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Thant Myint-U is a US-born historian and the author of two best-selling books on Burmese history. He received his PhD from Cambridge University, where he wrote his dissertation on the reigns of Burma's last two kings, Mindon and Thibaw. He has taught as a Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, and  worked for the United Nations, of which his grandfather, the late U Thant, was secretary-general from 1961 to 1971. 



He is also an outspoken critic of Western sanctions on Burma, which he says have only served to reinforce the country's “disastrous” isolation. In this interview with The Irrawaddy, he discusses recent developments in Burma, the country's increasingly important place in the region, and the challenges that lie ahead as it appears to open up to the West and allow more space for the democratic opposition. 


Question: In your new book, “Where China Meets India,” you make the case that Burma has the potential to become a major crossroads in Asia, bridging the world's two most populous nations, which for centuries were separated by a vast area of inhospitable terrain. Although this area is no longer so inaccessible, it is still beset by political instability, particularly in northern Burma and northeastern India. How much do you think this will affect Burma's prospects of assuming greater geopolitical importance in the future?


Answer: Finding a peaceful end to the armed conflicts and instability in northeastern India and northern and eastern Burma is absolutely essential if ordinary people are to benefit from Burma’s greater geopolitical importance. Burma will become geopolitically more important in any case, with the rise of China and with its emerging role as southwest China’s corridor to the Indian Ocean. As I’ve written in my book, it is already set to become an important new Asian crossroads, not only because of developments over the past couple of decades, but also because of centuries-old demographic, environmental and political processes that have finally brought both China and India to Burma’s doorstep. But if there is no real peace or good government, it’s hard to see how the new connections being made will be to the advantage of the majority of people. On the other hand, a peaceful and democratic Burma will be able to benefit immensely from its changing geography.


Q: Some have criticized your recent op-ed piece in The New York Times for describing Burma's ethnic conflicts as “brutal little wars.” Many would say that resolving these conflicts is the key to restoring stability not only in border areas, but also in the country as a whole. How significant, then, are recent “reforms” in Burma, in light of the fact that the government appears to be no closer to bringing peace to these regions, and in fact seems to stepping up its offensives against ethnic armed groups?

A: The actual sentence in my op-ed reads: “It is hard to imagine a successful and democratic transition while these longstanding and often brutal little wars continue.” I think the recent political changes and economic reforms are incredibly significant and represent the country’s best opportunity since 1962 to move in a positive direction. But, as I’ve said, progress in Naypyitaw or Rangoon cannot be divorced from progress in those largely border areas that have suffered terribly from armed conflict for decades. Democracy is impossible without a demilitarization of Burmese society generally. One of the main points I tried to make in my last book, “The River of Lost Footsteps,” was exactly that—the civil war in Burma and the rise of its military dictatorship are closely related, and that what we need are not simply ceasefires, but real peace and a new and more inclusive national identity.

Q: In your book, you say that Burma could go from being an economic backwater to a key regional player, provided it achieves its goals of restoring peace, prosperity and democracy. How optimistic are you that the country will break out of its half-century-old cycle of war, poverty and oppression in the near future?
A: It’s always good to be optimistic and it’s certainly easier to be optimistic now than a year ago.


(Page 2 of 5)

But at the same time it’s difficult not to feel overwhelmed by the extent of the country’s challenges. And it’s not just the legacy of war and poverty and oppression. In key areas we lack the institutions we need to move ahead. The judicial and banking systems are both key for future progress, but these systems will require enormous amounts of work before they are able to function properly. Or take education. Fifty years ago the Revolutionary Council government began to destroy what had been a first-rate system of higher education. We’re still living with the consequences and any improvement will take many years if not decades. And as in much of the rest of the region, corruption has reached levels that will be extremely difficult to reverse.

Q: During your travels to China to do research for your book, you were able to see for yourself how much that country has transformed itself economically. China's continuing rise is also having a major impact on other developing countries. What do you think about China's growing influence in Burma's economy? Do you think that Burma is in danger of becoming completely dominated by China's economic might?

A: For any poor country, being next to the fastest growing economy in the world should be a huge advantage. Chinese trade and investment can be a major asset to Burma in the future. But it’s a relationship that needs to be very carefully managed. There is an urgent need to make sure that China’s growing economic presence in Burma is something that will create jobs for ordinary people and help develop the economy in a proper way, not something that will simply fuel corruption, displace local communities or destroy the environment. But this is easier said than done. Developing the state institutions we need to do this will take a very long time. I suppose it’s possible that Burma could become completely dominated by China’s economic might, but I don’t think it’s likely; nationalism in Burma has long been very strong and if there is to be an end to Western sanctions in the near future, I think we’ll see a more balanced relationship with China. My fear is actually the opposite: that a very negative view of China has crept up over the past many years, and there could well be a backlash, and that would be a tragedy for both countries.

Q: Some analysts have suggested that the Burmese government's recent moves toward reform are aimed at improving relations with the West as a means of counterbalancing China's influence. Do you think there is a danger that, far from benefiting from its key strategic position in the region, Burma could become a battleground for the competing interests of China, India and the West, as well as other regional players such as Thailand and Japan?

A: There’s good competition and there’s bad competition. If Burma is seen as increasingly important, because of its natural wealth or geographic position, and this leads to healthy competition from the West, China, India and elsewhere for access to Burma, then that’s good, as long as new business and other ties are well managed. A good government could make sure that the country gets the best possible deal. But of course it would not be good if Burma actually became a “battleground” in a literal way, or if a corrupt government was unable or unwilling to manage growing international business interests in a way that benefited the majority of people. In general, though, I think moving away from over-reliance on any one country is extremely important.

Q: You have actively argued against Western economic sanctions imposed on Burma. Do you think that Burma's rulers would have made any concessions if they hadn't been under pressure from the West? Couldn't last year's election and President Thein Sein's meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi earlier this year, for example, be attributed largely to a desire to end the sanctions?
A: No, not at all. Nothing the old junta did over the past twenty years suggests that a desire to end sanctions was high on their agenda. We have to be mindful of what the sanctions actually are. They include, for example, restrictions on the international financial institutions providing technical assistance and the effective ban on the UNDP having a normal development program in the country. Even now, it’s not entirely clear that these things would be welcome. I think the old junta always wanted to normalize relations with the West and wanted a relaxation of sanctions as a sign of better relations, but I don’t think they actually wanted many of the things that would come with an end to sanctions, such as more development aid or an increased international presence.



(Page 3 of 5)

There were sanctions they did want lifted, for example the visa ban, but this was never a priority, and in general I think most were very comfortable in the closed economy that sanctions helped maintain. It’s only now, with a new government that actually wants to reengage with the outside world and reform the economy, that ending sanctions becomes more important.

In my last book I tried to argue that two things underpinned the status quo in Burma. One was the absence of peace, as we’ve discussed, and the other was the country’s isolation, begun by Gen Ne Win in 1962, and that has been, in my view, an unmitigated disaster. My principal argument on sanctions has been that they reinforced the isolation that already existed. In the 1990s, at a time when friendly governments should have been trying to help tear down the wall that Gen Ne Win had built around Burma, they instead started building a new one.

Recent positive changes have taken place in spite of sanctions, not because of them. They have little to do with a desire to end sanctions and everything to do with the realization that a military dictatorship was unsustainable and that at least some reform was necessary. Despite sanctions but because of better communications and information technology, more movement of people back and forth internationally, a greater awareness of the outside world, we’ve reached a tipping point in Burma. No one can defend the status quo and everyone, or nearly everyone, can see that a better future is really possible.

Q: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently wrote that the United States wants to increase its influence in the Indian Ocean through greater engagement with the countries of the region. What is your opinion of President Barack Obama's dual-track approach to Burma, which combines sanctions and engagement?

A: I’ve already said what I think about sanctions and I understand why the Obama administration felt unable to push for a relaxation of sanctions in 2009-10. I think the US government’s engagement is very welcome and I think the new US envoy Derek Mitchell has done an excellent job. A close relationship with the United States is crucial for Burma. We can’t be the only country in the region under sanctions, with essentially no access to US markets and US investment. Burma’s main trading partners—China, India, Thailand and Singapore—have all benefited immensely from their economic and educational ties to the US. If we are deprived of those ties, we’re doomed to second-class status and everything that means for ordinary people.

Q: You recently met with Aung San Suu Kyi, who appears to have taken a fairly positive view of recent developments in Burma. Did you see any change in her approach to dealing with the country's rulers? How far do you think the government and opposition forces can go in working together to establish democracy and improve the lives of the people?

A: I think it’s terrific that she met with President U Thein Sein, I think it’s terrific that there is a much better dialogue now between her and the government through Labor Minister U Aung Kyi, and I think that both sides have made incredibly important concessions and that we are on the verge of an historic compromise. My sense is that both the president and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi are trying to work in the interest of the country as a whole and have had to deal with many tough decisions in recent months, with resistance from a number of quarters. But I think they have both played their hands well and I think the vast majority of people are happy to see compromise and political reconciliation. But the future is unpredictable, and it’s hard to say how different people will be able to work together in future. Generally, there’s a lot of mistrust and there’s not a big history of cooperation in Burmese politics. Future issues may also be very different. Issues like unemployment, inflation, and the government’s trade, fiscal and monetary policies are the bread and butter of government in most countries but we seem to have very little public discussion on these matters, even though they are what affects the ordinary person the most.
Q: You have written three books about Burma and are well-known in the West as an authority on the country. However, some Burmese dissidents have criticized you for not really talking to opposition activists, exiles and others working for change in the country.


(Page 4 of 5)

What is your response to such criticism?
A: Since I left the UN four years ago and began returning to Burma on a regular basis, I’ve met literally hundreds of people, Burmese and non-Burmese, of every possible political persuasion, both inside and outside the country. I’ve also been in regular touch with dozens of mainly younger Burmese, who I’ve never met, but who have contacted me over social media sites, and have been very pleased to discuss and debate with them the sorts of issues we’ve discussed here. I also now travel around the country very frequently, and try to meet people from as broad a range of backgrounds as possible.

