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သို႕
ၿပည္ေထာင္စု ၿမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ သမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ ၊ ၿမဳိနယ္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးမွဴး၊ ၿပည္နယ္၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္ႏွင္႕တကြ ဌါနဆုိင္ရာ တာ၀န္ရွိသူမ်ား သိရွိရန္

ရခုိင္ၿပည္နယ္ အမ္းၿမဳိ႕နယ္ စခမ္းေမာ္ ေက်းရြာအုပ္စု အတြင္းရွိ ဇင္ေခါင္၊ အုိးပုံ၊ ခေမာင္းေခ်ာင္း ေက်းရြာမ်ားမွ ေတာင္သူမ်ား လုပ္ကုိင္ စားေသာက္ေနေသာ ေတာင္ယာႏွင္႕ လယ္ယာသီးႏွံ စိုက္ခင္းမ်ားမွာ ရခုိင္ၿပည္နယ္ ေက်ာက္ၿဖဴမွ တရုတ္ၿပည္သုိ႕ သြယ္တန္းေသာ ေရနံႏွင္႕ သဘာ၀ ဓာတ္ေငြ႕ ပုိက္လုိင္း ၿဖတ္သန္း သြားရာ လမ္းတြင္ ပါသြားခဲ့ပါသည္။

၄င္းလယ္ယာေၿမႏွင္႕သီးႏွံမ်ားအား ႏုိင္ငံေတာ္ႏွင္႕ အက်ဳိးတူ ပူးေပါင္းပါ၀င္ေသာ ကုမၼဏီမ်ားမွ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေငြထက္၀က္ကုိ (၂.၁.၂၀၁၂) ခုႏွစ္တြင္ ရခုိင္ၿပည္နယ္ အမ္းၿမဳိ႕နယ္ရွိ (မ.ယ.က) ရုံးခန္းမ၌ ရခုိင္ၿပည္နယ္ သီးႏံွႏွင့္ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးတာ၀န္ခံ ဦးတင္ေမာင္ေဆြ (မ.ယ.က) ဥကၠဌႏွင္႕ တၿခားအဖြဲ႕၀င္မ်ား ေရွ႕ေမွာက္တြင္ ေတာင္သူမ်ားအား ေပးအပ္ခဲ႕ပါသည္။

ဦးတင္ေမာင္ေဆြမွလည္း ၄င္းေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေငြမ်ားအား မည္သူတစ္ဦး တစ္ေယာက္ကုိမွ် ေပးစရာ မလုိဟု ေၿပာၾကားခဲ႕ပါသည္။ သုိ႕ပါေသာ္ လည္း အမ္းၿမဳိ႕နယ္ စခမ္းေမာ္ ေက်းရြာအုပ္စု ဥကၠဌ ဦးေအာင္၀င္းမွ ေတာင္သူမ်ားအား တစ္အိမ္တက္၊ တစ္အိမ္ဆင္း ၿပီး ေတာင္သူမ်ား ရရွိ ထားေသာ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေငြမ်ားမွ မိမိအား ေပးေဆာင္ရမည္ဟု အတင္း အဓမၼ လာေရာက္ ေကာက္ခံပါသည္။ ေတာင္သူမ်ားမွ မေပးႏုိင္ဟု ေၿပာပါေသာ္လည္း က်န္ရွိ ေနေသာ (၅၀) ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္း အား မလုိ ခ်င္ ေတာ့ဘူးလား ဟု ၿခိမ္းေၿခာက္ ေသာေၾကာင္႕ ေတာင္သူမ်ားမွာ ၄င္း ေတာင္းခံေသာ ေငြေၾကးအား ေၾကာက္အားလန္႕အား ၿဖင္႕ ေပးလုိက္ရပါသည္။ ေတာင္သူ(၂၂) ဦးမွာရရွိေသာ ေငြပမာဏမွ (၁၆) သိန္းႏွင္႕ (၇၀၀၀၀) က်ပ္ ၿဖစ္ပါသည္။

