Special guests to visit PyeongChang

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 Aung San Suu Kyi

 

Yao Ming

 

 

By Jung Min-ho

World leaders, including Myanmar’s democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and sporting greats such as former NBA player Yao Ming of China and U.S. figure skater Michelle Kwan will visit Korea for the Special Olympics Global Development Summit on Wednesday.

They join Malawi President Joyce Banda, Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller and Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikt Hasina at the meeting. The leaders will discuss issues and obstacles for people with intellectual disabilities to highlight the meaning of the 2013 Special Olympics World Winter Games that run from Jan. 29 to Feb. 5 in PyeongChang.

Some 300 international figures from various other fields will also be present.

“The Global Development Summit will contemplate the equality of people with intellectual disabilities in society and communicate the opportunities to improve the level of their lives,” said Na Kyung-won, chairwoman of the PyeongChang Special Olympics organizing committee. “I wish society would start to look at them just like they look at other people; looking once, not twice.” 

“The misunderstanding, neglect and often outright discrimination against people with intellectual disabilities have been pervasive, with devastating effects on them and their families,” said Timothy P. Shriver, chairman and CEO of the Special Olympics. “It is time to bring people with intellectual disabilities out of the shadows and every sector of society must take part.”

Other notable sports stars are expected to attend the meeting including U.S Olympic gold medalists in gymnast Bart Conner, swimmer Donna DeVarona and speed skater Dan Jansen and former NBA player Congolese-American Dikembe Mutombo. 

As part of its promotional activities, the Special Olympics organizing committee also has tried to encourage discussions among people by collecting stories about equality and inclusion on its website since November. The selected materials will be used for commercial purposes.

The Special Olympic is a biennial international sporting event. It is different from the Paralympics where athletes with both physical and intellectual disabilities compete at an elite level. The Special Olympics, which held its inaugural World Games in the United States in July 1968, awards medals to all participants. Instead of focusing on competition, the main purpose of the event is to induce the breakdown of public prejudice against people with intellectual disabilities by showcasing their capabilities.

mj6c2@ktimes.co.kr,

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Despite Cease-Fire, US 'Deeply Concerned' About Fighting in Burma's Kachin State

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The United States is "deeply concerned" by ongoing violence in Burma's Kachin state, where fighting continues between the army and rebel groups despite a cease-fire.

A statement from the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon Thursday said the Burmese army is continuing its offensive in the northeastern state. It cited media and NGO reports, and added that the offensive has resulted in civilian casualties and is undermining efforts to achieve national reconciliation.

President Thein Sein declared a unilateral cease-fire to take effect on Saturday. But sporadic fighting has continued. Eyewitnesses and rebel officials tell VOA that Burmese soldiers used the brief lull in hostilities to advance on rebel positions.



In a speech in Rangoon Sunday, Thein Sein said government forces are within an "arm's length" of the main Kachin Independence Army base in the town of Laiza, on the border with China.

He said he has ordered troops not to attack the base as a show of good will, and he called for the KIA to return to the negotiating table as soon as possible.

The embassy statement Thursday urged both sides to "take all necessary steps to create an atmosphere for dialogue." It also called on Burma to allow "unhindered access" to those in need of assistance from the U.N. and international aid agencies.

Burmese troops and Kachin rebels have been fighting since 2011, when a 17-year cease-fire broke down. It is the last active civil war in Burma. Other ethnic groups have signed peace deals with the government.

The fighting in Kachin state has displaced tens of thousands of people and overshadowed major political reforms introduced since Burma ended decades of military rule in 2011.


http://www.voanews.com/content/despite-ceasefire-us-deeply-concerned-about-fighting-in-burmas-kachin-state/1589932.html

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Aung San Suu Kyi leaves for US, S Korea

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YANGON - Leader of Myanmar's National League for Democracy (NLD) and parliamentarian Aung San Suu Kyi left yangon for the United States and South Korea Thursday morning.
It is the second time for Suu Kyi to visit the US and the first time to South Korea after she became a parliamentarian.
Suu Kyi will be received by the Hawaii governor in Honolulu and meet Myanmar community there, NLD sources said.
She will attend the Rotary Peace Forum in the Hawaii capital, where she will pick up Hawaii Peace Award and proceed to South Korean capital of Seoul where she will have talks with President Lee Myung-bak and first woman president-elect of the country Park Geun-hye.
She will then attend the Special Olympic Games-2013 in Pyeongchang and deliver a speech at the Global Development Summit.
After that, she will visit Gwangju where she will collect the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights awarded in 2004 when she was under house arrest in Myanmar and will deliver also an acceptance speech in her honor organized by the Gwangju city government and the May 18 Memorial Foundation.
She will pay respects at the May 18 National Cemetery which commemorates the 1980 Gwangju uprising against Chun Doo-hwan.
As a follow-up, Suu Kyi will also give a lecture at Seoul National University and meet Myanmar community, the sources added.
Released from house arrest in November 2010, Suu Kyi resumed her political career becoming a parliamentarian by winning the April by-election in 2012 and also made her first trip abroad in 24 years covering Thailand, five European countries, the United States and India.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2013-01/24/content_16170998.htm

