Engnews September 2009

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RFA News: Election Call From Former Aide

by Joshua Lipes

Election Call From Former Aide Go to www.rfa.org/english/news/china/baotong-09242009094453.html for complete coverage HONG KONG- A former top official in China's Communist Party has called on patriotic Chinese to "return power to the people" and push for full democracy ahead of the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports. Sixty years after peasant leader Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China from Tiananmen Square on Oct. 1, 1949, former top Party aide Bao Tong said the Party has never admitted its mistakes. "All of the great mistakes at a national level with far-reaching consequences were committed under the planning and leadership of the Communist Party," wrote Bao, a former aide to disgraced late Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang. "The People's Republic of China is not a republic at all. This is a sort of pathology," he said in a letter obtained by RFA's Mandarin service. "It consists in the systemic erosion of the rights of citizens to all sorts of things, including elections and private property, by the Party leadership over the last 60 years." 'Progress' under the Party In an essay penned from his Beijing home, where Bao has been held under house arrest since returning from a seven-year jail term in the wake of the 1989 student-led pro-democracy movement, Bao poured scorn on the wave of official praise for China's progress under the Party. "Hidden troubles shouldn't be allowed to remain packaged up in talk of 'great and mighty results,' for the sake of our children, our grandchildren, and all their descendants," he wrote. Behind the talk of "prosperity" and "the rise of China" lies rampant official corruption and an ever-widening gap between rich and poor, Bao said. "Behind the words 'hard reasoning of development' lies the plunder of natural resources and the laying waste of the environment," he added. He delineated a "collapse of personal freedoms, religious freedom, ethnic autonomy, and freedoms of speech, protest and demonstration" behind the government's emphasis on stability. Call for elections "How should a patriot show their love and concern for their country?" Bao wrote. "By returning power to the people and building a republic," said Bao, who called on Chinese people to educate themselves about what full, direct elections actually mean. "If we are to cash in on [promises of] democracy, openness, competition and meritocracy, universal direct elections are inevitable," he wrote. "Otherwise that particular check will undoubtedly bounce." "China is in dire need of a period of education and enlightenment about what is really meant by a 'republic' and what is really meant by 'universal, direct elections.'" Bao said that no political party should be given the right to field an approved list of candidates, or to interfere with the right of any candidate to enter the field or to take up their post if they are elected. "The legitimacy of a republic rests on universal, direct elections. It is the sacred duty of every patriotic citizen to promote universal, direct elections in which there is true competition between candidates," Bao wrote. Chinese authorities are implementing a nationwide security clampdown ahead of the Oct. 1 National Day celebrations, closing key Web sites and discussion boards, and detaining people who try to lodge complaints in Beijing about local governments. The anniversary comes as Beijing struggles to quell ethnic tensions in China's northwest and to silence outspoken dissidents, petitioners, and civil rights lawyers, who have been warned not to use the occasion to protest against the government. Original essay by Bao Tong. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han. Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. RFA's broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to "seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." RFA is funded by an annual grant from the Broadcasting Board of Governors. If you no longer wish to receive RFA news releases, send an e-mail to engnews-leave(a)rfanews.org. To add your name to our mailing list, send an e-mail to engnews-join(a)rfanews.org #####

