2009 March 01 « Rev. Danny Fisher

March 1, 2009

Radio Free Asia: Exclusive Pictures of Tibetan Monks in Losar Protest March

Radio Free Asia posts a couple of exclusive photographs (including the image above) that were taken of Tibetan monks from Lutsang Monastery in China’s Qinghai Province protesting at the Mangra County Government Building on February 25th, 2009. More than 100 monks defiantly marked the Tibetan New Year, Losar, with the peaceful march and candlelight vigil.

March 1, 2009

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Medicine Calls for U.N. Investigation into Junta’s Handling of Cyclone Recovery Efforts in Burma

Voice of America reports that the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Medicine has called for a United Nations investigation into “Burma’s handling of aid and assistance to cyclone hit regions last year, accusing the military government of crimes against humanity.” The report continues:

The report, a joint project of aid workers from the Thai-Burma border and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, charges Burma’s military government with abuse and corruption in its handling of aid and recovery to the devastated Irrawaddy Delta region hit by last year’s cyclone Nargis.

The report charges Burma’s military of resisting international and regional aid, interference in assistance, confiscation of aid and resale, arrest of aid workers, discrimination in aid along ethnic lines, forced labor and confiscation of land.

March 1, 2009

Burma News (3.1.09)

“Leaders from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations link arms at the group’s annual summit, held in Thailand. From left are Thailand’s Abhisit Vejjajiva, Vietnam’s Nguyen Tan Dung, Burma’s Thein Sein, Brunei’s Hassanal Bolkiah and Cambodia’s Hun Sen.” Photo by Tomohiro Ohsumi for the Bloomberg News.
Here are today’s items on Burma:

The Washington Post reports that the annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) of the “got off to a rocky start Saturday when the leaders of Burma and Cambodia threatened to walk out of a meeting on human rights if activists from their countries were included.”

The Associated Press reports that those two prominent activists–Burma’s Khin Ohnmar, who recieved Sweden’s Anna Lindh Human Rights Prize last year, and Pen Somony from the Cambodia Volunteers for Civil Society–were then barred from the meeting, “upstaging the opening of a summit billed as a historic step toward greater human rights in the region.”

The Agence France-Presse reports that during the summit “Southeast Asian leaders urged [Burma's] junta to move towards democracy but detained opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi’s name was never mentioned.”

The AFP goes on to tell us that both analysts and activists uniformly agree that ASEAN’s attempts to prove their commitment to human rights has “backfired.”

March 1, 2009

UNICEF PSA Series Against Child Soldiering in Sri Lanka

This from UNICEF:

Since 2002, nearly 7,000 Sri Lankan children reportedly have been recruited into armed groups. Their predicament is exacerbated by a 25-year conflict between the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that has killed more than 70,000 people.

This year, fighting has greatly intensified and child soldiers are being thrown to the front line.

As part of a national programme to tackle the issue of child soldiers, the President of Sri Lanka and UNICEF today launched a national campaign to prevent child recruitment and promote the release of all recruited children.

Bring Back the Child is a multimedia initiative directed towards armed groups, vulnerable communities and affected children. The campaign is made possible by the financial support of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and UNICEF France.

For more information on this campaign, follow this link. And watch UNICEF’s PSA series on the matter below.

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