Mail & Guardian - Aung San Suu Kyi's revolution of the spirit
MADELEINE BUNTING Jun 27 2011 06:18
On the wall by my desk, there's a spread of photos of Aung San Suu Kyi which appeared in the Guardian a year ago. It's a kind of family photo album with snaps of engagement, babies, university, chilly British family picnics and travels. It's a strikingly poignant illustration of everything Aung San Suu Kyi has sacrificed over 15 years of imprisonment in her struggle for Burmese democracy. Every time it catches my eye, it is both humbling and gives me hope: a reminder of what the human spirit is capable of.
Much has been made of her remarkable biography -- catapulted by circumstance from family life in Oxford into the violent repressive politics of Burma in 1988; missing the illness and death of her husband and the raising of her children to pursue the cause. What makes her Reith lectures so fascinating is they represent a statement of the ideals and mindset which have steeled her resolve and inspired her courage. The first lecture addresses the universal human desire for freedom, the second considers her fight in Burma to achieve it.
She is taking her stand on an ideal to which the West has a tendency to claim copyright in the Enlightenment. What's more, freedom is an ideal which has been bastardised in recent years by the rhetoric of two disastrous American wars. Deftly, she lays out an understanding of freedom which owes more to Buddhism than Western philosophy and, in so doing, injects a radical new meaning into an abused ideal. She is simultaneously quietly challenging western hubris and offering her global audience a new interpretation.
She does this not by expounding on obscure Buddhist philosophy -- there is only one explicit mention of Buddhism -- but by translating her spiritual tradition into a wide range of Western thinkers, poets and writers: Vaclav Havel, the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, Ratushinskaya, Henley, Kipling and Isaiah Berlin. What is far more important to her than a sales pitch for a much misunderstood religion/philosophy is that her global audience connect to what she is saying and she helps by giving plenty of familiar reference points, slipping the unfamiliar in alongside. She weaves in Christian metaphors and concepts with the Buddhism, Russian poetry and the Eastern European dissident tradition. It is a unique synthesis of East and West, only possible in someone deeply versed in both.
Many of her Western admirers will immediately grasp the language of human rights. It is the Buddhism which may be less comprehensible; for instance she recounts an anecdote in which people ask how it felt to be free after each period of house arrest, to which she replied "my mind had always been free". Or, in another passage, she says "Buddhism teaches that the ultimate liberation is liberation from all desire". Perhaps these are the points where Western minds shift uncomfortably at the proximity of spiritual faith to politics. But the most crucial fact about Aung San Suu Kyi's politics is how it is rooted in her Buddhism.
Political battles
For her, freedom is not only a set of institutions, laws and political processes, it is also a quest of the individual spirit, the struggle to free oneself from greed, fear and hatred and how they drive one's own behaviour. That is why she always talks of a "revolution of the spirit". You cannot have one without the other, both are part of transformational change; the individual and personal is inextricably bound up with the political, as she made clear in her interviews with the American Buddhist, Alan Clements, in Voice of Hope. Clements shared a Buddhist teacher with her and he told me that the meditational practices she is known to pursue are vital to cultivate the courage and insight for her political battles. When asked by Clements what her greatest struggle was, she replied: "It's always a matter of developing more and more awareness, not only day to day but moment to moment. It's a battle which will go on the whole of my life." Her greatest aim, she told him, was "purity of mind".
It is the awareness which enables her to perceive the fear that lies behind the violence of the Burmese junta and to insist on offering them dialogue. The practice of metta -- "loving kindness" -- is not passive, she says, and points to the Buddha himself, who went to stand between two warring parties to protect them both at the risk of his own safety.
This is a radical message for Western politics steeped in a technocratic managerialism and obsession with presentation: that the personal spiritual struggle cannot be stripped out of politics. But perhaps what gets overlooked is how revolutionary her message also is to her own Buddhist tradition. Not only is she a woman, she is a lay woman in a faith tradition dominated by male monasticism. Across Asia, those monastic institutions have frequently become complicit in state structures -- in Burma, spiritual preoccupations have often been an excuse for disengagement. In her Reith lecture she picks her words carefully. "There is certainly a danger that the acceptance of spiritual freedom as a satisfactory substitute for all other freedoms could lead to passivity and resignation.
But an inner sense of freedom can reinforce a practical drive for the more fundamental freedoms in the form of human rights and the rule of law."
She points to the monks who led the 2007 saffron revolution as acting out of "loving kindness" for the people suffering from sharp rises in food prices. She is putting herself at the forefront of the reforming movements in Buddhism in Asia, gently insisting on the interrelationship between practical action and private spiritual discipline.
Lastly, Aung San Suu Kyi's Buddhism is challenging one of the most persistent orientalist myths. Just as Islam was characterised as violent by Christian imperialists, Buddhism was scorned for its quietism, and self-absorbed fatalism: both were treated with comparable contempt under colonialism. Theistic Christians found Buddhism incomprehensible. That legacy persists; the current pope has described Buddhism as "self-indulgent eroticism". Bizarrely, Buddha statuary end up as a staple of garden centres, the Buddha as the consumer's symbol of calm and detachment. In a television interview the Beckhams once appeared in their sitting room alongside a near-lifesize gilt Buddha. The popular perception is of Buddhism as a form of calming therapy, much like a massage oil.
That is to emasculate the force of a powerful philosophy with radical political implications. Aung San Suu Kyi knows all too well how Buddhism has played a major political role throughout Asia, both for good and bad. Its adherents are growing fast in both India and China, as well as in the west. Like the Dalai Lama and the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, she is playing a vital role in communicating through her words and her life a Buddhism that speaks to the deepest human needs.
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Actor helps Myanmar poor on final journey
by Hla Hla Htay – Sun Jun 26, 2:16 am ET
YANGON (AFP) – He's the star of hundreds of films in military-dominated Myanmar, but these days Kyaw Thu is more likely to be found carrying coffins or driving a hearse at funerals for the poor.
In the decade since he founded the Free Funeral Services Society, the organisation has helped more than 100,000 families pay their last respects to late relatives, without charging a single kyat.
"I want someone's final journey to be good enough," said the 51-year-old, who with his long silver hair and moustache still retains some of the movie star looks that helped to propel him onto the silver screen.
With 80 paid employees and 115 volunteers, his group provides free services at about 50 funerals a day using 18 hearses and two boats to transport the deceased and relatives, relying on local and overseas donations.
It is one of a growing number of local civil society groups that have sprung up during almost half a century of military rule to fill the void left by an underfunded public sector and a relatively low inflow of foreign aid.
Despite abundant natural resources, Myanmar remains one of the world's least developed countries, with nearly a third of the population living below the poverty line, according to World Bank figures.
Rampant inflation has made it even harder for people to scrape by.
When 12-year-old Pyae Phyo Tun drowned in a lake his parents could not afford the funeral costs, so they turned to Kyaw Thu for help.
"You are our saviour. Without your help, my son's last journey could not be smooth," his 33-year-old mother Aye Maw told the one-time movie star at her son's funeral in Myanmar's main city of Yangon.
Funeral ceremonies are steeped in tradition in the country, also known as Burma, where the majority Buddhists believe that the journey to the next life should be smooth and without delay.
It is typical for relatives to build a temporary pavilion that stands for a week in front of the family home for people to gather in.
Usually on the third day mourners go to the cemetery where monks chant sutras before the body is cremated. Those who can afford to do so buy land at the cemetery for a grave.
A few days later a memorial service is held at which mourners and monks are invited to pray for the deceased to help guide them to the next life.
But for many families it is a struggle to organise such an elaborate final send-off, and these are busy days for Kyaw Thu.
"I feel both happy and sorry. My son didn't cause us trouble even though he's dead because the Free Funeral Service Society helped us to cremate him without any cost. We have many difficulties for his funeral," said Aye Maw, her voice trembling and tears running down her cheeks.
Her husband Zaw Tun, a 34-year-old construction worker, said it would be impossible for them to pay for their son's funeral themselves.
