Ashin Issariya (aka King Zero): “We need unity. We need to act and work hard.”

By Ashin Issariya (aka King Zero), Alexandra Rösch, Garrett Kostin

September 27 will be the third anniversary of the brutal crackdown on the peaceful Saffron Revolution in Burma in 2007. Since then many monks have been arrested, forcibly disrobed, and put into jail and forced labor camps. Others have been forced into hiding. Some have fled to Thailand, while others are still hiding inside the country. While their struggle for peace and freedom goes on, the world seems to have forgotten about them […]

International Community Responds to Election Date Announcement

As we reported on Friday, the regime’s election commission has announced the long-awaited poll date for the elections: November 7, 2010. The election commission also called on political parties to submit candidate lists in the next two weeks.

November 7 is exactly one week before Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s release. “[Burma’s ruling generals] are going to hold the election before the release of Aung San Suu Kyi because they want to marginalise her from any activities,” said NLD vice-chairman Tin Oo. “They don’t want any appearance by her during the run-up to the election, because the military junta is worried that most Burmese nationals would come out to follow her speeches[…]

9 – 15 August: International Community Responds to Election Date Announcement

As we reported on Friday, the regime’s election commission has announced the long-awaited poll date for the elections: November 7, 2010. The election commission also called on political parties to submit candidate lists in the next two weeks.

November 7 is exactly one week before Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s release. “[Burma’s ruling generals] are going to hold the election before the release of Aung San Suu Kyi because they want to marginalise her from any activities,” said NLD vice-chairman Tin Oo. “They don’t want any appearance by her during the run-up to the election, because the military junta is worried that most Burmese nationals would come out to follow her speeches.”[…]

Upholding the Responsibility to Protect in Burma/Myanmar

Introduction

The situation in Burma/Myanmar remains grave. With elections scheduled for 7 November 2010 international attention on the country has increased. Such attention, and any policy action taken, must focus not only on the goal of democratic transition, and concerns about the regimes nuclear collaboration with North Korea, but also on the plight of Burma’s ethnic minorities who continue to suffer atrocities at the hands of the government. These atrocities may rise to the level of crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing – crimes states committed themselves to protect populations from at the 2005 World Summit, as described in the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect policy brief dated 4 March 2010, “Applying the Responsibility to Protect to Burma/Myanmar[…]

Weekly Political Events Regarding the SPDC’s Election (029/2010)

ယခုအပတ္ NDD ၏သတင္းမွတ္တမ္းတြင္ –

* ျပည္ေထာင္စု ၾကံ့ခုိင္ေရးႏွင့္ဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးေရးအသင္း USDA တျဖစ္လဲ ျပည္ေထာင္စု ၾက့ံခုိင္ေရးႏွင္႔ဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးေရး ပါတီ USDP ၏ သတင္းေထာက္လွမ္းေရးအဖြဲ႔က ျပည္တြင္းတက္ၾကြလႈပ္ရွား သူမ်ားကို ႏိွပ္ကြပ္ရန္ အတြက္မ်က္ေျခမျပတ္ ေစာင့္ၾကည္႔ေနသည္ဟု ဇူလုိင္လအတြင္းက ထိုင္း- ျမန္မာ နယ္စပ္သို႔ ထြက္ေျပးတိမ္းေရွာင္လာခဲ႔သည္႔ USDP သတင္းေထာက္လွမ္းေရးအဖြဲ႔ဝင္ ကိုေအာင္ခုိင္ဦးကေျပာၾကာခဲ႔ပါသည္[…]

Burma: Escalate International Pressure Ahead of November 7 Polls

Elections a Blueprint for Continued Military Rule

(New York) – The national elections announced by Burma’s military government for November 7 are designed to further entrench military rule with a civilian facade, Human Rights Watch said today. The United Nations, the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and concerned governments should seize Burma’s announcement of the first elections in more than 20 years to exert greater scrutiny over a deeply flawed process and press for the release of more than 2,000 political prisoners […]

CSW Urges International Community to Reject Burma’s Sham Elections

CSW is urging the international community to reject Burma’s upcoming election, which the military regime announced today would be held on 7 November. Election laws issued earlier this year and Burma’s new constitution both make any hope of a free and fair election impossible. With imprisoned democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi excluded, the election constitutes a whitewash for the ruling military junta […]

Burma’s Military Regime Announces Election Date

The regime’s election commission has announced the long-awaited poll date for the 2010 elections: November 7, 2010. State-run TV and radio ran the election commission’s brief statement earlier today. The statement also called on political parties to submit candidate lists between 16 and 30 August […]

Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Browne urges military government to allow free and fair campaign and polling process.

In response to today’s announcement of the date for elections in Burma to be held on 7 November 2010, Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Browne said:
“These elections are set to be held under deeply oppressive conditions designed to perpetuate military rule. The Burmese people should have a real chance to vote for change. Instead, the first opportunity in twenty years for Burma’s people to have a more open, stable and prosperous society has been missed.[…]

Republican Leader calls Burmese Junta’s announcement a ‘mockery of the democratic process’

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following statement Friday on the announcement by the Burmese junta that their election will be on November 7, 2010:
“Although the Burmese junta will characterize the charade it announced today as an election–an exercise that only the junta considers meaningful–November 7, 2010 will be just another day in Burma, marked by continued government oppression and hardship for its people. […]