ျမန္မာအစိုးရသစ္အေပၚ အေမရိကန္နဲ႔ ကုလသမဂၢ တုံ႔ျပန္
ဗုဒၶဟူး, 30 မတ္ 2011
By ဦးသားၫြန္႔ဦး
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ အရပ္ဘက္ အစိုးရသစ္ ဖဲြ႕လိုက္ၿပီ ဆိုေပမဲ့ ယူနီေဖာင္းခၽြတ္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေဟာင္းေတြက ဆက္ၿပီး အေရးႀကီးတဲ့ ေနရာေတြ ယူထားတာမို႔ ႀကီးႀကီးမားမား အေျပာင္းအလဲ မဟုတ္ဘူးလို႔ အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စုက ယူဆထားပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ဒီေျပာင္းလဲမႈဟာ အမ်ားလက္ခံႏိုင္တဲ့ အေျပာင္းအလဲေတြအတြက္ အစျပဳခ်က္တရပ္ ျဖစ္လာဖို႔ေတာ့ ကုလသမဂၢက တိုက္တြန္းပါတယ္။ အျပည့္အစုံကုိ ကိုသားၫြန္႔ဦးက တင္ျပေပးထားပါတယ္။
ႏိုင္ငံအာဏာကို ႏွစ္အေတာ္ၾကာ ထိန္းထားခဲ့တဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ ေအးခ်မ္းသာယာေရးနဲ႔ ဖံြ႕ၿဖိဳးေရး ေကာင္စီကေန အခု အရပ္ဘက္ အစိုးရသစ္ကို မေန႔က တရား၀င္ အာဏာလဲႊေျပာင္းလိုက္ၿပီ ဆိုေပမဲ့ အစိုးရသစ္ရဲ႕ အဓိက ေနရာေတြ၊ အေရးႀကီးတဲ့ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ေတြအတြက္ စစ္အုပ္စုရဲ႕ ၾသဇာအာဏာ ဆက္ၿပီး သက္ေရာက္ေနတုန္းပဲလို႔ အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စုက ယူဆပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံေရး ဖိႏွိပ္မႈေတြ ဆက္ရိွေနတာေၾကာင့္ စစ္မွန္တဲ့ အေျပာင္းအလဲေတြ လုပ္ဖို႔လိုမယ္လို႔ အေမရိကန္ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဌာန ေျပာခြင့္ရသူ မာ့ခ္ တုိနာ (Mark Toner) က ေျပာပါတယ္။
“အေျခခံအားျဖင့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြရဲ႕ အားနည္းခ်က္ေတြေၾကာင့္ အေရးပါတဲ့ စစ္ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေတြဟာ အခု အစိုးရ အဖဲြ႕အတြင္း ဆက္ၿပီး ၾသဇာလႊမ္းထားႏိုင္သလို အေရးႀကီးတဲ့ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ေတြမွာ ပါ၀င္ေဆာင္ရြက္ႏုိင္ပါတယ္။ ဒီဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးေတြဟာ စစ္ယူနီေဖာင္းခြ်တ္ၿပီး အရပ္၀တ္ ေျပာင္းထားတာပါ။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္း ႏိုင္ငံေရး ဖိႏွိပ္မႈေတြ ဆက္ရိွေနတဲ့ အေပၚမွာ အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု အေနနဲ႔ စိုးရိမ္ေနတုန္းပါပဲ။
“ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားေတြကို လႊတ္ေပးဖို႔နဲ႔ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖဲြ႕ခ်ဳပ္၊ ဒီမိုကေရစီ အင္အားစုေတြနဲ႔ တိုင္းရင္းသား ႏိုင္ငံေရးပါတီေတြကို အသိအမွတ္ျပဳဖို႔ အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု အေနနဲ႔ ျမန္မာအာဏာပိုင္ေတြကို တိုက္တြန္းပါတယ္။ အမ်ဳိးသား ျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရးရဲ႕ ပထမအဆင့္အျဖစ္ အဲဒီ အင္အားစုေတြနဲ႔ ေတြ႕ဆံုညိႇႏိႈင္းမႈေတြ စလုပ္ဖို႔ တိုက္တြန္းပါတယ္။”
အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု အေနနဲ႔ကေတာ့ လက္ရိွ က်င့္သံုးေနတဲ့ အေရးယူ ပိတ္ဆို႔ ဖိအားေပးတဲ့ နည္းကိုေရာ အစိုးရသစ္နဲ႔ ထိစပ္ဆက္ဆံတဲ့ မူ၀ါဒကိုပါ ခ်ဥ္းကပ္မႈ ၂ မ်ဳိးစလံုး ဆက္က်င့္သံုးသြားမယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။
ကုလသမဂၢ အတြင္းေရးမွဴးခ်ဳပ္ကေတာ့ အခုလို အရပ္ဘက္ အစိုးရဘက္ကုိ အာဏာလဲႊေျပာင္းမႈကို အေျပာင္းအလဲေတြ စႏိုင္တဲ့ အခြင့္အလမ္းအျဖစ္ ဆုပ္ကိုင္ဖို႔ လိုမယ္လို႔ တုိက္တြန္းပါတယ္။ ဒီကေန အမ်ားလက္ခံႏိုင္တဲ့ စနစ္တရပ္ ျဖစ္လာဖို႔ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲမႈေတြ လုပ္သြားဖို႔ ကုလသမဂၢ အတြင္းေရးမွဴးခ်ဳပ္႐ံုး ေျပာခြင့္ရသူ ဖာဟန္ ဟာ့က္ (Farhan Haq) က ေျပာပါတယ္။
“ႏွစ္ ၅၀ နီးပါးၾကာတဲ့ စစ္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးကေန အေျပာင္းအလဲအတြက္ ေျခလွမ္းအစ ျဖစ္တယ္ဆိုတာ သက္ေသျပႏိုင္ဖို႔ ျမန္မာအာဏာပိုင္ေတြအတြက္ အခြင့္အလမ္းတရပ္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာလူထုအတြက္ ဒီလို ေဆာင္ရြက္ဖို႔လည္း ျမန္မာအာဏာပိုင္ေတြမွာ တာ၀န္ရိွပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာအာဏာပိုင္ေတြ အေနနဲ႔ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ ရင္ဆိုင္ေနရတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရးနဲ႔ လူမႈေရး၊ စီးပြားေရး ျပႆနာရပ္ေတြကို ထိထိေရာက္ေရာက္ ေျဖရွင္းႏိုင္ေရးအတြက္ အမ်ားယံုၾကည္ လက္ခံႏိုင္တဲ့ စနစ္တရပ္ ျဖစ္လာေစဖို႔ လိုအပ္တဲ့ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲမႈေတြအတြက္ သက္ဆိုင္ရာ အဖဲြ႕အစည္းေတြ အားလံုးနဲ႔ ေတြ႕ဆံုညိႇႏိႈင္းမႈေတြ လုပ္ရမယ္လို႔ အတြင္းေရးမွဴးခ်ဳပ္က ယံုၾကည္ထားပါတယ္။
“ျမန္မာျပည္သူေတြ ႏွစ္ရွည္လၾကာ ေတာင့္တေနခဲ့တဲ့ အမ်ဳိးသား ျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရးအတြက္ တိုင္းျပည္အတြင္း တည္တံ့တဲ့ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းမႈ၊ ဖံြ႕ၿဖိဳးမႈေတြ ရိွလာေစဖို႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ျဖစ္ထြန္းမႈေတြနဲ႔ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရး ေလးစားလိုက္နာမႈေတြ မျဖစ္မေန လိုအပ္ေနပါတယ္။”
ကုလသမဂၢ အေနနဲ႔ကေတာ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ အနာဂတ္မွာ တည္ၿငိမ္ၿပီး ျပည့္၀တဲ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ျဖစ္လာေစေရးမွာ ႏိုင္ငံသားအားလံုး ပါ၀င္ႏိုင္ေရးအတြက္ သက္ဆိုင္ရာ အေရးပါတဲ့ ပုဂၢိဳလ္အားလံုးနဲ႔ အတူတကြ လက္တဲြ ေဆာင္ရြက္သြားမယ္လို႔ အတြင္းေရးမွဴးခ်ဳပ္႐ံုးက ထုတ္ျပန္ထားပါတယ္။
Ref:
http://www.voanews.com/burmese/news/us-un-react-myanmar-new-gov-118959004.html
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
စစ္မွန္တဲ့ ေျပာင္းလဲမႈ မရိွဘဲ အေမရိကန္ ဒဏ္ခတ္မႈ ႐ုပ္သိမ္းမည္မဟုတ္
စစ္မွန္တဲ့ ေျပာင္းလဲမႈ မရိွဘဲ အေမရိကန္ ဒဏ္ခတ္မႈ ႐ုပ္သိမ္းမည္မဟုတ္
တနလၤာ, 28 မတ္ 2011
By ဦးသားၫြန္႔ဦး
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအေပၚ စီးပြားေရးအရ အေရးယူ ဒဏ္ခတ္မႈေတြကို ႐ုပ္သိမ္းေပးၾကဖို႔ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္း တိုက္တြန္းမႈတခ်ဳိ႕ ရိွေနေပမဲ့ စစ္မွန္တဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရး ေျပာင္းလဲမႈေတြ မေတြ႕ရမခ်င္း ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအေပၚ အေရးယူ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြ ဆက္ထားရိွမွာ ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ အေမရိကန္ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဌာနက ေျပာပါတယ္။ အျပည့္အစုံကို စံုစမ္းေမးျမန္းထားတဲ့ ကိုသားၫြန္႔ဦးက တင္ျပေပးထားပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕က အေမရိကန္သံ႐ံုး ယာယီတာ၀န္ခံနဲ႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီပါတီအခ်ဳိ႕ မေန႔က ေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၿပီး ပိတ္ဆို႔အေရးယူမႈ ကိစၥေတြကို ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့လည္း အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု အေနနဲ႔ကေတာ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအေပၚ အေရးယူ ဒဏ္ခတ္မႈေတြကို ဆက္လုပ္သြားမွာ ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဌာနက ေျပာပါတယ္။
ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့အပတ္ ေသာၾကာေန႔ ျပည္ေထာင္စုလႊတ္ေတာ္အတြင္း ႏိုင္ငံတကာရဲ႕ စီးပြားေရး ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကၿပီး ဒီပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြဟာ အမ်ားျပည္သူေတြနဲ႔ တိုင္းျပည္ စီးပြားေရးကို ထိခိုက္ေစတယ္ဆိုၿပီး ျပည္ေထာင္စုလႊတ္ေတာ္က ဒီပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြကို ကန္႔ကြက္ေၾကာင္း ဆံုးျဖတ္ခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ လႊတ္ေတာ္ရဲ႕ ဒီဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ဟာ ပိတ္ဆို႔အေရးယူမႈ လုပ္ထားတဲ့ ကာယကံရွင္ ႏိုင္ငံေတြ အေပၚမွာေတာ့ ၾသဇာသက္ေရာက္ႏိုင္မယ့္ အေျခအေန မရိွပါဘူး။
အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု အေနနဲ႔ကေတာ့ စစ္မွန္တဲ့ အေျပာင္းအလဲေတြ မျဖစ္မခ်င္း အေရးယူ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြ ဆက္လုပ္သြားမွာ ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ အေမရိကန္ ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရးဌာနက ထုတ္ျပန္ပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဌာန အရာရိွတဦးက ဒီေၾကညာခ်က္ကို အခုလို ဖတ္ျပပါတယ္။
“ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ အသိုင္းအ၀ိုင္းရဲ႕ စိုးရိမ္ပူပန္မႈေတြ အေပၚမွာ သိသာထင္ရွားတဲ့ အေရးယူ ေဆာင္ရြက္မႈေတြ လုပ္လာေရး အာဏာပိုင္ေတြကို ဖိအားေပးႏုိင္ဖို႔ အေရးယူ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြ ဆက္လုပ္ထားမွာပါ။ တိုက္တြန္း ဖိအားေပးထားတဲ့ အထဲမွာေတာ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲမႈေတြ လုပ္ဖို႔၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားေတြကို လႊတ္ေပးဖို႔နဲ႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီ အင္အားစုေတြ၊ တိုင္းရင္းသား အင္အားစုေတြနဲ႔ စစ္မွန္တဲ့ ေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးမႈေတြ စတင္လုပ္ႏုိင္ဖို႔ ဆိုတာေတြ ပါ၀င္ပါတယ္။”
အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု အေနနဲ႔ အခုလို အေရးယူ ပိတ္ဆို႔ထားသလိုပဲ တဘက္မွာ လာမယ့္ အစိုးရသစ္နဲ႔ ထိစပ္ ဆက္ဆံေရးမူကိုလည္း က်င့္သံုးသြားမယ္လို႔ ေၾကညာထားပါတယ္။ အေမရိကန္ရဲ႕ မူ၀ါဒေတြ ဘယ္ေလာက္ ထိေရာက္မႈ ရိွမရိွကိုလည္း သက္ဆိုင္ရာ ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေတြနဲ႔ မျပတ္ထိစပ္ ေဆြးေႏြးေနတယ္လို႔ ေျပာပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္လည္း မေန႔က သံ႐ံုး ယာယီတာ၀န္ခံနဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံေရးပါတီေတြ ေတြ႕ဆံုမႈဟာ ဒီလုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ရဲ႕ အစိတ္အပိုင္း ျဖစ္တယ္လို႕ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဌာန အရာရိွက ေျပာပါတယ္။
“အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုရဲ႕ ပိတ္ဆို႔ အေရးယူမႈဟာ ဘယ္ေလာက္ ထိေရာက္သလဲ၊ ဘာေတြအေပၚ သက္ေရာက္မႈ ရိွေနသလဲဆိုတာ သိႏိုင္ဖို႔ အတိုက္အခံ ဒီမိုကေရစီ အင္အားစုေတြ၊ တိုင္းရင္းသား လူနည္းစုေတြ၊ ႏိုင္ငံတကာက ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေတြ အပါအ၀င္ ျမန္မာ့ႏုိင္ငံေရးမွာ အဓိကက်သူေတြနဲ႔ ပံုမွန္ဆိုသလိုပဲ ေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးေလ့ ရိွပါတယ္။”
၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြ၀င္ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ပါတီေတြကေတာ့ အေရးယူ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြကို ဖယ္ရွားေရးအတြက္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ထဲမွာ ေ၀ဖန္ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကသလို သက္ဆိုင္ရာ ႏိုင္ငံေတြကို သီးျခား ပန္ၾကားခ်က္ေတြလည္း ထုတ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ သူတို႔အေနနဲ႔ကေတာ့ အေရးယူ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈဟာ ရည္မွန္းသလို အေျပာင္းအလဲအတြက္ မထိေရာက္ဘူးလို႔ ျမင္တဲ့အေၾကာင္း မေန႔က အေမရိကန္ သံတမန္နဲ႔ ေတြ႕ဆံုတဲ့အထဲ ပါ၀င္တဲ့ ျပည္ေထာင္စု ဒီမိုကေရစီပါတီ ဥကၠ႒ ကိုသိန္းတင္ေအာင္က ေျပာပါတယ္။
“က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္က Sanction ဟာ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ထြန္းကားေရးနဲ႔ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ခ်ဳိးေဖာက္မႈေတြ ကာကြယ္ေပးဖို႔ပဲ ရည္ရြယ္တာကုိး။ လူထုထိခုိက္ဖို႔လည္း မဟုတ္ဘူး၊ စစ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ထိခုိက္ဖို႔လည္း မဟုတ္ဘူးဆုိေတာ့ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ကိုက လြဲေနေတာ့ ဘာလုိ႔သုံးမလဲ၊ အဲဒါကို က်ေနာ္တုိ႔က ဆုိလိုတာပါ။ တခ်ဳိ႕မွာေတာ့ ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေရးအရ ေငြေရး ေၾကးေရး ထိခုိက္မႈ ရွိေပမဲ့ သူတုိ႔က ဆင္ပိန္ကၽြဲေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ အဲဒီလို ထိခုိက္ေပမဲ့လည္း ဒီမုိကေရစီ ခ်ဳိးေဖာက္မႈေတြက ေလ်ာ့မသြားဘူးေလ။ ဒီမုိကေရစီကို ျမႇင့္တင္ေရးေတြက အေကာင္အထည္ ေပၚမလာဘူး။”
အဓိက အတိုက္အခံ ဒီမိုကေရစီပါတီႀကီး ျဖစ္တဲ့ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖဲြ႕ခ်ဳပ္ကေတာ့ အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြရဲ႕ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔ သူတို႔ရဲ႕ သေဘာထားကို တရား၀င္ ထုတ္ျပန္ၿပီးသားပါ။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ စီးပြားေရး ခြ်တ္ၿခံဳက်မႈဟာ အေနာက္ႏုိင္ငံေတြရဲ႕ အေရးယူ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြေၾကာင့္ မဟုတ္ဘဲ အစိုးရရဲ႕ စီမံခန္႕ခဲြမႈ ညံ့ဖ်င္းမႈေၾကာင့္သာ ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ အျပစ္တင္ပါတယ္။ ဒါ့အျပင္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံထဲ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရး အေျခအေန တိုးတက္မႈေတြ မရိွတာေၾကာင့္ အေရးယူ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြ ဆက္ထားသင့္တယ္လို႔ သံုးသပ္ထားပါတယ္။
Ref:
http://www.voanews.com/burmese/news/burma-us-sanction-118814794.html
တနလၤာ, 28 မတ္ 2011
By ဦးသားၫြန္႔ဦး
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအေပၚ စီးပြားေရးအရ အေရးယူ ဒဏ္ခတ္မႈေတြကို ႐ုပ္သိမ္းေပးၾကဖို႔ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္း တိုက္တြန္းမႈတခ်ဳိ႕ ရိွေနေပမဲ့ စစ္မွန္တဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရး ေျပာင္းလဲမႈေတြ မေတြ႕ရမခ်င္း ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအေပၚ အေရးယူ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြ ဆက္ထားရိွမွာ ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ အေမရိကန္ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဌာနက ေျပာပါတယ္။ အျပည့္အစုံကို စံုစမ္းေမးျမန္းထားတဲ့ ကိုသားၫြန္႔ဦးက တင္ျပေပးထားပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕က အေမရိကန္သံ႐ံုး ယာယီတာ၀န္ခံနဲ႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီပါတီအခ်ဳိ႕ မေန႔က ေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၿပီး ပိတ္ဆို႔အေရးယူမႈ ကိစၥေတြကို ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့လည္း အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု အေနနဲ႔ကေတာ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအေပၚ အေရးယူ ဒဏ္ခတ္မႈေတြကို ဆက္လုပ္သြားမွာ ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဌာနက ေျပာပါတယ္။
ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့အပတ္ ေသာၾကာေန႔ ျပည္ေထာင္စုလႊတ္ေတာ္အတြင္း ႏိုင္ငံတကာရဲ႕ စီးပြားေရး ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကၿပီး ဒီပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြဟာ အမ်ားျပည္သူေတြနဲ႔ တိုင္းျပည္ စီးပြားေရးကို ထိခိုက္ေစတယ္ဆိုၿပီး ျပည္ေထာင္စုလႊတ္ေတာ္က ဒီပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြကို ကန္႔ကြက္ေၾကာင္း ဆံုးျဖတ္ခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ လႊတ္ေတာ္ရဲ႕ ဒီဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ဟာ ပိတ္ဆို႔အေရးယူမႈ လုပ္ထားတဲ့ ကာယကံရွင္ ႏိုင္ငံေတြ အေပၚမွာေတာ့ ၾသဇာသက္ေရာက္ႏိုင္မယ့္ အေျခအေန မရိွပါဘူး။
အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု အေနနဲ႔ကေတာ့ စစ္မွန္တဲ့ အေျပာင္းအလဲေတြ မျဖစ္မခ်င္း အေရးယူ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြ ဆက္လုပ္သြားမွာ ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ အေမရိကန္ ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရးဌာနက ထုတ္ျပန္ပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဌာန အရာရိွတဦးက ဒီေၾကညာခ်က္ကို အခုလို ဖတ္ျပပါတယ္။
“ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ အသိုင္းအ၀ိုင္းရဲ႕ စိုးရိမ္ပူပန္မႈေတြ အေပၚမွာ သိသာထင္ရွားတဲ့ အေရးယူ ေဆာင္ရြက္မႈေတြ လုပ္လာေရး အာဏာပိုင္ေတြကို ဖိအားေပးႏုိင္ဖို႔ အေရးယူ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြ ဆက္လုပ္ထားမွာပါ။ တိုက္တြန္း ဖိအားေပးထားတဲ့ အထဲမွာေတာ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲမႈေတြ လုပ္ဖို႔၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားေတြကို လႊတ္ေပးဖို႔နဲ႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီ အင္အားစုေတြ၊ တိုင္းရင္းသား အင္အားစုေတြနဲ႔ စစ္မွန္တဲ့ ေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးမႈေတြ စတင္လုပ္ႏုိင္ဖို႔ ဆိုတာေတြ ပါ၀င္ပါတယ္။”
အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု အေနနဲ႔ အခုလို အေရးယူ ပိတ္ဆို႔ထားသလိုပဲ တဘက္မွာ လာမယ့္ အစိုးရသစ္နဲ႔ ထိစပ္ ဆက္ဆံေရးမူကိုလည္း က်င့္သံုးသြားမယ္လို႔ ေၾကညာထားပါတယ္။ အေမရိကန္ရဲ႕ မူ၀ါဒေတြ ဘယ္ေလာက္ ထိေရာက္မႈ ရိွမရိွကိုလည္း သက္ဆိုင္ရာ ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေတြနဲ႔ မျပတ္ထိစပ္ ေဆြးေႏြးေနတယ္လို႔ ေျပာပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္လည္း မေန႔က သံ႐ံုး ယာယီတာ၀န္ခံနဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံေရးပါတီေတြ ေတြ႕ဆံုမႈဟာ ဒီလုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ရဲ႕ အစိတ္အပိုင္း ျဖစ္တယ္လို႕ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဌာန အရာရိွက ေျပာပါတယ္။
“အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုရဲ႕ ပိတ္ဆို႔ အေရးယူမႈဟာ ဘယ္ေလာက္ ထိေရာက္သလဲ၊ ဘာေတြအေပၚ သက္ေရာက္မႈ ရိွေနသလဲဆိုတာ သိႏိုင္ဖို႔ အတိုက္အခံ ဒီမိုကေရစီ အင္အားစုေတြ၊ တိုင္းရင္းသား လူနည္းစုေတြ၊ ႏိုင္ငံတကာက ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေတြ အပါအ၀င္ ျမန္မာ့ႏုိင္ငံေရးမွာ အဓိကက်သူေတြနဲ႔ ပံုမွန္ဆိုသလိုပဲ ေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးေလ့ ရိွပါတယ္။”
၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြ၀င္ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ပါတီေတြကေတာ့ အေရးယူ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြကို ဖယ္ရွားေရးအတြက္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ထဲမွာ ေ၀ဖန္ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကသလို သက္ဆိုင္ရာ ႏိုင္ငံေတြကို သီးျခား ပန္ၾကားခ်က္ေတြလည္း ထုတ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ သူတို႔အေနနဲ႔ကေတာ့ အေရးယူ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈဟာ ရည္မွန္းသလို အေျပာင္းအလဲအတြက္ မထိေရာက္ဘူးလို႔ ျမင္တဲ့အေၾကာင္း မေန႔က အေမရိကန္ သံတမန္နဲ႔ ေတြ႕ဆံုတဲ့အထဲ ပါ၀င္တဲ့ ျပည္ေထာင္စု ဒီမိုကေရစီပါတီ ဥကၠ႒ ကိုသိန္းတင္ေအာင္က ေျပာပါတယ္။
“က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္က Sanction ဟာ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ထြန္းကားေရးနဲ႔ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ခ်ဳိးေဖာက္မႈေတြ ကာကြယ္ေပးဖို႔ပဲ ရည္ရြယ္တာကုိး။ လူထုထိခုိက္ဖို႔လည္း မဟုတ္ဘူး၊ စစ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ထိခုိက္ဖို႔လည္း မဟုတ္ဘူးဆုိေတာ့ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ကိုက လြဲေနေတာ့ ဘာလုိ႔သုံးမလဲ၊ အဲဒါကို က်ေနာ္တုိ႔က ဆုိလိုတာပါ။ တခ်ဳိ႕မွာေတာ့ ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေရးအရ ေငြေရး ေၾကးေရး ထိခုိက္မႈ ရွိေပမဲ့ သူတုိ႔က ဆင္ပိန္ကၽြဲေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ အဲဒီလို ထိခုိက္ေပမဲ့လည္း ဒီမုိကေရစီ ခ်ဳိးေဖာက္မႈေတြက ေလ်ာ့မသြားဘူးေလ။ ဒီမုိကေရစီကို ျမႇင့္တင္ေရးေတြက အေကာင္အထည္ ေပၚမလာဘူး။”
အဓိက အတိုက္အခံ ဒီမိုကေရစီပါတီႀကီး ျဖစ္တဲ့ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖဲြ႕ခ်ဳပ္ကေတာ့ အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြရဲ႕ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔ သူတို႔ရဲ႕ သေဘာထားကို တရား၀င္ ထုတ္ျပန္ၿပီးသားပါ။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ စီးပြားေရး ခြ်တ္ၿခံဳက်မႈဟာ အေနာက္ႏုိင္ငံေတြရဲ႕ အေရးယူ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြေၾကာင့္ မဟုတ္ဘဲ အစိုးရရဲ႕ စီမံခန္႕ခဲြမႈ ညံ့ဖ်င္းမႈေၾကာင့္သာ ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ အျပစ္တင္ပါတယ္။ ဒါ့အျပင္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံထဲ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရး အေျခအေန တိုးတက္မႈေတြ မရိွတာေၾကာင့္ အေရးယူ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြ ဆက္ထားသင့္တယ္လို႔ သံုးသပ္ထားပါတယ္။
Ref:
http://www.voanews.com/burmese/news/burma-us-sanction-118814794.html
အေမရိကန္ သံ႐ံုးတာဝန္ခံက ပါတီအခ်ိဳ႕ႏွင့္ စီးပြားေရးပိတ္ဆို႔မႈ ကိစၥေဆြးေႏြး
အေမရိကန္ သံ႐ံုးတာဝန္ခံက ပါတီအခ်ိဳ႕ႏွင့္ စီးပြားေရးပိတ္ဆို႔မႈ ကိစၥေဆြးေႏြး
2011-03-28
ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအေပၚ စီးပြားေရးအရ ပိတ္ဆို႔ အေရးယူေရး ျပန္႐ုပ္သိမ္းဖို႔ တင္ျပထားတဲ့ ေ႐ြးေကာက္ပြဲဝင္ ပါတီေတြကို အေမရိကန္သံ႐ံုးက ဒီကေန႔ မတ္လ ၂၈ ရက္မွာ ေတြ႕ဆံုၿပီး အခ်က္အလက္ေတြ ရယူခဲ့တယ္လို႔ စံုစမ္း သိရွိရပါတယ္။
ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့လအတြင္း ေ႐ြးေကာက္ပြဲဝင္ ၁၀ ပါတီက ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံအေပၚ စီးပြားေရး အရ ပိတ္ဆို႔ အေရးယူတာေတြကို ဖယ္ရွားဖို႔ ေတာင္းဆိုခဲ့တာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီေတာင္းဆိုခ်က္နဲ႔႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး အေမရိကန္ သံ႐ံုး ယာယီတာဝန္ခံ မစၥတာ လယ္ရီဒင္းဂါးက ပါတီေတြကို ဒီကေန႔ မြန္းလြဲပိုင္းက ေနအိမ္မွာ ေတြ႕ဆံု ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့တာပါ။ ေတြ႕ဆံုပြဲကို တက္ေရာက္တဲ့ NDF ပါတီက ဦးခင္ေမာင္ေဆြက ခုလိုေျပာပါတယ္။
“Sanction ကို လႊတ္ဖို႔၊ ႐ုပ္သိမ္းဖို႔ လိုသလား မလိုသလား ဆိုတဲ့ အခ်က္ေလာက္ အနည္းငယ္ေလာက္ေပါ့ခင္ဗ်ာ။ သူတို႔ဖက္ကလည္းပဲ ျပန္ေျပာတာေတြ ရွိတာေပါ့။ ေလာေလာဆယ္ေတာ့ ႐ုပ္သိမ္းဖို႔ အေနအထား မရွိေသးဘူး၊ လက္ရွိအစိုးရနဲ႔ ဆက္ၿပီးေတာ့ ထိေတြ႕ ဆက္ဆံသြားဖို႔ sanction ကလည္း ဒီအတိုင္း ဆက္ရွိေနဦးမယ္ ဆိုတဲ့ သေဘာထားေတြကေတာ့ သူတို႔ အဆင့္ကေတာ့ ဘယ္ေျပာင္းႏိုင္မလဲဗ်ာ။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ ဒီဟာေတြကို ေလ့လာ သံုးသပ္ၿပီးတဲ့အခါ ခိုင္မာတဲ့ အေထာက္အထားေတြ ရွိရင္ေတာ့ ျပန္လည္ စဥ္းစားဖို႔ ျဖစ္ေကာင္း ျဖစ္လာႏိုင္တယ္ေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ ခုေနမွာ ဒီတိုင္းပဲေပါ့။ ဟိုသေဘာကေတာ့ဗ်ာ facts finding ေပါ့ဗ်ာ၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးပါတီေတြရဲ့ သေဘာထားကေတာ့ သိေနၿပီေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ ဒီဟာေတြက ဘယ္ေလာက္ထိ ခိုင္ခိုင္မာမာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔က ကိုယ္ယံုၾကည္ခ်က္ကို တည္ေဆာက္ထားသလဲ။ ဘယ္အေျခခံေပၚမွာ ေဆာက္ထားသလဲ ဆိုတာကို သိခ်င္တဲ့ အေျခအေနေလာက္ပါပဲ။”
အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စုအေနနဲ႔ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအေပၚ ပိတ္ဆို႔အေရးယူထားတာေတြကို လတ္တေလာ ဆက္လက္ ထားရွိဦးမွာ ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။ အခုေတြ႕ဆံုပြဲဟာ အေမရိကန္ အေနနဲ႔ ေ႐ြးေကာက္ပြဲဝင္ ပါတီေတြရဲ့ ပိတ္ဆို႔အေရးယူမႈ ဖယ္ရွားေရး အဆိုအတြက္ အခ်က္အလက္ ရွာေဖြတာ ျဖစ္ၿပီး ဥေရာပႏုိင္ငံေတြက ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံအေပၚ ကန္႔သတ္ထားတဲ့ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္မႈ မရွိဘူးလို႔ သိရပါတယ္၊ ေတြ႕ဆံုပြဲဟာ တနာရီေက်ာ္ေက်ာ္ ၾကာတယ္လို႔ သိရွိရပါတယ္။
Ref:
http://www.rfa.org/burmese/news/us_embassy_finding_facts_over_sanction-03282011141716.html
2011-03-28
ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအေပၚ စီးပြားေရးအရ ပိတ္ဆို႔ အေရးယူေရး ျပန္႐ုပ္သိမ္းဖို႔ တင္ျပထားတဲ့ ေ႐ြးေကာက္ပြဲဝင္ ပါတီေတြကို အေမရိကန္သံ႐ံုးက ဒီကေန႔ မတ္လ ၂၈ ရက္မွာ ေတြ႕ဆံုၿပီး အခ်က္အလက္ေတြ ရယူခဲ့တယ္လို႔ စံုစမ္း သိရွိရပါတယ္။
ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့လအတြင္း ေ႐ြးေကာက္ပြဲဝင္ ၁၀ ပါတီက ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံအေပၚ စီးပြားေရး အရ ပိတ္ဆို႔ အေရးယူတာေတြကို ဖယ္ရွားဖို႔ ေတာင္းဆိုခဲ့တာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီေတာင္းဆိုခ်က္နဲ႔႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး အေမရိကန္ သံ႐ံုး ယာယီတာဝန္ခံ မစၥတာ လယ္ရီဒင္းဂါးက ပါတီေတြကို ဒီကေန႔ မြန္းလြဲပိုင္းက ေနအိမ္မွာ ေတြ႕ဆံု ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့တာပါ။ ေတြ႕ဆံုပြဲကို တက္ေရာက္တဲ့ NDF ပါတီက ဦးခင္ေမာင္ေဆြက ခုလိုေျပာပါတယ္။
“Sanction ကို လႊတ္ဖို႔၊ ႐ုပ္သိမ္းဖို႔ လိုသလား မလိုသလား ဆိုတဲ့ အခ်က္ေလာက္ အနည္းငယ္ေလာက္ေပါ့ခင္ဗ်ာ။ သူတို႔ဖက္ကလည္းပဲ ျပန္ေျပာတာေတြ ရွိတာေပါ့။ ေလာေလာဆယ္ေတာ့ ႐ုပ္သိမ္းဖို႔ အေနအထား မရွိေသးဘူး၊ လက္ရွိအစိုးရနဲ႔ ဆက္ၿပီးေတာ့ ထိေတြ႕ ဆက္ဆံသြားဖို႔ sanction ကလည္း ဒီအတိုင္း ဆက္ရွိေနဦးမယ္ ဆိုတဲ့ သေဘာထားေတြကေတာ့ သူတို႔ အဆင့္ကေတာ့ ဘယ္ေျပာင္းႏိုင္မလဲဗ်ာ။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ ဒီဟာေတြကို ေလ့လာ သံုးသပ္ၿပီးတဲ့အခါ ခိုင္မာတဲ့ အေထာက္အထားေတြ ရွိရင္ေတာ့ ျပန္လည္ စဥ္းစားဖို႔ ျဖစ္ေကာင္း ျဖစ္လာႏိုင္တယ္ေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ ခုေနမွာ ဒီတိုင္းပဲေပါ့။ ဟိုသေဘာကေတာ့ဗ်ာ facts finding ေပါ့ဗ်ာ၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးပါတီေတြရဲ့ သေဘာထားကေတာ့ သိေနၿပီေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ ဒီဟာေတြက ဘယ္ေလာက္ထိ ခိုင္ခိုင္မာမာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔က ကိုယ္ယံုၾကည္ခ်က္ကို တည္ေဆာက္ထားသလဲ။ ဘယ္အေျခခံေပၚမွာ ေဆာက္ထားသလဲ ဆိုတာကို သိခ်င္တဲ့ အေျခအေနေလာက္ပါပဲ။”
အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စုအေနနဲ႔ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအေပၚ ပိတ္ဆို႔အေရးယူထားတာေတြကို လတ္တေလာ ဆက္လက္ ထားရွိဦးမွာ ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။ အခုေတြ႕ဆံုပြဲဟာ အေမရိကန္ အေနနဲ႔ ေ႐ြးေကာက္ပြဲဝင္ ပါတီေတြရဲ့ ပိတ္ဆို႔အေရးယူမႈ ဖယ္ရွားေရး အဆိုအတြက္ အခ်က္အလက္ ရွာေဖြတာ ျဖစ္ၿပီး ဥေရာပႏုိင္ငံေတြက ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံအေပၚ ကန္႔သတ္ထားတဲ့ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္မႈ မရွိဘူးလို႔ သိရပါတယ္၊ ေတြ႕ဆံုပြဲဟာ တနာရီေက်ာ္ေက်ာ္ ၾကာတယ္လို႔ သိရွိရပါတယ္။
Ref:
http://www.rfa.org/burmese/news/us_embassy_finding_facts_over_sanction-03282011141716.html
Radioactive Plutonium Found in Soil Around Damaged Japanese Nuclear Plant
Radioactive Plutonium Found in Soil Around Damaged Japanese Nuclear Plant
March 28, 2011
VOA News
Officials say highly radioactive plutonium has been detected in the soil in five locations around Japan's earthquake-disabled nuclear reactor, adding to the problems faced by workers struggling to get the power plant under control.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, TEPCO, that runs the Fukushima plant said late Monday it believed some of the plutonium came from nuclear fuel in the damaged reactors. But the company insisted the levels were not high enough to be considered a risk to human health.
The US embassy in Tokyo said the chief of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, was on his way to Japan Monday to assess the current situation. Jaczko said the NRC was ready to provide any assistance it can to ease the nuclear crisis.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said Monday the situation at the nuclear station is still very serious.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said earlier Monday he suspected a partial meltdown of one of the Fukushima earthquake-disabled nuclear reactors was leading to pools of highly radioactive water that plant operators say have been found in trenches outside the plant's buildings.
Plant workers are caught between trying to pump uncontaminated water into the reactors to cool them so that they can fix the damage inside, and getting rid of the radioactive water.
