request

ွုၿမန္မာ ဘေလာက္ဂါ မၽား သို႕ ပန္ ၾကားခ်က္ နွင္႕ အကူအညီ ေတာင္း ခံ ၿခင္း

Cultural anthropology and political science မဟာသိပၸံ သင္ၾကားေနေသာ ဂၽာမန္နိုင္ငံမွ ဂၽာမန္ေက်ာင္းသူတစ္ဦးက မဟာသိပၸံ စာတန္း အတြက ္ "The bloggers' community and cyber activism of Burmese people in Burma and the diaspora, especially during and after the "saffron revolution".(Democracy လိုလားေသာ ၿမန္မာ bloggers မၽား ရဲ႕ Saffron Revolutions အတြင္း နွင္႕ Saffron Revolution အၿပီး လွုပ္ရွားမွု နွင္႕ ကမ ၻာ အနွံ့႕ သတင္း ၿပန္႕နွံ႕မွုအ ေၿခ အ ေန နွင္႕ Blog sites မၽား အ ေၿခ အ ေန)(Blog site recently posting country လက္ ႐ိွ ေရာက္ေနေသာနိင္ငံ၊ မည္ သည္႕ နိင္ငံတြင္ ၿမန္မာ bloggers မည္ မၽွရွိသည္္ ကို သိ ရန္ သာၿဖစ္ပါ သည္။
မည္ သည္႕Blogsite ၊ မည္ သည္႕နိင္ငံ တြင္ရိွ သည္ ကိုမေဖၚၿပပါ (Fully confidential)

အဓိကသိလိုခၽက္ က ေတာ႕
- Blogsite ေထာင္ ရ ၿခင္း ရည္ရြယ္ခၽက္ နွင္႕ ဒီမိုကေရစီ လွုပ္ရွားမုမၽား ကို သင္႕ blogsite တြင္ တင္ၿပရၿခင္း အေၾကာင္းရင္းမ်ား ၊ ကမ ၻာ႕ လူထု ၏ Myanmar Bloggers မၽား အေပၚ အၿမင္ နွင့္ တံု႕ ၿပန္ မွု အေၿခအေန၊(What are the aims, thoughts of your blogs and how is the perception of the world public?)

- ဘာ ေတြ ကို ေၿပာင္း လဲ ေပး နိုင္ ခဲ႕ သ လဲ။ (What has changed? )

- On line(Internet) ဆက္ သြယ္မွုမၽား ေၾကာင္႕ ဘာ ေတြ ကို ေၿပာင္း လဲ မွု ေတြ ႐ိွ ပါ သ လား (Has anything changed due to the online-communication?)

Photos and Eye witness account of Voting scene in front of Burmese Embassy, Singapore on 27 April 2008

Source:http://linletkyalsin.blogspot.com/
This is the translation of the Ma Linlet Kyalsin Articles about the voting experience in front of Burmese Embassy on the 27 April 2008 (sunday). you can read the original post in Burmese here: http://linletkyalsin.blogspot.com/2008/04/no.html

On the 27 April 2008, under the bright sunny day light even though it was a rest day(Sunday) for other people but for self motivated Burmese patriots it was a day of the show of the united strength of democracy loving people. Some wearing Red tee-shirt with a word “NO” printed on the front and the back and some wearing red cap were slowly gathering and filling up the narrow road leading towards the Burmese Embassy.

All these Burmese patriots line up both side of the road in orderly manner waiting for their name to be called by embassy staff to vote inside the embassy compound. After the noon time the crowd grew up to 4000 and the queue line was almost up to the Tangling Mall traffic light which was about ½ kilometer from the Burmese embassy.

The embassy staffs were calling the voter names from 9:00am in the morning till 1:00pm in the afternoon but they stop the voting process from 1 pm to 4pm. They didn’t make any announcement; they didn’t concern anything about their fellow countrymen who were waiting patiently under the hot sun just to vote for their true feeling about the draft constitution which was written by the junta without the listening to the people voices and desire. Singapore police forces were also out in full force to check the situation between voters and embassy staff.

To see the scene of some youth from OPB (Organization of Patriotic Burmese, Singapore) distributed water among the voters make you to feel proud as a Burmese people. It showed the unity of Burmese people against the military Junta. Around 4:00pm voters were allowed to vote again but some voters who were wearing red tee-shirt with “No” word were not allowed to go inside for vote unless they took out their tee-shirts.

But some students only wearing the tee-shirt as their tops and nothing underneath it so the embassy staff finally and RELUCTANTLY allow them to wear the red tee-shirt while they voting. A moment later the in-charge of the voting came out from the office and announced that there were no more voting due the SHORTAGE of BALLOTS and they have to order again from Burmese capital and it will only continue on 28 and 29 April until late night.

When the voters asked to announce that arrangement officially by putting a notice on the Embassy wall and notice board, there were no replies from Embassy authority!!! For last three days total numbers of Burmese people who managed to vote were not even thousand and according to the one embassy staff, Embassy sent out about 15,000 invitation letters to Burmese people in Singapore to come for voting, now after not more than thousands voted, the were no more ballots!!! Did they expect that only few hundred will come and vote?