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Despite Cease-Fire, Fighting Continues in Burma's Kachin State

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 Sporadic fighting has continued between Burma's army and ethnic Kachin rebels in Burma's north Kachin state, despite a government-declared unilateral cease-fire. An eyewitness tells VOA that Burmese soldiers appeared to use a brief lull in hostilities after the declaration to advance on rebel positions. The close proximity of combatants is complicating efforts for peace talks.

President Thein Sein announced the cease-fire through state television, saying it would take effect on Saturday morning for the La Ja Yang area near the China border.

But, the rebel Kachin Independence Army says Burma soldiers attacked their positions in the days that followed using heavy artillery and machine guns.

Ryan Roco is a freelance photographer working in Kachin state for the past three months. Speaking to VOA from the trenches behind KIA lines, he could see smoke from mortar attacks.

"The situation is tense. We are hearing sporadic shelling now, occasional gunfire. And, heavy fighting is expected at any moment," Roco said.

The photographer says there was a brief lull in fighting Saturday after the declared cease-fire and that airstrikes did appear to have stopped. However, he says shelling quickly resumed in the afternoon and KIA fired on advancing Burma soldiers.

"I think it would be more correct to say that fighting never actually ceased. I think that fighting quieted but I don't think fighting ever ceased from the Burmese side," Roco said. "Yesterday, when fighting began heavily at twelve o'clock, it was initiated as Burmese troops advanced towards KIA lines on Hkaya Bum, which is the last major defense mountaintop post outside of Laiza."

Roco says he is about two kilometers from Hkaya Bum and five kilometers from the rebel capital Laiza.

Min Zaw Oo is director of cease-fire negotiations and implementation at the Myanmar Peace Center in Rangoon. He says the proximity of opposing fighters, some within 300 meters of each other, has made a unilateral cease-fire difficult to enforce.

"Before they can talk about the repositioning, their units, they got to talk about how to effectively start the cease-fire," Min said. "Because, the unilateral cease-fire in realty, when the troops are in very close position, is very hard because if one side shoot the other side gonna shoot back. That will create a tit-for-tat retaliation."

Since taking office, Burma's reform-minded President Thein Sein has overseen peace deals with all ethnic rebel groups except the Kachin.

The KIA wants to maintain a high-level of autonomy while the government is pushing for more federal control.

Fighting between the Burma army and KIA broke out in June 2011, ending a 17-year-old cease-fire and displacing tens of thousands of villagers.

In December Burma warned the KIA to stop disrupting supply routes. Authorities accuse the KIA of bombing trains, roads and police stations. The military backed up its threat with attacks on rebel positions with jet fighters and helicopter gunships.

Min Zaw Oo says despite the intense and ongoing fighting parties on both sides know the conflict cannot be resolved on the battlefield.

"What we're trying to do is we're trying to bring the parties, especially those people responsible for the military from both sides," Min explained, "come to the table, spread the map, look at the positions, and start thinking how they can stop fighting effectively."

President Thein Sein on Saturday invited the political wing of the KIA, the Kachin Independence Organization, to political talks with other ethnic groups.

He told an international donor and humanitarian aid conference his government is serious about efforts at peace.

Min Zaw Oo says if fighting spills into Laiza it could trigger huge refugee flows into China.

Since December several shells have landed along or inside Chinese territory, sparking calls from Beijing for stability along the border.

China in recent days sent a military delegation and a special envoy to Burma to discuss issues including border security.

