Now is the time to choose your destiny. The Military junta has reached its dusk. They are even demolishing the Buddhist religion as an enemy in order to cling on to power. The pools of blood in Ngwe Kyar Yan monastery depicts clearly the depths the junta are prepared to lower themselves. Even more disturbing is the news that all the monks, without exception, who were captured from that monastery were later murdered.Who has committed this atrocity? And why? These are questions that every person who loves Burma, her culture and her religion, should be asking. The majority of us Burmese people have been brought up to always pay respect to the Buddha, the Dhamma (the Teachings of the Buddha) and the Sangha.

Burma's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has greeted Buddhist monks protesting against the military junta. Apparently unable to hold her tears, Aung San Suu Kyi came out of the house she has been detained in since 2003 as the monks were let through a roadblock. At least 2,000 monks are staging a sixth day of protests through the streets of the main city of Rangoon. Up to 10,000 marched through Mandalay with protests also taking place in five townships across Burma.

Leaders of protests by Buddhist monks in Burma say they intend to continue their peaceful demonstrations until the military government collapses. The statement by the Alliance of All Burmese Buddhist Monks came as 1,500 monks took to the streets of Rangoon in their biggest protest yet. This is the fourth straight day of marches by monks in protest at recent government attempts to silence critics. Diplomats at the United Nations have expressed concern at the crisis. In a strongly-worded statement, seen by the BBC, the Alliance of All Burmese Buddhist Monks described the military government as "the enemy of the people".

The scale of the protests in Burma increased yesterday. More than 3,000 red-robed Buddhist monks took to the streets in the western city of Sittwe. A thousand marched through Mandalay, with several hundred more in Rangoon, demanding the release of four monks arrested on Tuesday. This is the most serious challenge to face the military junta for at least two decades. Burma's generals will be worried. Monks were the key players in the mass protests of 1988, to which the government responded with brutal violence. Tuesday's protest was over a 500 per cent rise in the price of petrol and compressed natural gas – a rise imposed by the government without the generals giving any reason. That is typical of this regime, as is the hardship it is causing ordinary people.

On Sept 19, Buddhist monks in Burma continued the Pattanikuzana – an excommunicative boycott against the regime in at least ten cities in Rangoon, Mandalay and Magwe Divisions and Rakhine State. There will be more protest planned today, Sept 20, in Rangoon and Mandalay. Included is an update for Sept 19. and please find four selected photos of monks' peaceful march for your record.

The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) military regime continued to totally disregard all human and labour rights. Military agents tortured and imprisoned labour leaders, maintained bans on the Federation of Trade Unions – Burma (FTUB) and other labour organisations, and continued the house arrest of opposition leader and Nobel Peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Despite interventions by the ILO, forced labour continued to be used systematically by the regime.

Without peace and national reconciliation, there is no way of eradicating opium in Burma, concluded a forum participated by the UN drug agency, activists and journalists at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand (FCCT) that was held last Wednesday, 12 September. The outcome of the meeting was in contrast to the declaration by Burma's Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control (CCDAC) last June that the military-ruled country would be drug free before 2015. According to UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) figures, the annual opium yield estimate was 1,676 tons and 315 tons for 2006, an 80% drop.

Reports recently received by S.H.A.N. says Wa forces along the Sino-Burma border areas have fanned out along the fringes of their territory following demands by Burma's military rulers to lay down their arms in mid-July. The Wa territory, known as Shan State Special Region # 2 in the official terminology, is bounded by the Nam Ting in the north, China's Yunnan province in the east, the Salween in the west and Kengtung and Mongla (Shan State Special Region # 4) in the south. "The landlocked Wa can be blocked from all sides by the Burma Army except in the east," a source from Kengtung explained. "Their survival therefore depends on keeping their outlet on the Mekong open."

Burmese monks released a second statement on Saturday saying monks should not accept alms from members of the military government and their supporters, starting on Monday, and called for a demonstration of monks nationwide on Tuesday. The announcement came in a second leaflet released by a group calling itself "The Alliance of All Burmese Monks." The first leaflet, released last week, demanded an apology from the junta by Monday for using violence against monks in peaceful demonstrations.

THE enduring image of Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle is of brightly colored poppy fields, opium-smoking hill tribes and heroin labs hidden in the jungle. But the reality is that after years of producing the lion’s share of the world’s opium, the Golden Triangle is now only a bit player in the global heroin trade. “The mystique may remain, and the geography will be celebrated in the future by novelists,” said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. “But from our vantage point, we see a region that is rapidly moving toward an opium-free status.”

Highly repressive, authoritarian military regimes have ruled the country since 1962. Constitutional protection of religious freedom has not existed since 1988, after the armed forces brutally suppressed massive pro-democracy demonstrations and abrogated the Constitution. In 1990 pro-democracy parties won a majority of seats in a free and fair election, but the junta of senior military officers refused to recognize the results and has ruled the country by decree and without a legislature ever since. The authorities generally permitted most adherents of registered religious groups to worship as they choose; however, the Government imposed restrictions on certain religious activities and frequently abused the right to freedom of religion.