Is that means they didn’t even prepare for the ballots for 10,000 people even though they sent out 15,000 invitation letter. Did they purposely doing this as per their cunning way of doing things?????

The Burmese Buddhist Monks who were in Singapore came to support the voters, were warmly welcome and pay respect by the crowd which make the scene to reflect back the time of saffron revolution.

Around 6:00pm everyone stand up and sang the National Anthem from their heart and ended their day.

The sunlight was slowly fading and the evening become darker but for the Burmese people, who were wearing Red Tee-shirt to show the feeling against the Junta, inside their heart and mind and inside their soul the patriotism, nationalism and unity will bright for eternity and even the darkest night cannot stop that brightness from their hearts.

Majority of Burmese from Lion city Vote "NO"

Source: http://linletkyalsin.blogspot.com/
On the 26 April, self aware Burmese Patriotic people were eagerly waiting in front of Burmese embassy at St. Martin Road off Orchard Road. Their face showed their determination of to do the right things for the country.

Some whispering, some shouting to show their dissatisfaction of the way Burmese Embassy Staffs working slowly for the voting Process.

Even though the law mentioned whoever is 18 years old and able to prove that he is Burmese citizen can able to vote for the so called "draft constitution" referendum but some are not allowed to vote, even though they explained politely to the embassy staff that they are already over 18 years old and they have their VALID Burmese passport which is the solid prove of they are Burmese citizen and they are still not allowed to vote and these Burmese people are asking the embassy staffs what are the reason.

The Only reply they got from the Burmese embassy staff was "because they were not on the list"!!! which was the only answer the embassy staff repeated and repeated again for all the questions and equiry(What a Bullshit !! the law already mentioned if you are 18 and above and prove of you are Burmese citizen you can vote and they are still mentioned no name on the list, What list,, we don't need that list..we already proved we are Burmese citizen!!! ..baydah)

What so ever, according to the people who went there and vote said the HIGH MAJORITY Vote for ..NO!!!.

Whether Junta try to cheat the Result or not, In Singapore,as per actual witness account and as per the voter themselves said ..that the Higher majority of the votes are all NO NO NO!!!

Than Shwe and his Followers become act like the Indian Chettiars ခ်စ္တီး လို ကၽင္႔ တဲ႕ သန္းေရြွ နွင့္ ေနာက္လိုက္ မ်ား

Bay Dah's Statement in English and Burmese

During the period of Pre World War II in Burma, the Indian Chettiars are the main Money lenders to the poor Burmese Farmers and they benefited a lot from tricking the uneducated Burmese farmers by asking them to sign(make a cross) on the piece of Paper before they borrowed the money.

Actually since the farmers are uneducated and they cannot read what were written inside that piece of paper and out of ignorant and naively, they just put a signature(which is actually just put a "X" on the paper since they are uneducated they didn't know how to sign their name) on that paper. Later when the time was up the Chettiers used this piece of paper and told the poor farmer that he agreed this and that while you borrowed money now since you cannot payback the money as per agreement we will take your land, your house and your daughter in return.

By these way Many Burmese farmers were cheated and loose their land, their home and worst of all their daughters become mistress of that Chettiars because of that piece of paper that they signed Blindly on that paper without knowing what was written on that.

Now Than Shwe and his followers are trying to do the same TRICK on the Burmese People.

They didn't explain to the whole country what is inside this "so called" draft constitution. They DON"T distributed the booklet of Draft constitution sufficiently(eg. only one book at the Burmese embassy in UK and 8 books at the Burmese embassy in Singapore and people have to put their passport or ID as a deposit at the embassy to read the draft constitution within the embassy compound) and they still ordered the people to vote for the referendum for that unexplained draft constitution.

Later they will use this vote count and will cheat the Burmese people and the whole world to retain their power.(Did all of you ever heard in the world history that people have to vote for the draft referendum which was never explain to the public that what was written inside..what a joke!!!)

Since we even don't know what is written inside, we will NEVER vote "yes" (actually we don't even need to read what is inside because we all know it is all about for them to retain their power)

All Burmese PLEASE BEWARE of this TRICK!! Don't let Chettier Than Shwe and his Followers cheat you. If all of you get cheated then you and your whole Burma will lost the freedom, Human rights and Democracy forever.

