Solomon
Mizzima News
October 10, 2008
New Delhi - Burma's detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Thursday submitted an appeal to the Burmese government regarding the extension of her house arrest.
The appeal, which called for legal scrutiny of the continued detention of pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was prepared by the Nobel Peace Laureate and her family lawyer Kyi Win. It was submitted to the government by lawyer Hla Myo Myint, aide of Kyi Win, in Burma's new jungle capital Naypyitaw.
"The appeal has been submitted to the government cabinet," Nyan Win the National League for Democracy party spokesperson said.
The NLD party general secretary Aung San Suu Kyi has spent more than 12 of the past 18 years in some form of detention. Her last detention began in May 2003 following a brutal attack by pro-junta mobs on her motorcade during a political trip in Northern Burma's Depayin town.
She completed five consecutive years of detention in May 2008. And according to her personal lawyer and her party members, Burmese law permits a maximum of five consecutive years of detention. It has accused the junta of breaching its own law.
But the junta has said its interpretation of the law allows a maximum of six years and extended her detention period in May.
"They [the government] accepted the appeal and put a signature against the receipt. Aung San Suu Kyi's lawyers are now waiting for a response from the government," Nyan Win said.
"We believe she will be free if there is a fair trial in keeping with the law," said Nyan Win. "We hope they [the government] will abide by the law."
While Aung San Suu Kyi is currently in fine health, Nyan Win said she was visited by her family doctor Tin Myo Win and an eye specialist last week.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Aung San Suu Kyi appeals against her detention
Solomon
Mizzima News
October 10, 2008
New Delhi - Burma's detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Thursday submitted an appeal to the Burmese government regarding the extension of her house arrest.
New Zealand urged to halt free trade with ASEAN
Zarni
Mizzima News
October 10, 2008
Chiang Mai - New Zealand's left-wing political party, The Alliance, on Friday reiterated its call to the government to walk out of its Free Trade Agreement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations which has Burma as a member.
The Alliance said continuing free trade with ASEAN will provide Burma's military rulers, who have long suppressed the rights of workers, a chance to prolong its rule with profits from the trade.
"We don't think we should do free trade with Burma until there is a democratic government that could speak human rights. We believe that this is not good for Burma and for the image of New Zealand as well," said Victor Billot, The Alliance's trade spokesperson.
The renewed call from the Alliance came as the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) released a new documentary film on Burmese migrant workers, which documents the deplorable situation of Burmese workers in their work fields.
Billot said the documentary graphically illustrates the horrifying brutality of the Burmese regime, with which New Zealand is involved in free trade deals.
"The issue is closer to home than many New Zealanders realize," Billot said in a statement released on Friday.
New Zealand's recently announced free trade deals with ASEAN, of which Burma is a member, makes New Zealand complicit with the Burmese regime, Billot said.
He pointed out there have been numerous incidents in New Zealand territorial waters in recent years where Burmese seafarers and fishermen have been mistreated aboard vessels in New Zealand waters, and in some cases have jumped ship.
"This free trade will not help the Burmese workers and there will be no benefits and the number of cross-border labour will still increase," Billot added.
Junta identifies nine brands of contaminated milk
The The & Mungpi
Mizzima News
October 10, 2008
New Delhi - Burma's military government for the first time on Friday announced that it has detected the industrial chemical melamine in nine milk powder brands being sold in Burmese markets and has warned consumers to avoid the identified labels.
A notice in the junta's mouthpiece New Light of Myanmar newspaper on Friday said authorities tested 16 brands of milk power and found the presence of melamine in nine of them.
The contaminated brands are: Star Milk Powder (20 gm), Crown, Happy Baby Toys, Dulac (Dumex) step 1(INFANT FORMULA), Star (450 gm), Mandalay-Raw Milk Powder, Whole Sweet Milk Powder (Two Cows Shi Lin), RAIN BOW Milk Powder, and Enfagrow Milk Powder.
The junta, in the paper, said it has also confiscated 46,025 kilograms of milk powder contaminated with melamine from a company in Burma and destroyed the stockpile.
"[T]hat other eight brands of milk powder in Yangon [Rangoon] and Mandalay markets imported by eight companies are being tested; and that import of other milk powder is temporarily suspended while safety checks are being carried out," the paper said.
