Dear Ta-ang brother and sister, Currently the Burmese army has been increasing its troops inside Palaung areas and northern Shan State and armed battles have broken out in Ta-ang areas almost everyday. After the Burma Army increased and reinforced it troops in northern Shan State, they are regularly patrolling inside areas, committing numerous human rights abuses including rape, killings, torturing, portering, forced labor and extortion. The Burmese army is expanding its presence in the area not only to provide security for the Chinese mega development projects and pipelines that will take oil and gas from Burma to China, but also systematically to control across over Palaung areas. This is unacceptable. Now, both Burmese and Shan army from the south are increasing their troops in Palaung areas and both army are forcing young Palaung to join their army while simultaneously collecting taxes and committing widespread human rights abuses against innocent Palaung people. Therefore, due to the demand of the Palaung people, we the PSLF/TNLA need to carefully and systematically plan actions to overcome the challenges on the front and be able to overcome difficulties that we are facing in order to protect our people. However, whatever we might be facing, we have to try to overcome these with sacrifices and continue our struggle until we achieve our political goals. The PSLF has been trying to protect its people not only through political activities, but also through armed activities in order to gain back our political rights that we have lost for over 50 years, but we still have a long way to go. We will not hurriedly meet the Burmese government’s peace team like other ethnic armed groups did; because we want to make sure Thein Sein’s government will respect or pay importance to us like they did to some major ethnic armed groups. We will try to walk well because we are building our strength position to political negotiate with the Burmese government. I strongly believed that we cannot reach our full political recognition if the Palaung people do not have their own army like other ethnic armed groups. Also an army is essential for us as otherwise the Burmese government will not recognize the Palaung’s political rights. That is why we trying our best to take this opportunity to build up Palaung armed forces through support from outside. Thein Sein government often announces that most ethnic armed groups have already reached cease-fire agreements with the government except the KIO/KIA has not signed any cease-fire agreement. However, there is also PSLF/TNLA have not signed a cease-fire agreement. It means that as long as Thein Sein’s government ignores the PSLF/TNLA, there will be no genuine peace and national reconciliation in Burma and peace will not last long. Therefore, I would like to urge the Ta-ang people to fully cooperate and support the PSLF/TNLA national liberation movement until we have met our political goals.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 02:37:12 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015