YANGON, Myanmar (AP) – Myanmar’s government denied on Monday that it was behind a possible attempt to hack into the email accounts of journalists working for foreign and local media who Google warned might have been the targets of “state-sponsored attackers.”

At least 12 reporters, including a Yangon-based correspondent for The Associated Press, received messages from Google last week when they tried to access their Gmail accounts. The messages said hackers “may be attempting to compromise your account or your computer.”

A spokesman for Google, Taj Meadows, confirmed the company issues such warnings to protect users. But he said he could not disclose how Google knows the activity is “state-sponsored” without giving away information that would help attackers avoid detection.

Meadows said users in other countries have also received similar warnings since the company began issuing them in June, but he declined to specify which ones or say which state was behind the recent alleged hacking attempts.

Myanmar presidential spokesman Ye Htut called on Google to identify those responsible “because the vague reference to state-sponsored attackers hurts the image of the government.”

“There is no state-sponsored attack on individual accounts,” said Ye Htut, who is also the nation’s deputy information minister. “That’s not a policy of our government.”

Ye Htut said he also received one of hacking warnings on his own Gmail account on Monday, about one week after most of the Myanmar journalists received theirs. He posted a screen photo on his Facebook page to back up the claim.

Google’s warnings spooked journalists in Myanmar, and raised concerns about the status of newfound press freedoms in a country that until recently was considered one of the most censored in the world. For decades, journalists in Myanmar were subjected to routine state surveillance, telephone taps and censorship so intense that independent newspapers could not even publish on a daily basis.

Many of those restrictions were eased drastically after President Thein Sein’s administration took power two years ago. Over the last year, his government has significantly relaxed media controls, abolishing an official policy of censorship and allowing reporters to print material that would have been unthinkable during the previous era of absolute military rule, such as photographs of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

However, reporters complain that the harsh laws which enabled the government to jail them remain on the books, and old misgivings linger. Some local journalists keep separate email accounts for dealing with the government, for fear their sources may be compromised.

The reporters who received the recent hacking warnings from Google include Burmese correspondents for Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Kyodo News. Journalists working for Yangon-based The Voice Weekly and the Eleven Media Group also received the warnings, as did Thailand-based author Bertil Lintner, who has written extensively on Myanmar.

Author and government adviser Thant Myint-U said on his Facebook page that he had received the same message last week.

“It’s difficult to pinpoint which group has done that, but it is very obvious that those who did that do not appreciate freedom of expression and the democratic reform process in the country,” said Wai Phyo, chief editor at Eleven Media’s Weekly Eleven news journal. “We can only assume that some of them could be from the military.”

The Gmail warnings have prompted speculation that the hacking attempt could be related to critical recent coverage of fighting in northern Kachin state, where government forces have launched aggressive artillery attacks against ethnic rebels. The government has complained publicly that coverage of the conflict has been one-sided.

“Targeting the media for not reporting what they like is not a good sign,” said Kyaw Min Swe, chief editor of The Voice Weekly. “Our security concerns are high and every journalist must be alert to this.”

Myanmar has seen a rash of hacking attempts recently. The Voice Weekly’s Facebook page has been disabled by a hacker since Feb. 4, and the website and Facebook page of Eleven Media were also hacked, journalists at those organizations said.

But the apparent cyberwar has gone both ways. The website of the president’s office was shut down briefly last week by hackers, and Ye Htut said the attack was traced to an Asian country, though it remains unclear who was responsible.

Last month, both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported that their computer systems had been infiltrated by China-based hackers. In both cases they said the focus was on monitoring news coverage and the reporters digging into stories the Chinese government deemed important.

Media organizations with bureaus in China have believed for years that their computers, phones and conversations were likely monitored on a fairly regular basis by the Chinese. The Gmail account of an Associated Press staffer was broken into in China in 2010.

KATE HODAL, in Rangoon

Foreign reporters will soon be able to work for up to a year in Burma on short- and long-term journalist visas after new regulations were introduced aimed at ensuring wider press freedom.

The new rules are intended to give local and foreign reporters greater access to government officials and will come into effect around mid-April, deputy minister for information and presidential spokesman U Ye Htut said.

“In the past, the government issued journalist visas to try to control the journalists’ movements,” he said.