The cremation alone can cost more than 35,000 kyats (about $43), about 10 times time his daily wage -- when he can find work.
"I have borrowed 45,000 kyats at a 15 percent interest rate as I needed the money when I sent my son to hospital and to hire a boat for the funeral," Zaw Tun said sorrowfully after he returned from the cemetery.
"Our neighbours cannot help us because they are also casual labourers."
Although Kyaw Thu's group is not the only organisation offering such services for poor people, its activities have brought it under the scrutiny of the authorities in Myanmar, where power was handed to a nominally civilian government in March following the first election in 20 years.
The Union Solidarity and Development Party, the military's political proxies who swept a November election marred by complaints of cheating and intimidation, has also been competing by offering its own funeral services.
The one-time film star has briefly been detained twice by the authorities because of his activities in student and monk-led uprisings in 1988 and 2007.
"I'm not interested in politics. But the people rely on us and believe in us because of our activities. They donate to us. It might worry the authorities," Kyaw Thu said, adding that he and his group have been under the watch.
He gave up acting as his work was banned after his release from his most recent spell in detention.
Kyaw Thu said he will continue providing free funeral services while fighting old-fashioned beliefs related to death, which have led some of his former friends to shun him.
"I'm lonely compared with an actor's life. But if I think of myself as social worker Kyaw Thu, I have many more friends now. Not only living people, but also ghosts," he said.
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US says will support UN-backed Myanmar rights probe
Sat Jun 25, 2:03 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States said Saturday it is prepared to support a UN-backed human rights probe in Myanmar, after opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi urged such an investigation.
The United States "is committed to seeking accountability for the human rights violations that have occurred in Burma by working to establish an international commission of inquiry," said the State Department, using the older term for the Southeast Asian country.
"We are consulting closely with our friends, allies, and other partners at the United Nations," US officials said in the statement.
Suu Kyi, who was released in November after spending most of the past two decades under house arrest, spoke by video Wednesday in a first-ever message to the US Congress, a stronghold of support for the Nobel Peace Prize winner.
She asked lawmakers to do "whatever you can" to support the work of the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar and assured that a so-called commission of inquiry would not be a tribunal.
The United States has publicly supported a UN-led probe -- a longstanding demand of activists. But it has done little to make it a reality, worrying its efforts would be futile so long as Asian countries -- particularly China -- are opposed.
UN-led commissions of inquiry elsewhere in the world have led to charges and prosecution, with Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir risking arrest if he travels to countries that recognize the International Criminal Court.
Human rights groups say that Myanmar has a record of severe human rights abuses including extrajudicial killings, custodial deaths, torture and frequent rape of displaced women from minority groups.
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US appeals for safety of Myanmar refugees
Fri Jun 24, 6:07 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States called Friday for protection of people fleeing fighting between government and rebel forces in Myanmar's northern ethnic minority regions and renewed an appeal for an end to hostilities.
"The United States is concerned by on-going violence in (Myanmar?s) northern Kachin State and other regions of the country and calls for a halt to hostilities," State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland said.
"We are particularly concerned by the reports of human rights abuses in the area, including reports of casualties, rape, and displacement of thousands of local residents," she said in a statement.
Fierce fighting between government troops and rebels began two weeks ago near a large hydropower project being built in Kachin State to provide power to China, and has since spread to northern areas of neighboring Shan State.
The rebel Kachin Independence Army said that thousands have crossed into China during the fighting. It appealed for mediation from Beijing, one of the closest allies of Myanmar's military-backed government.
"We urge all appropriate authorities to ensure, in line with international standards, adequate support, safety, and protection for those persons fleeing conflict" in the north, Nuland said.
"This recent violence underscores the need for an inclusive dialogue between the government of Burma and opposition and ethnic minority groups to begin a process of genuine national reconciliation," she said in a statement.
Myanmar is also known as Burma.
President Barack Obama's administration in 2009 opened a dialogue with Myanmar, concluding that efforts to isolate the regime had failed.
But the United States has repeatedly voiced disappointment with Myanmar's progress on democracy, human rights and other key concerns.
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Myanmar: a nation on cusp of change
By N.C. Bipindra | IANS – Sun, Jun 26, 2011
Yangon, June 26 (IANS) After nearly 40 years of military rule, Myanmar is changing, with clear signs that the transformation is for the better.
The country's most popular pro-democracy face, Aung San Suu Kyi, is free from house arrest and has resumed her active political life.
When India's External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna was in Myanmar last week to engage the three-month-old civilian government that shares a northeastern border with India and old historical ties, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao met with Suu Kyi for an hour at the Nobel laureate's lakeside residence in Yangon, the country's former capital.
But the new Thein Sein government, with several erstwhile military men as functionaries, had no qualms over the meeting.
The erstwhile military junta under Senior General Than Shwe that ruled since 1988 has moved to the background, though it still holds a remote control over governance.
A 659-member parliament with two houses of elected representatives of the country's 60-million citizens is up and functional in Myanmar's new administrative capital, Nay Pyi Taw.
'Hastening slowly', as an Indian diplomat put it, Myanmar is on its way to joining the rest of the democratic world.
The warm-hearted Myanmarese
Myanmarese have in recent months found themselves clamouring for a spot in cyberspace. With access made possible, internet cafes are sprouting in Yangon. A mobile phone connection too is available, though at a steep price of $1,500.
Jeans and T-shirts are popular wear among the youth and night life in the cities vibrant, with pubs, night clubs and discos as hotspots.
A majority of the Myanmarese are rural poor, dependent on agriculture. But they are warm-hearted, breaking into a smile every time they have something to say.
'The ability of the Myanmarese to smile is amazing. It disarms you completely,' says an Indian embassy official.
Strong Chinese presence
What strikes the most about present-day Myanmar is the all-pervading Chinese influence.
China has presence in most of Myanmar's infrastructure projects including the construction of Nay Pyi Taw's palace-sized government buildings, parliament house and the international airport. More constructions in the new capital, that has come up within five years, is progressing at a rapid pace, mostly by Chinese firms.
Chinese goods -- clothing, electronic gadgets, electrical appliances, toys and food items -- are flooding the Myanmarese consumer market, including the shopping malls in both Yangon and Nay Pyi Taw.
The all-pervading US dollar
Nature has blessed the country with splendour in large measure and tourism potential is very high. But economic sanctions imposed by the US and the European Union restricts
Myanmar's ability to tap it.
But that's not what Myanmar is concerned about. It deals with American dollars as though it is the country's own currency. Carry American dollars while visiting Myanmar, and there will never be a need to convert them into kyats while spending at a local store.
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Ranjan Mathai named India's new foreign secretary
By Indo Asian News Service | IANS – Mon, Jun 27, 2011
New Delhi, June 27 (IANS) Ending weeks of speculation, the government Monday appointed Ranjan Mathai, India's ambassador to France, as the next foreign secretary. He will succeed Nirupama Rao.
Mathai will hold office for a two-year term and will assume office on Aug 1, 2011, external affairs ministry spokesperson Vishnu Prakash told reporters here.
Mathai will succeed Rao, who is tipped to be India's next ambassador to the US. Rao will succeed Meera Shankar in Washington, sources said.
The cabinet committee on appointments met Monday to finalise Mathai's name for foreign secretary.
Rao's appointment as foreign secretary is set to set the stage for finalisation of crucial diplomatic postings in key capitals, including Paris and London.
A 1974 batch Indian Foreign Service officer, Mathai has held diplomatic positions, including serving as India's ambassador to Israel (February 1998-June 2001) and Qatar (August 2001 to July 2005).
A veteran diplomat, he was joint secretary dealing with India's relations with Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Maldives from January 1995 to February 1998.
He has also served in the Indian embassies in Vienna, Colombo, Washington, Tehran and Brussels.
Hardeep Singh Puri, India's permanent representative to the UN, and Sharat Sabharwal, India's high commissioner to Pakistan, were also seen to be claimants for the post of foreign secretary.
Mathai, who completed his post graduate studies in political science at the University of Poona, held the post of deputy high commissioner of India to the UK in London from August 2005 to January 2007.
