BBC TV: Myo Thein on BBC Burmese Service’s Impact on Burma

January 6, 2011 — Burma Democratic Concern (BDC)
Posted in Uncategorized. 3 Comments »

3 Responses to “BBC TV: Myo Thein on BBC Burmese Service’s Impact on Burma”

  1. thuya Says:
    May 2, 2011 at 12:07 pm

    i want to look for news burma.how i do?

    Reply
    • joeblogg4uJoseph Philip Says:
      October 30, 2011 at 4:16 pm

      DO YOU REALLY KNOW BURMA?
      IF YOU DON’T KNOW REAL BURMESE HISTORY, YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND BURMESE POLITICS.

      To Fred,
      It seems you don’t really know the truth. So-called Saffron Revolution was instigated by Bumese from US;it was not peaceful and govt troops were forced to respond to violent monks, who are not supposed to be violent according to Buddhism. there are pictures to prove that they were violent and tried to provoke massacre of 1988 scale. Official record shows 12 death, reality may be 30. How does it compare with daily killings in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc.
      Your interpretation of US policy towards Burma is correct but you got the facts wrong. You need to study history with proper supervisor.

      What’s McCain doing there interferring in Burma’s internal affairs?

      ————————————————————
      ——————————————————————————

      May 16, 2009, 02:23:26 AM
      Burma’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi will go on trial Monday amid signs that, one way or another, the country’s military rulers intend to force her to give up her home.

      The trial stems from an incident involving a U.S. citizen, identified as John Yettaw, who swam across Rangoon’s picturesque Lake Inya last week to reach Suu Kyi’s lakefront bungalow and allegedly stayed there one or two nights. On Thursday, she was taken to Rangoon’s Insein prison on charges of violating the terms of her detention by hosting a foreigner, which could bring a three- to five-year prison term, according to Burmese opposition officials. The charges came just days before Suu Kyi’s six-year term under house arrest is due to expire.

      A little-known lawsuit filed by Suu Kyi’s estranged older brother, a U.S. citizen, poses another threat. In 2001, Aung San Oo demanded ownership of half of the two-story house that had been the property of their mother. A Burmese court suspended the case because foreigners may not own property in Burma, but sources in Rangoon have indicated in recent weeks that the suit may be revived. The courts in Burma are completely under the control of the military junta.

      Aung Lin Htut, the former deputy chief of mission for the Burmese Embassy in Washington, said in a recent interview that the lawsuit was generated by the Burmese government. The ambassador at the time, U Tin Win, received an order from Rangoon to obtain San Oo’s signature on the lawsuit in exchange for promises of business opportunities for his wife, a Burmese national, and her family, Lin Htut said.

      “When Aung San Oo returned these papers with his signature, the ambassador checked them carefully, signed his signature to confirm and sent it back to General Than Shwe through the diplomatic pouch,” said Lin Htut, who defected in 2005 and now lives in Maryland.

      Than Shwe is Burma’s head of state. San Oo, who had a home in San Diego at the time of the lawsuit, could not be reached for comment; there are reports he is now living in Burma. Irrawaddy, a Burmese opposition magazine published in Thailand, reported in 2005 that he was building a home in Pagan and living in a government guesthouse near his sister’s home.

      Lin Htut, who said he still keeps in contact with high-level sources in Burma, said Than Shwe has made it clear to colleagues that he has little desire to allow Suu Kyi’s detention to end, viewing her release as “the last card” he can play in his dealings with the rest of the world.

      Than Shwe is especially wary of freeing her now, as the junta prepares to hold fresh elections in 2010 under a new constitution that it says will create a “disciplined democracy,” including a legislature with 25 percent of the seats reserved for members of the military.

      Dozens of opponents of the government have been rounded up in recent months, and many have been given long sentences. Critics contend that the authorities are trying to remove from circulation anyone who could become a focal point of opposition.

      The National League for Democracy, Suu Kyi’s party, recently issued a statement saying it would consider participating in the election, but only if Suu Kyi was freed, the constitution was amended and the elections were free and fair. The party won a landslide victory in 1990 that the military refused to recognize, and Suu Kyi has been under detention for 13 of the 19 years since then.

      Suu Kyi, 63, is said to be in poor health and has recently been treated for dehydration and low blood pressure. For the last six years, her only regular visitor has been her doctor, who has been allowed to see her once a month, but he has also been held for questioning.