Q: Throughout history, real progress has required heroic sacrifice on the part of the people and their leaders. Do you regard figures such as Ko Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi as heroes in Burma's democratic struggle, or do you feel that their sacrifices have been misguided?

A: First of all, no one should have had to sacrifice years in prison because of their convictions or the peaceful expression of their views. Hopefully this will soon be a thing of the past. And I wouldn’t call anyone’s sacrifice misguided. More generally, though, if we really do see a successful transition to democratic government over the coming years, I’m sure we will be arguing for decades to come over why and how it happened. And if we look at Burmese history there are many things we could easily still argue about. Who was right in 1885, the Kinwun Mingyi who understood the power of the British and sought a protectorate, or the Taingdar Mingyi and Supapyalat who wanted to resist to the very end? My point is that this is the time to release all political prisoners and to respect everyone’s sacrifice, as well as to recognize the tremendous suffering that millions of ordinary Burmese people have faced, as a result of war and poverty, but that it’s impossible to say with any honesty what effect different individual sacrifices may have made.

Q: Your grandfather once served the Burmese people. What will your contribution to Burma be? Do you have any plans to play a political role in the future?

A: I don’t see myself playing a political role at all. And I’ll leave it to others to say that they will “serve the Burmese people.” I would be happy if I could help in a few areas that are of special interest to me and for which I feel I have some competence. One of the legacies of the 1960s and 1970s is the downgrading of expertise and education, and the replacement of many well-educated Burmese by others with no relevant training or experience. I think this needs to change. My background is in writing and teaching history, and in international relations and development, and I’ll look to see how I might be able to help based on this background. I’ve been very happy as well to have served over the past year as a member of the board of the (Myanmar) Livelihood and Food Security Trust Fund, which provided support to 150,000 poor households in 2010 alone and is now working in several different states and regions. I hope that I will be able to contribute to very concrete efforts like this in the future as well.

Q: Last Friday, US President Barack Obama announced that he would send Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Burma next month. What do you think about the Obama administration's Burma policy, and how do you think Burma will balance its relations with the US and China?

A: I was very pleased to hear President Obama praise President U Thein Sein and the Burmese Parliament for the reform measures taken so far and I think he's doing exactly the right thing in sending Secretary Clinton to Burma at this critical juncture. I'm happy as well that he was able to speak directly to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and I hope that a full normalization of relations between Burma and the United States will be possible before too long. I don't think China has anything to worry about from a good relationship between Naypyidaw and Washington; on the contrary, a more balanced set of relations will be in Beijing's own interests in the longer term; a skewed relationship where Burma is too dependent on one country will only fuel Burmese resentment and lead to a backlash, as I've mentioned.

But I think that at this point we need also to think very carefully about what should come next. Nationwide ceasefires are of course critical, as is the further release of political prisoners. But so is the economic direction of the country. Political reconciliation will be near impossible unless we are also able to keep inflation down and reduce unemployment. I am absolutely convinced that efforts towards democratic change will come to very little without a basic economic reorientation as well. It's economics that's going to decide a lot of the political landscape and determine the lives of ordinary people.



(Page 5 of 5)

I fear that we might achieve some kind of democracy before long but that it will be the wrong kind of democracy, where where wealth remains highly concentrated, demagoguery dominates discussion, and where a corrupt gangster-style politics triumphs over everything else. This is far from an unlikely scenario. We need to consider exactly how the provision of technical assistance, a drawing down of existing trade and investment embargoes, and the government's own economic reforms can be properly sequenced, to avoid Burma becoming more corrupt or aid-dependent, and to lay the foundations for broad-based growth. I think a discussion on this should be very high on Secretary Clinton's agenda. The institutions of democracy are not enough, we needed policies that can actually respond urgently, and in a practical and effective way to the needs of ordinary people.

Credit : Irrawaddy News




၂၀၀၇ ခုႏွစ္ သံဃာ့ဆႏၵျပပဲြျမင္ကြင္းတခု

ႏုိင္ငံေရး ပါတီတရပ္အျဖစ္ မွတ္ပံုျပန္တင္ရန္ႏွင့္ လာမည့္ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမ်ားတြင္ ၀င္ေရာက္ယွဥ္ၿပိဳင္ရန္ ေသာၾကာေန႔တြင္ NLD က ဆံုးျဖတ္လိုက္ျခင္းကို သံဃာ့တပ္ေပါင္းစုက မေထာက္ခံႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း ယေန႔ေန႔စြဲျဖင့္ ေၾကညာခ်က္တေစာင္ ထုတ္ျပန္လိုက္သည္။

ယခုအခ်ိန္သည္ ေ႐ႊဂံုတိုင္ေၾကညာခ်က္ ထုတ္ျပန္စဥ္က အေျခအေနႏွင့္ ျခားနားျခင္း မရွိေသးဘဲ ဒီမိုကေရစီစနစ္ကို ေဖၚေဆာင္မည့္ အေျပာင္းအလဲမ်ား ထူးထူးျခားျခား မေတြ႕ရေသးသျဖင့္ NLD က ပါတီ မွတ္ပံုျပန္တင္ရန္ႏွင့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ၀င္ရန္ ဆံုးျဖတ္လိုက္ျခင္းသည္ ေ႐ႊဂံုတိုင္ေၾကညာစာတမ္းမွ လမ္းေၾကာင္းလြဲသြားၿပီ ျဖစ္သည္ဟု ယင္းေၾကညာခ်က္တြင္ ေဖၚျပထားသည္။

ယေန႔ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေရးအေျခအေနႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ တိုင္းရင္းသား ေဒသမ်ားတြင္ စစ္ပြဲမ်ား ျဖစ္ပြားေနျခင္း၊ ရဟန္းသံဃာေတာ္မ်ားအပါအ၀င္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသား ၂ ေထာင္ခန္႔ အက်ဥ္းက်ေနဆဲျဖစ္ျခင္း လူမႈေရး ႏိုင္ငံေရး စီးပြားေရး က႑အသီးသီးတြင္ ဒီမိုကေရစီကင္းမဲ့ေနဆဲ ျဖစ္သည္ဟုလည္း သံဃာ့တပ္ေပါင္းစုက ေထာက္ျပထားသည္။

ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံျပႆနာမ်ားကို စစ္ႀကံ႕ဖံြ႕လႊတ္ေတာ္ထဲတြင္ လံုး၀ ေျဖရွင္းႏို္င္လိမ့္မည္ မဟုတ္ဘဲ တန္းတူရည္တူ ေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးျခင္းျဖင့္သာ ေျဖရွင္းႏိုင္လိမ့္မည္ဟု ယံုၾကည္ေၾကာင္းလည္း ေဖၚျပထားသည္။

NLD ၏ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္သည္ တိုင္းျပည္၏ ပကတိ အေျခအေနမ်ားႏွင့္ မကိုက္ညီ မသင့္ေလ်ာ္ဟု သံဃာ့တပ္ေပါင္းစုက ယူဆေၾကာင္း ေရးထားသည္။

ျပည္တြင္းစစ္ရပ္စဲေရး၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသား အားလံုး ခၽြင္းခ်က္မရွိ လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အရ ေတြ႕ဆံု ေဆြးေႏြးအေျဖရွာေရး၊ ဒီမိုကေရစီ အခြင့္အေရးမ်ား အတြက္ ျပည္သူအေပါင္းႏွင့္ လက္တြဲ၍ ဆက္လက္ႀကိဳးပမ္းသြားမည္ဟု ဆုိသည္။

သံဃာ့တပ္ေပါင္းစုအဖြဲ႔တြင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံလံုးဆိုင္ရာ ရဟန္းပ်ိဳသမဂၢမ်ား အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ႏွင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံလံုးဆိုင္ရာ သံဃာ့သမဂၢီအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္တို႔ ပါ၀င္သည္။

၂၀၀၇ ေရႊ၀ါေရာင္ သံဃာ့ အေရးအခင္း ၿပီးသည့္ေနာက္ နအဖ အစိုးရက သံဃာ့ရာႏွင့္ခ်ီ ဖမ္းဆီး အက်ဥ္းခ်ခဲ့သည္။ ယခုအခ်ိန္ထိ အက်ဥ္းေထာင္ထဲတြင္ သံဃာ အပါး ၂၀၀ ၀န္းက်င္ က်န္ရွိေနေသးသည္ဟု ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသား ကူညီေပးသူမ်ားက ေျပာသည္။



Credit : Moe Ma Ka


ၿမန္မာနိူင္ငံသားရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားအသင္း(ဂ်ပန္)၏အထူးထုတ္ၿပန္ေၾကျငာ ခ်က္။
ရက္စြြဲ႔။ ။၁၉-၁၁-၂၀၁၁၊
ၿမန္မာနိူင္ငံသားရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားအသင္း(ဂ်ပန္)သည္အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္(NLD)၏ပါတီဗဟိုဌာနခ်ဳပ္၌
(၁၈-၁၁-၂၀၁၁)ရက္ေန႔တြင္က်င္းပၿပဳလုပ္ေသာဗဟိုဦးစီးအဖြဲ႔အစည္းအေဝး၏သမိုင္းဝင္ဆံုးၿဖတ္ခ်က္
အေပၚေအာက္ပါအတိုင္းသေဘာထားထုတ္ၿပန္လိုက္သည္။


Read the rest here


Here is one way to analyse the changes in Burma:
"I wonder how you assess the current events:

Do you support the re-registration of the NLD`?

NLD wrote on the wave of the popular uprisings which it did not have any part in fomenting or organizing. there is no popular revolt in Burma to speak of, except sporadic and infrequent small protests by some farmers, urban based farmers' rights advocates and a group of monks in Mandalay. In their place, the regime has launched military operations against ethnic minorities in resource-rich and strategic frontier areas.

Since there is no popular social and political wave to ride, or having no longer roots in the public, despite the Lady's rockstar-like popularity with the public, the NLD has abandoned its mass politics, in favor of only lop-sided compromise with the military elite.

So, in the absence of solid mass backing for any radical activities, the NLD had no better choice than to swallow the bitter pill and embrace the regime's "roadmap".

