Strong earthquake strikes northern Myanmar; bridge, gold mine collapse, about 12 feared dead

By Associated Press, Published: November 10 | Updated: Sunday, November 11, 5:44 AM Source：http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/magnitude-66-earthquake-strikes-northern-myanmar-no-injuries-immediately-reported/2012/11/10/a99fb4d6-2ba3-11e2-aaa5-ac786110c486_story.html YANGON, Myanmar — A strong earthquake of magnitude-6.8 struck northern Myanmar on Sunday, collapsing a bridge and a gold mine, damaging several old Buddhist pagodas and leaving as many as 12 people feared dead.

A slow release of official information left the actual extent of the damage unclear after Sunday morning’s strong quake. Myanmar has a poor official disaster response system, despite having lost upwards of 140,000 people to a devastating cyclone in 2008. Myanmar’s second-biggest city of Mandalay reported no casualties or major damage as the nearest major population center to the main quake Mandalay lies about 117 kilometers (72 miles) south of the quake’s epicenter near the town of Shwebo. The U.S. Geological Society reported a 5.8-magnitude aftershock later Sunday, but there were no initial reports of new damage or casualties. Smaller towns closer to the main quake’s epicenter were worse-hit. A report late Sunday on state television MRTV said 100 homes, some government buildings and a primary school were damaged in the Thabeikyin, a town known for gold mining not far from the epicenter. It put the latest casualty toll from the quake at four dead, 53 injured and four missing, a death toll lower than independently compiled tallies of around a dozen. An official from Myanmar’s Meteorological Department said the magnitude-6.8 quake struck at 7:42 a.m. local time. The area surrounding the epicenter is underdeveloped, and casualty reports were coming in piecemeal, mostly from local media. The region is a center for mining of minerals and gemstones, and several mines were reported to have collapsed. The biggest single death toll was reported by a local administrative officer in Sintku township — on the Irrawaddy River near the quake’s epicenter — who told The Associated Press that six people had died there and another 11 were injured. He said some of the dead were miners who were killed when a gold mine collapsed. He spoke on condition of anonymity because local officials are normally not allowed to release information to the media. Rumors circulated in Yangon of other mine collapses trapping workers, but none of the reports could be confirmed. According to news reports, several people died when a bridge under construction across the Irrawaddy River collapsed east of Shwebo. The bridge linked the town of Sintku, 65 kilometers (40 miles) north of Mandalay on the east bank of the Irrawaddy, with Kyaukmyaung on the west bank. The website of Weekly Eleven magazine said four people were killed and 25 injured when the bridge, which was 80 percent finished, fell. The local government announced a toll of two dead and 16 injured. All of the victims appeared to be workers. However, a Shwebo police officer, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said just one person was confirmed dead from the bridge’s collapse, while five were still unaccounted for.

US President Barack Obama to visit Burma

8 November 2012 BBC News Fresh from his election win, Barack Obama will this month become the first US president to visit Burma, the White House says.

He will meet President Thein Sein and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. It is part of a three-leg tour from 17 to 20 November that will also take in Thailand and Cambodia. The government of Burma has begun implementing economic, political and other reforms, a process the Obama administration sought to encourage. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was previously the most senior US official to go to Burma when she visited in December 2011. 'Democratic transition' Mr Obama's Burma stop is part of a trip built around the summit of the Association of South East Asian Nations in Cambodia, which leaders from China, Japan and Russia will also attend. In a statement, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Mr Obama intended to "speak to civil society to encourage Burma's ongoing democratic transition". The BBC's David Bamford says the trip - Mr Obama's first foreign initiative since his re-election this week - reflects the importance that the US has placed on normalising relations with Burma. This process has moved forward relatively swiftly, our correspondent adds, and it represents an opportunity for the US to have a greater stake in the region and so at least partly counter the dominant influence of China. Reforms have been taking place in Burma since elections in November 2010 saw military rule replaced with a military-backed nominally civilian government. Since then many political prisoners have been freed and censorship relaxed. The party of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was released from years of house arrest after the elections, has rejoined the political process after boycotting the 2010 polls. It now has a small presence in parliament after a landslide win in by-elections in April. In response, the US has appointed a full ambassador to Burma and suspended sanctions. It is also set to ease its import ban on goods from Burma, a key part of remaining US sanctions. Human rights groups are likely to criticise Mr Obama's visit as premature, given that the ruling government has failed to prevent outbreaks of communal violence in the west of the country. Clashes between Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine state have left more than 100,000 people - mostly members of the stateless Muslim Rohingya minority - displaced.