      The new charges against Suu Kyi were swiftly condemned by many Western leaders, and President Obama is expected to speak about her treatment when he renews an investment ban on Burma today. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters the charges are “baseless,” and she called on Burmese authorities to release Suu Kyi “immediately and unconditionally, along with her doctor and the more than 2,100 political prisoners currently being held.”

      Little is known about what motivated Yettaw, a 53-year-old resident of Falcon, Mo., to visit Suu Kyi’s home. His ex-wife told the Associated Press that he said he had to travel to Asia, leaving behind a 10-year-old and three teenagers with friends, to work on a psychological paper on forgiveness.

      The Washington Post
      ——————————————————————————————————————————————-

      High Court accepts Suu Kyi’s revision case application
      by Phanida
      Friday, 13 November 2009 21:39

      Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – The High Court today accepted the revision case application filed by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s lawyers.

      The lawyers filed an appeal case against the lower court’s verdict for Suu Kyi, who is serving one and-a-half years suspended sentence at her home, but the Divisional Court dismissed the appeal on October 2, so they filed a revision case at the High Court today.

      “We filed our application for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s revision case at the High Court today at about 10:30 a.m. The court accepted our application and gave us the case reference number — 600(b),” lawyer Kyi Win told Mizzima.

      In the application, the lawyers pointed out that the 1974 constitution is no longer in existence and not in force anymore. So the verdict based on this constitution is inappropriate, Kyi Win said.

      “The 1974 constitution is no longer in existence since 1988. How can it be in accordance with the law by imposing an internment order against Daw Aung San Suu Kyi by using a provision of this constitution? Using the dead constitution is unlawful,” he said.

      The Rangoon North District Court sitting inside Insein prison sentenced Suu Kyi to three years in prison on August 11 this year for violating her house arrest terms. But the junta supremo Senior General Than Shwe by an executive order reduced her sentence to half to be served at her home.

      Suu Kyi was tried for allowing an uninvited guest, an American John William Yettaw, who swam across Inya Lake and entered her house, according to him, to warn her of the danger of being assassinated. The incident coincided with the conclusion of her house arrest term due in a few days. But the junta released John Yettaw on humanitarian grounds.
      ——————————————————————————————————————————————
      Joe said…
      Freedom of SuuKyi (Mrs. Michael Aris) is not the same as freedom of Burma. As I understand it Mrs. Aris is free she will make havoc to destabilise the regime and hopefully she gets power. But getting rid of ancien regime Louis XVI did not bring about democracy but bloodbath in France. Why is she so ambitious? Why did she not do any charitable work in Burma? Puzzles me. So my friends, her freedom is going to impede freedom of Burmese people. Correct me if I am wrong. Also I want to ask. Does she not exploit her reputation created by Lady Gore Booth to punish her brother AungSanOo who is the rightful heir of their father AungSan? As I understand Burmese law says that the estate of the parents is to be shared equally between the surviving off springs. That means she is a squatter in her and her brother’s house. She must pay rent to the partnership. So AungSanOo is entitled to half of the house plus half of the rental income she owes since 1988. Is is not logic? What do you care? Truth or publicity?
      Yours sincerely,
      HONEST ENGLISHMAN JOE.

      September 11, 2009 9:49 PM
      Anonymous said…
      What a stupid comment which shows “Englishman Joe’s” appalling ignorance.

      No one says Aung San Suu Kyi is Burma, but she is a large and important part of it, as is the democracy she gives her life for.

      She is not “ambitious.” If she were she would have left Burma and set up a non-profit overseas a long time ago.
      The house is hers by inheritance.
      Her no good brother tried to claim it, instigated by SPDC.

      The NLD and democracy supporters does (sic) a tremendous amount of social work in Burma, but changing the political system in Burma is the only thing that will bring real change.

      Shut you mouth stupid Joe till you have educated yourself more about Daw Suu and Burma.

      A Burmese woman Jane.

