BURMA RELATED NEWS – JANUARY 27, 2012
Jan 28th, 2012
By Andrew R.C. Marshall
ON THE MEKONG RIVER | Fri Jan 27, 2012 9:12am EST (Reuters) – A thin line divides tourism, trade and terror in the Golden Triangle, where the lawless borders of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet.
In Myanmar, where the jungly banks of the Mekong River vanish into the mist, lies an anarchic realm of drug smugglers, militiamen and pirates on speedboats. “I’m scared to go any further,” says Kan, a 46-year-old boatman, cutting his engine as he drifts just inside Myanmar waters from Thailand. “It’s too dangerous.”
It was here, according to the Thai military, that 13 Chinese sailors on two cargo ships laden with narcotics were murdered in early October. It was the deadliest assault on Chinese nationals overseas in modern times. But a Reuters investigation casts serious doubts on the official account of the attack.
The Thai military says the victims were killed upriver before their ships floated downstream into Thailand. But evidence gleaned from Thai officials and unpublished police and military reports suggests that some, if not all, of the sailors were still alive when their boats crossed into Thailand, and that they were executed and tossed overboard inside Thai territory.
Their assailants remain unknown. Initially, the prime suspect was a heavily armed Mekong pirate who terrorizes shipping in Myanmar. But then the investigation turned to nine members of an elite anti-narcotics taskforce of the Thai military.
New patrols by Chinese gunboats were supposed to restore peace to the region. But a visit to the Golden Triangle also found that attacks on Mekong shipping continue.
Incongruously, just across the river from where the ill-fated ships were found moored, on the Laos side of the triangle, Reuters also discovered a vast casino complex catering to Chinese tourists. Its Chinese owner regards it as a “second homeland”; others worry it could morph into a strategic Chinese outpost.
CHINA’S MEKONG AMBITIONS
The events are unfolding at a time when Myanmar is in the international spotlight. The country’s decision last year to end a half-century of isolation by freeing political prisoners and reaching out to the West has the potential of to reshape this promising but impoverished nation and the entire region.
The geopolitical murder mystery is set against the backdrop of Southeast Asia’s famed Mekong River, which flows from the Himalayas through China, where it is called the Lancang, and into Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
Around 60 million people depend on the river and its tributaries for food, transport and many other aspects of their daily lives. Beijing has invested heavily in the Mekong as part of a strategy to expand its economic and diplomatic influence in Southeast Asia, dynamiting some sections to allow bigger ships to pass, streamlining import and export procedures, and improving shipping support facilities.
The Mekong is an increasingly lucrative trade route. Cargo volumes between Thailand’s Chiang Saen and ports in China’s Yunnan province have tripled since 2004, with about 300,000 tonnes of mainly agricultural goods now transported along the Mekong every year, Mekong River Commission statistics show.
All Chinese shipping on the Mekong was suspended after the October massacre, which sparked popular outrage in China, with photos of the sailors’ bodies circulating widely on the Internet. Shipping resumed five weeks later, with the departure of 10 cargo boats from the Mekong port of Guanlei — protected by heavily armed Chinese border guards on speedboats.
The patrols, ostensibly conducted with Myanmar, Laos and Thailand, are a major expansion in Beijing’s role in regional security, extending its law enforcement beyond its borders, down a highly strategic waterway and into Southeast Asia. They come as the U.S. re-engages with Asia, where Thailand is one of its oldest military allies.
“This tough new China policy toward any obstacles to their Mekong commerce could in future be met with charges of gunboat diplomacy,” said Paul Chambers, an American academic who co-authored “Cashing In Across The Golden Triangle” with Myanmar economist Thein Swe. “In the future, some Mekong states may increasingly turn to the U.S. to offset China’s influence.”
METH MADNESS
But as Chinese influence grows, it is encroaching on a region dominated for decades by a much more profitable trade: narcotics. The mountainous Golden Triangle is probably named after the gold once used to barter for opium. Today, Myanmar is the world’s second-biggest opium producer after Afghanistan. Methamphetamine production here is soaring as well.
Even a show of strength by China hasn’t tamed this wilderness. Three Myanmar soldiers were reportedly killed in December when their joint patrol with Laos clashed with armed bandits about 20 km (12 miles) upriver from the Thai border town of Sop Ruak, near the Mekong pirate Naw Kham’s haunt of Sam Puu Island.
It was here that the two Chinese vessels were supposedly attacked.
On the morning of October 5, the two cargo ships, Hua Ping and Yu Xing 8, drifted down the Mekong into Thailand. The Hua Ping was carrying fuel oil; the Yu Xing 8 had apples and garlic. Sometime after they crossed the border, the ships were boarded by an elite Thai military unit called the Pha Muang Taskforce, named after an ancient Thai warrior king. On the Yu Xing 8’s blood-splattered bridge, slumped over an AK-47 assault rifle, was a dead man later identified as its captain, Yang Deyi, the taskforce said. The Hua Ping was deserted.
Aboard the two ships were 920,000 methamphetamine pills with an estimated Thai street value of $6 million.
The corpses of the 12 other crew members were soon plucked from the Mekong’s swirling waters. Their horrific injuries were recorded in a Thai police report. Most victims had been gagged and blindfolded with duct tape and cloth, with their hands bound or handcuffed behind their backs. Some had massive head wounds suggesting execution-style killings; others had evidently been sprayed with bullets.
Li Yan, 28, one of two female cooks among the victims, also had a broken neck.
THAI INVOLVEMENT?
As a furious Beijing dispatched senior officials to Thailand to demand answers, a suspect for the massacre emerged: Naw Kham, the fugitive “freshwater pirate” of the Mekong, a member of Myanmar’s ethnic Shan minority whose hill tribe militia is accused of drug trafficking, robbery, kidnapping and murder.
Naw Kham is not the only suspect. On October 28, nine members of the Pha Muang Taskforce appeared before police in the northern city of Chiang Rai to answer allegations of murder and tampering with evidence. During a visit to Bangkok in late October, China’s vice minister of public security, Zhang Xinfeng, described this as “important progress” and concluded: “The case has been basically cracked.”
In reality, the case is far from solved.
Thai police have interviewed more than 100 witnesses and are still investigating. Despite reports to the contrary in Chinese and Thai media, the nine soldiers — who include a major and a lieutenant — have not been charged with any crime and remain on active military duty.
The Pha Muang Taskforce says its members boarded the Chinese ships after they had moored near the Thai port of Chiang Saen. But a prominent Thai parliamentary committee, which is also investigating the massacre, not only undermined this assertion but alleged official complicity.
“Circumstantial evidence suggests that Thai officials were involved in the sailors’ deaths,” the House Foreign Affairs Standing Committee said on January 12 in an apparent reference to the military task force. “However, their motive, and whether it is connected to the drugs found on the ships, remains inconclusive,” it said in preliminary findings seen by Reuters.
Early the next morning after that report, unknown assailants on the Myanmar riverbank lobbed two M-79 grenades at four Chinese cargo ships and a Myanmar patrol boat. Both missed. Ten days after that, yet another Chinese ship was fired upon from the Laos bank. Again, nobody was hurt – and nobody identified for the attack.
“OPIUM KING”
Naw Kham has become a near-legendary figure. So many shipping attacks are attributed to this 46-year-old ethnic Shan that it seems as if the Mekong ambitions of the Asian superpower are being foiled by a medieval-style drug lord with a few dozen hill tribe gunmen.
Naw Kham started out as a lowly administrative officer in the now-defunct Mong Tai Army (MTA), said Khuensai Jaiyen, a Shan journalist who also once served in the same Shan rebel group. The MTA’s leader was Khun Sa, the so-called “opium king” of the Golden Triangle, who had a $2 million reward on his head from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration until his death in Yangon in 2007.
But while Khun Sa was a flamboyant figure who courted media attention, Naw Kham is so publicity shy only two photos purporting to be him exist. Both are blurred, and show a faintly smiling man with protruding ears, thick eyebrows and a mop of black hair.
One of the photos is attached to an Interpol red notice seeking the arrest of a fugitive Myanmar national of the same name. The notice lists the man’s birthplace as Mongyai, a remote area of Myanmar’s war-ravaged Shan State.
A second big difference between Khun Sa and Naw Kham: the drugs that allegedly enriched them.
Opium and heroin are no longer the Golden Triangle’s only products. Since the late 1990s, secret factories in Shan State have churned out vast quantities of methamphetamine. This highly addictive drug is known across Asia in pill form by the Thai name yaba (”crazy medicine”) and in its purer crystalline form as ice or shabu.