၄င္းအၿပင္ ေက်းရြာ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးမွူး ရုံးေဆာက္လုပ္ရန္ အတြက္ ဆုိၿပီး တစ္အိမ္လ်င္ (၃၀၀၀) က်ပ္ ႏွဳန္းႏွင္႕ ကုိ မထည္႕ မေနရ ထည္႕ရမည္ဆုိၿပီး ေကာက္ခံ ေနပါ သည္။ စခမ္းေမာ္ ေက်းရြာအုပ္စုတြင္ အိမ္ေၿခေပါင္း (၃၅၀) ခန္႕ရွိပါသည္။ တစ္အိမ္လ်င္ (၃၀၀၀) က်ပ္ႏုန္းႏွင္႕ ဆုိလ်င္ အိမ္ေၿခ(၃၅၀) အတြက္ ေငြေၾကးပမာဏမွာ (၁၀)သိန္း ၊ (၅၀၀၀၀) က်ပ္တိတိ ရရွိမည္ၿဖစ္ပါသည္။

၄င္းအၿဖစ္အပ်က္အား ၿမဳိ႕နယ္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးမွဴး ၊ၿပည္နယ္ ၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္ႏွင္႕တကြ ၿပည္ေထာင္စုၿမန္မာ ႏုိင္ငံေတာ္ သမၼတဦးသိန္းစိန္ အပါအ၀င္ ဌါနဆုိင္ရာ တာ၀န္ရွိသူမ်ား သိရွိနုိင္ရန္ တုိင္ၾကား အပ္ပါသည္။

ေက်းရြာသားမ်ား

Sittwe: Over 300 students from Sittwe University marched to the office of the Regional Chief Minister in the capital Sittwe in western Burma's Arakan State to protest a hike in their school ferry fees on Friday.
"The taxi fare for travel to our university from downtown Sittwe increased from 100 Kyat to 200 Kyat and we have staged a protest in order to demand they reduce the fare to the regular price," said of the student who was involved in the protest.

A local resident from Palotetaung Ward in downtown Sittwe also confirmed that he saw the students march peacefully through the street in front of his house to the office of the Chief Minister.

When asked if it was not fair for the taxis to raise their fare as gasoline prices go up, the student responded, "Because of the fare hike, a student now has to pay 400 Kyat per day just for their school transportation, and most of the students will not be able to continue their studies in university because they are very poor. That is why we have to protest to demand to keep our school transportation fares as they were."

The student said they marched to the General Administration Office of the State to present their difficulties as they believe the government is responsible for solving the problem and managing school taxi fees for students, adding that they would continue their protest if the government does not solve their difficulties.

According to the sources, the authorities have not disturbed the students, although they did take close-up photographs and video recordings of the students as they were marching to the regional administration office.

Security was increased around campus and the university gates were shut due to the students' protest.

Students ended the protest after U Tin Maung Tun, the principal of the university, and other teachers negotiated with the students and promised to respond to their demands.

Similar protests have also occurred before when taxis running between downtown and the university have attempted to increase their fares for the students, after the university was moved to the outskirts of the city. Authorities have still neglected to provide reliable and affordable school transportation for the students.

Introduction

An outcome on the dispute over maritime border between Burma and Bangladesh will come out in a couple of months. The dispute originated from the locations of natural gas reserves offshore at kyaukphu, Arakan State, acclaimed by Burma, actually by Burmese military regime. Arakanese and elsewhere inside Burma were unpleasant about Burmese government’s deal of piping away the natural gas and oil from Arakan offshore to China. So-called the Shwe Gas Project benefits China and Sr. Gen Than Shwe; not for Burma and starving people of Burma. Chinese have already moved into Kyaukpyu. Military has built up its forces at Ann. For paving gas pipeline corridor at the Chinese border, military has, now, been waging war against Kachins who were living there for their whole lives. Therefore, this presentation of Part III of “If.. No Fly Zone over Burma” begins with Burma’s latest air force base at Ann.

Massive Military Built Up at Ann Pass, Arakan State

Arakans have heard of massive Burma’s military built up on the Arakan Yoma (Ranges) at Ann, but that whole area has been restricted to civilians. Ann airport was upgraded to Burma’s latest air force base, as reported by http://photayokeking.org/.

(all pictures can be enlarged to view by clicking on it)

The changes in the landscape in and around Ann (town and airfield) can be seen by comparing 2005 and 2006 satellite photos posted on Google Earth™. Note the circles in 2005 with no excavation on the slope of the hills.