      September 12, 2009 10:48 AM

      —————————————————————————————————————————————–
      Anonymous has left a new comment on the post “Amnesty International Urgent Action: Human Rights …”:

      Dear Madam Jane,
      You are a Burmese woman, with the name Jane. How come? You call Joe stupid, but surely you do love to have an English name. Do you not have a Burmese name or are you ashamed of being Burmese whilst calling Joe ‘stupid Englishman’? In any case, Suu’s late husband Dr. Michael Aris is English. We Englishmen are not stupid, madam. Besides, because of our efforts she became famous as a Nobel Prize winner. I, like many, don’t know why she got it. In case you do not know, in England the eldest son gets ‘the House’, when parents die. I think the Burmese law is fair. The house belongs to both of them. AungSanOo owns half the house and half the rent Mrs. Aris owes for all the years she had occupied the house solely. I don’t believe that she is a large part of Burma. Fact is she jumped on the bandwagon of democracy movement when she saw the opportunity. Is it not true that she went to Burma in 1988 to look after her mother who was ill; she had no intention of getting involved in politics? Having seized the opportunity, now she cannot back out. If she does, she will be disgraced. What would the international community think of her?
      As for her being leader of democracy movement, may I say a long time before, there had been several Burmese people including women, who struggled for democracy only to be imprisoned and tortured, or killed. Have you forgotten the floating bodies of Burmese men and women during the period 1962 -1988? Only because of the reverence for her father, who served under Lord Mountbatten in recapturing Burma from the Japanese, she was tolerated by the army – founded by her father. If she were an ordinary Burmese woman, she would have the same chance as a snow flake in the Sahara. If she was married to a Burman she would be a nothing. Only because she married an Englishman, she got the chance to rise out of obscurity to the stratosphere of fame.
      So Madam Jane, please be grateful to England for what England has done and still doing for her, so that she will get the power she craves for.

      You wrote:” She is not “ambitious.” If she were she would have left Burma and set up a non-profit overseas a long time ago.” Precisely, madam; because she is so ambitious, she would not leave Burma to set us a non-profit oversea (?) And what about neglecting her two sons?

      Now the sanctions. She urged the West to impose sanctions on Burma. Many Burmese lost their jobs. She also urged the international community not to go to Burma, thus depriving ordinary people of a chance to make a living from tourism. In effect, is she not saying “Unless I have power, Burmese people must suffer”?

      Madam Jane, please think very carefully what Mrs. Aris is doing to Burma. She indeed is the problem.
      NEVER IN HISTORY HAD A WOMAN DONE SO LITTLE AND ACHIEVED SO MUCH FAME!

