Democratic Voice of Burma |
- Erotic novel removed from Burma’s bookshelves
- The Migrants of Mahachai
- Civil society leaders released from Insein
- DVB journalist’s appeal heard at Magwe court
- DVB Debate: Is it too late to save Burma’s crumbling heritage?
| Erotic novel removed from Burma’s bookshelves Posted: 25 Jun 2014 05:18 AM PDT A controversial book of "adult fiction" by writer Aung Yin Nyein has been pulled from the shelves of Burma's bookstores after critics complained that the erotic novel is "obscene". The World of the Romancebots was recalled by publishers Pinlae Thit Literature Group after pressure from the Printing and Publication Registration Department. Government sources now say the publishers could face legal action. A manager from Pinlae Thit Literature who asked to remain anonymous told DVB that they decided this week to recall the book – the cover of which carries a disclaimer saying "Not for conservatives" – after a strong recommendation by the government department. "The scrutiny department contacted the author directly and suggested it would be better to recall the book as it is causing a scene," he said. "We acted on that advice and removed all copies from the shelves." Ye Htut, Burma's deputy-minister of information, said the government is considering taking legal action against the publisher and the author because the book was deemed to be "obscene material". "The Printing and Publication Registration Law, drafted by the Ministry of Information and approved by parliament, stipulates that publishers who print such literature can be prosecuted," he said. "Moreover, the Penal Code also forbids obscene literature. We are presently consulting legal experts to determine the next move." Sithu Aung Myint, a well-known columnist who wrote a scathing review of the novel, said such a book would "only bring evil" to Burmese society. Related Stories"I read the book and believe it carries no artistic value or even education about sexual health," he said. "Having something like this published legally in Burma – while the number of underage rape cases is dramatically increasing – will bring nothing good to our society. In fact, it will only bring evil." The book has seen the subject of much debate on Burma's social media, with many users calling it a disgrace to Burmese literature. Myo Myint Nyeing, a member of PEN Myanmar, an informal writers' union which supports freedom of expression, said he sees the furor surrounding the publication as a "bit of a joke". "It's ridiculous to believe that a single book will destroy the Burmese literature world," he said. "Nothing is going to happen over a novel that sells just 400 or 600 copies." Writer Chit Oo Nyo said a work of literature should promote morality to its readers; otherwise it can be deemed "undesirable". "Works of literature such as novels and poems should aim to promote goodwill, intelligence and morality among readers; otherwise they can be deemed undesirable," he said. |
| Posted: 25 Jun 2014 04:53 AM PDT It started with a nameless phone number passed around until it got to Ngwe Htay, a Mon State native who lived on a farm until an electrical fire wiped it away in a quick sweep of misfortune. The man on the phone promised jobs for his family in a Chinese-owned seafood processing plant, for a fee of US$400 each. They would be transported to the facility near Bangkok, Thailand, where they would be provided housing, meals and work permits. Ngwe Htay, his wife, three children, son-in-law, and four-year-old grandson left their village by bus for Moulmein, the capital of Mon State. There they took an overnight boat and a bus to Three Pagodas Pass, at the border between Karen State and Kanchanaburi, Thailand. After they crossed the border, a man instructed the seven stowaways to climb beneath a false floor in the back of a truck. Crammed in and covered in plastic tarp, they spent more than 20 hours underneath seated passengers, arriving in Mahachai at around 10pm the following day.
 Street view of Mahacai, a port town west of Bangkok and home to hundreds of thousands of Burmese migrant workers. (PHOTO: Feliz Solomon) Mahachai is the informal, antiquated name for the port town of Samut Sakhon, just west of Bangkok. It is one of the major seats of Thailand's fishing industry, which brings in billions of dollars annually and employs about 150,000 people, most of whom are migrants from Burma, Laos and Cambodia. Burmese make up a huge majority of that workforce; Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimated in 2010 that 70 to 80 percent of Thailand's migrants are from Burma. The Thai Ministry of Labour told DVB that there are around 1,000,000 migrant workers in Thailand, and that half of them have legitimate work documents. The US Department of State, however, has estimated that Thailand has as many as 3,000,000 migrant workers, accounting for roughly five percent of the country's entire workforce of approximately 66 million. It was already dark when Ngwe Htay's family crawled out and the truck drove off. What had been advertised as a bustling factory turned out to be an abandoned building.
