Shan Herald Agency for News |
- Thailand: Network of Salween People opposed to the construction of Hat Gyi Dam
- Shan scholar says ‘Burma’ comes from ‘Brahma’
- To Hopeland and Back (Part VI)
- FRONTIER AREAS COMMITTEE OF ENQUIRY
- Researcher: Only 33 ‘national races’, not 135
- KHRG Wins 2013 Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award
| Thailand: Network of Salween People opposed to the construction of Hat Gyi Dam Posted: 22 Dec 2013 04:04 AM PST Thai News Service THAINS English (c) 2013 Thai News Service Section: General News - Thai villagers living on the banks of Salween river have submitted letters opposing the construction of the controversial Hat Gyi hydropower dam on the Salween River in Myanmar's Karen State. Dozens of villagers and representatives from the Salween River Network have submitted two letters to the chief Mae Sariang District in the northern province of Mae Hong Son and a representative of the Electricity Generation Authority of Thailand (EGAT) on Thursday to express their objection to the dam. Earlier, the Burma Rivers Network (BRN) claimed on its website that the Ministry of Electric Power of Myanmar, Thailand's EGAT and China's Sinohydro Company signed an agreement in 2006 to build the Hat Gyi dam on the Salween River in Karen State. BRN sources claim that it is estimated that the expenditure for construction of the Hat Gyi dam will cost USD $1 billion and will have a capacity of 1,200 megawatts - most of the electricity produced will be sold to Thailand. Many groups both in Thailand and Myanmar showed their resistance to the plan because they believe the dam will turn a large number of residents on both sides of the Salween into displaced persons. Moreover, the river's ecology will be destroyed and also the way of life of people along the river. The Salween River Network's president Nu Chamnarnkiriprai said the project was allowed, Thailand would have to shoulder a larger number of Karens who will be forced to flee their land and seek better opportunities in Thailand. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Shan scholar says ‘Burma’ comes from ‘Brahma’ Posted: 22 Dec 2013 03:21 AM PST Noted Shan researcher Sai San Aik says the word 'Burma', the long-known name for the Southeast Asian country that was abruptly changed to 'Myanmar' following the 1988 military coup, originated in the Brahmin-Hindi word, 'Brahma'. Brahma, according to Hinduism, is the Creator of all things and beings. He backed up his assertion with the same statement made by acclaimed Burmese scholar Dr Than Tun (Shwebo) earlier. "I went to Hindu temples and met with many learned Brahmins," he said. "All of them confirmed that the first Indian settlers in the Irrawaddy basin were Brahmins and they had named the country Brahmadesh. It later corrupted into Bamar, and much later into Burma."  (Map: www.tanjungnewslog.blogspot.com/ Mr Joe Doe) Sai San Aik aka Sai Hsang Ai is writing a book on his findings about the races in Burma, including Burman, Shan, Mon, Karen, Chin and Kachin. His discovery began with his long interest in the names of places in Burma that obviously have Pali-Sanskrit origins but converted into Burmese words, such as: Bagan, used to be spelt Pagan, came from Purugama (or Prugama) meaning the Village for Pru (pronounced Pyu by the Burmese). "The Purus (Prus or Pyus), defeated in war around BC 580, had moved east into Burma and established kingdoms like Vishnu (Beithano) and Sriksetra (Thayay Khittaya)," he explained. The Irrawaddy (now written Aye-ya-waddy in accordance with Burmese pronunciation) was the former name of the river Ravi in India's Punjab. The founding of Indian kingdoms in Burma, he said, was not isolated events. "Well before the Buddhist era, Hindu traders, Brahmins and princes arrived in Southeast Asia and founded several kingdoms," he told SHAN. Sai San Aik also challenged the long held belief that Burmans are descendents of the Sakyans (The Lord Buddha's race). Abhiraja, the founder of the Tagaung Kingdom, more than 300 years before the Buddha, was believed to be a Sakyan. "At least he was not a Buddhist," said Sai San Aik. "Because the Lord Buddha wasn't even born yet." Many Pyu artifacts are also discovered there, according to Dr Than Tun's "Hindu-Buddhism Impact" (2010). For further details, Dr Sai San Aik can be contacted at Email: saisanaik@gmail.com, Tel: (95) 973 172 148. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| To Hopeland and Back (Part VI) Posted: 22 Dec 2013 03:19 AM PST Day One: 12 December 2013 This may be the 6th trip back to the country I have come to call Hopeland. But it is also the first trip alone, with no companion to pay for my bills. So when the taxi driver offered to drive me to my hotel for 10,000 kyat ($10), I felt insulted. Hopeland does not seem to have direct flights, if my experience since March (second trip) is conclusive. The plane, instead of flying straight to Rangoon, wanders off to Lashio, further north, and then to Mandalay in the west, before deciding it's time to call it a day and turns south. The result was that it took us more than 4 hours to get there instead of two. We started at 15:30 so by the time I got off the plane it was already 20:00.  Sun Wu (Photo: www.usmc81.com) Not that I'm complaining. The time spent waiting for the plane and riding it is the only time I can read books that I have been wanting to. This time I had brought "The Chinese Martial Code", a compilation of works by warrior-philosophers Sun Wu, Sima Fa and Wu Zi. It had been with me for two months. "Why are you reading Sun Wu?" Friends who have known me long will say that. "You've read it since you were thirty. In fact, you've already translated it." All of which is true. But Sun Wu or Sun Zi's Art of War is one book I never get tired of reading. Each new translation gives light to some of what the Master was trying to teach me.  