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June 25, 2011 16:03 PM
Russia Is Satisfied With Transition To Civilian Rule In Myanmar
MOSCOW, June 25 (Bernama) -- Russia has expressed its satisfaction with political reforms in Myanmar and the transition to civilian rule, Russia's Itar-Tass news agency reported.
The Russian Foreign Ministry made these remarks followed meetings and consultations between Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Borodavkin and Deputy Foreign Minister Maung Myint, Vice-President Thihathura Tin Aung Myint Oo, chairman of the Assembly of People's Representatives Thura Swe Mann, as well as with Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin held in Neypido on June 22.
"There was held a useful exchange of views on the development of Russia-Myanmar relations. The possibilities of intensifying the political dialogue as well as ways to better use the great potential of trade and economic and investment cooperation in the interests of both sides were discussed," the Russian Ministry said.
The Russian side expressed satisfaction with the programme for political reforms in Myanmar and the transition to civilian rule under the new Constitution and noted the importance of Myanmar's continued onward movement towards democratisation and socio-economic development, the Foreign Ministry said.
It said that discussions on the international agenda was focused on the situation in the Asia-Pacific region and building a new security architecture based on multilateral approaches to deepen cooperation between Russia and the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean).
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June 27, 2011 18:56 PM
Police Looking For Two Men To Help Solve Murder Case
IPOH, June 27 (Bernama) -- Police are seeking the assistance of two Myanmar men who had worked at a chicken farm in Tapah, about 50km from here, to help in investigations into a murder case involving a Bangladeshi worker.
Tapah police chief Superintendant Roslan Bek identified them as Hla Kyaw Sein, 36, and Nyunt Win, 36.
He told reporters today that the men were colleagues of Abdul Salam, 36, who was found dead in a house at Taman Ria in Tapah, on Thursday.
The victim sustained severe head injuries after being hit with blunt objects.
Amyone with information on the duo is urged to Tapah police at 05-4015222 or any nearest police station.
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June 27, 2011 12:16 PM
Asean Foundation Spurs Human Resource Development
JAKARTA, June 27 (Bernama) -- The Jakarta-based Asean Foundation is working on the second phase of a scholarship programme for postgraduate studies in Laos Cambodia and Myanmar, Vietnam News Agency (VNA) reported.
The first phase of the programme has been implemented in other member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
Dr Makarim Wibisono, the foundation's Managing Director, said the fund has recently signed a memorandum of understanding with UP Los Ba'os University (UPLB) of the Philippines and worked with Thabaya educational network of Thailand on the improvement of postgraduate education for Asean member countries.
The move is aimed at raising the programme's effectiveness, boosting human resources development in the region and contributing to the region's peace and security, he said.
Dr Wibisono stressed that the cooperation is completely in conformity with Asean Foundation missions - participating and partnering with the private sector to support the development of the Asean community by heightening public awareness of Asean identity, boosting exchanges among people in the bloc and further tightening the cooperation in business, civil society and institutes.
Established in 1909, UPLB is one of leading training centres in Southeast Asia in science, technology, agriculture, forestry, veterinary and other areas of research.
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Jun 27, 2011
Straits Times - Floods affect western, northern Thailand
A NINE-YEAR-OLD girl suffered an electric shock while wading through floodwater in the western Thai town of Mae Sot on Sunday.
She survived the electrocution and is being treated in the hospital. Local police believe the electricity supply to the area had not yet been cut off when the Burmese girl reached the flooded spot.
Floods hit many areas of Tak province yesterday- while officials are still trying to find out more about the earthquake that hit Trang province on Friday.
In Mae Ramat district, residents in two villages were evacuated in the face of rising floodwaters and more than 100 houses were inundated. The floods also ravaged a vast area of paddy fields but no casualties were reported.
The National Disaster Warning Centre also warned residents of other nearby districts and provinces.
In the northern district of Nan, floods had hit 48 villages as of press time.
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New Kerala - The warm-hearted Myanmarese
By N.C. Bipindra,
Yangon, June 26 :Myanmarese have in recent months found themselves clamour ing for a spot in cyberspace. With access made possible, internet cafes are sprouting in Yangon. A mobile phone connection too is available, though at a steep price of USD 1,500.
Jeans and T-shirts are popular wear among the youth and night life in the cities vibrant, with pubs, night clubs and discos as hotspots.
A majority of the Myanmarese are rural poor, dependent on agriculture. But they are warm-hearted, breaking into a smile every time they have something to say.
"The ability of the Myanmarese to smile is amazing. It disarms you completely," says an Indian embassy official.
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Grand Island Independent - JBS hires refugees from Burma
By Kay Kemmet
kay.kemmet@theindependent.com
Published: Saturday, June 25, 2011 11:24 PM CDT
Karen is a mountainous state in southeastern Burma, officially the republic of the union of Myanmar. The similarities between it and Grand Island are few and far between. But now they have one thing in common: the residents.
On Tuesday, 26 new employees started at JBS Swift, according to media spokeswoman Margaret McDonald. They are Karen refugees, and they have a long and sad history.
"We want to welcome everyone no matter what race," said Carlos Barcenas, Multicultural Coalition executive director.
Burma is bordered by India, Bangladesh, China, Laos and Thailand in Southeast Asia and is about the size of Texas.
After Burma received independence from Great Britain, civil war erupted in the country among many ethnic groups. To escape political and cultural persecution, many Karen residents fled to refugee camps in Thailand.
While Thailand offered the Karen refugees asylum, the refugee camps did not offer much protection. Julie Mayers of the Public Health Association of Nebraska spoke briefly about the Karen at the "Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?" summit on Thursday. She said that 80 percent of the women are raped in these refugee camps.
Many Karen people have left the Thailand refugee camps to immigrate to the United States. Grand Island's group originally emigrated to Oregon and they were recruited by JBS Swift.
Mayers also described the Karen people's native homes. They aren't accustomed to refrigerators and stoves, and instead cook on open fires in huts without walls.
"There is a culture shock," Barcenas said.
He hasn't met with the new Grand Island residents yet, and said he doesn't know any specifics about their background. However, he said there is one family and the rest came as individuals.
While refugee relocation sites such as Lincoln and Omaha have Karen populations, this group is the first to move to Grand Island. And local nonprofits have already been making plans to help.
Next week, Barcenas said, he will meet with them and find out how he can help them adjust. He also said JBS is grateful that the Multicultural Coalition stepped up as a resource.
Currently, three of JBS's new employees are translating for the rest of the group. Jennifer Larson, Literacy Council executive director, said they hope to help the new residents learn English, which in turn will help them assimilate quicker.
Larson said that when they do not have translators in a language, they can start with picture tablets. She also said they might receive assistance from groups in Lincoln if communication with the new residents is an issue.
"We want to find out how we can assist them," Larson said.
After meeting with Grand Island's JBS administrator, Rigo Mendiola, on Friday, Barcenas said the company has set up temporary housing for the new employees and is helping with transportation. The temporary housing will last at least two weeks, according to Barcenas.
"We appreciate and respect our multicultural populations, and do everything we can to help them adjust to the community," said McDonald, who chose not to comment on the benefits the new employees are receiving.
Barcenas also said that because JBS doesn't rehire people from the area, there will be more people coming in and out of Grand Island often.
For Trinity United Methodist Church's pastor, the Rev. Jay Vetter, the addition of Karen people to Grand Island will add cultural diversity to the community.
"I just think it's very important for our community to welcome them in," Vetter said. "(They) will bring something new to the community."
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BigPond News - Burma burns $48m of seized drugs
Monday, June 27, 2011 » 04:48am
Burma has burned opium and other illegal drugs with an estimated value of about $US50 million ($48 million) to mark the UN International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.
'We need to step up efforts to eradicate narcotic drugs by any means,' Lieutenant General Ko Ko, the home affairs minister, said at a ceremony in the capital Naypyidaw on Sunday.
The seized drugs included about 4.5 tonnes of opium and 146kg of heroin, along with various other types of drugs.
