Saturday, November 23, 2013

The Irrawaddy Magazine

The Irrawaddy Magazine

Tracing the Last of Burma’s Once Influential Armenians

Posted: 23 Nov 2013 02:57 AM PST

Armenian

A picture of the Gregorys' former home in Rangoon. (Photo: Alice Foster)

RANGOON — A hand-drawn map showed the way to the colonial teak house that my Armenian grandmother's family left behind when the Japanese captured Rangoon in 1942.

My relatives are thought to have hidden jewels in the well before fleeing the family home that was reportedly turned into a brothel during the Japanese occupation.

Last month, more than 70 years later, I took up the map drawn by my great-uncle from memory and returned to the house down by the railway lines near Lanmadaw station in Rangoon.

The street names have changed and a high-ranking government official has taken up residence in the large house, which was confiscated by the military sometime after the 1962 coup that marked the beginning of nearly a half century of authoritarian rule.

A decade ago the house was tightly guarded and photographs were prohibited, but now the restrictions have eased.

The official's sister and a maid gingerly let me into the locked garden, but not the house because the government official, said to be a director for education, was out. Looking at my black and white family photographs, his sister said: "I'm amazed. There are still people very much interested in this old house."

The maid, standing by the overgrown well, said the previous occupants did not eat beef inside the house because they were superstitious. Some people have said it is haunted.

But she said: "I have never had any experience of ghosts."

My late grandmother, Norma Gregory, grew up in Rangoon and lived with her mother and father, who was a barrister, together with three older brothers and several dogs.

The Gregorys were among a number of Armenians who had professions and commercial interests in Burma under British rule but fled before the Japanese captured Rangoon during World War II.

As part of the evacuation Norma, just 18, traveled to India, joined the army and later moved to London where she met my grandfather at a dance. She never returned to Burma.

Her parents did go back to the house in Rangoon but left for good when the military, led by former dictator Gen Ne Win, confiscated it.

Last month, in an attempt to trace my family history, I went to the 150-year-old Armenian Apostolic Church of St John the Baptist on Bo Aung Kyaw Street in Rangoon.

Its priest, Reverend John Felix, who invited me for tea, said there used to be hundreds of Armenian families in Burma but there are now very few left, as a result of the upheavals in the country over the decades. When he took over the church in 2011, he only knew two Armenian families.

"I said, I must do something," the Rev Felix told me. "I started to search and talk to people as much as I can. I learned that Armenians used to have positions with official status."

In the 17th century, a Persian shah uprooted many thousands of Armenians from the region of Julfa in their homeland and deported them to his new capital in modern day Isfahan, Iran. Ambitious young traders from the diaspora then traveled to India and Southeast Asia.

As the Armenian community established itself in Burma, a few of the most powerful merchants became advisors to Burmese kings and acted as go-betweens with the British.

After the British colonized Burma, my great-great-grandfather Chater Gregory moved to Rangoon from Calcutta in India, where Anglo-Armenian relations were traditionally close.

Rev Felix said that a number of Armenians ran large companies and built monuments, an airport and a fire brigade tower in Rangoon.

"When the British ruled, they were very much trusted," he said. "They got major building contracts and positions in customs. They contributed to the development of Myanmar."

In 1901, Armenian brothers Aviet and Tigran Sarkies opened the Strand Hotel as part of a luxury hotel chain including the Raffles Hotel in Singapore.

My great-grandfather is said to have drunk there after a day's work at the courtroom nearby.

Rev Felix took me to visit Armenian Ralf Gregory, 94, who was once a signaler in the British Army, got the last train out of Rangoon before its capture in 1942 and was later taken hostage by the Japanese.

Gregory, a frail man with the same surname and accent as my great-uncle, was born just four years before my grandmother but said he did not know my family.

At his home in Rangoon, he said that he is proud to be one of the few people with Armenian heritage left in Burma, where sometimes he is mistaken for a Jew.

He said: "I don't feel lonely, I depend on God. I pray morning and night, I pray for everybody, I leave nobody out."

