generation Students Group” and the most influential dissident after detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, is now in Yangon’s notorious Insein prison.

He spent 15 years in jail after the 1988 uprising. Now he haves another 20 years on sedition charges.

Many also see the junta’s shock decision in 2005 to move its capital to a small former logging town 400 km (240 miles) north of Yangon as a deliberate tactic to stop civil servants being around to swell the ranks of a people’s movement.

“With the monks confined at the monasteries, the students disappointed outside the cities and the civil servants depressed in Nay Pyi Taw, the situation is quite different from 1988,” a retired university professor said.

“It is completely in favor of the regime.”

Many veterans of 1988 also remember the blood flowing on the streets of Yangon and question whether it was worth it.

“If the protests were going to bring us a better life immediately, the situation would surely be different,” a pavement teashop owner said. “But many of us sacrificed a lot in 1988, and what happened? Things just went from bad to worse.”

Myanmar says protests not putting off tourists

Agence France Presse: - Hla Hla Htay
Thu 30 Aug 2007

Rare protests against the military regime in Myanmar have not so far hit the country’s small but growing tourism industry, government and industry officials said Thursday.

Pro-democracy supporters have staged more than 10 days of protests against a massive hike in fuel prices.

More than 100 people have been arrested, including some of the nation’s top pro-democracy leaders, according to activists.

But a tourism ministry official said no significant cancellations have been reported, and arrivals are still up over last year.

“We don’t think tourist arrivals will decrease because of the protests here. Now the number of arrivals is up 11 percent from April 1 to now, compared to the same period last year,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to reporters.

“These protests are not about tourists,” he said.

About 630,000 foreigners visited Myanmar, one of the world’s most isolated nations, last year. They spent some 164 million dollars, making tourism a key earner of foreign currency for the military regime.

Protesters have vowed to continue to defy the threat of beatings and arrests to attempt new rallies in Yangon and in other parts of the country.

Even though hundreds of plainclothes police and paramilitary groups are stationed outside Yangon’s city hall, tourists still wander past taking pictures of the moghul-style building and the nearby Sule pagoda.

With the peak tourism season set to begin in October, when the dry season starts and the weather turns cooler, travel operators say they are not worried about the protests scaring off holidaymakers.

“No tourists have cancelled their reservation yet because of these protests,” one tour company manager said.

A manager at a downtown hotel said his rooms were still fully booked.

“We have no worries at all. We are fully booked for high season. Even if some cancel because of the protests here, we can replace them,” he said.

“Almost all hotels in Myanmar are now in good condition as many tourists want to visit here,” he said.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained Nobel peace prize winner who leads the pro-democracy opposition, has urged tourists to stay away from Myanmar until the military leaves power.

But some protesters say they wish more tourists would come so they can see first-hand the conditions in the country.

Khin Khin Kyaw, 36, said she did not see any tourists when police arrested 17 protesters as they tried to rally outside city hall last Friday.

“When they arrested the protesters, including my mother, there were no tourists at that time near the city hall. I wish they had seen what happened. The so-called security forces were brutal in making the arrests,” she said.

Her mother, 62-year-old housewife San San Myint, is not in good health and authorities have given no information on her whereabouts, she told AFP.

Veteran politician appeals for international action on Burma

Mizzima News: - Mungpi
Thu 30 Aug 2007

With government-backed gangsters taking charge of security, ‘Burma is under Thug’s rule’ according to veteran Burmese politician U Win Naing, who today appealed to the international community to come to the protection of the Burmese people.

A self-styled nationalist, Amyotharyee U Win Naing, in a statement released today said, with at least 100 peaceful protestors forcibly arrested within the last seven days, Burmese people lack security and are vulnerable against inhumane attacks by junta-sponsored gangsters and goons.

“We are not protected by laws or ethical or moral practices any longer,” said U Win Naing.

Following the fuel price hike on August 15th, activists and civilians in Rangoon and other parts of the country have embarked on peaceful protests in the form of marching through the streets, demanding lower fuel and commodity prices.

U Win Naing says the people’s desire for adequate living conditions and survival has motivated them to take to the streets.

“They are not asking for the removable of the present military government,” U Win Naing said.

However, the public protests, the largest ever in a decade in Burma, were subject to a crackdown by the junta through the deployment of its puppet civilian organizations – Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) and Swan Arrshin.

According to the Thailand based rights group, Assistance Association for Political Prisoners Burma (AAPPB), at least 100 protestors, including Burma’s second most prominent pro-democracy figure Min Ko Naing and 12 other members of the 88 generation students group, have been arrested during the protests that first began August 19th.

While there are at least one-hundred thousand families that are missing daily meals in Rangoon’s suburban area alone due to severe poverty, actions to assist them are also being disrupted by junta-backed thugs, said U Win Naing.

U Win Naing and his group, who began donating rice to the poor people in Rangoon’s suburban areas on August 19th, were attacked by mobs believed to be backed by junta officials.

Following the attack, U Win Naing and company said their security remained threatened and they could not follow-up on their donation work.

“This morning I received a report that a young man in Hlaingtherer quarters about eight miles from downtown Yangon [Rangoon] hanged himself because he could not supply rice for his family,” said U Win Naing.
“Maybe I could have stopped him from hanging himself if I were allowed to provide rice to him and others,” he added.

U Win Naing said the incident was but one indication of conditions in Rangoon, and he appeals to the United Nations and world governments to intervene in order to prevent similar incidents from occurring.

Burmese hotels asked to help in search for activists

Burma’s military government has ordered local officials and hotels to be on the look-out for key pro-democracy activists as it tries to squash unusually persistent protests sparked by fuel price hikes, an official said on Thursday.

Demonstrations triggered by soaring prices began on August 19 and have continued almost daily—although they have dwindled from a few hundred people to a few dozen—as the junta employed menacing gangs of civilians to rough up protesters.

Dozens of people have been detained, including several prominent pro-democracy activists many of whom are party colleagues of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. However, several key protest leaders remain at large.

Authorities have sent out their names, photos and biographical information to local officials and hotel operators across Burma’s biggest city of Rangoon in the hope of rounding up the remaining protest leaders, said a local official who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.

“We have been instructed to inform higher authorities immediately if we sight any of these people in our area,” he said, adding that hotels, motels and guesthouses have been given the same information and instructed to inform authorities of any suspicious activities.

He said the list of dissidents includes Mi Mi, a member of the 88 Generation group, the former students at the forefront of a 1988 democracy uprising who were subjected to lengthy prison terms and torture after the rebellion was brutally suppressed by the military.

No demonstrations were known to have taken place on Wednesday in Rangoon, although there were reports of protests in two or three other towns. Information about them could not be independently confirmed.

Tension was especially high at Rangoon’s Hledan Junction, where security officials and their civilian auxiliaries clamped down on Tuesday on a protest within minutes of its start.

They pushed through crowds of onlookers to rough up about 15 demonstrators before tossing them into waiting trucks to take them away for detention, witnesses said.

On Wednesday, three trucks, each carrying about 20 tough-looking young men, were parked on either side of the road, watching for any protesters. About 20 plainclothes security officials roamed nearby sidewalks at the intersection, a traditional site for protests.

The EU on Tuesday said it was concerned about recent arrests of leading activists and the “decision to detain individuals who were exercising their right to peaceful demonstration.”

While the protesters have shown no sign of giving up, analysts said they didn’t expect the momentum to last because the general public remained afraid to join in.

Burmese junta stifles wave of peaceful protests

Financial Times: - Amy Kazmin
Thu 30 Aug 2007

Over the past 10 days, military-ruled Burma has been hit by a wave of small, peaceful protest marches by defiant activists and citizens infuriated by a sharp increase in rationed fuel prices. But the regime has moved swiftly and aggressively to prevent these acts of defiance from gathering momentum, using thugs to snuff out the protests and haul the participants away.

Rangoon-based diplomats say that more than 100 dissidents who participated in the marches - including the leaders of a 1988 student rebellion - have been arrested. State-controlled newspapers suggest they could be charged with violating laws that carry prison terms of up to 20 years.

The junta’s willingness to use force has served as an effective deterrent to Burma’s terrified citizens, despite their intensifying anger towards their rulers over growing economichardship.

“The public were sadly, but understandably, unwilling to show their support for the demonstrations,” said one Rangoon-based diplomat. “It’s dangerous, and they are trying to live life, and avoid direct political engagement because it ruins peoples’ lives.”

The military junta has planned extensively to avoid a repeat of the mass national uprising of 1988, which was triggered by anger at rice prices and other economic hardships. The uprising was bloodily suppressed by the army, with thousands believed killed.
In recent days, witnesses say that bands of pro-regime vigilantes known as the Swan Ah Shin (Capable Powerful People) have been posted around Rangoon, snuffing out any incipient demonstrations. Witnesses reported a heavy police presence in Mandalay, while monks and students were warned against demonstrating.

“The security apparatus has a pretty tight control of things,” said a long-time Burma watcher who was in Rangoon last week.

“On the streets of Rangoon, you have all these street sweepers who suddenly aren’t 40-year-oldemaciated women with bamboo brooms, but well built young men with metalshovels.”

But with many Burmese already struggling with a hand-to-mouth existence, analysts say that further economic shocks like the unexpected fuel price rise could prove a catalyst for more protest, and potentially violence, in the months ahead.

“They don’t care or understand what effect these things are going to have, or what percentage of the population are so close to the poverty line that they can’t absorb these kinds of shocks without falling into utter desperation,” the Burma watcher said.

“There must be a possibility that something like this will kick off such a level of suffering it will set off a rampage in one of these townships.”

Aung Naing Oo, a Burmese analyst in exile, said: “As long as people have food on the table, they won’t like the military, but they won’t think about demonstrating. But any mistake, or violence, could be a catalyst for people to go out on the streets.”

In recent days, Burma’s state-controlled newspapers have justified the sharp fuel price rise by saying the state could not afford such massive subsidies, given rising world fuel prices and increasing domestic demand.

But analysts say the generals appear dangerously ignorant of the potential repercussions of such abrupt policy changes. “They pull on one lever but have no clue in advance what things are going to go out of whack,” one analyst said.

Burmese protests to take on a new sound

Irrawaddy: - Yeni
Thu 30 Aug 2007

Burmese households are being urged in an anti-regime pamphlet campaign to protest noisily on three evenings in September by banging pots and pans.

Other pamphlets in circulation in Rangoon are urging a revival of the historic student union and calling for a “people’s power movement,” similar to the one in 1988 that led to the downfall of the previous regime.

Leaflets obtained by The Irrawaddy call on households to create a din on the evenings of September 11, 12 and 13 by banging pots, pans and other metal items. The action will have a mystical as well as a political purpose—“The time has now come to drive away evil from your homes by creating a din by beating any products made with tin, metal and steel,” the pamphlet says.