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9 Japanese killed in Algeria hostage crisis, gov't says

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In this image taken from television, Japanese Parliamentary Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Minoru Kiuchi, right, and Koichi Kawana, president of Japanese engineering firm JGC Corporation, bow toward the Ain Amenas gas facility a day after special forces stormed the plant to end a four-day siege, in Algeria, Sunday.AP  

 

Nine Japanese nationals were killed during a four-day siege at a gas plant in Algeria, where the number of hostages killed had already reached at least 48, a Japanese government source said on Monday.
“We’ve received information from the Algerian government that nine Japanese are dead,” the official, who declined to be identified pending the official announcement, told Reuters.
The Japanese government and engineering firm JGC Corp, which had several dozen employees working at the plant, have so far said only that 10 Japanese workers remained unaccounted for. Neither would confirm media reports of casualties.
One Japanese hostage who narrowly survived the armed attack on an Algerian gas plant said he was sure he would die after seeing two colleagues shot dead in front of him, a report said Monday.
The unnamed man told colleagues how Islamist gunmen had dragged him from his barricaded room, handcuffed him and executed two hostages standing nearby.
In a chilling account of his escape, published Monday in the Daily Yomiuri newspaper, the hostage told colleagues he had been aboard a bus when it was attacked by a group of heavily-armed Islamists in the Sahara desert early Wednesday.
Seven Japanese are known to have survived the three-day assault, which ended in a bloodbath on Saturday—all of them connected to JGC.
The man said he was leaving a lodging house with other foreign workers in a convoy of buses when militants first swooped.
As the vehicle in front was hit by a hail of bullets, the driver of his bus slammed the vehicle into reverse and tried to flee.
But a wheel snapped off, stranding the bus and forcing passengers to run through the desert and seek refuge at the workers’ formerly-secure lodging house.
The man barricaded himself in his room and cowered with the lights off, as gunmen began their rampage through the compound.
But a short time later, the door splintered open as militants shot the lock apart and burst in, plucking the frightened man from his hiding place and clamping handcuffs on him.
He was frogmarched to a bright room with other foreign hostages where his captors began speaking Arabic with some of his Algerian colleagues.
The next thing he knew someone opened fire and two people slumped to the floor, dead, in front of him. “I was prepared to die,” JGC spokesman Takeshi Endo quoted the employee as saying.
The bodies of other foreigners lay on the ground as he and a Filipino colleague were bundled into a vehicle and driven off towards the gas plant.
Without warning the vehicle was sprayed with bullets, which pierced the windshield and forced the prisoners to duck down as low as possible to avoid being shot.
As their captors abandoned the vehicle, the prisoners were left alone, not knowing who had opened fire.
In the hours that followed, the Japanese survivor hid under a truck, trying to stay away from the gun battle that raged around him. As bullets flew past he saw a bus full of hostages—some wearing JGC uniforms—drive past.
He watched with horror as the vehicle came under attack, but said he had no idea of the fate of those on board.
After nightfall, when the shooting had stopped he began trudging through the desert, walking for an hour before he came across Algerian soldiers and safety.
Earlier Monday, chief government spokesman Yoshihide Suga told reporters vice foreign minister Minoru Kiuchi had arrived at an airport near the gas facility that was over-run by Islamist gunmen last week.
He said Kiuchi would go into the complex and to a hospital in the town of In Amenas in an effort to determine what had happened.
Suga said those known to have made it to safety would be flown back to Japan on a government aircraft.


http://www.japantoday.com/category/crime/view/12-bodies-from-algeria-attack-said-to-be-japanese

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Myanmar rebels say army ignoring president's ceasefire

