အသစ္ အသစ္ အ၇င္ကသူေတြလုပ္ခဲ့တာလို ့..ေျပာေျပာေနၾကလို ့..

အသစ္ အသစ္ အ၇င္ကသူေတြလုပ္ခဲ့တာလို ့..ေျပာေျပာေနၾကလို ့..
Friday, August 31, 2012

အရင္က ဘယ္သူေတြလည္း အခုကေရာ ဘယ္သူေတြမို ့လို ့လည္း။

“ပိတ္ပင္တားျမစ္ ပိတ္ဆို ့တာေတြက အရင္အစိုးရလက္ထက္က လုပ္တာ .. အခု ငါတို ့ အစိုးရလက္ထက္ မဟုတ္ဖူး …”

“ဖမ္းဆီး ညဥ္းပမ္း ႏွိပ္စက္သတ္ျဖတ္တာေတြ အရင္အစိုးရလက္ထက္က လုပ္တာ .. အခု ငါတို ့ အစိုးရ လက္ထက္မဟုတ္ဖူး …”

“လူ ့အခြင့္အေရးခ်ဳိးေဖာက္တာေတြ အရင္အစိုးရလက္ထက္က လုပ္တာ .. အခု ငါတို ့ အစိုးရလက္ထက္ မဟုတ္ဖူး …”

“တိုင္းျပည္ကို ဆင္းရဲမြဲေတ ခြ်တ္ျခဳံက်ေအာင္ လုပ္တာ အရင္အစိုးရလက္ထက္က လုပ္တာ .. အခု ငါတို ့ အစိုးရလက္ထက္မဟုတ္ဖူး …”

“ငါတို ့ ငါတို ့က … အရင္ မဟုတ္ …. အင္း မဟုတ္ဖူး …..”

http://www.niknayman-niknayman.co.cc/

Laiza trip ‘eye-opener’ for civil society

www.mmtimes.com

By Nan Tin Htwe
Volume 33, No. 641
August 27 - September 2, 2012

Kachin Independence Army deputy chief of staff U Gun Maw speaks to leaders of civil society organisations and journalists in Laiza on July 7. Pic: Kaung Htet

CIVIL society leaders say a trip to Kachin Independence Organisation-controlled areas of northern Myanmar last month has changed their perceptions of the conflict and the group.

A one-hour meeting on July 7 with leaders of the KIO and its armed wing, the Kachin Independence Army, was particularly eye-opening, said Ko Nay Myo Zin, a former prisoner of conscience.

“I was surprised,” Ko Nay Myo Zin said. “Particularly by how transparent they were. The government should take them as an example. They told us openly why they are fighting with the Tatmadaw – what they want and what they are asking for from the government.”

Ko Nay Myo Zin established Myanmar Social Development Network immediately after being released from Insein Prison in January under a presidential amnesty. A former lieutenant in the Tatmadaw, where he served from 1994 to 2005, Ko Nay Myo Zin was arrested in 2010 under the Unlawful Association Act for his involvement with the National League for Democracy.

“If the Tatmadaw invites us to the frontline and explains the reasons it is fighting against the KIA, what the KIA has demanded and other things like this, then I think people will be able to better understand,” he said.

“For a long time, what I was forced to believe while I was in Tatmadaw was the KIA is cruel,” he said. “But what they ask for is fair – to have a more inclusive union … they want to change laws to be more inclusive in the Tatmadaw, like accepting ethnic minorities in the [Defense Services Academy]. Why hasn’t the government responded yet?”

The trip to Laiza, the KIO headquarters, was organised by Kachin Peace Network with the intention of giving civil society groups and journalists the chance to see the situation on the ground. Among those who took part in the July 4-12 trip were representatives from One More, Untied Network, Children Lovers, Myanmar Social Development Network, Yangon School of Political Science and The Myanmar Times.

U Pyi Thway Naing, the head of One More, which donated K7 million to camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) during the trip, said the chance to see conditions in the Laiza and Maijayang regions first-hand had been invaluable.

“It’s different from what I saw in the media,” he said. “I saw orphans whose parents were KIA soldiers and had died during the fighting. I saw an old woman who had been injured by landmine.”

One More, which was established in August 2011 and now has 14,000 supporters who donate K1000 a month to fund its activities, focuses on education and U Pyi Thway Naing said the schooling needs in the relief camps were “indescribable”.

“Even in normal situation, it’s not easy for them to go to school. Now they are living in these camps,” he said.

“Psychologically, I can feel that they are not okay either, because they are not in their own homes. And often parents can’t take care of their children. I want to do more for them having seen the situation with my own eyes,” said U Pyi Thway Naing, who is also editor of monthly magazine Ya Nant Thit (New Fragrance).

Dr Aung Nyein Chan, who like most participants was travelling to KIO-controlled areas for the first time, said it was much different from what he experienced volunteering in IDP camps in Myitkyina and Waingmaw townships for six months.

“I thought Myikyina and Waingmaw had many IDPs. But it’s only around 20,000, while there are more than 50,000” in KIO areas, he said.

“In the Myikyina-Waingmaw areas, the largest population in a single camp is at most 3000. In Laiza, it’s almost 7000.

“I found the IDPs are suffering from malnutrition as they haven’t been able to eat properly … as they are weak, it’s easy for the IDPs here to catch from other diseases,” he said, adding that the crowded conditions meant diseases like tuberculosis could spread easily.

Doctors are in short supply and Dr Aung Nyein Chan warned that people living in the camps also need psychological support as they are in a state of “helplessness”.

Ko Nay Myo Zin said he was concerned that the conflict will lead to “racial hatred” because of the suffering inflicted, particularly on children.

He said he plans to submit his concerns to the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw and press representatives to take a stronger role in resolving the conflict.

“I think the international community should pressure the government more to focus on peace talks and negotiations,” he said.

“If the government doesn’t solve this problem now, the worries and fears of the people affected could exist for generations.”

http://www.mmtimes.com/2012/news/641/news14.html

China Forces Ethnic Kachin Refugees Back to a Conflict Zone in Myanmar’s North

Asia Pacific

 

China Forces Ethnic Kachin Refugees Back to a Conflict Zone in Myanmar’s North

 

By EDWARD WONG

Published: August 23, 2012

 

KATMANDU, Nepal — The authorities in southwestern China are forcibly evicting thousands of encamped ethnic Kachin refugees who fled a renewed civil war in neighboring Myanmar, pushing them back into the conflict zone in Kachin State in northern Myanmar, according to foreign human rights researchers, political analysts and two people in Kachin State.