A woman, a Burmese broker who spoke Thai fluently, escorted them to a nearby factory, where they were again promised food, housing, work documents and 300 baht (US$10) per day, which is the minimum wage in Thailand as of April 2011. Five of Ngwe Htay's relatives began work the day after their arrival. The family quickly adjusted to waking up at 2:30am to begin 17-hour shifts standing at troughs, peeling shrimp by hand – a job they did for about seven months. The factory, which Ngwe Htay said has no name, employed about 20 migrants. Workers lived inside the compound, and were not allowed to leave. They were permitted to break once a day to eat. Food was not provided, and a weekly fee was deducted from everyone's pay to cover their housing. Other expenses chipped away at the pay — which was set at 200 baht (US$6), instead of the promised 300 — such that their earnings ended up closer to zero. These expenses included safety gear, such as rubber gloves and aprons. The heftiest expense was the work permit, which never materialized. Over the course of five months, 5,000 baht (US$155) was docked from each employee's pay to cover administrative fees. Whether the permits were ever obtained by the employer is still a mystery; they never reached the hands of the workers, effectively keeping them captive in the factory compound for fear of extortion by Thai police.  A worker unloads shrimp. (PHOTO: John Hulme) In recent years, Thai officials have touted a new approach to legalise workers, and they appear to be making a concerted effort to that end. In 2013, Thailand's immigration ministry provided legal status for about 800,000 migrants, according to the US State Department. The ministry also launched two new migrant registration campaigns specifically targeting fishery workers, the most recent of which ended on 31 March. "We would like to send a message to people in Burma that they should try to get work permits, and to enter our country legally, because then they can get full protection," said Puntrik Smiti, Deputy Secretary of Thailand's Ministry of Labour. "Their home countries have to help us, too." Life in Thailand is trying for migrant workers with or without documentation. At least five provinces have issued decrees that create discriminatory restrictions on migrant life. The decrees, issued in 2006, included curfews and limitations on cell phone usage. The former mayor of Mahachai recommended institutional citywide restrictions designed to prevent the spread of Burmese customs, fearing that migrants would "begin to feel at home here". Thai authorities claim that these orders have been repealed, but have never produced any documentation to that effect. Human Rights Watch told DVB in May that "we still get reports that local officials use these decrees as an excuse to extort migrant workers in those provinces where they were originally declared." Despite the daily hardships — which HRW's deputy director for Asia, Phil Robertson, said "hasn't changed at all" in recent years — workers still come in droves because, as Puntrik explained, "Thailand is very attractive to our neighbours". But that may have changed since she made the statement in April. On 22 May, Thailand's long-simmering political stalemate ended with a military coup. The new ruling junta, the National Council for Peace and Order, has initiated rapid reforms under the premise of stabilising the country. Among those changes were several orders meant to "regulate" migrant workers. Reports of systematic purges, which the Thai junta has adamantly denied, have caused panic among some of Thailand's densest migrant communities; more than 240,000 Cambodian workers have returned to their homeland since the beginning of June. Smaller numbers of Burmese migrants have also been said to flee, though reports are scarce from the border crossings, where a large part of the population lives without documentation.  A young girl packs crab at the port of Ranong in southern Thailand. (PHOTO: John Hulme) Mass economic migration to Thailand has been ongoing for decades, and work conditions vary wildly. Of those migrants, all are vulnerable to extreme exploitation, and an unknown percentage end up in the hands of human traffickers. This means that they are sent somewhere other than they wanted to go and in a position of indefinite exploitation. In the particular case of Mahachai, the employment scheme is multi-tiered, spanning all manner of jobs along the production line. Some are far more prone to exploitative conditions than others, and culpability for abuse is systematically difficult to place. "There are many cases where they [migrants] pay money to a broker and they were sent to the right place. No problem," said Kyaw Thaung, director of the Myanmar Association of Thailand, an organisation that works directly with Thailand’s Anti-Human Trafficking Department to identify and rescue trafficking victims.
