Migrant Expects Payout After False Murder Charge

A Shan migrant who spent two-and-a-half years in Chiang Mai Prison, Thailand, charged with rape and murder is attempting to get compensation after he was freed in late July.

Sai Nueng (Pseudonym) was originally from Burma's southern Shan State but migrated to Thailand to support his family over ten years ago. He worked as a construction worker in Mae Hong Son, northern Thailand, when he first arrived but later moved to Chiang Mai in search of better wages and job opportunities.

He requested that The Irrawaddy uses a pseudonym because he remains worried about possible police reprisals.

In early 2009, a student from Mae Jo University, Chiang Mai, was raped and murdered and Sai Nueng was placed under arrest for the crime along with another Shan migrant called Sai Bueak.

A court found Sai Bueak guilty and he was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Tuesday, Sai Nueng said, “A cop came to me where I go fishing and asked for my ID. When he saw my name, he talked about the case and I said I don’t know anything about it. Then he left. A few minutes later, four or five cops came and beat me down and covered my head with a black bag. Then they brought me to a police station.”

He said that until he arrived at the police station, he had no idea why he was arrested. He presumed the problem was just concerning his ID as he was registered as living in Mae Hong Son. However, he soon learned the truth in the police interrogation room.

Officers tied him to a chair and beat him as they had done since arriving at the police station. Sai Nueng said that four or five policemen attacked him, but he did not know who because his head was still covered by a black bag.

The cops even pointed a pistol to his head and forced him to admit to the murder and tried to get his thumb print by force. He said his clothes were removed by the police and head kicked many times. When he lost consciousness, the police poured water on him and continued their savage treatment.

Sai Nueng said that the scars are still on his body today.

Even though Sai Bueak, who confessed to committing the crime, told the police that the case did not concern Sai Nueng, officers still forced him to admit that he was involved.

Sai Nueng said, “Actually I was wrongfully arrested by the police. Sai Bueak and [another man who shared my name] committed the crime together, but this different [Sai Nueng] disappeared after the crime.”

After he spent three nights at the police station, he was sent to the main prison of Chiang Mai where the beatings continued at the hands of correction officers.

A lawyer from Migrant Assistance Program (MAP) Foundation and two lawyers from Bangkok's Lawyers’ Council represented Sai Nueng in court.

MAP Foundation lawyer Joe said that although it should not have been a difficult case, it actually proved to be quite tricky. He and the two other lawyers conducted research about Sai Nueng and collected testimony from Sai Bueak to be submitted to the court.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Tuesday, Joe said, “The court was not the problem in this case. Thai laws are equal for everyone, but the main problem was the police. If they had done the right thing, no problems would have occurred.”

He added that there are a few stages in the process of requesting compensation, and in Sai Nueng's case the facts are in line with receiving a payout. However, he did not know how long it would take to get compensation.

Even though on paper Thai law is supposed to be equal for everyone, many migrants feel they face discrimination based on their nationality and immigration status.

From: Irrawaddy

ေက်းဇူးျပဳျပီးမရယ္ပါႏွင္႔ (၂၈.၈.၂၀၁၁)

မွားယြင္းမႈ၏ရလဒ္”
မင္းနဲ႔ငါနဲ႔ညားလာတာ အခုဆိုရင္အိမ္ေထာင္သက္တမ္း အႏွစ္အစိတ္ရွိၿပီ ။
တကယ္တမ္းေျပာရရင္အဲဒီကိစ္စဟာ မွားယြင္းမႈတစ္ခုရဲ႕ ရလဒ္ပဲ ”
ဘယ္လို ဘယ္လို ဘာေျပာတယ္ ရွင္းစမ္းပါဦး”
ဒီလိုေလ၊ အဲဒီမင္းကို စေတြ႕တဲ့ေန႔က ငါေလခြၽန္မိတာ မင္းကိုေခၚတာမဟုတ္ဘူး။ တကၠစီသမားကိုကြ ”

သူ႕လက္ရာ
” ဒီေန႔ ကြၽန္မခ်က္ေကြၽးတဲ့ဟင္းက ဘယ့္ႏွယ္ေနလဲဟင္”
“ေကာင္းတယ္ မိန္းမရာ၊ ခ်ိဳၿပီးဆိမ့္ေနတာပဲ ”
“မဟုတ္ေသးပါဘူးေတာ္၊ ခ်က္နည္းျပဳတ္နည္းစာအုပ္ထဲမွာခ်ဥ္စပ္လို႔ေရးထားတယ္ရွင့္

တစ္ေယာက္တစ္လွည့္
“ကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႔ႏွစ္ေယာက္ လက္ထပ္ၿပီးတဲ့အထိမ္းအမွတ္အျဖစ္ဟန္းနီးမြန္းထြက္ခ်င္လို႔ခြင့္ဆယ္ရက္ေလာက္ ေပးပါခင္ဗ်ာ ”
“အင္း ….. ခက္တာပဲ။ ေလာေလာဆယ္အလုပ္ေတြ က်ပ္ေနေတာ့တစ္ေယာက္ေယာက္မရွိရင္လည္းမျဖစ္ျပန္ဘူး။
ႏွစ္ေယာက္စလံုးကငါ့ကုမၸဏီရဲ႕စံျပ၀န္ထမ္းေတြဆိုေတာ့ခြင့္မေပးႏိုင္ဘူးလို႔လည္းမေျပာရက္ျပန္ဘူး။
ဒီေတာ့တစ္ေယာက္တစ္လွည့္စီသြားၾကဖို႔ေမတၱာရပ္ခံပါရေစကြာ ”

သူ႕ေနရာသူျပန္သြား
“ေဟာဒီခြက္ထဲက ေက်ာက္ခဲေလးေတြဘယ္ေရာက္ကုန္ၿပီလဲ “”
ဪ ….. အဲဒါေက်ာက္တံုးေလးေတြလား၊ ကြၽန္ေတာ္ကေသာက္ရမယ့္ေဆးမွတ္လို႔ခုနကပဲေသာက္လိုက္မိၿပီဆရာမ “”
ေဟာေတာ္ဒုကၡပါပဲ။ ရွင့္ဆီးအိမ္ထဲကခဲြထုတ္ထားတဲ့ဟာေတြရွင့္ 。。အဲဒါရွင္သတိရလာရင္ ျပဖို႔ထားတာ။ ”

ေမးမွသိတယ္
“မင္းတို႕လင္မယား ျပန္ေပါင္းထုပ္သြားၾကၿပီလို႔ၾကားရတာ ၀မ္းသာတယ္ကြာ၊
ေန႕ခင္းတုန္းကေတာင္မင္းတို႕အိမ္ေရွ႕က ျဖတ္ေလွ်ာက္ေတာ့မင္းတို႔လင္မယားႏွစ္ေယာက္
ထင္းေတြအတူတူခဲြေနၾကတာ ေတြ႕မိေသးတယ္ကြာ ”
“ထင္းမဟုတ္ဘူး သူငယ္ခ်င္းရဲ႕ ၊ အိမ္ေထာင္ပရိေဘာဂေတြ ”

ေျပာခ်င္တာကဒီလိုပါ
“မင္းဟာကားကို တစ္နာရီမိုင္တစ္ရာႏႈန္းေလာက္နဲ႔ ေမာင္းလာတယ္ ။ၿပီးေတာ့ညအေမွာင္ထဲ
ကားေရွ႕မီးကို ဖြင့္မေမာင္းဘူး ။ လမ္းလည္းမွားလာတယ္ ။ယာဥ္ေမာင္းလိုင္စင္လည္း
မပါဘူး ။ ကိုင္း …..ဒီေလာက္ေတာင္အျပစ္ေတြမ်ားတာ
ဘာေျပာခ်င္ေသးလဲ ”
“ကြၽန္ေတာ္ေျပာခ်င္တာက ကြၽန္ေတာ့္မွာအျပစ္တစ္ခုပဲ ရွိပါတယ္ ။
အဲဒါကေတာ့ဒီကားကုိခိုးလာတာပါပဲ ”

ေမေမ့တာ၀န္ထားလိုက္
“ဒီလူနဲ႔သမီးလက္မထပ္ခ်င္ဘူးေမေမ ၊ သူနဲ႔သမီးနဲ႔ အယူအဆခ်င္း မတူၾကဘူး ။
သူကငရဲရွိတယ္ဆိုတာကိုမယံုဘူးလို႔အေၾကာက္အကန္ေျပာတယ္ ေမေမရဲ႕ ”
“လက္ထပ္မွာသာ ထပ္လိုက္ပါသမီးရယ္ ၊ ငရဲတကယ္ရွိေၾကာင္း သိေအာင္လုပ္ဖို႔ေမေမ့တာ၀န္ထားလိုက္စမ္းပါ”

 အေမြဆက္ခံမိလို႔
“ခင္ဗ်ား မေသသင့္ဘူးဗ် ။ ဟုတ္တယ္ ၊ တကယ္ဆို ခင္ဗ်ား မေသသင့္ေသးဘူး ”
“ေဟ့လူ မူးမူးနဲ႔ အုတ္ဂူေရွ႕မွာငိုၿပီး ဘာေတြလာေျပာေနတာလဲ ။
ဒီဂူထဲျမဳပ္ထားတာခင္ဗ်ားရဲ႕အခင္ဆံုးမိတ္ေဆြမို႔လို႔လား ”
“ဟင့္အင္း ….. ကြၽန္ေတာ့္မိန္းမရဲ႕ ပထမေယာက်္ားပါ ”

မေျမာက္ပါနဲ႔ဗ်ာ
“မင္းခိုးတဲ့ပစ္စည္းေတြက အစံုပါပဲလားကြ ၊ တီဗီြရယ္ ၊ ေအာက္စက္ရယ္ ၊
ေရခဲေသတၱာရယ္၊ ပန္ကာရယ္ ၊ မီးခံေသတၱာရယ္ ၊ အိမ္သားေတြတစ္ေယာက္မွမႏိုးေစဘဲ
အျပင္ကိုဒါေတြအကုန္သယ္ထုတ္ႏိုင္တာ ခ်ီးက်ဴးပါတယ္ကြာ  ”
“ဟာ ….. တရားသူႀကီးမင္းကလည္း ကြၽန္ေတာ့္ကုိအေနခက္ေအာင္ေျမွာက္ေနျပန္ၿပီ”

