Burma Launches Air Strikes Against Kachin Rebels

The Burmese government has confirmed that it carried out air strikes this week against ethnic rebels in northern Kachin state, raising fresh concerns about the country's reform and fragile peace processes.

In an interview with VOA's Burmese Service on Wednesday, a government spokesperson acknowledged that "training jets" were used against Kachin rebels in response to attacks by the Kachin Independence Organization.

Some government officials had at first denied carrying out an air offensive in rebel-held territory. But officials later said the army used air strikes to help regain a base during an increase in fighting that began last week.

Each side has blamed the other for the escalation in violence, which broke out near rebel headquarters in Laiza, near the Chinese border.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced since June 2011, when fighting broke out between the army and Kachin rebels, ending a 17-year ceasefire.

Ethnic groups in the northern part of the country have long accused the government of repressing them, and have been fighting for greater autonomy in their traditional states.

The Kachin is the only major ethnic rebel group not to reach a cease-fire agreement with the government of President Thein Sein, who has enacted a series of reforms since coming to power in 2011.

Observers say renewed fighting in Kachin state and ongoing sectarian violence in western Rakhine state have threatened to undermine the country's political reforms.

China, Myanmar to further military cooperation

Qi Jianguo, deputy chief of general staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), held a meeting with Soe Win, the visiting deputy commander-in-chief of the Myanmar Armed Forces and commander of the Myanmar Army，in Beijing on the morning of November 16, 2012.

Qi Jianguo and his Myanmar guest had in-depth exchange of views on regional security situation, the China-Myanmar relations, the military-to-military relations between the two countries and other issues of common concern, with significant consensus being achieved.

The China-Myanmar relations have withstood tests from the changeable international situations in the past 60-odd years since the establishment of the diplomatic relations, and the long-term mutual understanding and mutual support between the two countries have achieved fruitful accomplishments, Qi Jianguo said.

The relations between the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Myanmar Armed Forces are an important component in the relations between the two countries. The Chinese PLA and the Myanmar Armed Forces have conducted in-depth and pragmatic communications in terms of high-level exchange of visits, equipment technological cooperation, personnel training, border control and so on, which have exerted active effects in promoting the comprehensive development of the relations between the two countries, Qi Jianguo added.

Qi Jianguo also expressed that during the new historical era, Chinese PLA will continue to enhance the strategic communications with the Myanmar Armed Forces in order to increase the strategic mutual trust and deepen strategic cooperation.

U Tin Oo, Myanmar ambassador to China, also attended the meeting.

Myanmar Could Join U.S.-led Cobra Gold Exercises

 The United States plans to invite Myanmar to a major regional military exercise next year, host country Thailand said Oct. 19, reflecting a dramatic easing of tensions between the former foes.

The move would see Myanmar’s military, which ruled the nation with an iron fist for almost half a century and is accused of a litany of human rights abuses, join the annual Cobra Gold drills as an observer.

“Myanmar is on the list of observers but it’s not finalized yet,” Thai Defense Ministry spokesman Colonel Thanathip Sawangsang said, adding that the participants would discuss the idea at a meeting later this month.

Cobra Gold is the United States’ largest multilateral exercise in the Asia-Pacific region, bringing together thousands of troops from the United States, Thailand and other countries for field training.

Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Malaysia are expected to participate next year along with 13 observer nations, Thai officials said.

Past survival training sessions have seen troops drink snake blood and behead chickens.

The proposal to invite Myanmar was Washington’s initiative, according to a senior Thai military official who did not want to be named.

“If all members agree ... it will become official,” he said.

A U.S. embassy spokesman declined to comment.

Relations between the United States and Myanmar have improved markedly since President Thein Sein took power 18 months ago, ushering in a period of rapid political reforms in the former pariah state.

Thein made a landmark trip to New York last month, becoming the first Myanmar leader to speak to the U.N. General Assembly, following a series of visits to Myanmar by U.S. officials including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The regime has released hundreds of political prisoners, welcomed Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition party back into mainstream politics and inked a series of cease-fire deals with ethnic minority rebels.

In response the United States and other Western countries have begun rolling back sanctions, despite concerns about an ethnic conflict raging in northern Kachin state and a surge in communal violence in western Rakhine.