“Now we are issuing the visa to allow the journalist access to the ministries.”

The move, which means reporters will no longer have to fly in using tourist visas or file under pseudonyms, follows the recent dismantling of some, but not all, of Burma’s draconian censorship laws.

It also follows training sessions overseen by Unesco and local media last year aimed at teaching ministers how to deal with the press, U Ye Htut said.

“In the past, many journalists would enter Myanmar [Burma] with tourist visas, so if [government officials] made the mistake of talking with journalists, they would lose their job.

“That is why they are reluctant to talk with foreign journalists.”

Ministry spokespeople

Each ministry now has its own spokesperson to deal with media inquiries, as ordered by Burmese president Thein Sein.

The regulations will require journalists to submit a CV and letter of recommendation from their media outlet for approval.

Human rights groups gave the news a cautious welcome, warning that it was still not known how visa criteria would be assessed, or whether journalists would be allowed to criticise the government.

By Daniel Ten Kate & Kyaw Thu - Feb 11, 2013 9:30 AM PT

Former political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi is seeking support from Myanmar military officials for a constitutional change that would allow her to become president, according to senior members of her party.

“She’s talking sweet to the army,” Win Htein, a National League for Democracy lawmaker, said in an interview. Tin Oo, a former commander-in-chief who founded the NLD with Suu Kyi, said she’s convincing the military to “gradually become civilized in accordance with democracy.”

“She doesn’t go around the town and shout,” Tin Oo, 86, said in the party’s Yangon headquarters. “She’s not like that. She will work very brilliantly, effectively and very quietly.”

Suu Kyi, 67, is ineligible to become head of state under Myanmar’s constitution, which says the president and two vice presidents can’t have a child who is the citizen of a foreign country. The 2008 constitution automatically grants the military a quarter of seats in parliament and amendments need more than 75 percent of votes to pass.

Suu Kyi’s NLD expects a victory in 2015 elections after winning 43 of 44 seats in by-elections last year, which may give its lawmakers enough votes to elect the president. The party has no clear alternative to Suu Kyi, who spent 15 years under house arrest and rejoined the political process after holding talks with President Thein Sein two years ago following an election ending five decades of direct military rule.

Last Chance

“2015 is the first and last chance for her to become the president,” Ohn Kyaing, the NLD’s spokesman, said in Naypyidaw last week. “Next time, in 2020, she will be very old to work. Therefore, if we want her to become leader in 2015 we have to rewrite this constitution.”

Suu Kyi has toured the world since joining parliament last April, including a trip to Europe during which she collected the Nobel Peace Prize she won in 1991. Barack Obama hailed her “unbreakable courage and determination” during a visit to her home in November.

Suu Kyi has said little about ethnic conflicts involving Muslim Rohingyas and Kachin rebels since taking office, apart from offering her assistance as a mediator. Her assistant didn’t respond to an interview request.

Suu Kyi last month said she was “fond” of the military, which her father General Aung San played a role in founding in the 1940s when he led troops in a revolt against Japanese occupiers. He was assassinated in 1947, when Suu Kyi was two years old. More than 20 years later, she married Englishman Michael Aris and had two boys who are British citizens.

‘Negotiated Compromise’

“The members of our military, like the rest of our nation, would like to see Burma a happier, stronger, more harmonious country,” Suu Kyi said in a Jan. 25 appearance at the East-West Center in Hawaii, referring to the country by its former name. “And because of that I do not rule out the possibility of amendment through negotiated compromise. In fact, that is the way I want to go.”

Thein Sein has no position on changes to the constitution and would support whatever parliament decides, Ye Htut, his spokesman, said by phone. His Union Solidarity and Development Party also takes no position, lawmaker Win Myint said by phone. He noted that the rule affecting Suu Kyi has been in previous Myanmar constitutions and was used last year to block the vice- presidential nomination of Myint Swe, a military officer.

So far Suu Kyi appears to be “doing quite well” in convincing the military she doesn’t pose a threat, according to Hans Vriens, managing partner of Vriens & Partners, a Singapore- based political risk firm.

‘Red Line’

“As long as she doesn’t go after the military and after their past behavior, she’s fine,” Vriens said. “The moment she would do that then she crosses a really red line and they would not allow that.”