ထင္တာကတျခား
“တရားခံက သူငယ္မကို ပဲြခင္းထဲက ေခၚထုတ္သြားၿပီး လူရွင္းတဲ့ေနရာေရာက္မွပါသမွ်လုယက္သြားတယ္ဆိုတာ
ဟုတ္သလား ”
“ဟုတ္ပါတယ္ ၊ တရားသူႀကီးမင္း ”
“ဒါျဖင့္ရင္ ပဲြခင္းပရိသတ္ထဲမွာတုန္းက ဘာျဖစ္လို႔ေအာ္ဟစ္အကူအညီ မေတာင္းခဲ့တာလဲ”
“ကြၽန္မနားကိုအသာကပ္ၿပီး လက္ကုတ္ေခၚသြားတုန္းက ဒီလုိလုပ္လိမ့္မယ္မထင္ခဲ့မိလို႔ပါရွင္”

မိတ္ေဆြဟာ ခႊင့္လႊတ္ထိုုက္သူ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္လိုု ့ဘုုရားက ဆိုုပါတယ္။

ငါတစ္ပါးတည္းသာလွ်င္ ကိုယ္အတြက္ေၾကာင့္၊ သင္၏အျပစ္တို႔ကို ေျဖမည္။ သင္၏ဒုစရိုက္အမႈတို႔ကို မေအာက္ေမ့။

ေဟရွာယအနာဂတိၱက်မ္း အခန္းၾကီး ၄၃း၂၅

 

ကိုယ့္ဘ၀မွာ အဆင္မေျပမွဳေတြ စျပီး ၾကံဳလာရရင္ " ငါသိတယ္။ ဘုရားငါ့ကို စျပီး ဆံုးမေနျပီ။ ငါ မေန ့က(မႏွစ္က ဒါမွမဟုတ္ လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ ႏွစ္ႏွစ္ဆယ္ တုန္းက ျပဳမိမွားတဲ့ အျပစ္အတြက္ ဘုရားငါ့ကို ဒဏ္ခတ္ျပီ" လို႔ မိတ္ေဆြထင္ျမင္ မိဘူးပါသလား။

 

ဘုရားသခင္က ကိုယ့္သားသမီးကို ဒီလိုမ်ိဳး လုပ္လိမ့္မယ္လို ့ထင္ပါသလား။ ဒီလိုမ်ိဳး ဘုရားဘယ္ေတာ့မွ မလုပ္ပါဘူး။ ပေရာဖက္ ေဟရွာယက ဘုုရားသခင္က ကြ်န္ေတာ္တိုု ့ရဲ့ အျပစ္ကိုု မွတ္မထားပါဘူးလိုု ့ ေျပာပါတယ္။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တိုု ့ရဲ့အျပစ္ကိုု ၀န္ခံလိုုက္တာနဲ ့အျပစ္အားလံုုးကိုု ခြင့္လႊတ္လုုိက္သလိုု ေမ့လဲေမ့ျပစ္လိုုက္ပါတယ္။ ဘယ္ေတာ့မွလည္း အတိတ္က အရာေတြကိုု ျပန္လည္မေဖာ္ထုုတ္ပါဘူး။

 

မိတ္ေဆြဟာ ခရစ္ယာန္တေယာက္ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ရင္၊ ဧဖက္ၾသ၀ါဒစာ ၁း၄-၅ ကိုု ေသခ်ာ ဂရုုတစိုုက္ဖတ္ၾကည့္ပါ။

"ငါတို႔သည္ ဘုရားသခင့္ေရွ႔ေတာ္၌ ေမတၱာအားျဖင့္ သန္႔ရွင္းလ်က္၊ အျပစ္ကင္းလြတ္လ်က္ ျဖစ္မည္အေၾကာင္း၊ဤကမၻာ မတည္မရွိမွီ ငါတို႔ကို ခရစ္ေတာ္၌ ေရြးေကာက္ေတာ္မူသည္ႏွင့္အညီ၊ ေကာင္းကင္ဘံုႏွင့္ဆိုင္ေသာ အရာတို႔၌ ခပ္သိမ္းေသာ ဓမၼမဂၤလာတို႔ကို ခရစ္ေတာ္အားျဖင့္ ငါတို႔အား ေပးသနားေတာ္မူေသာ ငါတို႔သခင္ ေယရႈခရစ္၏ ခမည္းေတာ္ဘုရားသခင္သည္ မဂၤလာရွိေတာ္မူေစသတည္း။

 

ထိုဘုရားသခင္သည္ ခ်စ္ေတာ္္ မူေသာ သားေတာ္ေၾကာင့္၊ ငါတို႔အား ေပးေတာ္မူေသာ ေက်းဇူးေတာ္၏ ဘုန္းအသေရကို ခ်ီးမြမ္းေစျခင္းငွါ၊ ငါတို႔သည္ ေယရႈခရစ္အားျဖင့္ သားအရာကို ရမည္အေၾကာင္း၊ အလိုေတာ္ရွိေသာ ေစတနာအတိုင္း ေရွးမဆြက ခြဲခန္႔ မွတ္သားေတာ္မူ၏။"

ဘုုရားသခင္က မိတ္ေဆြကိုု ၾကည့္တဲ့ အခါမွာ ခရစ္ေတာ္ကေန တဆင့္ၾကည့္တယ္ဆိုုတာ သေဘာေပါက္ပါရဲ့လား။ ခရစ္ေတာ္ လက္၀ါးကားတိုုင္မွာ အေသခံတာဟာ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တိုု ့ရဲ့ အျပစ္အားလံုုးကိုု ေပးဆပ္ဖိုု ့၊ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တိုု ့အားလံုုးကိုု ခႊင္လႊတ္ဖိုု ့ နဲ ့ အျပစ္အားလံုုးကိုု ေမ့ပစ္လိုုက္ဖိုု ့အတြက္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။


ဒါေၾကာင့္ ခရစ္ယာန္တေယာက္ျဖစ္ရျခင္းဟာ တကယ့္သတင္းေကာင္းတရပ္ပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ကိုုယ့္ဘ၀ကိုု ခရစ္ေတာ္ထံမွာ အပ္ႏွံတယ္၊ ခရစ္ေတာ္က လက္ခံတယ္၊ ခႊင့္လႊတ္တယ္။ ျပီးေတာ့ အခြင့္အေရး အသစ္ကိုု ထပ္ေပးပါတယ္။ "အခုု သင့္ကိုု အျပစ္မရွိလိုု ့ငါျမင္ျပီ၊ ငါ့မ်က္ေမွာက္ေတာ္ေရွ ့ သင္သည္ ငါ၏ ေမတာျဖင့္ ျခံဳလႊမ္းလ်က္ ရွိျပီ။ " လိုု ့ ဘုုရားသခင္ ဆိုုပါတယ္။

ရစ္(ခ္)၀ါရင္၏ ေန ့စဥ္ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ခ်က္စာေစာင္မွ ၂၆ရက္ ၾသဂုုတ္လ ၂၀၁၁ ရက္စြဲပါ စာမ်က္ႏွာအား ဆီေလ်ာ္ေအာင္ ျပန္ဆိုုသည္။

Daily Hope  Aug 26, 2011  by Rick Waren

Bangkok-Chiang Mai trains resume

The train services between Bangkok and Chiang Mai have been resumed after the rail track damaged by flashfloods in Lamphun province has been repaired, State Railway of Thailand public relations chief Nuan-anong Wongchan announced on Sunday.

Train services between Bangkok and Chiang Mai had been halted after the rail track between Khun Tan and Tha Chomphu stations was damaged for about 20m by floodfloods.

Rapid train No 109 (Bangkok-Chiang Mai) departed from Hua Lampong railway station in Bangkok at 2.30pm.

It was followed by other trains including special express train No 1.

However, the trains were expected to arrive late at the destination because they would be able to run at the speed of only 20km per hour where the damaged rail track had just been repaired.

Japan to accept Burmese refugees from Umpiem camp

Japan will accept the first batch of Burmese refugees from Umpiem refugee camp, the second largest refugee camp on the Thai-Burmese border, in September 2013.

Camp officials, said: “In September 2012, Japan will scrutinize the list of refugees. In September 2013, they [the first batch of refugees] will leave from the camp [for Japan],” Saw Wah Htee, the chairman of the Umpiem refugee camp committee, told Mizzima.

Relevant Japanese officials and officials of the Mae Sot [on the Thai side of the Moei River opposite Myawaddy] branch of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) visited the refugee camp in Tak Province in July and met with 200 refugees who are interested in resettling in Japan. Earlier, Japan accepted refugees from the Mae La refugee camp, the largest on the Thai-Burmese border.

The Japanese government has not disclosed that how many refugees it will accept. Currently, more than 25,000 people live in the Umpiem refugee camp located 75 km south of Mae Sot. Among them, 11,404 people are recognized by the UNHCR and the remainder have applied for refugee status with the UNHCR. Japan said that it would not accept people over age 60 or the handicapped. There are 140 refugees over age 70, and 100 who are handicapped in the Mae La camp, according to officials.

“There are three options for the refugees; going back to Burma, living in Thailand and resettling in a resettlement country. Among them, resettling in a resettlement country is the only option for a brighter future,” said Saw Wah Htee.

He said most refugees would like to resettle in the US; to resettle in Japan requires a longer time. The Umpiem refugee camp was set up in 1999; it has 16 quarters. More than 10,000 refugees from the camp have resettled in resettlement countries; 75 percent of them went to the US and the rest have resettled in Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Canada and England.

Recently, Thai authorities gave instructions to officials at the Umpiem camp to compile a list that included four areas; the number of refugees who want to return Burma, the number of Burmese refugees who have already arrived in resettlement countries, the number of refugees who have applied to resettlement countries and the number of refugees who want to continue to live in Thailand.

Saw Wah Htee said that they had prepared a list with the education backgrounds of refugees and had made a list of people who were born in Thailand. A final list will be submitted to camp officials by September 7. Because of the instructions, refugees in the camp are concerned that Thai authorities will close the camp sometime in the future.