When invited to celebrate the church's 150th anniversary, he said: "If I am in good health I will go. I am almost blind and I have to wear this [visor] to keep away the light."

Rev Felix said that Gregory's Armenian school friend Basil Martin, chairman of the board of trustees at the church and a respected figure whose family ran a company, died in May.

At the start of the year, Burma established diplomatic ties with Armenia and more Armenians could soon begin to arrive as the country opens up.

If nothing else, Rev Felix hopes the changes will bolster the congregation of his church, which sees about 10 people attend its weekly Sunday morning service.

The post Tracing the Last of Burma's Once Influential Armenians appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

Public Service Media Unlikely Before 2015 Elections: Minister

Posted: 23 Nov 2013 02:50 AM PST

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MRTV head Tint Swe speaks to The Irrawaddy in August (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

RANGOON — Burma's Information Minister Aung Kyi says it could be late 2015 before state broadcaster Myanmar Radio and Television (MRTV) is changed to a public service outlet.

A public service media bill aimed at overhauling the government mouthpieces has been sent to Burma's army-dominated Parliament, but a lengthy discussion period is expected before the changes are implemented and MRTV takes up its projected public service role.

"I think public service media will be discussed in coming sessions of Parliament. It will take at least six months or more to be discussed in both Houses, and if there are any differences or arguments between them, it will go again to the Union Parliament," Aung Kyi told The Irrawaddy on Friday.

Burma has a Lower and Upper House of Parliament, as well as a Union Parliament made up of representatives of both Houses. Burma's 2010 elections saw a landslide win for the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), while a 25 percent bloc of seats in the Houses are blocked off for current army cadres.

Elaborating on the likely timeframe for passing the public service media bill, the minister said that "according to my estimation it will take at least one year for the promulgations of Parliament and then it will become active only one year after the promulgations of that law."

That would mean the law would not come into effect until near the end of 2015. "It could be after the elections," the minister concluded.

That timetable falls behind the estimate given by Tint Swe, MRTV's director-general, who told The Irrawaddy in August that Burma's new public service media should be in place by early 2015, a timeframe that would have the revamped TV and radio stations operational in time for Burma's 2015 national elections.

MRTV has introduced new services recently—including a channel dedicated to covering ethnic minority regions as well as a Parliament channel, while in advance of the public service makeover, expanded news and current affairs broadcasting are being lined up for the coming months.

The proposed bill has drawn fire from Burma's media sector, some of whom say it means retaining a tilted playing field in favor of state-linked media, which already have an advantage in terms of resources and logistics over Burma's private media. Otherwise the draft bill, which could see changes in Parliament before it is passed into law, has been welcomed by media watchdogs such as London-based Article 19.

The government and Burmese media have been at odds over other media-related legislation in recent months, such as the government-drafted Printing and Publishing Enterprise Bill, and the Interim Press Council's News Media Bill, which was passed by Burma's Lower House in early November.

Lawmakers have also diluted proposed punishments for those deemed in breach of the proposed printing and publishing code, leading Aung Kyi to surmise that the row between government and the media has died down.

"I hope there will not be further disputation between the Interim Press Council [a body set up with government backing to represent journalists] and the Myanmar government," said Aung Kyi, who added that he would support whatever parliamentarians decided to do with the various draft media laws.

"All of us have confidence in the Union Parliament and Parliament will decide on the laws," he said.

The post Public Service Media Unlikely Before 2015 Elections: Minister appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

Children of Mone Gone Village on the School Run—By Boat

Posted: 22 Nov 2013 06:13 PM PST

Myanmar, Burma Mandalay, Mount Popa, school children

Mone Gone village students on their way to school. (Photo: Kyaw Kha / The Irrawaddy)

Unlike most of their counterparts across the country, who usually take the bus to school, students of Mone Gone village—in the shadow of Mt. Popa in Mandalay Division—take a different approach: small wooden boats.