Pictures of both Aung San and his daughter hang throughout the NLD headquarters, where tourists stop daily to talk with party members and purchase T-shirts and other souvenirs featuring Suu Kyi. The NLD in the coming weeks will hold its first Congress since its founding 25 years ago to transform from a centralized body to one in which leaders are chosen from local elections.

The party’s reliance on Suu Kyi and the disarray caused by the detention of senior leaders in the decades since 1988 have left the NLD without a clear successor, said Win Tin, 83, a senior party member. She doesn’t always keep top leaders informed of her interaction with the military, he said.

Suu Kyi Influence

“We don’t know how much she’s got assurances from the military,” Win Tin said in Yangon last week. “She is so powerful and so popular and so influential, we don’t know how the military will approach her.”

Even while under house arrest, Suu Kyi asserted her influence over the party. NLD leaders planned to participate in the 2010 elections before she sent a message through her lawyer that she opposed the move, according to Than Nyein, a former committee member.

He helped form a new party called the National Democratic Force to compete in the election, which NLD leaders saw as a betrayal. It now wants to change the voting rules to proportional representation, which favors smaller parties.

“If there is a landslide win by the NLD in the 2015 election, there’s every danger that the whole process may go back to the beginning,” Than Nyein said. The military rejected the results of 1990 elections when the NLD won about 80 percent of seats.

On Yangon’s tree-lined streets, where bumper-to-bumper traffic exemplifies the economic gains since Myanmar’s political opening, sales of Suu Kyi pictures and biographies that were banned two years ago are a sign of her enduring popularity.

“She’s in parliament, so she has no choice but to be friendly with the military,” said Myo Min Htwe, a bookseller. “People still support her as a very good leader. She’s the hope of the country.”

YANGON – Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) said on Monday it would hold its first national congress on March 8-10, reflecting the dramatic political changes sweeping Myanmar.

“It will be the NLD’s first nationwide conference held in democratic conditions since the party was founded [in 1988],” NLD lawmaker and party spokesman Ohn Kyaing said.

Around 1,500 delegates are expected to attend, he said.

The meeting, which will define the leadership of the opposition party as it sets its sights on crucial 2015 polls, had originally been scheduled for the last week of February but was delayed.

The once-outlawed party entered parliament for the first time last year, when landmark April by-elections gave former political prisoner Suu Kyi her first ever seat in the legislature.

The hugely popular NLD is now gearing up for a general election in two years that observers say will test the limits of Myanmar’s transition to democracy as it emerges from nearly half a century of military rule.

A constitutional rule currently bars Mrs Suu Kyi from becoming president because the Nobel Peace Prize winner was married to a British man and has two sons who are both foreign nationals.

At its congress, the party will elect central executive committee members, who will in turn choose a new chairperson, Ohn Kyaing said, but declined to say whether he expected Mrs Suu Kyi to be reappointed to the helm of the party.

The NLD is facing the challenge of further reinventing itself as its ageing leadership faces the growing expectations of a new generation.

The NLD swept to victory in elections in 1990 but was never allowed to take power, and Mrs Suu Kyi was detained under house arrest for much of the following two decades.

Since taking office in March 2011, however, President Thein Sein has surprised observers with rapid political changes including the release of hundreds of jailed dissidents and Mrs Suu Kyi’s election to parliament.

A Seoul appellant court ruled Saturday that the government should grant refugee status to a Myanmarese applicant who campaigned against his government in Korea.

It upheld a lower court ruling that the Justice Ministry made an inappropriate decision in 2011 when it rejected his application for asylum though he could face political persecution back home.

“He did not leave his nation due to fears of persecution, but it is justifiable to accept his application for refugee status if he faces fears of persecution after protesting against his government in a foreign nation,” the court explained in its verdict.

The court added that it took into consideration his frequent participation in rallies against his government in front of the Myanmarese Embassy in Seoul and the possibility of heavy punishment that could be imposed on him upon return to Myanmar.

The 48-year-old plaintiff is a member of the minor ethnic minority group of Karen which comprises 7 percent of Myamar’s population of 50 million.

He first arrived in Korea in 2004 and set up a Korea branch of the Karen Youth Organization which ran campaigns calling for democratization of Myanmar.

He applied for refugee status in 2011. The Ministry of Justice rejected it and he filed a lawsuit against the justice minister.