The noisy demonstrations should be timed for 7:02 p.m., 8:01 p.m. and 9 p.m., the pamphlet directs. The digits of the three separate times add up to nine, a number given mystic importance by Burma’s ruling elite.

Among the bad influences to be dispersed by the noise campaign, says the pamphlet, are: “natural disasters [flooding throughout the country], economic decline, arbitrary detentions, the greedy ruling government oppressing their people, the people in helpless situation, disunity among the people due to the evil spirits, thugs beating good citizens, scarcity of food and needy materials among Buddhist monks, other religious people being oppressed and the evils living at Naypyidaw.”

The campaign is thought likely to attract a lot of support because of its anonymous, after-dark nature, but also on account of its astrological context. Sources told The Irrawaddy that the “pots and pans appeal” was being distributed by mobile phone, email and internet Web sites.

Astrology and superstition are part of everyday life in Burma, where the prophesies of fortune-tellers are followed by virtually every family—particularly by military leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe and his wife Kyaing Kyaing. One of their favorite “advisers” is E Thi— also known as ET—a woman with a speech impediment that only her sister can interpret.

The activity of banging pots and pans occurred when former president Sein Liwn—who became known as the ‘’Butcher of Rangoon'’ for his order to open fire on democracy demonstrators—was resigned in August 1988.

Myanmar police raid homes as manhunt intensifies

Reuters: - Aung Hla Tun
Thu 30 Aug 2007

Myanmar’s military junta tightened the net around leaders of a rare string of protests on Thursday, raiding homes of known activists and their friends and distributing their photographs in a Yangon-wide manhunt.

“I know they’ve been after me since our protest on Tuesday,” Suu Suu Nway, an outspoken critic of the ruling generals, told Reuters by telephone. “I heard they have sent pictures of three women activists, including me, to several of their offices.”

The other two are believed to be Ma Mee Mee and Ma Nilar, two well-known women members of the so-called “88 Generation Students Group”, the still influential leaders of a mass uprising against the former Burma’s military rulers in 1988.

Fourteen people from Tuesday’s demonstration, videotaped and photographed by undercover government spies, had now been picked up, Suu Suu Nway added.

The 34-year-old was roughed up by the junta-backed gang that broke up the march against soaring fuel prices and has gone into hiding since, apart from a brief hospital check-up.

“I’m not afraid of being arrested but I’m not feeling well at the moment,” she said.

The opposition National League for Democracy said more than 100 people had been arrested in the week-long crackdown, one of the junta’s fiercest since troops were used to crush the 1988 unrest, in which up to 3,000 people were believed killed.

On Wednesday night, police and plainclothes officials raided homes in the north of the former capital, apparently looking for the few well-known activists to have evaded capture.

“They didn’t find the people they were after,” one activist said. “Some people heard them mentioning the names of some colleagues of Htin Kyaw.”

Htin Kyaw and an accomplice were dragged off by a junta-sponsored gang at the weekend after shouting slogans against declining living standards and more than four decades of military rule.

It was the fourth time this year he had been arrested.

ARRESTED FOR GIVING WATER

Demonstrations have also broken out in at least three other parts of the country, including one in the northwest port city of Sittwe, where about 200 Buddhist monks participated in protests for the first time.

In most cases, bystanders have cheered the marchers although have been too scared to join in, suggesting the nascent social movement is unlikely to snowball into another 1988-style “people power” revolt. There were no reports of protests on Thursday.

A source in Sittwe said three people had been arrested for giving water to monks during Tuesday’s march.

Opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has been held incommunicado throughout the protests, under house arrest in her lakeside Yangon home.

The country’s second-most influential opposition figure, 88 Generation leader Min Ko Naing, is being held in Yangon’s notorious Insein prison with at least 12 of his colleagues. They face up to 20 years in jail on charges of undermining the state.

One 88 Generation leader still at large is Htay Kywe, who managed to escape the coordinated series of midnight arrests of Min Ko Naing and the others a week ago.

One activist source said Htay Kywe, who was jailed for 15 years for his part in the 1988 uprising like Min Ko Naing, might even have managed to flee to neighboring Thailand, home to many Myanmar exiles and dissident groups.Reuters
Myanmar police raid homes as manhunt intensifies - Aung Hla Tun

Myanmar’s military junta tightened the net around leaders of a rare string of protests on Thursday, raiding homes of known activists and their friends and distributing their photographs in a Yangon-wide manhunt.

“I know they’ve been after me since our protest on Tuesday,” Suu Suu Nway, an outspoken critic of the ruling generals, told Reuters by telephone. “I heard they have sent pictures of three women activists, including me, to several of their offices.”

The other two are believed to be Ma Mee Mee and Ma Nilar, two well-known women members of the so-called “88 Generation Students Group”, the still influential leaders of a mass uprising against the former Burma’s military rulers in 1988.

Fourteen people from Tuesday’s demonstration, videotaped and photographed by undercover government spies, had now been picked up, Suu Suu Nway added.

The 34-year-old was roughed up by the junta-backed gang that broke up the march against soaring fuel prices and has gone into hiding since, apart from a brief hospital check-up.

“I’m not afraid of being arrested but I’m not feeling well at the moment,” she said.

The opposition National League for Democracy said more than 100 people had been arrested in the week-long crackdown, one of the junta’s fiercest since troops were used to crush the 1988 unrest, in which up to 3,000 people were believed killed.

On Wednesday night, police and plainclothes officials raided homes in the north of the former capital, apparently looking for the few well-known activists to have evaded capture.

“They didn’t find the people they were after,” one activist said. “Some people heard them mentioning the names of some colleagues of Htin Kyaw.”

Htin Kyaw and an accomplice were dragged off by a junta-sponsored gang at the weekend after shouting slogans against declining living standards and more than four decades of military rule.

It was the fourth time this year he had been arrested.

ARRESTED FOR GIVING WATER

Demonstrations have also broken out in at least three other parts of the country, including one in the northwest port city of Sittwe, where about 200 Buddhist monks participated in protests for the first time.

In most cases, bystanders have cheered the marchers although have been too scared to join in, suggesting the nascent social movement is unlikely to snowball into another 1988-style “people power” revolt. There were no reports of protests on Thursday.

A source in Sittwe said three people had been arrested for giving water to monks during Tuesday’s march.

Opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has been held incommunicado throughout the protests, under house arrest in her lakeside Yangon home.

The country’s second-most influential opposition figure, 88 Generation leader Min Ko Naing, is being held in Yangon’s notorious Insein prison with at least 12 of his colleagues. They face up to 20 years in jail on charges of undermining the state.

One 88 Generation leader still at large is Htay Kywe, who managed to escape the coordinated series of midnight arrests of Min Ko Naing and the others a week ago.

One activist source said Htay Kywe, who was jailed for 15 years for his part in the 1988 uprising like Min Ko Naing, might even have managed to flee to neighboring Thailand, home to many Myanmar exiles and dissident groups.

Burmese junta circulates photographs of 88 leaders; order arrests

Photographs of 88 generation student leaders, who are still at large, have been circulated and arrest warrants issued by the Burmese military junta in Rangoon.

Photographs o f Ko Htay Kywe, Ko Myo Gyi (alias) Ko Aung Myo Tint, Ma Nilar Thein, Ko Hla Myo Naung, and Ko Aung Naing (alias) Ko Than Tin have been pasted in all townships in Rangoon, in offices of ward peace and development council, and hotels. Township authorities have ordered police to search and arrest the students.

“Some photographs were given to TPDC offices in all townships, and some were given to specific townships. The TPDC offices in turn have pasted them on rickshaw gates,” an NLD member Phyu Phyu Thin told Mizzima.

Besides, more security personnel are in place near the student leader’s residents. Interestingly more rickshaw gates are also reportedly open, so as to enable security personnel to operate disguised as rickshaw drivers while looking for student leaders.

“Now they [authorities] have opened new rickshaw gates. Unlike before, security is not everywhere now. They have ordered all townships to take responsibility for security. For Su Su Nway, who is in Yankin, the Yankin Peace and Development Council office has been ordered to do the needful. This holds true for Ma Nimon, in Thingan Kyun, and for me in South Okkla. I could see that there were about three or four men on our street,” Phyu Phyu Thin said.

An NLD member, who requested anonymity, told Mizzima that security personnel are visible wherever they move and family lists are being collected by authorities. Moreover, rickshaw drivers and members of Union Solidarity and Development Association, whom the junta has given money, have been ordered to monitor activists.

Authorities in parts of Rangoon are also conducting surprise guest list checks at midnight and searching the houses of people, who are believed to be close to the student leaders.

On Wednesday midnight, about 30 policemen and plainclothes officials conducted a guest list check at a locality in North Okklapah Township, where Daw May Win, who took part in a demonstration in downtown Rangoon over the increasing essential commodity prices in April, resides.

Officials reportedly searched the houses. They even entered bedrooms of women and took off their mosquito nets, which is considered an extremely demeaning thing to do in Burmese culture.

“We have a legal family list… and they went upstairs, where my sister and my daughter were. They demand the family list once again. They even opened the mosquito nets and searched. They then looked at us and compared our photographs in the family list. But it was all in order and we had no extra person in our house. They were all drunk and stinking of alcohol,” Daw May Win told Mizzima.

Similarly, at least 20 policemen and plainclothes officials conducted a surprise check at the residence of U Myat Hla, chairman of Pegu NLD, in Pegu town at about midnight on Wednesday.

The officials claimed that they were searching for students fleeing from Rangoon and showed several photographs of the students.

“They came in to the house and called us one by one according to the family list. Then they showed us the photographs of 88 student leaders Myo Gyi and eight other people. They said the students are in this locality and they had been ordered to search for them,” U Myat Hla told Mizzima over telephone.

Kyaukpadaung protestors call for release of detainees

A group of about 25 people marched through the Mandalay town of Kyaukpadaung this morning, protesting fuel price hikes and calling for the release of political prisoners in Burma.

One protestor told DVB that the group was demanding that the military government release detained National League for Democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and prominent activists such as Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi.

“Ward Peace and Development Council officials on motorbikes showed up immediately at the scene shortly after we started the protest and followed us,” the protestor said on condition of anonymity.

Eyewitnesses said about 70 government supporters, Union Solidarity and Development Association members and officials from the Kyaukpadaung Peace and Development Council tried to stop the demonstration only to be jeered at by bystanders.

“The authorities order bystanders to arrest us but no one listened to them and instead started laughing at the officials,” the protestor said.

A crowd of about 50 people reportedly followed the demonstrators to cheer them on.

Detained Myanmar protesters launch hunger strike

A group of pro-democracy protesters detained in military-ruled Myanmar launched a hunger strike Thursday, demanding that authorities provide medical treatment for a wounded colleague, activists said.