'Successive governments have strived to combat the abuse and trafficking of narcotic drugs which act as a barrier to the overall development of Myanmar,' Ko Ko said.
Burma's new military-backed government 'will keep up the war against this problem until its roots are removed from our soil', he added.
Burma, the world's second-largest opium producer after Afghanistan, has said it aims to eradicate illegal drugs by 2014.
Opium cultivation in the army-dominated nation rose by 20 per cent in 2010, with its share of global production up from five per cent in 2007 to 12 per cent last year, the UN anti-narcotics agency said last week.
'Opium production in Myanmar increased slightly because we have many difficulties - especially security reasons - destroying poppy farms in some areas,' a senior Burma drugs official said.
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KanglaOnline - State stays alert with Blue-ear disease outbreak in Myanmar
Published on June 26, 2011
IMPHAL June 26: Following the outbreak of the Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRRSV), or ‘blue-ear disease’, that has rocked Burma’s livestock industry over the past four months, and in the likelihood of the disease being communicated to other neighboring countries including the north eastern states of the country, an alert has been sounded by the the central government.
The alert came after the announcement from the World Health Organization’s Italian concern, the International Epizooties that the PRRSV virus which attacks the reproductive system of the swine has affected vast livestock in Myanmar and may spread to other neighboring countries if left unchecked.
A directive has been issued by the union agriculture ministry to the concerned departments of animal husbandry, dairy and fisheries that all states of the Northeast region that borders Myanmar to be on alert and take up precautionary measures.
In the meantime, official sources said that the concerned state officials including the chief secretary DS Poonia has intimated the security agencies among others to check the smuggling of pigs into the state from Myanmar.
It further stated that the districts of Churachanpur, Chandel and Ukhrul has close affinity with the Myanmar border and aside from other smuggled items, livestock products are being herded through the porous borders for sale in the said districts by the Myanmarese farmers.
On a similar note, veterinary officials also said that checking the smuggling of livestock including buffalo and pigs is itself a huge task and cannot be accomplished by the state veterinary department alone without additional help since the state shares a vast border with Myanmar and trade is conducted on a daily basis.
The source further maintained that there are no reports of the virus affecting the livestock of the state at present and the disease itself is not communicable to humans.
The PRRSV attacks only the reproductive system of swine; first the pig refuses to eat and later dies after ten days or so, he added.
He voiced apprehension that the virus if communicated to the livestock of the state then may be a calamity for the pig farmers of the state.
It may be mentioned that the states of Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur shares international borders with Myanmar. The states also rely on pork brought across the border as the
state piggeries cannot produce the demand of the public.
Manipur has small private pig farms and the State has only two big farms run by the state government.
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Jun 28, 2011
Asia Times Online - India hedges its bets in Myanmar
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - Under fire for its assiduous courting of Myanmar's generals, India appears to be setting in motion a strategy that will see it simultaneously engaging the Myanmarese people.
During the recent visit of External Affairs Minister S M Krishna to Myanmar, Indian unveiled initiatives aimed at enhancing food security, capacity building, etc - areas that will directly impact on the lives of millions in the country. Besides, in an attempt at an image makeover, it reached out to Aung San Suu Kyi. Though low-key, the meeting between Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and Suu Kyi was the first high-level contact with the leader of Myanmar's movement for democracy in many years.
Krishna's visit, though, was not only about winning hearts among the Myanmar people.
Uppermost on Krishna's agenda were security, connectivity and investment. It was the first high-level contact between the two countries since a new government took charge last year in Naypyidaw, Myanmar's capital.
The two sides signed an agreement for construction of an 80-kilometer road linking Rhi in India's northeastern state of Mizoram with Riddim in Myanmar's mountainous Chin province. The US$60 million project is expected to improve overland trade, providing a boost to the local economies.
They discussed progress in the $120 million Kaladan multimodal transit and transport project that India has funded and constructed. This project will link landlocked Mizoram with Myanmar's Sittwe port. India is already upgrading Sittwe port and Naypyidaw has reportedly agreed to India's request for a realignment of the project. This will involve moving the jetty at Sittwe a bit upstream.
The two sides are reported to have also discussed counter-insurgency cooperation. Several anti-India insurgent groups that are active in India's northeast have bases and training camps in Myanmar and New Delhi has been working on getting the military to support it in its counter-insurgency operations.
What set apart Krishna's visit from those of other Indian ministers and officials over the past decade was the announcement of a slew of people-centric initiatives.
India pledged $10 million towards capacity building in Myanmar. Importantly, this capacity building will focus on the agricultural sector, which is the backbone of Myanmar's economy, providing employment to two-thirds of Myanmar's people and contributing to 58% of its gross domestic product and 48% of export earnings. Farmers will be provided with funds to purchase agricultural equipment from India.
India is also setting up an agricultural research center at Yezin. A team from India's Ministry of Agriculture led by noted agricultural scientist and father of India's Green Revolution M S Swaminathan will visit Myanmar soon to understand the country's needs in the agricultural sector and the nature of help India can extend.
In the health sector, India has agreed to provide sophisticated medical equipment to a children's hospital in Yangon and has announced plans to build a state-of-the art general hospital in Sittwe.
The port's upgrade is reported to have forced an existing hospital, post office and markets to relocate. It seems that India's gesture in constructing a general hospital in the port town is aimed at reducing public distress over the port project.
As part of its efforts to reach out to the masses on issues involving human security, India has donated 10 disaster-proof silos - four in the Yangon region and seven in the Irrawaddy region - to store grain. Capable of withstanding wind speeds of 150 km per hour and resisting earthquakes of an intensity of up to 8 on the Richter scale, the silos could significantly enhance food security in cyclone-prone Myanmar.
Months after Cyclone Nargis ripped through Myanmar in 2008 people were still dying of hunger caused by the destruction of crops and grain storage dumps. The silos "will directly benefit the friendly people of Myanmar", Krishna pointed out.
"Over the past decade, India focused on security and economic co-operation in its interaction with Myanmar. It is now beginning to broad-base this engagement to include co-operation and capacity building in health, agriculture and education," K Yhome, research fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a think-tank in New Delhi, told Asia Times Online.
India and Myanmar have had strong cultural and other ties that go back several centuries. The close cooperation between their anti-colonial struggles laid the foundation for the warm relationship between the two countries up to the early 1960s.
The 1962 military coup in Myanmar changed that.
In the decades that followed, with Myanmar's military rulers disinterested in interacting with the world and India preoccupied with its own problems, the two neighbors drifted apart. Yet India continued to enjoy public goodwill in Myanmar.
This close relationship with Myanmar's people warmed considerably in the wake of the 1988 mass protests against military rule with India emerging a staunch critic of the military's repression and the sanctuary it provided to democracy activists fleeing the country. It resulted in ordinary people looking to India for support in their struggle for democracy.
But that support ceased from the mid-1990s with India adopting a "pragmatic policy" towards Myanmar. It began engaging the generals and diluting its emphasis on a return to democracy there. This shift was prompted by security concerns, economic and energy interests and the need to check China's mounting influence in Myanmar.
New Delhi's supply of arms to the military, its silence on its repression of the pro-democracy movement, and its reluctance to speak up against violence unleashed on mass protests resulted in a serious erosion of the goodwill it once enjoyed in Myanmar. While policy makers in New Delhi did recognize this, their hands were tied, they said. India needed to deal with whoever was in power in Myanmar and with Suu Kyi unlikely to come to power, the Indian government needed to continue dealing with the generals.
Last year's election, which has put in place a nominally democratic government, has given India space to widen its engagement.
The election was undoubtedly deeply flawed. The rules of the game were made to ensure the military's continued dominance over the power structure. Indeed a quarter of those in parliament are from the military and many others are their civilian cronies.
Still, the election has set in motion a process of change that few would have imagined possible in Myanmar even a year ago. New political institutions that Myanmar did not have for decades because of military rule - a presidential system, two houses of parliament, 14 regional governments and assemblies - have been created. Civil society groups, which emerged in the wake of Cyclone Nargis, have reportedly grown in number in recent months.