Every week day, about 80 middle and high school students from the village spend more than an hour on the roundtrip, crossing the nearly 1.5 mile-long waters above the Kyat Mauk Taung dam.  Their destination is the high school at Magyi Tine village, at the far end of the reservoir, where they must go for their education, since Mone Gone has neither a middle school nor a high school. The school is only accessible by waterway.

The daily boat trip is not under adult supervision as parents are busy with their tomato and onion plantations, the lifeline of the people in the region. So, students have to take turns to row the boats themselves.

"They can all swim, so we are not worried that much," said one of the parents from Mone Gone. "But when there's heavy rain and strong wind, we keep them home."

Locals recall that one boat ferrying children to school capsized in 2008, and a middle school girl was drowned. According to a dam guard, the water is quite deep.

But the children are unworried.

"It's fun to go to school by boat," high school student Thein Zaw said. "When you get tired of rowing, there is always another person to take your oar."

"It's a boring to spend time onboard," protested another high school student, Kyaw Min Htet.

"If we could go there by land we would be able to rest anywhere we like," he said. "Plus, we could play on our way to school."

The post Children of Mone Gone Village on the School Run—By Boat appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

Irrawaddy Business Roundup (November 23, 2013)

Posted: 22 Nov 2013 06:01 PM PST

Lax Laws Help Tobacco Firms Target Burma's Appetite for Nicotine

Burma is being targeted as a prime new market for foreign cigarette companies taking advantage of a lack of tobacco control laws that have curbed smoking in many other countries, said a report from Al Jazeera.

The story on the Qatari broadcaster's website named China's Hongyun Honghe Tobacco Group, Japan Tobacco International and British American Tobacco among the biggest investors in the sector in Burma.

"Cigarette sales are expected to grow at between 2-3 percent a year for the next four years," Al Jazeera said, citing research by Euromonitor.

"Activists say between one-third and half of [Burma's] 60 million people consume tobacco in some form," it said.

China's largest tobacco manufacturer Hongyun Honghe and its local partner have a factory capable of producing 3 billion cigarettes a year, according to the report.

British American Tobacco, the world's second-largest cigarette company, "plans to invest US$50m over the next five years, and employ about 400 people. Japan Tobacco International, which is number three globally, says it is in the process of setting up business in the country but declined to comment further," Al Jazeera reported.

Burma signed the World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention against Tobacco Control in 2004, "but legislation is poorly enforced, and the country has failed to implement some of the WHO's guidelines," Al Jazeera said.

Value of Burma's Gold and Cash Reserves Disclosed for First Time

Burma's central bank now holds 7.15 tons of gold in reserve, plus foreign cash reserves worth US$8.19 billion, state media announced.

The New Light of Myanmar on Nov. 13 quoted the central bank's vice governor Khin Saw Oo telling the Naypyidaw Parliament that the gold was held in Burma, while the cash reserves were spread among domestic and banks.

The government does not often disclose details of its financial matters, leading to speculation about where revenues, in particular from lucrative natural gas projects, have ended up.

In September, following reports that the government had $11 billion in Singaporean bank accounts, the Central Bank said that only $7.6 billion was kept "legally" in overseas accounts. In the newer report, Khin Saw Oo said the figure of $8.19 billion was correct at Oct. 29.

Swiss Business Delegation Visits Burma to Assess Investment Prospects

A business delegation from Switzerland led by the state secretary for economic affairs spent two days in Burma this week to look at investment prospects, the Swiss Embassy said.

The visit follows a provisional meeting between the countries to discuss business possibilities earlier this year at the World Economic Forum. Switzerland opened its embassy in Burma only in November 2012.

Aside from seeking potential commercial investment opportunities, the Swiss government "will continue to build schools and health posts in conflict areas in southeast Myanmar [Burma], support returning displaced persons and refugees in their re-integration, assist impoverished farmers in accessing better livelihoods," the Swiss statement said.

The post Irrawaddy Business Roundup (November 23, 2013) appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.
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