The military dictatorship which has ruled Burma almost 50 years, since a coup in 1962, has been widely criticized for frequent violations of human rights, including rape, forced labor, forced relocation and land confiscation.

Many Shan people have been forced to flee to Thailand because of frequent violations of their human rights by the brutal regime.

Farmers in central Shan State are facing a very difficult choice as the Burmese Army expands its presence in their area. Do they sell their family’s farm for less than fair market value, or risk having troops force them off the land being used to build a new regional army headquarters?

ELECTION 2010 --- Shan State

When voters in Shan State’s 55 electorates go to the polls on 7 November they will have 12 political parties to choose from, but not all 12 parties will contest all of the 55 electorates. Only the military regime’s backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) will contest in all electorates. A sticking point to the USDP’s dominance of all the electorates in Shan state is the unresolved issue of the regime’s move to force all ceasefire groups to join the Border Guard Force. The United Wa State Army and the National Democractic Alliance Army also known as the Mongla group have so far refused to accept the regime’s BGF proposal. This will affect six electorates, four under the control of the UWSA, one under the NDAA and one under both.

The Burmese military regime is going to great lengths to ensure its proxy civilian party, Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), wins the election on 7th November.

The 2008 constitution bars many groups from taking part in the national elections planned for 7 November. These people include religious leaders, political prisoners; ethnic people denied identity cards and millions of Burmese migrant workers in Thailand.

TO MY FRIEND

Principal of the American Baptist College,Rangoon, and Senior Shan Missionary, the greatest authority upon Shan literature, and the translator of the Bible into that language,this little book is dedicated by

THE AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION

The following stories have been taken from the great [v] mass of unwritten lore that is to the black eyed, brown skinned boys and girls of the Shan mountain country of Burma what "Jack the Giant Killer" and "Cinderella" are to our own children.

The old saw as to the song sand laws of a country may or may not be true. I feel confident, however, that stories such as these, being as they are purely native, with as little admixture of Western ideas as it was possible to give them in dressing them in their garment of English words, will give a better insight into what the native of Burma really is, his modes of thought and ways of looking at and measuring things, than a treatise thrice as long and representing infinitely more literary merit than will be found in these little tales; and at the same time I hope they will be found to the average reader, at least, more interesting.  Read more...................

Introduction

The West has St. Valentine and Romeo and Juliet. The Shans, a sub-family of the Tai race, one of the major inhabitants of Southeast Asia, spanning from Yunnan to Assam and from Kachin State of Burma to Laos, Vietnam and Thailand, have Khun Sam Law and Nang Oo Piem. The date of Khun Sam Law’s decease, the Third Waxing Day of the Third Lunar Month, synchronizes with that of St Valentines Day, 14 February, in some years, the latest in 1956.

One problem facing Shans each year when 7 February draws near is whether the day marking the unity between ruling princes and their people against British suzereignty should be called “Shan National Day” as it used to be or “Shan State Day” as renamed by the military junta that came into power in a bloody coup in 1962.