Sources closed to KIO said, Lt-Gen N’ban La has scheduled to meet with high ranking U.S government officials, including the U.S Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Mr. Kurt Campbell as well as United Nations officials.
+++more++ The Kachin Post
- စက္တင္ဘာ (၁) ရက္ေန႔ သတ္မွတ္ရက္ေၾကာင့္ ေတာင္ပိုင္း ၀ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ စစ္ေရးလႈပ္ရွား click
- ကခ်င္ႏွင့္ ၀ နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္ အေျပာင္းခံမွာမဟုတ္ click
- နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္ဖြဲ႔ေရး KIO အၿပီးသတ္ ျငင္းဆို click
- ေကအိုင္အိုက ပင္လံုမူအတုိင္း လက္နက္စြန္႔ေရး ရာဇသံကို တုန္႔ျပန္ click
- ေကအိုင္အို လက္နက္မခ်ဘဲ ႏွစ္ဘက္ေဆြးေႏြးေျဖရွင္းရန္ လိုလား click
- KSPP ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား တသီးပုဂၢလလို ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ၀င္မည္ click
The world's largest tiger reserve, in the wilds of northern Burma, is being rapidly eroded as a businessman with links to the junta replaces trees with cash crops, according to a report published yesterday.
The Hukaung Valley Tiger Reserve in Kachin State was created in 2001 with the support of the Wildlife Conservation Society. When it was expanded in 2004, the society hailed it as "the biggest tiger reserve in the world".
"In the northernmost stretches of Myanmar [Burma]," the society's latest newsletter reported earlier this month, "a valley exists where tigers can just be tigers. Country officials have declared the entire Hukaung Valley a protected tiger area. With 8,452 square miles in which to roam, hunt and hopefully breed, the region's remaining tigers have a chance too few of their kind currently enjoy".
But according to a report by the Kachin Development Networking Group, there has been wholesale destruction of large areas of forest for mono-crop development. Yuzana, a company owned by U Htay Myint, a wealthy businessman close to Burma's ruling generals, has taken over 200,000 acres in the south of the reserve. The Yuzana Integrated Agricultural Project began in 2007 with the junta's blessing.
The company is building a "green zone" enclave, within the project area, containing workers' barracks, a factory and a supermarket and surrounded by two metre-high concrete wall. Clashes have broken out between the company and villagers within the project area, and more than 160 families have been forced to move, the report said. It said with the villagers out of the way, the forest greenery was killed off with herbicide. Then Yuzana's bulldozers and excavators dug out and hauled away the debris, leaving large swathes of flattened and denuded land.
Only the tiger reserve's signposts remained in the cleared areas. "When there are many forests, it is a hot-spot for biodiversity," reads one of the signs. Another sign said: "Mountains and forests are deep; the animals have a good home and food."
The machines then carved deep irrigation canals between the eviscerated blocks of land, allegedly bisecting all but one of the tiger corridors running through the park which are meant to allow tigers and other wild animals to roam and hunt. The threat to the reserve has not gone unnoticed.
In 2007 BirdLife International, a global partnership of conservation organisations, reported on Yuzana's incursions. In March 2008 the organisation said that a strip of forest up to 1.5mile-wide that ran for 50 miles had been almost completely felled and re-planted with sugar cane and jatropha biofuel plantations. The authors of the new report say that "as of February 2010 [we] were unable to see any remaining forests in animal corridor areas [within the agricultural zone]. Only the signboards of the forest department and the Wildlife Conservation Society were left standing."
Ah Nan, spokesperson for KDNG, said: "The destruction in Hukaung makes a mockery of the tiger reserve. Yuzana is doing whatever it likes with the aid of the generals and the silence of the conservationists."
In plans to be submitted to next month's Global Tiger Summit in St Petersburg, Burma's military regime boasts that it will double the country's tiger population by 2022. But last October WCS said that there were fewer than 100 tigers left in the Hukaung Valley Tiger Reserve, a decline from the previous figure of 150.
WCS was not available for comment.
More++++http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/plantation-linked-to-junta-is-destroying-burmese-tiger-reserve-2062205.html
Photo: Ju Hpun Hta Mahkawng Nga Ai WP Nu Num Langai
mORE+++nAMKAWn////KUALA LUMPUR: The demolition of the century-old Pudu Prison has generated mixed reactions from the public with some saying that it should preserved and others commenting that it should make way for new development.
A photographer, Khiril, 38, said it would be a waste to remove a historical building which was more than 100 years old.
“I am doing a documentary on Malaysia’s heritage and it saddens me to see the destruction of a part of the country’s history,” he said.
A technician, Muhamad, 31, who took the day off just to visit the site before it was torn down last night said: “I think the Government should take initiatives to protect this historical building and not demolish it.”
He added that the prison was one of the country’s oldest buildings.
A former warden of the prison, Hamdan, 72, said he was sad that the prison would be demolished.
“I have many memories while serving in the prison for 35 years, but we should make way for better development,” he said.
English prat na htawng ding sa rai nga ai.kualalumpur mare kaba a kanag kaw re.
ngai hugawng nan rawng laiwa sai shara mung re.Moina htawng ding sa hpe htawng hku nna gaw nlang sai.Rai tim Kualalumpur mare hkan na rim la ai ni hpe 14ya ram hkyuk hku nna sharen da ngut sai hpang camp hte htawng de bai shalai dat dat re lam re.Malaysia du Tsinyam ni lawlaw wa rim hkrum nna ndai pudu htawng dingsa kaw shawng bang da hkrum ai re.ya maigan no 3 mungdan hkan du hkawm nga sai an hte Jinghpaw wun pawng Tsin yam ni lawlaw mung ndai pudu jail kaw e sharen da hkrum lai wa yu sai ni re.