I want to share with you some of my experiences in the jungle and the reason why I had to be hiding out in the jungle in the first place. My country has military dictatorship, the State Peace and Development Council or SPDC. Because of that there has been a civil war between Burma’s major ethnic minorities and the military that has been going on over 50 years and continues today.

This is the essay from middblogs written by a burmese girl named, Htar Htar Yu.  I just came across while I was surfing burmese news on the web. Pretty amazed to hear how people are struggling in Burmese jungle and made me realize the driven force of doing my work - "valid vibes". I wish her the best of luck in pursuing her goals.

 

Than Shwe, Burma.
Age 72. In power since 1992.
Last year’s rank: 2
This year's rank: 3

By David Wallechinsky
Published: February 13, 2005 in Parade magazine

“We are thankful for Canada, who supports our government in exile through Rights and Democracy, but we still need Canada to do more, to implement the motion to help us as other countries in terms of financially, in terms of politically,”

“There is no way that the situation in Burma can stand as it is for years and years coming,” 

“It’s a huge jail; it’s a huge camp; it’s a territory where there is no état de droit, where there is no respect at all for human rights and minority rights.”

By Noé Chartier -- Epoch Times Montreal Staff Nov 05, 2005

03 November 2005

Treasury Department adds names to economic sanctions list under Kingpin Act

The Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced November 3 that it has added the names of 11 individuals and 16 companies to its list of "Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons" pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (Kingpin Act).

The individuals and companies are identified as part of the financial network of designated significant foreign narcotics trafficker Wei Hsueh-kang and the Burma-based United Wa State Army (UWSA). 

Wei Hsueh-kang is a senior commander of the UWSA, an armed group that commands up to 20,000 fighters.  The group claims to be an ethnic separatist movement, but the U.S. government has charged that it is in fact a criminal syndicate and narcotics trafficking organization. 

UWSA controls a significant part of eastern Burma in the "Golden Triangle" opium-producing region. 

Wei, who is under U.S. federal indictment on narcotics-related charges, was designated a significant foreign narcotics trafficker under the Kingpin Act in June 2000.  (See related article.)

UWSA was designated a drug kingpin entity in May 2003.

According to the OFAC announcement, "Today's action freezes any assets found in the United States and prohibits all financial and commercial transactions between the designated persons and entities and any U.S. person."

The Kingpin Act is modeled after a 1995 executive order of the president that authorized OFAC to impose economic sanctions against narcotics traffickers based in Colombia.   Signed into law in December 1999, the act extends OFAC's authority to apply economic sanctions against narcotics traffickers on a worldwide basis.

"Wei and the UWSA's opium trafficking plagues the society and economy of Southeast Asia," said OFAC Director Robert Werner.   "We're acting to protect the U.S. financial sector from this network's tainted drug profits, as well as ensure Wei and his cohorts can't use the American financial system to move or launder their opium proceeds."

I've been wanting to do this for a long time... now the time has come and the opportunity is right in my bare hand....yet still striving to fit in my busy schedule... i need help! creating a blog is, of course, easy job for everyone...just that when it comes to maintaining part, you want every single person to strengthen the blog. that being said, i welcome everyone to come and join with me in this blog for our better future ...

Here're some topics I want to talk about:

~Utopic vision of Burma

~End of the ideas?