It is now the top drug in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Brunei, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime reported in 2011. Naw Kham’s rise coincided with this explosion of meth use, which transformed the ill-policed Mekong between Myanmar and Laos — Naw Kham’s patch — into one of Southeast Asia’s busiest drug conduits.
Every year hundreds of millions of Myanmar-made methamphetamine pills are spirited across the river into Laos or down into Thailand. The trade is worth hundreds of millions of dollars — enough to corrupt poorly paid law enforcement officials across the region.
Narcotics are not the Mekong’s only contraband.
Other lucrative goods include: endangered wildlife such as tigers and pangolins; weapons, stolen vehicles and illegal timber; and, in the run-up to this month’s Tet celebrations, thousands of dogs in filthy cages bound for restaurants in Vietnam.
There is human contraband too. Illegal migrants from Myanmar and Laos are bound for Thailand’s booming construction or sex industries, while a constant stream of North Koreans journey across southern China and through Laos to surrender to the Thai authorities, who obligingly deport them to South Korea.
“MADE-UP CHARACTER”
Naw Kham gets a cut of “anything that makes money and passes through his territory,” said Kheunsai Jaiyen, who runs the Shan Herald Agency for News, a leading source of news from largely inaccessible Shan State, based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He believed the most recent attack on a Chinese ship happened because the crew, thinking the new patrols would protect them, didn’t pay the usual protection money to Naw Kham.
Naw Kham proved impossible to reach for comment: Thai boats dared not sail to Sam Puu Island. Kheunsai Jaiyen said he was in hiding.
The freshwater pirate has capitalized on growing resentment towards China’s presence along the Mekong. Cheap, high-volume Chinese goods are squeezing Thai and Myanmar farmers and small traders, and threatening to turn Laos into what Paul Chambers called “a mere way-station.”
So when the crew of the Hua Ping and Yu Xing 8 were fished from the Mekong, Naw Kham seemed the obvious culprit. Yet both Kheunsai Jaiyen and Thai MP Sunai
Chulpongsatorn, who chairs the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, remained unconvinced. Sunai believed that a Naw Kham legend had been created by attributing attacks by other Mekong bandits to him.
“There are many Naw Khams, not just one,” he said. “It’s like in a drama. He’s a made-up character. He exists, but it seems he has been given a lot of extra importance.”
Lost in China’s outrage over the massacre was the possibility that the Chinese sailors were themselves involved in the drug trade. One theory holds that Naw Kham suspected that the Chinese vessels contained large shipments of narcotics, and dispatched men to seize the illicit cargo and brutally murder the crew to deter others from running drugs through his territory.
WHERE WAS SHIP ATTACKED?
The Pha Muang Taskforce, based in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, insists that Naw Kham, and not its nine soldiers, is responsible for murdering the Chinese sailors. The taskforce declined to be interviewed for this story, citing the ongoing investigation.
But Reuters has obtained the taskforce’s report of the incident to the foreign affairs committee in November. It stated that on October 5 the Pha Muang force boarded the two cargo ships in Chiang Saen after learning they had been attacked near Sam Puu Island. They reported finding the dead captain on the Yu Xing 8’s bridge and, in its hold, a cardboard box with 400,000 methamphetamine pills. Another 520,000 pills were hidden in three sacks aboard the Hua Ping.
Both ships were peppered with bullet-holes. There were 14 bullets or bullet casings on the Hua Ping’s decks, said Thai police, and two blood trails apparently indicating where bodies had been dragged and tossed overboard.
For Pha Muang, it was just another incident in its self-declared 11-year-old mission “to help secure the well-being of civilians residing along the three-nation border.” But the taskforce’s account has crucial gaps, said MP Sunai, the parliamentary committee chairman investigating the murders.
Pha Muang said the ships had already docked near Chiang Saen when its soldiers boarded them. But if one ship had only a dead captain aboard, and the other no crew at all, how did they drift down the fast-flowing Mekong without running aground, then safely moor near Chiang Saen?
“It’s a 200-tonne ship,” said Sunai. “With nobody steering, it would have lost control long before it reached the riverbank.”
The same point is made by a senior Thai official in Chiang Rai province who is close to the investigation and spoke on condition his name and exact profession were not identified. The boats could not have docked without both a captain and engineer on board, and they would probably need to read Chinese to understand the controls, he insisted.
He was also convinced that some, if not all, of the Chinese sailors were alive when their ships reached Thailand. According to witnesses, he said, four smaller boats had escorted the two ships through Thai waters to the sound of gunfire.
When the ships moored, about seven men jumped from them onto the smaller boats, the Thai official said, which then sped upriver again. The Thai official couldn’t say who these men were, but believed that the military, who had sealed off the area, watched them go.
GAMBLING EMPIRE
On the Laotian bank of the Mekong, clearly visible from where the ill-fated Chinese ships stopped, an enormous crown rises above the tree line. It belongs to a casino, part of a burgeoning gambling empire hacked from the Laotian jungle by a Chinese company called Kings Romans in English and, in Chinese, Jin Mu Mian (”golden kapok”), after the kapok trees that carpet the area with flame-red flowers.
Kings Romans controls a 102-sq-km (39-sq-mile) special economic zone (SEZ) which occupies seven km (four miles) of prime Mekong riverbank overlooking Myanmar and Thailand. The company’s chairman is also the SEZ’s president: Zhao Wei, a casino tycoon who hails from a poor peasant family in China’s northeastern Heilongjang province.
Zhao was unable to talk to Reuters because he was preparing to welcome Laotian president Choummaly Sayasone to a Chinese New Year festival, said Li Linjun, Kings Romans tourism manager. Li offered a tour of a Special Economic Zone into which he said the company had so far sunk $800 million.
Fountains and golden statues flank the main road from the pier to the casino. Across the road is a banner in Chinese exhorting people to “join hands to beat drugs.”
Two gargantuan lion statues guard the entrance to the casino. Inside, beyond the security gates, a marble staircase lit by a giant chandelier sweeps up to a golden statue of a nameless, bare-chested Roman emperor. The ceilings are decorated with reproductions of Renaissance frescoes.
Under construction nearby is a karaoke and massage complex, fashioned after a Chinese temple. The resort also offers a shooting range, complete with AK47 and M16 assault rifles, and a petting zoo.
An average of about 1,000 people visit the casino every day, said Li. (Gambling is illegal in both Laos and China.) But Zhao Wei didn’t intend to create a “little Macau,” mimicking China’s casino-stuffed enclave on the Pearl River estuary. Li notes that Kings Romans controls an area “bigger than Macau” – three times bigger, in fact – and plans to build an industrial park and ecotourism facilities.
NEW AIRPORT
Next month, said Li, construction begins on what will be the second-largest airport in Laos after Wattay International Airport in the capital Vientiane.
Perhaps aware of anti-Chinese resentment, Li hailed Kings Romans as a model of responsible investment. About 40 percent of the complex’s 3,000 workers were Chinese, he said, but the rest came from Thailand, Myanmar and Laos. He then showed off a compound with scores of modest concrete houses which he said were given free to local Laotians who had once lived in wooden shacks. “These might be the happiest people in Laos,” he said.
Li called Laos “our second homeland.” The SEZ certainly felt a lot like China. Most croupiers are Chinese. Most gamblers pay in Chinese yuan or Thai baht. The mobile phone signal is provided by a Chinese company. Street signs are in Chinese and English.
The passports of visitors are processed by Chinese and Laotian immigration officers. The area is protected by the Lao People’s Army, said Li, but when Reuters visited, the only car patrolling the streets belonged to the Chinese police.
When asked about the 13 Chinese sailors, Li’s eyes brim with tears. “I feel so sorry for my compatriots,” he said. Yet he believed their deaths would have no impact on business because “people know that we are not connected to this case.”
Yet Kings Romans has brushed against both the drug trade and Naw Kham. Last April, a casino boat was seized by the freshwater pirate’s men near Sam Puu Island and 19 crewmen held for a 22-million-baht ($733,000) ransom, which Zhao Wei paid, the Shan Herald Agency for News reported.
Then, in September, an operation by Laotian and Chinese officials found 20 sacks of yaba pills worth $1.6 million in the casino grounds, according to Thai media reports.
Li denied all knowledge of the yaba bust or that the kidnapping had even taken place, stressing that Zhao Wei came to the Golden Triangle to build an economic alternative to the narcotics trade. He said he had never heard of Naw Kham. “Maybe it’s gossip. That’s why they call this place the mysterious Golden Triangle.”