Edano said the government's top priority was to prevent the contaminated water from seeping into the ground water system. He urged residents to stay away from the 20-kilometer evacuation zone as the area continued to be very risky.
Greenpeace called on the government to extend the evacuation zone, as their experts have found unsafe radiation levels 40 kilometers northwest of the plant.
Radioactive contamination has been spreading into the seawater and soil for the past two weeks, since the reactors' cooling systems were seriously damaged in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
The contaminated water appears to be leaking from the one of the damaged plant's reactors after having been in contact with melted-down fuel rods inside the reactor's core. The discovery is the latest setback for crews that have been battling fires, explosions and spikes in radioactivity in their efforts to repair the cooling systems.
More than 10,800 people have been confirmed dead since the quake and 16,200 are missing, according to national NHK television. It said 193,000 people are living in evacuation centers, down from about 300,000 last week.
TEPCO officials said Monday radiation levels in the leaked water were "extremely high". Company officials said they were continuing to monitor seawater for radioactivity, and that it would have to develop a plan to monitor radiation levels underground.
Edano said the water seems to be coming from inside the plant's pressure chamber where it has been exposed to melted-down fuel rods in the reactor's core. That would confirm suspicions that the reactor suffered at least a partial meltdown, and that water is escaping from the pressure chamber.
The power company said Monday that water found in a utility trench outside the number two reactor building was emitting radiation at a rate of more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour. Officials said that is about the same level as the water inside the building, which was reported Sunday to be 100,000 times higher than normal.
Two workers were taken to a hospital last week after suffering burns to their feet while wading in the radioactive water. Officials said Monday the workers were recuperating.
Radiation from the plant, which lost its cooling systems during the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, has also been detected in milk and vegetables in a wide area around the plant and in tap water as far away as Tokyo, 220 kilometers to the south.
Related video by Melinda Smith:
Ref:
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/asia/Radioactive-Plutonium-Found-in-Soil-Around-Damaged-Japanese-Nuclear-Plant-118779069.html
March 28, 2011
VOA News
Officials say highly radioactive plutonium has been detected in the soil in five locations around Japan's earthquake-disabled nuclear reactor, adding to the problems faced by workers struggling to get the power plant under control.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, TEPCO, that runs the Fukushima plant said late Monday it believed some of the plutonium came from nuclear fuel in the damaged reactors. But the company insisted the levels were not high enough to be considered a risk to human health.
The US embassy in Tokyo said the chief of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, was on his way to Japan Monday to assess the current situation. Jaczko said the NRC was ready to provide any assistance it can to ease the nuclear crisis.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said Monday the situation at the nuclear station is still very serious.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said earlier Monday he suspected a partial meltdown of one of the Fukushima earthquake-disabled nuclear reactors was leading to pools of highly radioactive water that plant operators say have been found in trenches outside the plant's buildings.
Plant workers are caught between trying to pump uncontaminated water into the reactors to cool them so that they can fix the damage inside, and getting rid of the radioactive water.
Edano said the government's top priority was to prevent the contaminated water from seeping into the ground water system. He urged residents to stay away from the 20-kilometer evacuation zone as the area continued to be very risky.
Greenpeace called on the government to extend the evacuation zone, as their experts have found unsafe radiation levels 40 kilometers northwest of the plant.
Radioactive contamination has been spreading into the seawater and soil for the past two weeks, since the reactors' cooling systems were seriously damaged in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
The contaminated water appears to be leaking from the one of the damaged plant's reactors after having been in contact with melted-down fuel rods inside the reactor's core. The discovery is the latest setback for crews that have been battling fires, explosions and spikes in radioactivity in their efforts to repair the cooling systems.
More than 10,800 people have been confirmed dead since the quake and 16,200 are missing, according to national NHK television. It said 193,000 people are living in evacuation centers, down from about 300,000 last week.
TEPCO officials said Monday radiation levels in the leaked water were "extremely high". Company officials said they were continuing to monitor seawater for radioactivity, and that it would have to develop a plan to monitor radiation levels underground.
Edano said the water seems to be coming from inside the plant's pressure chamber where it has been exposed to melted-down fuel rods in the reactor's core. That would confirm suspicions that the reactor suffered at least a partial meltdown, and that water is escaping from the pressure chamber.
The power company said Monday that water found in a utility trench outside the number two reactor building was emitting radiation at a rate of more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour. Officials said that is about the same level as the water inside the building, which was reported Sunday to be 100,000 times higher than normal.
Two workers were taken to a hospital last week after suffering burns to their feet while wading in the radioactive water. Officials said Monday the workers were recuperating.
Radiation from the plant, which lost its cooling systems during the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, has also been detected in milk and vegetables in a wide area around the plant and in tap water as far away as Tokyo, 220 kilometers to the south.
Related video by Melinda Smith:
Ref:
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/asia/Radioactive-Plutonium-Found-in-Soil-Around-Damaged-Japanese-Nuclear-Plant-118779069.html
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Burma's Stubborn State How to Curtail the Military Junta By Michael Green
Burma's Stubborn State
How to Curtail the Military Junta
By Michael Green
November 23, 2010
Summary:
Although freeing Aung Suu Kyi may allow Burma’s military leaders to escape scrutiny for now, their budding nuclear ambitions could rejuvenate international interest in placing pressure on their regime.
MICHAEL GREEN is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a Senior Adviser and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He served on the staff of the National Security Council from 2001–5.
In November 2007, Derek Mitchell and I published an essay in Foreign Affairs (“Asia’s Forgotten Crisis,” November/December 2007) arguing that U.S. policy toward Burma (renamed Myanmar by the country’s military junta) needed to move beyond the debate over whether to place sanctions on the country’s repressive military junta or engage it. We also asserted that Washington must form a comprehensive strategy that leverages regional relationships and uses a mix of incentives to nudge the isolated regime toward democracy.
Three years later, the junta has released the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the longtime inspirational leader of Burma’s democratic opposition who had been under some form of house arrest or detention for the last 14 years. Although the release of Suu Kyi has to be welcomed by her supporters worldwide, it falls far short of objectives set for Burma policy by the Obama administration and others in the international community. They sought not only Suu Kyi’s unconditional and permanent release but also the inclusion of the democratic opposition and ethnic minorities in Burma’s political process, as well as the establishment of international standards and monitoring for the country’s elections on November 7.
None of this happened. Meanwhile, the regime has opened a dangerous new path by partnering with North Korea to explore nuclear capabilities, a potentially explosive issue given recent revelations that Pyongyang has successfully moved forward with its own program for highly enriched uranium. Although freeing Suu Kyi may allow Burma’s leaders to escape scrutiny for now, their budding nuclear ambitions could rejuvenate international interest in placing pressure on their regime.
Suu Kyi was released in the wake of Burma’s early November elections, which solidified the rule of the regime’s Union Solidarity and Development Party. The international community rightly dismissed the elections as fraudulent. The election stuffed the legislature with former military men who had swapped their uniforms for suits. Burma’s constitution -- passed overwhelmingly in a referendum staged by the junta in 2009, while of the country dealt with severe flooding -- locks in a controlling share of the seats in the legislature for the military or their proxies and authorizes the generals still in the military command structure to declare martial law again at their own discretion. The main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, was disbanded pursuant to a new election law before the elections, and the ethnic minorities who refused to bow to the new law’s restrictions have come under renewed military assaults, causing thousands to flee into Bangladesh, China, and Thailand. The junta justifies its repressive measures against the democratic opposition as necessary to hold together the country’s fractured ethnic groups.
It was no coincidence that North Koreans led the election monitoring in Burma on November 7.
Some optimists have argued that Burmese politics might be moving, however gradually, in the right direction. Countries such as Indonesia and South Korea, they point out, began their own transitions to full democracy after their previously authoritarian regimes conducted less than perfect elections. By comparison, then, the release of Suu Kyi would be the junta’s signal to the world that it is willing to open more political space for different viewpoints within the country, albeit slowly.
But at this time, neither the Indonesian nor South Korean scenario is likely. The military leaders of Indonesia and South Korea actually intended to transform their countries into democracies, not reconsolidate their own rule. Civil society was allowed to mobilize in both countries, and the major opposition parties were not forced to disband by new election laws. Burma’s leader, Senior General Than Shwe, and his generals have no intention of following the Indonesian or South Korean model. It was no coincidence that North Koreans led the election monitoring in Burma on November 7.
Nor did Than Shwe free Suu Kyi to reconcile with the democratic opposition. The junta has released her before, only to re-arrest her or turn its thugs on her, as in 1996 and 2003, when political supporters of the regime attacked her motorcade. In negotiations prior to Burma’s elections this month, the Obama administration offered to relax sanctions in exchange for modest steps toward reconciliation with the opposition and ethnic minorities. U.S. negotiators came away with nothing. And despite Suu Kyi’s release, more than 2,000 other political prisoners continue to languish in prison.
page 2
These are not the actions of a regime interested in reconciliation with the democratic opposition. More likely, Than Shwe freed Suu Kyi to stave off a growing tide of international scrutiny related to his regime’s forged election results and suspected nuclear ambitions. The junta’s interest in nuclear weapons was revealed by defectors and internal sources in Burma, and nuclear experts validated their concern in a report to the UN Security Council this year (evidence to date points to Burma’s pursuit of capabilities from North Korea but not yet a major program). The regime probably also worries about movement at the United Nations for a commission of inquiry into its internal repression, particularly after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed support for such a commission while traveling in the region earlier this month. By releasing Suu Kyi with unclear conditions and duration, the regime encourages supporters in the West to argue that the international community should be patient with Burma’s apparent progress rather than levy new sanctions on the junta. Meanwhile, Burma’s neighbors, China and India, continue to vie for strategic access to Burma’s natural resources (especially natural gas) -- a rivalry that has undermined U.S.-led efforts to press for Burmese democratic reform.