Praise from the United Nations for continued drop in poppy cultivation in military-ruled Burma paints a false picture of success, say members of the Shan ethnic community and human rights activists. What cannot be ignored, they add, is how profitable the narcotics trade remains for the local commanders of the junta. Plans to eradicate poppy cultivation will fail until this connection is addressed, says Khuensai Jaiyen, editor of the Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN), a news outlet based in Thailand that covers the Shan, a people who come from Burma’s north-eastern Shan state. "The root cause of the problem is the same: the Burmese army is involved in the drug trade."

Fields of brightly colored opium poppies, Corsican gangsters and the CIA's secret war: The mystique of the Golden Triangle clings to the jungle-covered mountains here like the morning mist. But the prosaic reality is that after years of producing the lion's share of the world's opium, the Golden Triangle is now only a bit player in the business. Three decades ago, the northernmost reaches of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar produced more than 70 percent of all opium sold worldwide, most of it refined into heroin. Today the area averages about 5 percent of the world total, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Today, September 11, 2007, is the 64th Birthday of our Shan State (SNLD) leader Hkun Htun Oo. He is regarded as not only the Shan State leader but the leader admired and respected by democracy activists of all nationalities in the so-called Union of Burma. It is very crucial for the implementation of democracy in the country as he is as important as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as a democratic leader in the movement to bring about democracy to the country. The struggle to bring democracy to the country has been in existence even from the time when the Panlong Agreement or Contract with its constitution began to see its danger just after 1958. That is 10 years after the agreement.

The Asian Human Rights Commission has been informed that courts in Burma's largest city, Rangoon, have stopped operating. As has been widely reported, protests began in Burma after an increase in fuel prices of two to five times on August 15. Since August 20, all cases going to the ordinary courts around the city have been repeatedly adjourned; lawyers and others asking about the reason have been told that it is because of security. Evidently, the same does not apply to special tribunals inside the prisons, as on September 7 a group of six men were given jail terms of 20 to 28 years for organising a discussion about workers' rights last May.

The ENC welcomes the international community's condemnations on the junta leaders' "tyrannical behaviour" and recent violent crackdown in Burma. The ENC would like to congratulate the political courage shown by the world leaders, especially Mrs Laura Bush for her long-standing concern about Burma. Word alone, however, is not enough. Action is needed. The ENC thus calls upon the international community to respond to the situation in Burma more quickly with substantive actions. "We welcome the recent UN Security Council resolution on Darfur, but the situation in Burma is the same as in Darfur, if not worse", said ENC Chairman Saw Ba Thin.

For decades they were known as some of Asia's most ferocious fighters, a tribe of fearless jungle warriors with a penchant for chopping off their rivals' heads. These days, however, the "Wild Wa" of eastern Myanmar's Shan State, a rag-tag militia of former communist and narco-army guerrillas, are going out of their way to avoid a fight. Drafted in by the former Burma's military junta in 1999 to wage a proxy guerrilla war against ethnic Shan rebels on the Thai border, the Wa have instead acquired a taste for the good life in the heart of the "Golden Triangle", Shan sources say.

Political tension in military-ruled Burma has taken an ominous turn, with soldiers clashing this week with sections of the country's respected Buddhist clergy. The confrontation was the latest in an unfolding drama that has featured rare public protests against the hardline regime for implementing massive hikes in fuel prices in mid-August. Monks in the central town of Pakokku on Thursday openly defied the regime by burning four cars belonging to local authorities. "The monks, who are students at a large monastery in Pakokku, are very angry with the military regime," said Than Win Htut, a senior producer for Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB).

The horrors unfolding in Darfur reflect a colossal failure by the international community to prevent yet another genocide. The impending dispatch of the 30,000-strong hybrid United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force is a welcome development. But for the 300,000 murdered and the two million displaced, it is too little, too late. The question is, why did we fail to see what was coming in early 2003 when Darfur was still a manageable, low-intensity guerrilla war? Given the Sudan government's past genocidal war against its southern peoples through the 1980s and '90s, was escalation in Darfur not a foreseeable scenario? Could timely diplomatic and economic pressures have prevented or reduced the scale of atrocities?

The Sydney Burmese democratic movement supports the US president, George. Bush’s condemnation of the Burmese military regime while Chinese president, Hu Jintao is denounced for exploiting Burma. The 21 leaders of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) urged to speak out against oppressive Burmese regime on the recent mass arrest in Burma and to stand united with United States’ policy on Burma. Mr. Bush has raised Burma’s issue on the first press conference of APEC in Sydney on Wednesday. “We really appreciate President Bush for his clear and strong message to the military regime” spokesperson of Australia Burma Council, Dr. Myint Cho said. He says the Australian Government should be embarrassed on its silence on recent crackdowns in Burma.