Of course, if there is one area where every man, and woman, not to mention those in public eyes, excels is self-rationalization and -justification.

So out of this unenviable situation it finds itself in the NLD has been articulating all kinds of justification for playing ball with the generals, more or less on the latter's terms. It has lowered its bar, and reshifted its goal post and redefining itself.

One example: the NLD said, in effect, it was good enough for the NLD leadership that the 1990 election results were recorded in the Government Gazette and ex-General Khin Aung Myint and that one of the parliamentary speakers mentioned the NLD won the election.

NLD's strategy is there for all to see: leverage US support, as opposed to the public at home, to get as much concessions as possible from Naypyidaw, and go with the military's flow into some place of influence within the emerging system.

The context in which the NLD has begun to tango at the military's choice of tune coincides, curiously, with Naypyidaw attempting to do the following 5 things:

1) bring the NLD into its quasi-parliamentary framework as a way of eliminating whatever little potential is left in the NLD to energize and mobilize the grassroots (it's easier to control one single NLD leader in an air-conditioned suite than unruly masses on the street); 2) gain international acceptability almost on its own terms (2008 Constitution, the parliamentary proceedings which are carefully choreographed and controlled from the commanding heights of the 70% USDP seats and 25% direct military seat allocation, the photo ops, the right noises about political relaxation, and a concerted media campaign aided by all manner of technocrats and outside advisers and cronies); 3) re-balance its strategic relations by striking the West at its weakest hour (its accelerated economic decline in the whole of Western capitalist world, except a few countries with strong niche markets such as Germany and commodity-export-oriented Australia, domestically increasingly unpopular US and UK governments); 4) making what it considers to be the final thrust to crush the armed resistance organizations, which are finding their backs against the international and neighborhood business interests - otherwise known as "economic development"; and 5) preempt any Burmese Spring which may be potentially precipitated by the global economic down-turn and its adverse impact on the economic life of the Burmese. (Remember Saya San and peasant armed rebellion in the least expected sector of the colonial society in 1931, 2 years after the Great Crash and the world's depression that ensued?)

Naypyitaw is in effect 1) hitting the softest spot of USA and EU, that is, business and strategic self-interests and temptations; 2) carefully packaging its implied anti-China message; 3) domestically bringing the NLD and ASSK - already tame and base-less opposition vanguard after 23 years of systematic persecution -- into its quasi-parliamentary process.

The parliamentary process and the new "democracy" in the making is 95% form and 5% substance.

The asking price by Naypyidaw in this, with the so-called international community is: its international legitimacy and acceptability of the military's political design.

To put it bluntly, the generals have gotten away with 50-years of murder, rape and loot.

Do you see any indications that parts of the *old regime* try to undermine President Thein reforms?"

There is NO "Thein Sein reforms".

To the extent there are reform measures in Burma - and there are, to be sure --they are coming from the National Defense and Security Council or NDSC, THE REAL POWER behind Thein Sein.



Thein Sein, or President-gyi Thein Sein as the typically sycophantic and slave-like mentality among Bama would compel one to address him, is the front man on the stage, the Mintha, the Prince.

This NDSC body puts him on a longer leash to give the appearance that Thein Sein is the man of the hour, "the hope of Burma" as his adviser Zaw Htay put it in "his" Washington Post article last week.

There may be, and there are, disagreements and personality conflicts - and even contests over material interests - among these guys. But it is a mafia-like organization that runs Burma's politics and economy. It remains as COMMAND A SYSTEM as it started out in 1962, as Revolutionary Council under Ne Win.

In this game Thein Sein has been made larger than life.

He is, in effect, the guy whom all sides - Naypyidaw, the NLD and outside interests - attempt to turn into their strategic proxy, a vehicle, a tool, a political drone.

But many who play along may know this drone-like nature of the reformist president. He seems like a very personable ex-general. But being nice means nothing, in the larger scheme of things especially in politics where power is the name of the game.

Truth is Thein Sein is NOT the real power. Power and control do matter.

This strategy putting Thein Sein, Mr Nice Reformer, at the center stage best suits both the military as the institutional base of the "new" government, and Senior General Than Shwe. Than Shwe and his clan who can't stand the Lady at the gut level can now use Thein Sein as their drone. They don't have to come into any face-to-face contact with her ever, despite her request to meet the top senior generals.

It also resonates with outside interests which want easy access to the highest level of the government, for their own strategic reasons. Also the typical view of "big men-and-women-make-history" compel these western players typically scramble for "big men" and "big women" in change processes.

Hilary Rodham Clinton going to Burma on 1 December for 2 days is a merry-making act. Everyone will get something. Naypyidaw will be pleased with the "halo" - and all the media attention (not to mention, Beijing's), that former First Lady and the US Secretary of State will bring to them; the "civil society" implanted in Burma with western money and behind-the-scene patronage will be happy to rub shoulders at embassy receptions; the NLD will be happy as Clinton makes a special stop and photo-op at the NLD as a precondition for her visit; the cronies on the sanctions list will be happy to be in the same room with Clinton whose government keeps them on the US visa ban list. Oh, before I forget EU commercial/governmental interests will be happy as Clinton's visit will pave the way for going beyond its policy foreplay with the generals.

But the truth is there are structures of power and interests in Burma that will not be willed away, or changed appreciably without any serious forces that are brought to bear upon them.

The language of "sincerity" in politics, popular in some quarter, and the history as products of 'big men' and 'women" don't have much empirical evidence in the long view of history and in the larger scheme of things.

But again beggars can't be choosers.


In recent months, series of anti-Rohingya campaigns afloat inside and outside of Burma. To the surprise of everyone, inflammatory writings are often posted on a few websites, face books and blogs that reveal deep-seated ill-will against the peace loving Rohingyas.

Propaganda against Rohingya has long been launched by the Burmese military dictatorship with some Rakhine intellectuals and politicians. Now it reached the new quasi-military government’s highest political institution, the parliament in Naypyidaw. The regime and xenophobes denied the existence of Rohingya as an ethnic group and alleged that Rohingyas are illegal Bengalis entered into Arakan from Bangladesh. This concocted propaganda was met with strong condemnation from Rohingya communities worldwide. There were global protests in front of the Burmese embassies on 15 September 2011. The protest rally held in London was joined by leaders and activists belonging to almost all Burma ethnic groups and democracy movements, some local supporters and NGOs. Speakers emphasised that the Rohingya are a part of the Burma’s society, and identified that they are worst victims of human rights violations.


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By ေဒၚခင္စိုး၀င္း



အင္ဒိုနီးရွားႏုိင္ငံ ဘာလီကၽြန္းမွာက်င္းပေနတဲ့ အာဆီယံထိပ္သီးစည္းေ၀းပြဲရဲ႕ ဒီကေန႔ ေနာက္ဆံုးေန႔ ညပိုင္းမွာေတာ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ သမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္က သတင္းေထာက္ေတြနဲ႔ ေတြ႔ဆံုခဲ့ပါတယ္။ သမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္က သတင္းေထာက္ေတြကို ေတြ႔ၿပီးေတာ့ ဘာေတြ ရွင္းျပခဲ့သလဲ ဆုိတာကိုေတာ့ ဘာလီကၽြန္းမွာ သတင္းယူဖို႔ေရာက္ေနတ့ဲ ဗြီအိုေအျမန္မာပိုင္း အယ္ဒီတာ ေဒၚခင္စိုး၀င္းကို မသင္းသီရိက ဆက္သြယ္ ေမးျမန္းထားပါတယ္။


ဓာတ္ပံု ASSOCIATED PRESS
အေမရိကန္သမၼတ ဘရက္အိုဘားမား (၀ဲ)၊ ျမန္မာသမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ (လယ္)၊ တ႐ုတ္၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ ၀မ္က်ားေပါင္ (ယာ) အေရွ႕အာရွ ထိပ္သီးစည္းေ၀းပြဲ အုပ္စုဓါတ္ပံု႐ိုက္ေနစဥ္။ (ႏို၀င္ဘာလ ၁၉၊ ၂၀၁၁)


မသင္းသီရိ။ ။ သမၼတဦးသိန္းစိန္က ဒီေန႔ညပိုင္း သတင္းေထာက္ေတြနဲ႔ေတြ႔တဲ့အခါမွာ ဘယ္လိုအခ်က္ေတြ ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သလဲဆိုတာ ရွင္းျပပါဦးရွင့္။ -

ေဒၚခင္စိုး၀င္း။ ။ “အႏွစ္ ၅၀ နီးပါးအတြင္း ျမန္မာသမၼတတစ္ဦးအေနနဲ႔ ပထမဆံုးအႀကိမ္ သတင္းသမားေတြကို ထူးထူးျခားျခား ေတြ႔ဆံုေမးျမန္းခြင့္ျပဳခဲ့တာလို႔ပဲ ေျပာရမွာပါ။ (၁၉) ႀကိမ္ေျမာက္ အာဆီယံ ထိပ္သီးညီလာခံနဲ႔ အေရွ႕အာရွ ထိပ္သီးညီလာခံႀကီး ၿပီးဆုံးတဲ့ေန႔မွာ ျမန္မာသတင္းသမားေတြကို စုေ၀းၿပီး ေတြ႔ဆံုခဲ့တာပါ။ အေမရိကန္သမၼတ ဘရက္အုိဘားမားက ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး ဟီလာရီ ကလင္တန္ကို ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို ေစလႊတ္ဖို႔ဆံုးျဖတ္လိုက္တာနဲ႔ပတ္သက္ၿပီး သမၼတဦးသိန္းစိန္က အခုလို ေျပာဆိုပါတယ္။”