Aung San Suu Kyi begins U.S. tour

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/18/world/suu-kyi-us-visit/index.html

Aung San Suu Kyi begins U.S. tour
(CNN) -- Myanmar democracy activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi kicked off her 17-day tour of the United States on Tuesday by meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
.........

"We have this plan throughout the country that when refugees come, we try and find sponsors, and I don't know yet about Fort Wayne," Clinton told Suu Kyi on Tuesday.

"I'm looking forward to visiting Fort Wayne," Suu Kyi replied. "There's all sorts of interesting things happening in Fort Wayne."

As part of Suu Kyi's U.S. tour, she will visit the Indiana city, home to one the United States' largest populations of Burmese expatriates. Since the early 1990s, about 5,000 Burmese have carved out a life there.

De'ang/Palaung Tribe Outreach

In April 2002, Hope Student Center, an outreach work to the de’ang, was established. It is located in Mei Hang village. This village is two miles away from Lashio (Shan State) with an estimated number of 120 de’ang families.

The Center has a daily schedule session for prayers and Bible reading. The children were taught about the Bible and the Burmese language. Through the Bible teachings, the children have the opportunity to know God and understand about the Christian faith. The children are required to join in all the activities at the Center. When the ministry first started, the Center took in 20 Buddhist de’ang children and some children had became Christians.

This year, there are 60 children at the Center. Among them, 50 children are Christians. Ten unbelieving children belonged to the de’ang and Han people group. The religion of the de’ang is Buddhism whereas the Han are ancestral worshippers. Thirty children have dedicated their whole life to serve God.


The illiteracy rate of the de’ang is high as there is no school in their remote villages. In mid 2011, the Sponsor-A-Child ministry started to set up school in three de’ang villages, Kai Dui, Bang Kang and Na Hong.

Na Hong School will start the semester in September 2012. The de’ang students in Kai Dui (38 students) and Bang Kang (50 students) School are from Buddhist family background. Besides providing academic education, the schools organize evangelistic outreach activities to lead the children to believe in Jesus. Leading the children to Jesus is a bridge to win the adults to God.

A Student Testimony of Experiencing God’s Grace

I am Chen Zhi Wen. I am a de’ang and my native name is “Ai Tong”. My father is still around but my mother passed away when I was a very young and naïve boy.

Few years after the demise of my mother, my father learnt of Mei Hang Student Center through a friend. At the age of eight, my father sends me to Mei Hang Student Center. At that time, I was a very innocent child and did not study in school before. The Center arranged for my kindergarten studies at a school. Since then, I started to study year after year and now in grade five.

Since the day I stepped into the Center, I have every opportunity to hear of the gospel. Indeed, it is God’s grace. Now, it has been six years of stay at the Center. I go to Sunday school with my schoolmates and memorized Bible verses. But then at that time, I could not have a full understanding of the Bible. After three years in the Sunday school, I started to realize that Jesus loves me. Jesus is the redeemer of all mankind in the world. I accepted Jesus as my Saviour with a sincere heart. In June 2011, at age of 13, I received water baptism. I have decided to follow Jesus wholeheartedly. Since then, my life was filled with peace and joy. Glory to God!

Since I came to the Center, my father did not visit me and it is already five years. When I grow up and completed my studies, I wish to share the gospel to my father, my brothers and close friends. I do not know where my home village and to commit this matter to God.


Prayer Items

- Mei Hang Student Center and the SAC schools as a good rapport and platform for
the gospel outreach.

- The life of the coworkers (student center) and school teachers as a strong witness of the
love and grace of the Almighty God. Good health, wisdom and strength to serve.