The forced repatriation appears to be happening in large waves this week. The refugees fled to China after a 17-year cease-fire agreement between the Kachin Independence Army and Myanmar’s government broke down in June 2011. The civil war with the Kachin is one of many occurring in Myanmar, formerly Burma, and the renewal of the Kachin conflict has cast doubts on the sincerity or ability of President Thein Sein to carry out deep political reforms.

 

A researcher for Human Rights Watch said the repatriations appeared to have begun en masse on Tuesday. He estimated that 1,000 refugees had returned to Kachin State and that an additional 4,000 were projected to return by the end of the week.

 

In June, Human Rights Watch reported that 7,000 to 10,000 Kachin refugees were in China and subjected to squalid conditions and harsh treatment by officials. It also said there had been some instances of forced repatriation by Chinese officials, though apparently not as systematic or widespread as now.

 

“All the refugees in China now are being pushed back,” said a resident of Laiza, the capital of the rebel-held part of Kachin State. “Many of them are back already.” On Wednesday, he added, Chinese border guards expelled a group of refugees from an area called Nong Tau and destroyed refugee huts even before the refugees had left the site.

 

Ryan Roco, a human rights researcher who has documented the plight of the war’s displaced, said he had learned that at least 4,200 Kachin were being forced out of six camps in Yunnan Province, China, and back into Myanmar. He said the process, begun last week, appeared to have intensified since Tuesday. A further 700 were living with family or friends in Yunnan after being forced from the camps, he said.

 

Those who have returned to Kachin State are living on both sides of the conflict zone. Part of Kachin State is controlled by the Kachin Independence Army, though the rebel group has lost significant territory since the civil war restarted.

 

“The actions of the Chinese against vulnerable Kachin demonstrate a wanton disregard for human dignity and international humanitarian law,” Mr. Roco said.

 

Officials in Yunnan and Beijing had been tolerating the presence of the Kachin refugees for more than a year, although Yunnan officials had threatened to evict them.

 

It is not clear why the refugees are being expelled now. An employee at the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the ministry had no immediate comment after it was sent a list of questions on Thursday. Calls to the Yunnan propaganda office went unanswered, as did calls to the propaganda office of Dehong Autonomous Prefecture, the location of the camps.

 

The Kachin are Christians, and Chinese religious organizations and some other aid groups have been allowed by local Chinese officials to help refugees and internally displaced Kachin.

 

China has not taken an official position on the Kachin conflict. Kachin State is rich in jade, timber, mineral wealth and water resources, all coveted by the Chinese. Several large Chinese dam projects are in the region, including the Myitsone Dam, which aroused local protests.

 

China is also a major patron of the Burmese government, though many Myanmar citizens are wary of or hostile toward growing Chinese influence.

 

On Monday, The Irrawaddy, a newspaper based in Thailand that reports on Myanmar, said Chinese officials had pressed the Kachin Independence Organization, the civilian counterpart to the Kachin Independence Army, to accept 4,000 refugees back in Kachin State.

 

Patrick Zuo contributed research from Beijing.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/world/asia/china-forcing-repatriation-of-ethnic-refugees-from-myanmar.html?_r=2

Unstoppable Kachin war: Biggest question of Burma?

By Zin Linn Aug 22, 2012 3:56PM UTC

As a result of ongoing civil war that taken place for more than sixty years has made Burma a largely dilapidated country in the region. Civil war in Burma has taken place since the country achieved its independence from British colonial rulers in 1948. Regrettably, the country lost its liberty in 1962 since the military led by the late dictator Gen. Ne Win seized power and cracked down all democracy institutions including free press in Burma.

Furthermore, consecutive military regimes never change their war policy against the ethnic rebels who defend just for their self-determination. Those military rulers have no intention of building an egalitarian federal union state; instead they ordered the ethnic armed-groups to surrender. The worst is that the military keeps on slaughtering thousands and thousands of their own citizens and displaced millions in conflict areas, whereas deliberately oppressed the democratic political practice in the country under their rule.

At present also, brutal warfare launched by the military-backed President Thein Sein government is going on and on mainly in ethnic areas, especially in Kachin State. Burma Army continues a merciless fighting on the ethnic Kachin people. It is the practice of government armed forces using landmines, bombarding artillery shells, attacking ordinary civilians, using rape as war weapon, taking hostages for forced labor, destructing citizens’ properties, sustenance and agricultural farms and burning the ethnic villages etc.

In fact, the government armed forces repeatedly breach principles of Geneva Conventions, which were drawn up in 1949. According to the Conventions, civilian must be protected by warring parties in any case. Civilian must not be discriminated against because of race, religion or political opinion. Geneva Conventions also not allows forcing them to give information. Civilian must not be used to shield military operations or make an area immune from military operations. Civilian must not be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Women must not be indecently assaulted, raped, or forced into prostitution.

Kachin Independence Army recruits in training. Pic: AP.

However, government of Burma and its troops turn a deaf ear what Geneva Conventions says. Government soldiers discriminate against the Kachin ethnic people because of their race and religion. The Burmese army has unlawfully used Kachin civilians for forced labor, which has long been a serious problem in Burma’s ethnic areas, Human Rights Watch said. Several Kachin natives told Human Rights Watch that Burmese army soldiers fired on them as they were fleeing their village.

As a result, fearing abuses from the Burmese army, tens of thousands of Kachin fled their villages incessantly. While President Thein Sein has been promising to build a democratic nation, his military wing has been violating basic human rights. All these war crimes violated by Burma Army will come back to haunt the President and his Commander-in-Chief of the military.

As reported by the Kachinland News, severe battles between Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and Burmese government army carry on throughout Kachin and Northern Shan State since more Burmese troops are being deployed in KIA’s territory. Burmese government soldiers under Thaton-based44th LID, Hmawbi-based 77th LID, Magway-based 88th LID, and Meiktila-based 99th LID have been continuously transported to Kachin and Shan State in the face of calls for peace from quasi-civilian government.

