forced membership

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a Falam resident stated that Falam Peace and Development Council (Chin State) forced one person per family, in Falam, to join USDP by forcing them to sign membership forms.

http://www.khonumthung.org/news.php?rowstart=81

Non-USDP Voters Refused Ballots

THANPYUZAYAT, Mon State — Polling station officers in Kyaung Paing, a village in Thanpyuzayat Township, Mon State, have refused to sign ballot papers to voters they suspect of not being USDP supporters, according to several local sources. The voters are nonetheless issued ballots and allowed to vote, however unsigned ballots will most likely be rendered “spoilt ballots” during vote-counting.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/

Farmers in Burma’s northern Kachin state claim the party led by Burmese Prime Minister Thein Sein is collecting votes in advance for the looming 7 November elections.

It comes as opposition politicians complain about controversial electioneering tactics by the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which is widely tipped to win the polls. The party has already been accused of illegal vote collecting in southern Burma.

A local USDP leader and a group of members from a local village group in Shan State came to four neighboring villages and ordered at least one from each family to work as a member of USDP. They had forced 80 villagers from the first village, over 100 villagers from the second village, 20 from the third, and 60 from the fourth village register under USDP. They gave them USDP membership cards and told them it was not necessary to go to the polling station to vote on election day now that they had membership cards.

A resident from Sansi B Ward, Tachilek Township, Shan State, reported that Tachilek USDP members have been forcefully recruiting women from wards in Tachilek about 50 to 60 years of age by taking photos, and making party membership cards without any consent.

Shan Herald Agency for News, 26 August 2010

တာခ်ီလိတ္ၿမိဳ႕ႀကံ႕ဖြံ႕ပါတီေကာ္မတီ၀င္မ်ား အခ်ဳိ႕ရပ္ကြက္မ်ားအတြင္းလွည့္လည္ၿပီး တစ္အိမ္တက္ဆင္း အသက္ ၅၀-၆၀ ေက်ာ္(အမ်ဳိးသမီးခပ္မ်ားမ်ား)အား ဓါတ္ပံု႐ိုက္ယူၿပီးေနာက္ ပါတီ၀င္ကဒ္ျပားျပဳလုပ္ကာ ပါတီ၀င္အျဖစ္ အဓမၼသြတ္သြင္း လ်က္ရွိေၾကာင္း စံုစမ္းသိရွိရပါသည္။

Zaykaba U Khin Shwe, a well-known businessman, explained that several well-known entrepreneurs, including Yuzana U Htay Myint, U Win Myint, the Chairperson of the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI), Dr. Tin Tun Oo, Takatho Tin Kha and some executive committee members of the Literature and Journalist Association, decided to participate in the elections and to represent the USDP. They were instructed to do so by the military regime.

Residents of Kyaukphyu, Arakan State, affirmed that the USDP has been recruiting 50 new members
from every village in Zin Chaung and Snae districts. The USDP is also recruiting new members in
constituencies 5 and 6 in Kyaukphyu Township, Arakan State.

U Hla Kyine, NUP Organizer of Tharawaddy Township, stated that NUP submitted a complaint to the Union Election Commission regarding the case where U San Win, USDP organizer seized the party membership cards of 16 NUP members from Myauklayyone village, Tharawaddy Township, Pegu Division on 19 September and forcefully urged them to join USDP.

The newly-formed political party led by Burmese prime minister Thein Sein has begun campaigning across Burma in lieu of elections this year.

A resident in Kaw Thaung town, in Burma’s southern Tenasserim division, said that local Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) members were going from door to door urging people to join the party.

According to a local, USDP membership recruiting campaign began on 15 May in Namkam Township, northern Shan State. USDP members had to recruit at least 50 members each from every ward of the township.

www.shanland.org