The prepared speech commemorating the 63rd anniversary of the Union Day, 12 February 2010, the day leaders of Burma, Shan, Chin and Kachin concluded an alliance pact in 1947, pointedly ignore Panglong where the conference took place, and Aung San, the co-author of the agreement and the father of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, according to sources from Shan State North and South.

“He spoke instead of Pondaung Ponnya, where the first human beings were supposed to have originated and the united struggle against colonialism that had brought Independence to the country,” said a source from Panglong, the town made famous by the Panglong Agreement.

The message was read out by local officials in each township. “He also mentioned the 2008 constitution and exhorted the people to exercise their rights in the forthcoming elections,” said a resident of Muse, who had attended the ceremony in the morning presided over by U Tun Min Zaw, Chairman of the Muse District Peace and Development Council.

The Union Day, a major event during the days of Senior General Than Shwe’s late boss Gen Ne Win, when it was celebrated day and night is now a largely forgotten day for many, least of all Panglong. “Instead we are having a gambling festival, a two week event, that began on 2 February,” the source from Panglong said.

“The age of Panglong is over,” Maj Gen Soe Win, the Burmese Army’s Kachin State commander, was reported by Kachin News Group as telling the Kachin Independence Organization, one of the major ceasefire groups that had promised to surrender if the Panglong spirit: Equality, autonomy, democracy and human rights for all states was continued to be upheld by the junta.

“Had Aung San not promised political equality and autonomy to the Frontier Areas (as the non-Burman areas were then known), the Union of Burma might never have been born,” wrote Nehginpao Kipgen, a researcher on the rise of political conflicts in Burma, in yesterday’s Korea Times.

Meanwhile, the United Nationalities Alliance, the umbrella organization of ethnic parties that had won in the 1990 elections, call for the release of all political prisoners including Aung San Suu Kyi and the Shan leader Khun Tun Oo, an end to the offensives in the ethnic areas and the holding of a tripartite dialogue between the junta, the National League for Democracy and the ethnic forces.