Myanmar media confirm junta chief retains

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2 hrs 11 mins ago YANGON, Myanmar – A message from Myanmar's junta chief Senior Gen. Than Shwe appeared in state media Tuesday, dispelling reports that he had stepped down from the army as part of a major military reshuffle ahead of elections. The message was a typical note of congratulations to Malaysia on its Independence Day and made no reference to the military reshuffle — the largest in more than a decade. But it was carried on the front page of the country's three official newspapers and the subtext was clear: Than Shwe is still in charge. The military reshuffle that occurred Friday retired more than a dozen senior leaders, though it has yet to be officially announced by the highly secretive junta. It was an apparent move to prepare for Nov. 7 national elections, the first in two decades. Than Shwe has ruled the country since 1992. The rumors of his retirement, along with that of his second-in-command Maung Aye, suggested they were being groomed for roles as president and vice president in the new government after elections. Since military reshuffles are often never formally announced, when rumors of such shifts spread through Myanmar society, citizens carefully follow television and news reports to see if leaders are referred to with new titles. "Senior General Than Shwe, chairman of the State Peace and Development Council, has sent a message of felicitations" to the king of Malaysia to mark the country's Independence Day, the New Light of Myanmar and other newspapers reported. The message referred both to Than Shwe's military rank and his title as head of the ruling junta's government, known as the SPDC, effectively putting to rest reports by several media outlets that had reported his resignation last week. The elections are portrayed by the regime as a key step to shifting to civilian rule after five decades of military domination, but critics call them a sham and say the military shows little sign of relinquishing control. Friday's reshuffle included about two dozen officials, notably the junta's third- and fourth-ranking generals, Thura Shwe Mann, who served as Joint Chief of Staff, and Tin Aung Myint Oo, who was the army's Quartermaster General, according to officials who are close to the military but could not be named because the reshuffle was not formally announced. It was the second since April, when 27 senior officials, including Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein, retired from the military. Under the country's new constitution, 25 percent of the seats in Parliament will go to military representatives. If retiring generals run for Parliament they would not be counted in the military's quota although they are likely to enhance the army's influence. The polls will take place without the country's leading opposition party, headed by detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, which says the elections are unfair and is boycotting them.

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Myanmar destroys over 8,000 hectares

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The Myanmar authorities destroyed a total of 8,256 hectares of poppy plantations illegally grown in the country in the 2009-10 poppy cultivation season from September 2009 to August 2010, an official daily reported Tuesday. The destroyed poppy plantations included 1.21 hectares' spoiled in a week from Aug. 14 to 20 this year in Loilem township, Shan state-South, said the New Light of Myanmar. During last year's poppy cultivation season, a total of 4,138 hectares of the plantations in the country were wiped out. Meanwhile, in December 2009, Myanmar burned 93 million U.S. dollars worth of seized narcotic drugs in Kengtung, eastern Shan state of the country. The burned drugs included 6.99 million tablets of stimulants, 819 kg heroin, 156 kg opium and 10 kg Ice. Moreover, the Myanmar authorities exposed 189 drug-related cases and punished 317 culprits including 73 women, in June this year, according to a monthly statistics by the anti-drug authorities. Of the total, stimulant tablets cases topped the list with 58 while those of heroin 46, opium 34 and marijuana 13. During the month, the authorities seized 23.3 kilograms of opium, 1.1 kg of heroin and 2.8 kg of marijuana as well as over 176,502 stimulant tablets. Myanmar has been implementing a 15-year plan (1999-2014) to totally eradicate poppy in three phases, each running for five years, and it has now entered into the final five-year phase of the plan. Source: Xinhua

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Myanmar heads to the polls in November

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YANGON, Myanmar, Aug. 16 (UPI) -- Myanmar has announced the date of the general election, the first in 20 years and which bars the last winner who remains under house detention. The date of Nov. 7 ends months of speculation but not of controversy and international concern over what many Western democracies fear will be a contrived outcome. The junta officially announced the date in a brief statement in the government's mouthpiece newspaper, New Light of Myanmar, and on state-controlled radio and television. The election is expected to be tightly controlled and carefully monitored by the generals' own appointed elections commission. On the same day as the election date was announced, the commission gave the 40 registered political parties until Aug. 30 to hand in the list of all their party members. Fifteen parties have done so already, the New Light of Myanmar said. A focus of international concern is Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, head of the National League for Democracy Party who is barred from running by an election law created by the generals in April. The law disallows people, such as Suu Kyi, with criminal records from standing for office. She has spent many of the past 20 years under some form of arrest and detention. She is currently under house arrest in Yangon, the former capital of Myanmar, called Burma before a name change by the junta. Suu Kyi, 65, won a landslide victory in the last national elections, which took place in 1990. But the generals refused to acknowledge the results and power was never handed over. Because Suu Kyi is barred, her party decided not to register for the election, although a splinter group has registered itself. Also barred from running for office are religious groups, a move that disallows Buddhist monks whose protests that began in August 2007 stretched the patience of the junta. Several thousand monks accompanied by students, opposition political activists and many women took to the streets over several weeks carrying banners, originally because of a rise in fuel prices. The so-called Saffron Revolution ended Sept. 26 when the military moved in with force to end the protests. Officially 14 people died, including a Japanese photojournalist, but outside sources suspect upwards of 40 people were killed. Myanmar often has faced harsh criticism over its proposed elections not just from Western countries but also from its Asian neighbors. "We certainly do not have any expectation that what proceeds in Burma here will be anything that remotely resembles a free, fair or legitimate result," U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said last month. Within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Burma has had to defend its election process and member states have called for elections to be more inclusive of groups, including Suu Kyi. It is not clear just how much control the generals will allow to be passed on, regardless of the polling outcome. They have reserved for themselves 25 percent of seats in the upper house. On top of the generals' reserved quarter of seats, Myanmar's Prime Minister Thein Sein, along with more than 20 other military ministers in the junta, officially have resigned their military positions to run in the elections as civilians. Sein, a former lieutenant general, set up the Union Solidarity and Development Party. If the former military officers win their seats, as observers expect, they are likely to side with the military on almost every issue, increasing the generals' influence beyond their allotted 25 percent of seats. Despite the junta's iron fist over demonstrations and street protests, it doesn't have as much control over some parts of the country as it would like, especially in northern border regions with India, Bangladesh and China. Rebel groups regularly run money and drugs back and forth across the mountainous frontiers. Earlier this year a Myanmar ethnic rebel group warned the ruling military that clashes are inevitable in the run-up to a national election. The head of the Karen National Union, the political wing of the Karen National Liberation Army, joined the call by some opposition groups to boycott the election. Zipporah Sein, head of the KNU, said ethnic minorities shouldn't vote because Myanmar's 2008 constitution doesn't recognize ethnic diversity. She said the KNLA would fight any attempt by the generals to force people to either join or form border guard militia that have been set up by the generals in some remote areas. It is not known how long it will be after closing of polling stations Nov. 7 before results are announced. It may be they are announced Nov. 13, the day Suu Kyi is released from house detention.