New York-based Human Rights Watch has accused Myanmar forces of opening fire on Muslims in Rakhine, an accusation denied by the government.

Washington has also urged Myanmar to cut military ties with North Korea. Thein’s government has said that it will abide by U.N. resolutions banning weapons exports from the secretive communist state.

Myanmar Ends Political, Religious Media Censorship

The Information Ministry of Myanmar cancelled censorship for media publishing political and religious information, Thailand's Kom Chad Luek newspaper said in its online edition on Monday.

An international non-governmental organization, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), ranked Myanmar seventh in this year’s list of ten most censored countries in the world.
“Starting from August 20 all media publishing political and religious information are exempt from the obligation to get the approval of the information ministry’s Department of media control and registration before publishing,” a ministry spokesman said in a statement.
The reform, the latest in a series of pro-democratic changes, might lead to an end to the country’s censorship history that lasted for more than five decades.
According to media reports, the parliament is expected to cancel the country’s 1962 Printer and Publisher Act this year.

Information Minister Kyaw Hsan announced in March that censorship was abolished for 173 dailies and weeklies and 124 magazines publishing information about culture, sports, fashion, science and technology, but religious and political information remained under state control.
Myanmar was ruled by a military junta in 1962-2011, which brought about Western economic sanctions in the 1990s. However, the opposition party National League for Democracy led by Nobel prize winner Aung Sun Suu Kyi was openly elected to parliament in 2011.
Although parliament remains controlled by the military, a civil government was formed in March 2011 and the military delegated their powers to its members.

Saudi Arabia gives $50 mln aid to Myanmar Muslims

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has ordered $50 million in aid be sent to a Muslim minority in Myanmar which a human rights group said has been targeted by the authorities since sectarian riots in June.
A report on the Saudi state news agency said the Rohingya community had been “exposed to many violations of human rights including ethnic cleansing, murder, rape and forced displacement”.
“King Abdullah … has ordered that assistance of the amount of $50 million be provided to the Rohingya Muslim citizens in Myanmar,” said the report which was carried by Saudi media on Sunday. It did not say who was to blame for the abuses.
However, Human Rights Watch said on Aug 1 that the Rohingyas had suffered mass arrests, killings and rapes at the hands of the Myanmar security forces.

The minority had borne the brunt of a crackdown after days of arson and machete attacks in June by both Buddhists and Rohingyas in Rakhine state, the monitoring group said.
Myanmar, where at least 800,000 Rohingyas are not recognised as one of the country’s many ethnic and religious groups, has said it exercised “maximum restraint” in quelling the riots.
Saudi Arabia sees itself as a guardian of global Muslim interests thanks to being the birthplace of Islam and home to some of the religion’s holiest sites in Mecca and Medina.
However, Riyadh also regularly draws criticism from campaigners for its lack of democracy.
Last week the Saudi cabinet condemned the violence against Muslims in northwest Myanmar and at a meeting on July 31, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in the kingdom’s second city of Jeddah urged members to send Rohingya Muslims aid.
The OIC is holding a summit in Mecca on Tuesday.
Asian Defence News

Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan threaten Myanmar over Rohingya

The Pakistani Taliban Thursday threatened to attack Myanmar to avenge crimes against the Muslim Rohingya, unless Pakistan halts all relations with the government and shuts its embassy in Islamabad.
In a rare statement focused on the plight of Muslims abroad, the umbrella Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) group sought to present itself as a defender of Muslim men and women in Myanmar, saying “we will take revenge of your blood”.
Spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan demanded that the Pakistani government halt all relations with Myanmar and close down its embassy in Islamabad.
“Otherwise we will not only attack Burmese interests anywhere but will also attack the Pakistani fellows of Burma one by one,” he said in a statement.
The Myanmar embassy in Islamabad was not immediately reachable for comment.
The TTP frequently claims attacks on security forces in Pakistan but its ability to wage violence in countries further afield has been questioned.
But US officials say there is evidence the group was behind a failed 2010 attempt to bomb Times Square in New York, for which Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad was jailed for life.