Last year 1,143 people sought refugee status, the highest number since Korea joined the U.N. convention relating to the status of refugees in 1993.

As of last year, 320 refuge seekers were given the official status, including 130 of the total 270 Burmese applicants, the largest number granted refuge status, followed by 65 Bangladeshi and 27 Congolese people.

More than 30 Burmese sought refugee status last year.

Unidentified attackers armed with guns and machetes assaulted several villagers in northern Arakan State’s Maungdaw Township on Sunday, killing one man and seriously injuring three others, according to reports from local villagers.

The villagers, who declined to be named out of fear for their safety, said a group of men entered the Arakanese village of Yaung Bwe, located some 15 km north of Maungdaw Township, at 1 am Sunday.

They reportedly approached the home of village leader Ba Tin and attacked him with a machete as he opened the door. When other villagers came to his aid they were also assaulted.

“They [the attackers] were disguised as local authorities, called out the name of U Ba Tin, the village head, saying that they need to check for census [identification] and when he opened the door, U Ba Tin was chopped,” said a villager, who spoke to The Irrawaddy by phone.

“When other men in the house were called for help, they were shot and injured,” he said, adding that surviving victims had provided the account of the gruesome events.

“Maung Aye, a 54-year-old trader from Sittwe, was heavily injured due to the stabbing and shooting. He died on the way to Maungdaw Hospital,” said the villager.

Ba Tin was reportedly receiving intensive care for head wounds at Sittwe Hospital, in Arakan State’s capital. The other two injured men, who were shot in the legs, were undergoing treatment at Maungdaw hospital.

Villagers alleged that the attackers disguised themselves by wearing uniforms of Burma’s Border Security Force units called Nasaka, who are stationed along the western border with Bangladesh.

Yaung Bwe village is located close to the Border Security Force region 5. An officer at the region 5 office alleged the attackers were coming from Bangladesh and had snuck across the border at night.

“Those attackers are believed to be from the [Rohingya] refugee camps in Bangladesh. They came and attacked at night and escaped immediately,” said the officer, who declined to be named as he was not authorized to speak to the media.

He said night time robberies by disguised men had occurred in the area before, although it was the first time that villagers had been killed in an attack.

Maungdaw Township and other parts of northern Arakan State were the scene of violence last year between Arakanese Buddhist communities and Muslim villagers. The latter group calls themselves Rohingya, but they are not recognized by Burma’s government as an ethnic minority. Locally they are referred to as ‘Bengalis.’

During waves of inter-communal violence last year scores of villagers were killed and some 110,000 people fled. Most of the displaced are Rohingya, who are now living in dire conditions in camps across the state.

On the other side of the border in Bangladesh, there are also camps where large numbers of Rohingya have been living for many years, without being recognized by the Bangladeshi government.

Incidents such as night time attacks in villages add to the volatile situation in northern Arakan State. In early November, three Burmese engineers belonging to the Border Security Force went missing in the area. They are believed to have been abducted by unidentified groups.

At the time, they were constructing a fence along Burma’s 170-kilometer long border with Bangladesh.

The Border Security Force officer said the unstable security situation in the area needed to be put under control. “The government should pay attention to the border security as a series of incidents happened in the border area, such as that soldiers were kidnapped, the truck was set ablaze and now the village administrator is attacked,” he said.

By LAWI WENG / THE IRRAWADDY| February 11, 2013 |

RANGOON — Thousands of job-seekers from all over Burma have seen their hopes of finding work in neighboring Thailand dissolve as agents fail to follow through on promises of employment, leaving many to languish in the border town of Myawaddy as they try to decide their next move.

According to the Migrant Worker Rights Network (MWRN), a group that assists Burmese workers in Thailand, around 10,000 would-be employees have been stranded in Myawaddy over the past three months after paying high fees to agents in exchange for guaranteed jobs across the border.

While some of the workers—many of whom hail from as far afield as Magwe Division and Arakan State—have been provided temporary accommodation by the brokers who brought them to the town, many others have been forced to seek shelter in local monasteries, says MRWN.

“The current situation began around two or three months ago, when they were transported to Myawaddy by local brokers,” said Sein Htay, a consultant for MRWN. “They paid a lot of money to get this far, and they’re afraid their money will be lost forever if they leave, so that’s why they stay.”