DISTANT OUTPOST OF CHINA
Equally mysterious was the special economic zone’s future ambitions. The area it occupied was so large and strategically located that it might one day be used as a Chinese military base, the Thai official in Chiang Rai said.
That might be far-fetched. But the Golden Triangle SEZ and similar schemes elsewhere in Laos and Myanmar “signify that China is prepared to remain entrenched in the Greater Mekong Subregion,” said Chambers. “They provide an exit for southwestern China to entrepots in Myanmar and Thailand, and then to markets abroad. Such schemes in fact need security to protect them.”
If the Golden Triangle SEZ is a distant outpost of China, a “second homeland,” then it is poignant that 13 Chinese men and women — blindfolded, gagged, terrified — could have sailed past it in the final moments of their lives.
The Hua Ping and Yu Xing 8 are still moored at Chiang Saen, across the river from the casino, their rusting flanks cordoned off with police crime-scene tape. Nearby, workers are loading dried goods and soft drinks onto another Chinese ship, the Hong Li, bound for the Myanmar port of Sop Lui.
“Of course we’re worried about security, but we’re encouraged by the presence of Chinese patrols,” said a crew member, who only identified himself by the family name Deng.
Asked about his 13 dead compatriots, he echoed what is now a common misperception in China: nine Thai soldiers have admitted their guilt and will be held responsible for the
killings.
“We want the truth. That’s the most important thing,” said Deng, before the Hong Li sailed up the Mekong and into the void.
Wall Street Journal (blog) – Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi Addresses WEF in Video Message
By Michael Casey
Twelve months after she made an historic audio address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, one that was made possible by the end of seven years of house arrest, Burmese pre-democracy leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi addressed the same gathering again, this time via the more advanced medium of video.
Coming in the wake of a raft of liberalization measures, including the release of political prisoners and the official recognition of opposition parties such as her National League for Democracy, Suu Kyi’s message was another mark of the sweeping changes underway in Myanmar, also known as Burma.
For decades, Myanmar was among the world’s pariah nations, subject to crushing economic sanctions from the U.S. and other Western nations, but its recent reform efforts have led to a rapid thawing in relations, up to the point that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the country in late November.
Also symbolically significant: the presence in Davos this year of Industry Minister U Soe Thein, which Suu Kyi described as a “sign of the positive changes that have been taking place in our country.”
In apologizing for not being able to attend the gathering in person, Suu Kyi explained that she is currently occupied with preparing her party to contest by-elections on April 1, which will be the NLD’s first chance to seek a role in government since it won a majority in the parliamentary elections of 1990, a victory that the military regime refused to recognize.
In her message, she called on the world community to support the Burmese people’s efforts to truly democratize their country and to all them to make a contribution to global affairs.
“A year on (from last year’s audio message), I can say we have taken steps toward meeting those challenges,” Suu Kyi said. “We are not yet at the point of a great transformation, but we have a rare and extremely precious opportunity to reach such a point.”
She emphasized that “an important step that will take us nearer to a truly revolutionary breakthrough will be the inclusion of all relevant political forces in the electoral and legislative processes of our country.”
VOA News – Rights Groups Urge International Community to Maintain Burma Sanctions
Ron Corben | Bangkok
Key advocates for Burmese political prisoners are calling for the international community to keep economic and trade sanctions in place until Burma’s government releases all political prisoners, including those detained in ethnic areas. United Nations agencies in Burma say an easing of sanctions is crucial to allow funds to support poverty alleviation programs in the country.
The rights monitoring group, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, says the international community must maintain pressure on Burma’s government to ensure the release of all political prisoners before economic and trade sanctions are fully lifted.
The secretary of the Thailand-based Association, Bo Gyi, himself a former political prisoner, spoke to foreign journalists in Bangkok.
“First we need from the Burmese regime is to release all political prisoners. Second is to help [achieve] nationwide peace and third, to allow citizens to set up human rights organizations in order to promote and protect human rights. So that is such a mechanism we need now if we receive those things we should consider lifting sanctions,” Gyi said.
Burma’s President Thein Sein has called for a speedy lifting of sanctions after his government freed hundreds of prisoners, allowed pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi to return to politics and held ceasefire talks with ethnic armed groups.
The most recent release of political prisoners, including key leaders from the 1988 uprising against Burma’s military, came on January 13.
But rights group Amnesty International says many more prisoners are still detained. Amnesty says 647 political prisoners have been freed since last year but 700 to 1,000 others remain in custody.
Burma refuses to acknowledge it is holding any “political prisoners.” Rights groups fear that without adequate recognition, some political prisoners may come to be seen as regular convicts and face long prison sentences.
Amnesty International Burma researcher, Benjamin Zawacki, says despite moves toward political reform, the situation remains “very grave” and that the government is using political prisoners as “bargaining chips” as it seeks to get sanctions reduced. “When you consider that many of these people, most of these people, should never have been detained in the first place, it really is quite disturbing that individuals would be used as a bargaining chip,” he said.
But international aid organizations are also looking for an easing of sanctions. The United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) resident representative in Burma, Ashok Nigam, says lifting of sanctions is vital to support much needed development programs.
“They are very important that they be lifted soon because we are still operating, especially UNDP, under restricted mandate which prevents us from actually running a regular UNDP country program. A regular country program focuses a lot more on building capacity and really getting government to take on its responsibilities in these areas. So clearly lifting of these sanctions will be immensely beneficial for us as and when it happens,” Nigam said.
A decision on the lifting of restrictions on the UNDP lies with the 36-member-state executive board that includes the United States, Canada and 12 Western European countries such as Germany and Britain.
In recent weeks, senior U.S. Congressional leaders have given conditional support for the lifting of trade, financial and economic sanctions.
This week foreign ministers from the European Union, which moved to ease some travel restrictions on senior Burmese leaders, are reported to be considering an aid package of nearly $200 million.
The ministers are calling for the unconditional release of all political prisoners “within months” with free and fair by-elections in April when Aung San Suu Kyi is set to run for a parliamentary seat.
VOA News – Documentary Highlights Burma’s Jailed Political Activists
Director Jeanne Hallacy said former political prisoner and activist Ko Bo Kyi inspired her to make “Into the Current.”
Sarah Williams | Washington, DC
A documentary film about Burma’s political prisoners and the underground movement to help them premiered this week in Asia, drawing attention to the plight of the country’s activists as the government releases hundreds of prisoners in an amnesty program.
Director Jeanne Hallacy said former political prisoner and activist Ko Bo Kyi inspired her to make “Into the Current,” which made its regional debut in Bangkok Thursday to a sold-out audience at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club.
“His mandate was, as a former political prisoner, he was going to work every which way he could on the global stage, to ensure that all these prisoners could be released,” she said.
Ko Bo Kyi spent seven years in prison in Burma before escaping to Thailand, where he co-founded the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in 1999.
Burmese authorities announced this month that they would be releasing 651 of the estimated 2,000 political activists behind bars in an effort to promote national reconciliation.
Ko Bo Kyi said those who remain in prison should not be forgotten.
“Political prisoners do not receive timely medical treatment, so there is not enough medication, and there are not enough doctors for the prisoners, therefore the prisoners suffer a lot,” he said, adding that even after their release, life is not easy.
He pointed to the case of Thet New, who died shortly after being freed under the government amnesty this month. The activist is believed to have died from the effects of torture suffered in prison.
Free, but not
Ko Bo Kyi said those who survive are still punished professionally and personally.
“The Burmese government doesn’t recognize the existence of political prisoners. Therefore, even after they were released, they are blacklisted. They do not receive passports. They do not get back their license,” he said.
Another focus of the film, co-produced by the Democratic Voice of Burma, is Ko Bo Kyi’s lifelong friend, the writer and poet Min Ko Naing. He is considered Burma’s most prominent opposition leader after Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, and was released earlier this month.
“It was because of his unyielding stance, and the enormous risks that he took, over and over again, that put him in that position of being a leader of what was called the ‘88 Generation Group,” said Hallacy.
Min Ko Naing spent 16 years in solitary confinement, and emerged from prison in 2007, only to lead another protest that returned him to jail later that year.
The human toll
The human toll exerted on the government’s opponents is explored in “Into the Current.” Min Ko Naing speaks ruefully of his former girlfriend, who he says, “now belongs to someone else,” following his many years in prison. Ko Bo Kyi bid farewell to his parents when he fled Burma more than a decade ago. And Aung San Suu Kyi had to give up her family life with her late husband Michael Aris and her sons.
“Despite all of that, what is their response? It’s informed by their Buddhist belief, Metta, loving kindness,” said Hallacy.
In the film, Aung San Suu Kyi is asked if the National League for Democracy will show mercy to members of the former military government. “We all need mercy,” she said.