It's a conflict that has been going on for decades. The military junta of Myanmar continues to wage war on the country's ethnic minorities. The refugee crisis continues to worsen as horrific violence spreads through the jungle. Tha Lei Paw, 32, doesn't respond at first when asked if she would return to her village when peace returns to Myanmar. She just smiles. Is it an awkward smile? Or is she smiling out of fear or shame? She remains silent for a while, and then she says: "I have never seen peace. My life was an unending disaster, a life of torture and hunger. We were just slaves. Do you understand? We are damned."

Soldiers fired warning shots in the air to break up hundreds of Buddhist monks protesting in central Myanmar against a massive hike in fuel prices, media reports and a resident said Thursday. The incident is believed to be the first time that uniformed soldiers have been sent out to quell the anti-government protests that have erupted around this military-ruled nation since August 19. The three-hour protest Wednesday in the central town of Pakokku, about 310 miles (500 kilometres) north of Yangon, was led by at least 300 Buddhist monks who prayed near the town's market, a resident told AFP by telephone. "We heard the monks were just praying for the people," the resident said, adding she was too afraid to attend the protest herself, but that neighbours said soldiers had fired shots in the air and then began beating the crowd.

Since mid August, protests against skyhigh fuel prices have been going on in the rest of Burma but not in Shan State, which does not mean the people here are unfeeling to other people's sufferings, say residents of Tachilek, opposite Thailand's Maesai, yesterday. The fact they say is that vehicles in Shan State, the biggest state in Burma, are long used to expensive combustibles coming from Thailand and China that rising prices of Burmese fuel they hardly have a chance to buy or use effect them very little. "In fact, fuel prices here are still higher than the new prices set by the military government."

The Golden Triangle, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC), may be almost opium free, but areas along the Thai-Burma border appear to have no inkling of it, says a report that recently reached S.H.A.N. More people are leaving their homes inside forbidden zones to go to the mountains and valleys too far for inquisitive eyes to grow poppies, according to the report that covers drug activities in Monghsat district, opposite Thailand's Maehongson, Chiangmai and Chiangrai provinces.

About nine tonnes of heroin are expected to be produced in Burma's Shan state this year, the director of the Office of the Narcotics Control Board's Northern Branch said. Janya Sramatcha said drugs authorities were worried about the surge in heroin production. They feared the drug, which had largely disappeared from Thailand after 1996, would make a comeback. Mr Janya said authorities had received information that Kokang and Wa ethnic groups, who were major heroin producers, had hired Shan and Palong people to grow opium on around 180,000 rai of land in the Shan state last year.

A minimum of one hundred human rights activists and peaceful protesters were arrested by security forces and civilian militias of Than Shwe’s military regime in Burma from August 21st – 25th, 2007. The regime falsely reported that only 64 protestors were arrested, including famed activist Min Ko Naing. The protests began after the Than Shwe’s regime suddenly increased fuel prices by up to 250%, resulting in huge increases in the price of basic commodities. The move puts basic survival out of reach for many people of Burma.

The SDU, on behalf of the people of Shan State, whole heatedly support the recent public protest or resistance of the people in Burma Proper and Arakan State, due to the military regime's irresponsible imposition of price hike of Compressed National Gas (CNG), diesel and petrol ranging from one hundred to five hundred percent. This irresponsible fuel price hike is comparable to the devaluation of currency in 1987, where 80% of private savings were rendered valueless, paving way for the nation-wide uprising in 1988.

In the August 2007 issue: Fuel hikes, protests, and crackdowns; MPs roadmap; National Convention; Ethnic groups under pressure; Floods; Border health threat; Chronology of events; List of Reports and much more...

• The SPDC increases fuel prices by 500% overnight. Within three days, inflation has already impacted transport costs and essential commodities, with the price of rice doubling.

• The sharp fuel price hike sparks nationwide protests that see extraordinary participation by Burmese people from all walks of life throughout the country.

• The SPDC reacts to the peaceful protest by violently cracking down on demonstrators. Over 120 activists are arrested in connection with the demonstrations. In most cases, the regime relies on pro-junta groups to intimidate and attack protesters.

This is an update for you on the latest developments in and outside Burma over the past 3 days. If you want to take an action on the Wed, there is an online petition to the UN Secretary General calling for the UN intervention on the current situation in Burma at: http://www.petitiononline.com/kha8954b/petition.html
In Solidarity, Khin Ohmar - AAPPB  

At night, the gilded Buddha standing imperiously on a hill overlooking Kyaing Tong is one of the few spots of light in the inky blackness of eastern Myanmar's Shan hills. But to the Shan, the former Burma's largest ethnic minority, the floodlit statue is no symbol of religious devotion. It is a monument to their subjugation by the Burmese, leaders of the junta that has controlled Myanmar and its complex patchwork of 100 or more different ethnic groups for the last 45 years.