Word: burma
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...through force and through a strategy of persuading militants, often through their families, to surrender, re-enter "the mainstream" and accept financial assistance. Peace talks with ULFA broke down in 2006, and two battalions of the group have refused to surrender, setting up bases in neighboring Bangladesh and in Burma, intelligence officials say. P.K. Mishra, inspector general of the Border Security Force for the Assam & Meghalaya frontier, who spoke to TIME from his headquarters in the city, says he thinks the blasts are the work of the two ULFA battalions which have not surrendered. "They wanted to show their strength...
According to Myanmar Ahlin, a state-run newspaper, Burma's military government released Win Tin and 9,001 other prisoners this week so they could participate in national elections planned for 2010. The polls will be part of the regime's seven-point "Roadmap to Democracy." Burma, also known as Myanmar, has been ruled by a series of repressive military regimes since 1962. Classified by the United Nations as among the world?s least developed countries, the agrarian nation in southeast Asia is still recovered from May's Cyclone Nargis, which killed an estimated 80,000 people and devastated...
...Many in Burma's exile community rejected the regime's explanation for the release of Win Tin and a half dozen other political prisoners. "This is a publicity stunt, and the international community should not fall for it," said Soe Aung of the National Coalition of the Union of Burma, an alliance of exile groups. "If they were serious, they would release all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi." He said the move was intended to relieve international pressure - and more importantly domestic discontent - over the junta's handling of the cyclone relief effort in which outside assistance...
...charge against him involved an unproven telephone conversation with the father of an individual who had been declared a fugitive from the law. Telephone conversations are, in any case, inadmissible as evidence under Burmese law, but the law offers scant protection for those who challenge military rule in Burma." She also noted that Win Tin was kept without sleep and interrogated non-stop for his first three days in prison. "A man of courage and integrity, Win Tin would not be intimidated into making false confessions," she wrote...
...photos of Burma's devastation after Cyclone Nargis here...