Source: MIZZIMA

Phangnga struggles with flood disaster

Five districts in Phangnga have been declared disaster zones after flash floods and forest runoff, triggered by heavy downpours, ravaged the province.

The flooding has inundated houses and farmland in Thai Muang, Takua Pa, Kapong, Khura Buri and Takua Thung districts, affecting more than 24,000 people, said provincial disaster and prevention chief Somkiart Inthachan.

The districts were declared disaster areas and a clean-up is underway.

The rain, which started on Thursday night, continues to batter most parts of the province, but the situation is improving and some residents are now moving back to their homes.

Some residents began cleaning mud out of their homes and moved back their belongings as flood water receded. However, riverside residents remained on higher ground as they are wary of floods rising again.

Many sections of key roads such as Phetkasem Road which were closed due to floods have now reopened.

In Phuket, the floods receded in several areas including Patong in Kathu district.

However, parts of Patong Hospital were still under water. Workers began pumping out the water.

The hospital yesterday resumed medical services to outpatients and emergency cases. A total of 38 inpatients were earlier transferred to Vachira Phuket Hospital in Muang district.

Meanwhile, the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department yesterday reported that the death toll from the Nock Ten storm-triggered floods had risen to 48 with one person still missing.

Fourteen provinces remain flooded. Of these, eight provinces _ Sa Kaeo, Chanthaburi, Trat, Ubon Ratchathani, Surin, Si Sa Ket, Nakhon Ratchasima and Surin _ have been warned about the risk of water run-off and river overflows.

Minimum wage and the migrant ‘bogeyman’

 In the unmarked offices of Burma Lawyers’ Council in the Thai border town of Mae Sot, Saw Htun is laughing. The source of this 36-year-old labour rights advisor’s amusement is the idea that Burmese migrant workers might soon be earning 300 baht a day – set to become Thailand’s minimum wage if Yingluck Shinawatra’s newly elected government gets its way. “This won’t apply to Burmese workers,” he says. “They don’t have the ability to make Yingluck Shinawatra prime minister. Thai workers do.” Given that migrant workers in Mae Sot are lucky if they make even two-thirds of Tak province’s current minimum wage of 162 baht, you can forgive Saw Htun the cynicism.

The campaign to derail the Pheu Thai Party-led government’s plans to raise daily minimum wages has been determined and at times shrill. Since the party’s election victory on 3 July, groups representing vested interests like the Federation of Thai Industries and the Thai Chamber of Commerce – not to mention Democrat Party politicians anxious to score points against the government following a humiliating electoral defeat – have been aided by large sections of the Thai media in waging what amounts to a propaganda war against the policy.

Perhaps inevitably, the Burmese bogeyman has featured heavily. In an editorial entitled “Pheu Thai’s wage hike doesn’t add up for Thailand”, The Nation claimed that boosting minimum wages could “open the floodgates for illegal migrant workers”. On the same day in Thailand’s largest tabloid, Thai Rath, columnist Lom Plianthit was making similar doom-laden predictions. “Burmese, Lao and Cambodian workers will flood in to dig for gold in Thailand… If one million more flood in, the security of Thailand will undoubtedly be shaken.” Given the vital role migrant workers play in so many of Thailand’s key industries, this was an unseemly display of hypocrisy meeting hyperbole. Was there any substance to the scare tactics?

The first observation to make is that few of the 3-4 million migrant workers in Thailand, 80% of whom are Burmese, are paid the minimum wage anyway. Indeed, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Thai law links labour rights to a worker’s nationality or immigration status. In line with international standards, it doesn’t. That hasn’t prevented a depressing tendency to underpay migrants – not to mention worse abuses.

In Mae Sot district, home to some 300 textile and garment factories that operate in a kind of labour-law no man’s land, almost no migrant workers make the legal minimum of 162 baht per day. Moe Swe, head of Yaung Chi Oo Workers Association, which fights for workers’ rights in the border area and across Thailand, said workers in Mae Sot had to be satisfied with what employers were willing to pay – and that was never 162 baht.

“The employers keep their work permit and migrant registration card. So the workers cannot move. If they run away, they become illegal. The other problem is that it is quite difficult to change jobs,” he said. “These limitations make workers powerless.”

Moe Swe, who says Thai factory owners displeased with his work fighting exploitation once put a price on his head, said many companies paid just 60 baht for an 11-hour shift. The reward for compulsory overtime is frequently nothing more than a tub of instant noodles. The average wage, he said, is 65-80 baht per day. “In Mae Sot, nobody gets the minimum wage, this is quite sure,” he said. The idea that workers on the border might earn 300 baht for their daily toils, then, is clearly fanciful.

But for migrants, it can get much worse. Many are not merely exploited, but enslaved. During UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking Joy Ngozi Ezeilo’s recent mission to Thailand, she heard shocking tales of victims of the trade in human beings. The case of Ye, a Burmese man trafficked into Thailand with promises of a monthly salary of Bt4,200 a month, was one of them. Arriving, he was told he would have to work on a fishing boat for free to pay off debts incurred in bringing him here, according to The Nation. “Ye told of migrants who, exhausted and unable to continue working, were simply pushed into the sea. He said he felt hopeless and hated the captain of the boat, who took advantage of him and the other workers… Ye worked for eight months on one boat. He was never paid for his work and forbidden to keep any cash of his own.” This is an extreme case, but by no means isolated.

It would nevertheless be wrong to pretend that every migrant worker is underpaid or a victim of abuse. In the provinces that surround Bangkok, Thailand’s industrial heartlands, workers are more often treated in line with the law. Export-oriented businesses such as manufacturing and seafood processing plants are subject to inspections and have to pay minimum wages.

Frequently, though, they will have fully paid workers on the books and underpaid employees off them. Workers with many years’ experience and those in more senior positions – foremen in factories and on construction sites, for example – are the most likely to be rewarded. Still, Jackie Pollock, head of the Chiang Mai-based Migrant Assistance Programme, estimates that “no more than 10 percent” of migrant workers in Thailand are paid at the legal levels.

So can Thailand expect a “flood” of migrants across its borders? Such claims rest on a misconception of the factors and mechanisms that bring migrants to Thai workplaces. Assoc. Professor Sean Turnell of Australia’s Macquarie University, an expert on the economics of Burma, told DVB that the concerns of some Thai commentators “do not hold water”;

“Burmese workers are overwhelmingly motivated by ‘push’ factors (i.e. conditions in Burma, economic and otherwise) rather than ‘pull’ factors (the intrinsic attractiveness of Thailand’s labour market),” he said.
There is also a myopic assumption that people in Burma know about labour laws in Thailand. “If migrant workers knew that they were entitled to minimum wage and labour rights, then that would be a great thing,” said Pollock.

“But I don’t think they do – and certainly when they’re in Burma they don’t. It’s not a great pull factor because it’s unknown to migrants.”

Turnell agreed. “I would suggest that the average person fleeing Burma for Thailand would have no idea about Thailand’s labour laws, and these would have zero impact on their movement,” he said.

Still, the misconceptions didn’t stop news outlets claiming the policy had already led to illegal migrants setting foot on Thai soil. On July 10, The Nation reported that 113 Cambodian workers had entered Thailand “in the hope of getting paid a minimum wage of Bt300 per day as promised by the Pheu Thai-led government.” Not so much as a single quote was supplied to back the suggestion that the Cambodians would not have entered the country anyway, as they do every day.

“If you look at the statistics, there’s been no evidence at all that there’s been any substantial increase in people coming into the country since the policy of the Thai government was announced,” said Andy Hall of the Human Rights and Development Foundation.

This somewhat inconvenient, if spurious, story led to then-prime-minister-elect Yingluck coming out with a worrying denial. “Alien workers are not connected to the 300 baht minimum wage,” she declared, prompting labour organisations and NGOs to point out that migrants are legally entitled to the same wages as Thais. Is the new prime minister of Thailand ignorant of her own country’s laws? Or is this a sign that she is content with the status quo – where some workers are more equal than others?

Opposition to the 300-baht wage – which might have gone some way to correcting the widening gap between Thailand’s rich and poor – already seems to have forced the government to backtrack. According to the Bangkok Post, Commerce Minister Kittiratt Na-Ranong recently told a major meeting on the wage hike policy that the government “would not try to force the private sector to comply with the wage hike policy” but would “take the lead by increasing the minimum wage for workers of state enterprises and employees of state agencies.” Perhaps migrant workers will not be the only ones left out in the cold.

6P Registration to be Handled via Refugee Communities in Malaysia

The UNHCR has announced today that the biometric registration of refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia will be conducted in collaboration with refugee community-based organization (CBOS).

The announcement said the processes of the 6P Programme will include the taking of bio-data and biometric information of all individuals concerned including refugees and asylum seekers registered with UNHCR.

In the first phase of the 'long running' processes beginning yesterday, the UNHCR having agreed with the Malaysian Government will assist in registering those individuals residing in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor until 26 August.

"UNHCR is in contact with the CBOS and had worked out a scheduling system to have selected population to be registered this week. The schedule will be conducted in different batches and in accordance with the communities that have been identified to send their members," added the announcement.

Refugee communities from Burma including Alliance of Chin Refugees, Chin Refugee Committee, Falam Refugee Organization, Dai Community and other ethnic groups are asked to send their members to the Putrajaya Immigration Office for the first phase.

A member of the Chin Refugees in Kuala Lumpur told Chinland Guardian: "Now that a proper announcement is made, it makes our confusion clear. Before, we were not sure if we should go to get registered."

Each refugee community is expected to bring a limit of 600 individuals for the next three days to meet a total quota of 2,500 a day within the processing capacity of the Malaysian Immigration in Kuala Lumpur.

The UNHCR also announced that no payment is being charged for the ongoing registration by the Malaysian Government.

Any individuals who are not a member of the refugee communities are advised to wait for further instructions from the UNHCR, according to today's announcement.

It is claimed that the second phase of the 6P exercise will start next month with its details of schedules including venues and dates yet to be confirmed. 

Source: Chinland Guardian

50 Hours

Flood is started from last sunday and until now. In Maesai raining is starting again this morning and we are facing the flood is until now.