The Burmese Western Military Command and Control Headquarters have been moved out from Sittwe (Akyab) to Ann.

(A) Military establishments have been further extended to the south of airfield and the original Ann town.

(B) On 2006 photo, hill slopes at two large hills had been excavated. Expansion of the establishments extended further south.

(C) Extended area from the hills to the west bank of Ann creek has been potted with standard military structures with blue colored roofs.

(D) Original Ann airport was upgraded with longer runway and new tarmac. The 2006 satellite photo was limited to see possible aircraft hangers, new taxi-ways, etc.

(all pictures can be enlarged to view by clicking on it)

(E) Total population of original Ann town was 1,000. The town is spreading along the east bank of Ann Creek. The new military installations have been developed south and northeast of the old town. In http://en.wikipedia.or/wild/Ann_Township, it noted that "Ann Creek" Hydropower Project is being implemented by the Ministry of Electric Power No. 1 on Ann Creek, 3.5 miles northeast to Ann. The project can generate 44 million kilowatt hours yearly when it is finished.

(F) Just on the western side of the hill across from the air base, more military installations have been establishing. (G) The same way, more military installations have been developed on the east of original Ann town.

So, why has the Burmese military built up at Ann location then?

(A) The simplest reason is to keep nationalistic Arakanese (Rakhines) people under tight control of military powers. At the lowest level, looting land and properties in rural areas abusing Naypyitaw directions. Arakanese are faced with land confiscation without compensation; destruction of ancient cities, national heritage and Arakanese pride, for railroad construction; harass and arrest of individuals who express personal political belief. To the extent, it is to thwart quickly any popular uprising in the future.

(B) Militarily, this is the seat of control and command center to engage in ethnic armed-resistance such as Arakan Liberation Party (ALP) and Chin National Front (CNF) activities effectively.

(1) Burmese Refugee Camps -- There are 28,000 Burmese Muslim refugees sheltering in two officially registered refugee camps, and an estimated 50,000 refugees are sheltering in two makeshift unregistered camps in Bangladesh. (http://www.ibiblio.org/obl/docs/Chris_Ottawa-2002.htm)

(2) Border Fencing -- Fencing 40 mile long border with barbed wire. (http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/2009/05/07/65740.html) (Who knows, the traditional Burma’s military tactic – the land mines, to be followed.)

(D) Air Force Rivalry: Because of Burma’s military built up, Bangladesh established a new Air Force base on the opposite side of the border from Maungdaw, Arakan State on April 3, 2011, raising tensions between the two nations. (Naranjera News 04-06-2011)

(E) Maritime Border Dispute -- Two countries sent warships to the disputed waters in 2008. The delimitation issue with Burma will be settled by ITLOS while the claim regarding the outer limit will be decided at the United Nations. (http://www.mizzima.com/news/world/5848-burma-bangladesh-border-dispute-set-for-un-hearing.html)

(F) Military Exercises -- Recently, Bangladesh, US and Asian CARAT naval exercise was held near Chittagong. (http://www.narinjara.com/details.asp?id=3105) (Oct 24, 2011)

(G) (Than) Shwe Gas Project -- Seriously, Chinese government has gotten a rare economic and military opportunities at the most critical juncture of time in Burmese history. As if acting as a Chinese warrior, dam construction contracts; copper mines for weaponry; and gemstone mines of jade, rubies and gold mines were granted to China by general Than Shwe. He offered naval ports to China at Coco island and Heingyikyun. Then. he’s created special Chinese fortunes such as oil and gas from offshore (Shwe Gas) and inland (Yenangyaung) reserves with an additional approval to create a deep sea harbor at Kyaukphu (Arakan) together with a new airport; and also to build a dual oil and gas pipelines with a parallel rail road. (See Video on China’s Kyaukpyu Economic and Technology Development Plan at http://www.ramree.com/2011/05/22/video-ramree-economic-technological-zone/). Than Shwe has cunningly setup against the United State’s concerns over China’s military access to Indian Ocean by-passing traditional shipping route through South China Sea-the Strait of Malacca. (See illustrated map below)

(all pictures can be enlarged to view by clicking on it)

Just looking at the planned route (corridor) of gas and oil pipelines (see below) of Shwe Gas Project, and its associated plan for a rail road, Burma will be divided diagonally into two states with a corridor from Ruili (Chinese border) to Kyaukpyu (Arakan coast). For a national security reason alone, no other government would usher a neighboring country who would grab every resource to feed its exploding population, into its own land.

