Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Democratic Voice of Burma

Democratic Voice of Burma

Mangrove planters take fight to Naypyidaw

Posted: 04 Jun 2014 04:47 AM PDT

Twenty-three farmers from Dedaye, Irrawaddy Division have travelled to the capital Naypyidaw, with the hopes of meeting President Thein Sein.

The farmers object to their regional government's plan to destroy a mangrove forest near Kyondat village, which they have painstakingly replanted.

Extensions to farmland have led to the destruction of hundreds of hectares of mangrove forest in the region. In response, the farmers successfully restored a 700-acre tract of forest, which is again under threat.

Tun Tun Oo of the Irrawaddy Division Human Rights Monitoring Network said the decision by the divisional government to uproot the mangrove forest is out of keeping with the Union government's conservation agenda.

"The township administration, citing orders from the Irrawaddy Regional Government, has been pressuring us to destroy the mangrove forest we replanted and to stop planting more," Tun Tun Oo said. "They warned us that they would take action otherwise."

"But the Union Government has instituted a programme to restore the mangroves in Irrawaddy Division."

Tun Tun Oo also pointed out that the lack of mangrove coverage makes the community vulnerable to extreme weather events.

"This was one of the worst hit areas during Cyclone Nargis in 2008, due to mangrove deforestation," he said. "The loss of life and destruction was devastating."

The delegation of farmers met with three officials on Tuesday, including Sin Sant, former Speaker in the Irrawaddy regional parliament, and Aye Myint, deputy minister for Environmental Conservation and Forestry.

The officials told the environmentalists that it was unlikely that the Union Government would allow them to continue to grow mangroves in the area.

"The deputy Forestry Minister Aye Myint Aung told us that the land is designated as pastureland and technically we aren’t allowed to grow trees there,” Tun Tun Oo said.

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"But he said he would help us avoid punishment for growing mangroves on the pastureland, as he is aware the area was hit by a natural disaster."

According to a 2013 report compiled by the Rangoon-based Mangrove and Environmental Rehabilitation Network and the University of Singapore, mangrove coverage along the Irrawaddy Delta has declined by over 50 percent over the last 30 years, from 2,623 square kilometres to around 1,000 square km.

The report added that deforestation for farming expansion was the main cause and confirmed that the lack of mangrove coverage exacerbated the impact of Cyclone Nargis, which killed 140,000 people and made two million homeless.

Close to eight million people currently live on the Irrawaddy delta, with many relying on the natural aquaculture and rich soil for survival. Yet agrarian opportunities for locals are being slashed alongside the mangrove ecosystems, and farmers are increasingly forced into environmentally damaging practices, compounding the problem.

The Dedaye conservationists have been in Naypyidaw for four days and have set up a roadside campaign site. Despite depleting funds for the campaign, they have vowed to wait at their camp until granted a presidential audience.

 

Tavoy farmers charged with ‘disturbing’ authorities over disputed land

Posted: 04 Jun 2014 02:24 AM PDT

Twenty farmers were charged this week for "disturbing" local authorities in Tenasserim Division's capital of Tavoy [Dawei] after they resisted their attempts to measure out lands that have been at the centre of a longstanding dispute.

Some 300 acres of land in Tavoy's Sanchi ward, owned by 64 local farmers, was allegedly confiscated by the government in 1990. The farmers, who had been paying land taxes for decades, said that they were not aware of this until 2012 when they tried to register for land ownership.

Since then, the community has staged protests demanding return of the land, which currently houses the divisional headquarters of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party on a third of it. More construction is planned for the remainder, and the protesting farmers have faced threats of lawsuits from the private company that has leased the land from the government.

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On Sunday, company representatives and government officials – accompanied by 50 police officers – tried to survey the remaining land but were stopped by the farmers, said one farmer named Shwe Zin Yu.

"They were very insistent about doing the surveying but we did not let them," Shwe Zin Yu said.

The Town Administration's director then filed charges against 20 farmers on Sunday and called them in for questioning on Tuesday, said Tavoy police superintendent Myo Myint Oo.

"The Town Administration's director has filed charges against the villagers for disturbing officials on duty on Sunday," said Myo Myint Oo. "At the moment, we are only questioning the villagers but we are not making any arrests."

Than Myam, one of the charged farmers, said they faced questioning for about an hour before they were released on bail.

This long-running case has prompted the villagers to petition the parliament's Land Grab Investigation Commission for help. Local authorities have previously offered a settlement to the farmers, but were rejected as they felt the offer was unfair.

