The government’s Peace Making Work Committee led by Railway Minister Aung Min met with Burmese opposition groups based in Thailand yesterday in Bangkok.
The committee’s delegation headed by Aung Min arrived in Bangkok yesterday morning and met with representatives from the Democratic Party for a New Society — a political party founded in 1988 by university students.
The DPNS had the second largest member-base after Aung Sann Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. Many of the members were high school and university students who went into exile in 1991.
The party is currently listed as an unlawful association in Burma.
The DNPS’s chairman Aung Moe Zaw said Minister Aung Min promised to work to get the group’s name removed from the unlawful association list and would help facilitate a safe return for all the DPNS members to Burma.
“Some of us were accused of criminal charges individually – I have been a legal fugitive since 1990 and we want those charges cleared as well,” said Aung Moe Zaw.
“We expressed our wish to go back to Burma and work there as a [legitimate] political party – [the committee] said this is possible and they would try as much as they can.”
The government’s delegation recommend the DNPS’s members to write a letter concerning their requests their wishes and the peace committee would speak with the president about the issues.
The Burmese Immigration and Population Minister Khin Yi and Hla Maung Shwe, vice-president of Myanmar Egress and Tin Win, Burma’s ambassador in Thailand, also attended the meeting.
This was the second round of talks between the peace committee and the DNPS.
On Sunday Aung Min and the committee met with members of Generation Wave at Myanmar Egress’s office in Rangoon.
Generation Wave formed in 2007 during the Saffron Revolution and were in exile in Thailand but returned to Burma earlier this year.
The government delegation in Thailand is also scheduled to meet with representatives from the Karen National Union, the National League for Democracy-Liberated Area (NLD-LA), the Forum for Democracy in Burma and the All-Burma Students Democratic Front today.