Kachinland News also said that a battle took place between a KIA’s mobile column and Burmese army’s 37th LIB at Galang Ja village located between Seng Mai and Ta Law Gyi on Aug 16 at 8 am. Another skirmish took place between KIA’s 3rd Battalion under 5th Brigade and Burmese army’s 88th LID at San Pai village on Aug 16. One more head-on clash occurred on 16 August in Northern Shan State; KIA soldiers from 34th Battalion under 4th Brigade fought against government soldiers under Burmese army’s North Eastern Command based in Lashio.

A day ahead on August 15, security forces of KIA’s headquarters fought against Burmese army’s 390th LIR for four hours beginning 12 noon near Namsan-yang village. Burmese Army’s artillery unit stationed at Dum Bang hill and Lai Lum Awng Ja have reportedly pounded with 81 mm mortar shells onto Namsan-yang village for 15 times and Burmese army’s Gang Dau Yang base fired 105 mm mortar shells for at least 17 times.

Burmese president Thein Sein has ordered twice to end offensive operations against KIO so as to start negotiation but Burmese army responds by sending more troops to Kachin frontline. An informed source says that Burmese army has to ignore all orders and focus on its military maneuver regardless of changing political landscape.

Then, what is the government’s objective in the war against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA)? Although, President Thein Sein has been speaking about the national unity for many times, the wars with ethnic groups continue.

The President Thein Sein government used to say that it has been trying to build a peaceful and developed country; on the other hand the momentum of civil war is increasing. So, the words of the government are not in harmony with the acts of its armed forces.

If President Thein Sein has genuine inspiration of poverty alleviation as well as good governance, he must stop all forms of civil conflict that make the country underprivileged in the region. Most analysts agree that allowing civil war and saying poverty alleviation and good governance looks like an impractical futile strategy.

http://asiancorrespondent.com/88090/unstoppable-kachin-war-biggest-question-of-burma/

Burmese troops, student army engage in brief fight

Burmese troops, student army engage in brief fight

DVB
By AYE NAI
Published: 21 August 2012

Troops from the ABSDF during a training exercise in March 2008 (Source: ABSDF website)

The All Burma Students’ Democratic Front in northern Burma’s Kachin state reported that its troops clashed with government forces on 18 August.

La Hseng, chairman of the ABSDF’s Northern Command that is carrying out joint operations with the Kachin Independence Army’s Brigade-5 territory in Lajayang, said the group returned fire after being attacked by the Burmese army.

“It happened on [Saturday] – there is a command [centre] held by the [Burmese Army’s] 40^th Infantry Battalion in Lajayang with about 70 troops. They have a shortage of food supplies and there is a joint-command base held by the ABSDF and its ally, the KIA, on the way to that position,” said La Hseng.

According to the chairman, the Burmese troops were in route to deliver supplies to the infantry’s base and launched an attack on the ABSDF units in the process.

“The 40^th IB’s troops opened fire at the hill where our base is so we had to return fire,” said La Hseng.

He said the skirmish was only brief and was not as intense as clashes that erupted between the two sides in June.

According to the La Hseng, the Burmese Army has been reinforcing troops inside KIA territories and launching offences against the armed group.

“If the government wants a genuine change, then it should try to implement a nation-wide ceasefire and reconciliation plan. In accordance with our policy, we would accept a [ceasefire] if it were going to be nation-wide,” said said La Hseng.

“Otherwise, since we are the ABSDF that walks arm-in-arm with all ethnic resistance groups, we will continue to fight as long as they do.”

The ABSDF was formed by university students who took up arms against the Burmese government after the 1988 uprising and following crackdown.

At its peak in the 1990s, the student army had about 10,000 members, and waged a guerrilla campaign against government forces largely from the mountains of Karen state.

The ABSDF has been linked with the ethnic resistant movements since its formation in 1988.

In February, ABSDF representatives met with Burmese officials in Thailand to discuss a potential ceasefire; however, an agreement failed to materialise.

Author: AYE NAI

Lata Matut Ndi Ndai Laru Kaba Hpe Jawm Shingla Padang Dip La Ga

Lani hte lani Myen Amyu sha Uhpung yawng ngu na daram Thein Sein Asuya hpe madi shadaw nhtawm KIO/KIA hpe lam amyu myu hku adawt kasat hpang wa nga masai..Egress, DASSK, Thant Myint Oo, 8888, Myen Media, Myen Human Rights Commission hte Myen Parliament ni gaw Thein Sein a Myen Amyu Kaba Mung Masa Shawnglam Hkali kaba hta jawm jawn nga masai..anhte Jinghpaw WP ni yawng Lata matut ndi, ndai Laru kaba hpe jawm shingla kasat awng dang hkra naw da-ting ga. Anhte maga de yawng mayawng hpe dangdi lu ai "Mastaw Lahta na anhte a Wa" lawm nga sai majaw anhte hpa tsang na lam nnga ga ai...Ndai Laru hta anhte sum yang shawnglam e Jinghpaw WP ngu ai shingteng amying gaw Maumi langai hku nna sha ngam nga na hpe asan sha dum nga ga law...

Yumaya Hpyen Magam Gun Dingsa

ျမန္မာ့ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရး ေကာ္မီ႐ွင္၏ ေတြ႕႐ွိခ်က္ မမွန္ကန္ဟု ကခ်င္ ဒုကၡသည္ ေကာ္မီတီမွ ေထာက္ျပ

ျမန္မာ့ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရး ေကာ္မီ႐ွင္၏ ေတြ႕႐ွိခ်က္ မမွန္ကန္ဟု ကခ်င္ ဒုကၡသည္ ေကာ္မီတီမွ ေထာက္ျပ

Tuesday, 14 August 2012 19:47
Written by ေရႊဟသၤာသတင္းဌာန

ကခ်င္ ဒုကၡသည္ စခန္းမ်ား၏ အေျခအေနအေပၚ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရး ေကာ္မ႐ွင္၏ ေလ့လာ ေတြ႔ရွိခ်က္သည္ လက္ေတြ႔ ျဖစ္ရွိေနေသာ အေျခ အေနႏွင့္ ကင္းကြာေနျပီး တရားမွ်တမွဳ မရွိဟု ကခ်င္ ဒုကၡသည္မ်ား အေရး ေဆာင္႐ြက္ ေပးေန သည့္ ဦးတြဲပီဇာမွ ေ႐ႊဟသၤာ သတင္းဌာနသို႕ ေျပာပါသည္။