Aung San Suu Kyi spent 15 years under house arrest over the past two decades. She was released in 2010, just days after controversial elections that gave Burma its first nominally civilian government since 1962.
She will be among the candidates vying for a seat in parliamentary by-elections in April. It will be the first time that she has been allowed to seek political office.
By Zin Linn Jan 27, 2012 10:39PM UTC The third regular session of the first Pyithu Hluttaw (Lower Parliament) and the third regular session of first Amyotha Hluttaw (Upper Parliament) kicked off at the Pyithu Hluttaw Building in Nay-Pyi-Taw, Thursday. President of Myanmar (Burma) Thein Sein sent a message to the Speakers of the Lower and the Upper Parliaments which commenced yesterday, the New Light of Myanmar said.
The President mentions in his message to the Parliament Speakers that different policies for sate peace and stability are being exercised based on the nation’s current conditions and lessons of the past in an attempt to guarantee eternal peace in the country. Government has been held talks with the 11 national race armed groups. Out of them, six groups have been signed preliminary peace agreements. And he also points out that negotiations with the remaining groups are in progress. According to the president’s message, the government has been taking good steps overall in peace process.
As said by the state-own newspaper, the main theme of the both parliaments’ session is going to approve the budget bills. The representatives of the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (Union Parliament), which is the combination of the lower and the upper houses, are to scrutinize and approve the bill on supplementary budget for 2011-2012 fiscal year and the bill on budget and national planning for 2012-2013 fiscal year to be submitted by the Union government, the state-owned newspaper reported.
The Speaker of the Union Parliament has received 2011-2012 Supplementary State Budget Bill and 2012-2013 Union Budget Bill. These will be shared to all parliament representatives for their consideration.
The Lower House speaker Thura Shwe Mann said in his introductory speech that on behalf of the people, the Union Parliament representatives have to check how to distribute and spend the public funds and how about effectiveness of spending funds for the public.
And then, he pointed out that it is necessary to focus on supporting, suggesting and amending the various matters. He also stressed the need to talk about a variety of items by calculating the actual possibilities and consider the short-term and intermediate-term plans on the related tasks for coming years.
Actually, the budgetary plan of a government must be done by the people’s representatives through transparency and accountability. The outgoing military regime endorsed the 2011-2012 budget on January 27 last year, just a few days before parliament met for the first time on January 31, 2011.
The Government Gazette released by the previous military junta says that 1.8 trillion kyat (about $2 billion at free market rates of exchange), or 23.6 per cent of the 2011-12 budget will go to defense. The health sector, meanwhile, will get 99.5 billion kyat ($110 million), or 1.3 per cent. Education will obtain a 4.3 per cent allotment.
The budget is the government’s most important economic strategy and it presents a comprehensive proclamation of the nation’s priorities. Parliament, which is formed with representatives-elect, is the best proper place to guarantee that the budget goes with the nation’s needs with the available resources.
In March last year, National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Aung San Suu Kyi has criticized the previous junta’s 2011-12 budget for allocating too much of its funds to the military and not a sufficient amount to social services such as health and education.
Economic Times – IMF sees Myanmar as Asia’s next economic bright spot
WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has commended Myanmar’s economic reform efforts, saying that the nation has the potential to become the next economic bright spot in Asia.
“The new government is facing a historic opportunity to jump-start the development process and lift living standards,” the Washington-based body said in a statement released earlier this week, reported Xinhua.
“Myanmar has a high growth potential and could become the next economic frontier in Asia, if it can turn its rich natural resources, young labour force, and proximity to some of the most dynamic economies in the world, into its advantage,” the global lender said.
An IMF mission headed by Meral Karasulu visited Naypyitaw and Yangon between Jan 9 and 25.
Karasulu noted that Myanmar’s recent reform efforts “go in the right direction.”
The Asian country “would benefit from broader consultation with stakeholders and using the best international practices distilled from other countries’ experiences”, the mission head said.
The IMF has projected Myanmar’s real gross domestic product to grow about 5.5 per cent this fiscal year and 6 per cent next fiscal year.
Deutsche Welle – India, Myanmar seek closer ties Pointing to the involvement of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in the April by-election as evidence of the progress Myanmar has made, Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin said he was “confident” that his government will be able to hold the upcoming by-elections in a free and fair manner.
“The reform process that we have started is irreversible. There will be no turning back or derailment in the road to democracy,” Maung Lwin told an august gathering of former diplomats and strategic affairs thinkers at the Indian Council of World Affairs, a think tank in New Delhi.
A transition to democracy?
These were the concluding remarks of Maung Lwin’s four-day trip to India where he exchanged views on the internal political changes in the previously military-ruled cloistered country that is gradually opening up to the world.
“Myanmar is a very important neighbor. The foreign minister’s remarks have great import. And I feel the political, economic and commercial relations between our two countries will only deepen further,” ICWA Director General Sudhir T. Devare told Deutsche Welle.
“We must bolster existing strategic, security, and economic bilateral ties,” Devare added.
The last election held in November 2010 under the then ruling military was rejected as heavily rigged in favor of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was released in November 2010, having spent 15 of the past 21 years under house arrest, boycotted that election.
Doubts persist over turnaround
During his wide-ranging talks, Maung Lwin said President Thein Sein had only just met Suu Kyi and they agreed to find potential common ground for collaboration for the interest of the country and the people, setting aside their different views.
“The foreign minister’s talk is all fine. We need to wait and see how free and fair the coming by-election under President Thein Sein government will be. If they want free and fair elections they should allow international observers,” Tint Swe, an elected Burmese MP and chairman of Delhi’s Burma Centre told Deutsche Welle.
He fled to India in 1990 and was never acknowledged by the junta.
There are reportedly more than 80,000 Burmese refugees living in India and over 90 percent of them are of Chin ethnicity.
According to Indian officials, the new administration has allowed access to the Internet and opened up Myanmar to overseas investments. Many political prisoners have also been released and peace overtures have been sent to ethnic rebel groups.
“Let constructive engagement take a further boost. For India, it is important to see that our aid projects are efficiently administered. Myanmar is pressing ahead with political reforms,” said Swaran Singh, a professor at Delhi’s Jawaharal Nehru University.
Economics over politics
Over the last few years, India has been promoting a much more cooperative stance with Myanmar, in part to counter China’s increasing influence there.
For increased economic linkages, India has invested in Myanmar’s resource-rich energy and infrastructure sectors. During Thein Sein’s visit in 2010, India announced a 500 million US dollar credit line to promote economic and development activity.
The 17th national level meeting to strengthen border issues and to strengthen strategic ties between Myanmar and India was concluded at Nay Pyi Taw, the capital city last week.
Both sides discussed in detail security related issues like the presence of Indian insurgent groups along the Indo-Myanmar border, exchange of intelligence information and arms smuggling.
Author: Murali Krishnan
Editor: Sarah Berning
Financial Times – Currency tops Myanmar’s economic agenda
By Gwen Robinson in Yangon
Myanmar must liberalise its foreign exchange controls or it will struggle to carry through economic reforms, one of the country’s central bank directors has warned.
The bank, which is set to gain more autonomy under the government’s reform plans, will also concentrate on economic growth and price stability this year, according to U Maung Maung.
“These are our top priorities, but most of all we must liberalise foreign exchange controls…it’s a fundamental priority to move forward on this,” Mr Maung Maung, one of eight directors under the central bank’s deputy governor, told the Financial Times.
Western sanctions imposed in response to a brutal military crackdown in 1988 have restricted trade and investment with Myanmar.
The country’s dual exchange-rate system has also helped strangle the economy and grossly distort economic fundamentals. Under the parallel system, the official rate this week is 5 or 6 kyat a dollar, but the black market offers around 800 kyat a dollar.
While even government agencies have shifted to unofficial market rates, officials acknowledge the urgency of unifying the parallel rates. The central bank is considering proposals to allow the kyat to float, said Mr Maung Maung, but “no decisions will be made until later this year”.
Economists who study Myanmar say currency unification is key to the country’s entire reform programme.
“This step should precede all others…Following unification, a range of other important policy interventions will immediately become possible,” a paper by Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation concluded.
Since mid-2011, most of the country’s 19 private commercial banks and four state owned banks have been permitted to offer market rates. But the banks’ exchange procedures are onerous and informal money changers thrive throughout the country.
Other important reforms implemented under the nominally civilian government of Thein Sein, president, include the slashing of trade taxes and boosting pensions. For the central bank, the reform agenda includes developing Myanmar’s capital markets and investment code, and lifting restrictions on banks’ overseas and domestic lending operations.