ဦးသိန္းစိန္။ ။ “တိုက္တိုက္ဆိုင္ဆိုင္ ဒီအစည္းအေ၀းမွာ အုိဘားမားအေနနဲ႔ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံနဲ႔ပတ္သက္ၿပီးေတာ့ လတ္တေလာ ႏုိင္ငံေရး ျဖစ္ေပၚတုိးတက္မႈေတြကို သူ ေဖာ္ထုတ္ၿပီးေတာ့ ေျပာၾကားသြားတာရွိပါတယ္။ အကုန္လံုး ပကတိ အေကာင္းခ်ည္းပဲလား ဆိုေတာ့လည္း မဟုတ္ေသးပါဘူး။ ဆက္ၿပီးေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ လုပ္ရမယ့္ဟာေတြ၊ ဆက္ၿပီးေတာ့ သူ႔အေနနဲ႔ ဒါကို ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ရမယ့္ ဟာေတြကိုလည္း က်ေနာ္တို႔ကို ေျပာပါတယ္။ သုိ႔ေသာ္လည္းပဲ ဘာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ရဲ႕ ဒီ ျဖစ္ေပၚတုိးတက္မႈကို အသိအမွတ္ျပဳတယ္ ဆိုတဲ့အတြက္ ကိုယ့္ႏိုင္ငံအတြက္ေတာ့ ဒါ အမ်ားႀကီး ေကာင္းတယ္ေျပာရမွာေပါ့။ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံကိုလာမယ္ ဆိုတဲ့ဟာက က်ေနာ္ ထင္ပါတယ္၊ ႏွစ္ေပါင္း ေလးငါးဆယ္အတြင္းမွာ မရွိခဲ့တဲ့ဟာပါ။ ဒါလည္း က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ႏိုင္ငံအတြက္ေတာ့ ဘာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ ေကာင္းတဲ့အေျခအေနတရပ္လို႔ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ေျပာရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။”

ေဒၚခင္စိုး၀င္း။ ။ “ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံမွာ ႏိုင္ငံေရး ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲမႈေတြအတြက္ တြန္းအားေပးၾကတဲ့ေနရာမွာ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ထြန္းကားၿပီးသား၊ ရင့္က်က္ၿပီးသား အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြက လိုခ်င္တဲ့ပံုစံမ်ိဳးလို တထပ္တည္း ျဖစ္ေအာင္ လုပ္လို႔မရေပမဲ့ အံ၀င္ခြင္က်ျဖစ္ေအာင္ေတာ့ ရႏိုင္ပါတယ္လို႔ သမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္က အခုလို ေျပာပါတယ္။”

ဦးသိန္းစိန္။ ။ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ရွင္သန္ေအာင္လုပ္ဖုိ႔ ဆိုတဲ့ေနရာမွာ အဓိကကေတာ့ တုိင္းျပည္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းဖို႔ လိုတယ္။ တုိင္းျပည္ေအးခ်မ္းဖို႔ဆိုတာမွာ ၂ ပိုင္းေပါ့။ ျပည္တြင္းက သေဘာထားအျမင္ အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးရွိေနတဲ့ ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေတြနဲ႔ သေဘာထားခ်င္း တူညီေအာင္ ညိႇၾကတဲ့အပိုင္းေပါ့။ တခါ ဒီသေဘာထားအျမင္ အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးရွိတဲ့ ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေတြနဲ႔ က်ေနာ္တို႔ သေဘာထား အျမင္ခ်င္းတူၿပီဆိုလို႔ရွိရင္ ျပည္ပကလည္း ဘာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ ဖိအားေတြ ေလွ်ာ့နည္းလာတယ္။ အခုလိုပဲေပါ့ ဟုတ္လား။ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္တို႔ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ေတြ႔ၾကျပဳၾက။ ကိုယ့္ရဲ႕ ညီအစ္ကိုေမာင္ႏွမေတြလိုပဲ သေဘာထားၿပီးေတာ့ ေတြ႔တယ္။ ေတြ႔ေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ရဲ႕ စိတ္ေစတနာေတြ လည္း နားလည္သြားတယ္။ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔နဲ႔ေတြ႔ၿပီး ေနာက္ပိုင္းမွာဆိုရင္ အျပဳအမူေတြ အေျပာအဆိုေတြ ဒါေတြကလည္း က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ အမ်ားႀကီးေျပာင္းလဲသြားတယ္။ ဒီေျပာင္းလဲတဲ့အေပၚမွာ မူတည္ၿပီးေတာ့မွ ျပည္ပကေနၿပီးေတာ့လည္း လုိက္ၿပီးေတာ့ ေျပာင္းတယ္။”

ေဒၚခင္စိုး၀င္း။ ။ “ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ အမ်ိဳးသားျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရး အတြက္ အေရးပါလွတဲ့ က်န္ေနေသးတဲ့ ယံုၾကည္ခ်က္ေၾကာင့္ အက်ဥ္းက်ေနသူေတြ လႊတ္ေပးေရးနဲ႔ပတ္သက္လို႔ေတာ့ သမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္က သူ႔ရဲ႕သေဘာထားကို အခုလို ေျပာျပပါတယ္။”

ဦးသိန္းစိန္။ ။ “ယံုၾကည္ခ်က္ေၾကာင့္ ဆုိတဲ့ဟာကေတာ့ ေျပာရမွာခက္တယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ကေတာ့ ယံုၾကည္ခ်က္ဆိုတာကိုေတာ့ လက္မခံဘူး။ ဥပေဒတစ္ခုခုကို က်ဴးလြန္ထားတဲ့အတြက္ေၾကာင့္ က်ေနာ္တို႔က အေရးယူထားတာ။ အဲဒီေတာ့ သူ႔လိုပဲ ဥပေဒတစ္ခုခုေတြ က်ဴးလြန္ထားတဲ့သူေတြ ေထာင္ထဲမွာ အမ်ားႀကီးရွိတယ္။ အဲဒီေတာ့ ဒီအဖြဲ႔ေတြပဲ ေျပာမယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ က်န္တဲ့အဖြဲ႔အတြက္ပါ ခင္ဗ်ားတို႔ ကိုယ္ခ်င္းမစာရာ က်တယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ကေတာ့ အားလံုးအတြက္ စဥ္းစားၿပီးေတာ့ တုိင္းျပည္ရဲ႕ အေျခအေန၊ အခ်ိန္အခါကိုၾကည့္ၿပီးေတာ့ ဖြဲ႔စည္းအုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ပံုကလည္း သမၼတကို လုပ္ပိုင္ခြင့္အပ္ႏွင္းထားတာက ခုနကလို pardon ေပးလို႔ရတယ္။ လြတ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာခြင့္ amnesty က်ေနာ္တို႔က ေပးလို႔ရတယ္။ အဲဒီေတာ့ အခ်ိန္မေရြး အခ်ိန္အခါအေပၚမွာ ၾကည့္ၿပီးေတာ့ပဲ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ဒါကို လုပ္သြားရမွာေပါ့။ ဘာေၾကာင့္လဲဆုိေတာ့ ကိုယ့္ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြ ျဖစ္တယ္။”

ေဒၚခင္စိုး၀င္း။ ။ “ဆက္လက္ၿပီးေတာ့ တိုင္းရင္းသားေဒသေတြမွာ တိုက္ခိုက္တာေတြ ရပ္စဲသြားေအာင္၊ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးရေအာင္ တိုင္းရင္းသား လက္နက္ကိုင္အဖြဲ႔ေတြနဲ႔ ေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြး ညိႇႏိႈင္းေနတဲ့အေၾကာင္းကိုလည္း ဦးသိန္းစိန္က အခုလို ေျပာပါတယ္။”

ဦးသိန္းစိန္။ ။ “ထာ၀ရ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးဆိုတာ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔က အဓိပၸါယ္ဖြင့္တာကေတာ့ ဥပေဒေဘာင္ထဲကို က်ေနာ္တို႔အားလံုး ၀င္ေရာက္ၿပီးေတာ့မွ ဥပေဒတခုတည္းရဲ႕ေအာက္မွာ ႏိုင္ငံသားအားလံုးက ေနထိုင္လုပ္ကိုင္ စားေသာက္၊ သြားစရာရွိတဲ့ေနရာေတြ သြားျပဳၿပီးေတာ့ ဒီလိုျဖစ္ေရးဟာ ခုနကလို က်ေနာ္တို႔အတြက္ ထာ၀ရ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးျဖစ္တယ္။ သို႔ေသာ္လည္း အခ်ိန္ေတာ့ ယူရမယ္။ ဒီအထဲမွာလည္း က်ေနာ္တို႔ ညိႇရျပဳရတာ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ပိုင္းေတြမွာလည္း စာတတ္တဲ့ ေပတတ္တဲ့သူေတြ ပါသလို စာမတတ္ေပမတတ္ေတြကလည္း ပါေနတာ။ ဘာျဖစ္လို႔လဲဆိုေတာ့ ယံုၾကည္မႈလည္း တဘက္က က်ေနာ္တုိ႔က သူတို႔နဲ႔ တည္ေဆာက္၊ သူတို႔ကိုလည္း နားလည္ေအာင္ ေျပာထားတယ္။ မင္းတို႔လိုခ်င္တဲ့ ထာ၀ရၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ဆုိတာေတာ့ ဥပေဒေဘာင္ထဲကို အားလံုး၀င္ေရာက္လာၿပီးေတာ့မွ ဒီဥပေဒတခုတည္းရဲ႕ ေအာက္မွာ ပါတီဖြဲ႔ခ်င္တဲ့သူေတြက ဖြဲ႔။ စီးပြားေရးလုပ္ခ်င္တဲ့သူက လုပ္။ ၿပီးရင္ ခုနကလို လႊတ္ေတာ္ထဲေရာက္လာရင္ေတာ့ အကုန္လံုး တို႔တိုင္းရင္းသားေတြဟာ တန္းတူရည္တူနဲ႔ ဆက္ဆံၾကရမွာပဲ ဆိုၿပီး ရည္ရြယ္ထားတာကေတာ့ အဲဒီလို ရည္ရြယ္ထားတယ္။”