The situation in Burma thus seems worse than it did when Derek Mitchell and I called on Washington to adopt a new approach to the country that would engage Burma and foster the formation of an international negotiation group composed of Burma’s neighbors, similar to the six-party talks set up to coordinate negotiations with North Korea. This group would create a package of incentives to reward reform and sanctions to punish continued repression and the pursuit of nuclear technology. We suggested that the Obama administration appoint a coordinator for Burma affairs to manage this group and help it establish benchmarks for measuring the regime’s behavior.
Although little of this has materialized, the Obama administration has tried to adopt some of these tracks. It intensified engagement with Burma based on a specific set of actions that the junta would need to follow in exchange for the relaxation of U.S.-specific sanctions and began the process by warning that U.S. sanctions might be increased if the regime were not forthcoming. The administration also sent envoys to explain its approach to Burma’s neighbors. Yet these disparate parts did not add up to a consistent or comprehensive strategy. The United States did not unite nations surrounding Burma in a negotiating coalition, nor did it successfully rally the international community to step in and pressure the junta should it undermine negotiations. The administration never appointed a Burma coordinator, despite the fact that the U.S. Congress passed legislation mandating the position. (I was nominated for the post at the end of the Bush administration, but it remains unfilled.) Finally, the Obama administration has not lived up to its promise of ramping up sanctions in the wake of Burmese intransigence. Although Obama’s direct diplomacy with the regime was skillful, it would have been bolstered by these other elements of a comprehensive strategic approach to the problem.
Nevertheless, opportunities to pressure Burma’s military leaders remain open. First, the junta may be mistaken in thinking that it could control the impact of Suu Kyi’s release. It has consistently underestimated her. In 1990, for instance, it permitted the National League for Democracy to participate in elections and watched as the party won a landslide victory (albeit quickly dismissed by the military). Since her release, Suu Kyi has carefully calibrated her public comments -- suggesting that efforts by the regime to engage her supporters could lead to the relaxation of international sanctions, but also standing by the principle that Burma must move toward real democracy. In so doing, she has seized the moral high ground both internationally and within Burma. The regime has not yet figured out how to suppress the hope that she engenders in the Burmese people.
Second, in its paranoid search for security, the regime may have made a drastic miscalculation. The United States may have difficulty organizing countries to sustain a campaign for democratic change in Burma, but Burma’s partnership with North Korea in its quest for nuclear technology will surely attract international attention. In March 2003, North Korean officials warned a George W. Bush administration delegation, of which I was a member, that they would transfer nuclear capabilities to other countries if there were not sufficient U.S. concessions (such as ending the U.S. nuclear umbrella over Japan and South Korea, withdrawing troops from Northeast Asia, providing economic aid, and recognizing Pyongyang as a nuclear weapons state). In September 2007, the Israeli air force bombed a reactor construction site in Syria that the CIA later said had been built with North Korean assistance. The North Korean nuclear connection to Burma has attracted the notice of credible proliferation experts reporting to the UN Security Council.
Than Shwe’s search for security from his own people may not have aroused sufficient international concern, but his pursuit of the bomb will. There is not yet clear evidence of any nuclear program or capability, but the evidence of intent is growing. If this newest crisis erupts as many expect, the United States will need to do a better job formulating a strategy that combines direct engagement with pressure and international diplomatic coordination. And in the midst of this storm will stand Suu Kyi, a courageous women backed by her countrymen and thousands more still under arrest. On her shoulders much of the hope for the people of Burma continues to rest.
Ref:
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67014/michael-green/burmas-stubborn-state
How to Curtail the Military Junta
By Michael Green
November 23, 2010
Summary:
Although freeing Aung Suu Kyi may allow Burma’s military leaders to escape scrutiny for now, their budding nuclear ambitions could rejuvenate international interest in placing pressure on their regime.
MICHAEL GREEN is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a Senior Adviser and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He served on the staff of the National Security Council from 2001–5.
In November 2007, Derek Mitchell and I published an essay in Foreign Affairs (“Asia’s Forgotten Crisis,” November/December 2007) arguing that U.S. policy toward Burma (renamed Myanmar by the country’s military junta) needed to move beyond the debate over whether to place sanctions on the country’s repressive military junta or engage it. We also asserted that Washington must form a comprehensive strategy that leverages regional relationships and uses a mix of incentives to nudge the isolated regime toward democracy.
Three years later, the junta has released the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the longtime inspirational leader of Burma’s democratic opposition who had been under some form of house arrest or detention for the last 14 years. Although the release of Suu Kyi has to be welcomed by her supporters worldwide, it falls far short of objectives set for Burma policy by the Obama administration and others in the international community. They sought not only Suu Kyi’s unconditional and permanent release but also the inclusion of the democratic opposition and ethnic minorities in Burma’s political process, as well as the establishment of international standards and monitoring for the country’s elections on November 7.
None of this happened. Meanwhile, the regime has opened a dangerous new path by partnering with North Korea to explore nuclear capabilities, a potentially explosive issue given recent revelations that Pyongyang has successfully moved forward with its own program for highly enriched uranium. Although freeing Suu Kyi may allow Burma’s leaders to escape scrutiny for now, their budding nuclear ambitions could rejuvenate international interest in placing pressure on their regime.
Suu Kyi was released in the wake of Burma’s early November elections, which solidified the rule of the regime’s Union Solidarity and Development Party. The international community rightly dismissed the elections as fraudulent. The election stuffed the legislature with former military men who had swapped their uniforms for suits. Burma’s constitution -- passed overwhelmingly in a referendum staged by the junta in 2009, while of the country dealt with severe flooding -- locks in a controlling share of the seats in the legislature for the military or their proxies and authorizes the generals still in the military command structure to declare martial law again at their own discretion. The main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, was disbanded pursuant to a new election law before the elections, and the ethnic minorities who refused to bow to the new law’s restrictions have come under renewed military assaults, causing thousands to flee into Bangladesh, China, and Thailand. The junta justifies its repressive measures against the democratic opposition as necessary to hold together the country’s fractured ethnic groups.
It was no coincidence that North Koreans led the election monitoring in Burma on November 7.
Some optimists have argued that Burmese politics might be moving, however gradually, in the right direction. Countries such as Indonesia and South Korea, they point out, began their own transitions to full democracy after their previously authoritarian regimes conducted less than perfect elections. By comparison, then, the release of Suu Kyi would be the junta’s signal to the world that it is willing to open more political space for different viewpoints within the country, albeit slowly.
But at this time, neither the Indonesian nor South Korean scenario is likely. The military leaders of Indonesia and South Korea actually intended to transform their countries into democracies, not reconsolidate their own rule. Civil society was allowed to mobilize in both countries, and the major opposition parties were not forced to disband by new election laws. Burma’s leader, Senior General Than Shwe, and his generals have no intention of following the Indonesian or South Korean model. It was no coincidence that North Koreans led the election monitoring in Burma on November 7.
Nor did Than Shwe free Suu Kyi to reconcile with the democratic opposition. The junta has released her before, only to re-arrest her or turn its thugs on her, as in 1996 and 2003, when political supporters of the regime attacked her motorcade. In negotiations prior to Burma’s elections this month, the Obama administration offered to relax sanctions in exchange for modest steps toward reconciliation with the opposition and ethnic minorities. U.S. negotiators came away with nothing. And despite Suu Kyi’s release, more than 2,000 other political prisoners continue to languish in prison.
page 2
These are not the actions of a regime interested in reconciliation with the democratic opposition. More likely, Than Shwe freed Suu Kyi to stave off a growing tide of international scrutiny related to his regime’s forged election results and suspected nuclear ambitions. The junta’s interest in nuclear weapons was revealed by defectors and internal sources in Burma, and nuclear experts validated their concern in a report to the UN Security Council this year (evidence to date points to Burma’s pursuit of capabilities from North Korea but not yet a major program). The regime probably also worries about movement at the United Nations for a commission of inquiry into its internal repression, particularly after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed support for such a commission while traveling in the region earlier this month. By releasing Suu Kyi with unclear conditions and duration, the regime encourages supporters in the West to argue that the international community should be patient with Burma’s apparent progress rather than levy new sanctions on the junta. Meanwhile, Burma’s neighbors, China and India, continue to vie for strategic access to Burma’s natural resources (especially natural gas) -- a rivalry that has undermined U.S.-led efforts to press for Burmese democratic reform.
The situation in Burma thus seems worse than it did when Derek Mitchell and I called on Washington to adopt a new approach to the country that would engage Burma and foster the formation of an international negotiation group composed of Burma’s neighbors, similar to the six-party talks set up to coordinate negotiations with North Korea. This group would create a package of incentives to reward reform and sanctions to punish continued repression and the pursuit of nuclear technology. We suggested that the Obama administration appoint a coordinator for Burma affairs to manage this group and help it establish benchmarks for measuring the regime’s behavior.