Only action that will save your future is Vote "NO"

ခ်စ္တီး လို ကၽင္႔ တဲ႕ သန္းေရြွ နွင့္ ေနာက္လိုက္ မ်ား

ၿမန္မာ့ သမိုင္း ၿပန္ ၾကည့္ လၽွင္ ခၽစ္တီး မၽား သည္

စာမတတ္ ေသာ ၿမန္မာ လယ္သမား မၽား အား ဘာ ေရး ထား မွန္း

မ သိ ေသာ စာရြက္ ေပၚ တြင္ ၾကက္ ေၿခ ခတ္ ထိုး ခိုင္း ကာ

လိ္မ္ ညာ ေငြ ေခၽး ခဲ႔ ႀက သည္။

ယၡဳ လည္း ခၽစ္တီး ေတြ လို သန္းေ႐ြွ တို႕ က ဘာမွမရွင္း ၿပတဲ႕၊ ဘာေရးထားမွန္းမသိတဲ႕၊

ၿပည္သူလူထုကိုလြတ္လပ္စြာဖတ္ခြင္႕မေပးတဲ႕ ဖြဲ႕စည္းပံု အေၿခခံမူၾကမ္း ကို သူ တို႕ အာဏာ တည္ ၿမဲ ေရး အတြက္၊ လိမ္ညာၿပီး ၿပည္သူူထုကို မဲ ထည္႕ခို္င္း ေန ၾက ၿပီ။

ခၽစ္တီးလိမ္တာမၽိဳး မခံရေအာင္
သင္႔ေ႐ွ႕ေရး နွင္႔ ၿမန္မာၿပည္ လြတ္လပ္ေရးအတြက္ မေထာက္္ခံၾကပါနဲ႕။

(X) မဲ သာ ေပး ၾက ပါ။

Send Protest letter to your nearest Japanese Embassy.

Source: http://drlunswe.blogspot.com/

Japanese Police used EXCESS Force to suppress Burmese Protesters who came to Burmese Embassy to vote "No vote" to Draft Constitution referendum.

U Myint Thein(NLD), Ma Thaw Dar Min Htun(BDA), Ko Soe Min Aung(BDA), Ma Mya Phyu Pyar(Lu Baung Thit), Ma Naw Tha Balu and other 8 including one woman were injured.

Ma Thaw Dar Min Htun who is pregnant was beaten at her stomach and now in danger of getting loss her unborn baby.

Some of the girls loose their dress and skirts because of Japanese police uses excess force to suppress the demonstrators.

There were five military Helicopters hovering above the Burmese Embassy. According to one witness one of the Burmese Embassy staff was swearing at the protesters and threatening that whoever come in the the compound to vote, embassy staffs will beat them up.

The way the Japanese police suppressed the protesters are similar to the way the Burmese Military Junta did to the protesters said one eye witness.

(Japanese Primes Minister MUST apologise to the Burmese People for this unfair Treatment ..Bay Dah)
Please send your protest letter to your nearest Japanese Embassy around the world.

Additional Information: according to the sources from Japan, all the civil servants from Burma and students scholar who are happen to be in japan right now are recruited to vote at secret place and give dinner and these civil servants and students have to submit their Yes/No Vote together with their Biography(there was no secret voting at all ..do you think these people dare to vote "NO" with their Biography together.

One Woman Protester did manage to vote at the Burmese embassy and she was PHOTOGRAPHED while she was VOTING For NO. (is it call free and fair????)

Don't Watch the Olympics 2008

Source: http://www.usacampaignforburma.org/

Why Boycott and Don't Watch the Olympics 2008?
Watch this then You will know.

2008 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Breaking News Photography

Source: http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2008/breaking-news-photography/

The Pulitzer Prize 2008

BREAKING NEWS PHOTOGRAPHY
For a distinguished example of breaking news photography in black and white or color, which may consist of a photograph or photographs, a sequence or an album, in print or online or both, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).

Awarded to Adrees Latif of Reuters for his dramatic photograph of a Japanese videographer, sprawled on the pavement, fatally wounded during a street demonstration in Myanmar.

Adrees Latiff Biography

Born in Lahore, Pakistan on July 21, 1973, Adrees Latif lived in Saudi Arabia before immigrating with his family to Texas in 1980. Latif worked as a staff photographer for The Houston Post from 1993 to 1996 before joining Reuters. Latif graduated from the University of Houston in 1999 with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism. Latif has worked for Reuters in Houston, Los Angeles before moving to Bangkok in 2003 where he covers news across Asia.

"The March of the Saffron Robes", won the coveted News Story of the Year

Source: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/

MediaCorp News bagged five of seven awards given out at a ceremony on Friday night. Its documentary, entitled "The March of the Saffron Robes", won the coveted News Story of the Year.

The protest marches by the Buddhist monks in Myanmar last September made news around the world. But covering the event, which saw Myanmar authorities crack down on protesters in the reclusive country, was a major challenge.

Seasoned current affairs producer Sharon Hun and her team took the bull by the horns and tamed it. Immediately after the story broke, the team overcame the odds to produce "The March of the Saffron Robes" documentary in just three days, when similar productions would have taken much longer.

The judges felt that the documentary was a timely story that gave much-needed context and perspective to the Myanmar issue. "I think because it involves Myanmar - the country has been closed for many years - getting independent opinion and information and even access into the country was a challenge in itself.

We were very fortunate to have a group of people who were willing to share their story with us," said producer Sharon Hun. (Full story here)