Ye Thein Naing, 37, suffered a broken leg when police and pro-government militia violently broke up a demonstration in Yangon on Tuesday and arrested up to 20 people, activists said.

He and an unknown number of other protesters are being held at an improvised detention centre at the city’s Kyaikkasan sports grounds, they said.

“Some of the people arrested with him started a hunger strike this evening because their colleague Ye Thein Naing hasn’t received any medical treatment for his broken leg,” one activist told AFP on condition on anonymity.

At least 100 people have been arrested since a rare string of anti-government rallies began on August 19 in protest at a massive hike in fuel prices, according to activists.

Myanmar’s military regime, which for 45 years has ruled this impoverished nation with an iron fist, deals harshly with even the slightest show of dissent.

At Tuesday’s protest, about 50 activists had gathered near the former campus of Yangon University to start a rally when plainclothes police and pro-junta militia broke up the group after only 10 minutes.

“Ye Thein Naing was beaten and thrown onto a waiting truck by militia,” one activist said.

“His leg was broken at that time, when he was beaten up. Even then, they still kept kicking him on the truck,” the activist added.

Like many of the protesters, Ye Thein Naing is a member of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), headed by detained Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.

Twelve elected Burmese MPs stage peaceful protest

Twelve elected members of parliament staged a peaceful protest in Mandalay this afternoon in a show of solidarity with the detained leaders of the 88 Generation Students group.

The NLD members, who were elected in 1990, marched from the Mandalay NLD headquarters through the streets between 1:30pm and 2:30pm until heavy rain forced them to turn back.

Protester and member of parliament U Tin Aung told DVB this afternoon that the group also called on the military to work to reduce commodity and fuel prices and for Burmese citizens to express their dissatisfaction with the government.

“We are peacefully walking to reflect people’s suffering over consumer goods and petrol price hikes, high taxation and to show our solidarity with people suffering,” U Tin Aung said.

“We are requesting the government to lower petrol prices and would like to appeal to the people to show their suffering bravely,” he said.

Elected members of parliament U Bo Zan, U Tin Aung Aung, U Htin Kyaw, U Maung Maung Than, U Tin Cho Oo, Dr Thein Lwin, U Maung Maung Lay, Daw Ohn Kyi, U Paw Khin, U Maung Maung Win, U Than Lwin and U Bo Zan took part in the protest.

US lawmakers call for UN action over Myanmar crackdown

30 Aug 2007, 0702 hrs IST,AFP

WASHINGTON: US lawmakers on Wednesday called on President George W. Bush's administration to demand an urgent UN Security Council meeting on the Myanmar military junta's crackdown on dissent.

Senior lawmakers from the House of Representatives and the Senate wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asking her to press for such a meeting, as pro-democracy supporters in Myanmar defied a clampdown and staged rare street protests against a staggering increase in fuel prices.

More than 100 people have been arrested, including some of the nation's top pro-democracy leaders, following the largest non-violent demonstrations in Myanmar in five years.

"We strongly urge you to send a letter to the President of the Security Council requesting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to expeditiously provide a complete briefing to the Security Council," Tom Lantos, the Democratic head of the House's foreign relations committee, and four other lawmakers from the chamber wrote.

A similar call was made in a separate letter to the chief US diplomat by the Senate's Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and senior Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein.

"The current situation in Burma merits a strong and meaningful response by our government," they said.

The lawmakers welcomed the Bush administration's swift condemnation of the Myanmar junta's "brutal behavior" as well as similar condemnations from France and Britain -- two other permanent members of the Security Council -- along with Canada, Sweden, Ireland, Denmark, the European Union, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

"However, at this critical juncture, words of support from the world's democracies are not enough," McConnell and Feinstein said. "The matter needs to be addressed by the UN Security Council."

There was no immediate reaction from Rice's office but Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman, said earlier Wednesday that Washington expected discussions on Myanmar in the Security Council as well as during the upcoming meetings of the General Assembly.

With full bipartisan support from Congress, the United States has led a diplomatic drive to place the Myanmar issue on the permanent agenda of the UN Security Council.

"We must avail ourselves of this diplomatic forum; the brave people of Burma deserve no less," Lantos and the other House legislators said.

In addition to the current crackdown, they said, the UN Security Council could also act to stop the junta's alleged "war" against ethnic minorities, use of "rape as a weapon of war" and recruitment of child soldiers.

The United States has a longstanding ban on all imports from Myanmar and new investments and exports of financial services to Myanmar. It also denies visas to top junta officials as part of sanctions against Yangon.

Last January, China and Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution urging Myanmar's rulers to free all political detainees and end sexual violence by the military.

The United Nations estimates there are some 1,100 political prisoners in Myanmar, including Nobel Peace Prize winner and democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Her National League for Democracy overwhelmingly won 1990 elections, but were never allowed to take office, and she has now spent more than a decade under house arrest.

Under military rule since 1962, Myanmar tolerates little public dissent, but analysts say the military junta has been shaken by the persistence of the latest protesters.

The junta sparked public anger when the government hiked key fuel prices by as much as five-fold on August 15.

That immediately doubled the cost of transport, which left many people unable to even afford the bus fare to get to work.

Myanmar junta uses gangs not guns to crush dissent

By Ed Cropley
Thu Aug 30, 2007 2:57AM EDT

BANGKOK (Reuters) - The broom-wielding gangs that broke up fuel price protests in Myanmar were taking direct orders from the ruling junta, which now appears to favor them as a way to crush dissent, rights groups and diplomats said on Thursday.

The Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) said it had documents proving military and civilian officials had explicit guidelines on how to mobilize and run the Swan-ar Shin heavies used to quash this month's rare outbreak of protests.

In one of the documents, a mid-ranking military officer even talks of the need for proper record-keeping and training courses to ensure "more effective and systematic use" of the Swan-ar Shin, which roughly translates as "Masters of Force".

"They are describing in some detail how they have organized and used these gangs for the purposes of attacking people," AHRC director Basil Fernando said.

The Swan-ar Shin is merely the latest means the junta employs to control the former Burma's 53 million people.

Throughout most of its 45 years of unbroken rule, the military relied first and foremost on the internal spies of Military Intelligence, or MI, a web of informants built up by Prime Minister Khin Nyunt, who was purged in 2004.

When MI failed to keep a lid on protests, as happened with a mass uprising of monks, students and civil servants in 1988, the generals sent in the army, which killed as many as 3,000 people in a ruthless crackdown.

The mid-1990s saw the emergence of the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), a pro-junta social network claiming an official membership of 23 million, to act as the junta's eyes and ears in the provinces.

However, it was the attack on opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in fields outside the town of Depayin in 2003 that marked the Swan-ar Shin's entry into the fray.

The junta says four people died in clashes with Suu Kyi supporters at Depayin. Human rights groups say as many as 70 people were killed in a carefully planned night-time ambush by hundreds of men wielding sharpened bamboo staffs.

"Depayin represented the birth of a vigilante force used specifically to beat up and kill peaceful demonstrators," a Western diplomat in Yangon said.

Since then -- and with MI in relative disarray after Khin Nyunt's removal -- it has been called upon more and more to control dissent, especially the sporadic outbreaks of public anger which started last year over declining living standards.

The decision to use civilian gangs rather than police appears to be a deliberate but barely credible tactic to distance the authorities from the clampdown, the diplomat said.

"When they attacked the demonstrators and started dragging them away, they were shouting 'We're doing this for the people', and there were people in the crowd shouting back, 'No you're not. Don't speak for us.'," the diplomat said.

Myanmar police raid homes as manhunt intensifies

Photo caption: Demonstrators are stopped by men in civilian clothes during a protest in Yangon August 28, 2007.

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military junta tightened the net on leaders of a rare string of protests on Thursday, raiding homes of known activists and their friends and distributing their photographs in a manhunt around Yangon.

"I know they've been after me," Suu Suu Nway, an outspoken critic of the former Burma's ruling generals, told Reuters by telephone. "I heard they have sent pictures of three women activists, including me, to several of their offices."

Fourteen people from a protest on Tuesday, videotaped and photographed by undercover agents, had now been picked up, she added.

The 34-year-old was roughed up by a pro-junta gang that broke up the march in northern Yangon against soaring fuel prices. Apart from a brief hospital check-up, she has been in hiding since.

"I'm not afraid of being arrested but I'm not feeling well at the moment," she said.

The opposition National League for Democracy said more than 100 people had been arrested in the week-long crackdown, one of the junta's most intense since it sent in troops to crush a mass uprising of students, monks and civil servants in 1988.

Up to 3,000 people are thought to have been killed.

On Wednesday night, police and plainclothes officials raided homes in the north of the former capital, apparently looking for the few well-known activists to have evaded arrest so far.

"They didn't find the people they were after," one activist said. "Some people heard them mentioning the names of some colleagues of Htin Kyaw."

Htin Kyaw and an accomplice were dragged off by a junta-sponsored gang at the weekend after shouting slogans against declining living standards and military rule. It was the fourth time this year he had been arrested.

လူထုတိုက္ပြဲ ေျမေအာက္လက္စြဲ

Directly copy from http://ko-htike.blogspot.com/2007/08/blog-post_4496.html

ဒီေန႔ျဖစ္ေနတဲ့ လႈပ္ရွားမႈေတြေတြကို စစ္အစိုးရက အျပင္ထန္းဆံုး ဖိႏွိပ္ေနတယ္။ ဘာျဖစ္လို႔လဲ ဆိုေတာ့ ၈၈ က စတင္လာတဲ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီ တိုက္ပြဲဟာ အေရးအႀကီးဆံုးပိုင္းကို တစတစ ေရာက္ရိွလာေနလို႔ ျဖစ္တယ္။ တိုက္ပြဲက ပိုၿပီး ျပင္းထန္ လာသလို၊ အေကြ႔အေကာက္ေတြ မ်ားလာႏိုင္တယ္။ လႈပ္ရွားမႈတိုင္းဟာ ဒီသေဘာေတြ ေဆာင္ေနခဲ့တယ္။ လႈပ္ရွားမႈ အေသးေလးေတြက လႈပ္ရွားမႈႀကီး တခုလံုးကို အဆံုးအျဖတ္ ေပးႏိုင္တယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္မႈ ဟာ အေရးႀကီးလာပါတယ္။ ေခါင္းေဆာင္တိုင္း သတိထားသင့္တဲ့ လူထုတိုက္ပြဲ နည္းနာေတြကို က်ေနာ္တို႔ ၈၈ တိုက္ပြဲ ကာလက ရရိွခဲ့တဲ့ သင္ခန္းစာေတြ အေပၚ အေျခခံၿပီး ေဝငွလိုက္ပါတယ္။

