Beating And Arresting Won't Stop The Protesting - Happy New Year Burma!

By Goldie Shwe

One of the courageous members of the National League for Democracy Party, who gathered to protest on the 63rd Anniversary of the Anti-Fascist Revolution Day on 27th March had said, “They (the junta) may beat us or they may arrest us but we will keep on protesting.”

And the protests will go on.

The bad news for the junta is that instead of being intimidated, the NLD and other protesters are getting tougher and more resilient to the usual beatings and arrests. The timing also seems to be all wrong for the junta, who couldn’t have chosen the worst time for their much publicised referendum in May, too soon after “Thingyun”, the famous water festival.

Traditionally, Thingyun is the time when people expose and deliver their suppressed feelings, by performing topical antiphonal chants, in public. The Burmese, who are usually non-confrontational, get involved enthusiastically in the amusing satirical responses to the witty lead lines.

The mocking and ironically taunting chants are usually aimed at strict school headmasters, flamboyant movie stars, strangely behaved monks, greedy shop owners and mean mother-in laws. This year, every chant that has emerged is aimed at one target – the hated military junta.

It seems as though the people of Burma are unable to think of anything else but the torture and bullying they have suffered at the hands of the junta for the last 50 years. While the horrifying memories of last Septembers’ protests are still vivid in the minds of the people, the lies, the threats and the force used by the junta in preparation for their referendum in May, have made it all the more revolting and outrageous.

And what can you do when you feel revolted and outraged in Burma ? You protest, even though everyone knows that “protest” in Burma means violent beatings and arrests, certainly followed by long-term imprisonment. Fortunately for the protesters, the timing is just right for them.

Thingyan Festival , equivalent to the West’s Christmas and New Year rolled into one, is just around the corner. And during this important festival, people normally do what they like and jokes, humour and less inhibited behaviour are all-pervading. No one will be too surprised to see a normally restrained and reserved person, getting drunk and dancing all around the town, for example.

Everyone, alone, in pairs, or in small and bigger groups, walking, dancing, riding a trishaw or in a decorated cars, buses and coaches will be singing or chanting. The wittiest of the writers would have composed and prepared the antiphonal chants, which would be led by the most exuberant and spirited person, and echoed by a chorus of passionate and zealous followers.

Passers-by will stop to listen, admire and encourage the chanters. The Householders will open their doors and balconies to look at the performers before offering them drinks and snacks. More wealthy people will donate generously to the chanters.

The best thing about the antiphonal chants for the Water Festival is that the anti-government slogans could be all hidden amongst the traditional ones and could be passed off as mishearing, or a slip of a tongue. The clever writers would write ambiguously and or slightly obliquely so the chanters and the listeners will be giggling and laughing helplessly about the vitriolic and critical language but the junta will just have to watch impotently and take the ridicule. It is a protest, an outward and open protest, yet no one can arrest them because it is Thingyun and people are supposed to be chanting.

More importantly the chants will not only refresh the memories of the long-suffering people over the abuse to which they have been subjected by the ruthless and malicious junta, but also to remind them of their cunning and deviousness and their efforts to trick people into voting for the sham referendum in May.

Happy New Year Burma !

End.

Some Antiphonal Chants For The Water Festival

(Amusing and satirical – sung to the accompaniment of drums on festive occasions

The lead recites, lead lines to which a group respond , in chorus)


Lead : Is there any rain ..boys ?

Chorus: Is there any storm ..girls?

Lead: The Sun and the Moon are competing …

Chorus: Lord Sakka himself will be saving Daw Su (Aung San Su Kyi) .

Lead: The blood of the fighting peacock is so vividly red…

Chorus: Standing tall right in front of the public. (to protect or lead)

Lead : The military we inherit from our General (Aung San) …

Chorus: Is not to kill the people of Burma.

Lead: Aren’t you a tiny bit embarrassed …

Chorus : To bully the defenceless public ?

Lead: While Than Shwe’s daughter is covered in diamonds …

Chorus: The rest of the country is dying of starvation.

Lead: President of China Hu Jintao....

Chorus: Is the leader of the colonization.

Lead: Someone's sucking Burma’s blood …

Chorus: It is the Hu Jintao of China.

Lead: The PM of Thailand has shameless face…

Chorus: Who doesn’t flinch when telling fibs.

Lead : All the generals support the Olympics

Chorus: Which is certain to get bad reputation.

Lead: China’s got them by the balls…..

Chorus: Generals will do anything to please them all.