- The de’ang students are weak intellectually. Need God’s wisdom and strength to
cope and learn well in their studies. Hearts to be receptive to make the decision to
receive salvation.

- The thirty children that dedicated their whole life to serve God. Faithfulness and
commitment for this decision made to God.

- God’s guidance that Chen Zhi Wen (student at Center) will reconcile with his father and
brothers.

Note: Article from Partners Internationals (CNEC Myanmar) 2012 Report. Pictures are taken when I was there in 2008.

Bay Area Burmese Churches and Fellowships Funfair and Concert

Ethnic Violence in Rakhine State: Analysis and Updates

Storify by LinkAsia
After two weeks of intense fighting that left at least 50 dead and displaced over 30,000 people in Myanmar's Rakhine state, an uneasy calm has descended on the region. This Storify looks at the root causes of the violence, and updates the unfolding situation on the ground.

UPDATE 6.25:
An uneasy peace has descended on Myanmar's Rakhine state, yet some of the region's biggest problems are just beginning. Authorities have to deal with 90,000 displaced citizens, simmering tensions, and the smoldering ruins of Sittwe's neighborhoods.

As Violence Dies Down in Rakhine, Real Struggles Begin

http://storify.com/LinkAsiaNews/decades-of-tension-erupt-in-rakhine-ethnic-violenc/elements/4fe8e2b0156367cc2f25c038

East Asia 2012 - A Conversation with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi, Beyond Myanmar’s Borders

Links View From Asia |By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW| May 30, 2012, 1:12 am

The last time Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar’s democracy movement, traveled internationally, it was 1988 and the Berlin Wall was still standing. That year, she flew back to Myanmar from Britain to care for her ailing mother.
Today, the lawmaker and leader of Myanmar’s opposition is in Thailand on a historic – and politically sensitive – trip, the first outside her country in nearly a quarter of a century. As The Irrawaddy, a Thailand-based news magazine set up by exiles from Myanmar, put it, “Only now does Aung San Suu Kyi really seem to feel free.”
To get a sense of the historic nature of this trip (and just how long it’s been since the Nobel Peace laureate was last about in the world), consider these facts, from a story by The Associated Press: In 1988, Ronald Reagan was still president of the United States, Libyan terrorists blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and Prozac was introduced to the market.
In June, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi will visit Switzerland, Britain and Ireland, where she is due to appear on stage at a concert by Bono, who has been an outspoken supporter. She will also travel to Oslo for her Nobel, awarded in 1991 but never received by her.
Most significantly, her presence in Thailand signals that the woman who cared so passionately about bringing democracy to Myanmar that she endured many years of house arrest, even missing the funeral of her husband in Britain, is confident that the government of President Thein Sein is serious about the democratic reforms it began last year. Until now, though she could probably have traveled at times, she stayed behind, fearful that the generals who ran Myanmar wouldn’t let her back in.
The trip “signifies a strong vote of confidence on Suu Kyi’s part in the seriousness of the reforms underway in the country,” Suzanne DiMaggio, the Asia Society’s vice president of global policy programs, told The Huffington Post. She wouldn’t take the risk of leaving “if she wasn’t absolutely certain she would be allowed to return,” Ms. DiMaggio said. ........

Love4Burma (2011)： A Letter from a servant's little dream

Thanks for supporting the Love4Burma non-profit organization with your love and prayers.

This year (2011) the political atmosphere in Myanmar has changed a lot. We hope that the openness of the new power can bring a new future for the people of Burma. Hillary Clinton’s visit on 12/1/2011 marks a new era of US-Burma relationship.

Two images kept popping up when I thought of Burma. One of the images is the rice bowl of the student. It was 1998 my first visit to Lashio. We were conducting a Winter Camp with students of Sheng-Guang Chinese school. I had a chance to eat with around 10 of them in a student table setting. I heard that day is the day the short term mission team donated some money for their dinner so they can eat well. That day we were having a happy time with them because they are very excited to have some meat in their rice bowl. I am not a picky person in eating. I ate with a taxi driver at the road side of MaeMiao without any problem. That day’s meal is delicious for me even though it is very simple. Two days after that, one night I happened to walk by the student’s dining area. I saw they were eating. I glimpsed to see into a boy’s rice bowl. It was just rice with a little greasy oil on top. I realized that is their normal life.