      Never in history had a woman done so little and gained so much publicity and fame; it just shows how powerful the Western media is. The truth is she cannot quit now. She did not lift a finger when Burmese people were suffering immensely under the thug ShuMaung, with nom de guerre of NeWin. There had been thousands of democracy activists, true leaders of democracy, men, women and minors, who were imprisoned, tortured, maimed and killed. Yet the English neo-colonialist media completely ignored them; worse, the British govt of the time was so hypocritical, for the late thug ShuMaung was welcome to UK and allowed to buy property in London. He had a house in Wimbledon. Burmese people are like children, so innocent, honest and gullible. They did not know that SuuKyi had married an Englishman and became MRS. MICHAEL ARIS. How could she have done that? AungSan fought the British for independence and he paid with his life. After colonising Burma, IN 1886, English coloniser started drawing boundaries within the unitary kingdom of Burma to instil divide-and-rule, marginalising the Burmans and favouring the so-called ethnic minorities. They let in Christian missionaries, particularly Baptists to Christianize atheist Karens. Most of the Karens are Buddhist. About a third became Christians and their allegiance changed to the coloniser English. In 1947, English sympathisers of the Karens who fought on the side of the British against the Japanese engineered the massacre of the cabinet of AungSan. He and his brother U BaWin were two of the 8 who were assassinated, with the help of English. Burmese never know the truth. They love AungSan, absolutely adored him, quite deservedly. It is unbelievable that considering what the former enemy state, England, did to her father she married an Englishman. It was sheer treason. Her late father AungSan must be turning in his grave. Her brother AungSanOo immediately disowned her. Since then they had been estranged. In 1988, SuuKyi went to Burma to care for her terminally ill mother Daw KhinKyi; she refused to lead the students when they asked her to lead. Only when she saw hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating against the then BSPP regime, carrying AungSan’s picture, she jumped on the bandwagon of democracy; sheer opportunist! English media got into top gear to promote her, assisted by her godmother Lady Gore Booth, an arch imperialist, who looks down on the Burmese. Then SuuKyi, Mrs. Aris, got Nobel Prize. For what? Exactly! Burmese, who had no understanding of the machination of the English to promote ‘their woman’, who was literally under an Englishman, to recolonise Burma by proxy. No wonder the military was so stubborn about releasing her. Americans and Europeans do not know or understand true Burmese history. In fact AungSanOo should have been chosen, in which event Burma would have gained freedom and democracy a long time ago. He had been maligned and his political career was nipped in the bud. He did M.Sc in electrical Engineering at Imperial College, London. Later he went to America to work. He wanted to overthrow the BSPP regime after his MSc degree in 1971. But he was not allowed to become a lecturer at the Rangoon Institute of Technology. What a tragedy for Burma. He arrived in Burma a few days later after his sister SuuKyi. If only he was the first to arrive, history would have been very different. Later, MR. ARIS calling herself AungSanSuuKyi asked Western governments to impose sanctions on Burma and to stop tourists going to Burma. Many ordinary Burmese lost their livelihood. She is waiting for power. It will be an ultimate insult to Burmese honour. Further she had cheated her brother. Customarily and legally, siblings share the estate when both parents pass away; it is a Buddhist law, which is most fair and more advance than Western laws of inheritance. She took over the house and occupied it. The house belongs to her and her brother. What should have happened is this: in the ‘current’ brother-sister partnership, she should have paid rent all these years since she began occupying it. The expenses, if THERE WERE any, in maintaining the house should be have been deducted from the rent to calculate the net rental income; half of this net income belongs to AungSanOo. Logical? Of course! Very simple accountancy. Therefore, she now owes her brother half of the net income since the day she took occupied the house, PLUS half of the worth of the property. Her brother tried to claim his share of the house. But with her sky-high reputation and the sympathy the Western media had stoked up for her, she could swindle her brother with impunity. How decent is she? Her ambition was to revenge her brother for disowning her. In history there have been many people who could transgress without impunity because of their fame or popularity with the people that is just or unjustly bestowed upon them; Mrs. Michael Aris is one of them. But wait, she will not get away for ever; you can fool all people sometimes, some people all the time, but NOT all people all the time. FOR THE TIME BEING THE WORLD HAS NOT BEEN GIVEN THE TRUTH, WHICH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION.

      ******************************************************************************************
      A rare look at Burma’s imprisoned ‘Lady’
      On what could be the eve of political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest in Burma, a Vancouver writer has released footage of the democracy activist that’s never been seen before.
      Former Buddhist monk and author Alan Clements spent sixth months with Suu Kyi, and collected audiotapes, diaries and video of the woman who’s been the face of the resistance against the military junta for two decades.
      “Her charm is her values. She represents non-violence,” Clements told CTV News.
      “She looks to the goodness in the human heart, rather than to see their flaws.”
      For years, his documentary material was hidden somewhere inside the Southeast Asian country — but not anymore.
      Some of the video footage is from 1996, when 400 guests were invited to the Nobel laureate’s home to celebrate Burma’s independence from Britain.
      It was a rare occasion. By coming, the guests risked losing their homes and jobs — or even prison.
      The ruling junta reacts severely to criticism, jailing or executing its opponents. Death was reportedly the fate of nearly 200 monks who staged a protest in 2007.
      “Those are the conditions in Burma. There is no regard for human rights there,” Clements said.
      Clements is speaking in Vancouver on Saturday about Suu Kyi and her message. For more information, visit his website.
      House arrest could end this week
      On Thursday, Suu Kyi lost an appeal for early release from her house arrest, which is due to expire on Saturday.
      But close aides remain optimistic she will be freed.
      The junta has not confirmed the 65-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner will be set free, but government officials have quietly said they are making “necessary security preparations” for this weekend.
      Suu Kyi has been detained for 15 of the past 21 years, the latest for violating terms of her house arrest by briefly sheltering an uninvited American who swam to her home.
      Once she is released, Suu Kyi plans to help her disbanded party probe allegations of fraud in the polls, according to aides.
      Re-entering politics, especially in a manner that would embarrass the junta, poses the sort of challenge that the military has met in the past by detaining her. While her party was disbanded because it refused to participate in the election, it remains enormously popular as a social movement.NOT AT ALL TRUE.