“ သူတို႔ရဲ့ ထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္က မွန္လည္း မမွန္ပါဘူး။ သူတု႔ိက အစိုးရက ထိမ္းခ်ဳပ္ထားတဲ့ ဒီျမစ္ႀကီးနား နဲ႔      ၀ိုင္းေမာ္မွာရွိတဲ့ ဒုကၡသည္စခန္း (၁၆) ခု ကိုဘဲ ေလ့လာ တာပါ။ ဒါေတာင္မွ က်ေနာ္တို႔သိတဲ့ အေျခအေန နဲ႔ လြဲေနတယ္။ ျပီးေတာ့ KIO ထိမ္း ခ်ဳပ္တဲ့ ဒုကၡသည္ စခန္းကို မသြားဘဲနဲ႔ ဒုကၡသည္ရဲ့ အေျခအေန တခုလံုးကို ၿခဳံျပီးတင္ျပဟန္ကို ယူထားတယ္ဆိုေတာ့ တရားလည္း မတရားပါဘူး” ဟု ဆိုပါသည္။

လက္ေတြ႔၌ ေကအိုင္အို ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္႐ာ နယ္ေျမထဲမွ လိုင္ဇာ ပတ္ဝန္းက်င္တြင္ ဒုကၡသည္ေပါင္း ၅၄,၀၀၀ ခန္႕ ႐ွိၿပီး အစိုးရ ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္ နယ္ေျမထဲတြင္ ဒုကၡသည္ေပါင္း ၂၄, ၀၀၀ ခန္႕သာ ရွိပါသည္။ ဤသို႔ေၾကာင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရး ေကာ္ မ႐ွင္၏ အစီရင္ခံစာသည္ အေျခအေနမွန္ကို တင္ျပေနျခင္း မဟုတ္ ေၾကာင္း ကခ်င္ ဒုကၡသည္မ်ား အေရးကိုေဆာင္႐ြက္ ေပးေနေသာ ဒုကၡသည္ ေကာ္မီတီက ဆိုပါသည္။

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံလူ႕အခြင့္အေရး ေကာ္မ႐ွင္မွ ေျပာေသာ ေလာက္ငွမွဳသည္ ဘာကို ဆိုလိုျခင္း မသိရေပ။ အစိုးရ ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္ေသာ စခန္း မ်ား၌လည္း ရိကၡာမ်ား သိုေလွာင္ထားျခင္း မရွိပါဘဲႏွင့္ ေလာက္ငွမွဳ ရွိသည္ဟု ေျပာေနသလို ျဖစ္ေနပါသည္။ အစိုးရ ထိမ္းခ်ဳပ္ေသာ စခန္းမ်ား၌လည္း UNHCR ကသာ အမ်ားစု ေထာက္ပံ့ေနပါသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္လည္း က်ေနာ္တို႔ နည္းတူသာ ေပးထားသည္ဟု UNHCR ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ မ်ားမွ သိရေၾကာင္း ဦးတြဲပီ ဇာကဆိုပါသည္။

KIO ထိမ္းခ်ဳပ္ေသာ နယ္ေျမ၌ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ အကူအညီ ေပးေရး အဖြဲ႕မ်ား (၅) ဖြဲ႔မွ်ရွိပါသည္။ ၄င္းတို႔သည္ အေျခခံရိကၡာမ်ား ကိုပင္ေလာက္ငွစြာ မေပးႏိုင္ဘဲ ယခုလို မိုးရာသီတြင္း၌ တလစာ ႏွစ္လစာ စသည္ျဖင့္ သင့္ေတာ္သလို ခြဲတမ္းႏွင့္ ေပးေနရ ပါသည္။

မိုင္ဂ်ာယန္ ကခ်င္ ဒုကၡသည္ စခန္းမွ ဒုကၡသည္ အမ်ိဳးသမီးတစ္ဦးအား ေတြ႔ရစဥ္ (ဓါတ္ပံု-အင္တာနက္)

“ဖူလံုမႈ႐ွိတယ္ ဆိုျပီးေျပာတယ္၊ က်ေနာ္တို႔မွာ ေပးသလို အစိုးရ ထိမ္းခ်ဳပ္တဲ့ စခန္းမွာလည္း အဲဒီလိုဘဲ ေပးတယ္။ ဒီေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တို႔မွာက လူတစ္ေယာက္ကို တစ္ေန႕ကို ဆန္ (၂) ေပါင္(၄ဘူးခန္႔)၊ ဆီ၊ ဆား ေပးေနတယ္။ ဒါေတာင္ အေျခခံ ရိကၡာ အျပင္ ဟင္းဖိုးအတြက္ တစ္ဦးကို က်ပ္ ၃၀၀ ထပ္ျဖည့္ ေပးရတယ္။ အဲဒါ အဟာရျဖစ္ ေလာက္တဲ့ ေထာက္ပံ့မွဳ မဟုတ္ဘူးေလ၊ ဒီေတာ့ အတူတူေလာက္ ရေနတဲ့ အေျခအေန ကို ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရး ေကာ္မ႐ွင္က ေလာက္ငွ တယ္လို႔ ေျပာ ေနတာဟာ ေပၚလစီ တခုခု ေၾကာင့္ ဒီစကားကို ေျပာေနတယ္လို႔ ထင္ပါတယ္ ”ဟုဒုကၡသည္ စခန္း ေကာ္မီတီ၀င္ မ်ားက ဆိုပါသည္။

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရး ေကာ္မ႐ွင္သည္ အစိုးရမွ ဖြဲ႔စည္းေပးထားေသာ ေကာ္မီရွင္ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဆိုင္ရာအ ေမရိကန္သံရံုးသည္ ကခ်င္ ဒုကၡသည္မ်ား အတြက္ ေဒၚလာ သံုးသန္း ေထာက္ပံ့ရန္ ထုတ္ျပန္ ထားပါသည္။ ဤအကူအညီမ်ား သည္ တရုတ္ႏိုင္ငံ၏ ခြင့္ျပဳခ်က္ မရပါက KIO ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္ေသာ ကခ်င္ ဒုကၡသည္ စခန္းသို႔ ေရာက္ရွိရန္ ခက္ခဲေပလိမ့္မည္။ ဤသို႔ေၾကာင့္ KIO ထိမ္းခ်ဳပ္ေသာ ကခ်င္ ဒုကၡသည္ စခန္းမ်ား၌ အေျခခံ ရိကၡာကိုပင္ အကန္႔အသတ္ျဖင့္ ေပးေနရျခင္း ျဖစ္ပါသည္။