TTP leader Hakimullah Mehsud has also been charged in the United States over the killings of seven CIA agents who died when a Jordanian al Qaeda double agent blew himself up at a US base in Afghanistan in December 2009.
Recent clashes in western Myanmar between Buddhist ethnic Rakhine and Muslim Rohingya have left dozens dead and tens of thousands homeless.
Last week, Amnesty International said hundreds of people, mostly men and boys, have been detained in sweeps of areas heavily populated by the Rohingya, with almost all held incommunicado and some ill-treated.
Most arrests appear to have been “arbitrary and discriminatory” and Amnesty said there were “credible reports” of abuses, including rape, destruction of property and unlawful killings, by both Rakhine Buddhists and the security forces.
Decades of discrimination have left the Rohingya stateless, and they are viewed by the United Nations as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.


Asian Defence News

Myanmar’s Rohingyas being targeted

BANGKOK: Communal violence is continuing in western Myanmar six weeks after the government declared a state of emergency there, and much of it is being directed at minority Muslim Rohingyas who have been beaten, killed and raped, Amnesty International said Friday.
The rights group accused both security forces and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists living in the region of carrying out fresh attacks against Rohingyas, who are seen as foreigners by the ethnic majority and denied citizenship by the government because it considers them illegal settlers from neighboring Bangladesh.
After a series of isolated killings starting in late May that left victims on both sides, bloody skirmishes quickly spread across much of Myanmar’s coastal Rakhine state. The government declared a state of emergency June 10, deploying troops to quell the unrest and protect both mosques and monasteries.
The worst of the violence subsided two weeks later, and authorities said at least 78 people were killed and thousands of homes were burned down or destroyed — with damages roughly split evenly between Buddhists and Muslims.

Since then, communal violence has ground on, albeit at reduced intensity. But now, Amnesty said, attacks are mostly being directed at the Rohingya population.
Violence in the last six weeks has been ”primarily one-sided, with Muslims generally and Rohingyas specifically the targets and victims,” Benjamin Zawacki, a Bangkok-based researcher for Amnesty, told The Associated Press.
”Some of this is by the security forces’ own hands, some by Rakhine Buddhists with the security forces turning a blind eye in some cases.”
Officials from Myanmar’s government could not immediately be reached for comment.
Amnesty also said that security forces, including the police and the army, have conducted massive sweeps and detained hundreds of Rohingyas who are being held ”incommunicado.”
”While the restoration of order, security, and the protection of human rights is necessary, most arrests appear to have been arbitrary and discriminatory, violating the rights to liberty and to freedom from discrimination on grounds of religion,” Amnesty said in a statement.
The violence, which reached its bloodiest point in June, constituted some of the country’s deadliest sectarian bloodshed in years and raised international concerns about the Rohingyas fate inside Myanmar.
President Thein Sein said earlier this month that the solution to ethnic enmity in Rakhine state was to either send the Rohingya to a third country or have the United Nations refugee agency look after them.
UNHCR chief Antonio Guterres said, however, that it was not his agency’s job to resettle the Rohingya.
Many people in Myanmar don’t recognise Rohingya as legitimate settlers — even those of Bengali heritage who came in the 19th century, when Myanmar was under British rule and called Burma.
Large exoduses of Rohingya to Bangladesh in the 1980s and 1990s because of persecution, and their subsequent return, also add to the confusion over who among them are illegal immigrants.
Bangladesh, for its part, also denies the Rohingya citizenship, arguing that they have been living in Myanmar for centuries and should be recognised as citizens there instead.
The UN estimates that 800,000 Rohingya live in Myanmar today. Thousands attempt to flee every year to Bangladesh, Malaysia and elsewhere in the region, trying to escape a life of abuse that rights groups say includes forced labour, violence against women and restrictions on movement, marriage and reproduction that breed anger and resentment.
Amnesty called on Myanmar to accept the Rohingya as citizens, something the government has staunchly opposed because it does not consider them an ethnic group native to Myanmar.
”Under international human rights law and standards, no one may be left or rendered stateless,” Zawacki said. ”For too long Myanmar’s human rights record has been marred by the continued denial of citizenship for Rohingyas and a host of discriminatory practices against them.”