      With a report from CTV British Columbia’s St. John Alexander and files from The Associated Press

      Bottom of Form
      ” BBC tells lies. It is not true everyone in Burma loves SuuKyi. Many hate her for treason. BBC said that she dedicated all her life to the cause of Burmese democracy. Rubbish! Liar BBC! When she went to Burma in 1988 she was 43 years old, yes 43! No genuinely dedicated person, man or woman, ever wait till that age to get involved in a cause they believe in. Many people in England, Burma and elsewhere believe she is just an opportunist, aided by neo-colonialist media of England. That is the truth!
      A response from an anonymous.”

      SO CAN ANYONE TELL ME THE TRUTH?

      Joe
      (Joseph Philip)

      BURMA RESEARCHER

      FILM REVIEW

      There are a number of serious passion projects from unlikely directors at Toronto this year: we’ve had Madonna’s W.E, Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous, and now we have French action king Luc Besson’s The Lady, a biopic of the Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

      1. The Lady
      2. Production year: 2011
      3. Directors: Luc Besson
      4. Cast: David Thewlis, Michelle Yeoh
      5. More on this film

      Surprisingly, it’s the worst of the three. Although it is garbled, Madonna’s film does at least articulate the reasons for her fascination with Wallis Simpson – and the same goes for Emmerich’s unmasking of William Shakespeare. But The Lady says so little about its subject, it would struggle to pass muster as a TV biopic.

      The dialogue is flat, the performances creaky and, in the wake of George Clooney’s much more sophisticated The Ides of March, its depiction of the political world borders on cartoonish.

      It begins with a misleadingly exciting prologue, set in 1947, in which Suu’s politician father is murdered by rebels. From here, we move to the late 90s and a sterile Oxford hospital room, where Michael Aris (David Thewlis), Suu’s husband, is receiving some bad news about his illness: he has less than five years to live.

      Aris’s twin, also David Thewlis, comes to visit, and suggests that his wife should come home to be with him. But Aris won’t hear of it and instead embarks on a flashback reminiscence that takes him back ten years, to the moment his mother-in-law became fatally ill.

      It is now the late 80s, riots are rife in Burma, and, as the daughter of a political martyr, Suu is begged by the intelligentsia to spearhead a democratic rebellion against the brutal, oppressive government.

      This takes an age to relate, cutting backwards and forwards between Oxford and Burma, from Suu being welcomed by Burmese from all walks of life to Aris in the corner shop, buying what looks like a packet of raisins.

      But, strangely, very little of Suu and Aris’s previous life is mentioned. There is next to no emotional turmoil, she simply plunges headlong into the role of people’s leader, and Aris supports her as one might a football team, not a beautiful woman whose life is clearly in danger.

      Issues are discussed in brief and simple terms, and the regime is personified in the Idi Amin-like figure of The General – a vindictive, superstitious despot who makes his judgements based on tarot readings.

      Quite why Suu made the sacrifices she did, and why Aris let her make them, is never really explained, other than it was the right thing to do. This may be the case but it is not cinematic, and the film’s vast hordes of extras do not make up for what’s missing from the script. Yeoh is noble but detached; Thewlis, though he tries hard, is miscast in the kind of role Jim Broadbent has patented; and, worst of all, the couple’s two boys are given the clunkiest, least realistic lines in the movie (another theme of this festival has been parent-children relationships, and The Lady pales next to Alexander Payne’s The Descendants in this respect).

      This should be a dynamic film about a dynamic couple; instead, it might as well be titled Aung San Suu Kyi: Housewife Superstar.
      ************************************************************************************************************
      COMMENTS

      The Nobel Price is not a guarantee anylonger for inmunity.Yunus failed with the Micro Credits.Obama is exercising far things than Promoting Peace.Once in Politics Vargas Llosa.He stained his career in Literature.In Spain he says one thing and in Peru other.

      Aung San Suu Ky is another character who the Nobel Price has just brought more disgrace in her existence.As Brighton takes resposibility.The Nobel Committee should take theirs as well.
      ******************************************************************************************
      ReplyReply
      More|
      Transworld Research Writers to me, timesofoman, adsales, webedition, circulation, sarah.jewell, melondon, contact, newseditor, editor, editor, info, info, info, ips

      We can pass no judgement at this stage. We need to research more, a great deal more. We need to know more about history of Burma.
      You are welcome to stay in touch with us. We will share any furtHer discoveries with you.
      Can you tell us more about AungSanOo?
      Thank you for the information.

      Reply

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