Lead: The UN and the Security Council …

Chorus: A million visits but nothing happens.

Lead: If we are afraid of the machine guns…

Chorus: There wouldn’t have been any protest.

Lead: Beating with the police batons…

Chorus: Make us laugh, make us laugh.

Lead: Su Su Nwe possesses tremendous courage…

Chorus: Who never stops smiling , even in prison.

Lead: Phu Phu Thin is the queen of hearts ….

Chorus: Who missed the funeral of her father.

Lead: Nilar Thein , the iron lady ..

Chorus: Who simply ignores the husband and the baby.

Interpretation by Nay Chi U
Original source : Democratic Voice of Burma

UN Must Reject Burma's False Constitution

Dear Friends

The military regime in Burma will be trying to pass a new constitution this May, one that only the military had a voice in creating and will essentially cement their hold of power. A new resolution has been introduced in the House of Representatives that will urge the United Nations Security Council to not recognize or accept this new constitution. Please let your Representative know today that he/she must co-sponsor this resolution.

Easily send an email through our website. It only takes a few minutes.

Why we need this resolution - UN Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari returned just a few short weeks ago from Burma. The military regime rejected each and every one of his proposals for a more inclusive and democratic process. Yet despite the complete failure of his mission, Gambari praised the military regime in his briefing to the Security Council. We must show the UN Security Council that Gambari is wrong, Burma's brutal military regime does not deserve praise but condemnation. Only through our strong support and advocacy for the people of Burma will we be able to overcome Gambari and the regime's biggest supporter, China at the Security Council. It is time the UN Security Council takes action to protect the people of Burma from another half century of oppressive military rule.

Representative Holt who introduced the resolution said in a press release "The Burmese people are determined to enjoy the same rights and freedoms that so many take for granted. The heroic efforts of opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi and others have given hope to victims of terrible oppression, and they deserve our support. Passage of this resolution would send a strong signal to the people of Burma that we stand with them in their struggle for democracy."
To read more about why this constitution should not be supported, check out articles on our website in Burmese and English.


The resolution:
- Denounces the constitution drafting process and new referendum
- Insists that the miltary regime engages in tripartite dialogue with democracy forces led by Aung San Suu Kyi and ethnic minorities
- Demands the unconditional release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners
- Urge President Bush to push the United Nations Security Council to not accept this new constitution and push for a binding resolution at the Security Council.

This is something that we can easily do to support the people of Burma who are determined to fight this new constitution. Please email now!

Aung Din, Jeremy, Jennifer, and Thelma

The United States Campaign for Burma


Support 1991 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi and the struggle for freedom and democracy in Burma.

Junta Spy Fake Monk on the Loose

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Source: Dr Lun Swe Blog site Translation By Pan Baydah

Junta Spy Fake monk named U Pyin Nya WunTha is on the way to US, left Bangkok on the Thai Airways Flight No. TG792 to New York on 19 March 2008 with Passport No. A015054, Name on Passport: U PANNA VAMSA

After the last year Saffron Revolution, the opportunist junta spy fake monk names U Pyinnya Wun Tha is on the way to United States.

Please visit Pan Bay Dah Blog for full report and photo of the spy monk.

Benefit single for Burma Campaign released - ³ Wake Up ² by Lo-Star

Dear Friends

Up and coming new indie band Lo-Star have just released their debut single in support of the Burma Campaign UK. Their new song 'Wake Up' was written by the band to tell the world that it’s time to take action on Burma. The profits from the single will be donated to the Burma Campaign UK to help us in our work for human rights and democracy in Burma.

The Daily Star has named it their single of the week, saying, “We should all still go out and buy it. Why? Because all the proceeds go to the Burma Campaign. Fortunately, it sounds quite lovely too. The lyrics "We gotta wake up, we've got to realise that something needs to be done" sound all the more poignant alongside the affecting video of the protesting Burmese people.”

Download the single now and help raise money for the Burma Campaign.
You can buy the single on iTunes: here...
Simply to sing a song about freedom and democracy in Burma is an arrestable offence, with a penalty of up to 20 years in jail. While the Burmese people are silenced, the rest of the world can speak out.

Watch the video at burmacampaign.

Buy the single on iTunes
phobos.apple

Wake Up is available in the shops from March 24th.

Thanks for your support.