During a recent interaction at the Observer Research Foundation between Indian analysts and civil society activists from Myanmar, the latter expressed interest in India's "considerable experience in parliamentary democracy and institution building", Yhome recalled.
Since Myanmar's parliamentarians have no experience in democracy, they are looking to India - the government and civil society here - to share with them expertise in democratic processes. They are hoping that India will provide their parliamentarians with exposure to democratic functioning and institution building, he said.
India has provided such support elsewhere as in Afghanistan for instance where it has shared its experience of building democratic institutions such as an election commission, a human-rights commission or a strong judicial system with Afghan parliamentarians and officials.
Its emphasis on capacity building and human resource development is aimed at helping Afghanistan own and lead its reconstruction, even as it creates goodwill for India. In Africa too, India is emphasizing capacity building and people-centric projects with a view to creating sustainable partnerships with countries.
By broadening the scope of its engagement in Myanmar while retaining its focus on security concerns and furthering economic interests, India appears to be winning back lost public goodwill. New New Delhi is no doubt hoping that the people-centric projects and reaching out to the masses will make its relationship with its eastern neighbor more sustainable.
However, there is no shift in India's Myanmar policy and it is not about to back Suu Kyi against the government. "Too much should not be read into Rao's meeting with Suu Kyi," cautions Yhome, saying that it is unlikely to have "tangible political consequences". The meeting was aimed at sending out a message that New Delhi has not forgotten democracy in Myanmar. It is "a symbolic gesture of support and respect for Suu Kyi and the cause she represents".
Myanmar's pro-democracy movement has been calling on India to change its Myanmar policy. It will have to make do with New Delhi's broadbasing of its engagement with Myanmar.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore. She can be reached at sudha98@hotmail.com
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Foreign Policy In Focus - Review: Free Burma
By Guteriano Neves, June 27, 2011
In his new book Free Burma: Transnational Legal Action and Corporate Accountability, sociology professor John Dale challenges the basic assumption underlining “constructive engagement” policies that continued trade with Burma will help bring about political reform in the country. Dale argues that, instead of promoting democracy, constructive engagement poses a threat to Burma’s political and economic development.
Contrary to constructive engagement, civil society movements see the presence of transnational corporations inside Burma as helping to sustain the regime. Foreign investment does not benefit the Burmese, they maintain, but only empowers the junta. They also argue that companies that do business with the regime violate the rights of Burmese either directly or indirectly, employ child labor, remove people from the land, and destroy the environment. Therefore, these companies have to be held accountable. Civil society activists operate under the assumption that the Burmese regime would suffer greatly without foreign investment. In order to achieve their main objective, the movement established a worldwide network, launched a campaign to raise public awareness in the United States, and sued companies in court.
These efforts finally brought positive results with the passage of Free Burma laws in numerous states, including Massachusetts and Michigan. The Burma law in Massachusetts, for instance, enjoined commonwealth authorities and agencies from purchasing goods and services from companies that do business with the Burmese regime. Following the Massachusetts precedent, a federal law imposed conditional sanctions on Burma.
These laws showed the positive result of transnational movements. But they also caused a backlash. Corporations were motivated to unite and launch a counterattack by challenging the morality and the legality of these laws. Corporate attorneys claimed that the laws were an “injurious imposition” of “unfair trade barriers” and an unconstitutional interference in foreign affairs.
Free Burma documents and analyzes this battle, which has involved the state, corporations, and a transnational movement of civil society. This battle, Dale demonstrates, is not only about legal issues, it’s also about the discourse that underlies the presence of corporations in Burma and the question of who gets to shape U.S. foreign policy toward the country. He also shows how the state has increasingly aligned itself with corporate interests. “Constructive engagement” in many ways is embedded in this alliance of states and corporations. Interestingly, corporations are in Burma in the first place because an illiberal regime made a “liberal” decision to open its market to foreign investment.
Free Burma also provides a valuable lesson for any social movements operating in the globalized and integrated world. Although globalization enables companies to expand their operations to other countries, it also helps social movements become transnational. Such transnational movements then become a powerful alternative movement when the state’s foreign and economic policies fails to produce results.
In the case of Burma, the sanctions campaign raised public consciousness that consumers have the power to influence the behavior of corporations. Most importantly, Dale’s book raises the question of who rules over corporations. The entrenched policies of constructive engagement, Dale concludes, suggest that corporations, often aligned with the state, reign supreme.
Guteriano Neves is an East Timorese activist and contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.
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Monsters and Critics - Myanmar parliamentarian delegation in Russia on study tour
Jun 26, 2011, 10:29 GMT
Yangon - Myanmar's newly elected House Speaker has led a delegation to Russia to study its parliamentary system as part of a 'capacity building' exercise for the pro-military government.
People's Parliament speaker Shwe Mann led a delegation in a visit to the Russian parliament on Saturday at the invitation of B.V Gryzlov, chairman of the Duma federal assembly of Russian Federation, the New Light of Myanmar reported.
'The Hluttaw (Parliament) representatives are trying to build their capacity,' Shwe Mann told parliament representatives in Yangon on Friday, the day before his departure to Russia.
'In this regard, measures are being taken to conduct self-study, hold discussions and workshops and exchange visits between Hluttaw representatives and MPs of other nations,' said the former general.
Shwe Mann is one of the leading figures in Myanmar's new government, which came of office on March 30 following the general election on November 7.
The election was won by the pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which is packed with former generals and high-ranking miliary men who doffed their uniforms to take up civilian posts.
The election, which excluded opposition leader Aung Sann Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy party, was criticized as a 'sham' but most western democracies.
'The Hluttaws must accept criticism of the people and assessment of the international community,' Shwe Mann said, before departing for a study course in parliamentary democracy in Russia.
Myanmar has three houses of parliament, a lower house, upper house and a third house representing the separate regions.
All three houses include 25 per cent appointees by the military, assuring them veto power over any legislation.
Myanmar was ruled by military dictatorships between 1962 to 2010, and is now under a military-managed elected government.
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guardian.co.uk - Aung San Suu Kyi's idea of freedom offers a radical message for the west
The Burmese heroine's Reith lectures expose our patronising attitudes to Buddhism, and injects fresh meaning into a concept we have abused
Madeleine Bunting
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 26 June 2011 21.00 BST
On the wall by my desk, there's a spread of photos of Aung San Suu Kyi which appeared in the Guardian a year ago. It's a kind of family photo album with snaps of engagement, babies, university, chilly British family picnics and travels. It's a strikingly poignant illustration of everything Aung San Suu Kyi has sacrificed over 15 years of imprisonment in her struggle for Burmese democracy. Every time it catches my eye, it is both humbling and gives me hope: a reminder of what the human spirit is capable of.
Much has been made of her remarkable biography – catapulted by circumstance from family life in Oxford into the violent repressive politics of Burma in 1988; missing the illness and death of her husband and the raising of her children to pursue the cause. What makes her Reith lectures so fascinating is they represent a statement of the ideals and mindset which have steeled her resolve and inspired her courage. The first lecture addresses the universal human desire for freedom, the second considers her fight in Burma to achieve it.
She is taking her stand on an ideal to which the west has a tendency to claim copyright in the Enlightenment. What's more, freedom is an ideal which has been bastardised in recent years by the rhetoric of two disastrous American wars. Deftly, she lays out an understanding of freedom which owes more to Buddhism than western philosophy and, in so doing, injects a radical new meaning into an abused ideal. She is simultaneously quietly challenging western hubris and offering her global audience a new interpretation.
She does this not by expounding on obscure Buddhist philosophy – there is only one explicit mention of Buddhism – but by translating her spiritual tradition into a wide range of western thinkers, poets and writers: Vaclav Havel, the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, Ratushinskaya, Henley, Kipling and Isaiah Berlin. What is far more important to her than a sales pitch for a much misunderstood religion/philosophy is that her global audience connect to what she is saying and she helps by giving plenty of familiar reference points, slipping the unfamiliar in alongside. She weaves in Christian metaphors and concepts with the Buddhism, Russian poetry and the eastern European dissident tradition. It is a unique synthesis of east and west, only possible in someone deeply versed in both.