၁ - လံုျခံဳေရး
၂ - ဆႏၵျပျခင္း၊ ခ်ီတက္ျခင္း
၃ - စည္းကို ေက်ာ္ေပးရျခင္း
၄ - ယႏၱရားမ်ားကို ၿဖိဳခ်ျခင္း
၅ - အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးမ်ား အစားထိုးျခင္း

၁။ လံုျခံဳေရး

ကိုယ္ရဲ့ လံုျခံဳေရးဟာ လႈပ္ရွားမႈရဲ့ လံုျခံဳေရး ျဖစ္တယ္။
လံုျခံဳေရးကို ဂရုစိုက္တတ္ႏိုင္ရင္ အဖမ္းမခံရေအာင္ ႀကိဳးစား။
ကိုယ္လြတ္ေနသမွ် တိုက္ပြဲေတြ ဆင္ႏႊဲႏုိင္တယ္။

အခုျဖစ္ေနတဲ့ ဆႏၵျပ လႈပ္ရွားမႈေတြမွာ အားနည္းခ်က္ တခ်ဳိ႕ကို က်ေနာ္ ေလ့လာ ေတြ႔ရိွရတယ္။ ဒါကေတာ့ တူညီဝတ္စံု - ယူနီေဖာင္း၊ အျဖဴနဲ႔ ကခ်င္ပုဆိုးေတြ ဝတ္ထားတာ၊ ပင္နီ တိုက္ပံုေတြ) ဝတ္ထားၿပီး ဆႏၵျပတာ အားနည္းခ်က္ ရွိတယ္။ ဒီလို ဝတ္ထားျခင္းအားျဖင့္ ပစ္မွတ္ကို အလြယ္တကူ ေပးထားသလို ျဖစ္ေနတယ္။ လူထုထဲက ၾကည့္ေနတဲ့ သူေတြနဲ႔ မိမိနဲ႔ အဆင့္အတန္းတခု - Class တခုကို ခြဲျခားေပးထားသလို ျဖစ္ေနတယ္။ လမ္းေဘးက ရပ္ၾကည့္ေနတဲ့သူ တဦးအေနနဲ႔ ငါပါလို႔ သူတို႔က ႀကိဳက္ပါ့မလား။ (သူမွာက ယူနီေဖာင္း မဝတ္ထားတဲ့ အတြက္) ငါ့ကို အစိုးရ လူေတြက ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ေနမလား ဆိုတဲ့ စိုးရိမ္ သံသယေတြ ျဖစ္ေပၚ ေနတတ္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ယူနီေဖာင္း မဝတ္ဘဲ သူလို ကိုယ္လိုပဲ ဝတ္ထားရင္ အေရးအေၾကာင္းမွာ လူထုထဲကို ဝင္ေရာက္ၿပီး ပံုဖ်က္ႏိုင္တယ္။ လူထုေတြကိုလည္း ကိုယ့္လႈပ္ရွားမႈမွာ ဝင္ေရာက္ႏုိင္ဖို႔ တံခါးဖြင့္ေပးထားႏုိင္တယ္။

အခုျဖစ္ေနတဲ့ လႈပ္ရွားမႈဟာ ၁၉၇၄ ခုႏွစ္ အလုပ္သမား အေရးအခင္းနဲ႔ သြားတူေနတယ္။ ၁၉၇၄ ခုႏွစ္ အလုပ္သမား အေရးအခင္းက ကုန္ေစ်းႏႈန္း ႀကီးျမင့္လာမႈကို မခံႏုိင္လို႔ အလုပ္သမားေတြ စတင္ သပိတ္ေမွာက္မႈက စတင္လာခဲ့တယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အလုပ္သမား အေရးအခင္းဟာ အႏွိမ္နင္းခံရတယ္။

ဘာေၾကာင့္လဲ။ မဆလ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရး ယႏၱရားဟာ ခိုင္မာေနေသးတယ္။ အလုပ္သမား လႈပ္ရွားမႈက လူထုနဲ႔ မပူးေပါင္းႏုိင္ခဲ့ဘူး။ ဒီေနရာမွာ လူထုနဲ႔ မပူးေပါင္းႏိုင္တာက ၁၉၇၄ ခုႏွစ္က အလုပ္သမား သပိတ္ေတြဟာ စက္ရံုေတြ၊ အလုပ္ရံုေတြထဲမွာပဲ ျဖစ္ခဲ့တယ္။ သပိတ္ကို ဦးေဆာင္တဲ့ သူေတြက အလုပ္သမားေတြနဲ႔ လူထုနဲ႔ ပူးေပါင္းေစႏုိင္တဲ့ နည္းနာကို မက်င့္သံုးႏုိင္ခဲ့လို႔ပဲ ျဖစ္တယ္။

၁၉၇၄ ခုႏွစ္ ေက်ာင္းသား လႈပ္ရွားမႈဟာလည္း အလားတူပဲ ျဖစ္ခဲ့တယ္။ ၁၉၈၈ ခုႏွစ္ ေက်ာင္းသား လႈပ္ရွားမႈရဲ့ ထူးျခားမႈကေတာ့ လူထုနဲ႔ ပူးေပါင္း ႏုိင္ခဲ့တယ္။ ဒီလို ပူးေပါင္းႏုိင္ခဲ့တာ အမွတ္မထင္ တိုက္ဆိုင္မႈ တခုေတာ့ မဟုတ္ခဲ့ပါဘူး။ ဒီလို ပူးေပါင္းႏုိင္ဖို႔ အတြက္ စနစ္က်တဲ့ နည္းစနစ္ တခ်ိဳ႕ကို တီထြင္ႏုိင္ခဲ့လို႔ ျဖစ္တယ္။
ေနာက္ တိုက္ဆိုင္မႈတခုက အခု အေျခအေနက ၈၈ အစပိုင္းက အေျခအေနနဲ႔ တူေနပါတယ္။ ဒီကာလတုန္းက က်ေနာ္တို႔ဟာ လူထု မလိုက္ပါႏုိင္ ပါႏုိင္ဆိုတာကို ပိုင္ပိုင္ႏုိင္ႏုိင္ မဆံုးျဖတ္ႏုိင္ေလာက္ေအာင္ကို ျဖစ္ခဲ့ရတယ္။

ဒီေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တို႔ဟာ အခ်က္ ၂ ခ်က္ကို အတိအက် လုပ္ေဆာင္ႏုိင္ခဲ့တယ္။

၁ - ကိုယ့္ရဲ့ အေျခအေနကို လံုျခံဳေအာင္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ႏိုင္ခဲ့တယ္။ (တဖက္မွာလည္း မဆလက ေထာက္လွမ္းေရး တင္ဦးနဲ႔ ျဖဳတ္ထုတ္ ခံေနရမႈက က်ေနာ္တို႔ကို အခြင့္သာေစခဲ့တယ္။ အခုလည္း ခင္ညြန္႔နဲ႔ အဖြဲ႔ ျဖဳတ္ထုတ္ ခံေနရတာကို အခြင့္ေကာင္းယူႏုိင္ဖို႔ က်ေနာ္ တိုက္တြန္းလိုတယ္။)

၂ - လႈပ္ရွားမႈကို တျပည္လံုး ျပန္႔ႏွံ႔ေအာင္ က်ေနာ္တို႔ လုပ္ေဆာင္ႏုိင္ခဲ့တယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ လူထု တိုက္ပြဲဝင္ခဲ့တဲ့ နည္းနာကေတာ့ ေျပာက္က်ားသပိတ္ နည္းနာကို က်င့္သံုးခဲ့တယ္။ အေျခအေန ေပးတဲ့ ေနရာေတြမွာ အခ်ိန္ ေတာ္ေတာ္ၾကာတဲ့ ခ်ီတက္ ဆႏၵျပမႈကို က်ေနာ္တို႔ လုပ္ေဆာင္ခဲ့ၾကတာ ျဖစ္တယ္။

အဲဒီကာလ စကားတခြန္း ျဖစ္ခဲ့တယ္။ ဒါကေတာ့ ေျပာက္က်ားသပိတ္ ဆိုတဲ့စကားပါပဲ။ ဒါက ဘာလဲဆိုေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တို႔ဟာ လူစည္ကားတဲ့ ေနရာေတြကို ရုတ္တရက္ ေရာက္လာတယ္။ တရားေဟာတယ္။ စာေဝတယ္။ ပိုစတာေတြ ကပ္တယ္။ လံုထိန္းေတြ၊ ေထာက္လွမ္းေရးေတြ ေရာက္လာရင္ လူထုထဲမွာ ကိုယ္ေရာက္ေဖ်ာက္ၿပီး ထြက္ေျပးၾကတယ္။ ေနာက္တေန႔ ေနာက္တေနရာမွာ ျပန္ေပၚလာၿပီး ဆက္လိုက္ တိုက္ပြဲဝင္ရင္း လူထုကို အဆက္မျပတ္ လံႈ႔ေဆာ္ခဲ့တဲ့ နည္းစနစ္ေတြကို သံုးခဲ့ျခင္း ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

နအဖကလည္း ဒီေျခအေနဟာ ၈၈ ကာလတုန္းကလိုပဲ ျပင္ဆင္ေနတာ၊ တုံ႔ျပန္ေနတာကို ၾကည့္ျခင္းအားျဖင့္ အေလးအနက္ ေပးေနတာကို သိႏိုင္တယ္။ ခုကာလဟာ ၈၈ တုန္းက ေဒါက္တာ ေမာင္ေမာင္ ကာလ ၁၉၉ဝ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ကာလတုန္းကလို မေရာက္ေသးဘူး ဆိုတာကို သတိျပဳသင့္ပါတယ္။ ဒီကာလေတြတုန္းက က်ေနာ္တို႔ တူညီ ယူနီေဖာင္းေတြ ဝတ္ခဲ့တယ္။ ဒီလို တူညီ ယူနီေဖာင္းဝတ္ ဆႏၵျပတာကို က်ေနာ္တို႔ ဒီကာလ ေတြမွာပဲ လုပ္ခဲ့တယ္။ ဒီလိုဝတ္ထားျခင္းအားျဖင့္ ေအာင္ျမင္ခဲ့တာေတြ ရိွသင့္သေလာက္ေတာ့ ရိွခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ဆႏၵျပပြဲ အစပိုင္းမွာ လံုျခံဳေရးဟာ အထူး အေရးႀကီးလွပါတယ္။ ကုိယ့္ရဲေဘာ္တေယာက္ အဖမ္းခံရျခင္းဟာ လႈပ္ရွားမႈအတြက္ ေအာင္ပြဲအတြက္ တဆင့္ အားနည္းသြားျခင္း ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ လံုျခံဳေရးကို အထူး ဂရုစိုက္ဖို႔ လိုပါတယ္။ အဖမ္းမခံရေအာင္ ေရွာင္တိမ္းႏိုင္ဖို႔ ျပင္ဆင္မႈ ရိွေစခ်င္တယ္။ ၁၉၈၈ ခုနစ္ မတ္လ ကေန ၈၈ လႈပ္ရွားမႈႀကီးအထိ က်ေနာ္ အဖမ္းမခံရအာင္ အစြမ္းကုန္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ခဲ့တယ္။ ကိုယ္လြတ္ေျမာက္ေနသမွ် အာဏာရွင္ စနစ္ကို ေႏွာင့္ယွက္ ဖ်က္ဆီးႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ ဒီေနရာမွာ အဖမ္းခံရတဲ့ ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား၊ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၊ မင္းကိုႏိုင္တို႔နဲ႔ တခ်ဳိ႕ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြကေတာ့ တက္ႂကြ လႈပ္ရွားသူမ်ားလို ေရွာင္တိမ္း လႈပ္ရွားေနလို႔ မရပါဘူး။ သူတို႔ဟာ ေျမေပၚမွာ ေျပာင္တိုက္ပြဲဝင္ရမယ့္ အေနအထားမ်ိဳးကို ရင္ဆိုင္ တိုက္ပြဲဝင္ေနရသူေတြ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ လံုျခံဳေရးကို အထူး ဂရုျပဳ လႈပ္ရွားေနရတဲ့ တက္ႂကြ လႈပ္ရွားသူမ်ား အတြက္သာ ဒီအႀကံျပဳခ်က္က အက်ံဳးဝင္ပါတယ္။