Anna Roberts
The Burma Campaign UK

က်ိန္ စာ တိုက္ ၿခင္း

ေက်းဇူးႀကီးလွစြာေသာ ၿမတ္စြာဘု၇ားသခင္အား ဦးထိပ္ထားေ့ရြ ၊ မဟာပထဝီေၿမႀကီး ကို သက္ေသၿပ ုလ်က္ ၊
အကြ်န္ုပ္သည္ ဤမွန္ကန္ေသာ သစြာစကား ကို ဆိုအပ္ပါသည္။

မင္းဆိုးမင္းညစ္ နအဖ စစ္အစိုးရသည္္ ၄င္းတို့၏ ကိုယ္က်ိုးငွာ ၊ ရုိးသားေၿဖာင့္မတ္ေသာ ၿပည္သူမ်ား အေပၚ မတရား လိမ္ညာ လွည့္ၿဖားယုံသာမက ယုတ္မာ ညစ္ညမ္း စြာျဖင့္ ေစာ္ကား ညွင္းဆဲ သတ္ျဖတ္ လ်က္ရွိပါသည္။

ဤမွန္ကန္ေသာ သစြာစကားေႀကာင့္ ၊ မင္းဆိုးမင္းညစ္ စစ္အစိုးရ နွင့္ တကြ ၄င္းတို့၏ အေပါင္းပါ မ်ား၊ မိသားစုဝင္ မ်ားအားလံုးတို့သည္ စိတ္ဆင္းရဲ ကိုယ္ဆင္းရဲ ျခင္း ဒုကၡအဖုံဖုံကို ခံစားျပီးမွသာလ်င္ ေသျခင္းဆိုးျဖင့္ ေသႀကပါေစကုန ္သတည္း။

၄င္းတို့ေသေသာ အခါတြင္လည္း အဝီစိငရဲတြင္ အထပ္ထပ္ အဖန္ဖန္ ခံစားႀကပါေစကုန္ သတည္း။

Walk For Freedom

Athein, 35 and Zaw, 27 have embarked into a Walk for Freedom campaign. Please visit here to support them.

Free Burma's Political Prisoners Now ! - FBPPN

About Free Burma’s Political Prisoners Now! - FBPPN

BULLETS IN THE ALMS BOWL

An Analysis of the Brutal SPDC Suppression of the September 2007 Saffron Revolution

Human Rights Documentations Unit

NATIONAL COALITION OF THE UNION OF BURMA

March 2008


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This report is dedicated to the memory of all those who lost their lives for their part in the September 2007 pro-democracy protests in the struggle for justice and democracy in Burma.

May that memory not fade

May your death not be in vain

May your voices never be silenced


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For full reports please visit NCGUB site. Thank you.

20th Anniversay of Burma’s Human Rights Day

Twenty years ago, on 13th March 1988, the peaceful demonstration of Rangoon Institute of Technology (RIT) students was brutally cracked down by the ruling authorities, Burmese Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) government led by General Ne Win who took the power by armed might on 2nd March, 1962.

The deaths of RIT students Maung Phone Maw (inside the campus on that day) and Maung Soe Naing (on March 15 in hospital) by gunshots were followed by a mass demonstration on the street led by students of higher education on 16th March 1988. The demonstration was again brutally cracked down by government’s troops, resulting in the deaths of innocent students and hundreds of students in prison .

The student blood was shed on the streets and around the White-Bridge - about 500 meters away from the Rangoon University (main campus) - beside the Inya Lake. (Later then the White-Bridge is called as the Red-Bridge). Another demonstration on 17th March 1988 culminated in the deaths of many students, mainly in closed conveyances used to truck the arrested students to the Insein prison. since then, March 13 has been commemorated as Burma’s Human Rights Day.

(Original source : Burma Digest)

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Invitation to 20th Anniversary of Burma Human Rights Day

13th March 2008 is 20th Anniversary of Burma's Human Rights Day. We, Burmese Democratic Movement Association – UK (BDMA-UK) is holding a commemoration with the program below. Therefore we would like to invite you to come and show your solidarity with us.

(1) Offering food and alms to monks dedicating Phone Maw and to those who sacrificed their lives in the struggle for Burma's freedom.
AND
- Brief Presentation about Signature Campaign for all political prisoners in Burma.

Date - Thursday 13th March 2008
Time - Between 10:00 - 12:00
Venue - London Vihara (Wembley)
1 Old Church Lane
London NW9 8TG
Map………...
Tel: 02082006898

(NB - If you would like to bring your own prepared food, it will be helpful to feed all the participants)

(2) Masked Demonstration (Mask of Phone Maw will be provided)

Date - Thursday 13th March 2008

Time - 15:00 to 16:00

Place - In front of the Burmese Military Regime Embassy
19A Charles Street, London, W1J 5DX

Map................