အစိုးရသည္ ကခ်င္ ဒုကၡသည္အေပၚ ကမၻာကေရာ ျမန္မာကပါ အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္ ေကာင္းေအာင္၊ အာရံု မစိုက္မိေအာင္ ရည္ရြယ္ၿပီး ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ေကာ္မ႐ွင္ကို ထုတ္ျပန္ခိုင္းဖြယ္ ရွိေၾကာင္း အကဲခတ္ မ်ားက ဆိုပါသည္။

http://www.phophtaw.org/burmese/index.php/news/local-news/2011-2012-08-14-12-58-44.html

Egress ဆိုသည္မွာ အစိုးရ၏ NGO အဖြဲ႔ပါ

Egress ဆိုသည္မွာ အစိုးရ၏ NGO အဖြဲ႔ပါ

Tuesday, 14 August 2012 17:40
Written by ျဖဴျဖဴကို

Myanmar Egress အဖြဲ႔သည္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ၌ စစ္မွန္သည့္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး အျမန္ တည္ေဆာက္ရန္ အေျဖရွာ လိုပါက ၄င္းတို႔ အေနႏွင့္ အစိုးရ ေပၚလစီကို အေကာင္အထည္ ေဖၚေသာ NGO အျဖစ္မွ ရပ္ဆိုင္းရန္ လိုအပ္သည္ဟု ညီညြတ္ေသာ တိုင္းရင္းသား လူမ်ဳိးမ်ား ဖက္ဒရယ္ေကာင္စီ (UNFC) အတြင္းေရးမွဴး အဖြဲ႔၀င္ တဦးျဖစ္သည့္ ခြန္ဥကၠာက ဆိုပါသည္။

“ျမန္မာ အီးဂရက္က ရွင္းရွင္းေျပာရရင္ အစိုးရဘက္ကို လိုက္ေနတဲ႔ NGO ေပါ့ သူတို႔က အစိုးရရဲ့ ေပၚလစီမူ၀ါဒကို ျဖန္႔ေပး ေနတဲ့ အန္ဂ်ီအိုေပါ့ အဲလိုျဖန္႔ခ်ီေပးတဲ႔ေနရာမွာလဲ အစိုးရရဲ့ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ေတြပါ ပါ၀င္လာခဲ့လို႔ ဒီလိုပဲြမ်ဳိးကို က်င္းပခဲ့တာေပါ့။ ျပီးေတာ့တခ်ဳိ႕ေနရာေတြမွာ အက်ဳိးအျမတ္ေတြေတာင္ သူတို႔ ရရွိလာပါတယ္” ဟုဆိုပါသည္။

အက်ဳိးျမတ္ ဆိုသည္မွာ နိုင္ငံေရးအရ လုပ္ပိုင္ခြင့္မ်ား ရလာျခင္း၊ ေငြေရးေၾကးေရးအရ သံုးစြဲနိုင္ျခင္း၊ အီးဂရက္ဌာန ခ်ဳပ္ သည္ တကၠသိုလ္တစ္ခုသဖြယ္ ပညာေပးေရး ဌာနတစ္ခု အျဖစ္ တည္ေဆာက္ ႏိုင္ခဲ့သည့္ အက်ဳိးအျမတ္ကို ဆိုလို ျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္ဟု ဆိုပါသည္။

Myanmar Egress အဖြဲ႔သည္ အစိုးရႏွင့္ တိုင္းရင္းသား လက္နက္ကိုင္ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ား အၾကား စစ္မွန္သည့္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္း ေရး အျမန္ဆံုး တည္ေဆာက္ႏိုင္ရန္ အေျဖရွာသည့္ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲ တစ္ရပ္ကို ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ ႔ ပန္ဒါဟိုတယ္မွာ ယမန္ေန႔ မနက္ပိုင္း၌ က်င္းပခဲ့ပါသည္။ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲကို ၿငိမ္းေဖာင္ ေဒးရွင္းမွ ဦးေဆာင္ၿပီး ၂ ရက္တာ က်င္းပသြားျခင္းျဖစ္ပါသည္။ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲသို႔ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဆိုင္ရာ ေနာ္ေ၀သံရံုး ဒုတိယ အႀကီးအကဲ Mr.Arne Jan Flolo၊ Trans National Institute မွ Mr.Tom Kramer ႏွင့္ ျမန္မာအီးဂရက္ ဥကၠဌ ဦးတင္ေမာင္သန္းတို႔ပါ တက္ေရာက္ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကသလို တုိင္းရင္း သား အဖြဲ႔အစည္း (၅၇) ဖြဲ႔မွ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္မ်ား အပါအ၀င္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္မ်ား၌ ပါ၀င္ေဆာင္ရြက္ ေနၾက ေသာ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ား အသီးသီးမွ ပုဂိၢဳလ္ (၂၀၀) ခန္႔တက္ေရာက္ ခဲ့ပါသည္ဟု သတင္း ထုတ္ျပန္ခဲ့ပါသည္။