We have pump out water from the banks until now almost 50 hours. But not so much impact because the incoming water is more than pump out water.

In practically we are not facing the flood problem is our space, some school class room are effected, in our neighbor houses are more flood.

We bought one water pump machine and running everyday with gasoline engine, some of the houses from our neighbor are came and say "THANK YOU VERY MUCH" and a number of houses are helping the money for gasoline for running the pump engine.

We are very happy for work with this opportunity, we hoped that is very good opportunity for community development program for our community.

Time not right for Thai push back

Surapong Kongchantuk, vice chairman of the Thai National Human Rights Commission’s sub-committee on ethnic minorities, the stateless, migrant workers and displaced persons, has said now is not yet the right time to repatriate refugees from Burma.

Kongchantuk was responding to a remark recently made by the governor of Thailand’s Tak province Samart Loifah. He had issued an order for refugee camps situated along the border in the region to make lists of their population to pre-empt a send back to Burma.

Kongchantuk however told DVB that we have yet to see tangible improvements;

“We sent a list of procedures for the concerned [Thai] government departments regarding the repatriation – that it should be voluntary and that their native country must be in a ready-state to accept them back,” Kongchantuk said.

“To decide whether the native country is ready or not should not be based on claims by the [Burmese government] alone but also needs to be inspected and approved by a UN organisation such as the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). So far, the UNHCR is yet to make any inspection about the real situation,” he added.

“This is not a case between just two countries but also concerns the international community. The Tak governor’s decision is irrelevantly premature and is causing a panic among the refugees.”

Samart Loifa made the orders after President Thein Sein’s remark on 17 August, that Burmese nationals living abroad in exile were allowed to go back to their home country.

He told the media that he was happy for Burmese refugees, who were forced to flee their homes, that they were allowed to go back to Burma and expressed a belief that this would bring peace to the Thai-Burma border region.

Saw Po Dan, chairman of Nupo refugee camp however said they had not received any order from Loifa as yet;

“There is no official order yet. [Loifa] came around our camp a couple of times in the past but he didn’t come in [the camp] – he just hung around outside and talked with camp officials. There was no clear order as yet,” said Saw Po Dan.

There are nearly 150,000 refugees living in nine refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border. Whilst commentators have welcomed what appears to be a relative softening of rhetoric from Naypyidaw, others have responded to invitations back and supposed offers of dialogue with some scepticism.

Far from a decrease in violence in the ethnic areas of Burma the past year has seen an escalation in fighting as the Burmese military has pursued greater incursions into Shan, Karen and Kachin areas.

The last of which has seen around 10,000 people internally displaced and the World Food Program commence delivering food aid to over 3,000 vulnerable people near Kachin state’s capital, Myitkina last week.

From: DVB

ဘုရားသခင္ကို ယံုၾကည္စိတ္ခ်ရၿခင္းသည္ အသက္တာတြင္ မေရရာၿခင္းကသင္ၾကားေပးသည္

“ကိုယ္ေတာ္သည္ ခရစ္ေတာ္တည္းဟူေသာအသက္ရွင္ ေတာ္မူေသာဘုရား သခင္၏ သားေတာ္ျဖစ္ေတာ္မူသည္ကို အကြၽႏ္ုပ္ တို႔ယံုၾကည္သိမွတ္ ၾကပါသည္ဟု ေလွ်ာက္ေလ၏။”(ေယာ ၆း၆၉)


ေရတြင္းခန္းေၿခာက္ ေသာေၾကာင့္၊  သခင္ေယရႈေပးသည္ေရသည္ ထာ၀ရအသက္ ရွင္းၿခင္းအလိုငွါထြက္ေသာ စမ္းေရၿဖစ္လိမ္႕မည္ဟုမိန္႕ေတာ္မူ၏။ (ေယာ ၄)


ၿပင္းထန္ေသာမုန္တိုင္းၿဖစ္ေသာေၾကာင့္၊ သခင္ေယရႈသည္ မုန္တိုင္းသခင္ၿဖစ္သည္။  (မ  ၁၄)


ေရလႊမ္းမိုးေသာေၾကာင့္၊ သခင္ေယရႈသည္အိမ္္ေဆာက္ရန္ေက်ာက္ၿဖစ္သည္။ (မ ၇)


အေၿခအၿမစ္သည္ခိုက္ခိုက္တုန္သည္၊ သခင္ေယရႈသည္တိုက္ေထာင့္အထြဋ္ဖ်ားလံုး၀တည္ၿငိမ္သည္။ (မ ၂၁)


မက်န္းမာၾကေသာေၾကာင့္ ၊ သခင္ေယရႈအနာေရာဂါကိုၿငိမ္းေစေတာ္မူ၏  (မ ၄)


အၿပစ္ေၾကာင့္ၿဖစ္ေသာအေၾကြးမ်ားကိုမဆပ္ႏိုင္ေသာေၾကာင့္၊ သခင္ေယရႈသည္ေပးဆပ္ေသာ ကယ္တင္ရွင္ ၿဖစ္သည္  (ဂလ ၃)


ကၽြႏ္ုပ္တို႕၀မ္းနည္းေၾကကြဲေသာေၾကာင့္၊ သခင္ေယရႈကကုန္းေပၚမွ “ခ်စ္သားတို႕၊ စားစရာ တစံုတခုရွိသေလာ ဟုေမးေတာ္မူလွ်င္?”  (ေယာ ၂၁)


ကၽြန္ုပ္တို႕မယံုသကၤာသည္မွာအၿပည့္ၿဖစ္ေသာေၾကာင့္၊  သခင္ေယရႈ လက္ေတာ္၌ သံရိုက္ရာခ်က္ ကိုစမ္းၾကည့္ရန္ဖိတ္ေခၚေနသည္ ။ (ေယာ ၂၀)


သခင္ေယရႈသည္ မႏွစ္ၿမိဳ႕ဖြယ္ ခဏခဏ သင္ၾကားေပးသည္ အဘယ္ေၾကာင့္ဆိုေသာ္တပည့္ေတာ္မ်ားသည္ ၿပတ္သားေသာ ယံုၾကည္မႈသည္ဘယ္ေတာ့မွအတန္းထဲတြင္ မရၾကပါ၊ ကၽြႏ္ုပ္တို႕သည္ မ်က္ႏွာခ်င္းဆိုင္ ေတြ႕ ေသာအခါ အသက္တာတြင္မေရရာၿခင္းၿပဳလုပ္သည္။ “ကၽြန္ေတာ္မလုပ္ႏိုင္ပါ၊ ဘုရားသခင္သာလုပ္ႏိုင္သည္။”

ကၽြႏ္ုပ္တို႕သာဒါကိုလက္ခံလွ်င္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕၏အေၿခအေနသည္ဘုရားသခင္၏စိတ္ႏွလံုးသို႕တြန္းပို႕ေပးသည္၊ “ကိုယ္ေတာ္သည္ ခရစ္ေတာ္တည္းဟူေသာအသက္ရွင္ ေတာ္မူေသာဘုရား သခင္၏ သားေတာ္ျဖစ္ေတာ္မူသည္ကို အကြၽႏ္ုပ္ တို႔ယံုၾကည္သိမွတ္ ၾကပါသည္ဟု ေလွ်ာက္ေလ၏။” ( ေယာ ၆း၆၉)

Malaysia UNHCR Accused of Betraying Refugees

The Malaysia United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is accused of betraying refugees by conspiring with Putrajaya Immigration Office to take their fingerprints and send them back to their own countries, it has been claimed.

On Tuesday, several UNHCR-affiliated organizations in Malaysia instructed refugees to provide fingerprints at Putrajaya Immigration Office, claims Shwe Zin, a Burmese refugee living in Malaysia.

“I arrived at the immigration office in the morning and was made to queue up. Then when my turn came, I had my fingerprints and a photo taken. And then I was given a printed document written in Malay that said to go back to our own country,” said Shwe Zin.

Many registered refugees came to the immigration office to give their fingerprints but did not know the details of what was going on, she added.

Many refugees received a document entitled “Pulang Ke Negara Asal” which translates as “Returning Home,” “Leaving” or “Going back to native country.” However, others were registered and given an alternative document which allows them to stay in Malaysia.

“I think I made a mistake by giving my fingerprints. It is impossible for me to go back [to Burma],” said Shwe Zin, adding that UNHCR staff were present in the immigration office.

“The UNHCR is tricking us because they want to settle corruption dealings with refugee processes. I don't know why some refugee receive different documents,” said Kyaw Htoo Aung from Malaysia, who works for worker affairs.

An official from Putrajaya Immigration Office in Malaysia refused to give further details when contacted by The Irrawaddy, but just said that it was an “enforcement event.”

Malaysia is currently running the 6P Program to tackle illegal migrant numbers in a bid to settle social problems and crime related to illegal foreigners. Although the Malaysia UNHCR was officially against the scheme, after Aug. 23 the organization is legally obliged to assist with the 6P registration.

UNHCR refugee card holder Myat Ko Ko sent a letter to UNHCR officials asking why the organization was not upfront about its involvement in the fingerprint campaign, and questioning its commitment to protecting international human rights and refugees affairs.

“As a result of the UNHCR and Malaysia [government] fingerprint program addressed to all the ethnic Burmese refugees in Malaysia, all of them are in trouble and the UNHCR should surely have given an announcement about it,” he wrote.

The Irrawaddy repeatedly tried to contact the UNHCR office in Malaysia but there was no reply.

Yan Naing Tun, the editor of weekly Kuala Lumpur journal Thuriya, said the action is taking place because of UNHCR corruption when dealing with processing refugee claims.

The Malaysia UNHCR has been accused of discriminating between refugees and corruptly selling resettlement registrations for profit, according to refugees in Malaysia.

“While I met with the Malaysian authorities, my friend told me not to give a thumbprint on the document when the [UNHCR] called us. It is an act of cheating. They made the plan in secret but the problem is now widely known,” said Yan Naing Tun.

Australia and Malaysia’s recent agreement to swap 800 asylum seekers who came to Australia for 4,000 refugees living in Malaysia was widely criticized by human rights groups, as Malaysia is not a signatory of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention.