For more info: 07762094562

We look forward to seeing you.

BDMA

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Please click for an invitation for residents in Thailand, Singapore and the USA.

Urgent action ­ Ban Ki-moon ­ Go To Burma!

Ban Ki-moon – Go To Burma!

Email UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon now calling on him to go to Burma.

On Monday 10th March the UN Envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, left Burma empty handed after the regime rejected every proposal he made for restoring democracy in Burma.

It was the 35th visit to Burma by a UN envoy in the past 18 years, and there has not been a single reform to show for any of them. In fact, the human rights situation has got much worse.

We can’t have another 18 years of suffering in Burma, another 18 years of torture, rape and ethnic cleansing.

It is time the UN woke up to the fact that this regime has been lying to UN envoys for almost two decades. It does not want reform and it is not interested in democracy.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon should take over the process. He should have the backing of a binding Security Council resolution, which under international law will force the regime to reform.

Take action here.

Thank you.

Anna Roberts
The Burma Campaign UK

Aung San Suu Kyi Meets UN Envoy, What Happened

Dear Friend,

We typically use this email list to distribute calls for action on how you can help the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi and the people of Burma.

However, many of you have been asking us what happened in Burma over the past weekend, so we wanted to send a special note.

Aung San Suu Kyi was seen in public when the United Nations Secretary General's envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, traveled to Burma.

His trip was the 35th trip by a UN envoy to Burma since 1990, but his mission was the same: to convince Burma's generals to participate in peaceful negotiations with Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's ethnic groups. In one form or another, 31 consecutive UN resolutions have called for these "talks" to start for nearly two decades. The goal of the "talks" is to create a framework for a transition to democracy.

Like previous trips by UN envoys, the military regime rejected all the UN proposals. The UN trip failed.

Frankly, we expected this to happen. We have watched how the military regime defies the UN at every turn for quite some time, and this trip was no different.

The main reason the regime is able to refuse to honor UN calls for change is that they know there will be no consequences from the UN. The only body at the UN that is capable of enforcing resolutions is the UN Security Council, but China has completely paralyzed the Security Council with its veto power. 10 Nobel Peace Prize recipients have called for the UN Security Council to impose a ban on all arms sales to Burma, but because of China's threat of a veto, the Council has only issued a non-binding, weak statement. Meanwhile, China has provided the military regime with billions of dollars in weapons and hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.

As a result, the UN is making the same mistakes the world made on Rwanda, Darfur, and elsewhere. In the meantime, the regime has carried out awful human rights abuses against the people of Burma, which you know about. It is shameful that in todays' world one single country can hobble the entire United Nations, but that is exactly what is happening.

What You Can Do

Clearly, we need to be doing more to focus attention and pressure on China. That is one reason why we are asking people to turn off their televisions and not watch the Beijing Olympics. China very much cares about the Olympics and its reputation, and it appears that the only way we can get China's attention is to call for everyday American people (and others throughout the world) to signal our frustration by refusing to watch the Olympics. You can sign up here today to pledge to become one of 1 million people that will turn off your televisions and do something instead of watching the Olympics. We have an easy online tool that allows you to ask your friends and family to refuse to endorse the Beijing Olympics as well.

Feel free to write to us with any questions or ideas you have. We have to do a lot more to convince China to support peace instead of underwriting tyranny in Burma. If we work together, we can make it happen.

Aung Din, Jeremy Woodrum, Jennifer Quigley, Thelma Young

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Please support 1991 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi and the struggle for freedom and democracy in Burma.

Free Burmese Journalists Petition

Dear Reader

Two Burmese journalists, chief editor Thet Zin and manager Sein Win Maung, from the Rangoon-based weekly publication "Myanmar Nation" were arrested on 15 February 2008, without any justification being offered. They are now in Insein jail, facing 10 years imprisonment.

Burmese Bloggers are appealing to United Nations mediator Ibrahim Gambari to condemn the arrest of these two journalists which could be linked to the presence in the newspaper's office of a copy of a report by his UN colleague, Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Paulo Sergio Pinheiro.

If you would like to act for the immediate release of Thet Zin and Sein Win Maung, as well as author Lay Lay Mun (alias Phu Ngong) of "Teenage Magazine", blogger and author Nay Phone Latt, and poets Min Han, Nay Htet Naing and Ko Ko Maung (alias Zaw Lu Sein), who were also arrested in 2008 please click here.

Links to the report : DVB and Ma Thadar's Blog