There are “many ideas” to reform the financial and banking system but significant changes hinge on the outcome of two multilateral missions led by the International Monetary Fund, said Mr Maung Maung.
Highlighting a reversal in the government’s previously isolationist stance, he said: “We are co-operating, we need to consult and hear advice from the IMF, we hope it’s soon, as we will need some time [to implement reforms].”
The missions, the second of which left Myanmar on Thursday, will issue recommendations on exchange rate unification and economic policies in coming weeks and are expected to resume loans and aid to Myanmar if western sanctions are lifted.
Another pressing concern is the strength of the kyat, which has appreciated by about 32 per cent in nominal effective terms since April 2010. The currency has been boosted by massive natural resources sales, privatisation of government assets (mainly of property), surging investment from China and other countries and speculative capital inflows.
These large foreign inflows “cannot find an outlet due to exchange restrictions on current international payments and transfers,” the IMF mission said.
English.news.cn 2012-01-27 13:14:32 YANGON, Jan. 27 (Xinhua) — Myanmar Ministry of Education will cooperate with The Johns Hopkins University in the United States aimed at developing the education sector of the country, according to official media Friday.
A meeting in Nay Pyi Taw on Thursday between a delegation of U. S., led by Ron Daniel, President of The Johns Hopkins University, and Myanmar Deputy Minister for Education U Ba Shwe focused on cooperation between universities under the Myanmar Ministry of Education and The Johns Hopkins University including other universities in the United States, said the New Light of Myanmar.
The move also covered sending of Myanmar students, cooperation in research, exchange of students from both countries, upgrading machines used in advanced research, easy access to reference books and papers from internet website and training of basic education teachers for promotion of English proficiency skill.
Meanwhile, Ron Daniel and Minister for Health Dr. Pe Thet Khin discussed matters related to development of rural health care, giving training for promoting for the quality of health staff, supply of medicine and medical equipment, study of public health at Johns Hopkins University, training of medicine, better program for selection of students at Universities of Medicine, prevention and cure of non-infectious diseases, maternal, infant and child health care, nourishment program, availability of immunization and promotion of immunization program.
English.news.cn 2012-01-26 20:05:30
YANGON, Jan. 26 (Xinhua) — Myanmar private banks will launch money exchange services in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand starting from February this year in its first phase in a bid to extend foreign trade services with ASEAN members, local media reported Thursday.
Private banks — the Cooperative Bank, Kanbawza Bank, Asian Green Development Bank and Ayeyawaddy Bank will facilitate migrant workers in Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia in sending back money to their families in the country, the Yangon Times said.
The Cooperative Bank will handle remittances from Myanmar workers in Singapore while Ayeyawaddy Bank in Malaysia, Kanbawza Bank in Thailand, Asian Green Development Bank in Singapore and Malaysia.
Meanwhile, Myanmar has exempted its citizens living abroad from paying income tax in foreign currency from Jan. 1.
Moreover, 11 private banks out of 19 were granted to trade three foreign hard currencies — U.S. dollar, Euro and Singapore dollar in November last year.
The 11 private banks include Kanbawza Bank, Cooperative Bank, Myanmar Industrial Development Bank, Myawaddy Bank, Inwa Bank, Myanmar Oriental Bank, Asian Green Development Bank, Ayeyawaddy Bank, Myanmar Pioneer Bank, United Amara Bank and Tun Foundation Bank.
There are also three state-owned banks in Myanmar, namely Myanma Economic Bank (MEB), Myanma Foreign Trade Bank (MFTB) and Myanma Investment Commercial Bank (MICB).
Besides the state-owned and private banks, there have also been 15 foreign bank representative offices from nine countries set up in Myanmar so far, of which four from Singapore, two each from Bangladesh, Malaysia and Japan, and one each from Cambodia, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam and China.
Kristina Wolf of East Bay’s Kristina Wolf Design is back from Myanmar and not only did she return with one-of-a-kind “finds” from the country, but she would also like to share her experiences there.
Berkeley, CA (PRWEB) January 27, 2012
East Bay interior designer, Kristina Wolf Design’s owner, Kristina Wolf, has returned from Myanmar, the second largest country in Southeast Asia, with a variety of handcrafted pieces for both design inspiration and her clients.
“Whether they were making silk fabrics or applying gold leaf designs to lacquer-ware, every craftsman took a great deal of pride in the details and finished product,” owner Kristina Wolf said. “Not only are the ‘finds’ beautiful, they are also functional. This element of functional yet gorgeous is exactly what I think of when I am designing for my clients.”
While the primary purpose of the trip was business, Wolf was fortunate to visit many cultural sites, as well as silk, lacquer and gold leafing manufacturers, rural outdoor markets, two elementary schools, and a handful of local furniture manufacturers. Wolf could not help but notice the pride that showed in all of the workmanship she observed. The visit also contributed a variety of ideas for her upcoming designs that will focus on a mixture of modern and traditional styles for home interior designs.
Despite the harsh government censorship and the trials of the past decades, Wolf found the people of Myanmar to be incredibly warm and welcoming, while exhibiting a strong sense of community in the factories and workshops she visited.
“Americans often forget how fortunate we are as a nation. Traveling is always a great way to expand one’s perspective and gather a new understanding of humanity in general. Thank you, Myanmar for new wonderful design inspirations and new vendor contacts. And last, but not least, thank you for teaching us gratitude!” Wolf said.
Myanmar, formally known as Burma, is bordered by China, Laos and Thailand, as well as India and other countries. For decades, the country has been under the control of a military regime, which has only recently begun to loosen its grip with the re-entry of democratic opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi after 20 years of house arrest. Wolf was incredibly lucky to arrive in Myanmar merely a week after Hillary Clinton’s official visit to the country. History in the making, the Secretary of State’s visit was the first time in more than 50 years that a U.S. official traveled to Myanmar.
To learn more about any of Kristina Wolf Design’s products or services, call 510-848-8773 or view the design company on the web at http://www.kristinawolfdesign.com.
About Kristina Wolf Design
Kristina Wolf Design is a top interior design company in the Bay Area that serves Oakland Hills, Piedmont, Lafayette, Orinda and Lamorinda. Owner Kristina Wolf and her team feature experienced, commercial interior designers and modern interior designers.
Kristina Wolf Design creates memorable interiors in harmony with each client’s personal vision and with minimal stress. Whether developing new home interior designs or helping clients select the perfect color palate for a paint project, Kristina Wolf Design deepens the connection between customers and their home, while honoring a client’s objectives, schedules and budgets. To learn more about the team’s services or to view its portfolio, visit the company on the web at http://www.kristinawolfdesign.com.
Posted 27 January 2012 12:27 GMT
Written by Onnik Krikorian
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees considers the situation of between 110-150,000 Burmese refugees located in camps on the border with Thailand as one of 29 protracted refugee situations globally. And, according to East Asia Forum, there are also an additional 1.5-2 million refugees in Thailand and represent the ‘visible side of human rights abuse.’
Ruled by a military junta from 1962 to 2011, Burma, known locally and by the United Nations as Myanmar, has often been accused of violating human rights and the forcible relocation of civilians. Although an ostensibly civilian government was controversially elected in 2010, a quarter of seats in parliament as well as three cabinet seats are reserved for the army.
Other concerns include the use of forced labour, among them children, human trafficking and internal ethnic conflict. In an extensive post, Mary Ditton, a Senior Lecturer in Health Management in Australia, looks at the problem of internally displaced people and refugees:
Most of the self-settled migrants from Burma work in the manufacturing, food processing and agricultural industries throughout Thailand […]. Further to the constant fear and threat of deportation, they work in poor conditions with neither basic rights of association, nor employee and health rights. […] Only some forced migrants choose to officially seek asylum and reside under the protection of UNHCR. Other forced migrants decide to earn a living within the informal economy and endure the risks of being deported. This protracted refugee process means the actual refugee camp populations are made up of women, children, the elderly and disabled, as the able-bodied men and women seek work elsewhere. This ‘left behind’ population is prey to corrupt practices such as people and drug trafficking, smuggling, and child labour. The self-settled group is vulnerable to these practices as well, since they have no effective legal protection.
A group particularly at risk are children, especially from minority communities, as the Rohingya Arakanese Refugee Committee explains:
Last week the human rights group Arakan Project released a report on children’s rights in Northern Arakan State, in western Burma. Arakan State is home to about 735,000 Rohingya Muslims, one of the most oppressed ethnic minorities in Burma.