The Malaysian government has cooperated with the UNHCR on humanitarian grounds since 1975 even though Malaysia has not signed the UN Convention Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. Burmese refugees have since been sent to third countries including the United States, Canada, Australia, France, New Zealand, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway.

According to the Malaysia UNHCR website, at the end of May 2011 there are some 94,400  refugees and asylum-seekers registered with their office. Of these, around 86,500, or 90 percent, are from Burma. That figure is split up into 35,600 Chins, 21,400 Rohingyas, 10,100 Burmese Muslims, 3,800 Mon and 3,400 Kachins or from other smaller ethnic minorities.

From:Irrawaddy

Reconstruction Project in Three Mountain(Taung Tone Lone) Village

Three Mountain (Taung Tone Lone) village is the quarter of Tarlay District Area, that village is also break down during the Earthquake on March, 2011.

Especially include the Church building is all are fall down and broken all the Church building, now we are helping the reconstruction project of that building, as soon they will finish and next week they can start the painting in and out and some are fixed the windows and door.

Please pray and continue for that reconstruction project and for the villagers.

We attached some picture from the church building for your reference of prayer.

 Three Mountain Church(Photo:maesaigrace)

 Three Mountain Church Building(Photo:maesaigrace)

 Inside of the Building(Photo:maesaigrace)

 From Behind(Photo:maesaigrace)

 From Left Side(Photo:maesaigrace)

Inside of the Building(Photo:maesaigrace)

Package tour sales drop despite arrival growth

TOURIST arrivals increased 22.8 percent in the first six months of 2011, but the rise was not all good news for the tourism sector.

According to the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism, only 5525 of the 172,244 tourists who visited the country from January 1 to June 30 came on group packages, down more than 60pc on the same period last year.

However, there was a 40pc increase in foreign individual traveller (FIT) arrivals, which totalled 106,970.
“In my company the number of booking is about the same as 2011 but this year I’ve received more FITs, who book flights and hotels rather than complete packages – I would say total bookings are now about 60-40 in favour of FITs,” said Daw Phyu Phyu Mar, the managing partner of Seven Star Tours in Hlaing township.

She said FITs were usually younger and more adventurous and that if the government reduced restrictions, such as visa and border crossing regulations, “we are likely to see more FITs come to Myanmar”.

Industry sources said the increase in FITs was in large part due to the end of a tourism boycott campaign and positive press following the general election and release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in November 2010. The campaign had been particularly effective in Western Europe, the United Kingdom and United States.

Arrivals from European countries totalled almost 40,000 in the first six months of 2011, a 44pc increase on last year, with France (9435 visitors) and Germany (6119) leading the way.

Daw Phyu Phyu Mar said her company has received a “good number” of bookings for the coming peak season, which runs from October through to March 2012.

“We’ve even had enquiries from Balkan states and other countries in eastern Europe such as Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine. But because of the unstable currency exchange rate, we might see some cancellations later on.”

U Hpone Thant, the former secretary of Union of Myanmar Travel Association, said the figures showed travellers wanted freedom and flexibility, rather than the restrictions of joining a package tour where everything is organised.

However, he said group tour numbers could easily bounce back if tour operators designed more “interactive” packages and marketed them effectively.

“We need programs that are more than just pagoda, restaurant, hotel. People travel to interact with other cultures and experience the differences. Our tour programs are too conventional and don’t allow tourists to have an interactive experience. For example, instead of just getting tourists to watch a Myanmar traditional dance show, we should encourage them to get behind the curtains, talk with the performers or even teach them some rudimentary steps,” he said.

Daw Than Than Swe, manager of Diethelm Travels, said another ongoing factor that would hinder purchases of group packages was the exchange rate, which had made meals and land transportation more expensive this year.

“For the coming [peak] season, I think hotel room rates are likely to rise 15 to 25pc. Most domestic airlines will hike fares 10pc but for some remote destinations it might be even more than 10pc. [Land] transportation [are already] much higher in Mandalay, up about 25pc [since the start of 2011], and in Bagan and Inle up about 10pc,” she said.

This would eat into companies’ profits, because the packages are sold up to 12 months in advance. “We’ve already sold the packages so we can’t increase the price to take into account the changes in the exchange rate.”

Daw Phyu Phyu Mar said exchange rate stability was one of several factors needed to sustain growth in tourist arrivals, and recommended the drafting of a “master plan” for the tourism industry.

“We should not be satisfied with this increase in arrivals; tourist arrival numbers are still very small compared to neighbouring countries,” she said. “We need to examine and open up more sights for tourists, create new activities and attractions, and teach people in newly opened up places how to properly handle tourists.”

Migrant passport applications surge

By Kyaw Hsu Mon
August 22 - 28, 2011

THE number of temporary passports issued to illegal migrant workers in Thailand has more than quadrupled in the past 12 months, largely because of the opening of a registration office in Thailand, a senior Special Branch official said last week.

More than 530,000 passports had been issued to August 15 since the program was launched in July 2009, up from just 118,000 in July last year, the official said, citing Ministry of Home Affairs statistics.

Of the total, 341,596 were issued through an office at Ranong in Thailand, which opened on June 30, 2010. The Tachileik office had issued 94,062 passports to August 15.

When the program was launched, migrant workers could apply for the passports at offices in Myawaddy, Kayin State, Tachileik, Shan State and Kawthoung in Tanintharyi Region. However, the Myawaddy office has been closed since July 2010, while the Kawthoung office was shifted to Ranong the following month.

“The Ranong office has issued the highest numbers of passports even though it’s only been open about a year because it’s more convenient for Myanmar workers in Thailand,” the official said. “However, at this stage we don’t plan to open any more offices in Thailand.”

In July 2011, the validity of the temporary passports was extended from three to six years.

Ko Phone Myint, a 34-year-old postgraduate student at Chiang Mai University said the temporary passport system had been beneficial for both migrant workers and the Thai government.

He said it would be more convenient for workers if offices were opened in Bangkok and Chiang Mai.

“Before the temporary passports were introduced, the Thai government was always concerned about its national security, while Myanmar workers didn’t dare go anywhere except their workplace because they only had a labour card. Now the Thai government can monitor the workers and they can also travel around the country with this passport –they can even fly back to Myanmar,” he said.