The paper further said the Ministry of Health, Myanmar Pharmaceutical Industries, Myanmar Pharmaceutical Factory (Yangon) and the Development Centre for Pharmaceutical Technology under the Ministry of Industry-1 had conducted a test on 16 brands of imported milk powder and found that nine brands were contaminated with melamine.
The junta's announcement of its findings came nearly a month after the Chinese Foreign Ministry acknowledged that Chinese manufactured contaminated milk had been exported to five developing countries, including Burma.
A nursery school owner in Rangoon's Mingalar Taung Nyunt Township, however, said the announcement came too late, as the contaminated milk powders had previously made their way into markets with little awareness on the part of consumers as to the danger of consuming the infected brands.
"We are worried because here people lack awareness, so both children and adults are likely to have consumed tainted milk," said the nursery school owner, who works with children between the ages of two and five.
"But the worst is that even if any children would have fallen sick, it is unlikely even for doctors to blame the tainted milk as there is no proper testing and scanning," he added.
But an official at the Burmese Ministry of Health in the last week of September told Mizzima that they have been monitoring major children hospitals across the country and had so far not found any cases of illness that could be connected to contaminated milk.
Meanwhile, the Myanmar Golden Star (MGS) Company, which produces Star milk powders and was named by the junta in the list of contaminated milk brands, said they are awestruck by the announcement that mentioned two of its products to be contaminated with the chemical melamine while its third, and related product, was not mentioned.
"It is so strange," an official at the MGS Company told Mizzima.
He added that the company's amazement at the announcement was only enhanced due to the fact that it procures its materials from New Zealand, and not from China.
The junta's newspaper on Friday claimed melamine was detected in Star's 20 gm and 450 gm packages, but not in 200 gm packages.
The official at MGS Company further said they have not retracted their products from the market as they have not received any notice to do so from the authorities. But, he said, the company will decide what steps need to be taken during a meeting to be held today.
Similarly, an in-charge at Rangoon's Sanpya market said the market committee has not received any notice to seize the contaminated milk and still sees several brands of infected milk powder, particularly Rainbow, being sold in the market.
"Usually, if the government announces something like this in the newspaper, we are ordered to seize the products so as to stop them from being sold in the market. But this time we have not received any notice and I still see contaminated milk being sold in the market," the in-charged told Mizzima.
The Burmese Ministry of Health, when contacted by Mizzima, refused comment and said the Food and Drug Authority (FDA) is solely dealing with the matter. But an official at the FDA in Rangoon said Dr. Kyaw Lin, Director General, who deals with the issue, is currently out of the station.
Dear Mizzima Friends and Subscribers,
Since Thursday evening Mizzima's websites have attracted several hacking attempts, resulting in the sites being on and off for about 24 hours. However later on Friday, our sites were completely knocked down by a DDoS attack.
With consistent attempts to hack our sites and sophisticated and coordinated DDoS attacks, our hosting company, hostpapa.ca in Canada, notified us that they have suspended our site, fearing that it may harm other sites on the server.
According to Mizzima's technical staff, the hacking attempt is very sophisticated, well-timed and organized. The hacking file uses more than 4,000 lines of code and is adapted from a popular PHP Shell script.
While it is still unclear who is behind the attacks, with the sophisticated nature and the use of coordinated efforts in the attempted hacks, we assume that it can only be the work of an organized group of individuals with a huge amount of resources.
Similar to our case, several Burmese exile media groups including the Irrawaddy, the New Era Journal and Democratic Voice of Burma have all come under similar attacks in recent months. This makes us think the attacks and attempted hacks are orchestrated by our common enemy, who make no attempt to hide their loathing for us and the news and information that we produce on their activities as well as those of the people of Burma.
Our technical staff is working almost 18 hours a day to resolve the problem. But unfortunately we still don't know when we will be able to return to regular service.
Our technical support team members have informed us that several companies have rejected our inquiry to host our sites, as they fear our sites might attract DDoS attacks and attempted hacks which can cause severe problems to the server itself.
However we are not giving up as it is an act to suppress the freedom of expression and independent journalism.