Some of the workers can’t even afford to feed themselves, said Sein Htay, adding that many sold all their property or took out high-interest loans to finance their quest for gainful employment in more prosperous Thailand.

It was unclear why so many workers have failed to find jobs in Thailand, which is host to an estimated two million migrant workers from Burma, most of them unregistered. The owner of one recruitment company, however, blamed the situation at least in part on security issues in Thailand, particularly in the country’s far south.

“We can’t send our workers there because of the fighting between Thai troops and militants,” he said, referring to an insurgency by Muslim separatists in Thailand’s three southernmost provinces that has claimed more than 5,000 lives over the past nine years.

Another problem, he said, is that sometimes Thai employers cancel contracts for foreign laborers without warning.

There are more than 50 legally registered recruitment companies in Burma, offering jobs in Thailand and other countries around the region. Although the official price for providing employment-related services is 110,000 kyat (US $127), many companies charge double this amount or more, according to MWRN.

Aung Htay Win, the director of the Labor Ministry’s Department of Employment, told The Irrawaddy that the ministry can take action against companies that charge more than the fixed rate if workers file complaints.

“If the workers come to us with complaints, we can do something about this abuse of their rights,” he said. Regarding the situation of the workers stranded in Myawaddy, however, he said he hadn’t heard anything about this problem.

Kyaw Kyaw Lwin, the labor attache at the Burmese embassy in Bangkok, also told The Irrawaddy that he wasn’t aware of the problem.

According to MRWN, the solution to rampant abuses of the system for sending Burmese workers abroad is for the government to become more directly involved in the process, which currently has limited government oversight.

The government should also do more to educate workers before they are sent to Thailand or other countries, to teach them about their legal rights if they are cheated by brokers or foreign employers.

“Our country doesn’t have a proper system to deal with contracting labor to companies in other countries,” said Sein Htay. It is the responsibility of both recruitment companies and the government to implement such a system, he said.

After many years of leaving migrant workers entirely to their own devices, however, the Burmese government has more recently begun to address some of the issues facing workers forced to seek employment abroad.

On Friday, Deputy Labor Minister Myint Thein visited Bangkok to assess the progress of the Burmese government’s nationality verification process, which is part of a system for allowing Burmese citizens to live and work legally in Thailand.

Myint Thein said he was hopeful the Thai government would extend its deadline for completion of the national verification process beyond its current date of March 16. The previous deadline was Dec. 14, when the Thai government threatened to deport hundreds of thousands of workers who hadn’t registered.

A parliamentary commission that is investigating a copper mine in northwestern Burma’s Sagaing Division announced on Sunday that its eagerly awaited report is still being compiled.

It was previously announced that it would be released on Dec. 31 and later on Jan. 31.

The commission, which is headed by NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi, announced in the state-run New Light of Myanmar that President Thein Sein received a provisional report on Jan. 19.

On Feb. 8, the commission discussed “compilation of the final report.” The commission said it recently met six monks, who were among about 90 monks injured during a brutal police raid on a protest against the Chinese-backed mine on Nov. 29.

Myanmar received US$794 million in foreign investment over nine months of the 2012-2013 fiscal year, according to an announcement from the Myanmar Investment Commission.

“$794.345 million was invested in various sectors of business in Myanmar from April 1 to December 31 of this fiscal year,” said U Kyaw Zaw Maung, the director of Directorate of Investment and Company Administration under the Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development.

Sixty-two foreign companies were recorded as investing in a variety of industries from clothing and seed production to IT and electronic engineering.

Monday, 11 February 2013 12:10 Saw Zin Nyi

Environmentalists have called for the formation of a river conservation commission to to cover all Myanmar rivers following the establishment of the Irrawaddy River Conservation Commission by Mandalay Region Legislative Assembly Committee on February 6.

As the Irrawaddy is Myanmar’s lifeline and is connected with many other rivers, the conservation of all rivers should be ensured, said Dewi Thant Zin, an environmentalist.

“The government should form a river commission to conserve all river systems in the country and balance environmental works on rivers with the mining industry,” she said.

Forming the Irrawaddy River Conservation Commission will benefit the whole country and not only scholars and environmentalists but also local people should be included, said U Ohn, vice-president of the Forest Resource and Environment Development Association.