I Have A Dream ကြၽန္ေတာ့္အိပ္မက္မက္ထားတယ္

Written by ေဒါက္တာခင္ေမာင္ညိဳ

''ကြၽန္ေတာ့္အိပ္မက္မက္ထားတယ္။'' ''ဘာအိပ္မက္လဲ။'' ''တစ္ခ်ိန္မႇာ တို႔ႏိုင္ငံဟာ စစ္မႇန္တဲ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီႏိုင္ငံ ျဖစ္လာကာ အာရႇမႇာ ထိပ္တန္းကိုေရာက္ၿပီး၊ ျပည္သူေတြအားလံုး ခ်မ္းခ်မ္းသာသာနဲ႕ တန္းတူရည္တူ တူညီတဲ့ အခြင့္အေရး ရေစဖို႕ေပါ့။'' လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ ႏႇစ္ငါးဆယ္ေလာက္က ျဖစ္သည္။ တိတိက်က် ေျပာရလွ်င္ေတာ့ ၁၉၆၃ ခုႏႇစ္ ၾသဂုတ္လ ၂၈ ရက္ေန႔မႇာပါ။ လူမည္းေခါင္းေဆာင္ မာတင္လူသာကင္း ဂ်ဴနီယာက ၀ါရႇင္တန္ဒီစီရႇိ လင္ကြန္း ေအာက္ေမ့ဖြယ္ အေဆာက္အအုံရဲ႕ ေလႇကားမႇာ ရပ္ၿပီး လူမည္း ပရိသတ္ကို ေျပာခဲ့တဲ့ မိန္႕ခြန္းထဲက စကားေလးကို သတိရမိပါရဲ႕။ I Have A Dream 'ကြၽန္ေတာ္ အိပ္မက္မက္ထားတယ္'တဲ့။ ပရိသတ္ ႏႇစ္သိန္းေက်ာ္ တက္ေရာက္နားေထာင္တဲ့ တကယ့္မိန္႔ခြန္းကို သူေျပာသြားတာပါ (တကယ့္မိန္႔ခြန္းလို႔ သံုးရတာကေတာ့ ႀကီးက်ယ္ ျမင့္ျမတ္တဲ့ မိန္႕ခြန္းလို႔ ေျပာခ်င္တာပါ)ယေန႕အထိေတာ့ သူ႔မိန္႕ခြန္းဟာ အေကာင္းဆံုးေတြထဲက တစ္ခုလို႔ လူေတြ လက္ခံထားဆဲပါပဲ။ သူဘာေတြေျပာလဲ။ ''လူမည္း အခြင့္အေရး၊ လူမည္းေတြ အလုပ္ရရႇိေရး၊ ခြဲျခားဆက္ဆံမႈ မရႇိေရး အတြက္ သူေျပာတာပါ။ လူမည္းေတြ လြတ္ေျမာက္ဖို႔ ငါးႏႇစ္တိုင္တိုင္ တိုက္ခဲ့ၾကတယ္။ လူေတြ အမ်ားႀကီး ေသၾကတယ္။ ဒီလိုတိုက္ပြဲ၀င္ၿပီး လြတ္ေျမာက္လာတယ္လို႔ ေျပာတဲ့ လူမည္းေတြဟာ ယေန႕ႏႇစ္တစ္ရာရိႇၿပီ ဘယ္မႇာ လြတ္ေျမာက္ ၾကေသးလို႕လဲ'' သူတို႔ကို လူျဖဴေတြက ခြဲျခား ဆက္ဆံတယ္။ ေက်ာင္းအတူ မေနရဘူး။ ဘတ္စကား အတူ မစီးရဘူး။ လူမည္းေတြက ေနရာရထားလို႔ လူျဖဴ တက္လာရင္ လူမည္းေတြက ဖယ္ေပးရတယ္။ အဲဒါက ဥပေဒ ျဖစ္တယ္။ မာတင္လူသားကင္းဂ်ဴနီယာ က ဒီကိစၥေတြကို စိတ္၀င္တစား ေထာက္ခံခဲ့တယ္။ အေမရိကန္ တစ္ႏိုင္ငံအႏႇံ႕ ခ်ီတက္ဆႏၵျပတယ္။ သူ႔ အိပ္မက္မိန္႕ခြန္းထဲမႇာ ပါတယ္။ ''တစ္ေန႕မႇာ လူမည္းကေလးေတြဟာ လူျဖဴကေလးေတြနဲ႕ လက္တြဲၿပီး ေပ်ာ္ရႊင္စြာ ကစားၾက၊ အတူ စားေသာက္ၾကမႇာပါ။ ကြၽန္ေတာ္ အိပ္မက္မက္ထားပါတယ္''တဲ့။ သူရဲ႕ ဆႏၵျပမႈေတြ ေနာက္ပိုင္းမႇာ ဥပေဒႏႇစ္ခု ျပ႒ာန္းခဲ့တယ္။ အဲဒါကေတာ့ ႏိုင္ငံသား အခြင့္အေရး ဥပေဒ(Civil Rights Act -1964)နဲ႔ မဲေပးခြင့္ အခြင့္အေရး(The Voting Rights Act-1965)တို႔ပါပဲ။ သူက အိပ္မက္ဟာ မႇန္တယ္လို႔ ေျပာရပါမယ္။ ဘယ္ေလာက္မႇန္လဲ။ ယေန႕ လူမည္းနဲ႕ လူျဖဴ လက္တြဲေနပါၿပီ။ ကြန္ဒိုရီဇာ႐ိုက္ဇ္ဟာ အမ်ဳိးသမီး ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး ျဖစ္ခဲ့သလို ေကာလင္းပါ၀ယ္ဟာလည္း လူမည္း ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး ျဖစ္ခဲ့တယ္။ ေနာက္ ဘားရက္အိုဘားမားဟာ လူမည္း သမၼတ ျဖစ္ေနပါၿပီ။ တကယ္ေတာ့ မာတင္လူသားကင္းဂ်ဴနီယာဟာ သူရဲ႕ ႀကိဳးပမ္းမႈေၾကာင့္ ႏိုဘဲလ္ဆုကို ရခဲ့ပါေသးတယ္။ သူဟာ အငယ္ဆံုးေသာ ႏိုဘဲလ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးဆု ရရႇိသူ ျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒီဆုေတြရသလို သူရ႕ဲ ႀကိဳးပမ္းမႈကရတဲ့ ရလဒ္ေတြဟာ အမ်ားႀကီးပါပဲ။ ဒါကို သူမျမင္လိုက္ရပါဘူး။ သူဟာ ၁၉၆၈ ခုႏႇစ္ ဧၿပီလ ေလးရက္မႇာ လုပ္ၾကံျခင္း ခံလိုက္ရပါတယ္။သူရဲ႕အုတ္ဂူမႇာ ေရးထားတယ္။ Free At Last. Free At Last. Thanks God Almighty I Am Free At Last. ၂၀၁၀ တုန္းက ကြၽန္ေတာ္ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု ေဂ်ာ္ဂ်ီယာျပည္နယ္ အက္တလန္တာကို ေရာက္သြားခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီမႇာရႇိတဲ့ မာတင္လူသာကင္းဂ်ဴနီယာရဲ႕ ေနအိမ္နဲ႕ ျပတိုက္ကိုလည္း ေရာက္သြားခဲ့တယ္။ ခမ္းနားႀကီးက်ယ္တဲ့ ျပတိုက္ပါ။ ေႏြရာသီျဖစ္လို႔ ျပတိုက္ေရႇ႕မႇာ ေဒသ အေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားက ေက်ာင္းသားေတြရဲ႕ ပန္းအလႇျပပြဲကို က်င္းပေနတဲ့ အခ်ိန္လည္း ျဖစ္တယ္။ ကြၽန္ေတာ္က ျပတိုက္မႇာ တစ္ေနကုန္ထိုင္ၿပီး သူ႔အေၾကာင္းေတြကို ေျပာျပတဲ့ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာေတြဆီက အသံေတြကို နားေထာင္တယ္။ သူရဲ႕ မိန္႕ခြန္းေတြကို နားေထာင္တယ္။ ေန႔ခင္းမႇာေတာ့ အျပင္ဘက္မႇာထိုင္ၿပီး ကြၽန္ေတာ္က ပါလာတဲ့ ေနလယ္စာကို ဘူးကေန ဖြင့္စားတယ္။ ကြၽန္ေတာ့္အနီးမႇာ လူမည္း အမ်ဳိးသမီးတစ္ဦး ေရာက္လာၿပီး သူမကလည္း ေန႔လယ္စာဘူးကို ဖြင့္စားတယ္။ အဲဒီမိန္းကေလးက တစ္ရႇဴးမပါခဲ့လို ကြၽန္ေတာ့္မႇာ အပိုပါလို႔ ေပးလိုက္ပါတယ္။ေက်းဇူးတင္ေၾကာင္း သူမက ေျပာရင္းနဲ႔ စကား ေျပာျဖစ္သြားတယ္။ ''ဘယ္ကလာလဲ''လို႔ သူမကိုေမးေတာ့ ေျမာက္ပိုင္းကတဲ့။ ေျမာက္ပိုင္းမႇာ လူမည္းေတြ သိပ္မရိႇဘူး။ လူမည္းေတြကို ကြၽန္အျဖစ္ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု ေတာင္ပိုင္းမႇာပဲ အသံုးျပဳတာမ်ားတယ္။ အရင္ေခတ္က ၀ါခင္းေတြ အတြက္ လူမည္းကြၽန္ေတြကို သံုးတာပါ။ စိုက္ပ်ဳိးေရးကို ေတာင္ပိုင္းမႇာ အဓိက လုပ္ခဲ့တယ္။ ''ဘာေၾကာင့္ အက္တလန္တာကိုလာလဲ''ဆိုေတာ့ သူမက ''ဒီေနရာမႇာ သူသေဘာက်တာသံုးခု ရႇိသတဲ့။ နံပါတ္တစ္က မာတင္လူသားကင္း ဂ်ဴနီယာတဲ့။ နံပါတ္ႏႇစ္က စီအင္အင္တဲ့။ စီအင္အင္ဆိုတာ Cable News Network ျဖစ္ၿပီး ကမၻာမႇာ အႀကီးက်ယ္ဆံုးလိုလို ျဖစ္ေနတဲ့ ႐ုပ္သံေကာ္ပိုေရးရႇင္း ျဖစ္တယ္။ တတိယကေတာ့ မာဂရက္မစ္ရႇဲလ္တဲ့။ မာဂရက္မစ္ရႇဲလ္ဆိုတာက Gone With the Wind ဆိုတဲ့ ၀တၴဳကို ေရးခဲ့သူပါ။ ႐ုပ္ရႇင္ေရာ စာအုပ္ေရာ ဆုရတယ္။ စာအုပ္က ပူလစ္ဇာဆု ရတယ္။ ႐ုပ္ရႇင္ကေတာ့ ေအာ္စကာ ငါးဆုရတယ္။ Gone With the Wind စာအုပ္ဟာ ယေန႔တိုင္ ႏႇစ္စဥ္ သိန္းခ်ီ ျပန္႐ိုက္ရတဲ့ စာအုပ္ပါ။ ခုစာအုပ္ထြက္တာ ၇၅ ႏႇစ္ ရႇိသြားပါၿပီ။ ခုထိ အုပ္ ၃၅ သန္းေက်ာ္ ေရာင္းၿပီးပါၿပီ။ မာဂရက္မစ္ရႇဲလ္ဟာ ဒီစာအုပ္တစ္အုပ္ကိုသာ ေရးခဲ့ပါတယ္။ သူမ ကြယ္လြန္ၿပီးတဲ့အခါ ေနာက္၀တၴဳရႇည္တစ္အုပ္ လက္ေရးမူကို ေတြ႕တယ္လို႔''ဆိုတယ္။ ကြၽန္ေတာ္က သူမကို ''မာတင္လူသားကင္းဂ်ဴနီယာကို ဘယ္လို ျမင္လဲ''လို႔ ေမးေတာ့ သူမက ''တို႔တေတြရဲ႕ ဟီး႐ိုးပါ။ ကြၽန္မက ႐ိုဆာပတ္ကိုလည္း အထင္ႀကီးတယ္''လို႕ ေျပာတယ္။ ၿပီးေတာ့မႇ သူမက ''႐ိုဆာပတ္ကိုသိလား''လို႔ ေမးေတာ့ ကြၽန္ေတာ္က ေခါင္းညိတ္ျပၿပီး ''႐ိုဆာပတ္ဟာ ဘတ္စကားမႇာ လူျဖဴလူမည္း ခြဲျခားမႈ အတြက္ ခိုင္ခိုင္မာမာ ရပ္တည္ခဲ့သူပဲ မဟုတ္လား''လို႕ ေျပာေတာ့ သူမက သေဘာက်သြားတယ္။ ဒီကိုလာတဲ့ လူေတြ အားလံုးေတာ့ ဒီေလာက္သိမႇာပဲလို႔ သူမက ယူဆထားဟန္လည္း တူတယ္။ ''မင္းတို႔ သူတို႔လုိလူမ်ိဳး ရတာကံေကာင္းတယ္''လို႔ ေျပာေတာ့ ''ကံေကာင္းတာေပါ့။ ႏႇစ္ေပါင္း တစ္ရာေက်ာ္ေလာက္ အတြင္း တစ္ေယာက္တစ္ေလသာ ေပၚခဲ့တာ။ သူတို႔သာ မရိႇရင္ တို႔တစ္ေတြ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရးေတြ အမ်ားႀကီး ဆုံး႐ံႈးေနဦးမႇာ''လို႔ ေျပာတယ္။ ကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႔ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ဆန္းကို ၾကည္ညိဳသလိုမ်ိဳးေပါ့။ ''ခုေတာ့ အဆင္ေျပသြားတာပဲ မဟုတ္လား။ ဟုတ္ပါတယ္။ ဘားရက္အိုဗာမား တက္လာေတာ့ တို႔တစ္ေတြဟာ မာတင္လူသားကင္း အိပ္မက္အတိုင္း ျဖစ္လာတယ္လို႔ ေျပာႏိုင္တာေပါ့'' ဒီေတာ့မႇ ကြၽန္ေတာ္လည္း စဥ္းစားမိတယ္၊ တို႔ဆီမႇာေကာ။ ''တို႔ဆီမႇာလည္း ဒီႏႇစ္အတြင္း ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ လုပ္မယ္''လို႔ သူမကို ေျပာလိုက္မိတယ္။ ''မင္းတို႔ဆီမႇာက ေလးႏႇစ္တစ္ခါလား ငါးႏႇစ္တစ္ခါလား'' ''မလုပ္တာ ႏႇစ္ ၂၀ ေက်ာ္ၿပီ'' ''ဟယ္၊ မလုပ္လို႔ေကာရလား'' ''တို႕တစ္ေတြက မင္းတို႔နဲ႔ မတူဘူး။ ဒါေပမဲ့ တူတာေတြ အမ်ားႀကီးေပါ့ေလ။ တို႔ႏိုင္ငံက Myanmar အရင္က Burma ေပါ့'' ''ေျပာျပပါလား'' ''လြန္ခဲ့သည့္ ႏႇစ္ေပါင္းတစ္ရာေက်ာ္ေလာက္က တို႔တစ္ေတြလည္း ႏြံနစ္လို႔ ကြၽန္ျဖစ္ခဲ့ရတယ္။ ၿဗိတိသွ်ေတြရဲ႕ကြၽန္ေပါ့။(British Subject)'' သူမ ေခါင္းညိတ္တယ္။ ကြၽန္ဘ၀ကလာတဲ့ အေမရိကန္လူမည္းေတြ ကိုယ္ခ်င္းစာတတ္ၾကမႇာပါ။ ''သူတို႕က တို႔ကို အႏိုင္က်င့္ၿပီး ကိုလိုနီ ျပဳခဲ့တာပါပဲ။ ေနာက္ေတာ့ ျမန္မာတို႔တစ္ေတြ ႀကိဳးပမ္းမႈမ်ားနဲ႔ လြတ္လပ္ေရး ရခဲ့တယ္'' ''ဘယ္ေလာက္ၾကာၿပီလဲ'' ''၆၃ ႏႇစ္ ေပါ့'' ''တို႔လူမည္းေတြ လြတ္လပ္ေရး ရတာနဲ႕ေတာ့ သိပ္မကြာပါဘူး'' ''အေမရိကန္ လြတ္လပ္ေရးရတာ ႏႇစ္ ၂၀၀ ေလာက္ရႇိၿပီ မဟုတ္လား'' ''ဟုတ္တယ္ေလ။ ဒါေပမဲ့ မာတင္လူသားကင္းဂ်ဴနီယာတို႔ ေနာက္ပိုင္း ၁၉၆၅ ခုႏႇစ္မႇာ မဲေပးခြင့္ဥပေဒ ထြက္လာတာပဲ'' ''ဟုတ္တယ္ေလ'' ''အဲဒီအခါက်ရင္ ရႇင္ဘာလုပ္မလဲ'' ''တစ္ခုခုေပါ့၊ မာတင္လူသားကင္းစကားပဲ အငႇား သံုးရမယ္'' ''ဘာစကားလဲ'' ''I have a dream'' ''ဘာအိပ္မက္လဲ'' ''တစ္ခ်ိန္မႇာ တို႕ႏိုင္ငံဟာ စစ္မႇန္တဲ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီႏိုင္ငံ ျဖစ္လာကာ အာရႇမႇာ ထိပ္တန္းကို ေရာက္ၿပီး၊ ျပည္သူေတြအားလံုး ခ်မ္းခ်မ္းသာသာနဲ႔ တန္းတူရည္တူ တူညီတဲ့ အခြင့္အေရး ရေစဖို႕ေပါ့'' ''မင္းအိပ္မက္ အေကာင္အထည္ ေပၚပါေစ'' ''ေပးတဲ့ဆုနဲ႕ျပည့္ပါေစ''