လံုျခံဳေရးနဲ႔ လႈပ္ရွားမႈ ဟန္ခ်က္ညီေစျခင္း
၈၈ တေလ်ာက္လံုး ေပးခဲ့တဲ့ သခၤန္းစာအရေတာ့ လံုျခံဳေရး ကင္းမဲ့မႈ ျဖစ္တယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ရဲေဘာ္ေတြဟာ လႈပ္ရွားမႈ တခုလုပ္ဖို႔ အႀကိမ္ႀကိမ္ ေဆြးေႏြးတာ၊ လက္ဖက္ရည္ဆိုင္ ထိုင္တာ၊ ကိုယ္က ဘာလဲဆိုတာကို ရန္သူက သိေနမႈဟာ အလြန္ စိုးရိမ္စရာ ေကာင္းတဲ့အခ်က္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ တခ်ိဳ႕ ေနရာေတြ ရန္သူက ေတာ္လို႔ မဟုတ္ဘဲ ကိုယ္ဘက္က ေပါ့ဆမႈေတြေၾကာင့္ ေပါက္ၾကားမႈေတြ ျဖစ္တာ၊ အဖမ္းခံရတာေတြ ျဖစ္ကုန္ၾကရတာပါပဲ။

လံုႈခံဳေရးအတြက္ က်ေနာ္အႀကံျပဳေစခ်င္တာေတြကေတာ့

၁ - လက္ကိုင္ဖုန္းနဲ႔ သတိထား စကားေျပာဖို႔ လိုတယ္။ လက္ကိုင္ဖုန္း တခါေျပာတိုင္း ရန္သူ နားေထာင္ေနတယ္ ဆိုတာကို သတိျပဳပါ။ လက္ကိုင္ဖုန္းက ေစ်းႀကီးသေလာက္၊ ရန္သူကို ေစ်းအေပါဆံုး သတင္း ပို႔ေပးေနသလို ျဖစ္ေနပါတယ္။ ဘာျဖစ္လို႔လဲ လက္ကိုင္ဖုန္းက FM ေရဒီယိုစနစ္ ပံုစံမ်ိဳးနဲ႔ အသံလိႈင္းကို သယ္ယူသြားတာ ျဖစ္တဲ့အတြက္ ရန္သူက ေနရာအႏွံ႔ကေန ၾကားျဖတ္ နားေထာင္ ေနႏိုင္လို႔ပဲ ျဖစ္တယ္။ ၾကားျဖတ္ နားေထာင္တဲ့ စခန္းကို အရင္က တိုးေၾကာင္ေလး အနီးနားမွာ ရံုးဖြင့္ၿပီး နားေထာင္ေနၾကပါတယ္။
၂ - တေနရာတည္းမွာ အၾကာႀကီး မေဆြးေႏြးၾကဖို႔ စကားမေျပာၾကဖို႔ လိုတယ္။
၃ - တေနရာတည္းမွာ အျမဲတမ္း မအိပ္ဖို႔ လိုတယ္။
၄ - ညအိပ္တဲ့အခါမွာ သတိဝီရိယ အျမဲ ရိွေနဖို႔ လိုတယ္။
၅ - ထြက္ေပါက္ကို အျမဲတမ္း ႀကိဳတင္ ၾကည့္ထားဖို႔ လိုတယ္။
၆ - ကားစီးတဲ့အခါ ေနာက္ဆံုး ထိုင္ခံုမွာ စီးပါ။ ကိုယ့္ေနာက္မွာ ဘယ္သူကိုမွ မထားပါနဲ႔။
ကိုယ္က အားလံုးကို ၾကည့္ႏိုင္တဲ့ပံုစံ အျမဲ ရိွေနရပါမယ္။
၇ - ခရီးသြားတဲ့အခါ တေနရာရာကို ထြက္တဲ့အခါမွာ လူအုပ္ထဲမွာ အျမဲတမ္းေနပါ။
၈ - မသကၤာစရာ လႈပ္ရွားမႈ ေတြ႔တာနဲ႔ ေျခရာေဖ်ာက္ပါ။
၉ - စာရြက္စာတန္း၊ စာေစာင္၊ သတင္းစာ အေဟာင္း ႏိုင္ငံေရးနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္တာ အားလံုး
ကိုယ္နဲ႔အတူ မထားပါနဲ႔။ အိမ္ထဲမွာ မထားပါနဲ႔။ ဝွက္စရာ ေနရာေတြ အမ်ားႀကီးရိွတယ္။ ရေအာင္ ဝွက္ပါ။
၁ဝ - ေဆးမင္၊ နာရီ၊ လက္စြပ္၊ ဆြဲႀကိဳးေတြ မဆြဲပါနဲ႔။ ေဆးမင္ရိွရင္ ဖံုးကြယ္ထားပါ။

အုပ္စု ၂ စု ခြဲၿပီးလႈပ္ရွားျခင္း
ဆႏၵျပေတာ့မယ္ ဆိုတာနဲ႔ ကိုယ္အင္အားကို ၂ စုခြဲပါ။ တစုက ေျပာင္ဆႏၵျပမယ့္ အဖြဲ႔၊ တဖြဲ႔က လူထုထဲမွာ ေရာေႏွာၿပီး ကိုယ္ေရာင္ ေဖ်ာက္ထားရမယ့္ အဖြဲ႔ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီစနစ္ကို က်ေနာ္တို႔ ၈၈ ကတည္းက လုပ္ေဆာင္ခဲ့တယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ လုပ္ေဆာင္တုန္းက ကိုယ့္မွာ လူအင္အား ၁ဝ ေယာက္ရိွရင္ သံုးပံုတပံုက ေျပာင္ဆႏၵျပတဲ့ တာဝန္ကို ယူခဲ့တယ္။ က်န္တဲ့ ႏွစ္ပံု ၇ ေယာက္ခန္႔က လူထုထဲမွာ ေရာၿပီး ကိုယ္ေရာင္ ေဖ်ာက္ထားတယ္။

ဒီအဖြဲ႔ ၂ ဖြဲ႔မွာ သီးျခား တာဝန္ေတြကို လုပ္-ကတယ္။ ဆႏၵျပတဲ့ အဖြဲ႔က တရားေဟာတယ္။ လံႈ႔ေဆာ္တယ္။ ခ်ီတက္တယ္။ သီခ်င္းဆိုတယ္။ အလံေတြကိုင္ၿပီး ေဝွ႔ယမ္းတယ္။ ကိုယ္ေရာင္ေဖ်ာက္ထားတဲ့ သူေတြရဲ့ တာဝန္က လူထုထဲမွာ ေထာက္လွမ္းေရးေတြက ဘယ္သူေတြလဲ။ လူပ္ရွားမႈကို ေထာက္လွမ္းေရးကို သတင္းပို႔ေနသူ၊ ေႏွာင့္ယွက္မယ့္သူက ဘယ္သူေတြလဲ ဆိုတာကို သတိထား ေစာင့္ၾကည့္တယ္။ အခြင့္အေရးရရင္ အနီးကပ္ၿပီး တိုက္ခိုက္ ပစ္လိုက္တယ္။ ၈၈ မတ္လနဲ႔ ဇြန္လ ေက်ာင္းသား လႈပ္ရွားမႈတုန္းက ေက်ာင္းသားေတြထဲမွာ ျမႇဳပ္ႏွံထားတဲ့ ေထာက္လွမ္းေရးေတြကို ဒီနည္းနဲ႔ ေဖာ္ထုတ္ ႏိုင္ခဲ့တယ္။ သူတို႔ကို အလစ္မွာ ဖမ္းဆီးၿပီး အမ်ိဳးသား အိမ္သာထဲမွာ ဖမ္းခ်ဳပ္ထားရင္းနဲ႔ လႈပ္ရွားမႈကို အသက္ဆက္ေပးေနခဲ့တယ္။

တကယ္လို႔ ေထာက္လွမ္းေရးေတြ လံုထိန္းေတြက လာေရာက္ ရိုက္ႏွက္တဲ့အခါမွာ သူတို႔က ျပန္လည္ မခုခံရပါဘူး။ သူတို႔က လူထုကို ကယ္ပါ ယူပါ ေအာ္ဟစ္ အကူအညီ ေတာင္းၾကရမယ္။ ဒီအခါမွာ လူထုထဲမွာ ျမႇဳပ္ႏွံထားတဲ့ ကိုယ့္လူေတြက စတင္ၿပီး လူဆိုးလူမိုက္ေတြ၊ ေထာက္လွမ္းေရးေတြကို စတင္ တိုက္ခိုက္လိုက္တဲ့ အခါမွာ လူထုက မခံမရပ္ႏိုင္ ျဖစ္လာတဲ့ ပံုစံကို ေရာက္လာတယ္။ ေနာက္ေတာ့ တကယ္ပဲ လူထုက ဝင္ေရာက္ ကူညီလာေတာ့တယ္။