Sima Fa (Photo: www.slideshare.net/ Sompong Yusoontorn) Sima Fa, you will also like him as I do, even though he is less well known outside China. He sounds like the Master himself when he says: However strong a country maybe, if it loves war it will be ruined. But however secure an Empire Maybe, if it forgets war it will be in danger. Wu Zi, who has been immortalized in several Chinese movies, gives an almost identical advice: If the ruler does not advance against the enemy when he comes, it is not righteousness. And if he is sorry that men are killed it is not benevolence. Sun Wu: War is important to the nation. It is the ground of death and life, the path of survival and destruction. Hence, under no circumstances it can be neglected.  Wu Zi (Photo: www.slideshare.net/ Sompong Yusoontorn) My mind, still immersed in Sun Wu, Sima Fa and Wu Zi, was rudely awakened by the taxi driver's statement of his "outrageous" taxi fare. "Are you not asking too much?" I responded. He said, "No. We're going from one end of the city of the other. And we'll have to navigate through heavy traffic. I can go down to K 9,000, but not more than that. Take it or leave it." While he was talking, my senses returned. Hey, I told myself, K 10,000 is 300 Baht. You pay that much or more whenever you land in Bangkok. So I meekly consented and went along with him to a hotel on the Rangoon river. It was also near the venue where the Burma News International (BNI) ad hoc meeting was to take place tomorrow. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| FRONTIER AREAS COMMITTEE OF ENQUIRY Posted: 22 Dec 2013 03:15 AM PST | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Researcher: Only 33 ‘national races’, not 135 Posted: 22 Dec 2013 03:16 AM PST A Shan State born researcher who had released a report a decade earlier that there were 58 'national races' in Burma, yesterday issued a new report that there are no more than 33 indigenous races. Gamanii, who resides in Thailand's Tak province, says, "It is not strange to have several subfamilies and clans in a 'national race'. Developed countries today can determine one's race by running DNA tests."  Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund with Ministe of Immigration and Population U Khin Yi on 29 August 2012 (Photo: UNFPA) According to him, if the following races pre-eminent in neighboring countries:
The 33 indigenous races of Burma as enumerated by Gamanii are:
The government of U Thein Sein, nominally elected in 2010, nevertheless has stuck to its guns on the 135 national races designated by his predecessors for the census taking that will begin on 30 March 2014. Each of the 135 national races has been given a numerical code name. For instance, Shan's code number is 801, while its aliases 'Shan Gyi' and 'Tai Long' are 822 and 829. Critics have accused Naypyitaw of trying to justify the role of the military by exaggerating the number of national races that it is needed to prevent the country from breaking up into several independent states. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| KHRG Wins 2013 Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award Posted: 22 Dec 2013 03:11 AM PST MEDIA ALERT KHRG Wins 2013 Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award On Tuesday, December 10, 2013, the Karen Human Rights Group will receive the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy's 2013 Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award at a ceremony in Taipei. This prestigious award is given annually for "significant contributions to the advancement of human rights or democracy in Asia through peaceful means." KHRG is the first human rights organization operating in Burma to win the award. "This award has a lot of symbolic value to KHRG as an affirmation of the importance and value of our work. The grant that accompanies it will allow us to continue and expand our work in the coming years," said KHRG's Field Director, Saw Albert Moo, who will represent KHRG at the award ceremony. KHRG is an independent, unaffiliated, locally-led organisation; our commitment is to villagers whose voices are often ignored. To promote the voices of villagers, KHRG engages in field research documentation, report-writing, and local and international advocacy. KHRG also conducts workshops with villagers where villagers can openly discuss the abuses and the challenges they face, gain greater knowledge of protection strategies, and consider options for collective action in their local area. Throughout the years, KHRG researchers have documented forced labor, systematic destruction of villages and crops, forced relocation, arbitrary detention, torture, extortion, summary executions and sexual assault. In the last two years, KHRG has continued to bring human rights violations in eastern Burma/Myanmar, and the responses of villagers to those abuses, to the attention of international actors. In 2012, a KHRG delegation travelled to New York to present at a UN Security Council consultation meeting on the issue of child solders. KHRG released the report "Uncertain Ground: Landmines in Eastern Burma", in 2012, and "Losing Ground: Land Conflicts and Collective Action in Eastern Burma", in March 2013. KHRG is currently writing a report analyzing continued human rights abuses since the Burma government-Karen National Union ceasefire, which was signed in January 2012. The report will be published in March 2014. "Though the overall human rights situation in southeastern Burma has improved since the ceasefire, too many abuses remain, including killing of civilians, and destruction of civilian property. Abuses by profit-seeking actors have increased since the ceasefire, because drug traffickers and land-grabbing businessmen have a new freedom of movement, and landmines continue to kill and injure villagers and restrict their ability to move freely," said Saw Albert Moo, KHRG's Field Director. "We hope that the international community will continue to support the villagers of southeastern Burma as they act to claim their rights." For more information about KHRG's work or to arrange interviews in Karen, English or Burmese, contact KHRG on +66(0)852685519 or +95(0)931764207 or email khrg@khrg.org |
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