ၾသဂုတ္ (၁၃)ရက္ေန႔က ပန္ဒါေဟာ္တယ္၌ ေဆြးေႏြးပဲြက်င္းပေနစဥ္

http://www.myanmarnewshub.com/?p=33276

ဤသတင္း ထုတ္ျပန္မွဳကို ၾကည့္ပါက Egress သည္ အစိုးရေပၚလစီကို အေကာင္အထည္ေဖၚ ေနေသာ NGO တခုဆို သည္မွာ ထင္ရွားလွသည္ဟု ခြန္ဥကၠာကဆိုပါသည္။ UNFC သည္ တိုင္းရင္းသား အေရးကို ေတာင္းဆို ရာ၌ မူ(၇)ခ်က္ ခ်မွတ္ ထားပါသည္။ အစိုးရသည္ မူ(၈)ခ်က္ ခ်မွတ္ၿပီး ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဖၚေဆာင္မွဳ ဗဟိုေကာ္မီကို သမၼတ ကိုယ္တိုင္ ဦးေဆာင္ျပီး ဖြဲ႔စည္းခဲ့ပါသည္။

http://www.president-office.gov.mm/briefing-room/daily-news/news1200

ဤလင့္ထဲ၌ ရွိေသာ အစိုးရ၏မူ (၈) ခ်က္ကို UNFC က လက္မခံ ေသးေပ။ ဤသို႔ေၾကာင့္ Egress ဥကၠဌ၏ အဆိုျပဳခ်က္သည္ လက္ေတြ႔ မက်သည့္အျပင္ အစိုးရ၏ ေပၚလစီ အတိုင္း ျဖစ္ေနေပသည္။ UNFC သည္ အစိုးရႏွင့္ မသက္ဆိုင္ေသာ လြတ္လပ္သည့္ တိုင္းရင္းသား ညီလာခံတရပ္ ျဖစ္ေပၚေရး ကို ႀကိဳးပမ္း ေနပါသည္။

ျမန္မာ့ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးသည္ အပစ္အခတ္ ရပ္စဲေရးထက္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအရ စစ္မွန္ေသာ အေျဖရွာမွဳသည္ သာလ်ွင္ အေကာင္း ဆံုး ျဖစ္လိမ့္မည္ဟု ခြန္ဥကၠာကဆိုပါသည္။

“UNFC ရဲ့ 7 ခ်က္နဲ႔ ကိုက္ညီမွလည္း မဟုတ္ဘူး ဦးသိန္းစိန္ရဲ့ ၈ ခ်က္နဲ႔ ကိုက္ညီမွလည္း မဟုတ္ဘူး အဲဒီ ၇ ခ်က္နဲ႔ ၈ ခ်က္ကို ဘယ္ဟာ လုပ္မလဲ ဆိုတာကို ေဆြးေႏြး တိုင္ပင္ ညိွနွုိင္းဖို႔ လိုတယ္။ ဘယ္ေတာ့ ညိွနိုင္းမလဲ ဆိုတဲ့ အေပၚမွာ မူတည္တယ္။ အီးဂရက္က ဦးတင္ေမာင္သန္း ေျပာသလို ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးဟာ လက္နက္ကိုင္ တိုင္းရင္းသားအဖြဲ႔ ေတြေပၚမွာဘဲ မူတည္တယ္လို႔ ေျပာတာဟာ အစိုးရဖက္ကို လိုက္ျပီး ေျပာတာ ျဖစ္တယ္။ ၀ါဒ ျဖန္႔တာလည္း ျဖစ္မယ္။ တကယ္ ေတာ့ အစိုးရ အဆက္ဆက္ေၾကာင့္ တိုင္းျပည္ မၿငိမ္းခ်မ္း တာကိုလည္း စဥ္းစား သင့္ပါတယ္”ဟု ဆိုပါသည္။

ထို႔အျပင္ UNFC သည္ လြတ္လပ္သည့္ တိုင္းရင္းသား ညီလာခံ တခုကို ျပည္တြင္း ၌လည္း က်င္းပ လိုပါသည္။ အစိုးရက ခြင့္ျပဳမလား ဆိုသည္မွာ ၄င္းတို႔ ေစတနာ အေပၚ မူတည္ ပါလိမ့္မည္။ ႏိုင္ငံေရး ပါတီမ်ား၊ တိုင္းရင္းသား ပါတီမ်ား၊ တက္ေရာက္ လိုေသာ ပညာရွင္ ပုဂၢဳိလ္မ်ား၊ တိုင္းခ်စ္ ျပည္ခ်စ္ ပုဂၢိဳလ္မ်ားမွ လြတ္လြတ္လပ္လပ္ ေဆြးေႏြးၿပီး အေျဖရွာ သင့္ပါသည္။ ဤညီလာခံမ်ဳိး အစိုးရက ခြင့္မျပဳဘူး ဆိုပါက ဘာေၾကာင့္လဲဟု ႀကိဳၿပီး ေမးခြန္း ထုတ္ရ ပါလိမ့္မည္။

http://www.phophtaw.org/burmese/index.php/statement-pressrelease/statement/1917-2012-07-23-08-18-43.html

ဤလင့္သည္ UNFC ၏ လမ္းျပေျမပံု (၇) ခ်က္ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ ျမန္မာ့ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးသည္ KIA အေပၚ အစိုးရ၏ ကိုင္တြယ္မွဳ သေဘာထား အေပၚမွာသာ မူတည္ လိမ့္မည္ဟု ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ၏ျငိမ္းခ်မ္း ေရးျဖစ္စဥ္ ကို အကူအညီ ေပးေနေသာ ေနာ္ ေ၀းႏိုင္ငံမွ Myanmar Peace Support Initiative (MPSI) က ဆိုပါသည္။

http://www.phophtaw.org/burmese/index.php/news/local-news/2009-egress-ngo-.html

အစိုးရ၏ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဖာ္ေဆာင္မွဳမူ တိုင္းရင္းသားမ်ား လက္မခံ

အစိုးရ၏ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဖာ္ေဆာင္မွဳမူ တိုင္းရင္းသားမ်ား လက္မခံ

Monday, 13 August 2012 20:44
Written by ေရႊဟသၤာသတင္းဌာန

အစိုးရ၏ တိုင္းရင္းသားမ်ားအေပၚ ထား႐ွိခဲ့သည့္ လက္ရွိ သေဘာထားသည္ မူေဟာင္းမ်ားျဖစ္၍ ဆက္ လက္ ဖိအားေပးေန ပါက ရ႐ွိထားသည့္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးမ်ားသည္ ပ်က္ျပားသြားႏိုင္ဖြယ္ အေနအထား႐ွိ ေၾကာင္း ညီညြတ္ေသာ တိုင္းရင္သား လူမ်ိဳးမ်ား ဖက္ဒရယ္ ေကာင္စီ (UNFC) အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉး ႏိုင္ဟံသာမွ ေ႐ႊဟသၤာ သတင္းဌာနသို႕ ေျပာၾကား ခဲ့ပါ သည္။

