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Myanmar announces amnesty for 452 jail inmates in “goodwill gesture”
November 15, 2012
Myanmar has pardoned hundreds of prisoners under an amnesty that appears to be a goodwill gesture just days before a visit by US President Barack Obama.
The government ordered the release of 452 prison inmates on Thursday in a move criticised by pro-democracy activists for allegedly failing to grant freedom to many political detainees.
It was not immediately clear if any jailed dissidents were among those given amnesty, prompting rights groups to renew calls for officials to bring transparency to one of the world’s most opaque prison systems.
Myanmar has long insisted that all prisoners are criminals and release no official information on political detainees.
“This is extremely disappointing because we haven’t heard of any political prisoners being released. This is a shame,” said U Naing Naing of the Central Social Assistance Committee, which helps families of political prisoners.
Other groups that monitor political prisoners gave similar reports. Many political detainees are in remote areas where communications are difficult, so the extent of the release may not be known for several days.
State media said some of the prisoners to be released are foreigners who will be extradited, but gave no details.
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Human Rights Watch (HRW), the New York-based watchdog group, accused the government of using strategically timed prisoner releases to appease the international community.
“The government of Burma has said they are committed to releasing all political prisoners. So why haven’t they?” Phil Robertson, the group’s deputy Asia director, said.
“This whole process is being drawn out unnecessarily to maximise the Burmese government’s leverage with the international community.”
The last release took place in September, a week before Thein Sein visited New York for the UN General Assembly.
Thein Sein’s government has spearheaded a major transition towards democracy, easing harsh media censorship, signing ceasefire deals with armed rebel groups, and opening the country more to Western investment.
But rights groups say Thein Sein has not yet consolidated the political and economic reforms. The military is still dominant and is commonly implicated in rights abuses.
Funny, you’d think they’d jail more political prisoners in anticipation of an American President’s visit, not release them.
Malaysians protest persecution of Muslims
August 4, 2012
Thousands of people in Malaysia have taken to the streets in protest at the ongoing violence against the minority Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.
The protestors gathered in front of the Myanmar Embassy to voice their outrage at the persecution and massacre of Muslims in the Southeast Asian country.
They demanded a meeting with the officials of the Myanmar Embassy. Their request, however, was declined by the Myanmar’s officials.
The demonstrators also called for an immediate end to the violence against Rohingyas.
Reports say some 650 Rohingyas have been killed in the Rakhine state in the west of the country in recent months. This is while 1,200 others are missing and 80,000 more have been displaced.
The UN says decades of discrimination have left the Rohingyas stateless, with Myanmar implementing restrictions on their movement and withholding land rights, education, and public services from them.
The world body has also described the Muslim community as the Palestine of Asia and one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.
Earlier this week, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) condemned the Myanmar government for the killing of minority Rohingya Muslims during a recent wave of sectarian violence in the country.
“Burmese (Myanmarese) security forces committed killings, rape, and mass arrests against Rohingya Muslims after failing to protect both them and Arakan Buddhists during deadly sectarian violence in western Burma in June 2012,” the rights organization said in a report on Wednesday.
HRW also called on Myanmar to “take urgent measures to end abuses by their forces, ensure humanitarian access, and permit independent international monitors to visit affected areas and investigate abuses.”
The Buddhist-majority government of Myanmar refuses to recognize Rohingyas, who, it claims, are not natives, and classifies them as illegal migrants though the Rohingy as are said to be Muslim descendants of Persian, Turkish, Bengali, and Pathan origin, who migrated to Myanmar as early as the eighth century.
Japanese protest invasion of US planes
July 23, 2012
The US military’s Osprey aircraft have arrived in Japan despite public protests against their deployment after recent crashes raised safety concerns.
Protesters in a dozen small boats shouted slogans as the shipment of MV-22s were unloaded from a cargo ship at the US Marines’ base in the western city of Iwakuni.
The aircraft will ultimately be sent to Futenma airbase in Okinawa where a separate protest was also held today.
Residents and regional officials have voiced safety concerns following two crashes involving Osprey aircraft this year including one in Morocco in which two Marines were killed.
The June 13 crash, which left five U.S. Air Force personnel injured, followed another accident in Morocco in April that killed two U.S. Marines, and also came just a day after the Japanese government had stressed the safety of the aircraft to Okinawa prefectural officials based on a U.S. military report.
“This confirms that Ospreys could crash at any time,” said Toshio Takahashi, secretary-general of the anti-U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma group Futenma Bakuon Soshodan (Futenma noise legal action group), which organized a sit-in in protest. “We just can’t recognize the deployment (of Ospreys to Okinawa),” he added.
(Source: thepeoplesrecord.com)
Vietnamese protest fights back as China rivals the United States for title of meanest imperial bully.
July 1, 2012
Hundreds of Vietnamese demonstrated in Hanoi on Sunday against China’s moves to strengthen its claim to disputed islands in the South China Sea and its invitation to oil firms to bid for blocks in offshore areas that Vietnam claims as its territory.
The authorities in Vietnam rarely allow public demonstrations and some bloggers said security forces had warned them against attending the rally, but the police made no attempt to disperse people, Nguyen Quang A, one of the protesters said.
“We want to raise people’s awareness of China’s wrongful moves recently, and we have received applause from people in the streets,” he said.
The authorities tolerated a series of protests over China’s territorial claims from June to August last year before the government put an end to them.
CNOOC, the parent of New York- and Hong Kong-listed CNOOC Ltd, issued a tender last Saturday to invite foreign companies to jointly develop nine blocks in the western part of the South China Sea.
Vietnam has called this move illegal because the blocks encroach on what it claims are its territorial waters.
“The area that the China National Offshore Oil Corporation announced to open for international bidding lies entirely within Vietnam’s 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone and continental shelf in accordance with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,” Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesman Luong Thanh Nghi said on June 26.
“It is absolutely not a disputed area,” he said.
While The People’s Record was in Chicago for Socialism2012, a “No more Fukushimas” rally in Tokyo drew 200,000+ into the streets.
July 04, 2012
On Friday, June 29, more than two hundred thousand people inundated the streets around the Prime Minister’s office and residence, the Parliament building and other facilities.
Around 5:40 PM, the “protest on the sidewalk” spilled into the streets. Around 6:50 PM, all the six traffic lanes of the street from the crossing in front of the Prime Minister’s Office through the Ministry of Finance were completely occupied by workers and people, young and old, who held makeshift placards. Other streets nearby were also full of protesters. It was a Tahrir Squar in Tokyo.
The huge crowd of people began to move toward the PM’s Office, chanting “Saikado hantai” (“Stop Restart”). The panic-stricken police moved dozens of armored police vehicles and built a wall with them and stopped the march of protesters at the last minute.
Prior to this action the women from Fukushima and the rest of Japan held a rally inside the Upper House Building and in front of the main gate of the Parliament. Around 5:45 PM, they joined the protest in front of the PM’s Office and led chants and speeches. NAZEN contingents also led chants.
The delegation of Ethecon from Germany emphasized, “We have to strengthen solidarity and unity in Europe, America, Asia, Africa and Australia in order to abolish nuclear plants.” The protesters cheered and chanted loud with them.
A historical upsurge of tens of millions of workers and people has begun.
We have to organize an anti-nuke movement in labor unions and workplaces, passing resolutions and begin mobilizing as many workers as possible to get to the Yoyogi Park rally on July 16.