Although little of this has materialized, the Obama administration has tried to adopt some of these tracks. It intensified engagement with Burma based on a specific set of actions that the junta would need to follow in exchange for the relaxation of U.S.-specific sanctions and began the process by warning that U.S. sanctions might be increased if the regime were not forthcoming. The administration also sent envoys to explain its approach to Burma’s neighbors. Yet these disparate parts did not add up to a consistent or comprehensive strategy. The United States did not unite nations surrounding Burma in a negotiating coalition, nor did it successfully rally the international community to step in and pressure the junta should it undermine negotiations. The administration never appointed a Burma coordinator, despite the fact that the U.S. Congress passed legislation mandating the position. (I was nominated for the post at the end of the Bush administration, but it remains unfilled.) Finally, the Obama administration has not lived up to its promise of ramping up sanctions in the wake of Burmese intransigence. Although Obama’s direct diplomacy with the regime was skillful, it would have been bolstered by these other elements of a comprehensive strategic approach to the problem.
Nevertheless, opportunities to pressure Burma’s military leaders remain open. First, the junta may be mistaken in thinking that it could control the impact of Suu Kyi’s release. It has consistently underestimated her. In 1990, for instance, it permitted the National League for Democracy to participate in elections and watched as the party won a landslide victory (albeit quickly dismissed by the military). Since her release, Suu Kyi has carefully calibrated her public comments -- suggesting that efforts by the regime to engage her supporters could lead to the relaxation of international sanctions, but also standing by the principle that Burma must move toward real democracy. In so doing, she has seized the moral high ground both internationally and within Burma. The regime has not yet figured out how to suppress the hope that she engenders in the Burmese people.
Second, in its paranoid search for security, the regime may have made a drastic miscalculation. The United States may have difficulty organizing countries to sustain a campaign for democratic change in Burma, but Burma’s partnership with North Korea in its quest for nuclear technology will surely attract international attention. In March 2003, North Korean officials warned a George W. Bush administration delegation, of which I was a member, that they would transfer nuclear capabilities to other countries if there were not sufficient U.S. concessions (such as ending the U.S. nuclear umbrella over Japan and South Korea, withdrawing troops from Northeast Asia, providing economic aid, and recognizing Pyongyang as a nuclear weapons state). In September 2007, the Israeli air force bombed a reactor construction site in Syria that the CIA later said had been built with North Korean assistance. The North Korean nuclear connection to Burma has attracted the notice of credible proliferation experts reporting to the UN Security Council.
Than Shwe’s search for security from his own people may not have aroused sufficient international concern, but his pursuit of the bomb will. There is not yet clear evidence of any nuclear program or capability, but the evidence of intent is growing. If this newest crisis erupts as many expect, the United States will need to do a better job formulating a strategy that combines direct engagement with pressure and international diplomatic coordination. And in the midst of this storm will stand Suu Kyi, a courageous women backed by her countrymen and thousands more still under arrest. On her shoulders much of the hope for the people of Burma continues to rest.
Ref:
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67014/michael-green/burmas-stubborn-state
Friday, March 11, 2011
Quake and Tsunami Leave Wake of Destruction Across Northern Japan
Quake and Tsunami Leave Wake of Destruction Across Northern Japan
By MARTIN FACKLER
Published: March 11, 2011
TOKYO — Rescuers struggled to reach survivors on Saturday morning as Japan reeled after an earthquake and a tsunami struck in deadly tandem. An 8.9-magnitude earthquake, the strongest ever recorded in Japan, set off a devastating tsunami that sent walls of water washing over coastal cities in the north. Concerns mounted over possible radiation leaks from two nuclear plants near the earthquake zone.
The death toll was in the hundreds, but Japanese media quoted government officials as saying that it would almost certainly rise to more than 1,000. About 200 to 300 bodies were found along the waterline in Sendai, a port city in the northeastern part of the country and the closest major city to the epicenter.
Thousands of homes were destroyed, many roads were impassible, trains and buses were not running, and power and cellphones remained down in the region. Japanese officials on Saturday issued broad evacuation orders for people living in the vicinity of two separate nuclear power plants that had experienced breakdowns in their cooling systems as a result of the earthquake, and they warned that small amounts of radiation could leak from both plants.
While the loss of life and property may yet be considerable, many lives were certainly saved by Japan’s extensive disaster preparedness and strict construction codes. Japan’s economy was spared a more devastating blow because the earthquake hit far from its industrial heartland.
On Friday, at 2:46 p.m. Tokyo time, the quake struck. First came the roar and rumble of the temblor, shaking skyscrapers, toppling furniture and buckling highways. Then waves as high as 30 feet rushed onto shore, whisking away cars and carrying blazing buildings toward factories, fields and highways.
By Saturday morning, Japan was filled with scenes of desperation, as stranded survivors called for help and rescuers searched for people buried in the rubble. Kazushige Itabashi, an official in Natori City, one of the areas hit hardest by the tsunami, said that several districts in an area near Sendai airport had been annihilated.
Rescuers found 870 people in one elementary school on Saturday morning and were trying to reach 1,200 people in the junior high school, closer to the water. There was no electricity and no water for people in shelters. According to a newspaper, the Mainichi Shimbun, about 600 people were on the roof of a public grade school, in Sendai City. By Saturday morning, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and firefighters had evacuated about 150 of them.
On the rooftop of Chuo Hospital in the city of Iwanuma, doctors and nurses were waving white flags and pink umbrellas, according to TV Asahi. On the floor of the roof, they wrote “Help” in English, and “Food” in Japanese. The television reporter, observing the scene from a helicopter, said, “If anyone in the City Hall office is watching, please help them.”
The station also showed scenes of people stranded on a bridge, cut off by water on both sides near the mouth of the Abukuma River in Miyagi Prefecture.
People were frantically searching for their relatives. Fumiaki Yamato, 70, was in his second home in a mountain village outside of Sendai when the earthquake struck. He spoke from his car as he was driving toward Sendai trying to find the rest of his family. While it usually takes about an hour to drive to the city, parts of the road were impassible. “I’m getting worried,” he said as he pulled over to take a reporter’s call. “I don’t know how many hours it’s going to take.”
Japanese, accustomed to frequent earthquakes, were stunned by this one’s magnitude and the more than 100 aftershocks, many of them equivalent to major earthquakes.
“I never experienced such a strong earthquake in my life,” said Toshiaki Takahashi, 49, an official in the Sendai City Hall office. “I thought it would stop, but it just kept shaking and shaking, and getting stronger.”
Train service was shut down across central and northern Japan, including Tokyo, and air travel was severely disrupted.
................
Page 2
On Friday, television images showed waves of more than 12 feet roaring inland in Japan. The floodwaters, thick with floating debris shoved inland, pushed aside heavy trucks as if they were toys. The spectacle was all the more remarkable for being carried live on television, even as the waves engulfed flat farmland that offered no resistance. The tsunami could be seen scooping up every vessel in the ocean off Sendai, and churning everything inland. The gigantic wave swept up a ship carrying more than 100 people, Kyodo News reported.
Vasily V. Titov, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Center for Tsunami Research, said that coastal areas closest to the center of the earthquake probably had about 15 to 30 minutes before the first wave of the tsunami struck. “It’s not very much time,” he said. “In Japan, the public is among the best educated in the world about earthquakes and tsunamis. But it’s still not enough time.”
Complicating the issue, he added, is that the flat terrain in the area would have made it difficult for people to reach higher, and thus safer, ground. On Friday, NHK television showed images of a huge fire sweeping across Kesennuma, a city of more than 70,000 people in the northeast. Whole blocks appeared to be ablaze. NHK also showed aerial images of columns of flame rising from an oil refinery and flood waters engulfing the Sendai airport, where survivors clustered on the roof. The runway was partly submerged. The refinery fire sent a plume of thick black smoke from blazing spherical storage tanks.
Even in Tokyo, far from the epicenter, the quake struck hard. William M. Tsutsui, a professor of Japanese business and economic history at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, was traveling in Tokyo with a business delegation when the ground began to shake. “What was scariest was to look up at the skyscrapers all around,” he said. “They were swaying like trees in the breeze.”
Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the quake and tsunami caused major damage across wide areas.
The United States Geological Survey said the quake was the most severe worldwide since an 8.8-magnitude quake off the coast of Chile a little more than a year ago that killed more than 400. It was less powerful than the 9.1-magnitude quake that struck off Northern Sumatra in late 2004. That quake set off a tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people around the Indian Ocean.
The survey said that Friday’s quake was centered off the coast of Honshu, the most populous of the Japanese islands, at a point about 230 miles northeast of Tokyo and a depth of about 15 miles below the earth’s surface.
President Obama said the United States “stands ready to help” Japan deal with the aftermath. “Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to the people of Japan,” he said in a statement. He later spoke with Mr. Kan and offered assistance.
American military airfields in Japan began accepting civilian flights diverted from airports that suffered damage, American officials said early Friday.
A spokesman for the American Seventh Fleet in Japan said that Naval Air Field Atsugi had received several commercial passenger planes that could not land at Narita airport outside Tokyo. Officials said that Yokota Air Base also received civilian flights. Three American warships in Southeast Asia will be ordered out to sea to reposition themselves in case they need to provide assistance, said a fleet spokesman.
The tsunami assaulted Hawaii with seven-foot waves, although it caused little damage. Powerful surges that hit the West Coast of the United States caused boats to sink in Santa Cruz harbor. The Coast Guard reported that one person was swept to sea near McKinleyville, Calif., while trying to take pictures of the waves, and a search had begun.