But brilliantly, Than Shwe’s offered a flow of gas and oil to China as well as bringing them back into Burma with a flow of population, machines, materials, money and military forces along this corridor. Officially, the whole deal with China was Than Shwe’s personal interest; not merely any benefits for the nation. Thus, it’s been named as “(Than) Shwe Gas Project”.

(all pictures can be enlarged to view by clicking on it)

Now, Than Shwe’s streamlined with current Burmese government whom he has selected/elected, to wipe out Kachins who’ve lived there forever at the Chinese border region to lay the gas pipelines to China. What a shame! At Than Shwe’s command, current Burmese government and military is waging a war against Kachins, its own national ethnic minority for the Chinese favor. It is also evident in Kyauklpyu, the Burmese government and military is assisting in land confiscations for Chinese who came to work for (Than) Shwe Gas Project. One of the main reasons for military built up at Ann is for (Than) Shwe Gas Project too. The military will use force as necessary to put the pipeline corridor in place through the Ann Pass, and making sure of what Chinese needed in Kyaukphyu.

As for all nationalities of Burma, present killings in Kachin hills, and land confiscations in Kyaukpyu (Arkan) cannot be considered as isolated local issues. It is a national issue, no less serious than Myitsone Dam issue. It’s time to rise up to scrap the (Than) Shwe Gas Project.

If the people of Burma would let go of this (Than) Shwe Gas Project by the government now, the next generations of population of Burma will become Chinese, and Burma will most likely to become a province of the Republic of China. Most chillingly, Chinese-Burmese children in the next generations will be paying homage to Than Shwe’s statue as one of the loyal warriors of China in Beijing’s Tienanmen Square.

Stop (Than) Shwe Gas Project, immediately.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to "arakanone" for assistance in Burmese type.

/// end

Posted on November 2, 2011 by winners’ circle.

You can read "Stop (Than) Shwe Gas Project" in English language only at:

http://stopthanshwegas.blogspot.com/

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TO BE CONTINUED … with ‘Burmese Chemical Weapon Factory’

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New York: Arakanese living in the USA will celebrate the 17th annual Arakanese Thingyan or New Year water festival in New York, according to the Thingyan Association, the organizer of the festival.

The festival will be held from 11am to 4pm local time on 17 July, at 100 West 84th Street, PS9 Playground between Columbus Avenue and Amsterdam Avenue, in Manhattan, New York.

Ko Kyaw Tha Hla, the managing director for organizing the festival, said the festival is held to show the Arakanese traditional culture to people internationally as well as to the different ethnic peoples from Burma living in USA.

"This is the most enjoyable Arakanese traditional festival and we celebrate it especially to make known our culture to the peoples here in USA. There are also people of Burmese origin who were born or brought up here and do not know about our lovely Arakanese traditional culture and I hope our celebration will not only enlighten to the people about our culture, but will give a chance to them to have a great fun in our festival", said Ko Kyaw Tha Hla.

The new year festival or Thingyan is traditionally held during the month "Tankhu" that starts a new year on the Arakanese lunar calendar and usually coincides with mid-April in the Roman calendar. Playing water among the adults and children is the joyous feature in the festival, which is for quenching the summer heat and for getting rid of troubles in the bygone year in tropical Arakan State in Burma. It is also distinguished for using traditional race-boats filled with water with the waiting young women holding bowls under a pavilion for pouring water with their interested young men and the water of love at the pavilion may lead most of the young peoples to their conjugal knots.

The organizing Thingyan Association said that because April is too cold to celebrate the festival, particularly with playing water, it has to be planned to celebrate in mid-July with the coming of summer in New York.

It said apart from the playing water, the festival will be celebrated with traditional singing and dancing, exhibition of arts and crafts, selling of traditional foods, and children games.

"Wet or dry, come to experience colorful multi-ethnic culture and heritage of Burma", invited the organizer. The detailed plans of the festival also can be read at http://www.thingyan.org.

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