The report stated that over 40,000 Rohingya minority children in Arakan State do not have Burmese (or any), citizenship, despite being born and having parents who live in Burma.
The children’s stateless status, along with several other draconian laws that discriminate against Rohingya, are in fact severe human rights violations and can have dire consequences on their health.
All Rohingya living in Burma, according to Arakan Project, are required to pay bribes to get permission to travel outside of their villages. Some are forced by the Army or border forces to build roads and guard and clean bases. Rohingya have been pushed off their land, and Arakan Project estimates that only 30% of Rohingyas have access to farmland, with the rest working mostly as casual day laborers.
A study in the United States of 400 refugee children has found that health is a serious concern even when they leave Thailand and Burma:
Some Burmese refugee children heading to the U.S. have toxic levels of lead in the blood, according to a study released this week in the journal Pediatrics. Researchers at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention measured lead levels in Burmese children living in Thai refugee camps. They found that children under age two were at highest risk. Fifteen percent of them had lead poisoning, as did five percent of all children.
Lead poisoning is extremely toxic and can severe health effects on children, including brain damage, mental retardation and lowered IQ levels.
Well-Being For Rohingya Refugee Bangladesh says that changes and reform in Burma might help improve the situation:
While many humanitarian groups have called for more aid for Burmese refugees displaced by years of conflict, there is some optimism now that a series of cease-fire agreements may offer some hope to deliver badly needed food, medicine and shelter supplies.
A recent field report published by Refuges International (RI) focused on two key goals: allowing humanitarian groups freedom of access to refugee areas and the removal of elaborate donor restrictions.
There are an estimated 500,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) in Burma, and three million Burmese refugees in other countries, according to their study. There are also some 800,000 stateless Rohingyas in the west of the country, who live in dire humanitarian conditions because of their lack of basic human rights.
With the decrease in fighting now is the time for the humanitarian community – led by the UN Resident Coordinator/Humanitarian Coordinator (RC/HC) and supported by key donors like the European Union, United Kingdom, and United States – to expand operations in Burma
A ceasefire recently signed between the government and rebels, as well as the release of political prisoners, has given some cause for hope. However, Tina McCloughy says more is necessary:
As part of my Fulbright research in Burma,Malaysia,and Thailand,a Burmese ethnic minority boy told me how he held on tight to his father’s back,as his father carried him through Burmese mountainous war zones to Thailand,leaving him alone in a refugee camp across the border. Why? Because the boy’s father saw how the Burmese government military had repeatedly torched his ethnic villages,schools,and never built them new schools. The only help any minority students have gotten in Burma has been from illegal forays by the Free Burma Rangers into Burma,risking their lives to take ethnic minority educators safely through dangerous conflict zones to be trained to start schools. Burmese minority educators shouldn’t have to risk their lives trying to educate their children.
Changing the lives of minority Burmese requires [Secretary of State] Clinton to also pressure Thailand and Malaysia to change their refugee policies,given that refugees continue to flow out of Burma and that it may take many years before Burma becomes safe for minority families. Thailand and Malaysia have deliberately refused to ratify the 1951 U.N. Convention protecting refugees,perhaps because they fear giving education and work rights to such an overwhelming number of Burmese minority refugees.
Following last year’s visit by the U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, Andrew G. Lim writes on the Huffington Post that now is a “critical moment to press for further changes in the way that Myanmar’s government deals with its ethnic minorities,” while Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, released from house arrest in 2010, this week addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in a video message:
The Nobel Peace Prize Laureate acknowledged the changes in her country and urged the international community to do more to support further reform.
by: Geoffrey Goddard
From: The Australian
January 28, 2012 12:00AM
Ma Noreen Phillip Myan Mon Yee has a big picture in my mind.“I’d like to raise the standard of the health care system in Myanmar”.
Ms Yee’s dream is a possibility after she returned to Myanmar in December after a one-year scholarship at Griffith University studying for a masters in health care management.
Ms Yee was one of 10 students selected under the inaugural AusAid scholarship program designed to build human capacity in Myanmar. Another 21 masters and PhD students are due to depart for Australia shortly.
“Building human capacity across the board is a very big challenge. It’s something we focus our assistance program on and the [Myanmar] government has identified as a big priority,” Bronte Moules, the Australian ambassador, said.
Of last year’s eight female and two male scholarship holders, nine chose masters degrees in disciplines such as health services management, biotechnology, sustainable agriculture, public policy and pharmacy. Another started a PhD in economics.
This year’s group will focus on three main areas: health, education and agriculture, while two will undertake doctorates in public health and in the environment.
“We prioritise scholarships for areas of study that are consistent with the focus of our aid program, which is health, education and agriculture, but we are reasonably open-minded about it,” said Ms Moules.
Host institutions include Australian National University, University of Sydney, Monash, Curtin, Griffith and Adelaide.
Mr Michael Hassett, a counsellor and AusAid representative at the Australian embassy in Myanmar said the program would receive about $3.5 million this year, or about 7 per cent of AusAID’s allocation for Myanmar.
“We have to balance the numbers between PhDs and masters to get as many through as possible,” he said.
The scholarships cover all costs, including air fares, accommodation, a living allowance and course fees.
“We estimate a masters at about $125,000 all up, but it varies,” he said, acknowledging that from a development perspective, the cost is high.
“But we know from long experience involved in scholarships that the returns are also very high and the return is not over one or two years, it’s over 10, 20 years and 30 years,” he said.
“These people pass on their skills and knowledge.”
“We would like to think that it will be an important part of our engagement as we move into the future [with Myanmar], as it is with other countries,” Ms Moules said, adding that at any one time there are more than 5000 scholars and professionals from about 100 countries supported by AusAID scholarship programs.
Successful scholarship recipients are required to return to Myanmar for at least two years after completing their studies. Students who decide to stay in Australia have to repay the total cost of the scholarship, including the living allowance.
“That’s a very strong incentive to leave Australia, but through our selection process we try to pick people who are passionate about development in this country; we try to identify people who really want to come back and make a difference,” Mr Hassett said.
While Ms Yee acknowledges her grand plan would “definitely take some time”, the trained dentist says she is much better equipped to focus on the massive task.
And while it took time to adjust – “the teaching method is totally different from in Myanmar” – she soon found her feet.
“One thing I learned is that while we need to respect our tutors and lecturers, we should not be afraid to speak up and even argue if we have sound reasons for doing so,” she said.
Ms Yee also had her first experience working on a research paper with a group of other students.
“Our paper was one of the best in the class and was offered to be published,” she said.
Published on Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 18:46 | Source : Reuters
NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (Reuters) – Myanmar will keep natural gas from new projects beyond 2013 for domestic consumption, a shift of policy aimed at powering its development, the country’s energy minister said on Friday.
Myanmar has opened up to the outside world with astonishing speed since a civilian government took office last March after five decades of army rule. The prospect of the end of Western sanctions has prompted a surge of interest from investors.
Speaking to Reuters in his first interview with foreign media, Minister of Energy Than Htay pegged the country’s natural gas reserves at 22.5 trillion cubic feet, almost double the 11.8 trillion cubic feet estimated by BP in its 2011 statistical review. www.bp.com/statisticalreview
“Now we are developing, we need more energy, so we won’t sell our natural gas abroad, we will use it ourself,” Than said in an interview in the capital, Naypyitaw.
Existing plans to supply gas to China and boost exports to Thailand would be honoured, he said.
A pipeline to pump 400 million cubic feet of gas to China is on schedule to start in 2013. Myanmar already supplies 1.2 billion cubic feet to Thailand daily, the minister said, and would add another 300 million cubic feet per day from the early stages of a project at the Zawtika gas field.
Than ruled out supplying natural gas to an ambitious deep-sea port and special economic zone in Dawei that has the potential to transform a section of southern Myanmar into Southeast Asia’s biggest industrial complex.
Italian-Thai Development Pcl , the company developing the first $8.5 billion phase of the Dawei project, had hoped natural gas piped from nearby fields would provide an alternative fuel after the government this month halted construction of a 4,000 megawatt coal-fired power plant, citing environmental concerns.
The minister said three other special economic zones would be developed more quickly than Dawei, citing in particular two: Thilawa, south of Yangon, and Kyaukphyu, on the Bay of Bengal, where the China-Myanmar pipeline starts.
He said the government was now considering supplying electricity to the Kyaukphyu zone.
By SIMON ROUGHNEEN / THE IRRAWADDY Friday, January 27, 2012
BANGKOK — “I’ve puzzled over that,” said Sen. John McCain, when asked his opinion on why Burma’s government has undertaken several landmark reforms in recent months.
