VOA News

Burma has begun the trial of six Buddhist men accused of killing Rohingya Muslims during an incident that helped spark last year’s deadly sectarian violence.

The men face up to life in prison if convicted at the trial in the Rakhine state town of Taungkok, northwest of Rangoon.

They are the first to go on trial for the June 2012 incident, in which a mob dragged 10 Muslims from a bus and killed them.

A local man who did not want to be identified told VOA the killings were instigated by people who did not live in the town.

“We doubt the arrest and alleged charges on those six men.  It’s impossible to kill 10 people by only six.  There were many suspicious things in this accident.  Most of those who were involved and committed the crimes are strangers, not locals,” he said.

Sharon Bradley

The winner of this year’s Sydney Peace Prize, to be announced on Saturday, is fighting for the future of her internationally-renowned health clinic based in Thailand after AusAid slashed its funding last month.

As famous in Myanmar as her fellow countrywoman Aung San Suu Kyi, Dr Cynthia Maung, 54, has not returned to her homeland since she was forced to flee it, 25 years ago next month, during the great 8888 Uprising.

    “The prize is a way of bringing attention to Burma”

The Sydney Peace Foundation will announce on Saturday that Dr Maung is the winner of the 2013 Sydney Peace Prize, an international award that celebrates the achievements of an individual who demonstrates in daily life a commitment to the pursuit of peace with justice.

By NYEIN NYEIN

More than a dozen lawmakers discussed rule of law in a session of the Lower House on Wednesday, after a parliamentary committee looking into the issue found continued intervention by administrative officials in the judicial system.

In an annual report submitted on Monday, a parliamentary committee led by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, said poor rule of law was harming the Burmese people.

Committee member Khin Saw Wai, from the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party said the committee had received about 11,259 complaints over the course of one year.

BNI

The Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army (RCSS), commonly known as the SSA South, recently issued a directive to its field units to make direct contact with their immediate Burmese army units as part of an effort to avoid further clashes, according to Sao Yawd Serk, the SSA South’s top leader.

“One reason for the directive is most of the Burmese units have left it to their superiors at the regional headquarters to notify the SSA of its planned patrols and their headquarters does not usually inform the SSA’s liaison office of their movements,” Yawd Serk explained. “Inevitably there were clashes leading to unnecessary losses on both sides.”

There has been more than 100 military encounters between the two armies since the ceasefire agreement was signed on 2 December 2011.

By KYAW PHYO THA

RANGOON — The United Nations’ special rapporteur for human rights in Burma, Tomás Ojea Quintana, met on Tuesday with the parents of a girl gunned down by the Burmese military in a killing that brought the brutality of the 1988 pro-democracy crackdown to the eyes of the world.

The father of Win Maw Oo, the subject of an infamous photograph that appeared in the Oct. 3, 1988, issue of Newsweek magazine’s Asian edition documenting a blood-soaked 16-year-old girl being carried by two doctors, said he and his wife were invited to the UN Development Program’s office in Rangoon to meet with Quintana on Tuesday evening.

“Mr. Quintana said after reading a story about our daughter in The Irrawaddy magazine that he felt sad about our daughter,” the father Win Kyu said. “He also said he respects our daughter for her sacrifice at such a young age for democracy in Burma so that he wanted to see us.”

Author: Thomson Reuters Foundation Correspondent

CORRECTION – In paragraph 10, please read ‘Thailand-based Shwe Gas Movement, an activist group’, correcting from the group’s former description of itself as ‘Shwe Gas Movement, a group of Myanmar exiles in Bangladesh, India and Thailand’.

BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Ten activists on trial for protesting without a permit against a Chinese-led oil and gas project in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state say they expect to be jailed, in a case rights groups say is typical of a new authoritarianism creeping into Myanmar.

Tun Kyi, an activist from Maday Island, the westernmost project site, told Thomson Reuters Foundation the defendants expected to be found guilty and jailed when the verdict is handed down in a week or two.