Ethnic cleansing and policing knows no boundary in military ruled Burma. It encroaches everywhere, including education. One of the latest instances of imposition of the junta’s will, comes in Karen State where the State Peace and Development Council has ordered teaching of the Burmese Language instead of the ethnic language to the brighter students in schools.
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The Kachin Independence Organization has approved Lanyaw Zawng Hra as the ceasefire group’s new chairman to replace Lamung Tu Jai, who died of liver cancer last week. Following a three-day central committee meeting held in the KIO’s Laiza headquarters from June 19 to 21, Zawng Hra, 72, was promoted from vice chairman. Gauri Zau Seng, vice president of the KIO, becomes the vice chairman.
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Thai and Burmese authorities concluded a township border committee meeting yesterday after discussing border issues, the movements of ethnic rebels and drug trafficking. About 60 participants from both sides met for about two hours in the Burmese town of Tachilek, about a kilometre from the border with Chiang Rai province.
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Border trading between Burma and Thailand has dropped dramatically in the past month because of restrictions imposed by Burmese authorities, Thai officials have told The Irrawaddy.
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Chinese drug control officials said Thursday their yearlong war on drugs has severely squeezed heroin supplies from the Golden Triangle but warned that they were seeing increased drug-trafficking from Afghanistan.
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June 21: According to a report by Reuters, Chinese police in the poor, inland province of Henan have rounded up 69 women from Burma who were sold to farmers unable to find local wives, quoting a Chinese newspaper report.
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The UN envoy who met Myanmar’s detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi last month said Thursday that the nation’s military rulers might be ready to re-open a dialogue with the world body.
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Mr Michael Bootzin, a guitar and piano teacher in Milwaukee in Wisconsin, has attempted to break the Guinness World Record for reading out the books and interviews of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi for 114 consecutive hours.
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When Argentina was ruled by a brutal military junta, thousands of people and organisations around the world rallied to the cause, demanding human rights and democracy without delay.
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We are used now to hearing from Burma’s military regime that it is turning a new page. And some, including regional leaders, diplomats and scholars, seem to have believed what the junta said. Anyone who wants to trust the generals can probably say the junta is turning a new page, but turning that one page has so far taken more than a decade.
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