Many of her western admirers will immediately grasp the language of human rights. It is the Buddhism which may be less comprehensible; for instance she recounts an anecdote in which people ask how it felt to be free after each period of house arrest, to which she replied "my mind had always been free". Or, in another passage, she says "Buddhism teaches that the ultimate liberation is liberation from all desire". Perhaps these are the points where western minds shift uncomfortably at the proximity of spiritual faith to politics. But the most crucial fact about Aung San Suu Kyi's politics is how it is rooted in her Buddhism.
For her, freedom is not only a set of institutions, laws and political processes, it is also a quest of the individual spirit, the struggle to free oneself from greed, fear and hatred and how they drive one's own behaviour. That is why she always talks of a "revolution of the spirit". You cannot have one without the other, both are part of transformational change; the individual and personal is inextricably bound up with the political, as she made clear in her interviews with the American Buddhist, Alan Clements, in Voice of Hope. Clements shared a Buddhist teacher with her and he told me that the meditational practices she is known to pursue are vital to cultivate the courage and insight for her political battles. When asked by Clements what her greatest struggle was, she replied: "It's always a matter of developing more and more awareness, not only day to day but moment to moment. It's a battle which will go on the whole of my life." Her greatest aim, she told him, was "purity of mind".
It is the awareness which enables her to perceive the fear that lies behind the violence of the Burmese junta and to insist on offering them dialogue. The practice of metta – "loving kindness" – is not passive, she says, and points to the Buddha himself, who went to stand between two warring parties to protect them both at the risk of his own safety.
This is a radical message for western politics steeped in a technocratic managerialism and obsession with presentation: that the personal spiritual struggle cannot be stripped out of politics. But perhaps what gets overlooked is how revolutionary her message also is to her own Buddhist tradition. Not only is she a woman, she is a lay woman in a faith tradition dominated by male monasticism. Across Asia, those monastic institutions have frequently become complicit in state structures – in Burma, spiritual preoccupations have often been an excuse for disengagement. In her Reith lecture she picks her words carefully. "There is certainly a danger that the acceptance of spiritual freedom as a satisfactory substitute for all other freedoms could lead to passivity and resignation.
But an inner sense of freedom can reinforce a practical drive for the more fundamental freedoms in the form of human rights and the rule of law." She points to the monks who led the 2007 saffron revolution as acting out of "loving kindness" for the people suffering from sharp rises in food prices. She is putting herself at the forefront of the reforming movements in Buddhism in Asia, gently insisting on the interrelationship between practical action and private spiritual discipline.
Lastly, Aung San Suu Kyi's Buddhism is challenging one of the most persistent orientalist myths. Just as Islam was characterised as violent by Christian imperialists, Buddhism was scorned for its quietism, and self-absorbed fatalism: both were treated with comparable contempt under colonialism. Theistic Christians found Buddhism incomprehensible. That legacy persists; the current pope has described Buddhism as "self-indulgent eroticism". Bizarrely, Buddha statuary end up as a staple of garden centres, the Buddha as the consumer's symbol of calm and detachment. In a television interview the Beckhams once appeared in their sitting room alongside a near-lifesize gilt Buddha. The popular perception is of Buddhism as a form of calming therapy, much like a massage oil.
That is to emasculate the force of a powerful philosophy with radical political implications. Aung San Suu Kyi knows all too well how Buddhism has played a major political role throughout Asia, both for good and bad. Its adherents are growing fast in both India and China, as well as in the west. Like the Dalai Lama and the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, she is playing a vital role in communicating through her words and her life a Buddhism that speaks to the deepest human needs.
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The Irrawaddy - Security Tightened in Wake of Bomb Blasts
By SAI ZOM HSENG Monday, June 27, 2011
Security has been tightened in Burma's main cities since a series of bomb blasts struck Naypyidaw, Mandalay and Pyin Oo Lwin on Friday. Local people say they are frightened the bombing campaign will continue and many say they are avoiding crowded urban areas.
Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Monday, a Naypyidaw police officer said, “We have beefed up security in busy places and we have launched a task force to patrol potential targeted areas since the day of the bomb blasts.
“As for the explosion on Friday in Zabuthiri Township in Naypyidaw, we are investigating the case, and have combined our security force with bomb experts from the army.”
According to another police officer, the security detail involves a task force combined of police, army, firefighters, officials from local administrations and members of the Union Solidarity and Development Party.
In Burma's former capital, Rangoon, police are tightening security in crowded areas, such as bus stations and markets. According to a local journalist, people are thinking twice about venturing toward such areas.
A military officer from Pyin Oo Lwin said that after the bomb blast on Friday, his unit received an order from the principal of the Defense Services Academy advising army personnel to avoid crowded areas.
A Mandalay resident told The Irrawaddy that the security task forces are patrolling the streets the whole night and are immediately seizing and detaining anyone they deem suspicious.
Meanwhile, the security level was raised in northern Shan State with the additional factor that there is in many townships an ongoing armed conflict between the former Shan State Army-North (SSA/SSPP) and the Burmese army.
A police officer from Lashio, the capital of northern Shan State, said that the authorities had raised the security level since Saturday, the day after the bomb blasts in Naypyidaw, Mandalay and Pyin Oo Lwin. He said that security will be focused on crowded places and the houses of high-ranking officials and military officers.
Another police officer who spoke to The Irrawaddy on condition of anonymity on Sunday said, “We have also raised the security level in Kyaukme and Hsipaw, which are towns close to the area occupied by the SSA/SSPP. We believe that the Shan insurgents might attack and we are closely watching the entrances to those towns.”
Local authorities in northern Shan State have introduced a program to force local residents in every quarter to take turns at working as night watchmen and as security detail.
However, individuals can evade the responsibility by paying a fine of 3,000 kyats (US $3.70), according to a local Lashio resident.
State-owned The New Light of Myanmar reported on Saturday that the bomb blasts destroyed two houses and a vehicle, leaving three people injured, though they are not in critical condition.
“Aiming to cause public panic and undermine already achieved peace and stability, insurgents have been committing terrorist acts persistently at crowded places. Now, they are recruiting bombers to commit destructive acts providing incentives,” said the report.
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The Irrawaddy - Landslides Brings Border Trade to a Standstill
Monday, June 27, 2011
Trade and transportation across the Thai-Burmese border at Mae Sot-Myawaddy have come to a complete halt over the past three days due to a series of landslides that have closed the Myawaddy-Kawkareik road, the main route connecting eastern Karen State to Rangoon.
Continuous heavy rain has caused at least 10 landslides along the road since Friday, bringing traffic to a standstill and stranding around 400 vehicles, including transport trucks, according local sources.
Burmese traders who import fruits and other perishable goods from Thailand are facing losses due to the disruption. A fruit merchant said that apples, durians, oranges and other fruits destined for Rangoon had to be shipped back to Myawaddy, opposite the Thai border town of Mae Sot.
“If the road remains blocked, the fruit will become overripe and we will lose about 10 million kyat (US $12,500),” said the fruit merchant.
A motorbike taxi driver said that some people who couldn't get through by car were using motorcycles to reach their destinations.
“Just when they nearly finished clearing the road, it started raining again, triggering another mudslide. So motorcycles are the only way to get through now. The trip costs 10,000 kyat ($12.60) per person, or 15,000 kyats ($19) if the passenger has a lot of luggage,” said the motorbike taxi driver.
Seafood exported from Burma to Thailand is also in danger of spoiling, said a trader who sells crabs.
Although official trade at the Mae Sot-Myawaddy border crossing has been suspended since last July for security reasons, the area still has a booming illegal trade between the two countries. Traders estimated that imports from Thailand are worth about 700 million baht ($22.7 million) per month, while Burmese exports are valued at around 400 million baht ($13 million).
A government worker in Myawaddy said that a lack of heavy machinery in Burma meant that it could take days to clear the road. “If this had happened in Mae Sot or anywhere else in Thailand, it would have taken just a few hours to reopen traffic. But this is Burma, so we have to be patient.”