Observers have been surprised by the changes—such as the freeing of political prisoners, relaxed press curbs and a newfound environmental and social awareness—described by McCain as unimaginable one year ago. The Burmese government says the new course is irreversible, while outside observers believe the reforms to be real, though many, like McCain, are no more than “cautiously optimistic” and remind that more needs to be done—such as fair elections, a free press and peace in ethnic borderlands.
Many exiled Burmese and even some recently freed political prisoners remain skeptical, reminding anyone who cares to listen that Burma’s 2008 Constitution vests ultimate authority with the country’s military, and that even if Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) win all 40 Lower House seats in a by-election slated for April 1, it will not affect power structures inside Burma.
Behind the scenes, an 11-man National Defense and Security Council (NDSC) is said to be exercising real control, leaving President Thein Sein as the moderate-sounding front man attempting to launder the reputation of a cabal of military strongmen nationalists, who want Western sanctions lifted and to reduce the influence of an increasingly powerful
China on their country.
Former junta dictator Snr-Gen Than Shwe is said to head the NDSC, though close aides such as Shwe Mann, now speaker of Burma’s Lower House of Parliament, say that Than Shwe has retired from politics. Certainly the reforms undertaken by successor Thein Sein, suggest—on the surface, at least—a clean break with Than Shwe’s draconian rule and appear to confirm that the near-octogenarian ex-senior general has indeed retired.
But then, reforms or no reforms, nobody can really parse the signals from inside what is still one of the world’s most opaque polities. McCain believes the reforms to be partly a reaction to the Arab Spring, partly a desire to end Burma’s long isolation, partly a weariness with a decades-old pariah status.
Some are curious as to why Than Shwe would cede power to Thein Sein—a man he reportedly dismissed as his “postman” when the current president was still just prime minister under the former junta.
“We have to ask, why is Than Shwe letting this happen, and why now?” said Thai academic Thitinan Pongsudhirak. Than Shwe, after all, seized power in 1992 and later put former ruler Ne Win under house arrest, where he remained until his death in 2002. Does he not fear a similar fate for himself and his family?
Clues lie, perhaps, in what Thitinan described to The Irrawaddy as Than Shwe’s “farewell tour,” visiting India and China shortly prior to the 2010 parliamentary elections, after which he formally ceded control to today’s nominally civilian government under Thein Sein.
While visiting India from July 25 to 29, 2010, Than Shwe made cash donations to monks, meditated at Bodh Gaya, where Buddha attained enlightenment, and laid a wreath at the Mahatma Gandhi’s grave.
“I have heard from several inside sources that Than Shwe sees himself as deeply Buddhist,” said Thitinan. “He has money, he has power, but we cannot dismiss the possibility that he cares a lot about his spiritual well-being, despite the many abuses he was responsible for.”
It could be, therefore, that Than Shwe has stepped back from power because he fears bad karma from transgressions committed by Burma’s ruling regime when he was still at the helm, such as the beating and jailing of hundreds of Buddhist monks during the crackdown on the 2007 Saffron Revolution.
In response, the Burmese monastic community declared a religious boycott of the generals and their families, refusing to accept their alms or offer them the Buddha’s teachings—both necessary for earning karmic kudos. According to recently freed U Gambira, one of the leaders of the Saffron protests who was tortured in jail, the boycott still stands.
Burmese Buddhism has long been infused with nat worship—placating spirits to generate good fortune in worldly affairs.
Knowing this, and seeing first-hand the nature of military rule, many Burmese question the sincerity and depth of Than Shwe’s Buddhism, says Ingrid Jordt, an anthropologist who studies Burmese religion and culture.
As far as Than Shwe is interested in his spiritual well-being, according to Jordt, he is following yadaya che, a non-Buddhist ritualism aimed at reversing bad fortune or compensating for misdeeds.
This can sometimes be passed off as Buddhist merit-making, as per Than Shwe’s pilgrimage to India, but sometimes there is no disguising the voodoo element, such as former Prime Minister Khin Nyunt’s cross-dressing incantations in 1990, when he dressed as a woman in a yadaya ceremony aimed at preempting predictions that a woman (Aung San Suu Kyi) would take power in Burma.
Jordt does not believe Than Shwe has retired, and that underneath the recent reforms, the power structures remain the same.
“Burma’s military (now civilian) leaders do not care a fig about democracy. They only care that the international community sees what they are doing as democracy. They will shape-shift as they need to,” she says.
Than Shwe is not out of the picture, she adds, but simply no longer needs “to micro-manage according to the old system.”
By YAN PAING / THE IRRAWADDY Friday, January 27, 2012 Burmese President Thein Sein’s recent political reform efforts have garnered continuous support within the army, according to military sources.
Many army officers and other rank-and-file soldiers are reportedly in favor of Thein Sein’s administration regarding its meeting with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, peace talks with different ethnic armed groups and the release of a large number of political prisoners.
Many believe that the actions of the new president—who used to follow the direct orders of previous junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe—have been improving the image of the army, according to a high-ranking official in Naypyidaw Military Command.
Relations are fine between Thein Sein and Gen Min Aung Hlaing, the commander-in-chief of armed forces, despite a slight rift previously developing between the pair, the official told The Irrawaddy.
“They have good relations. Sometimes the president tried to stop the commander-in-chief when he thought the latter wanted to do anything that came into his mind, that’s all,” said the official.
During his goodwill visit to Thailand earlier this month, Min Aung Hlaing said the Burmese armed forces have no desire to turn backwards while the country is marching towards a democratic future.
In her recent interview with the Washington Post, Suu Kyi emphasized that the army has much more power than necessary.
“Our present constitution gives the military far too much power,” said the Nobel Laureate. “Although the president is the head of state, he is not necessarily the highest power in the
land. The commander-in-chief can take over all powers of government at any time he feels it to be necessary.
“I don’t know how much support [Thein Sein] has within the army. He himself is an army man, so I assume there must be considerable support for him in military circles. But that is just an assumption.”
The army under Min Aung Hlaing’s command, however, ignored the president’s order to stop its current offensive against the Kachin Independence Army in northern Kachin State. Critics believe that hardliners in both the military and government have resisted some of the Thein Sein’s reforms.
Another senior officer based in an infantry unit in Shan State, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Irrawaddy that the commander-in-chief has been consolidating power by transferring or dismissing high-ranking personnel who were previously appointed by Than Shwe and his deputy Vice-Snr-Gen Maung Aye.
“He asked many colonels in army regional commands such as in Lashio, Shan and Arakan states either to move somewhere else or resign if they don’t want the transfer, so many have chosen the second option,” said the senior officer.
He added that Min Aung Hlaing recently transferred some senior officers, who were earmarked for regional and divisional commander posts before Than Shwe retired, to unimportant positions within the army.
Thein Sein was a graduate of the Defense Services Academy (DSA) Intake 9 and served as Colonel General Staff at the office of the commander-in-chief. He later became the head of the Military Operation Command No. 4 based in Rangoon. In 1997, he served as the commander of Triangle Region Command. He also took the position of the Adjust General within the army.
Gen Min Aung Hlaing was much junior in military rank compared to the president and graduated from DSA Intake 19. In 2001, he served as the commander of Division 44 based in Mon State. He later became the headmaster of Pyin Oo Lwin Military University.
Min Aung Hlaing also took other positions such as head of the Western Command, Triangle Region Command, Bureau of Special Operations and Coordinator of Special Operations (Army, Navy and Airforce).
By ZARNI MANN / THE IRRAWADDY Friday, January 27, 2012 Despite hints that he would be released as a goodwill gesture, detained Karen National Union (KNU) leader Mahn Nyein Maung is facing trial and a possible sentence of life imprisonment or execution, according to his lawyer.
“The judge informed me yesterday to prepare for the trial which will begin again this coming Thursday. They are charging him with two acts—participating in a battle against the country and ruling government, which can carry a sentence of life imprisonment or death, and having connections to an illegal organization, which can carry a sentence of two to three years,” said his lawyer Kyee Myint.
Mahn Nyein Maung, who is currently in Insein Prison, was sentenced to one year imprisonment for breaking immigration laws and possessing a fake passport, later reduced to six months and the prison term served.
“At that time the authorities don’t know who he was, but later, according to reports from various media groups, they found out he was Mahn Nyein Maung and asked him to help with peace talks with the KNU,” added Kyee Myint.
Speaking through his lawyer, Mahn Nyein Maung warned that the trial against him would impact the ongoing peace process with ethnic armed groups.
“He told me that he is worried that people would distrust the government more and this would create difficulties for peace and national reconciliation, since the ethnic groups have long had doubts about every regime of the Burmese government,” said Kyee Myint.