Flooding hits Tachilek; border market closed

The Mae Sai stream has overflowed its banks flooding Mae Sai and Tachilek on the northern Thai-Burmese border, closing a market and two schools.

Residents said five quarters of Tachilek had been flooded and Tarlot market closed.

Heavy rain over the weekend caused flooding in Ponetun, Tarlot, Makahokham, Samsai and Mekong quarters and travel on roads was disrupted.
 
Phyu Phyu Thwe in kthe Ponetun quarter said, “Flooding on the road has been to my thighs. Only shops at the high area of Tarlot Market are open. The shops at the low end of the market are closed.” She said that the Tarlot market, a major location for border trade, was closed on Saturday

The Bogyoke Aung San Road, Tachilek’s main roadway, has been ruined by the floodwaters, according to residents.

“After the road was flooded, people had to walk and grope their way forward. Cars and motorcycles were out of order,” said a local resident.

Some residents said that blocked sewers and gutters added to the flooding. Others cited the depletion of the forest on nearby mountains.

“I think the flood is connected with the loss of trees,” said Phyu Phyu Thwe, a local resident. “Also the Mae Sai stream is narrower by about one-half. Because it’s more narrow now, it often overflows its banks.”

Quarters in Tachilek are usually flooded in August and September each year when the Mae Sai stream overflows its banks, residents said.

Winner for Junior and Adult

JUNIOR LEVEL

John 15:1-9

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

   “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.  If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 

 First: Aik Lu

 Second: Am Nap

 Third: Noami

ADULT

Proverb 4:10-19

Listen, my son, accept what I say,
   and the years of your life will be many. I instruct you in the way of wisdom
   and lead you along straight paths. When you walk, your steps will not be hampered;
   when you run, you will not stumble. Hold on to instruction, do not let it go;
   guard it well, for it is your life. Do not set foot on the path of the wicked
   or walk in the way of evildoers. Avoid it, do not travel on it;
   turn from it and go on your way. For they cannot rest until they do evil;
   they are robbed of sleep till they make someone stumble. They eat the bread of wickedness
   and drink the wine of violence.The path of the righteous is like the morning sun,
   shining ever brighter till the full light of day. But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness;
   they do not know what makes them stumble.

 First: Niiang San Lun

 Second: Saw Kyaw San Nyein

Chin Christians Banned to Rent and Construct Buildings

MYANMAR :: The local government authorities do not still allow Chin Christians to construct buildings and rent a house to live in as a family in Tayawaddy village of Sagaing Division.

However, it is reported that Chin Christian students studying at the Goverment Technological University can stay in a boarding apartment or in a rented house.

A Kalaymyo resident, who visited the village, told Chinland Guardian: "In Tayawaddy, construction of any Christian buildings is prohibited and Christian families can not rent a house to live. Only students attending the university can stay in a boarding house."

There are about 400 Chins out of 1,070 students studying at the GTC in the academic year 2011.

In November 2008, all the construction materials purchased with a construction by the Chin students were removed by the local villagers under the direct order of U Ko Ko Latt, Chairman of Township Peace and Development Council.

Leaders of the University Christian Fellowship said permission to build a place for holding worship services by the students was eventually granted after a series of appeals made, adding: "At first, we were denied and told that it was not Chin State."

But the building foundation and materials used were all removed and destroyed later.

Amid intimidation and threat, the Chin Christian students still hold worship services in the morning on Sundays in a makeshift church until today, according to the Kalaymyo resident.

Established as Government Technological Institute in December 1999, the university was upgraded to its current status in January 2007, with introduction of major subjects in Civil, Electrical Power, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineerings, and Computer Numerical Control. 

Source: Chinland Guardian

Prizes award for the winner of 2011 bible verses memorizes competition

In August 21, 2011 is the bible sunday and we also have prizes award for 2011 bible memorize competition for the winner from different level.

KINDERGARTEN JUNIOR LEVEL

Psalm 117:1-2 (In Burmese Version)

Praise the LORD, all you nations;
   extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us,
   and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever.

 First Winner :Rebacca Aung

 Second Winner: Chaw Yadanar Oo

Third Winner : Go Khan Sang(Sang Pi)

KINDERGARTEN SENIOR

Psalm 117:1-2(Burmese Version)

Praise the LORD, all you nations;
   extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us,
   and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever.

 First Winner : Ei Kat

Second :Oak Sham

PRIMARY LEVEL

Romans 12:1-5 (Burmese Version)

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is his good, pleasing and perfect will.Humble Service in the Body of ChristFor by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

First Winner : Yeh Mwe

Still Flood in Maesai Grace Church

We already pump the water from the tank behind of the Church almost 30 hours, but still water in the tank. And along the border Maesai and Tachileik are facing the flood.

Some of the market and shop are closed for the flood, especially Tachileik Tarloh market closed from yesterday.

Today, we are continue to pump water from the tank.

No Fun, and Not Much Future, at Border Camp

 BAN DON YANG REFUGEE CAMP

It takes more than an hour along a rough, muddy road to reach the Ban Don Yang refugee camp from Sangkhlaburi, in Thailand's Kanchanburi Province, during the rainy season, but only around 45 minutes the rest of the year.

It's impossible to get a ride to this camp, located less than a kilometer from the Burmese border, except on Mondays and Fridays, when the Thai authorities allow traders from Sangkhlaburi to bring vegetables and other foodstuffs to sell to its 4,000 or so inhabitants.

Around 90 percent of the people in the camp are ethnic Karen. Karen is the de facto official language at the camp, used for announcements and most other communication.

Ban Don Yang is considered to be within the territory of Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) Brigade 6. In the camp, you can see KNLA soldiers, some in civilian dress, but others wearing camouflage combat pants.

When armed men attacked Three Pagodas Pass, about 15 km away, in June, the Thai camp authorities attempted to prevent members of the KNLA from leaving the camp, suspecting that they were involved in the attacks.

“Every day, they came to take photos of all the refugee families in the camp,” said Nai Klour Non, an ethnic Mon refugee. “I think they believed the KNLA was behind the attacks in Three Pagodas Pass.”

Despite the presence of soldiers and the proximity to the border, the camp's inhabitants consider it “safe”—for some, in fact, safer even than the Western countries to which many expect to be relocated.
“There are around 1,000 Karen refugees here who have not applied for resettlement in a third country. They don't want to go anywhere. They just want to stay here, where they feel more secure,” said Nai Klour Non.

