Myanmar’s government ordered more than 80 people at a shelter for patients with HIV and AIDS to leave following a visit by newly freed democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the center’s organizers said yesterday.
Aung San Suu Kyi visited the shelter on the outskirts of Yangon on Wednesday, promising to provide it with badly needed medicines. She also addressed a crowd of more than 600 who came to see her.
A day after her visit, government officials told patients they would have to leave by next week or face legal action because the center’s permit was not being renewed, said Phyu Phyu Thin, a democracy activist who founded the operation.
By law, homeowners must seek government permission every two weeks to allow visitors to stay overnight.
“We have been allowed to renew our resident permits in the past,” Phyu Phyu Thin said.
“I think authorities want to pressure us because of aunty’s Aung San Suu Kyi’s] visit to the shelter,” said Zeyar, a member of Suu Kyi’s officially disbanded political party and one of the organizers of the shelter.
Zeyar uses only one name.
The shelter, which includes a small wooden house and a two-story building of wood and thatch walls, currently accommodates 82 patients, including young children, offering them housing, food, medicine and educational opportunities.
Zeyar said that health authorities yesterday offered to move the patients to their own HIV center.
“The patients have the right to make their own choice. The pressure by local authorities has made our patients very sad, which will adversely affect their health,” he said.
Some patients were defiant.
“I will never move out of the shelter,” said 45-year old Ma Yi Yi Nyunt, who arrived at the shelter in September.
“I could have been dead by now had I not been taken to this place. This place is a haven for people like us,” 45-year-old Maung Ohn said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in