Chin Pastor Detained after Police Seized Illegal Drugs from House Guests

A Christian pastor has been detained by Burmese authorities since 16 July 2012 after police seized illegal drugs from guests staying at his house.

Rev. He Ling from the Tahan Hmunthar Baptist Church in Kalaymyo of Sagaing Division, is being placed in custody on suspicion of having possible links with the drug bust.

Sources said that police busted and seized 100.56 kg of heroin from Ms Siang Tin aka San Sai Par, 37, from Falam, Lal Than Thang, 32, and Lawma, 22, both from Tahan, on 13 July 2012 as the three were attempting to leave the pastor's house on scooters.

The 56-year-old Chin writer and preacher was arrested at his house three days later, at around 2am in the morning of 16 July.

"Since the guest was staying and leaving her bags at the house of Rev. He Ling, the pastor was arrested by the police on the basis that he must have known about the heroin," another Chin pastor close to Rev. He Ling told Chinland Guardian.

According to the Hakha Post, Rev. He Ling and his family received the guests after their landlady, who owns the house, asked if Siang Tin could stay with them for a few days.

A Chin local from Tahan told Chinland Guardian: "The three traders must have been somehow suspected by the police before the incident happened. I strongly believed that they intentionally used the pastor's house as a safe place to keep their stuff."

The three Chin traders and Rev. He Ling are being held in judicial custody after reportedly making their first court appearance last Thursday.

Rev. He Ling is scheduled to make his court appearance again on 10 August 2012. The trial continues.

Source: Chinland Guardian

maesaigracechurch: Plights of Myanmar immigrant workers

maesaigracechurch: Plights of Myanmar immigrant workers: Although Thailand is not a place of greener pasture for Myanmar migrant workers, this year saw the largest number of them there as t...

Labour minister addresses migrant worker issue in Thailand

The issue of Myanmar's migrant workers in Thailand was highlighted during President U Thein Sein's three-day visit to the neighbouring country in late July.

U Aung Kyi, the union minister for labour and social welfare, relief and resettlement, who also accompanied the president, met with representatives from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working to protect Myanmar workers at the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok on July 24. The NGOs involved were BATEED Foundation, Mekong Migration Network, and MAP Foundation.

During the meeting, the minister was clarified on the difficulties facing the Myanmar workers in Thailand. Some of them hold no passports, and others saw their passports being seized by employers or brokers. U Aung Kyi promised to take the issue seriously and pointed to the need for cooperation.

At their meeting, U Aung Kyi urged Interior Minister Yongyuth Wichaidit to take appropriate steps to make sure that:
- Immigrant Myanmar workers enjoy the same salaries and wages as their Thai colleagues do,
- Thai employers do not keep Myanmar workers' passports,
- The workers have the right to send their children to Thai schools, and
- They all get temporary passports.

Union Minister U Aung Kyi also visited the temporary passport issuance office in Bangkok, where he gave encouragement to the Myanmar workers there.

He then called on the commissioner of the Thai Immigration Bureau. They discussed measures to prevent unwanted human trafficking cases that could result from sending back Myanmar workers to its border without prior information. The Thai immigration was also asked to charge for issuing temporary passports at the rate fixed by both countries, and to issue stay permits at a one-stop service centre in the form of temporary Myanmar passports.

Thai officials said that some points discussed with Myanmar's minister need to further discussion in detail.

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2012 က်မ္းစာေတာ္ျမတ္ေန႕အတြက္ျပိဳင္ပြဲ၀င္သီခ်င္း

2012 ခုႏွစ္ေက်းဇူးေတာ္အသင္းေတာ္၊မယ္ဆိုင္ျမိဳ႕၏က်မ္းစာေတာ္ျမတ္ေန႕အတြက္ျပိဳင္ပြဲ၀င္ရန္ေရး
စပ္ထားေသာသီခ်င္းျဖစ္ပါသည္၊သီခ်င္းျပိဳင္ပြဲကို 18.8.2012 ရက္ေန႕ညေန (၇) နာရီတိတိတြင္က်င္း
ပမည္ျဖစ္ပါသျဖင္႕ပါ၀င္ႏိုင္ရန္အားလံုးကိုဖိတ္ေခၚအပ္ပါသည္။

Three migrants gunned down in southern Thailand

Three Burmese migrant workers in southern Thailand’s Phang-nga and Songkhla provinces were shot and killed by unknown gunmen in two separate incidents on 25 July.

Htoo Naing, a 27-year-old Burmese migrant worker at a rubber plantation Phang-nga’s town of Thai Mueang, was found dead at 10pm in the evening with six gunshot wounds, according to Foundation for Education and Development’s executive director Htoo Chit.
Htoo Naing came from Tenasserim division’s Mergui Archipelago in southern Burma.

In a similar incident, Sabei Phyu and Aung Aung, two Burmese migrants working at a shrimp factory owned by Charoen Pokphand Foods Company Limited in Songkhla province across the border from Malaysia, were also shot and killed earlier in the day by two masked gunmen.

The victims’ colleague told DVB that the two were having a chat in front of their living quarters after getting back from working a night shift.

“They were talking at the gates [of the living quarters] when they were shot by the assailants who came on a motorbike. It happened around 4am in the morning,” said the migrant who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

He said another employee, Khin Maung Htun, came out of the quarters when he heard the gunfire and was also shot. He was hospitalised after being wounded in the leg and back.

“He had a operation at the hospital and apparently is in good condition,” said his colleague.
A funeral for Sabei Phyu was held later in the day in accordance with Islamic rites, while Aung Aung’s body was kept at a monastery near the hospital, said his wife Aye Moe.

“We are devastated,” said Aye Moe. “This happened to those who didn’t do anything wrong.”
Htoo Chit said his organisation will work closely with the Burmese embassy in Thailand as well as Thai police as investigations proceed.