October 15, 2015
By Steve Herman
Bangkok - Myanmar (click here) on Thursday signed a cease-fire agreement with eight armed groups, but other significant rebels fighting the government refused to sign the pact.
“The National Cease-fire Agreement is a historic gift from us to generations of the future,” declared President Thein Sein at the signing ceremony in the capital, Naypyidaw.
“Tens of thousands of troops from both sides have lost their lives in the conflicts,” the president noted. “Hundreds of thousands of people living in conflict areas have suffered severely due to the fighting.”
Acknowledging that the ethnic Kachin and Wa – with tens of thousands of soldiers – are still determined to fight, Thein Sein pledged to “try harder to gain agreement with other groups.”...
I would think those that signed a ceasefire would have an easier time in obtaining food and water at the very least. It is time for a permanent peace. The children have to be put first to education and a future without war.
...Myanmar’s ethnic conflict (click here) has existed since before independence in January 1948. The ethnic minorities of the country have since felt marginalised, excluded from the mainstream and being given differential treatment as opposed to the favoured Burman people. After the assassination of Gen Aung San (Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s father), who is called the ‘Father of the Union of Burma’ in July 1947, the ethnic minorities were left out in the cold by subsequent governments. Eventually, an armed struggle ensued between the Myanmar junta’s Tatmadaw (Main Army) and the ethnic armies (local militias), which continues even today. Since the 1962 military coup and subsequent takeover by Gen Ne Win, the situation deteriorated further as the ethnic minorities were discriminated against even more with Ne Win’s policy of Burmanisation. The ethnic minorities were further excluded from political decision-making and brutally repressed by the ruling junta which led to a simmering anger within them....
If President Thein Sein would offer better living conditions and education of the children to the militant groups there was be sincere reasons to end the civil war.