The second image is the hopeless eyes in a student boy. That was a night when we were about to leave. I talked to a boy. He is very shy and not any confidence in him. I asked him what he would like in the future. He said Taiwan is their dreams, but they need to work very hard and pass some examinations. If not, if lucky, they can go digging in the jade mines for their life. No excitement for their futures.

Later, I happened to know some Palaung. I realized poor is a relativity. They are even poorer than those Chinese students. The worst part is that they had been looked down for centuries. The poor looked down the poor in a survival world. They lived in the mountain and perceived as a lazy people. They all know that there are these poor people. Even worse, no gospel of Salvation had ever reached them. Not only in Burma, in Yunnan of China as well.

I don’t know how Love4Burma can do. But, this is a little dream hoping that Love can be delivered without prejudice. God love can be known everywhere and glory to God alone!

May God bless you all!

Wen-jen Chen

US to ease sactions against Burma

US to ease sanctions against Burma

The United States has announced it will further ease sanctions against Burma. (BBC News)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said some travel and financial restrictions would be relaxed, with Burmese leaders allowed to visit the US.
European Union leaders had said earlier on Wednesday that they would consider taking similar steps.
The news follows by-elections in Burma on Sunday in which pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party secured a landslide win.
The National League for Democracy (NLD) took 43 out of 45 seats up for grabs in the polls, which were generally deemed to be free and fair.
Mrs Clinton, who paid a visit to Burma last year, praised President Thein Sein's "leadership and courage".
"We fully recognise and embrace the progress that has taken place and we will continue our policy of engagement," she said.
Under the moves, the US will name an ambassador to Burma and establish an office for its Agency for International Development in the country.
The US would also begin "targeted easing" of the ban on US financial services and investment in Burma, she said without giving further details.

Continue reading the main story

Administration officials said agriculture, tourism, telecommunications and banking would be among the economic sectors to be considered for the relaxation of sanctions.

Mrs Clinton said that sanctions would remain in place "on individuals and institutions that remain on the wrong side of these historic reform efforts".
The US eased some sanctions on Burma in February.

The recent by-elections are being hailed as an important step in Burma's transition from decades of authoritarian military rule towards a more open, democratic and representative system. But it is a transition fraught with difficulties.
Aung San Suu Kyi will feel that the risk she took in deciding to participate in the elections has been vindicated by the scale of her party's success.
But the real test will be to see how effective she is able to be as an agent for change within parliament.

Rachel Harvey BBC South East Asia Correspondent

Kachin Refugee along the China-Burma Border Worsens

The video about Kachin refugees can be seen here:

http://youtu.be/uD3vHpHyokc

The latest report from China is here:

http://www.chinaaid.org/2012/02/refugee-crisis-along-china-burma-border.html?spref=fb

Refugee Crisis along the China-Burma Border Worsens 
(Dehong, Yunnan―Feb. 17, 2012) In recent days, as the news of the Burmese refugee crisis has spread rapidly over the Internet, people are once again paying attention to the half-year conflict between Burmese government troops and Kachin rebel forces. The government troops’ current moves to wipe out ethnic Kachin rebels in the border regions have caused tens of thousands of refugees to swarm into China fleeing the fighting.

Attempts to negotiate a ceasefire between the Burmese government and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in the Kachin minority areas in the border region with China have time and again been interrupted by the outbreak of fighting. Since June 2011, the two sides have been trading fire without pause and the small skirmishes have escalated, resulting in the displacement of what the United Nations estimates to be some 60,000 refugees who have been forced to leave their homes and head north. Already, more than 25,000 of them have poured into China’s Dehong prefecture in the province of Yunnan.

According to aid workers from the local churches, the intensity of the armed clashes appears to have eased for now, but all the refugee camps lack drinking water and some refugees have come down with diarrhea, malaria and upper respiratory tract infection. The Chinese government not only is refusing to provide humanitarian aid, but is also trying to prevent refugees from crossing the border into China.
 