Kyaw Thaung was part of the team that helped Ngwe Htay and his family leave the shrimp-peeling factory. In the past two years alone, he has helped more than 260 migrants escape from similar situations – some enslaved on fishing boats, in restaurants and brothels, and many, like Ngwe Htay, in poorly regulated food processing facilities that sometimes supply distributors for markets worldwide. Ngwe Htay and his family now work in one such facility. Even these factories – larger processing plants that sometimes employ thousands of migrants to clean and package products before exporting them to places like Europe, the United States and Japan — have been accused of sourcing products from abusers at the tail-end of the production chain, but evidence is hard to come by. None allowed DVB access to their facilities and senior managers of one company declined all comment because they "do not wish" for their name to appear in the news. Ngwe Htay and his family say they were lucky enough to get the step up into one of these facilities; while they may be linked to clear cases of abuse at other, smaller factories, the larger ones now seem relatively well-monitored. Thet Sein Mon, Ngwe Htay’s 17-year-old daughter, said her new job as an accountant for Phattana Seafood was preferable to the 17 hours a day she spent peeling shrimp by hand. "Where we were working," she recalled, "the stand was kind of high, and I am kind of short." She showed us faint scarring, by now hardly visible, on her forearms from an infection incurred while working at the peeling plant. Because of her height, her skin was exposed to a constant stream of shrimp water every day, causing infection that led to severe, painful blistering of the arms and hands. "I had so many blisters from the shrimp water that I couldn't use my hands to eat." “I like my new job,” Thet Sein Mon said. “I don’t want to move to another job because I’m afraid I’ll be in that situation again."
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| Civil society leaders released from Insein Posted: 25 Jun 2014 01:05 AM PDT Civil society leaders Nay Myo Zin and Win Cho were released from Insein Prison on Tuesday, having spent 84 days locked up for organising an unauthorised demonstration in downtown Rangoon. In January, the activists led hundreds of farmers in a march to Rangoon City Hall, calling for the release of jailed demonstrators, constitutional reform, and the establishment of a farmers' union. Nay Myo Zin and Win Cho were then arrested for breaching Article 18 of the Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Processions Law, which stipulates that protests must be organised with permission from the authorities. On Wednesday, Nay Myo Zin, an ex-army general and now two-time political prisoner, used his first day of freedom to lead his Myanmar Social Development Network (MSDN) to the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party headquarters in Rangoon. There, both parties signed a petition calling on the parliament to repeal Article 436 of the 2008 Constitution, which retains military veto over any proposed amendments. "Today, I went to the NLD head office to sign the 436 movement petition," Nay Myo Zin told DVB on Wednesday. "I went with all our Myanmar Social Development Network Members. All our members came to support by signing it here." The MSDN works to provide impoverished communities with sustainable community facilities and education programmes, and has primarily focused on promoting the rights of rural communities. However, after his prison sentence, Nay Myo Zin says he is turning his attention to national politics. The activist, who previously found himself in hot water for sporting Aung San Suu Kyi merchandise, is advocating for multilateral discussions including the NLD leader, the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party, the military and ethnic parties. "I'm collecting other members of civil society groups to support us in a request for our Myanmar government to hold a four party meeting, a four party movement of the government, the commander of the army, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other party leaders as well as ethnic leaders." Related StoriesNay Myo Zin highlighted the recent closure of the Mahasantisukha Monastery and the deposition of religious minister Hsan Hsint as "complex problems" which require multilateral national level discussions to be resolved. Two weeks ago, police and the government-backed State Sangha Maha Nayaka, the highest order of Buddhist monks in the country, shut the doors of Mahasantisukha monastery in a midnight raid. The ownership of the temple is disputed between the politically active Penang Sayadaw and the state commission itself. Five monks arrested in the raid stood trial for "defaming religion" before they were released on bail and re-ordained. Shortly after, Religious Affairs Minister Hsan Hsint lost his job for his alleged mishandling of the situation. "We need to solve political deadlocks peacefully," the activist said. "So we are asking the government to convene this four-way dialogue." Nay Myo Zin's release comes as amendments are being made to the law under which he was detained. Passed in 2011, Article 18 previously allowed for the staging of public demonstrations in Burma under the provision that rallies should receive government permission. An amendment was approved by the parliament, and the changes uphold the requirement for demonstrators to achieve permission, yet oblige officials to grant permission unless they can provide "valid reasons" for a refusal. The maximum jail term for those who stage a protest without permission has been reduced from one year to six months. |