Peace in Burma: Closer than ever but still beyond reach

Posted: 03 Jun 2014 11:37 PM PDT

Burma's ethnic armed groups and government negotiators now have less than two months to meet an August deadline for signing a nationwide ceasefire agreement, which would mark the beginning of the end to six decades of conflict. While that deadline will almost certainly prove flexible, those involved in the process agree that Burma is closer than ever to achieving peace.

"As an historian, I would like to say that this is the best chance to make peace in Burma. The government is willing. The people are willing… we should take that opportunity and try to take it in the direction we want," said Harn Yawnghwe, executive director of the Euro-Burma Office (EBO), speaking at a conference in Chiang Mai, Thailand, on Friday.

For Burma, however, whose central government has a history of using divide and conquer tactics against its many ethnic insurgencies, "closer than ever" could be a considerable distance. Ethnic armies still at war with the government might need some convincing that the "direction we want" actually exists, and that the EBO has any authority to broadcast it.

Hosted by the newly-formed Pyidaungsu Institute, a five-member panel of optimistic experts convened at Chiang Mai University to try to demystify Burma's tangled path to peace. The Pyidaungsu Institute (PI), an ethnic research centre founded as an answer to the government-influenced Myanmar Peace Centre (MPC) and funded in part by the EBO, is meant to provide resources and space for community involvement in the peace process, which to date has been dominated by government forces and has appeared impenetrable and opaque to concerned communities.

The conference was initially conceived as an ambitious debut for the institute, but was markedly downscaled because of administrative pressure from the university in light of newly-instituted martial law in Thailand. Several distinguished players in the peace process showed up nonetheless, including PI founders Khunsai Jaiyen and Lian Sakhong, EBO's Yawnghwe, MPC Associate Director Nyo Ohn Myint and seasoned peace advisor Hannes Siebert.

“The government is willing. The people are willing… we should take that opportunity and try to take it in the direction we want" – Harn Yawnghwe, executive director of Euro-Burma Office

Discussion centred on the scope and trajectory of the peace process, which after much back-and-forth between the two sides at the negotiating table — the government's Union Peace-making Work Committee (UPWC) and the ethnic armed groups' National Ceasefire Coordination Team (NCCT) — has prioritised the signing of a single-text nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA) as its cornerstone. This document, now headed towards a third draft, synthesises proposals drafted independently by each side and will subsume state-level ceasefires.

Yawnghwe emphasised to DVB on Tuesday that, "At the moment everyone is focusing on the draft of the NCA," which, while it seems like a given now, was not the case only a few months ago.

Signing the accord is prerequisite to launching political dialogue and pursuing constitutional reform, as reiterated by Burmese President Thein Sein in his monthly radio address on Sunday. Ensuing dialogue, which many ethnic stakeholders have long demanded as a precondition for ceasefire, will be geared towards changing Burma's military-drafted 2008 Constitution to allow for federalism and political autonomy for ethnic states and regions. Hence, the postponement of the dialogue is already viewed as a major compromise on behalf of the NCCT.

It appears to many observers that the NCCT has absorbed most of the compromise, while the UPWC hasn't had to do much bargaining. It was the commander-in-chief of the Burmese armed forces who established the deadline for ceasefire, and the latest draft of the agreement, penned in late May, is "not much different" from the original document pushed forward by the UPWC in November 2013, according to a legal advisory group.

The Legal Aid Network (LAN), a non-governmental assistance programme based in Kachin State with an international oversight board, recently published a chapter-by-chapter analysis of the November draft on the premise that the newer versions are almost identical in substance to the UPWC's original, which was based on state-level pacts. Yawnghwe agreed with this assessment, adding that the NCA "is based on the individual ceasefire agreements. The difference is not in the substance but to cover those [ethnic armed groups] who have not yet signed or cannot for political reasons sign ceasefire agreements."

The LAN takes issue with several parts of the text, namely: vague and deceptive language; existing law clauses that could override parts of the agreement; and the document's apparent acceptance of the 2008 Constitution as a legitimate legal charter. Yawnghwe responded that the newest draft of the NCA leaves out existing law clauses, but there is not yet a clear plan to reconcile the agreement with the most relevant preexisting law: the Unlawful Associations Act, which criminalises all of Burma's ethnic armed groups.

