R Thangmawia, President of ZORO passes away

R Thangmawia, head of the Zo Reunification Organisation (ZORO) which led a popular movement for political unity among the ethnically similar Mizos of India and Chins of Myanmar in the late 80s and early 90s, was found dead in a Geneva hotel on Monday, according to the organisation he headed for almost three decades.

R Thangmawia had flown to the Swiss city last Wednesday with a colleague to take part at the UN’s 8th session on Expert Mechanism on The Rights of Indigenous Peoples, but he was found dead in his hotel room a little past 8 am local time. He was 79 years old, and was suffering from diabetes.

The popular movement spearheaded by Thangmawia and ZORO, which he was president of until his death, resulted in several Chin groups declaring their allegiance to the Indian Union soon after the 1988 democratic uprising in Myanmar, just two years prior to which Mizoram had attained statehood and the insurgent group Mizo National Front had entered a lasting peace deal with New Delhi.

Mizos in Mizoram, among them former Chief Minister Brigadier T Sailo, were enthusiastic about the movement and had even marched to the international border as a sign of solidarity with the Chins. But India never responded to the Chins’ call for merger although Chins in various parts of Chin State (which borders Manipur, Mizoram and Bangladesh) hoisted the Indian flag.

An alarmed Myanmar government meanwhile responded to the declarations of merger with India with a heavy military build-up in the relatively peaceful Chin Hills, with Chin groups reporting a host of associated atrocities subsequently.
The ZORO movement eventually fizzled out and today its message of political unity among ethnic Zo in Mizoram, Manipur and Myanmar mainly finds resonance in Mizoram’s student unions’ gatherings and rhetoric although some groups in Manipur still hold on to the ideal fervently. Nevertheless, ZORO the organisation remained a small but vocal group that continued to press for indigenous rights at global bodies such as the United Nations, with R Thangmawia leading the group’s effort for decades even as political parties in Mizoram never failed to pay lip service to the organisation’s ideals.

But the lack of mass appeal can be gauged from the fact that there was little mention even in the local media of ZORO’s latest move, which was to declare the “freedom” of the “Zo Nation” on June 26 along with other indigenous groups from around the world gathered under the Indigenous People’s United Nations forum.

Source: http://indianexpress.com

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Why can't I subscribe to Yahoo! Groups with certain email addresses?

A nuai a thu theih huai hi?
...
Description

This article explains why some addresses are prohibited for use in Yahoo! Groups, even though you may be able to successfully add them to your Yahoo! account. Examples are email addresses with prefixes like, "info", "admin", "webmaster", etc.

Resolution

We prohibit two kinds of email addresses from subscribing to Yahoo! Groups:

• "Role email addresses" with prefixes like "info", "admin", "webmaster", "sales", "support", etc.
• "Group" or "List" email addresses like "yahoogroups.com", "googlegroups.com", "topica.com", etc.

Role addresses are prohibited because of the burden they place on Customer Care. At one time, these types of addresses were allowed, but they created enormous volumes of complaints to our Customer Care team. Two reasons why:

• In many organizations, multiple people receive messages sent to these email addresses. So one person in the organization might choose to subscribe to a group using that address only to annoy everyone else on that distribution list who would suddenly start receiving email from a group they had never subscribed to.
• To make matters worse, unsubscribing via email doesn't usually work for these addresses, since the user's email client uses their individual address in the "from" field, while the unsubscribe system requires that the request come from the email address that is actually subscribed to the group.

Group addresses, meanwhile, are banned for the same reasons, although there are additional concerns for these addresses around mailing loops and copyright issues.

http://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=content&y=PROD_GRPS&locale=en_US&id=SLN2568&pir=P5OYIMlibUnUjhooAPBu2zIHph.ccO7VPvZYZpvyAqXkQJGB.eoMtH84cuOSlDp7RzUVdeQ9Sk0Nt2EQWk.jB4J2GwbuC1q3dxiTLfHI

Internet Users Face More Restrictions

A children computer user at internet cafe in downtown Yangon browses the online.

"I had to contact my friends abroad and ask them to open a G-mail account for me as I couldn’t do it over here," said a student at Dagon University.

She added that most Internet users have faced similar difficulties since March.

Yahoo and Hotmail are banned in the military-run country. G-mail can be accessed through proxy servers although it is also banned.

The Burmese military government is notorious for controlling the flow of information into and out of the country.

"Burma leads the dishonor roll," said the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a leading media watchdog, in its April report. CPJ named Burma as the worst violator of Internet freedom in the world.

Internet cafés which get caught helping customers open G-mail accounts by running bypass programs are to be closed down, said the owner of an Internet café in Mayangone Township in Rangoon.

"Our café only helps people we know when we are asked to open an email account," he said. "We don’t help strangers because we will be in trouble if the authorities find out."

The military regime has blocked the well-known Google research engine and its Google mail service since June 2006.

The regime has been constructing a "silicon valley," called Yadanabon Cyber City, in Maymyo in Mandalay Division since June 2006. According to state-run newspapers, the facility is intended to serve as the sole nationwide Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Burma.

One computer technician said, "the Cyber City will likely be used to control Internet users and the flow of information".

"The government is losing its cyber battle because of Google high technology, but it has kept trying to block access to popular e-mail services, including G-mail," he said, adding that the government can’t eradicate e-mail completely, but can slow it down and shut it down temporarily.

"It is believed that the junta is concentrating on Yadanabon Cyber City in preparation for controlling and monitoring the flow of information before the 2010 election," he added.

Burma currently has three ISPs : state-run Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications (MPT), which operates Myanmar Info-tech; semi-government-owned Myanmar Teleport (formerly Bagan Net); and Hanthawaddy National Gateway.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy in September, a senior member of the Myanmar Computer Professionals Association said that Hanthawaddy National Gateway—Burma’s newest ISP, which was launched in July 2008—is expected to become the largest ISP in the country.

He said it receives technical assistance from Alcatel Shanghai Bell Company, which is represented in Burma by Tay Za, a wealthy tycoon and close associate of senior leaders of Burma’s military junta.

Hanthawaddy National Gateway is to be linked to the Yadanabon teleport in Mandalay and will provide access to subscribers in every state and division except Rangoon Division. It is currently only available to military officials, he said.

Src: Myanmar ISP