We know that the military junta is determined to prevent the flow of information in and out of Burma and we are not overlooking the possibility of the junta orchestrating these attacks targeting Mizzima and other Burmese exile media groups.
But these attacks will only strengthen our determination in carrying out our mission to bring news and information on Burma and related issues.
Meanwhile, for our readers we will continue to bring you updated and timely news and analysis through our email service in the listserv.
We would sincerely like to express our gratitude to all of our friends who are now helping us in trying to solve the problem. We also thank all our readers for your patience and continued support.
We would also like to ask our readers for any kind support, technical advice or expertise that you can lend us. We are now looking into the possibilities of reconstructing our site and changing the web hosting. We would, therefore, appreciate any kind of help or support in our work and would like to invite any interested donors to contribute.
Thank you,
Soe Myint
Mizzima News Agency
editor@mizzima.com
mizzima@mizzima.com
Mizzima.news@gmail.com
Hack attempts suspend Mizzima websites
By Mungpi
Friday, 10 October 2008 19:55
New Delhi - The websites of Mizzima News, an independent Burmese multi-media group based in New Delhi, have been crippled since Thursday evening because of suspension by its hosting server due to the site attracting several hacking attempts.
Mizzima' Canada-based hosting company, Hostpapa.ca, said it has suspended the sites – mizzima.com, mizimaburmese.com, mizzima.tv, and mizzimaphoto.com – after the sites attracted several hacking attempts and as it fears such attacks might also harm other sites on the server.According to Mizzima's technical staff, the hacking attempt is very sophisticated, well-timed and organized. The hacking file used has more than 4,000 lines of code and is adapted from a popular PHP Shell script.
"Unfortunately to protect the servers and the other customers on your server we had to suspend your account," Hostpapa's technical support staff relayed in its notice to Mizzima. While it is still difficult to technically trace who is behind the hacking attempts, Mizzima's technical staff said the main attempt is found to have originated from Russia with cooperation from other hackers in Germany, France and India.
"This sort of well-organized attacking can't be done by individuals but must instead be the disguised actions of an institution, most probably in this case the military regime could be behind the scene," Sein Win, Mizzima's Managing Editor said.
Burma's military junta, which has several of its technocrats training in several IT-related fields in Russia and other parts of the world, has imposed a ban on Mizzima's websites inside the country.
Though web users could still access the Mizzima sites by bypassing the government's Internet filtering systems through the help of proxy servers and browsing, the junta has made it an offense to surf the site and users who do could find themselves paying a heavy penalty if caught.
The junta has constantly blamed exile media groups as well as foreign broadcasting radio stations for producing information that reveals human rights violations inside Burma as well as the continued mismanagement of the country.In its campaign against foreign broadcasting stations after the September 2007 protests, the junta, in its mouthpiece New Light of Myanmar, carried slogans that stated: "Skyful of liars attempting to destroy nation, BBC lying, VOA deceiving, RFA setting up hostilities. Beware don't be bought by those ill-wishers," referring to the services of the UK's British Broadcasting Corporation, US's Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.
This is the second instance in which Mizzima's sites have been the target of hackers. In July, Mizzima websites were crippled due to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). Mizzima, however, was not alone in suffering such attacks.
Also in July, the website of the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) suffered a similar DDoS attack, while in September DVB along with two other websites of exile Burmese media groups – the Chiang Mai-based Irrawaddy and Bangkok-based New Era Journal – came under the crosshairs of a DDoS attack, causing inaccessibility to their sites on September 24th, two days before the crack-down on last September's protests.
"Mizzima is serving the people. We should all work together to sue or to crack-down against these criminals," Sein Win said.
Mizzima News Agency, run by Burmese journalists, is an independent Burmese multi-media group focusing on Burma and Burma-related news and issues, and maintains four different websites - mizzima.com, mizzimaburmese.com, mizzima.tv and mizzimaphoto.com.
Besides offering updated daily news both in English and Burmese, Mizzima also podcasts video stories on its mizzima.tv site, stories which are frequently picked up by other news organizations.
Mizzima, as a member of the international media watchdog International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX), and as partner of the regional media watchdog Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA), has been producing media alerts on the violations of freedom of expression and press in Burma for over a decade.
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