Week 31: 2010 Election Watch (5-11 October)

Developments

• Youth activists posted signs that urged people to boycott the upcoming elections in 15 Villages across Arakan State.
• Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) organizers told residents of Shweza Village, Maungdaw Township, Arakan State, that if they did not vote for USDP candidates, they could be fined up to 100,000 kyat (about US$1,000) and serve one year in prison […]

Vote not anonymous: Burmese Embassy Official

In an interview on 6 October with SBS radio journalist Kate Stowell, Wunna Han, a spokesperson for the Burmese embassy in Canberra, said voting in the upcoming election would not be anonymous.

The interview discussed how Burmese residents living in Australia could vote in the upcoming election in Burma.

Kate Stowell asked Wunna Han: “Are those votes’ anonymous votes?”

He replied: “No, not anonymous” […]

Trade Unions Call on ASEM to Act on Burma

Trade unions from across Asia and Europe, gathered in Brussels in for o the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Leaders’ Summit are calling on ASEM Leaders to take action on Burma, including demanding the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners and the ending of attacks on the civilian population, particularly ethnic communities and democracy supporters […]

ASEM Backs Release Of Political Prisoners And UN Action On Burma

Burma Campaign UK today welcomed the ASEM statement on Burma as a sign that European and Asian countries are not being fooled by the Burmese dictatorship’s promises that elections will bring significant change in Burma […]

Weekly Political Events Regarding the SPDC’s Election (036-2010)

ထိုင္း-ျမန္မာ နယ္စပ္အေျခ စိုက္ႏုိင္ငံေရးအဖြဲ႔အစည္းတခုျဖစ္ေသာ Network for Democracy and Development (NDD) သတင္းႏွင္႔သုေတသနဌာနမွ နအဖ၏ လာမည့္ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြႏွင့္ စပ္လ်ဉ္း၍ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ၏ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအေျခေန အျဖစ္အျပက္္မ်ားကုိ အပတ္စဥ္ ရွာေဖြ စုစည္း ျဖန္႔ေဝလွ်က္ ရွိပါသည္။ ထိုအပတ္စဥ္ မွတ္တမ္းတြင္ နအဖႏွင့္ ၾကံ့ဖြ႔ံ တို႔၏ လႈပ္ရွားမႈ သတင္းအခ်က္အလက္မ်ား အပါအဝင္ ေတာ္လွန္ေရး အဖြဲ႔မ်ား၊ တုိင္းရင္းသားလက္နက္ကုိင္အဖဲြ႔မ်ား၊ လက္နက္ႏွင္႔ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး လဲလွယ္ထားေသာ အဖဲြ႔မ်ား၊ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ အစိုးရ ႏွင္႔ အစိုးရမဟုတ္ေသာ အဖဲြ႔အစည္းမ်ား၊ ျပန္တြင္းျပည္ပမွ ျပည္သူလူထုတုိ႔၏ လႈပ္ရွားမႈ မ်ားႏွင္႔ သတင္းအခ်က္အလက္မ်ားကိုလည္း ျပည္႔စုံစြာ စုစည္းတင္ၿပထားပါသည္။ […]

Appeal Letter to Smt Sonia Gandhi by Burmese orgs in India on Mahatma Gandhi Birthday

On the 141st birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, Burma Centre Delhi on behalf of all the Burmese democratic organizations in India submitted an appeal letter to Smt. Sonia Gandhi, President of All India Congress Committee (AICC) seeking her support to bring about genuine democratic change in Burma.

The letter which was endorsed by 44 Burmese organizations in India carries a very powerful speech of Aung San Suu Kyi on non – violent approach […]

U.S. Members of Congress Condemn the Burmese Regime’s Undemocratic Upcoming Elections on November 7, 2010

A bipartisan group of Members of the House of Representatives, led by Mr. Donald Manzullo (R-IL), yesterday introduced a Resolution, condemning the Burmese military regime’s undemocratic upcoming elections on November 7, 2010. The resolution is called H. Res. 1677, and co-sponsored by ten Representatives, including Mr. Howard Berman (D-CA) and Ms. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairman and Ranking Member of the powerful House Committee on Foreign Affairs respectively. The draft Resolution denounces the regime’s election as “the one-sided, undemocratic and illegitimate actions of the State Peace and Development Council (official name of the regime) that seeks to legitimize military rule through a flawed election process” […]

An Election Not Worthy of Support

Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, recently said the world must exercise “utmost vigilance” to ensure the approaching elections in Myanmar (Burma) are free and fair.

We are disappointed in such comments, which focus on the election as something important for our country, as something worth waiting and watching for, although this election is not the solution for Burma.

The elections, scheduled for Nov. 7, are designed to legalize military rule in Burma under the 2008 constitution, which was written to create a permanent military dictatorship in our country […]

Press Release on Elections in Burma

The Indian government should take a critical stance on the fairness and inclusiveness of the upcoming elections in Burma and their results. This call was made by the more than 20 journalists and civil society activists who participated in a media workshop on the November elections as well as the situation of Burmese refugees living in India, held at the Press Club of India […]

Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic received a delegation of the representatives of Burmese opposition

On September 23, the First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Mr. Jiri Schneider, received a delegation of the representatives of Burmese opposition.

The current alarming situation in Burma/Myanmar was discussed during the meeting […]