ေဒၚခင္စိုး၀င္း။ ။ “သမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္က အာဆီယံ မိသားစု၀င္ျဖစ္တာနဲ႔အညီ အလွည့္က်ဥကၠ႒ ဆိုတဲ့တာ၀န္ကို မျဖစ္မေန လုပ္သြားရမယ့္ ၀တၱရားရွိတယ္လို႔ ေျပာရင္း လုပ္စရာအလုပ္ေတြလည္း အမ်ားႀကီးရွိေသးေၾကာင္း ေျပာပါတယ္။ သမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ရဲ႕ သတင္းသမားေတြနဲ႔ ေတြ႔ဆံုပြဲမွာ ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး ဦး၀ဏၰေမာင္လြင္၊ ျပန္ၾကားေရးနဲ႔ ယဥ္ေက်းမႈ၀န္ႀကီးဌာန ၀န္ႀကီး ဦးေက်ာ္ဆန္း၊ အမ်ိဳးသား စီမံကိန္းဌာန၀န္ႀကီး ဦးတင္ႏိုင္သိန္း၊ သမၼတ အႀကံေပးပုဂၢိဳလ္ေတြျဖစ္ၾကတဲ့ ဦးကိုကိုလိႈင္၊ ေဒါက္တာ ေနဇင္လတ္ နဲ႔ ဦးစစ္ေအး တို႔လည္း တက္ေရာက္ခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ ဒီကေန႔ ထူးထူးျခားျခား ျမန္မာသတင္းသမားေတြကို ေတြ႔ဆံုတယ္ဆုိတာဟာလည္း သမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္အစိုးရရဲ႕ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရး ေျခလွမ္းေတြထဲက ေရွ႕ဆက္လွမ္းတဲ့ေျခလွမ္း လို႔ပဲ ေကာက္ခ်က္ခ်ရမလား စဥ္းစားစရာပါပဲ။”


Credit : VOA Burmese
"Let me start with Burma. I have no disagreement with the IRF report on Burma, and
simply wish to add some updates on developments in Burma in recent months. Many Buddhist monks, including U Gambira, whose case is noted in the IRF report, remain in prison. In the recent release of an estimated 220 political prisoners, no prominent Buddhist monks held in prison were freed. U Gambira is held in solitary confinement in Kale prison, and is reportedly seriously ill and in need of urgent medical care. He sustained serious injuries as a result of torture in 2009. The United States should press for his immediate release and for urgent medical care to be provided.

The plight of the Rohingya people remains unchanged, and they face continuous discrimination on religious, as well as racial, grounds. It is vital that the United States continues to press the regime to recognise the Rohingya as equal citizens of Burma, by returning their citizenship status, and that pressure is put on any country, particularly
Malaysia, that is considering repatriating Rohingya people to Burma, to desist until the Rohingyas are fully recognised as citizens of Burma and can live in Burma in freedom, peace and security.


Please read the statement here



The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
November 18, 2011

Briefing on Burma by Senior Administration Officials


Grand Hyatt
Bali, Indonesia
1:45 P.M. WITA

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Just to give you a bit of background -- this comes after many months of engagement between the United States and Burma, which we can speak to.

The President, of course, had a policy of maintaining the very strong pressure that we apply on the Burmese government while also testing engagement. And we felt that this was an appropriate step given the movement by the Burmese government in a range of areas that we can discuss. 


The only piece I'll just start with as relates to the President, he's been regularly briefed on this for some time now; he's discussed this with Secretary Clinton for some weeks now. The final piece as far as we were concerned that was very important to take place was for him to be able to call Aung San Suu Kyi last night to confirm that she was supportive of this engagement. He called her from Air Force One. He had a very substantive discussion with her where she was able to update him on her view of the political situation within Burma. And again, my colleagues can speak to that as well.


The President, I have to say, was very -- this was his first conversation with Aung San Suu Kyi. He was very struck by both her substantive observations and her warmth. As he said to us, he has great -- and as he said to her, he's long been a great admirer of hers for her struggle for democracy and human rights, and so it was a particularly meaningful conversation for the President -- but also a friendly one. She even asked the President how Bo, the dog, was doing. (Laughter.) So they were able to have a light series of moments as well.


But with that, I'll turn it over to my colleague to give you a little more background and then 



Q How long was the call?


SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think it was about 20 minutes -- 20 minutes or so.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, I can corroborate the reference to the dog. She asked after the family, asked after Bo, and said that she had a dog herself. But we'll have to wait until the next installment to find our more about her dog. (Laughter.) 


The President began, as you just heard, by expressing his great personal admiration for her for her commitment to democracy, to political freedom and to human rights, and indicated that he wanted to consult with her on the significance of the developments over the past few months in Burma and solicit her ideas and thoughts about the best approach. He made very clear that our goal is to see a Burma that's responsive to the will of the people and needs of the people of Burma, and one that promotes the well-being of all of the diverse peoples in that country.


She talked with the President about the developments and emphasized the importance of a reconciliation process in Burma that is fully inclusive. She encouraged the President to make clear to Burma's leaders that the U.S. will be willing to work with them if they are, in fact, demonstrating that they are willing to work with the world and with her.


She advised the President that it is valuable and important for there to be direct lines of clear communication between the U.S. and the leadership in Burma. She strongly welcomed the prospect of a visit by Secretary Clinton for the purpose of increased dialogue and engagement both with her and her associates and with the government there. 


And I think that they agreed that the timing and sequence of developments from this point forward is important. They discussed Aung San Suu Kyi's thinking about the importance, as I've said, of reconciliation and putting an end to violence in the ethnic areas. And I think they both expressed a hope someday to be able to meet in person.


SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: They did, yes.


SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thanks, and good to see you all this afternoon. Let me just give you a sense of how this has played out. As you know, in 2009, when the administration came into office, President Obama asked the Secretary of State to conduct a full review of our policy towards Burma. And after a period of close consultation -- we began a consequential with key stakeholders on Capitol Hill, in the region -- Southeast Asia, with China, Northeast Asian friends -- and all of our interlocutors in Europe. I think we came to the conclusion that the policy of sanctions only was not addressing our strategic interests and so we began a process of attempting, while keeping our sanctions in place, to promote a systematic dialogue with both elements of the regime and also Aung San Suu Kyi.


We've had a series of visits, then, in 2009 and 2010. We first started to see real progress, however, late this summer, after a period in which contested elections led to a new leadership in Nay Pyi Taw. Thein Sein is the current President of the country, formerly was the prime minister, and in a very substantial set of steps over the course of the last three months has taken a number of specific things that we had asked them to do over the course of the last several months. I'll just give you what some of those things were.


We asked that the government begin a systematic dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi. And in fact, what we have seen is a very deep set of consultations emerge between her and key members of the government, and particularly the President himself. And she has said on several occasions that she believes that he is a man of goodwill, has the best interests of his country at heart, and she thinks that she can do business with him.


So I think we've been pleased by that and, as you know, that the parliament and the government had taken steps to allow the reregistration of her party -- the NLD -- and they are contemplating how to participate in the political life of the country going forward. So, indeed, the amendment of the political party's registration law allows for much broader participation of various political groups inside the country going forward.


The country still has a very large number of political prisoners, and we have seen the release of some 200 political prisoners in the last couple of weeks. It’s not enough, but it clearly is a first step, and one that we welcome. But we need to see much further progress in this regard. And Aung San Suu Kyi and the President have underscored that to us in terms of our interactions directly.


There are a whole set of other laws that have been put in place, including new labor organization laws, that if effectively implemented would put Burma near the top of the list in terms of how labor issues are handled through Southeast Asia. 


Media restrictions have been eased very substantially in the last several weeks. And in somewhat of a surprise move, the government suspended the building of a very large dam on the Irrawaddy, which is the legendary, almost mythic river of Burma. 


The government also created a human rights commission and has begun very careful, but very responsible, constructive interactions with various international financial organizations, such as the IMF.


So what we’ve seen really across the board is a substantial set of steps that we thought indicated a seriousness of reform. And indeed, we think that the winds of change are blowing inside the country -- but it’s not far enough yet. And we believe that the best way to help entrench those changes and see them go further is by an active engagement. And that’s why the President decided to send Secretary Clinton to Burma.


We will be in Burma on December 1st and we will have consultations both in Nay Pyi Taw and in Rangoon. So we’re seeking a parallel engagement in which we work very closely with our interlocutors in the government, including the President, the foreign minister, members of the Parliament, but also, constructive dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi; critically, has been suggested, elements of what are called the ethnic minority groups that make up a large part of the country, and other discussions with civil organizations who have been involved in emergency response after Hurricane Nargis. 



Q I’m sorry, December 1st is the Secretary’s trip, is that correct?



SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear. 


So I’m going to stop here, and then if there are questions we can --


Q First of all, I want to ask, what does the United States think about ASEAN allowing Myanmar to chair ASEAN in two years -- three years, actually -- and also, do you think that this will feed some fears on China’s part of encirclement? How do you think China is going to react to this, and are you concerned about that?


SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: To your first question, first of all, this is an ASEAN decision, this is an ASEAN organization, and we respect that decision -- the ability of that organization to make decisions. And we hope that by 2014, if this process inside the country continues, then they will be able to hold the summit and a meeting that will be broadly welcomed and supported by the international community. And I think that’s our position right now.


Let me just say, we’ve had very close consultations with China about a whole host of issues in Asia -- North Korea, developments throughout Southeast Asia, Iran, climate change, you name it. But in addition, we’ve had very substantive discussions about Burma -- what they call Myanmar. They have been supportive of our engagement and they have been encouraging of political reform inside the country. 


I recognize that you're -- sort of the lens that is being used is seeing some of the developments in kind of this almost bipolar way. I would just simply say that the issue in which the United States confronts enormous historical, moral challenges inside the country really have very little to do with the kind of bilateral dynamics of Sino-U.S. relations. 


Overall, they’ve been very supportive. Remember, they want stability on their borders. They want a country that is part of the international community. They have experienced problems with ethnic groups that have led to tens of thousands of refugees in the past pour into China. They have no interest in that. And so we fully expect that they will welcome these developments. And we intend to work closely with them and consult with them along the way.


SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I’d just add one thing that -- on the ASEAN point, as my colleague pointed out, these are parallel issues and that ASEAN makes their decisions. This was very much something that we pursued -- the Secretary’s -- the announcement the President made today, the Secretary’s trip, in our own discussions with the Burmese government.