15 years, 5 months

RFA News: Karen Children Forced To Work for Burmese Junta, Ethnic Troops

by Sarah Jackson-Han

Children, Families Forced To Work for Burmese Junta, Ethnic Troops Also on www.rfa.org: 'The Moon Is Up': Poems by Young North Korean Defectors, translated into English for the first time www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/nk-children-poetry-09012009142744.html Vietnamese Schools Reject HIV Children http://www.rfa.org/english/news/vietnam/HIV-08282009102134.html NORTHERN THAILAND, Sept. 14, 2009-Children as young as 10 are being forced to work as porters for the Burmese military and ethnic minority Karen troops amid intensifying conflict near the border with Thailand, according to refugees in northern Thailand, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports. One village here in a Karen region houses 95 Burmese refugees, including 39 children under age 12. All say they were taken from their villages in Burma and forced to work as military porters. The increased press-ganging of villagers, including children, into work as porters comes in the wake of intensified fighting between Burmese government forces supported by elements of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) on one side and the mostly Christian Karen National Union (KNU) troops on the other, the refugees said. Thousands more are believed also to have fled their homes in Burma since June and to be hiding in villages on the Thai side of the border, according to human rights and aid workers. The prolonged military conflict in the region has meant that none of the Karen children has ever been able to attend school. "I am 10 years old," one shy girl told a visiting reporter. Another, who said she was 16, said she had to carry dozens of cans of rice in a basket on her back for five days at a stretch and was given only rice with salt and chili peppers to eat. "When it rained, we had to sleep under trees, so we would get completely wet," she said. Pulling children through the jungle Burmese soldiers forced anyone who had no physical disability to carry goods and ammunition for them, the refugees said. No one was paid for his or her labor. The porters said they don't know if the troops who press-ganged them into service belong to the DKBA or a joint force comprising soldiers for the DKBA and the ruling junta. Fathers with children able to walk on their own but not big enough to work as porters themselves must hold onto their children while carrying ammunition on their backs, sometimes pulling the children through heavy jungle vegetation, they said. Parents and children are required to sleep separately to prevent them from running away, they said, and the men are told their wives will be taken by soldiers if they try to flee. Parents in the camp said they had no choice but to bring their children, as the only people left behind in their villages were very elderly or too disabled to look after anyone but themselves. One woman carrying her three-year-old son in a sling in front of her demonstrated how she had to carry artillery shells in a basket on her back at the same time. If her child cried, she was told to put her hand over his face to silence him or face a reprimand from the soldiers. She said she had had to carry the shells for four days at a time and was allowed to stop and rest only two or three times a day. Stepped-up recruiting "In the past, they would need porters only once a month," said the head of the village that the group of refugees left behind them. "But now they need them three or four times a month, and we would even have to go to the front line. We would have to supply three soldiers per village, and if the village was bigger we would have had to supply up to 20 soldiers," he said. "If we cannot supply the soldiers we would have to pay 30,000 baht (about U.S. $880). If we cannot give them the money, they would send us to jail," he added. Karen refugees have so far received no aid from international agencies, nor from the Thai government, they said. Sometimes, soldiers from the DKBA stole their goods, even on the Thai side of the border, they added. "When I left I brought with me the best bullock I had, but when I got to Thailand the DKBA stole the bullock from me," she said. "I had to pay them 1,500 baht (U.S. $44) to get my bullock back." According to the Burma-based Karen Human Rights Group, the DKBA began a stepped-up recruitment drive in August 2008 in response to an escalating series of DKBA and joint DKBA/government attacks on KNU and Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) positions in the Dooplaya and Pa'an Districts of Karen state. Those attacks have greatly intensified since the start of the year, the group said in a report published on its Web site. Partly under the control of the Burmese government, the DKBA has again increased recruitment as it prepares to transform itself into a Border Guard Force as required by the military junta ahead of elections in 2011. "By June 7, over 3,000 villagers, including the Ler Per Her camp population of just over 1,200 people as well as nearly 2,000 residents from other villages in the area, had fled to neighboring Thailand to avoid fighting as well as forced conscription into work as porters and human minesweepers for DKBA and SPDC forces," the group said Aug. 25. The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, says there are more than 100,000 registered Burmese refugees inside Thailand today, most of them Karen. Original reporting in Burmese by Khin May Zaw. Translated by Soe Thinn. Burmese service director: Nancy Shwe. Written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han. Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. RFA's broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to "seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." RFA is funded by an annual grant from the Broadcasting Board of Governors. If you no longer wish to receive RFA news releases, send an e-mail to engnews-leave(a)rfanews.org. To add your name to our mailing list, send an e-mail to engnews-join(a)rfanews.org #####

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Engnews September 2009