ဒီေန႔ျဖစ္ေနတဲ့ လႈပ္ရွားမႈကိုၾကည့္ရင္ နအဖက လူဆိုးလူမိုက္ေတြကို လူထုထဲမွာ ေရာေႏွာ ထည့္ထားတယ္။ ဒီလူေတြက ဘယ္သူေတြလဲ ဆိုတာ ကိုယ့္လူေတြက မသိႏိုင္ဘူးလို႔ လႈပ္ရွားမႈထဲမွာ ပါဝင္ေနတဲ့ သူတဦးက ဆိုတယ္။ ဒီလို ျဖစ္ရတာကေတာ့ ကိုယ္ဘက္က – ႀကိဳတင္ၿပီး လူထုတဲမွာ ေရာေႏွာ မျမႇဳပ္္ႏွံထားႏိုင္လို႔ ျဖစ္တယ္။ ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာျမႇဳပ္ႏွံၿပီး လူအုပ္ထဲမွာ အကဲခတ္ၾကည့္ရင္ သာမေဏန သမေဏေဏာ၊ ေဂါေဏန ေဂါေဏာ ဆိုသလို သာမေဏက ဘယ္သူလဲ ႏြားက ဘယ္သူလဲ ဆိုတာကို ခြဲျခား သိႏိုင္လိမ့္မယ္။ လူထုထဲမွာ ကိုယ္ေရာင္ေဖ်ာက္ လႈပ္ရွားရတဲ့ သူေတြကို က်ေနာ္တို႔ တာဝန္ေပးတဲ့ အခါမွာေတာ့ အားေကာင္းေမာင္းသန္ေတြ၊ လက္စလက္န ရိွသူေတြ၊ ဆႏၵျပတာ မလုပ္တတ္ေပမယ့္ မတရားမႈေတြကို လက္ပိုက္ မၾကည့္လိုတဲ့ ရပ္ကြက္ထဲက လူငယ္လူရြယ္ေတြဟာ ဒီလုိ လုပ္ငန္းမွာ အထူး သင့္ေတာ္ၾကတယ္။ သူတို႔ကို ဦးစားေပးၿပီး က်ေနာ္တို႔ ေရြးခ်ယ္ေပးခဲ့တယ္။ တခါတရံမွာ ကိုယ္ေရာင္ေဖ်ာက္ၿပီး ဝင္ကူမယ့္ သူေတြဟာ ေလး ငါးဆယ္ခန္႔အထိ က်ေနာ္တို႔ သံုးခဲ့တယ္။ သူတို႔ကို အုပ္စုလိုက္ေတြ ဖြဲ႔ၿပီး တာဝန္ေတြ ေပးခဲ့တယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ဆႏၵျပပြဲ လုပ္ေတာ့မယ္ ဆိုတာနဲ႔ လူအုပ္စု ၂ စုခြဲၿပီး လႈပ္ရွားတာဟာ အေကာင္းဆံုး နည္းစနစ္တခု ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ အႀကံျပဳလိုတယ္။

၂။ ဆႏၵျပခ်ီတက္ျခင္း

က - ခ်ီတက္ ဆႏၵျပရမယ္။

၁ - အေရးအႀကီးဆံုးက လူအစည္းကားဆံုး ေနရာျဖစ္ရမယ္။ အေျခခံ လူထုေတြ အမ်ားဆံုး ရိွတဲ့ေနရာေတြ ျဖစ္ရပါမယ္။

၂ - ႀကံ႔ဖြံ႔ သို႔မဟုတ္ အာဏာပိုင္မ်ားက လာေရာက္ တားျမစ္လွ်င္ ထိပ္တိုက္ မရင္ဆိုင္ပါနဲ႔ ထိုင္ၿပီး ဆႏၵျပပြဲ ဆက္လက္ မဆင္ႏႊဲပါနဲ႔ ခ်က္ခ်င္း လူစု ျပန္ခြဲလိုက္ပါ။ ေနာက္တႀကိမ္ ဆႏၵျပႏိုင္ေအာင္ ျပင္ဆင္ပါ။ လူျပန္စု ျပန္ခ်ီတက္ ျပန္တိုက္ပြဲဝင္။

၃ - လမ္းေဘးမွ ရပ္ၾကည့္ေနတဲ့ လူထုေတြကို ပါေအာင္ စည္းရံုးပါ။ ဒီလို စည္းရံုးႏိုင္ဖို႔ကေတာ့ ကိုယ္ဘက္က ခုလို ျပင္ဆင္မႈေတြ လုပ္သင့္ပါတယ္။

က - လမ္းေဘးမွ ရပ္ၾကည့္ေနတဲ့ လူေတြထဲကို ကိုယ့္ရဲေဘာ္ တခ်ဳိ႕က ဝင္ေရာက္ ေရာေႏွာ ေနရာယူ ထားဖို႔ လိုပါတယ္။
ခ - လူထုေတြကို အလုပ္ေပးပါ။ (တာဝန္ေပးပါ။)
ဂ - အသင့္ပါလာတဲ့ စာရြက္ေတြကို လူထုေတြကို ေဝခိုင္းပါ။
ဃ - လူထုေတြထဲကို ခြပ္ေဒါင္း တံဆိပ္ပါတဲ့ နဖူးစည္းမ်ား ရပ္ၾကည့္ေနတ့ဲ လူေတြကို ျဖန္႔ေဝေပးဖို႔ လိုတယ္။
င - ေျမျဖဴခဲ၊ မီးေသြးခဲ၊ ေဆးစုတ္တံ၊ ပိုစတာမ်ားကို လူထု လက္ထဲ ထည့္ေပးပါ။ ေႂကြးေၾကာ္သံေတြကို ေရးခိုင္းပါ။
စ - တိုက္နံရံမ်ား၊ အုတ္နံရံမ်ား၊ ကားလမ္းမမ်ားေပၚမွာ ေႂကြးေၾကာ္သံမ်ားကို ေရးခိုင္းပါ။ ပိုစတာမ်ား ကပ္ခိုင္းပါ။
ဆ - လူထုထဲမွာ ရိွေနတဲ့ ကိုယ့္လူေတြက လူထုကို ပူးေပါင္း ပါဝင္လာေအာင္ အနီးကပ္ လံႈ႔ေဆာ္ေပးေနရမယ္။
ဇ - တကယ္လို႔ ဆႏၵျပေနတဲ့ ကိုယ့္လူေတြကို ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔မ်ား၊ လူဆိုးလူမိုက္မ်ားက တိုက္ခိုက္လာပါက၊ ဝင္ေရာက္ ကာကြယ္ ေပးႏိုင္ရမယ္။ ေဟ့ … ဒါမတရားဘူးကြ၊ ဒို႔ လက္ပိုက္ ၾကည့္မေနဘူး။ သတၱိရိွရင္ ထိၾကည့္ကြ စသျဖင့္ ကိုယ္လူေတြက စတင္ ေျပာဆိုရမယ္။ လိုအပ္လာရင္ ခြန္အားကို သံုးၿပီး ေျဖရွင္းရပါမယ္။
စ် - တုတ္မ်ား၊ ပုလင္းမ်ား၊ အုတ္နီခဲမ်ားနဲ႔ တိုက္ခိုက္ ေခ်မႈန္းပစ္ရမယ္။ ဒီအခါမွာ လူထုက မခံမရပ္ႏိုင္ ျဖစ္လို႔ မိမိတို႔နဲ႔အတူ တိုက္ပြဲဝင္လာတဲ့ ပံုစံကို ထြက္လာပါတယ္။
ည - အာဏာပိုင္မ်ားက တိုက္ခိုက္လာတဲ့ ကိုယ့္လူေတြကို တုံ႔ျပန္ရင္းနဲ႔ လူထုကိုပါ တိုက္ခိုက္တ့ဲ ပံုစံကို ေရာက္လာေလ့ ရိွတယ္။ ဒီအခါမွာ အာဏာပိုင္ေတြနဲ႔ လူထုတိုက္ပြဲ စတင္လာသလို ျဖစ္လာေတာ့တယ္။ တိုက္ခိုက္ ကာကြယ္ေပးတဲ့ ပံုစံ ျဖစ္လာတယ္။ လူထုေတြကလည္း ငါ့ေဘးက လူေတြေတာင္ ပါကုန္ၿပီ၊ ငါလည္း ပါေတာ့မယ္ ဆိုတဲ့ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ကို ျဖစ္ေပၚေစတယ္။ လူထုေတြမွာ Group Dynamic Behavior ရိွတယ္။ တေယာက္က လုပ္ရင္ က်န္တဲ့လူကလည္း လိုက္လုပ္တဲ့ သေဘာပဲ။ လံုျခံဳမႈ ရိွတယ္။ ေအာင္ပြဲခံမယ္ ဆိုရင္ လူတိုင္းက အားတက္သေရာ ပါခ်င္ၾကတယ္။ ဒီေတာ့ ေခါင္ေဆာင္ လုပ္တဲ့သူက ဒီအေျခအေနကို မွန္မွန္ကန္ကန္ အသံုးခ်တတ္ရမယ္။
ဋ - တကယ္လို႔ ကိုယ့္မွာ အင္အား မ်ားလာတယ္ဆိုရင္ ခ်ီတက္ ဆႏၵျပႏိုင္တယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ လူစည္ကားတဲ့ ေနရာမွာပဲ ျဖစ္ရမယ္။

ခ - ေႂကြးေၾကာ္သံမ်ား
ေႂကြးေၾကာ္သံေတြကို ခ်မွတ္ေပးတဲ့ ေနရာမွာ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အေျခအေန ျဖစ္ေပၚေျပာင္းလဲမႈအလုိက္ တဆင့္ၿပီးတဆင့္ ျမႇင့္တင္ေပးသြားဖို႔ လိုတယ္။ ေလာေလာဆယ္မွာ ဓာတ္ဆီ ေစ်းႏႈန္းေတြ က်ဆင္းေရး စြမ္းအင္နဲ႔ ဘ႑ာေရး ဝန္ႀကီး ႏုတ္ထြက္ေရး စတဲ့ ေႂကြးေၾကာ္သံကို တင္သင့္တယ္။ အဆင့္ျမင့္လာရင္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ သန္းေရႊ ႏုတ္ထြက္ ေပးေရးနဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားမ်ား လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးကို ဆက္လက္ တင္ရမယ္။ အျမင့္ဆံုးပိုင္းကို ေရာက္လာရင္ စစ္အာဏာရွင္ စနစ္ ဖ်က္သိမ္းေရးနဲ႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီ လူထုအစိုးရ တရပ္ ဖြဲ႔စည္းႏိုင္ေရး အထိ ဆက္လက္ တင္ေပးသြားဖို႔ လိုတယ္။ လူထုတိုက္ပြဲရဲ့ အျမင့္ဆံုး ေႂကြးေၾကာ္သံကေတာ့ လူထုအစိုးရ ဖြဲ႔စည္းေရး (ၾကားျဖတ္အစိုးရ ဖြဲ႔စည္းေရးအထိ ျဖစ္ရမယ္။)