What I will say, though, is that there -- that this will also be further welcomed by I think the nations in this region. The U.S. engagement with Burma is something that I think will resonate broadly in Southeast Asia, and will be seen as an opportunity to build a relationship not just between the U.S. and Burma -- if they continue down this path -- but fostering greater regional cooperation. So in that respect, we see this as a positive signal.


And similarly, I think it speaks to what we’ve talked about throughout this trip, which is the U.S. deepening its engagement in Asia Pacific, and Southeast Asia specifically. As my colleague pointed out, the focus of our efforts here in Burma are really on the democracy and human rights issues that we care very strongly about that have very broad -- that engender very broad interest in the United States. At the same time, again, as this process moves forward, there is extraordinary potential for a positive set of developments in the region, where you have Burma moving in the direction of reform and potentially having a different relationship with the United States and a deeper integration with the region and the international community.


SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Could I add on the China question, first and foremost, this is a decision about Burma, of human rights, and it’s in response to measurable, concrete progress that the Burmese leaders are making. It’s, therefore, not -- it’s about Burma, not about China. Secondly, China itself benefits from a Burma that is stable, that is prosperous, and that is -- they’re integrated into the international community. And thirdly, engagement with Burmese leaders by the United States does not come at the expense of China or China’s relationship with Burma.



Q Just following up on that, taking it from a different tack, do you guys think that part of why Burma is doing what it’s doing is because they want to decrease their reliance on China and broaden themselves out to the rest of the world? Do you think that they’re playing a role from that point of view?



SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think, first of all, it would be fair to say that there are a number of countries in the world that are extraordinarily difficult to make authoritative conclusions about why they do things. North Korea is in that category. Until quite recently, so has Burma.


However, I think that, undeniably, one of the things that has led to this process is the leadership of the country is seeing as they travel around Southeast Asia and other parts of the world that Burma is falling farther and farther behind. This is a country -- and I'll just give you an example, if I could, just one -- so their senior team is here. They don’t carry BlackBerrys because there's almost -- or any kind of Internet device because there's very little service inside the country. They recognize that the cockpit of global prosperity is in the Asian Pacific region, and they’re not playing. 


And so I think that, more than anything else. I will also say, having interacted with these guy a lot, they clearly did not enjoy the international isolation that we have subjected them to for decades and they want to rejoin, and they have, frankly, appreciated the respect and the engagement that they’re beginning to receive, and they want to build on that.


And so I think, like all decisions like that, there are a complex set of variables that come to play. But I also think that they are convinced of the seriousness of how the President has approached this, and the determination of the Secretary of State. And I’m confident that -- again, they’ve only taken a first step, but they recognize that we are prepared to meet them in that first step as well.



Q You’ve all said that they haven’t done enough and so forth. So do you have any specific benchmarks that you’ll be looking for them to accomplish, for example, all of the political prisoners that remain behind bars?



SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Look, our set of issues -- and these are, by the way, not simply issues that the United States seeks. They're broadly recognized among what was often referred to as the "Friends of Burma" -- people in Europe, much of Asia, those who follow the developments in this really mythical and tragic country in many respects. 


We would like to see, very clearly, political prisoners released. We're working closely with authorities there and with various organizations, including the International Red Cross. Probably near the top of the list is a serious internal, domestic, diplomacy between the leadership and the various ethnic groups. Remember, the country is made up of a large number of largely different cultures, and some parts of the country have been at war -- civil war -- for decades, since the 1940s. So we need a really systemic level of interaction.


We're seeking further assurances from the government, with respect to its relationship with North Korea and previous interactions on banned articles that we think are antithetical to the maintenance of regional peace and stability. 


So there are a whole host of things that we want to continue to work on. But we have to say that on the issues that we have laid out at the outset of these discussions -- remember, even a long journey begins with a couple of steps -- they have been clear, taking those steps, and have worked with us on identifying the path forward. And that's one of the reasons why Secretary Clinton is looking forward to going.



Q And do you have any concerns that the changes that they've made have been cosmetic, as some in the country seem to fear, and that once they get to a certain point of international recognition they'll turn back the clock or something?



SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Maybe my colleagues would want to say -- but I would just simply say I actually don't pick that up at all. I think most of the people that I interact with -- and I spend a lot of time talking with people inside the country -- principally Aung San Suu Kyi and her colleagues and others in civil society believe that the moment is now, that this is a sincere effort; the United States had to get off the sidelines. 


And so I think the fear is not that these are simply symbolic or less-than-significant reforms. I think the concern is how they entrench them, how to continue this process, how to make sure that they are locked in going forward.


SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I would just add to that that this is also part of the reason why the President felt it was very important to talk to Aung San Suu Kyi before we took this step, in part because he wanted to confirm her support for this engagement. And in fact she was quite supportive and enthusiastic about the need to try to reinforce the positive steps that have been taken, and to create momentum for reform. 


But, again, I think it was very important to the President to have that conversation with her, in part to ensure that what we are doing is responsive to the dialogue we've had with the Burmese government, but it's also responsive to the views of democracy advocates, chief among them Aung San Suu Kyi.


The other thing I'd just point is that the issue -- my colleague mentioned it -- that really they did focus on, too, was this question of ethnic minorities, where there hasn’t been quite as much progress as there has been on other areas. So that's something that I think we'll continue to make sure we're raising in the context of these discussions.


But, look, we need to see -- as the President said today, there have been concrete actions taken. We wouldn't be taking this step if they had just made verbal pledges. This is in response to actual laws being passed through the Parliament, prisoners being released, changes being -- taking place within the country. But if those concrete actions don't continue, we won't be able to continue to build on a new relationship with the Burmese. 


So we're taking a step forward here. It's a very significant step. It's a step that goes beyond U.S. government engagement for over 50 years. But at the same time, we're clear about the fact that they're going to have to continue to move down this track if we're going to fundamentally change our relationship.


SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And I would add, it's a step that helps ensure that they continue down that track by, as Aung San Suu Kyi called for, establishing very clear lines of communication, allowing us to speak directly and authoritatively to the leadership about our views about what the future steps ought to be.


The President consulted with Aung San Suu Kyi directly on the significance of the steps thus far, and she emphasized the importance she placed on the U.S. showing the Burmese leaders that their actions -- their positive, constructive actions -- will generate positive responses by the international community, and by the U.S. in particular.



Q When the President came into office, one of his signature foreign policy approaches was reaching out to adversaries, but it's clear that he pursued a cautious approach on Burma. And I'm wondering if you can maybe give a little context for why that is, and if you could tie that in to sort of the events, the timeline of -- that you explained of how this came about.



SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, I'd just say one thing, and then these guys may want to say something. I mean, I think the approach the President made out is that we were always going to be open to engagement, but also we're going to be clear-eyed about how we approach engagement. The line from the inaugural was, if you unclench your fist, you'll find an extended hand. And I think what we see now is a gradual unclenching of the iron fist that has ruled Burma for so many years. And we are being responsive to that. Our engagement has helped encourage that by laying out these specific steps. And we're going to continue to use our engagement to reinforce that.


So I think we've maintained the pressures that we have in place. There are still robust sanctions on Burma. They still face a great deal of isolation. But at the same time, we've always been open to pursuing an engagement track as well, and now that that has begun to yield demonstrable progress, we are taking a step to be responsive to that.



Q Could you just talk a little bit about what exactly Secretary Clinton is going to do, where she's going to go, and just a little bit more about what that December 1st trip will look like? Is it a one-day trip, or is it --



SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It will be two days. 


SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: If you would allow, I think what we'd like to be able to do is sort of get the story out -- its reasons. We will, early next week, lay out a very clear schedule. I will just simply say that she's going to talk to the key stakeholders. She will be meeting with the President. She'll have a chance for extended sessions with Aung San Suu Kyi and elements of civil society. 


So I think we've put together, working very closely with their government, the kind of trip that we think is necessary. They've been very supportive. We face no restrictions. And we are looking forward to that engagement.



Q And is this going to come up at the ASEAN meeting? You guys pointed out that --



SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes.



Q -- the leaders will both be there. Is this going to be talked about?



SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Oh, yes.


SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes.


SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We anticipate that the President will be able to address, again, the approach that he's taking here. Thein Sein will obviously be at the meeting, so he'll have an opportunity to reinforce exactly the messages we're talking about here.


SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And the irony is that this is their second meeting. He was prime minister in the previous government, and came to Singapore for the first U.S.-ASEAN meeting, and so they had a chance to meet at that time.



Q Met like in a bilateral meeting, or just on the side?



SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: They met in a bilateral meeting, in which --


SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, a multilateral meeting.


SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Excuse me, a multilateral meeting. Sorry, I misspoke -- in a multilateral meeting as one of the 10 ASEAN members there.


I think what is different now is attributable to the steps that the Burmese government has taken. It is not that the President of the United States rolled out of bed and decided that it's time to tackle the Burma problem. It is that he is responding to measurable, concrete and significant steps that, in the view of Aung San Suu Kyi, warrant an engagement response and the kind of dialogue that Secretary Clinton will be able to engage in when she goes.



Q Just one more point on the benchmarks -- I mean, have you told them things like, you must do X by Y date? Is it that specific, or is it just that they know more generally what it is that you need to see?



SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think we have been clear about what our benchmarks are for what we would like to see, and that's how the dialogue has proceeded.


SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And by the way, they have also told us some things that they'd like to see as well.



Q So the President will talk about this at ASEAN in -- not while we’re in there, but during the closed part, he'll mentioned it -- tell the group what he told us, that he's --



SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Cat is out of the bag.


SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, and I think our sense is that this is something that will be broadly welcomed by the ASEAN countries. This morning, the President was able to -- the subject of Burma came up in his bilateral meeting with the President of the Philippines, for instance, who noted the positive steps Burma has taken, as well as in the meeting with Prime Minister Singh, who similarly noted those steps.