| DVB journalist’s appeal heard at Magwe court Posted: 25 Jun 2014 12:39 AM PDT An appeal by DVB reporter Zaw Pe, sentenced to one year's imprisonment in April on charges of trespassing and disturbing a civil servant on duty, took place on Tuesday at Magwe Divisional Court. Following the first day's hearing, Thein Tun, the lawyer for the video-journalist, said the defence team were able to present a solid argument and proof that the reporter and co-defender Win Myint Hlaing went to Magwe Divisional Education Department as journalists to simply enquire about a scholarship programme, but did not commit the offences the township court found them guilty of. "The Union Supreme Court in Naypyidaw demanded we present evidence that Ko Zaw Pe was at the education department within his capacity as a journalist to inform to the public about a Japanese-sponsored education scholarship programme," said Thein Tun. "Co-defendant Win Myint Hlaing attended as a parent interested in the details of the scholarship for his daughter. "We were able to present this evidence to the Magwe court as per the Supreme Court's orders," he continued. "It is clear that they went to the divisional education chief's office with pure intentions. "We were able to make a strong argument for their innocence." The lawyer added that he is optimistic about the case, and said he believes the sentences will either be reduced or dropped completely. "We believe that their one-year sentences will be reduced as they did not threaten or act in a manner to disturb government officials," Thein Tun said. Moe Moe, the wife of Zaw Pe, said her husband is in good health in prison, although she feels insecure at home and is alone with their young child. "My husband is in good health, but now as I must manage with our child by myself, I feel lonely and insecure," she said. Since his incarceration, several campaigns have been held calling for Zaw Pe's release, as well as other journalists held in detention. Related StoriesShawn Crispin, the senior Southeast Asia representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said these recent convictions and detentions are a sign of reforms moving backwards, and called for "the immediate release of all reporters being held in Burma." "[The] conviction of journalist Zaw Pe is the latest indication that Burma's once-promising democratic reform program is rapidly being reversed," Crispin said in an email to DVB. "With at least five journalists now in jail, President Thein Sein's vows to uphold press freedom ring increasingly hollow." |
| DVB Debate: Is it too late to save Burma’s crumbling heritage? Posted: 24 Jun 2014 11:36 PM PDT Burma boasts a rich and diverse history and its spectacular collection of ancient sites make the country unique. However, today, the country's heritage is suffering from years of negligence, the strain of a tropical climate, and the recent effects of Burma's rapid development. Panellists on DVB Debate discussed whether it is worth restoring heritage sites that have suffered decades of neglect. "The Ministry of Cultural Affairs can't conserve the colonial buildings, it is not our responsibility," said Numara Zan from the Department of Archaeology at the National Museum and Library. "Under the description of our duties, it doesn't state that we must conserve these buildings." "For some buildings it is too late. We've lost them completely," said historian Bhone Tint Kyaw.
But others thought that it is never too late to save whatever is left of the country's cultural heritage. "The heritage has value even if only a small piece remains, so later is always better than never," said Khin Maung Maung, a member of Myanmar Engineering Society. In areas like Bagan, which lays claim to as many as 4,000 stupas and pagodas, there have been restoration efforts. But some panellist said that these repairs were often badly done, ill conceived and carried out by individuals seeking merit with no attempt to preserve historic accuracy. "It was a very big mistake to order us to repair so many things in such a short period of time," said Numara Zan. "The conservation efforts began destroying heritage because the conservation was not systematic. There should be specific criteria for conservation," said Khin Maung Maung. The studio debated who should be responsible for the current state of heritage buildings, and how management of the restoration process can be improved "In my opinion, everything has happened because of the people in power," said Khin Maung Maung. But Numara Zan argued they did their job as best as they could and according to orders from higher officials. "We are given orders from above, and we have to try and finish the work according to these orders. This means that both experts and amateurs end up leading these projects and then the conservation becomes destructive," she said. Aye Zar Chi Htun-Kantkaw from the Education Centre suggested educating those in power about the importance of heritage preservation. Bhone Tint Kyaw agreed, "Of course, we need to give them training," he said. The studio generally agreed that restoration efforts need to be controlled and done with care and expertise if they are going to be worthwhile.
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