This is the second time this month that the road has been closed due to landslides. On June 11, border trade stopped for two days because of a road closure.
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The Irrawaddy - Press Censors Issue Warning to Rangoon Editors
Monday, June 27, 2011
Burma’s notoriously draconian censorship board, the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD), has issued a warning to several Rangoon-based journals not to try to take advantage of the PSRD's new “post-publishing” censorship regulation.
Editors at several weekly journals have been ordered to sign statements promising not to violate press regulations either in print or in photography.
Several publications were sent warning letters last Wednesday, including Modern Times, Health Care, First Line Up, Soccer, and Mobile Guide.
“At least six journal signed the pledge the first day,” said a Rangoon-based sports journal editor. “The regulations vary from journal to journal, depending on their content.”
Beginning on June 10, publishers were permitted to run stories on sports, entertainment, technology, health and children's literature without PSRD approval. However, they were instructed that they still have to follow rules protecting the “Three National Causes”—the basic principles espoused by Burma's military rulers—and avoid any writing that damages “state instability.”
The news suddenly became that little bit fresher, said Win Nyein, the chief editor of The Ray of Light, an entertainment journal. “We need to be more careful, so now we don't dare to publish international news as we did before.”
“In July, the censorship board did not allow us to publish a photo of Aung San Suu Kyi offering robes to novices,” said Moe Tun, the editor in charge of Dhamma Yeik magazine. “But they didn't give any reason.”
Many Rangoon-based editors and publishers have expressed doubts about any improvements in the freedom of media following the swearing in of a new government in March.
“Things are quite different what they [the PSRD] said at the previous meeting,” said another editor. “They said that they will not take action if there are no complaints. We wee told we would be able to write what we want in accordance with the new regulations.”
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Young ‘dragons’ seek to empower the Pa-O community
Monday, 27 June 2011 17:37 Thea Forbes
Mae Sot (Mizzima) – Nang and Ingin don’t look like dragons. The 19-year-old Pa-O girls from Shan State in Burma appear rather shy. But they get fired up when encouraged to talk about how the education programme they are taking could empower their Pa-O community back home in the hills of Burma.
It’s a myth, of course. The girls grew up with the tale of dragons and their people’s origin through the union of a dragon lady and a 'weiza', a supernatural being. Even today, their sense of dragon origin and belonging to the Pa-O community—said to number between one and two million people spread over more than three Burmese states—is reinforced by the history they have learned during an innovative education programme on the Thai side of the Burmese border.
Nang and Ingin offered Mizzima an insight into their personal quest for empowerment—one that involved running away from their hill village in order to gain the skills and knowledge to become teachers and then return. A sense of Pa-O identity is an important part of the mix in a programme currently training close to a dozen girls.
Their mothers still wear turbans in the shape of a dragon's head; their fathers a turban that resembles the weiza's tail. But the two girls are young, modern and don’t want to wear the headdress, not here anyway. They don’t want to stand out given their illegal status in Thailand. They recounted grimly how at one point they had been arrested earlier in 2011 by the Thai police, but managed to get released. Little wonder that they ask to keep their location a secret and insist on pseudonyms.
Their programme is an effort by leaders of the Pa-O National Liberation Organization (PNLO) in exile who wish to educate their youth with the knowledge and skills to return to Shan State and teach and act as local leaders in the Pa-O community. The programme is in English, Burmese and the Pa-O language and follows a rigorous schedule and a breadth of subject matter aimed at empowering their fellow Pa-O dragons.
The political wing of the Pa-O people in Burma has gone through some changes since they went underground in 1949, a year after independence. They initially fought against the Shan State’s feudal princes but surrendered in 1958, after the princes relinquished their traditional powers, according to the Shan Herald News Agency. They returned to arms under the PNLO name in 1966 to fight against Burma’s military rulers. After some name changes and change of alliances, they returned to using the name PNLO in December 2009.
Five years ago, the two girls, then just 14, made a pact. They fled together from their village in Shan state. Life for the two girls looked bleak due to the ongoing conflict between the Burmese Army and the Shan State Army – South in surrounding villages, and the poor state of education. At best they might have been set for an early marriage, motherhood, potato farming and poverty—if they weren’t killed in the fighting. Horrific tales abound of how girls are kidnapped by army soldiers and forced to act as porters and human shields, with the ever-looming threat of rape and murder.
In addition, the hills where their families have lived for generations under assualt wrecked by outsiders through toxic mining and widespread logging that displayed no concern for protecting the environment.
There was little to keep them tied to their village.
Initially, they traveled to Karen State where they attended school while staying with their Pa-O relatives. Ultimately though, due to lack of general resources and the pervading shadow of the government's censorship of learning material in schools, their pursuit of higher learning led them to leave their country. Thailand beaconed.
History provides a crucial part of the girls’ identity. Apart from the myth of their origin, the history they are taught in the programme in Thailand talks of a group of people who came down from Tibet to Thaton, now in Mon State, about 1,000 years BC. Burma, like most countries, has a troubled history of conflict and the subjugation of minority peoples, according to studies of the people. The Pa-O were no exception. At the turn of the first millennium, King Anawrahta of Pagan attacked Thaton and defeated the Mon monarch King Kakuta forcing the Pa-O to stop wearing their multi-coloured costumes and wear black, becoming his slaves. Many Pa-O fled into neighbouring states including Shan State. They continue to wear black today, or Burmese or western clothing.
History matters but there are modern subjects that the girls feel will more concretely help their ethnic community. Both see the need to help empower their community that is mostly engaged agricultural, but faces severe environmental challenges and the threat of fighting.
'I want to learn political science, human rights, environment, social studies and computer studies’, said Nang. ‘I will go back and share my education and have discussions with my people’.
Both girls say that people in their villages back home are unaware of even their basic human rights because of the lack of education, and that they want to change that. They said that most people in their villages only get as high as middle school.
Nang expresses concern at how the military government, prior to the 2010 election, had violated human rights and destroyed the environment.
‘I think in my village, which is very small, people know very little about their human rights…I will try to talk with my Pa-O people and the local government, Nang told Mizzima.
Ingin said that she wants to go back home in about four or five years to share her knowledge, and to teach. ‘They already know some, but they do not know a lot, they have no opportunity to know a lot’, she said.
Nang said she did not want to see another Saffron Revolution, a time when the army shot monks in Rangoon in 2007. ‘I saw so many people dying when the (government forces) were shooting at people, I felt so sad’, she said, recounting what she had seen in the media.
'I think in a long, long time we will get democracy', Nang said.
Nang's and Ingin's thirst for knowledge is evident, but it is their desire to devote their youth to learning so as to impart knowledge to their Pa-O that most impresses.
Ingin sees education as the path to pursuing democracy, but she thinks that at this point the Burmese government cannot help her.
'I don't think they can help. They should give ethnic people their rights, fairly, they should give education for free to young people. The schools are so bad. We only learn by memorizing; we don't have discussions’, she said.
The girls are aware of how under-funded and under-resourced the Burmese education system is. The new budget laid out by Burma's government has allocated approximately 4 per cent of the national budget to education and roughly a third to the military.
'For me, we are young people, so we should know about the political situation in our country. There are so many problems, I want to understand everything, and if I get some knowledge, I want to share it’, Ingin said.
'I think if we get democracy in our country, we can stop the conflicts’, said Ingin, reflecting on the destruction of war she had seen first-hand near her village in Shan State.
Both Ingin and Nang hope to become teachers when they return home, but whether their optimism and desire to spread new knowledge will succeed under the system that exists in Burma remains to be seen.
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Vice President calls for more effort to clean up polluted Inlay Lake
Monday, 27 June 2011 22:01 Tun Tun
New Delhi (Mizzima) – Vice President Sai Mauk Kham urged people not to build more floating cultivated islands in Inlay Lake, which has been polluted with toxins and is facing depleted water levels.
Sai Mauk Kham spoke at an environment meeting at Inlay Lake on Sunday that was attended by ministers from the Forest Ministry, Agriculture and Irrigation Ministry and officials from the Myanmar Agriculture Department.