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“An underlying question, is how the existence and operation of the EAOs [ethnic armed organisations] can be legalized," reads LAN's report, citing the United Wa State Party (UWSP) as a cautionary symbol for other armed groups. The UWSA is Burma's most powerful ethnic army, and has been tolerated by the Burmese government since an informal, oral ceasefire agreement was reached in 1989. The LAN argues that though the government recognised them as a lawful organisation, the agreement should have made the Wa army a part of the national Armed Forces. The fact that it didn't demonstrates arbitrary and selective application of law, and could cause problems as the peace process enters a more mature phase, which will require the government to at least appear to be consistent.

Yawnghwe assured DVB that the current negotiations "call for the EAOs to be de-listed from the illegal organizations list when the NCA is signed", but no one seems to yet have an answer as to how that will be either implemented or honoured. Speaking to DVB on Tuesday, Lian Sakhong, co-founder of PI and a high-level member of the Chin National Front, remarked only that "all who sign the national ceasefire, their names should be removed from the illegal organisations list, and they should not be punished under that law… Until it is signed, there is no way we can do that."

This is an important point, considering that the Burmese military still operates with impunity in ethnic territories. The most recent example is the raid of a rebel liaison office in Kengtung, Shan State, just last month. An agreement to operate rebel army liaison offices is written into state-level ceasefire agreements. The most basic purpose of these offices is to bring insurgents out of the jungle and into the towns, where they can directly communicate with local Burmese authorities. The demonstrated consequence is that the offices turn some select rebels into sitting ducks.

It's hardly irrelevant that the EBO, which partially funds the PI, also funds the establishment of liaison offices and pays staff salaries. Both institutions have a clear stake in the success of and public support for the offices. The Kachin Independence Organisation, which does not have a state-level ceasefire and is still in active conflict with the central government, does not accept EBO assistance for their offices. The Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS), which has been under ceasefire since 2011, has been among the most reluctant participants in NCCT negotiations with the government. It's no coincidence, say some observers, that their offices have been subject to abuse by Burmese authorities. More curious is the fact that just one day prior to the raid, a senior Shan politician was arrested at his home without warrant and charged with unlawful association for communicating with members of the RCSS, which is still considered illegal.

Lian Sakhong maintains that "until and unless we sign a nationwide ceasefire agreement, we do not have collective action, collective responsibility." Because there is no nationwide agreement yet, he said, violation of an agreement between the RCSS and the Burmese authorities isn't really any of the NCCT's business. It seems an odd position to take, sending a message that those ethnic armed groups still resisting the agreement for the same reasons they did last year must either get on board or be left out to dry.

Arakan towns to join national grid

Posted: 03 Jun 2014 09:15 PM PDT

Towns in southern Arakan State are scheduled to connect to Burma's national grid as early as next week, according to energy officials.

The towns of Taungup and Sandoway [officially known as Thandwe] were previously scheduled to light up in May under the government scheme but work-related delays pushed the project back a month. Zaw Myint, an officer at Sandoway's Electricity Engineering Office, told DVB that installing transmission towers and other infrastructure took longer than expected.

"The construction of electrical pylons to Taungup and Thandwe has been completed, we just need to finish a little work at the relay stations," he said. "We expect to bring electricity to the towns by the second week of June."

He said his office is now accepting applications from locals who wish to receive power from the national grid and install electricity metre boxes in their homes. So far, about 1,000 applications have been submitted, he said.

Until now, residents in Taunggup and Sandoway have had to buy electricity from a private company, but at a much higher cost than in other areas in Burma that are connected to the grid. The fixed nationalised price in Burma is 35 kyat (US$0.04) per unit (for usage exceeding 100 units per month), but in off-grid Arakan, households were asked to pay around 450 kyat per unit.

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Aung Gyi, an internet café owner in Sandoway, said that, although costly, the private electricity is reliable, and he expressed his concern at whether the government would be able to provide service at the same level.

Sandoway is the nearest town to Ngapali, Burma's most popular beach resort and the venue for many foreign tourists staying at high-end hotels, almost all of which have their own generators.

"When the power goes out, the private company immediately sends technicians to fix it," said the internet café owner. "But we are concerned that the technicians from the governmental department won't be so efficient.

"As always, when it comes to the national grid, it may take hours for the power to come back on."

The majority funding for this power project in Arakan was provided from the Union Government's budget, but the state government contributed and India also loaned funds, said State Minister of Electric Power Aung Than Tin.

He said officials expect northern Arakan State towns such as Ann, Ponnakyun, Sittwe, Mrauk-U and Kyaukphyu to be connected to the national grid by August.

Thousands of residents of the port city of Kyaukphyu are already enjoying the benefits of 24-hour electricity since being hooked up to turbines after the internationally backed Shwe Gas project began pumping natural gas to China from the port in September last year.
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