Dewi Thant Zin also said that this commission should work towards permanently halting the Myitsone Dam project.

The environmentalists criticized the lack of conservation works for the country’s rivers and they pointed out the danger of the rivers drying up due to unmonitored gold, pebble and gravel mining and the extraction of other natural resources.

A forum for Irrawaddy River Conservation was held at Taw Win Hninsi Hall in Yangon on February 9.

Monday, 11 February 2013 18:22 Mizzima News

Tokyo-based NGO Mekong Watch has sent an open letter to the Japanese government and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) calling on them to immediately address the Burmese government on preventing the forcible eviction of residents in the Thilawa Special Economic Zone (SEZ), which is to be largely run by Japanese companies.

The February 8 letter follows an eviction notice issued by local authorities dated January 31, which gave some 500 households in the area 14 days notice to vacate their homes, which are to be confiscated and allotted to the SEZ.

On February 5, Mizzima broke the story of how rice farmers in the village of Thida Myaing had been told to abandon their paddies within two weeks or else face a possible one-month prison sentence.

The Mekong Watch letter goes further and alleges that residents in nearby hamlets and villages have been instructed by the Thanlyn and Kyauktan authorities not only to abandon their rice fields but to evacuate their villages too.

“No alternative site to which such residents might relocate has been prepared, and no compensation measures for the livelihood of residents, such as farming and keeping small shops, have been considered,” said the report, quoting residents of A Lwan Sot village.

“Therefore, many residents will not be able to find any place to resettle, and will lose their livelihoods. In fact, authorities have already stopped supplying irrigation water from the reservoir nearby for some rice fields since the end of December 2012, and farmers have not been able to continue farming since then. This situation could throw them into a crisis and cause severe hardship in the short term, about which we are very much concerned,” Mekong Watch said.

The open letter drew attention to reports that JICA is scheduled to grant loans on the projects related to the Thilawa SEZ in the near future. “We request that the Japanese government and JICA consider this urgent petition letter and immediately take appropriate measures,” it concluded.

Burma has become the “latest flashpoint in an alarming trend” of global land grabs, which continue to wreak havoc on economic development and human rights around the world, two new reports have warned.

Two reports released last week warned that investors in land and resources in emerging economies, including Burma, risk financial and public relations disasters if local inhabitants feel they are getting ripped off.

“Rarely have local communities — and ultimately their national governments — prospered through this development model,” said Lou Munden from the Munden Project. “It’s even more astounding given that investors often fail to prosper as well. This model proved unsustainable in 2012, nowhere more apparent than in Liberia. And now the conflict in Kachin shows that Myanmar [Burma] could be the next country to fail with this approach.”

As Burma slowly emerges from five decades of military rule, international companies have been lining up to invest in the country’s vast natural resources, which include precious stones, oil, natural gas and timber. Last week, the government formally clarified the country’s new foreign direct investment law for the extractive industries, which will allow foreign firms to hold 100% stakes in oil and gas projects and removes the minimum capital investments previously required. The government is also in the process of liberalising its mining laws.

But most of Burma’s resources are found in its volatile border regions, plagued by decades of civil war with ethnic minority rebels fighting for greater autonomy and rights. Despite inking tentative ceasefire deals with most armed group, the central government has stepped up its assault against Kachin rebels in northern Burma, where over 90,000 people have been displaced since June 2011.

“The conflict in the north of Myanmar, like so many around the world, has its roots in land and resource rights — including community forest rights,” said Maung Maung Than, project coordinator for The Center for People and Forests. “The leadership of previous governments guiding Myanmar started a race to sell off our natural resources, and our livelihoods have become collateral damage in the process. As our country opens up to the outside world, we need to stay focused on reducing poverty, not increasing it.”

For Andy White, the coordinator of Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) in Washington, “the mining sector is the most exposed because it needs a lot of investments.” He told AFP: “The mining sector is a ticking time bomb all across Africa and now in Myanmar.”

RRI said that “the pace of deforestation in [Burma] has raced forward unabated.” Dense forest cover, for example, has declined precipitously, from 45.6 percent of the land in 1990 to just 19.9 percent in 2010, warned the group.