He urged people not ‘to build more cultivated floating islands and houses on the lake, and to clear the unnecessary floating islands, algae and flotsam in order to de-silt the lake’. He also called for no logging around a 20-mile radius of the lake.
There are 36 village tracts inhabited by 170,000 people at Inlay Lake and its surrounding area.
Environmentalist U Ohn of the Forest Resource Environment Development and Conservation Association (FREDA) noted that local people would face severe restrictions on their incomes if the recommendations were implemented without effective government support.
‘Livelihood is important for the local people’, he said. ‘The local people have settled here for many generations and survived by this lake so we must give priority to the people. Development and environment is always in a tug-of-war. It will be successful only if we can handle this issue cleverly and patiently’, he told Mizzima.
The Inlay region-based Inn National Development Party Chairman Win Myint said, ‘Manufacturing, cottage industry and small-scale industry should be established here in order to make living on the shore more attractive for local people. This way the local people could get employment and could reduce waste in the lake’.
Previously Inlay Lake had a surface area of 100 square miles. That decreased to 23 square miles in 2007, when the lake faced a devastating drought. The depth of the lake is an average 7 feet in the summer and rises to bout 12 feet in the rainy season.
Sai Mauk Kham also called for more trees to be planted in the region and embankments to be improved to prevent silting.
He called for more conservation of the environment and more awareness campaigns, saying it was one of the duties of the government, and he urged more cooperation between local residents and businesses to improve conservation.
Inlay Lake is one of Burma’s major natural attractions and is listed as an Asean heritage site by the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean).
Conservationist U Ohn said it would take at least 10 years to restore Inlay Lake to its normal condition and would require special laws in addition to restrictions and regulations.
‘The existing laws are not adequate. For instance, we don’t have any environment law yet. More importantly for conservation, lnlay Lake needs a biodiversity law. I mean we should use bio-fertilizer rather than chemical fertilizers when growing vegetables in the lake’.
According to Win Myint, pollution in the lake is caused by the use of chemical fertilizers in the cultivation of about 8,000 acres of floating cultivating islands.
‘Water quality in the lake is being degraded’, he said. ‘The use of chemical fertilizers in tomato cultivation on the floating islands causes pollution and degrades water quality. But it has not yet reached a dangerous level. If we do not contain and control this issue in time, it will reach dangerous toxin level within next five years’, he said.
The government has established a supervisory committee for conservation of the lake but it can only be successful if all ministries work together, U Ohn said.
‘The vice president should coordinate all the government departments and ministries for the success of this effort. Not only one or two ministries, but all governmental departments should be placed under the control of the vice president for the task of conservation of Inlay Lake’, he said. He said the forest, agriculture and irrigation, fishery, hotel and travel departments should all work in tandem on the effort.
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DVB News - Russia ‘satisfied’ as Shwe Mann visits Moscow
Published: 27 June 2011
A senior Burmese delegation led by the powerful House speaker Shwe Mann arrived in Moscow on Saturday for what state media billed a ‘fact finding’ mission to assess Russia’s parliamentary model.
The trip prompted the Medvedev administration’s first public acknowledgement of the new Burmese government, which came to power in March. A foreign ministry statement at the weekend noted that Russian officials “expressed satisfaction with the program for political reforms … and transition to civilian rule” in Burma.
Also in the delegation were Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin, Deputy Foreign Minister Maung Myint and Vice President Tin Aung Myint Oo. Shwe Mann said on Friday that the visit was part of an attempt to build the capacity of Burmese government officials through “self-study, discussions and workshops”, that included a trip to Cambodia in April.
It is not the first time Shwe Mann has visited Moscow – in 2006, during his tenure as joint chief of staff of the Burmese army, he made a secretive trip there with then Vice-Senior General Maung Aye to bid for assistance in the development of a nuclear reactor and heavy weaponry.
Russia is known to have provided training programmes for Burmese military technicians and scientists, and is a leading arms supplier to Naypyidaw, having in the past provided surface-to-air missiles.
But it is also a leading proponent of the ‘disciplined democracy’ model that Burmese officials have occasionally used to clarify questions about their so-called transition to civilian rule.
The foreign ministry statement talked of “possibilities of intensifying the political dialogue” between the two countries with suggestions that Russia is looking to develop a stronger security presence in Southeast Asia.
“In the context of discussions on the international agenda special attention was paid to the situation in the Asia-Pacific region and coordination of positions on topical problems of the world, above all – to building there a new security architecture based on multilateral approaches to deepening cooperation between Russia and the Association of South-East Asian Nations,” it said.
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DVB News - Burmese, Chinese traders fight in Mandalay
Published: 27 June 2011
A gem market in Burma’s second city of Mandalay was shut down this morning after fighting broke out between Chinese and Burmese merchants over a deal that turned sour.
Police arrived at the scene and detained five Chinese, one of whom punched a rival Burmese gem seller, an eye-witness told DVB. The argument was sparked by accusations from Chinese merchants that Burmese traders had broken a deal worth $US5,300.
“Other Burmese traders nearby got involved and they surrounded the Chinese merchants’ office for about one hour,” said a resident of Mandalay’s Mahaaungmyay township, where the incident took place. “About 100 police and security forces arrived and took them to the police station.”
A police official at the local station however denied the men were being held there. “Our senior officials are currently informing higher level authorities. We don’t know what the situation is at the moment,” he said.
It mirrors an incident last month at the same market when a Burmese trader punched a Chinese man and was sentenced to six months in jail.
Mandalay is heavily populated with Chinese, who now dominate the town’s hotel and small business sector. Some estimates put the proportion of Chinese at half of the town’s population.
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DVB News - MP bids for stronger anti-drugs policy
By AHUNT PHONE MYAT
Published: 27 June 2011
Recent findings by the UN that production of opium in Burma has increased by 20 percent should prompt the government into taking tougher action against the trade, an MP has said.
As well as a rise in opium, Burmese authorities hauled a record 15.8 tons of methamphetamine pills in 2009, the latest year for available figures, up by more than one third from 2008.
Dr Sai Kyaw Ohn, a parliamentary representative of Shan state’s Namhkam township, labelled it a ‘frontline issue’ for the new government, which has maintained the former junta’s pledge to eliminate Burma’s lucrative drugs industry by 2014. “We will have to discuss in parliament ways to eradicate or cut down [production],” he told DVB.
The government reacted to the UN report in state media by highlighting “concerted efforts” in driving eradication efforts. “Measures are being taken with added momentum to destroy poppy plantations and prevent drug trafficking. In 2010, opium, heroin, opium oil, low-grade opium, marijuana, stimulant pills and various kinds of chemicals were confiscated and legal action was taken against 3465 culprits in 2630 cases,” said an article in the New Light of Myanmar.
Promises of eradication have been met with doubt, however, not least due to evidence of the government’s hand in the trade – a report by the Thailand-based Shan Drug Watch in 2010 claimed that government-backed militias had taken over ethnic armies as Burma’s main drugs’ producers.
Reports emerged last month that army officials were also taking bribes of up to $US90 per acre from farmers in exchange for being allowed to grow poppies for opium. During peak season, a poppy farmer can earn $US12 a day, a huge incentive in a country where average annual wages hover at just over a dollar a day.
Crop substitution has also been an area of concern, with opium production vastly more lucrative, and suited to environmental conditions in the mountainous Shan state where the majority of drugs are growing, than the alternatives offered by the government.
“Business opportunities should be created for civilians, then we should be able to lower [drugs’ production],” said Dr Sai Kyaw Ohn. “But for now, the population in the mountains has nothing else worthwhile to grow.”
US State Department has consistently chastised the government’s anti-drugs efforts, claiming in a report last year that Burma had “failed demonstrably” to eradicate narcotics.
With a decline in Afghanistan’s output, Burma’s share of global opium production has risen from five percent in 2007 to 12 percent last year, the UN report said.
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Monday, 27 June 2011
BURMA RELATED NEWS - JUNE 25-27, 2011
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