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8888 demostration prade held in Tokyo

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About 1200 persons support the prade , Burma democratic activitist in Japan lead that heavy demostration and a lot of Japanese people also support the prade,The Burma Campaign Japan also make live brocast on BCJP television program .

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Protecting Tigers in a Troubled Land Myanmar

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Related Topics: Conservation Wildlife , wildlife, tiger, conservation, Alan Rabinowitz, Burma Burma is best known to the West as the home of one of the most repressive military regimes in the world, a country where more than 2,100 political prisoners remain behind bars. The U.S. has strict economic sanctions against Burma—a policy President Obama just renewed last week—and the country's most famous citizen, democratic icon and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has been under house arrest off and on since she won the last free elections, held in 1990. Even the Southeast Asian nation's name is controversial—the military junta changed the country's name to Myanmar in 1989, but dissidents and many media organizations, including TIME, continue to use the title Burma. But as bloody and tragic as Burma's history is, the land itself is just as beautiful, home to dense tropical forests and lush river valleys. Wildlife that has been all but wiped out in other Asian nations—rhinos, crocodiles, Asian elephants—are still at large in Burma, in part because the country's repressive politics have stunted economic development. (It's people have paid the price for that, however—more than 90% of Burmese are poor, and the country's medical system is the second-worst in the world, behind only Sierra Leone.) Most amazingly of all tigers still roam in Burma, a rarity today, when there are less than 3,000 tigers left alive in the wild. If you want to save big cats in Asia, Burma is your best bet—if you can navigate the politics. No one can do that better than Alan Rabinowitz, a wildlife biologist, big cat lover and the CEO of the conservation group Panthera. (No, not Pantera.) Yesterday Panthera and the Wildlife Conservation Society announced the creation of the world's largest tiger reserve in Burma's Hukuang Valley, where over 8,400 sq. miles in northern Burma will now be under protection. Hundreds of tigers are believed to live in the region—Rabinowitz himself discovered the populations when he led the first scientific expedition to the area in 1999—along with clouded leopards, Asian elephants and hundreds of species of birds. The reserve extends the 2,500 sq. miles the Burmese government protected in Hukuang in 2004, after personal lobbying by Rabinowitz, and it may be the most meaningful step ever taken to protect tigers in Asia: “Myanmar now offers one of the best hopes for saving tigers in Southeast Asia,” said Colin Poole, Director for Wildlife Conservation Society's Asia Programs. “The newly expanded protected area in the Hukaung Valley will be a cornerstone of tiger conservation throughout this iconic big cat's range.” For Rabinowitz—a passionate, driven scientist and a legend in the conservation community—the creation of the reserve is the pinnacle of his career, the result of years of tireless lobbying and single-minded determination: “I have dreamt of this day for many years,” said Rabinowitz. “The strides we made in 2004 were groundbreaking, but protecting this entire valley to ensure tigers are able to live and roam freely is a game changer. This reserve is one of the most important stretches of tiger habitat in the world, and I am thrilled that the people and government of Myanmar understand the importance of preserving it.” It will also be controversial. While many Burmese dissidents still believe that the best way to bring about change in Burma is to continue the isolation of its government, Rabinowitz has never let politics get in the way of protecting tigers. But there would be no way to create a reserve in Burma of this size—or any size—without getting buy-in from the country's leaders, despite the blood on their hands. There's an argument to be made that wildlife are innocent of politics—that it would be a mistake to pass up the chance to protect one of the most endangered species on the planet because of problems with a country's politicians. I think that's the case here—and given that isolation has failed to bring about change in Burma, perhaps connection will work. Then two troubled species might be helped: tigers and human beings. Update: I had a chance to talk with Rabinowitz about many of these issues—and his passion for cats—a few years ago in the Bronx Zoo. Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2010/08/04/protecting-tigers-in-a-troubled-land/?xid=rss-topstories#ixzz0vjvw8FvT

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