“He said he got a promise from the authorities who interrogated him that they will forget about the trial if he helps them in the peace talks, as he is a leader of the KNU, and gives suggestions. So he suggested to approach the KNU.”
Railways Minister Aung Min gave hints that Mhan Nyein Maung would be released as a gesture of peace two days after meeting with KNU leaders for ceasefire discussions in the second week of January. Both sides signed preliminary agreements and arranged for further talks at the meeting.
David Tharkapaw, vice-president of the KNU, said that the group is confused by the actions of the government.
“This is affecting both sides badly at the same time as we are talking and working strongly—even signing pre-agreements for peace. Since they have not released Mahn Nyein Maung and the other 69 of our detained members, we have a lot to think about and discuss,” he said.
Mahn Nyein Maung, a prominent KNU leader and central committee member of the United Nationalities Federal Council ethnic armed alliance, was arrested in July 2011 by Chinese immigration officials in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province.
He was sent back to Bangkok where he was denied entry by Thai officials. He was then deported to Burma and taken into custody.
Mahn Nyein Maung is a former underground activist inside Burma. In 1960, he was arrested and later sent to the Coco Islands, an infamous detention center for political prisoners located around 300 km off the Burmese mainland in the Indian Ocean.
Mahn Nyein Maung and two other political prisoners, Mahn Aung Kyi and Aung Ngwe, managed to escape from the island in 1970 by floating across the water clutching driftwood. However, they were rearrested when they reached the Burmese mainland. It is the only known escape from the prison, located on what is commonly referred to as “Burma’s Devil’s Island.”
Due to his extraordinary escape, Mahn Nyein Maung is frequently likened to the famous French prisoner Henri Charrire, nicknamed Papillon, who escaped a penal colony in French Guyana. Like Charrire, Mahn Nyein Maung published a book about his experiences inside the brutal prison at Coco Island and his subsequent escape.
Friday, 27 January 2012 22:13 Mizzima News (Mizzima) – The director of the Burmese Press Scrutiny and Registration Department (PSRD) repeated claims this week that the department would be abolished in coming months.
“The new press law, which is still in the process of being enacted, will guarantee freedom of expression in Burma,” Tint Swe told Radio Free Asia (RFA) in an interview on Wednesday. “It won’t take too long to adopt the press law—it would just be a matter of months after discussions at the upcoming parliament session.” Tint Swe made similar claims in November.
Tint Swe told RFA that the law had already been drafted by Burma’s Ministry of Information and sent to the Attorney General’s office for approval.
His remarks came as Rangoon journalists report that many prior censorship restrictions or advisories have been handed down in recent weeks. Among the items censored or advised to be toned down were calls by Aung San Suu Kyi and others for the release of all remaining political prisoners and comments by recently released 88-Generation student leaders.
Other censored items involved the news of the eviction of a popular abbot for his outspoken political views and criticism of possible election irregularities by the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) ahead of April 1 elections, according to RFA.
Lawmakers in Parliament said this week that revisions to the country’s press law would probably come up in this session of the Parliament, which opened this week.
Burmese censorship rules have been modified in recent months and are now divided into two general categories:
Group 1 includes nearly 200 publications focusing on sports, health, arts, children’s literature, crime, business and technology, which don’t need to pass articles through censors prior to publication, but must submit copies after publication.
Group 2 includes around 160 publications focusing on news, economics, and religion, which must pass articles through censors prior to publication.
Friday, 27 January 2012 14:44 Kyaw Kha
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – It’s past time to offer direct aid to tens of thousands of internal refugees in Karen State and other areas.
The Karen National Union (KNU) and Burmese government peace delegation will discuss the rehabilitation of internally displaced persons (IDPs) during the second round of peace talks, KNU officials said prior to the meeting.
KNU peacemaking committee Secretary Pado Saw David Htaw said that the KNU plans to prioritize the issue because internal refugees need to return to their villages and restart their lives.
“We will give second priority to the issue regarding refugees in Thai camps along the border area, because they don’t have as many problems getting food and shelter as the Internally Displaced People (IDPs) inside Burma,” Pado Saw David Htaw said.
Many refugees inside Burma have to hide in remote jungle camps in the Pegu Region and in Karen State. Food aid groups along the Thai-Burmese border can sometimes provide for IDPs, and the foreign-based Backpacker Health Worker Teams and KNU medical units can provide limited health services to IDPs, said the KNU.
There are around 100,000 IDPs, according to some estimates. Many villages have been burned down by Burmese troops, and many IDPs can not return to their villages because land mines have been planted by government and ethnic armies. DPs are homeless for various reasons, the first being renewed fighting since mid-summer 2011. Dam construction in Karen State has also been a factor.
The KNU peacemaking committee and the Burmese government delegation signed a cease-fire agreement in Hpaan on January 12, agreeing in principle on 11-points, which according to the agreement will be discussed further in coming talks.
Another key issue to be discussed, said David Htaw, is KNU-connected prisoners.
There are around 150,000 refugees in nine camps in Thailand with food and shelter provided by the Thailand-Burma Border Consortium, which is funded by international organizations. Most of the refugees are Karen who fled from their homes because of the fighting.
Most of the refugees’ homes and farmland have been destroyed and landmines have been planted in their areas.
A refugee who fled from Paingkyon Township to the Nu Po camp along the Thai-Burmese border told Mizzima, “There is only empty land in our villages. No one has solved the problem. Even if we want to return to the area to farm, we don’t have oxen and carts. Who will help us?”
A Karen refugee who fled three years ago from Kadimu village to the Mae La camp told Mizzima, “Here, we don’t know what our future will be. If we are sent to resettlement countries, it’ll be good for our children’s education. To return our villages, we’ll need guarantees that we can make a living in safety.” She said she fled because her village was burned down in February 2010 by the Burmese army.
Refugee groups say that both the Burmese government and the KNU have a responsibility to create conditions where internal and external refugees can return to their homes to restart their lives. After a genuine cease-fire, refugees will need support, including access to their farmland, seed crops, equipment and national identification cards.
International aid groups have called for the Burmese government to allow them full access to the area, in order to start the rebuilding process and national reconciliation. So far, the government has prevented full access to the area.
Friday, 27 January 2012 14:08 Nay Myo
New Delhi (Mizzima) – As many as 918 political prisoners may still be locked up in Burmese prisons, but an accurate list of the number is still incomplete, say groups working on the political prisoner issue.
According to the list compiled by the Thai-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma (AAPP-B), 918 political prisoners are still behind bars. According to the National League for Democracy (NLD) party, 388 are political prisoners are still being detained. The two groups use different criteria in defining a political prisoner. It is possible the exact number may never be known.
The Burmese government does not claim to have an accurate list of political prisoners, because it denies that it has political prisoners in its jails. Occasionally, it refers to the numbers compiled by the AAPP and NLD.
AAPP-B Secretary Teik Naing told Mizzima: “When we rechecked our list, we found that some of them were released but some were handed over to police and some were taken away by military units so that it is very difficult to make a complete list. We can confirm around 900 political prisoners are still behind bars.”
According to NLD spokesman Ohn Kyaing, the number of remaining political prisoners may likely increase and the NLD is still working on the exact numbers.
“According to our list, there were 591 political prisoners, and we found that 303 prisoners were released,” said Ohn Kyaing. “We are compiling a new list by collecting figures based on information from prisoners who were just released, and the new list is almost completed,”
A total of 651 prisoners are believed to have been freed during the January 13 presidential amnesty.
At a press conference in Naypyitaw on January 14, Home Minister Ko Ko said, “There are only prisoners in the prisons who are convicted for the crimes they committed. If you know there are monks who were arrested, please give us an accurate list of them.”
Taik Naing said that the AAPP defined those who were arrested and imprisoned in connection with a political issue as political prisoners.
“Some of these political prisoners were charged and framed up in criminal cases such as a narcotic drug cases, misappropriation cases, gambling cases, etc. But we saw them all as political prisoners because they were arrested for their political activities, and then charged with other cases and imprisoned,” he said.
Ohn Kyaing said the NLD considered those who were imprisoned in bomb blast cases and charged under the Unlawful Associations Act were regarded as political prisoners.
“We list all of them who were charged in bomb blast cases, charged in the “saffron revolution” cases, those who were charged under sections of the Unlawful Associations Act in Taungoo, those who were charged under the Emergency Provisions Act and those who were charged with section 505 of Penal Code (causing disaffection to the State) as political prisoners. And some of them were charged with abetting these political prisoners. We list them also as the political prisoners,” he said.