So we believe, again, this will be seen as a very positive signal. It's a signal that also, frankly, connects to what we've been discussing throughout this trip, which is our commitment to deepening our engagement here, and that engagement is welcome.



Q Unrelatedly, is President Hu of China at the East Asia Summit here?



SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Premier Wen Jiabao is at the summit for China.


All right, sorry, we've got to run these guys off. But thanks, guys.



END


2:17 P.M. WITA



Credit : white house

အားလံုး မဂၤလာေန႔လယ္ခင္းပါ။ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အစုိးရသက္တမ္းတစ္ေလွ်ာက္နဲ႔ ဒီခရီးစဥ္တစ္ေလွ်ာက္ လံုးမွာ အာရွ-ပစိဖိတ္ေဒသအေပၚ အေမရိကရဲ႕ ယံုၾကည္ခ်က္ကို အေလးအနက္ထား စဥ္းစားခဲ့ပါ တယ္။ ဒါ့အျပင္ ဒီေဒသအတြင္း လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးကိစၥေတြရဲ႕ အနာဂတ္ကိုေရာ အေမရိကန္ရဲ႕ ယံုၾကည္ရပ္တည္မႈအေပၚကိုပါ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ အေလးအနက္ထား စဥ္းစားခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ကေန႔မွာေတာ့ ကၽြန္ ေတာ္ဟာ အဲဒီ့မ်က္ႏွာစာႏွစ္ဖက္စလံုးမွာ ေရွ႕ကို တုိးတက္ေစဖို႔ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ရဲ႕ ႀကိဳးပမ္းအားထုတ္မႈ ေတြထဲက အေရးပါ တဲ့ေျခလွမ္းတစ္ရပ္ကို ေၾကညာပါေတာ့မယ္။

ဆယ္စုႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာၾကာေအာင္ပဲ အေမရိကန္ေတြဟာ ျမန္မာျပည္သူေတြအတြက္ အေျခခံလူ႔ အခြင့္အေရး ကိစၥေတြ ျငင္းပယ္ထားတာအေပၚ နက္႐ိႈင္းစြာပူပန္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒီမိုကရက္တစ္ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရးသမားေတြကို ဖိႏွိပ္ထားမႈ၊ လူနည္းစု တုိင္းရင္းသားမ်ဳိးႏြယ္ေတြအေပၚ ဦးတည္ျပသခဲ့တဲ့ရက္ စက္မႈနဲ႔ စစ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္အနည္းငယ္ရဲ႕ လက္ထဲမွာပဲ အာဏာကို ဆုပ္ကုိင္ထားမႈေတြဟာ (ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအေပၚ) ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ရဲ႕ စဥ္းစားပံုကို စိန္ေခၚခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ၿပီးေတာ့ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံကို ကမၻာနဲ႔ အေမရိကရဲ႕ (အေ၀းမွာ)အထီးက်န္ေစခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ဒါေပမဲ့ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ဟာ အၿမဲပဲ ျမန္မာျပည္သူေတြအေပၚ ေလးစားမႈထားရွိခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ၿပီးေတာ့ သူတုိ႔ တုိင္းျပည္ရဲ႕အနာဂတ္ကို ပါ ေလးစားမႈထားခဲ့ပါတယ္။ (ဒီတုိင္းျပည္က) အေရွ႕နဲ႔ အေနာက္ ဆံုစည္းရာမွာတည္ရွိတဲ့ၾကြယ္၀တဲ့သမုိင္းနဲ႔ ႏုိင္ငံ တစ္ႏုိင္ငံျဖစ္ၿပီး၊ ျပည္သူလူထုကလည္း တည္ၿငိမ္တဲ့ဂုဏ္သိကၡာ နဲ႔ ထူးျခားၿပီး အလားအလာေကာင္းေတြရွိ တဲ့ ျပည္သူတစ္ရပ္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာၾကာေအာင္ ကိုပဲ ျမန္မာျပည္သူေတြရဲ႕ ဖိႏွိပ္ခံရမႈနဲ႔ ကတိစကားကို ေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ဆုိတဲ့(နာမည္နဲ႔) သေကၤတ ျပဳခဲ့ၾကတယ္။ (ေခတ္သစ္) ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံကို တည္ေထာင္သူရဲ႕ သမီးရင္းတစ္ဦးအေနနဲ႔၊ သူမ ျပည္သူေတြအတြက္ ခြန္အားႀကီးမားစြာရပ္တည္ခဲ့သူတစ္ဦးအေနနဲ႔ သူမဟာ အျခားေသာဖိႏွိပ္ခံရတဲ့ ျမန္မာလူမ်ဳိးမ်ားလိုပဲ ေနအိမ္အက်ယ္ခ်ဳပ္နဲ႔ ေထာင္ဒဏ္ေတြကို ႀကံ့ႀကံ့ခံခဲ့ရတယ္။

ဒါေပမဲ့ ေမွာင္အတိႏွစ္မ်ားစြာၿပီးတဲ့ေနာက္မွာေတာ့ ေဟာဒီရက္သတၱပတ္အနည္းငယ္အတြင္းမွာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ဟာ တုိးတက္မႈအရိပ္အေယာင္ေတြကိုျမင္ခဲ့ရပါတယ္။ သမၼတဦးသိန္းစိန္နဲ႔ ျမန္မာလႊတ္ေတာ္ကုိယ္စားလွယ္ေတြဟာ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရးကို ဦးတည္တဲ့လမ္းေၾကာင္းမွာ အေရးပါတဲ့ေျခလွမ္းေတြ စတင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အစိုးရနဲ႔ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္အၾကား ေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးမႈျဖစ္ခဲ့တယ္။ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားအခ်ဳိ႕ကို အစိုးရက လႊတ္ေပးခဲ့တယ္။ ၿပီးေတာ့ ဥပေဒျပဳေရးက႑ကလည္း ႏုိင္ငံေရးပတ္၀န္းက်င္ကိုပြင့္လင္းဖုိ႔ အတည္ျပဳေပးခဲ့တယ္။ ဒါ့ေၾကာင့္ ဒါေတြအားလံုးကို ၿခံဳၾကည့္ရင္ ဒါေတြဟာ ႏွစ္မ်ားစြာအတြင္း ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ျမင္ခဲ့ရတဲ့ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံမွာ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရးဆီ ဦးတည္တဲ့ အေရးႀကီးဆံုးေျခလွမ္းေတြ ျဖစ္ပါေတာ့တယ္။

တကယ္တမ္းေတာ့ လုပ္စရာေတြ အမ်ားႀကီးရွိပါေသးတယ္။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ဟာ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံရဲ႕ပိတ္ ထားတဲ့ႏုိင္ငံေရးစနစ္၊ ၄င္းရဲ႕ လူနည္းစု(တုိင္းရင္းသား)ေတြအေပၚ ဆက္ဆံပံုနဲ႔ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား ေတြကို ဆက္လက္ထိန္းသိမ္းထားတာေတြ၊ ၄င္းရဲ႕ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားနဲ႔ ဆက္ဆံေရးေတြအေပၚ စိုးရိမ္ ပူပန္ဆဲရွိေနပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ဟာ တုိးတက္မႈအတြက္ သမုိင္း၀င္အခြင့္အေရးတစ္ရပ္ျဖစ္ လာႏုိင္တဲ့အရာကို ဆုပ္ကိုင္ခ်င္ပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံဟာ ဒီမုိကရက္စီျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရး လမ္း ေၾကာင္းေပၚ ဆက္္လက္ေလွ်ာက္သြားမယ္ဆုိရင္ ဒီတုိင္းျပည္ဟာ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုနဲ႔ ဆက္ဆံေရးအသစ္တစ္ရပ္ ပံုသြင္းႏုိင္မယ္ဆုိတာလည္း ရွင္းလင္းစြာေဖာ္ျပခ်င္ပါတယ္။

မေန႔ညက ကၽြန္ေတာ္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္နဲ႔ တုိက္႐ုိက္စကားေျပာခဲ့ၿပီး သူမကလည္း ဒီျဖစ္စဥ္ ေရွ႕ဆက္တုိးတက္ေရးအတြက္ အေမရိကန္ရဲ႕ ထိေတြ႕ဆက္ဆံမႈကိုေထာက္ခံေၾကာင္း အတည္ျပဳခဲ့ ပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ဒီေန႔မွာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ဟာ ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး ဟီလာရီကလင္တန္ကို ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ သြားေရာက္ဖုိ႔ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ သူမဟာ ရာစုႏွစ္တစ္၀က္ခန္႔ကာလအတြင္း ဒီတုိင္းျပည္ကို သြားေရာက္ တဲ့ ပထမဆံုး အေမရိကန္ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီးျဖစ္လာပါလိမ့္မယ္။ သူမဟာ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု က ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ အျပဳသေဘာေဆာင္တဲ့ အေျပာင္းအလဲကာလတစ္ရပ္ျဖစ္ဖို႔ လုပ္ႏိုင္၊ မလုပ္ႏုိင္ဆုိတာကို နည္းလမ္းရွာေဖြၿပီး ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ႏွစ္ႏုိင္ငံ အၾကား စာမ်က္ႏွာသစ္ စတင္ဖြင့္လွစ္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။

အဲဒီျဖစ္ႏုိင္ေျခဟာ ျမန္မာအစိုးရက ပိုၿပီးလက္ေတြ႕က်တဲ့ ေဆာင္ရြက္မႈေတြ လုပ္တဲ့အေပၚ မူတည္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။ တကယ္လို႔ ျမန္မာျပည္ဟာ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရးလမ္းေၾကာင္းကို ဆက္ေလွ်ာက္ဖို႔ ပ်က္ကြက္ခဲ့ရင္ ပိ္တ္ဆို႔မႈေတြနဲ႔ အထီးက်န္မႈေတြကို ဆက္လက္ရင္ဆုိင္ရပါလိမ့္မယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ျမန္မာျပည္ဟာ ဒီအခ်ိန္မွာ (အေျပာင္းအလဲကို) ဖမ္းဆုပ္ႏုိင္ရန္ အဲဒီေနာက္မွာ အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္စည္းလုံး ညီညြတ္ေရးကို အားေကာင္းေစႏုိင္ၿပီး ျပည္သူသန္းေပါင္းမ်ားစြာဟာလည္း ဂုဏ္သိကၡာရွိမႈ၊ ႀကြယ္၀မႈနဲ႔ လြတ္လပ္မႈေတြကို ပိုမိုႀကီးမားတဲ့ အတုိင္းအတာနဲ႔ ရရွိၿပီး၊ ရွင္သန္ေနထုိင္ဖုိ႔ အခြင့္အေရးရရွိပါလိမ့္မယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ဒီျဖစ္ႏုိင္ေျခဟာ မသိက်ဳိးကၽြံျပဳလုိ႔ မရေအာင္ သိပ္အေရးပါလွပါတယ္။