“အစိုးရရဲ့ တိုင္းရင္းသားေတြအေပၚ ထားရွိတဲ့ မူ(၈) ခ်က္ဟာ ဘယ္လိုမွ လက္ခံ ႏိုင္စရာ မ႐ွိဘူး၊ တရား နည္းလမ္း မက် ဘူး၊ မွ်တမႈ မ႐ွိဘူး၊ သူတို႕ အတြက္ အသာစီး ယူထားၿပီးေတာ့ ကႊ်န္ေတာ္တို႕ တိုင္းရင္း သားေတြ သူတို႕ ၾကားကို ဝင္ေရာက္ ေစတဲ့ နည္းဟာ တိုင္းရင္းသား အခြင့္အေရးေတြ ဘယ္လိုမွ ရႏိုင္မွာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး၊ ဒီမူေတြဟာ မူေဟာင္းပါ။ သူတို႕က ဒီမူနဲ႔ ဘဲ ဆက္ လက္တြန္းအား ေပးလာမယ္ ဆိုရင္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးဟာ ေ႐ွ႕ဆက္သြားဖို႕ မျဖစ္ႏိုင္တဲ့ အေနအထားပါ” ဟု ႏိုင္ဟံသာမွ ေျပာပါသည္။

ၾသဂုတ္လ ၁၂ ရက္ေန႕၌ သမၼတ အိမ္ေတာ္ သဘင္ေဆာင္၌ က်င္းပသည့္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဖာ္ေဆာင္ေရး အဖြဲ႕ လုပ္ငန္း ေကာ္မီတီ၏ ၁/၂၀၁၂ အစည္းအေဝး၌ ၄င္းတို႔ ခ်မွတ္ထားေသာ တိုင္းရင္းသား အပစ္ရပ္အဖဲြ႕မ်ားလိုက္နာ ရမည့္မူ (၈) ခ်က္သည္ ယခင္ စစ္အစိုးရလက္ထက္က က်င့္သံုးခဲ့ေသာ မူေဟာင္းမ်ားသာ ျဖစ္သည္ဟု UNFC မွ ႐ႉ႕ျမင္ပါ သည္။ ယင္းမူ မ်ားသည္ ျမန္မာ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ သမၼတ႐ံုး အင္တာနက္ စာမ်က္ႏွာတြင္ ထုတ္ျပန္ ေၾကျငာထားပါသည္။

“ဒါကလည္း သူတို႕ အျမင္ သူတို႕ ရပ္တည္ခ်က္ကို ထုတ္ျပတာပါ၊ ဒါကလည္း တရားေသ ျဖစ္ရမယ့္ အရာမဟုတ္ပါဘူး၊ ကႊ်န္ေတာ္တို႕ တိုင္းရင္းသားေတြ ဘက္ကလည္း တရားေသ အေနအထား မဟုတ္ပါဘူး၊ ႏွစ္ဖက္ ညိွႏႈိင္း လုပ္ေဆာင္ သြားဖို႕ သင့္ပါတယ္၊ ျပည္သူ လူထု ေတြရဲ့ သေဘာထား ေတြကိုလည္း အေျခခံ ရမယ္၊ ကႊ်န္ေတာ္တို႕ တိုင္းရင္းသားေတြ အားလံုး ကလည္း ဒီလိုပဲ ျမင္ပါတယ္၊ ဒီထက္ ဆိုးလာရင္ေတာ့ အပစ္အခတ္ ရပ္စဲေရး ဆိုတာ ပ်က္ျပား ႏိုင္တဲ့ အေနအ ထားပဲ ႐ွိပါတယ္” ဟု ႏိုင္ဟံသာမွ ေျပာပါသည္။

ျပည္ေထာင္စုအဆင့္ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေဖၚေဆာင္မွဳ လုပ္ငန္းေကာ္မီတီ

အဆိုပါ အစည္းအေ၀းတြင္ ဒု-သမၼတ စိုင္းေမာက္ခမ္းက “ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဖာ္ေဆာင္ ႏိုင္ေရးမွာ ႏွစ္ဦးႏွစ္ဖက္ ေတြ႕ဆံု လက္မွတ္ ေရးထိုးၿပီး႐ံုမွ်ျဖင့္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ရၿပီဟု မဆိုႏိုင္၊ ထိလြယ္႐ွလြယ္ေသာ အေျခအေန ျဖစ္၍ အခန္႕မသင့္ပါက အခ်ိန္မေ႐ြး ေနာက္ဆုတ္ ပ်က္စီးသြားႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း” ထည့္သြင္း ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ၿပီး ျဖစ္ပါသည္။

ျပည္ေထာင္စု ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဖာ္ေဆာင္ေရး ဗဟို ေကာ္မီတီကို ၃/၅/၂၀၁၂ ရက္ေန႕က ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ သမၼတ႐ံုး အမိန္႕အမွတ္ ၁၁/၂၀၁၂ ျဖင့္ ဖြဲ႕စည္းခဲ့ၿပီး ဗဟိုေကာ္မီတီ (၁၁) ဦး ပါ႐ွိ ပါသည္။ ထို႕အတူ ျပည္ေထာင္စု ၿငိမ္္းခ်မ္းေရး လုပ္ငန္း ေကာ္မီတီ ကိုလည္း သမၼတ႐ုံး အမိန္႕အမွတ္ ၁၂/၂၀၁၂ ျဖင့္ ဖြဲ႕စည္းခဲ့ၿပီး အဖြဲ႕ဝင္ေပါင္း (၅၂) ဦး႐ွိပါသည္။ တိုင္းရင္းသား အဖဲြ႕မ်ားႏွင့္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲ မ်ားကိုမူ ျပည္ေထာင္စု ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဖာ္ေဆာင္ေရး လုပ္ငန္း ေကာ္မီတီ ဒုဥကၠ႒ ဦးေအာင္မင္းမွ တာဝန္ယူ ေတြ႕ဆံုလ်က္ ႐ွိပါသည္။

http://www.phophtaw.org/burmese/index.php/news/local-news/2006-2012-08-13-13-57-12.html

Bringing Myanmar killers to justice tops summit agenda

Bringing Myanmar killers to justice tops summit agenda

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah being received by Crown Prince Salman upon his

arrival in Makkah. (SPA)

DAMMAM: SIRAJ WAHAB
Sunday 12 August 2012

The ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar is one of the key issues to be discussed at the Islamic solidarity summit convened by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah in Makkah on Aug. 14-15.