In Japan, the Tokyo subways emptied, and airports were closed. Many residents set off on epic journeys home, walking for miles across a vast metropolitan area. In a video posted on YouTube, rumbles shook a supermarket as shopkeepers rushed to steady toppling wares and a classical music soundtrack played.
On Twitter, a person who used the name sinonosama said that students at an agricultural high school in Miyagi Prefecture were fine, but had to take refuge on the third floor after the tsunami flooded the first two floors. The writer said the people there had wrapped themselves in blankets and curtains to keep warm.
The quake occurred in what is called a subduction zone, where one of the Earth’s tectonic plates is sliding beneath another. In this case, the Pacific plate is sliding beneath the North American plate at a rate of about three inches a year. The earthquake occurred at a depth of about 15 miles, which while relatively shallow by global standards is about normal for quakes in this zone, said Emily So, an engineer with the United States Geological Survey in Golden, Colo.
When such quakes set off a tsunami, the devastation often comes from a succession of waves, with the first few being relatively small. The waves can travel across oceans at speeds of 500 miles per hour or more.
...............
Reporting was contributed by Yasuko Kamiizumi from Tokyo; Ken Belson, Maria Newman and Henry Fountain from New York; Daniel Krieger from Osaka, Japan; Kevin Drew and Bettina Wassener from Hong Kong; Alan Cowell and Richard Berry from Paris; Michael Schwirtz from Moscow; Thom Shanker from Washington; Mike Hale from Honolulu; and Elisabeth Bumiller from Brussels.
Ref:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/world/asia/12japan.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
By MARTIN FACKLER
Published: March 11, 2011
TOKYO — Rescuers struggled to reach survivors on Saturday morning as Japan reeled after an earthquake and a tsunami struck in deadly tandem. An 8.9-magnitude earthquake, the strongest ever recorded in Japan, set off a devastating tsunami that sent walls of water washing over coastal cities in the north. Concerns mounted over possible radiation leaks from two nuclear plants near the earthquake zone.
The death toll was in the hundreds, but Japanese media quoted government officials as saying that it would almost certainly rise to more than 1,000. About 200 to 300 bodies were found along the waterline in Sendai, a port city in the northeastern part of the country and the closest major city to the epicenter.
Thousands of homes were destroyed, many roads were impassible, trains and buses were not running, and power and cellphones remained down in the region. Japanese officials on Saturday issued broad evacuation orders for people living in the vicinity of two separate nuclear power plants that had experienced breakdowns in their cooling systems as a result of the earthquake, and they warned that small amounts of radiation could leak from both plants.
While the loss of life and property may yet be considerable, many lives were certainly saved by Japan’s extensive disaster preparedness and strict construction codes. Japan’s economy was spared a more devastating blow because the earthquake hit far from its industrial heartland.
On Friday, at 2:46 p.m. Tokyo time, the quake struck. First came the roar and rumble of the temblor, shaking skyscrapers, toppling furniture and buckling highways. Then waves as high as 30 feet rushed onto shore, whisking away cars and carrying blazing buildings toward factories, fields and highways.
By Saturday morning, Japan was filled with scenes of desperation, as stranded survivors called for help and rescuers searched for people buried in the rubble. Kazushige Itabashi, an official in Natori City, one of the areas hit hardest by the tsunami, said that several districts in an area near Sendai airport had been annihilated.
Rescuers found 870 people in one elementary school on Saturday morning and were trying to reach 1,200 people in the junior high school, closer to the water. There was no electricity and no water for people in shelters. According to a newspaper, the Mainichi Shimbun, about 600 people were on the roof of a public grade school, in Sendai City. By Saturday morning, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and firefighters had evacuated about 150 of them.
On the rooftop of Chuo Hospital in the city of Iwanuma, doctors and nurses were waving white flags and pink umbrellas, according to TV Asahi. On the floor of the roof, they wrote “Help” in English, and “Food” in Japanese. The television reporter, observing the scene from a helicopter, said, “If anyone in the City Hall office is watching, please help them.”
The station also showed scenes of people stranded on a bridge, cut off by water on both sides near the mouth of the Abukuma River in Miyagi Prefecture.
People were frantically searching for their relatives. Fumiaki Yamato, 70, was in his second home in a mountain village outside of Sendai when the earthquake struck. He spoke from his car as he was driving toward Sendai trying to find the rest of his family. While it usually takes about an hour to drive to the city, parts of the road were impassible. “I’m getting worried,” he said as he pulled over to take a reporter’s call. “I don’t know how many hours it’s going to take.”
Japanese, accustomed to frequent earthquakes, were stunned by this one’s magnitude and the more than 100 aftershocks, many of them equivalent to major earthquakes.
“I never experienced such a strong earthquake in my life,” said Toshiaki Takahashi, 49, an official in the Sendai City Hall office. “I thought it would stop, but it just kept shaking and shaking, and getting stronger.”
Train service was shut down across central and northern Japan, including Tokyo, and air travel was severely disrupted.
................
Page 2
On Friday, television images showed waves of more than 12 feet roaring inland in Japan. The floodwaters, thick with floating debris shoved inland, pushed aside heavy trucks as if they were toys. The spectacle was all the more remarkable for being carried live on television, even as the waves engulfed flat farmland that offered no resistance. The tsunami could be seen scooping up every vessel in the ocean off Sendai, and churning everything inland. The gigantic wave swept up a ship carrying more than 100 people, Kyodo News reported.
Vasily V. Titov, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Center for Tsunami Research, said that coastal areas closest to the center of the earthquake probably had about 15 to 30 minutes before the first wave of the tsunami struck. “It’s not very much time,” he said. “In Japan, the public is among the best educated in the world about earthquakes and tsunamis. But it’s still not enough time.”
Complicating the issue, he added, is that the flat terrain in the area would have made it difficult for people to reach higher, and thus safer, ground. On Friday, NHK television showed images of a huge fire sweeping across Kesennuma, a city of more than 70,000 people in the northeast. Whole blocks appeared to be ablaze. NHK also showed aerial images of columns of flame rising from an oil refinery and flood waters engulfing the Sendai airport, where survivors clustered on the roof. The runway was partly submerged. The refinery fire sent a plume of thick black smoke from blazing spherical storage tanks.
Even in Tokyo, far from the epicenter, the quake struck hard. William M. Tsutsui, a professor of Japanese business and economic history at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, was traveling in Tokyo with a business delegation when the ground began to shake. “What was scariest was to look up at the skyscrapers all around,” he said. “They were swaying like trees in the breeze.”
Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the quake and tsunami caused major damage across wide areas.
The United States Geological Survey said the quake was the most severe worldwide since an 8.8-magnitude quake off the coast of Chile a little more than a year ago that killed more than 400. It was less powerful than the 9.1-magnitude quake that struck off Northern Sumatra in late 2004. That quake set off a tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people around the Indian Ocean.
The survey said that Friday’s quake was centered off the coast of Honshu, the most populous of the Japanese islands, at a point about 230 miles northeast of Tokyo and a depth of about 15 miles below the earth’s surface.
President Obama said the United States “stands ready to help” Japan deal with the aftermath. “Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to the people of Japan,” he said in a statement. He later spoke with Mr. Kan and offered assistance.
American military airfields in Japan began accepting civilian flights diverted from airports that suffered damage, American officials said early Friday.
A spokesman for the American Seventh Fleet in Japan said that Naval Air Field Atsugi had received several commercial passenger planes that could not land at Narita airport outside Tokyo. Officials said that Yokota Air Base also received civilian flights. Three American warships in Southeast Asia will be ordered out to sea to reposition themselves in case they need to provide assistance, said a fleet spokesman.
The tsunami assaulted Hawaii with seven-foot waves, although it caused little damage. Powerful surges that hit the West Coast of the United States caused boats to sink in Santa Cruz harbor. The Coast Guard reported that one person was swept to sea near McKinleyville, Calif., while trying to take pictures of the waves, and a search had begun.
In Japan, the Tokyo subways emptied, and airports were closed. Many residents set off on epic journeys home, walking for miles across a vast metropolitan area. In a video posted on YouTube, rumbles shook a supermarket as shopkeepers rushed to steady toppling wares and a classical music soundtrack played.
On Twitter, a person who used the name sinonosama said that students at an agricultural high school in Miyagi Prefecture were fine, but had to take refuge on the third floor after the tsunami flooded the first two floors. The writer said the people there had wrapped themselves in blankets and curtains to keep warm.
The quake occurred in what is called a subduction zone, where one of the Earth’s tectonic plates is sliding beneath another. In this case, the Pacific plate is sliding beneath the North American plate at a rate of about three inches a year. The earthquake occurred at a depth of about 15 miles, which while relatively shallow by global standards is about normal for quakes in this zone, said Emily So, an engineer with the United States Geological Survey in Golden, Colo.
When such quakes set off a tsunami, the devastation often comes from a succession of waves, with the first few being relatively small. The waves can travel across oceans at speeds of 500 miles per hour or more.
...............
Reporting was contributed by Yasuko Kamiizumi from Tokyo; Ken Belson, Maria Newman and Henry Fountain from New York; Daniel Krieger from Osaka, Japan; Kevin Drew and Bettina Wassener from Hong Kong; Alan Cowell and Richard Berry from Paris; Michael Schwirtz from Moscow; Thom Shanker from Washington; Mike Hale from Honolulu; and Elisabeth Bumiller from Brussels.
Ref:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/world/asia/12japan.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
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