ဂ - စည္းကို ေက်ာ္ေပးျခင္း
အာဏာပိုင္ေတြက ဟုိဟာ မလုပ္ရဘူး။ ဒီဟာ မလုပ္ရဘူး။ ဟုိေနရာကို မသြားရဘူး။ ဒီေနရာကိုမသြားရဘူး။ လူမစုရဘူး စသျဖင့္ မတရားတဲ့ ဥပေဒေတြကို ထုတ္ျပန္တတ္ေလ့ ရိွပါတယ္။
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က ‘မတရားတဲ့ အမိန္႔အာဏာ ဟူသမွ် တာဝန္အရ ဖီဆန္ၾက’ လို႔ အမိန္႔ ရိွခဲ့ဖူးတယ္။ လူထုတိုက္ပြဲမွာ မတရားတဲ့ ဥပေဒေတြကို ထုတ္ျပန္လာတဲ့ အခါမွာ က်ေနာ္တို႔က ဒါကို နည္းမ်ိဳးစံုနဲ႔ ခ်ိဳးေဖာက္ပစ္ဖို႔ လိုတယ္။ သူတို႔ ဥပေဒေတြကို ဟာသ လုပ္ပစ္ရပါမယ္။ ဒါကို က်ေနာ္က စည္းကို ေက်ာ္ေပးရတယ္လို႔ သံုးခ်င္ပါတယ္။ အခြင့္အေရးရတာနဲ႔ စည္းကို ေက်ာ္ေပးဖို႔ ႀကိဳးစားရပါမယ္။

ဃ - အေရးအႀကီးဆံုး အခ်က္မ်ား
၁ - အလံ
၂ - စကားေျပာစက္
၃ - ရန္သူ႔လူမ်ား ထိုးေဖာက္လာျခင္း

၁ - အလံက ကိုယ္လက္ထဲ သို႔မဟုတ္၊ ကိုယ့္ရဲေဘာ္ လက္ထဲမွာပဲ ျဖစ္ရမယ္။
လူေတြရဲ့ ပင္ကိုဗီဇစိတ္က ဘဲေတြနဲ႔တူတယ္။ ဆႏၵျပပြဲေတြမွာ ေရွ႕က တေယာက္က ဦးေဆာင္ေနရင္ ဦးေဆာင္ေနသူ ေနာက္ကိုပဲ တစြတ္ထိုး လိုက္တတ္တဲ့ အက်င့္ ရိွတယ္။ ဒီအခါမွာ မသမာတဲ့ သူေတြက အလံကိုရေအာင္ယူၿပီး ခ်ီတက္တဲ့ လမ္းေၾကာင္း ေျပာင္းေအာင္ လုပ္လာႏိုင္တယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ အလံကို ကိုယ့္လူ လက္ထဲမွာပဲ ရိွေစရမယ္။

၂ - အလံလိုပဲ အေရးႀကီးတဲ့ အခ်က္တခုက အသံခ်ဲ႕စက္ ျဖစ္တယ္။
အသံခ်ဲ႕စက္ကို ကိုယ့္လူကပဲ ကိုင္ထားရမယ္။ တက္ႂကြဖြယ္ ေကာင္းတဲ့ စကားေတြေျပာၿပီး လူထုကို လိုက္ပါေအာင္ လံႈ႔ေဆာ္ေနခ်ိန္မွာ မသမာသူေတြက အသံခ်ဲ႕စက္ကို ရေအာင္ယူၿပီး ဆႏၵျပပြဲကို ပ်က္စီးေစတဲ့ စိတ္ဓာတ္ က်ဆင္းဖြယ္ရာ စကားေတြ၊ အေတြးအေခၚ ရႈပ္ေထြးေစတဲ့ စကားေတြ၊ စည္းပ်က္ကမ္းပ်က္ ျဖစ္ေအာင္၊ ဆႏၵျပပြဲကို ထိန္းမႏိုင္ သိမ္းမရ ျဖစ္ေအာင္ ေျပာဆိုတာေတြကို လုပ္ေဆာင္ေလ့ ရိွတတ္ၾကတယ္။

၃ - ရန္သူ႔ လူမ်ားက ပံုစံအမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးနဲ႔ ထိုးေဖာက္ ဝင္ေရာက္ၿပီး အဖ်က္လုပ္ငန္းေတြ လုပ္ေဆာင္တတ္ေလ့ ရိွတယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔တုန္းက ရန္သူလူေတြက သပိတ္ကို ဦးေဆာင္ေနတဲ့ သူေတြကို စာေရးၿပီး ၿခိမ္းေျခာက္တာ၊ လႈပ္ရွားမႈကို ရပ္တန္႔ခိုင္းတာ၊ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြနား ခ်ဥ္းကပ္ၿပီး လက္နက္ေတြ ရလာၿပီ ယူမလားဆိုၿပီး လာေခၚေလ့ ရိွတယ္။ လိုက္မသြားပါနဲ႔။ အေရးႀကီးတာ တိုင္ပင္ခ်င္လို႔ဆိုၿပီး လူျပတ္တဲ့ ေနရာေတြကို ေခၚေဆာင္ေလ့ ရိွတယ္။ လိုက္မသြားပါနဲ႔။ စစ္သားေတြကို ရန္သူ႔လူေတြက ကိုယ့္လူပံုစံ ဖမ္းထားတဲ့သူေတြက စစ္သားေတြကို စတင္ တိုက္ခိုက္ျပတာမ်ိဳးေတြလည္း လုပ္ေလ့ရိွတယ္။ ခ်ီတက္ရာ လမ္းေၾကာင္းကို ေျပာင္းေအာင္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေလ့ ရိွတယ္။ သတ္ကြင္းကို ခ်ီတက္ေနတဲ့ လူထုကို ေခၚေဆာင္သြားတာ လုပ္တတ္တယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ခ်ီတက္ရာကို ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေနတဲ့ သူေတြဟာ ကိုယ္လူေတြပဲ ျဖစ္ရပါမယ္။ အေရးအႀကီးဆံုးက လူျပတ္တဲ့ သတ္ကြင္း ျဖစ္ေစတဲ့ ေနရာေတြမွာ ဆႏၵျပပြဲ မလုပ္မိဖို႔ အေရးႀကီးတယ္။ မသြားသင့္ဆံုးေနရာက ေရႊတိဂံုဘုရား ျဖစ္တယ္။ ဘာျဖစ္လို႔လဲဆိုေတာ့ လူျပတ္တဲ့ေနရာ ျဖစ္ေနလို႔ ျဖစ္တယ္။

င - အလုပ္သမားေတြ သပိတ္ထဲ ပါလာေအာင္ ဘယ္လို လုပ္ခဲ့သလဲ
၈၈ တုန္းက အလုပ္သမားေတြနဲ႔ ရန္ကင္းစက္မႈ ဝန္ႀကီးဌာနက ဝန္ထမ္းေတြကို သပိတ္ထဲ ပါလာေအာင္ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ႀကိဳးစားခဲ့တယ္။ ကန္ဘဲ့ အပ္ခ်ည္လံုး စက္ရံုက အလုပ္သမားေတြကို က်ေနာ္တို႔ သပိတ္ထဲမွာပါဖို႔ သြားေရာက္ တရားေဟာတယ္။ မပါဘူး။ ေက်ာင္းသားနဲ႔ လူထုေတြ ၁ဝဝ ေလာက္က အလုပ္သမားေတြကို သပိတ္ထဲပါဖို႔ နားခ်ေပမယ့္ အလုပ္သမားေခါင္း ၁ ေယာက္က အျပင္ မထြက္ရဘူး ဆိုၿပီး တံခါးေတြ ပိတ္လိုက္တဲ့အခါမွာ အလုပ္သမားေတြဟာ နာခံသြားၾကတယ္။

ဘာျဖစ္လို႔လဲ
၁ - ေက်ာင္းသားေတြ ဦးေဆာင္ လႈပ္ရွားေနတဲ့ သပိတ္က ႏိုင္မွာမို႔လို႔လား
၂ - ငါအလုပ္ ျပဳတ္သြားရင္ ငါ့ မိသားစုကို ဘယ္သူက ေစာင့္ေရွာက္မွာလဲ
၃ - လူသားမွာ ဗီဇ အရိုးစြဲေနတဲ့ အထက္အရာရိွကို နာခံလိုမႈ သေဘာတရား
ေတြေၾကာင့္ျဖစ္ႏိုင္တယ္။

က်ေနာ္တို႔က ဘာလိုခ်င္တာလဲ။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ လိုခ်င္တာက အလုပ္သမားေတြ အလုပ္သပိတ္ထဲ ပါဝင္ဖို႔ အလုပ္မဆင္းဘဲ ကန္႔ကြက္ ဆႏၵျပဖို႔ ျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒီေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တို႔က ဘာလုပ္ေပးခဲ့သလဲ။ ေဘာက္ေထာ္ ဘူတာနားက မီးရထား သံလမ္းေတြကို ဆြဲျဖဳတ္ ပစ္လိုက္ၾကတယ္။ ေမာ္ေတာ္ကားလမ္းေတြကို ပိတ္ဆို႔ေပး လိုက္တယ္။ ဒီေတာ့ အလုပ္သမားေတြ အလုပ္မဆင္းႏိုင္ေတာ့ဘူး။ သပိတ္ထဲ ပါဝင္သလို ျဖစ္လာတယ္။ လမ္းေတြ ပိတ္ကုန္ေတာ့ အလုပ္သမားေတြ လမ္းေလွ်ာက္လာရတယ္။ ဒီေတာ့ လမ္းေပၚမွာရိွတဲ့ လူထုေတြ သံဃာေတြ၊ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြနဲ႔ ေပါင္းမိလာတယ္။ (မီးရထား သံလမ္းေတြကို ျဖဳတ္ၿပီးတဲ့ အခါမွာေတာ့ ရန္ကုန္ ဘူတာႀကီးကို ဖုန္းဆက္ၿပီး သံလမ္း ပ်က္ေနတယ္လို႔ေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တို႔ အေၾကာင္းေပးခဲ့ပါတယ္။ မီးရထားနဲ႔ ခရီးသြားသူေတြကို အႏၱရာယ္ မျဖစ္ေအာင္လို႔ပါ။)