It's not just fear of the unknown that has made many feel they are better off where they are. Six families that were resettled in the Czech Republic two months ago contacted relatives at the camp by phone and said that they had basically been abandoned since their arrival in the country, where their children were unable to attend school and there were concerns about safety. They asked their family members who were still in Thailand to pray for them.

“Some families are so worried about going to a third country that they hide in the jungle when they are informed of their departure date,” said Nai Lawi, another Mon refugee.

For those who stay, life is far from easy. Apart from the isolation, there is no electricity, as the camp is far off the grid and camp authorities restrict the use of generators.

On Saturday and Sunday, however, children get a reprieve from the tedium of camp life when a Mon Buddhist temple at the camp shows videos.

“I come every chance I get, because this is the only entertainment we have here,” said Mi Chit, a mother of two.

Because refugees are not allowed to leave the camp, even simple tasks must be performed by people from outside. Those who want to listen to music, for instance, must pay 30 baht (about US $1) to have their batteries recharged in Sangkhlaburi.

The enforced simplicity of life in the camp means that religious and cultural events assume a great importance in the lives of refugees. There are two Buddhist temples and one Christian church at the camp, and schools are closed on Sundays and all Buddhist holidays.

In the winter and summer, when the weather is dry, many refugees also spend time growing vegetables. During the rainy season, however, they have to get their vegetables from Sangkhlaburi because it's too muddy to grow anything in the camp.

Although most of the camp's inhabitants are Karen, there are also around a hundred Mon and ethnic Burman refugees who have lived there for the past five years, awaiting their opportunity to resettle in third countries.

They are former members of the New Mon State Party and the All Burma Students' Democratic Front. Relatively well-educated, they try to keep themselves occupied with any job they can find, even if the pay is negligible.

Those working as school teachers now receive just 200 baht ($6.70) a month, compared to the 800 baht ($27) they were paid by ZOA, a non-governmental organization that supports refugee education, last year.
Nai Lawi said that after the rainy season, he might open a shop at his house to support his family.

“We don't know how much longer we will have to stay here, so it might be better to start a business instead of always just thinking about going abroad,” he said.

He added that he would go mad if he had nothing to do except wait for the day when he could finally leave the camp—a sentiment shared by some other inhabitants.

“I'm sure I would go out of my mind if I didn't have this job,” said Ai Mon, who sews women shirts at the camp.

Burmese refugees fearful of being forced back to Burma

Maela Refugee Camp

Because of a recent speech by Burma’s president inviting citizens living abroad to return home to help the country develop, refugees in Thailand and Malaysia are concerned that Thailand and Malaysia will change their refugee policies.

On Wednesday, Burmese President Thein Sein said the government would invite its citizens living abroad to return home. Thai authorities recently gave instructions to officials at the Umpiem refugee camp to make a list of refugees who want to return to Burma.

“A few days after Thein Sein invited Burmese citizens living in foreign countries to return home, they told us to make the list. But, other refugee camps have not been ordered to make the list,” Saw Wah Htee, the chairman of the Umpiem refugee camp committee, told Mizzima.

The chairman of Tak Province [in which the camp is located] on Thursday ordered Saw Wah Htee to compile the list but no reason was given.

The list must include four areas; the number of refugees who want to return Burma, the number of Burmese refugees who have already arrived in resettlement countries, the number of refugees who have applied to go to resettlement countries and the number of refugees who want to continue to live in Thailand.

“The Thai government did not say state a reason. I think they want to remove this burden [refugees] if they have an opportunity,” said Saw Wah Htee.

The Umpiem refugee camp was set up in 1999. More than 25,000 people live in 16 quarters of the camp. Among them, 11,404 people are recognized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the remaining have applied for refugee status with the UNHCR.

The list has not yet been compiled because camp officials wanted to meet with the chairman of Tak Province on Monday.

“Our major concern is that Thailand will close the refugee camps. Some refugees do not trust the invitation of the government because it has not released political prisoners and the army has fought against cease-fire armed groups,” said Myo Thant, who has lived in the camp for seven years.

Similarly, Burmese refugees in Malaysia are concerned that the government will force some refugees to return in accordance with Malaysia’s “6Ps” program, and now their concerns are further increased.

“Some people do not have refugee status from the UNHCR so they can be arrested at any time,” said Tun Tun, an official with Burma Campaign-Malaysia.

From August 1 to August 31, in accordance with Malaysia’s “6Ps” program, illegal migrants including refugees need to be officially identified to receive legal status. Malaysia will launch a nationwide crackdown on illegal migrants in November.

The “6Ps” refers to “registration, legalization, granting amnesty, supervision, enforcement and deportation.”

According to the UNHCR-Malaysia Web site, there are 73,000 Burmese refugees recognized by UNHCR including 12,000 Burmese asylum seekers and 5,000 other Burmese. On the other hand, Malaysia-based Burmese organizations have estimated that there are more than 400,000 Burmese refugees in Malaysia who have arrived there via various means.

“We are worried for the refugees who are not in accord with the “6Ps” program. They are refugees. The people who the Malaysia government can force back to their countries are not people who have refugee cards recognized by UN. But, the people who have identification cards only recognized by the [small] communities can be forced to go back,” said Nay Min Tun, an information official with the Malaysian-based Alliance of Arakan Refugees.

Most Burmese refugees in Malaysia have organized small communities and they hold the identification cards recognized by those communities.

Burmese refugees in Malaysia and Thailand said that they have concerns that both governments would force them to return to Burma. Many said that if the Burmese government really makes a genuine change, they would voluntarily return.

“We don’t mean that we don’t want to go back. All the Burmese citizens living in foreign countries including refugees want to go back to Burma if there is genuine peace, stability and security in our land,” said Saw Wah Htee.

Sources: MIZZIMA

Shan children ‘used as human shields’

Children as young as 10 are being ordered to accompany Burmese army columns as they carry wounded troops through a volatile stretch of Shan state, locals report.

The township of Kehsi Mensi lies close to the frontline in the battle between Burmese troops and the Shan State Army in the central region of the state. Residents there told DVB that an infantry battalion went through villages in the township on Tuesday recruiting people to act as “human shields”.

“We were taken while working in the farm,” said one man, who requested anonymity due to likely retaliations from Burmese soldiers. “There were just 10 of us at the beginning but then they also took along people they saw along the way – making up about 30 people in total.

He said that they were forced to carry wounded soldiers and heavy packs for the seven mile walk between Kehsi Mensi town and Wanphwe village.

“Around the halfway point, while passing by a primary school in Naungka village, they picked up 11 children aged around 10 or 11. They were not provided with any meal so those who brought along food had to share with [the troops]. We were not allowed to take a peek at the wounded soldiers – they cursed us when we did.

“Some of the kids were unable to walk back to their village in the end so their parents had to go and pick them up on motorbikes.”

The Burmese army has been accused in the past of using civilians as porters and human minesweepers, but rarely have reports surfaced of children so young being forced to accompany troop columns.

Kehsi Mensi has seen heavy fighting since a 15-year ceasefire between the Burmese government and the northern faction of the Shan State Army (SSA) ended in March this year. Both sides have since accused one another of harming civilians.

The local said the recruitment of young children was an attempt to prevent SSA attacks on retreating Burmese forces, and added that local villagers are often forced to “contribute” themselves and their equipment to the army.

The army unit in question, battalion 143, was engaged in heavy fighting on 14 and 15 August close to Wanphwe village, resulting in heavy casualties on both sides. Some 400 clashes are believed to have erupted since March this year.

Sources: DVB

Violin Training on the 3rd Week

We continue to conducted the Music Training for the Third Week, Now the children are more confidence and more practice. They are very happy for their week end with the Music Training and the bible study program.

They enjoin with the music and music is coming from God and they want to praise and worship to the Lord and savior after they finish the course.

Thank of all of friend and partner from abroad for your praying and inspire to us before our expire.

Vietnam on Alert as Common Virus Kills 81 Children

Vietnam's prime minister has put the country on alert as an outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease continues to surge, killing 81 children and sickening more than 32,000 people nationwide so far this year, officials said Friday.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has called for stepped-up efforts to prevent and control the transmission of the common childhood disease. It has spread nationwide but is raging hardest in the country's south, where nearly 80 percent of the cases have been reported. About 65 percent of the deaths have occurred in children younger than 3.

"Hand foot and mouth disease, a dangerous infectious disease for children under 5, is spreading fast, creating huge danger to the health and life of young children," Dung said in a statement that appeared on the government's website Friday.

This year's outbreak is a sharp increase over previous years. Since 2008, about 10,000 to 15,000 cases were reported per year, with about 20 to 30 children dying annually.

Hand, foot and mouth disease is spread by sneezing, coughing and contact with fluid from blisters or infected feces. It is caused by a group of enteroviruses in the same family as polio. No vaccine or specific treatment exists, but illness is typically mild and most children recover quickly without problems.

The virus gets its name from the telltale symptoms it causes, including rash, mouth sores and blisters covering the hands and feet. Many infected children are not sickened at all, but remain capable of spreading it to others.

A more severe strain called enterovirus 71, or EV-71, has been identified in about a third of the sampled cases in Vietnam, said Dr. Graham Harrison, the World Health Organization's acting country representative for Vietnam. EV-71 can result in paralysis, brain swelling and death.

Harrison urged greater awareness at clinics and hospitals outside cities in detecting and treating new cases. Early symptoms include fever and sore throat, with the rash and blisters coming later in most, but not all, patients.

He said there's been a slight decrease recently in the number of cases, but it's too soon to know for sure whether the outbreak is waning. State media have reported about 2,000 new cases are still being logged every week.

"It started picking up in May or June like it had in previous years," Harrison said. "Whether it's going to go down and come back up or has just sort of peaked for the year and will then go down, we'll have to wait and see."

Dr. Truong Huu Khanh, head of the infectious disease department at Ho Chi Minh City's main children's hospital, said the number of patients has decreased compared to a month ago. He added that most children being admitted are now coming from southern provinces outside the city.

WHO is assisting with the outbreak along with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They are urging enhanced hygiene, including frequent hand washing and regularly cleaning floors, tables and counters with disinfectant.