An Ethnic War Is Rekindled in Myanmar

In Myanmar, at least 10,000 displaced people live in camps in areas controlled by the government that often lack adequate food, health care and education facilities.

By EDWARD WONG

Published: January 19, 2012 

MAIJA YANG, Myanmar — Even as the Burmese government initiates political reforms in much of the country, it has intensified an ethnic civil war here in the resource-rich hills of northern Myanmar, a conflict that at once threatens its warming trend with the United States and could alienate Chinese officials concerned about stability on the border.
This month hundreds of mortar rounds fired by the Burmese military landed within miles of this town near the mountainous Chinese border. International human rights groups and soldiers and officials of the Kachin ethnic group say that Burmese soldiers have burned and looted homes, planted mines, forcibly recruited villagers as porters and guides, and raped, tortured and executed civilians. Several thousand villagers have fled to China. Tens of thousands more who have been displaced could follow if the Burmese Army continues its offensive, local relief workers say.
Lazum Bulu will not be going farther. Exhausted by the flight from her village, she died on Jan. 10 in a bare concrete room in a camp here for the displaced. People said she was 107. Her body lay on blankets on the floor. “I regret that my mother can’t be buried with my father,” said her daughter, Hkang Je Mayun. “The Burmese Army was coming, and we didn’t want to live in the village anymore. We were afraid they would kill all the Kachin people.”
The fighting has raised questions about the limits of the reform agenda pushed by President Thein Sein, Myanmar’s first civilian president in nearly 50 years, who has led the opening to the West. Some analysts in Myanmar say Mr. Thein Sein has been unable or unwilling to control the generals pressing the war.
Myanmar, formerly Burma, is riddled with ethnic civil conflicts, but this is the largest, with the greatest at stake. Right on the Chinese border, Kachin State is rich in jade, gold and timber, and has rivers that are being exploited by Chinese hydropower projects. Part of the state has long been controlled by the Kachin Independence Army and its political wing, which levies taxes on all commerce. The army allowed a reporter and a photographer recently to visit an area rarely seen by Western reporters for one week.
Both the United States and China would like to see the war resolved: the Chinese to ensure stability on the border and access to resources and important power projects; the United States to forestall the kinds of abuses by the Burmese military that present one of the biggest obstacles as President Obama considers lifting economic sanctions. At the same time, some Chinese officials and executives might welcome Burmese military control of the resource-rich areas, preferring to cut deals with the Burmese rather than the Kachin, foreign analysts say.
Some Kachin commanders say one factor that rekindled the war last June after a 17-year cease-fire may have been a desire by the Burmese military to widen its control of the areas with Chinese energy projects.
Such projects are a source of tension. After protests last year by Kachin civilians, Mr. Thein Sein suspended the planned Myitsone Dam, which was being built by a Chinese company in a part of the state controlled by the Burmese. That angered Chinese officials and executives, some of whom suspect Mr. Thein Sein of trying to wean Myanmar off its overreliance on China and to encourage investment from the West.
..........
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/world/asia/ethnic-war-with-kachin-intensifies-in-myanmar-jeopardizing-united-states-ties.html

U.S. to restore full diplomatic ties with Burma

(AP)  WASHINGTON - The United States is restoring full diplomatic relations with Burma, a landmark in the Obama administration's drive to reward democratic reforms by a government the U.S. previously treated as a pariah.
The decision announced Friday to exchange ambassadors with Burma for the first time in two decades followed the release of hundreds of political prisoners, but Washington probably will be looking for fair conduct in coming elections and an end to ethnic violence before it lifts sanctions.
The U.S. also wants Burma to open up to U.N. nuclear inspectors and sever illicit military ties with North Korea because of concerns that Pyongyang has sold Burma defense hardware, including missiles, in defiance of international sanctions.
Burma President Thein Sein pardoned 651 detainees on Friday, among them leaders of brutally repressed democratic uprisings, heads of ethnic minority groups, journalists and even a former prime minister who had been blamed himself for incarcerating activists.
President Barack Obama, in a statement, described the pardons as "a substantial step forward for democratic reform."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57359121/u.s-to-restore-full-diplomatic-ties-with-burma/