ဒီေန႔ ညေနပိုင္းမွာေတာ့ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ဟာ သမၼတဦးသိန္းစိန္အပါအ၀င္ အာဆီယံနဲ႔ အေမရိကန္ရဲ႕ ေတြ႕ဆုံမႈမွာ ဒီသတင္းစကားေတြကို ထပ္မံေျပာၾကားသြားပါဦးမယ္။ ဒီအေတာအတြင္း မစၥဟီလာရီကလင္တန္ဟာ ေနျပည္ေတာ္နဲ႔ ရန္ကုန္ကို ခရီးထြက္ရင္ သူမဟာလည္း ဒီသတင္း စကားကို ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္လို ဒီမုိကေရစီ လႈပ္ရွားသူေတြ၊ အရပ္ဘက္လူ႔အဖဲြ႕အစည္းနဲ႔ (ျမန္မာ) အစိုးရကိုပါ ေပးအပ္ ဖို႔ အခြင့္အေရးရရွိမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ထပ္ေျပာခ်င္တာကေတာ့ ျမန္မာျပည္သူေတြနဲ႔ ထုိက္တန္တဲ့ ျပန္လည္စည္းလံုးညီညြတ္ေရးနဲ႔ အသစ္ တစ္ဖန္ ျပန္လည္စတင္ေရး အနာဂတ္ကိုရရွိဖို႔ ဆက္လက္လုပ္ေဆာင္စရာေတြရွိေနပါေသးတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ဒီေန႔မွာေတာ့ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ဟာ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္း အျပဳသေဘာေဆာင္တဲ့ တုိးတက္ျဖစ္ထြန္းမႈ မ်ားကို တံု႔ျပန္ေသာအားျဖင့္ ဒီေျခလွမ္းကိုစတင္ဖုိ႔ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ခ်ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ၿပီးေတာ့ အားလံုးလႊမ္းၿခံဳ ႏုိင္တဲ့ ယူနီဗာဆယ္တန္ဖုိးေတြနဲ႔ သတိၱရွိတဲ့ျပည္သူတစ္ရပ္၊ တစ္မူ ထူးျခားတဲ့တုိင္းျပည္တစ္ျပည္ရဲ႕ အနာဂတ္အတြက္ အေမရိကန္ရဲ႕ ယံုၾကည္ခံယူခ်က္ကို ရွင္းလင္းစြာသ႐ုပ္ေဖာ္ဖုိ႔ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ဆံုးျဖတ္ ခ်က္ခ်ခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ေက်းဇူးအမ်ားႀကီးတင္ပါတယ္။

အင္ဒိုနီးရွားႏုိင္ငံ ဘာလီတြင္ ယေန႔ ေန႔လယ္ ၁၂ နာရီ ၄၅ မိနစ္က ေျပာၾကားခဲ့ေသာ အေမရိကန္သမၼတ၏မိန္႔ခြန္းကို 7Day News International Desk မွ ဘာသာျပန္ဆုိသည္။

Credit  : 7 day journal



__________________________________________________________________
The White House

Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
November 18, 2011

Statement by President Obama on Burma

Grand Hyatt
Bali, Indonesia

12:42 P.M. WITI

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Good afternoon, everybody. Throughout my administration -- and throughout this trip -- I've underscored America’s commitment to the Asia Pacific region, but also I've underscored America's commitment to the future of human rights in the region. Today I'm announcing an important step forward in our efforts to move forward on both these fronts.

For decades, Americans have been deeply concerned about the denial of basic human rights for the Burmese people. The persecution of democratic reformers, the brutality shown towards ethnic minorities, and the concentration of power in the hands of a few military leaders has challenged our conscience, and isolated Burma from the United States and much of the world.

However, we have always had a profound respect for the people of Burma, and the promise of their country -- a country with a rich history, at the crossroads of East and West; a people with a quiet dignity and extraordinary potential. For many years, both the promise and the persecution of the Burmese people has been symbolized by Aung San Suu Kyi. As the daughter of Burma’s founding father, and a fierce advocate for her fellow citizens, she's endured prison and house arrest, just as so many Burmese have endured repression.

Yet after years of darkness, we've seen flickers of progress in these last several weeks. President Thein Sein and the Burmese Parliament have taken important steps on the path toward reform. A dialogue between the government and Aung San Suu Kyi has begun. The government has released some political prisoners. Media restrictions have been relaxed. And legislation has been approved that could open the political environment. So, taken together, these are the most important steps toward reform in Burma that we've seen in years.

Of course, there's far more to be done. We remain concerned about Burma’s closed political system, its treatment of minorities and holding of political prisoners, and its relationship with North Korea. But we want to seize what could be an historic opportunity for progress, and make it clear that if Burma continues to travel down the road of democratic reform, it can forge a new relationship with the United States of America.

Last night, I spoke to Aung San Suu Kyi, directly, and confirmed that she supports American engagement to move this process forward. So today, I've asked Secretary Hillary Clinton to go to Burma. She will be the first American Secretary of State to travel to the country in over half a century, and she will explore whether the United States can empower a positive transition in Burma and begin a new chapter between our countries.

That possibility will depend upon the Burmese government taking more concrete action. If Burma fails to move down the path of reform, it will continue to face sanctions and isolation. But if it seizes this moment, then reconciliation can prevail, and millions of people may get the chance to live with a greater measure of freedom, prosperity, and dignity. And that possibility is too important to ignore.

Later today I'll reinforce these messages in America’s meeting with ASEAN -- including with President Thein Shein. Meanwhile, when she travels to Nay Pyi Taw and Rangoon, Hillary will have the chance to deliver that message to the government, to civil society, and to democratic activists like Aung San Suu Kyi.

Again, there's more that needs to be done to pursue the future that the Burmese people deserve -- a future of reconciliation and renewal. But today, we've decided to take this step to respond to the positive developments in Burma and to clearly demonstrate America's commitment to the future of an extraordinary country, a courageous people, and universal values.

Thank you very much.

END

An analysis of Myanmar ASEAN Chair: BBC World News ,Zeinab Badawi, interview with Dr.Zarni on 2010 GMT, 17 Nov 2011 



By JACKIE CALMES and THOMAS FULLER,


BALI, Indonesia — Hours before Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s most prominent democracy campaigner, announced her return to formal politics on Friday, President Obama disclosed that he was sending Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on a visit there next month, the first by a secretary of state in more than 50 years.

Mr. Obama spoke shortly before Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, a symbol of perseverance and democracy in Myanmar, declared that she and her party would rejoin the political system backed by the military leadership that persecuted her for more than two decades.

Her decision was seen as a milestone in reconciliation efforts between the military-backed government and the country’s democracy movement whose members were jailed and repressed during years of authoritarian rule. The party’s decision was unanimous, according to a statement.

Mr. Obama made known his decision to send Mrs. Clinton at a gathering in Bali where nations from Southeast Asia were meeting on Friday with leaders of lands from across the Pacific Rim, including the United States, China and Japan.

“For decades Americans have been deeply concerned about the denial of basic human rights for the Burmese people,” Mr. Obama said. “The persecution of democratic reformers, the brutality shown toward ethnic minorities and the concentration of power in the hands of a few military leaders has challenged our conscience and isolated Burma from the United States and much of the world.”

But he added that ”after years of darkness, we’ve seen flickers of progress in these last several weeks” as the president and Parliament in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma, have taken steps toward reform.

“Of course there’s far more to be done,” Mr. Obama said.

On Thursday night, while Air Force One was flying from Australia to Indonesia for the East Asia summit, the president spoke with Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, a senior official said.

“They reviewed the progress that has been made in Burma, including her release, her dialogue with the government, the release of some political prisoners, and legislation that could open the political system further,” the official said.

At the headquarters of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, her announcement on Friday was greeted by cheers.

“Mother Suu, we support you!” the crowd chanted, using the party leader’s nickname, according to a witness. Others depicted her decision as portentous.

“The pace of political change in Burma has exceeded all expectations,” Thant Myint-U, a historian and former United Nations official. “We’re on the verge of a historic compromise.”

Mr. Obama will see President U Thein Sein of Myanmar at Friday’s broader meeting of Pacific Rim leaders but will not have a one-on-one encounter.

The decision to send Mrs. Clinton came shortly after Myanmar took another step away from its diplomatic isolation on Thursday when its neighbors agreed to let the country, which had been run for decades by the military, take on the chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 2014.

Myanmar has long coveted the rotating chairmanship of the organization, known as Asean. The country renounced its turn in 2006 in the face of foreign pressure over human rights abuses.

“It’s not about the past, it’s about the future, what leaders are doing now,” the Indonesian foreign minister, Marty Natalegawa, told reporters in Bali about the chairmanship. “We’re trying to ensure the process of change continues.”

Myanmar inaugurated a new civilian system this year after decades of military rule. The new government, led by Mr. Thein Sein, has freed a number of political prisoners, taken steps to liberalize the nation’s heavily state-controlled economy and made overtures to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel peace laureate who was released from house arrest last year.

Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party won elections in 1990, but the result was ignored by the military.


Jackie Calmes reported from Bali, Indonesia, and Thomas Fuller from Bangkok.


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 18, 2011



Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this article gave the wrong city as Myanmar’s capital. It is Naypyidaw, not Yangon.

Credit : New York Times

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