With just two days to go for the conclave of the world’s most important Muslim leaders in the most holy city, pressure is mounting on Myanmar’s military junta to allow international and Islamic relief agencies access to the besieged Muslim population of the Arakan province.

Two important delegations to Myanmar — one led by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and the other by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — this week have revealed signs of panic and desperation among the junta’s top leadership.
“They have been caught out and have now realized that what they have done to Rohingya Muslims constitutes a war crime,” one of the diplomats at the Jeddah-based OIC told Arab News.

“There is no doubt that the state was and possibly still is involved in the planned pogrom of Arakan Muslims, and they are now trying to reach out to the Muslim world to lessen the impact of the expected robust and unified Muslim response at the Makkah summit,” he said.

Besides Davutoglu, the Turkish delegation included Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s wife Emine and daughter Sumeyye. The delegation called on Myanmar President U Thein Sein and Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin and visited Rohingya Muslims staying in the Banduba refugee camp where more than 8,500 Rohingya Muslims have taken shelter.

The delegates received a first-hand account of what exactly happened to the Rohingya Muslims. They talked to a number of victims, and at one point, according to reports in the Turkish media, the prime minister’s wife was reduced to tears while listening an account being recounted by an affected Rohingya Muslim woman.

Davutoglu later told journalists that he would present his findings to the Muslim leaders at the Makkah summit. His findings will hold the key to the future course of action from the Muslim world at the summit.

According to a top Jeddah-based diplomat, there are a number of measures that the Muslim world can think of against Myanmar.

“We can haul the country’s top military leadership, including President Thein Sein and the Arakan provincial head, to the International Court of Justice in The Hague and try them like Solobodan Milosevic and other Serbian leadership,” he said. “Among the other viable options are that of approaching the UN Security Council and UN Human Rights Council.”

The diplomat also hinted at pressurizing and persuading the world’s leading powers to constitute an international peace-keeping force to save the Rohingya Muslims from being obliterated and uprooted from their historic homeland.

The OIC delegation to Myanmar was headed by former Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla. Among others, it included OIC Assistant Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Atta Manan Bakhiet and presidents of the Qatari Red Crescent and Kuwaiti International Humanitarian Commission.

The OIC delegates conveyed to President Thein Sein of the outrage in the Muslim world at the deplorable humanitarian conditions in the Arakan province of Myanmar.

The delegation asked for access to Muslim humanitarian organizations to provide emergency aid to inhabitants of the worst-hit Arakan province “without any religious discrimination.”

According to a press note issued by the OIC yesterday, Myanmar president welcomed the OIC delegation and stated that that what had happened was not a direct result of religious differences. Instead, he blamed the massacre on what he called as “social problems between various ethnicities in the province.”

Thein Sein pointed out to the OIC delegates that the international media distorted the events and presented wrong information and exaggerated the killings.

“President Thein Sein stressed his eagerness for the Muslim world in particular to know the truth about what occurred in Arakan, and he mentioned that he had sent an invitation to OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu recently to visit Myanmar to observe the real situation in the affected province,” said the OIC press note.

The president welcomed the OIC humanitarian delegation to Arakan and agreed to allow the OIC and its partner organizations to provide humanitarian aid to the province in an urgent manner and to open an office in the region in coordination with the central government in Yangon and the local authorities in the province.

He instructed the relevant ministries to sign an agreement with the OIC to complete the arrangements.

http://www.arabnews.com/bringing-myanmar-killers-justice-tops-summit-agenda-0

'Many Missing' in Dam Burst

'Many Missing' in Dam Burst
2012-08-10
RFA

People in China's Zhejiang province expect casualties to mount after a major dam collapses.

Rescuers clean up debris after a dam burst near Zhoushan city, Aug. 10, 2012.

Residents of the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang cast doubts on the official death toll after a large dam collapsed on Friday, flooding the surrounding area, as rescuers continue to search for missing people in the wake of Typhoon Haikui.

Official media reported that 10 people had died after the 28.5-meter-high dam burst and loosed the waters of the Shenjiakeng reservoir across countryside near Zhoushan city, with an estimated 27 injuries.

However, the number of casualties could rise further, local people said.

"They haven't accounted for everyone yet," a resident of nearby Changtu township who declined to be named told RFA. She said the town was full of ambulances and rescue vehicles rushing back and forth.

She added that many people living near the dam had been undocumented migrant workers from inland regions. "Some people were from other provinces; households that we don't even know about."

"I don't think [the rescue effort] is very effective," she added. "It happened very early [this morning] but when people were calling in for help, it seems that people didn't reach them until much later."

"It took them nearly an hour to reach them."

'Suppress'

Asked if the authorities had reported the full extent of casualties, she said: "The media is bound to try to suppress this."

Teams of experts were sent to the scene, while local rescue teams vowed "all-out efforts" to locate the missing, the English-language China Daily newspaper reported in the wake of torrential rains which have lashed China's eastern seaboard at the trailing edge of typhoon Haikui.

An employee who answered the phone at the Daishan County People's Hospital said it had been overwhelmed with casualties in the wake of the disaster.

"There have been a very large number [of casualties]," the employee said, describing their injuries as "all kinds."

"There was one person who didn't make it, but the others are doing OK."

But he declined to give exact details. "If you want to know exactly how many people it was, you'll have to talk to our bosses," he said.

Calls to all other listed numbers at the hospital went unanswered, however.

Some netizens posted to popular microblogging services that the Shenjiakeng dam was old and had been falling into disrepair since the local government had handed it over to a private entrepreneur who was running a water purification plant at the reservoir.

Photographs

Photographs of the disaster-hit area in state-run media showed flattened houses and teams of rescue workers forming human chains in waist-deep flood-water.

Zhejiang has been lashed by downpours over the last few days with the arrival of typhoon Haikui, which landed in the province early Wednesday morning, the official news agency Xinhua reported.

Last month, heavy rainstorms and massive floods engulfed the streets of Beijing, killing at least 37 people and stranding tens of thousands of travelers and evacuees who had fled their homes.

The floods sparked allegations that the authorities had tried to cover up the true number of casualties, as well as widespread public anger over the absence of adequate drainage in a city which has promoted itself as world-class.

Reported by Fang Yuan for RFA's Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.