၄။ ယႏၱရားမ်ားကို ၿဖိဳခ်ေပးျခင္း
အစိုးရ ယႏၱရားေတြထဲမွာ ဆက္သြယ္ေရး၊ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရး၊ ရဲစခန္း၊ ရပ္ကြက္ထဲမွာရိွတဲ့ သူတို႔ရဲ့ ရံုးခန္းေတြကို ရပ္တန္႔သြားေအာင္ နည္းမ်ိဳးစံုနဲ႔ ေႏွာင့္ယွက္ေပးရတာ ျဖစ္တယ္။ ၈၈ တုန္းက စိန္လြင္ တက္လာတဲ့ ေနာက္ပိုင္းမွာ ခ်ီတက္ ဆႏၵျပတာေတြကို လုပ္ေဆာင္ဖို႔ အေတာ္ ခက္ခဲလာခဲ့တယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ က်ေနာ္တို႔က ကိုယ္နဲ႔ အနီးစပ္ဆံုး ရိွေနတဲ့ မဆလ ရံုးခန္းေတြ၊ ရဲစခန္းေတြကို တိုက္ခိုက္ ေပးခဲ့တယ္။ ဒီလို ၿဖိဳခ်တဲ့ ေနရာမွာ အသံုးျပဳရတဲ့ နည္းစနစ္ကေတာ့ ႀကံ႔ဖြံ႔ေတြကို ႏုတ္ထြက္ဖို႔ ဖိအားေပးတာ၊ ၿခိမ္းေျခာက္စာ ေရးတာ။
၈၈ တုန္းက က်ေနာ္တို႔က မဆလ ပါတီဝင္ေတြကို ႏုတ္ထြက္ေပးဖို႔ ညဘက္မွာ ေလာ္စပီကာငွားၿပီး လိုက္လံ ေအာ္ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ညဘက္က တိတ္ဆိတ္ေနခ်ိန္မွာ အေမွာင္ထုကို ေဖာက္ၿပီး ထြက္လာတဲ့ ကိုယ့္ရဲ့ ေၾကညာခ်က္ အသံက မဆလ ေဒါက္တိုင္ေတြကို ေျခာက္ျခား ေစခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ဒီတုန္းက က်ေနာ္တို႔ သံုးခဲ့တဲ့ ေၾကညာခ်က္ကေတာ့ တိုတိုနဲ႔ လိုရင္း ေရးခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ဥပမာေျပာရရင္ -
ဗမာႏိုင္ငံလံုးဆိုင္ရာ ေက်ာင္းသားသမဂၢမ်ား အဖြ႔ဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ရဲ့ ရာဇသံ
မဆလ ပါတီဝင္ အေပါင္းတို႔ … သင္တို႔ မဆလ ပါတီဝင္ အျဖစ္မွ ႏုတ္ထြက္ရန္ ငါတို႔ ျပည္သူ တရပ္လံုးက ေတာင္းဆိုသည္။
သင့္တို႔ မတရားမႈ လုပ္ေဆာင္ခ်က္မ်ားကို ငါတို႔ သည္းခံေတာ့မည္မဟုတ္။
မနက္ ေနာက္ဆံုးထားၿပီး သင့္တို႔ မဆလပါတီဝင္ ကတ္ျပားမ်ားကို ရဟန္းသံဃာမ်ား ေက်ာင္းသား ျပည္သူမ်ားထံ လာေရာက္ အပ္ႏွံရမယ္။
မအပ္ႏွံပါက သင္တို႔ အသက္အိုးအိမ္ စည္းစိမ္ကို တာဝန္ယူမည္ မဟုတ္။
ပံု
ဗကသမ်ားအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္

ဆိုၿပီး ေၾကညာခ်က္ ထုတ္ျပန္ခဲ့တယ္။ ညဘက္မွာ ေလာ္စပီကာကို ကားေပၚ၊ ဆိုက္ကားေပၚ တင္ၿပီး ရပ္ကြက္ေတြထဲမွာ လိုက္လံ ေအာ္ခဲ့ၾကတယ္။ ဒီအေျခအေနကို လူထုလႈပ္ရွားမႈ အျမင့္ဆံုး အပိုင္းမွာ က်ေနာ္တို႔ လုပ္ေဆာင္ခဲ့ၾကတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ေနာက္တခုကေတာ့ မဆလအစိုးရ သံုးတဲ့ တယ္လီဖုန္း လိုင္းေတြကို ျဖတ္ေတာက္ ျပစ္လိုက္ျခင္း၊ လမ္းေတြကို ပိတ္ဆို႔ပစ္ျခင္းေတြ ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့တယ္။ အဓိက လုပ္ရတဲ့ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ကေတာ့ ရန္သူရဲ့ အမိန္႔ေပးစနစ္ Commend and Control ကို ရပ္တန္႔ သြားေအာင္လို႔ ျဖစ္တယ္။ ၈၈ တုန္း ဒီလို ယႏၱရားကို ထိထိေရာက္ေရာက္ ၿဖိဳခ်ႏိုင္ခဲ့တဲ့ အတြက္ မဆလ ပါတီဝင္ေတြ သန္းနဲ႔ခ်ီၿပီး ၿမ့ဳိနယ္တိုင္းမွာ ႏုတ္ထြက္လႊာေတြ လာေရာက္ တင္ခဲ့ၾကတယ္။ မဆလပါတီ ထိပ္သီး ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြ အိမ္ထဲက အိမ္ျပင္ မထြက္ရဲခဲ့ၾကဘူး။ အမိန္႔ေပး စနစ္ တခုလံုး ၿဖိဳခ်တာ ခံခဲ့ရလို႔ ျဖစ္တယ္။

၅။ လူထု အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရး အသစ္ကို အစားထိုးျခင္း
ေတာ္လွန္ေရးတခု ေအာင္ပြဲခံတယ္ မခံဘူးဆိုတာဟာ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရး အသစ္တခုကို တည္ေဆာက္ႏိုင္သလား မတည္ေဆာက္ႏိုင္သလားနဲ႔ ဆံုးျဖတ္ရမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ၿဗိတိသွ် ေထာက္လွမ္းေရး အႀကီးအကဲေဟာင္း တခုက တခ်ိဳ႕သူပုန္ေတြ ေအာင္ပြဲခံၿပီး တခ်ိဳ႕သူပုန္ေတြ ဘာေၾကာင့္ ေအာင္ပြဲ မခံရသလဲ ဆိုတာနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔ သုေတသန ျပဳခဲ့တယ္။ သူရဲ့ ေတြ႔ရိွခ်က္အရ တခ်ိဳ႕ သူပုန္ အဖြဲ႔ေတြဟာ အစိုးရ အဖြဲ႔တခုကို ျဖဳတ္ခ်ပစ္ဖို႔ ႀကိဳးစားေနခ်ိန္မွာ သူတို႔ဟာ အစိုးရသစ္ တခုကို ဖြဲ႔စည္းႏိုင္ဖို႔ ျပင္ဆင္ႏိုင္ခဲ့ၾကတယ္။ ဖဲြ႔စည္း ႏိုင္ခဲ့ၾကတယ္။

၈၈ ရဲ့ မဟာေသြး သင္ခန္းစာအရ က်ေနာ္တို႔ဟာ လူထုတိုက္ပြဲရဲ့ အျမင့္ဆံုးအပိုင္းမွာ အစိုးရ တရပ္ကို က်ေနာ္တို႔ မဖြဲ႔စည္းႏိုင္ခဲ့ပါဘူး။ ဦးႏုက အစိုးရတရပ္ ဖြဲ႔စည္းဖို႔ ႀကိဳးပမ္းခဲ့ေပမယ့္ မ်ိဳးခ်စ္ ရဲေဘာ္ေဟာင္းမ်ား အဖြဲ႔၊ တတ္သိ ပညာရွင္မ်ားက မေထာက္ခံခဲ့ၾကပါဘူး။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ဦးႏုရဲ့ စင္ၿပိဳင္ အစိုးရ ဖြ႔ဲစည္းေရး စီမံကိန္းက ပ်က္စီးသြားခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒါဟာ ႀကီးမားတဲ့ ဆံုးရံႈးမႈ တခုပါ။ ဒီကာလက က်ေနာ္တို႔ အစိုးရ ဖြဲ႔စည္းႏိုင္ခဲ့ရင္ အေမရိကန္၊ ၿဗိတိန္၊ ၾသစေၾတးလ်၊ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံနဲ႔ အိႏၵိယ ႏိုင္ငံတို႔က ေထာက္ခံဖို႔ ကတိျပဳခဲ့ေသာ္လည္း၊ အေမရိကန္ ေရတပ္သေဘၤာက ျမန္မာ့ ေရပိုင္နက္အထိ ေရာက္ရိွေနခဲ့ပါေသာ္လည္း က်ေနာ္တို႔ ေအာင္ပြဲ လက္တကမ္း အလိုက်မွ အရႈံးကို ရင္ဆိုင္ခဲ့ရတယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ အစိုးရကို မဖြဲ႔စည္းႏိုင္ခဲ့ၾကလို႔ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ဒီေန႔ လူထုတိုက္ပြဲ အျမင့္ဆံုးပိုင္းကို ေရာက္လာတဲ့နဲ႔ တၿပိဳင္နက္ က်ေနာ္တို႔ဟာ ကိုမင္းကိုႏိုင္ ဦးေဆာင္တဲ့ ၈၈ မ်ိဳးဆက္ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြ ဦးေဆာင္ျပီး ၾကားျဖတ္ အစိုးရ တရပ္ကို ဖြဲ႔စည္းဖို႔ လိုပါတယ္။ ဒါကို အားလံုးက ဝိုင္းေထာက္ခံဖို႔ လိုပါတယ္။

ဒါေၾကာင့္ က်ေနာ္တို႔ဟာ ကိုယ့္ရပ္ကြက္ ကိုယ့္ၿမိ့ဳ ကိုယ္ရြာေတြမွာ နအဖ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးေတြကို နည္းမ်ိဳးစံု သံုးၿပီး ၿဖိဳခ်ဖို႔ လိုလာတယ္။ နအဖ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရး ေနရာေတြမွာ ဒီမိုကေရစီ လူထု အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးေတြနဲ႔ အစားထိုးရမယ္။

ေက်းရြာ ရပ္ကြက္အလိုက္ ရဟန္းသံဃာမ်ား၊ ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ား၊ ရပ္မိရပ္ဖမ်ား ဦးေဆာင္တဲ့ ေကာ္မတီေတြကို ဖြဲ႔စည္းရမယ္။ ရပ္ရြာ လံုျခံဳေရး၊ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေတြကို ခ်က္ခ်င္း ေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးရမယ္။ လမ္းပန္း ဆက္သြယ္ေရးကို တာဝန္ ယူေပးရမယ္။ တရား ဥပေဒ စိုးမိုးမႈကို အာမခံေပးရမယ္။ လူထုထဲအတြက္ စားေရ ရိကၡာမ်ား ျဖန္႔ျဖဳး ေပးရမယ္။ ဒါကို ေက်းရြာ ရပ္ကြက္ ၿမ့ဳိနယ္ ကိုယ္နည္းကိုယ္ဟန္နဲ႔ ေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးရမယ္။ ရဲစခန္းေတြကို ေက်းရြာ ရပ္ကြက္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရး ေအာက္မွာ တည္ရိွေစရမယ္။

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