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Myanmar's president said on Sunday he wanted peace talks with all ethnic rebel groups in the country, but government troops again attacked rebel positions in Kachin State in the northeast despite his order to cease fire, rebels and a local source said.
President Thein Sein had issued the ceasefire order on Friday to troops in the La Ja Yang area of Kachin State near the border with China, where fighting has been fiercest.
It was due to take effect on Saturday morning, but Colonel James Lum Dau, Thai-based spokesman for the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), told Reuters the army had continued to attack over the weekend, both in La Ja Yang and elsewhere in the state.
Thein Sein denied that the army, known as the Tamadaw, aimed to capture Laiza, where the KIA and its political arm, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), have their headquarters.
"Now the Tamadaw members are an arm's length from the KIA/KIO headquarters in Laiza but I have ordered them not to occupy Laiza," he said at a meeting with non-governmental groups in Yangon, the commercial capital.
"In order to gain sustainable peace all over the country, there is no other way but to hold talks at the negotiating table as soon as possible," he added.
A 17-year ceasefire with the KIA broke down in June 2011 and fighting has been particularly intense in recent weeks.
Twenty months of fighting has displaced tens of thousands of people and, for some analysts, raised doubts about the sincerity of all the political and economic reforms pursued by Thein Sein in Myanmar, also known as Burma.
On Saturday, addressing a development forum attended by donor countries and international aid organizations, Thein Sein had invited the Kachin rebels to a "political dialogue" with the government and ethnic rebel groups from other states. No date was given.
Ten other major rebel groups have already agreed ceasefires.
The KIA's Lum Dau said an offensive in La Ja Yang from about 8 a.m. on Sunday morning (8:30 p.m. EST Saturday) had involved artillery and infantry.
A local source in Kachin, who did not want to be identified, confirmed the army attacks on Sunday, including one on a rebel position about five miles (eight km) from Laiza. Fighter jets had flown over the area but had not attacked, the source said.
New York-based Human Rights Watch last week accused the army of indiscriminately shelling Laiza.
Loud explosions were also heard by residents of the town of Mai Ja Yang who felt the vibrations, the source said.
MORE GOODWILL NEEDED
Lum Dau said the KIA had sent the president a reply saying it would not attend talks until there was more evidence of goodwill on the government side, involving a ceasefire in the whole state, or at least a big reduction in fighting.
"We already agreed to a ceasefire in 1994 and look at where we are now ... We didn't break any agreement," he said, expressing KIA mistrust of central government that has persisted even after Thein Sein took office in 2011 at the head of a quasi-civilian government after half a century of military rule.
The KIO said in a statement that "the government should reduce offensive operations all over Kachin State instead of suspending operations in La Ja Yang region". Further clarification of its demands was not immediately available.
Lum Dau said the government was simply buying time and would use any ceasefire to prepare another assault on rebel positions.
He argued that it had only agreed to the partial ceasefire in response to diplomatic pressure from the United States and others, including China, which called for a halt to fighting on January 15 after a shell landed on its side of the border.
There was no immediate response from the government to the accusations of continued attacks in La Ja Yang but it said rebels were responsible for violence elsewhere in Kachin.
Presidential spokesman Ye Htut said rebels attacked Kamine police station in the Phakant area early on Saturday, killing two policemen, wounding five and setting the building on fire.
He also blamed rebels for setting off mines that wounded about 20 people in cars on the road from Bamaw to Lwejei on Saturday.

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Kachin rebels sceptical over Myanmar ceasefire

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Kachin rebels fire rockets from an outpost on the Laja Yang frontline, on September 22, 2012. Kachin rebels cast doubt on Saturday over a Myanmar government pledge to end a military offensive after weeks of intense fighting that sparked international concern amid reports of fresh shelling.

Kachin rebels cast doubt on Saturday over a Myanmar government pledge to end a military offensive after weeks of intense fighting that sparked international concern, amid reports of fresh shelling.
The government move on Friday came after the country's fledgling parliament called for a halt to the fighting, which has left dozens reported dead in northern Kachin state and marred optimism about the country's political reforms.
The conflict between government troops and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) has escalated in recent weeks with the use of air strikes by the military, prompting the United States and the United Nations to speak out.
A KIA official, requesting anonymity, said the military had gained "the upper hand" by surrounding the rebel stronghold of Laiza and was therefore able to declare an end to the offensive from a position of strength.
But he cautioned that the rebels would "wait and see" if military operations ceased.
The halt to the offensive was due to take effect from 6:00 am Saturday (2330 GMT Friday) but the political wing of the KIA said attacks had continued near Laiza, which borders China.
"The Burmese... never keep promises," Thailand-based spokesman James Lum Dau said, adding "several minutes of shelling" had taken place on Saturday near Laiza, the rebel's base since the resumption of fighting in 2011.
A witness told AFP that an uneasy peace prevailed in the city itself.
Some experts have questioned the level of control President Thein Sein, a former general, exerts over army units in Kachin after an order to end military offensives in December 2011 was apparently ignored.
The exact number of casualties from the conflict is unknown, but the government said Friday that 35 soldiers had been killed and 190 injured in a series of ambushes by the rebels since 2011, in the first official death toll for the military side.
The quasi-civilian government in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has reached tentative ceasefires with a number of ethnic rebel groups since taking power in early 2011 but talks with Kachin rebels have shown little progress.
The reform-minded president on Saturday re-stated his government's desire for peace with the rebels.
"I have ordered the Tatmadaw (Myanmar's army)... to seek a peaceful solution to the conflict. I believe the Kachin Independence Organisation will soon join us in the peace process," he said in a statement, referring to the rebels' political arm.
Doibu, a lower house MP of the Kachin State Unity and Democracy Party -- who goes by one name -- welcomed the declared end of the recent offensive.
But she said renewed clashes had been reported elsewhere in the resource-rich state.
Presidential spokesman Ye Htut said an incident had taken place in Pha Kant on Saturday morning, giving details on his Facebook page saying "two policemen died and buildings were burnt down" in a KIA attack on a police station.

NAYPYIDAW (AFP) 

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