Meanwhile, the Munden Project highlighted the economic risks for companies investing in unstable regions. “When we looked at companies involved in international land acquisitions, we found that they experience an astonishing amount of financial damage,” said founder Lou Munden.

This ranged from “massively increased operating costs, as much as 29 times above a normal baseline scenario, to outright abandonment of functional operations when they ignore pre-existing or customary local land rights.” Munden emphasised that the financial risks were many and varied from delays in construction timetables to the expropriation of assets “following the loss of insurance coverage.”

He commented that “even more troubling, the escalation of risk can be extremely rapid”, and that conventional techniques for managing risk were inadequate for coping with insecure local land tenure.

President Thein Sein famously suspended the Chinese-backed Myitsone hydropower dam in Kachin state in September 2011, after a massive backlash from civil society groups over its environmental and social impacts. The China Power Investment Corporation (CPI), which ran the project, subsequently claimed to have suffered ”immeasurable” financial losses.

Parliamentarian Thein Nyunt called on journalists to use “polite usage” and have a “positive attitude” when criticising the country’s parliament, according to a report in The New Light of Myanmar on Saturday.

The MP from the New National Democratic party went on to instruct journalists to distinguish between parliamentarians’ mistakes and “opinions”.

Thein Nyunt comments were aired during a conversation surrounding the creation of a commission tasked with taking action against a notorious blogger, after the unidentified writer published critical remarks about the legislative body’s performance last month.

Burma’s Union Parliament appointed the 17-member commission during a legislative session last Friday. The deputy speakers of both the Upper House and the Lower House will lead the group.

The commission has been tasked with addressing the public’s misunderstanding of the parliament and to investigate whether the blogger’s statements violated existing law.

“First of all; we need to assess how much damage [has been done] to the credibility of the parliament and its representatives by the article and secondly – this is a more important task – to clear up the misunderstanding of the public who read the article,” said Upper House MP Hpone Myint Aung, from the National Democratic Force party, who was appointed to the commission.

“Thirdly, [we need] to expose and take action against the [blogger].”

However, Upper House MP and commission member Hla Swe, from the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), interjected and said hunting down a blogger may be unrealistic.

“Personally, I think this would be a difficult task. Internet posting is like writing graffiti on a toilet’s wall – like in our younger days – no one would find the author,” said Hla Swe.

The USDP representative said specific evidence that could lead to the identification of the blogger should be followed up on.

In January, an article published by the blogger, who writes under the pseudonym Dr Seik Phwa, stated that the parliament was acting “above the law”.

The comments were made in reference to an ongoing row between the parliament and President Thein Sein concerning controversial moves made by the country’s legislators to control Burma’s constitutional tribunal.

After the parliament impeached six tribunal justices last year, the legislator went on to amend Burma’s tribunal laws, effectively providing MPs with the means to challenge the judicial body’s decisions. The amendments also allow parliamentarians to have a hand in the appointment of the tribunal chairman.

Legal analysts and the president criticised the move, which violates the existing constitution thus undermining the rule of law.

The president first requested parliamentarians to amend the constitution before passing a resolution that would violate the country’s legal framework.

President Thein Sein eventually rescinded his request and accepted the parliament’s amendments, but noted and they would “hamper the jurisdiction of the highest constitutional court”, according to a report in The New Light of Myanmar published in late January.

“They are currently pushing through amendments on the existing constitutional tribunal law, even though the president has described them as ‘unconstitutional’,” wrote human rights lawyer Aung Htoo, in an op-ed for DVB last month.

“Despite the fact that the president raised these constitutional issues, he did not stand against the resolution of the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw [Union Parliament],” wrote Aung Htoo.

The blogger has run articles in the past seemingly in support of Thein Sein’s policies. Dr Seik Phwa has not published an article since 20 January.

On his final post, the blogger addressed the controversy surrounding his critique of parliament but apologised for referring to the country’s MPs as ‘companions’ in an earlier post.

“I correct my earlier statement that they are individuals who represent our nation’s pride working for the legislative pillar, in accordance with the constitution and the People’s representatives elected by the people with their true will in the 2010 elections held democratically with free and fairness in line with the 2008 constitution that was accepted by the people,” wrote the blogger in his final blog post.

The 2008 constitution has been consistently critiqued for suppressing democratic forces within Burma and effectively allowing the military to maintain its grip on power in the country.