Showing posts with label asia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label asia. Show all posts

Sunday, November 18, 2012

President Obama in Burma ~ UPDATE: Political Prisoners Freed

MyanmarSign

Recap of entire trip from Alex Wagoner on MSNBC:



UPDATE: Good news - the government of Burma (Myanmar) is releasing dozens of unfairly accused political prisoners during President Obama's visit.

Reuters
Myanmar's government began releasing dozens of political prisoners on Monday as Barack Obama arrived for the first visit by a sitting U.S. president to the former dictatorship.

Sixty-six prisoners were scheduled to be freed, two-thirds of them dissidents, according to prison officials and activists.

They included prominent figures such as Myint Aye, a senior Prison Department official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A third of those released were former military intelligence personnel who fell afoul of the junta, according to the 88 Generation Students political group.

Myint Aye is arguably the most prominent dissident left in Myanmar's gulag. He was one of dozens of activists arrested on what Amnesty International says were trumped-up charges and convicted in secret courts on flimsy evidence or confessions extracted under torture.











Reuters
His plane landed in the former capital Yangon, where he will meet President Thein Sein, a former junta member who has spearheaded reforms since taking office in March 2011, and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who led the struggle against military rule and, like Obama, is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. She is now a lawmaker.

. . . Speaking in Thailand on the eve of his landmark visit to the former pariah state, Obama denied he was going there to offer his "endorsement" or that his trip was premature.

Instead, he insisted his intention was to acknowledge that Myanmar, also known as Burma, had opened the door to democratic change but there was still much more to do.

"I don't think anybody is under the illusion that Burma's arrived, that they're where they need to be," Obama told a news conference as he began a three-country Asian tour, his first trip abroad since winning a second term.

"On the other hand, if we waited to engage until they had achieved a perfect democracy, my suspicion is we'd be waiting an awful long time," he said.



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Obama Goes Philosophical in Thailand

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President Obama is travelling in Asia this week, with stops in Thailand, Burma (Myanmar) and Cambodia.

He's been there almost 24 hours now and hasn't insulted or offended anyone, unlike Mitt Romney on his last world tour. /snark

CNN Political Ticker
"I always believe in prayer. I believe in prayer when I go to church back home," Obama said at a press conference in Bangkok. "if a Buddhist monk is wishing me well, I’m going to take whatever good vibes he can give me to try to deal with some challenges back home."

At a stop earlier in the day, Obama jokingly told a monk, "We're working on this budget; we're going to need a lot of prayer for that."

At Sunday's press conference with Thailand's Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, Obama also expressed confidence about a fiscal deal, drawing on the democracy theme.

"Democracy's a little messier than alternative systems of government, but that's because democracy allows everybody to have a voice," Obama said. "That system of government lasts, and it's legitimate. And when agreements are finally struck, you know that nobody's being left out of the conversation - and that's the reason for our stability and prosperity."








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