The Irrawaddy Magazine

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• Chin National Front Office Bombed in Tedim
• Malaysia Opposition Plans No-Confidence Motion Against PM
• Southeast Asia Set to Suffer for Months as Indonesia Fails to Douse Fires
• Teen’s Death in Indian Kashmir Mob Attack Sets Off Protests
• Return of Dollar Black Market Shows Limits of Reforms

Chin National Front Office Bombed in Tedim Posted: 20 Oct 2015 05:14 AM PDT The center of Tedim town in Chin State. (Photo: The Irrawaddy) RANGOON — Two small bombs exploded inside the Chin National Front (CNF) liaison office in Tedim Township, northern Chin State, according to a member of the ethnic armed group. The bombs exploded around 11pm on Monday evening, marking the second time the liaison office had been attacked after a similar incident last year. "They did not use strong explosives," said Gho Khant Nan, a CNF officer. "The two bombs exploded at the same time in the office, but no one was there at that hour." Gho Khant Nan said that there was an ongoing investigation into the attack, and the Burma Army had sent officers to provide assistance. He added that some Chin locals did not support the CNF, and speculated the group's participation in the Burmese government's "nationwide" ceasefire agreement. A small explosive detonated under a car belonging to a CNF leader in Tedim in March 2014. Gho Khant Nan said that no investigation was launched at the time because of the small size of the explosive. The CNF is one of eight armed groups that signed the government's ceasefire accord in Naypyidaw on Oct. 15. The group established its Tedim liaison office in 2003 after signing a bilateral ceasefire agreement with the government. The post Chin National Front Office Bombed in Tedim appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Malaysia Opposition Plans No-Confidence Motion Against PM Posted: 19 Oct 2015 10:33 PM PDT Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak leaves parliament in Kuala Lumpur on Monday. (Photo: Olivia Harris / Reuters) KUALA LUMPUR — The chief of Malaysia’s newly formed opposition alliance will submit a no-confidence motion in parliament this week against Prime Minister Najib Razak, the head of the grouping said on Monday. Najib’s tight grip on his United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) party has kept him in power despite public anger over alleged graft and financial mismanagement at strategic investment fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), whose advisory board the prime minister chairs. But Najib’s grip appears to be loosening, and his position could become precarious if he loses some crucial upcoming votes in parliament. “We will have a motion of no confidence against the Prime Minister, to be tabled by myself as opposition leader,” said Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, the wife of jailed opposition politician Anwar Ibrahim, and the head of the new Pakatan Harapan alliance. “The rationale is that we have to save this country.” The move will be the opposition’s first such coordinated effort against Najib, Wan Azizah said, after party leaders decided to file a collective motion, retracting and taking over an individual motion submitted last week by one MP. However, the opposition, which is about 25 seats short of a majority, is unlikely to win such a vote—provided the speaker does not reject the motion first. Wan Azizah did not say how the opposition would respond to such a rejection. But the action adds to pressure on Najib after a report in July said investigators were looking into 1MDB and had found close to $700 million deposited in his personal bank account. Reuters has not been able to verify the report. Najib has denied taking any money for personal gain while the Southeast Asia nation’s anti-corruption commission said the funds were a political donation from the Middle East. Najib also faces pressure within UMNO, as the party’s old guard, led by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, calls for his resignation over his alleged involvement in the 1MDB scandal. 1MDB, with debts of more than $11 billion, is under investigation by authorities in several countries. A Parliament inquiry into 1MDB was halted midway when Najib reshuffled his cabinet in July, moving several party leaders into government positions. But Hasan Ariffin, the newly elected chief of parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), said on Monday the group was set to resume its inquiry into 1MDB, and it stayed “a priority”. Wan Azizah’s alliance groups Anwar’s People’s Justice party, the largely ethnic Chinese Democratic Action Party and the newly formed Parti Amanah Negara. They united against Najib’s ruling coalition last month. The post Malaysia Opposition Plans No-Confidence Motion Against PM appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Southeast Asia Set to Suffer for Months as Indonesia Fails to Douse Fires Posted: 19 Oct 2015 10:10 PM PDT Indonesian environmental activists in Jakarta wear masks during a protest demanding the government to immediately resolve forest fires. (Photo: Beawiharta / Reuters) JAKARTA — Indonesian forest fires that have caused choking smoke to drift across Southeast Asia are spreading to new areas and are unlikely to be put out until next year, experts said on Monday. Indonesia has come under increased pressure from its neighbours to contain the annual “haze” crisis, which is caused by slash-and-burn agriculture practices, largely on Sumatra and Kalimantan. But it has failed to put out the fires, with “hot spots” growing in eastern parts of the country and industry officials and analysts estimating the smoke will last until early 2016. “Maybe it will last until December and January,” said Herry Purnomo, a scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research, adding that hot spots had reached Papua, a region that usually avoids widespread fires. “It is because people are opening new agriculture areas, like palm oil,” he said. A senior official at a company active in Indonesia’s forested areas said the haze could continue until March. Indonesia usually enters its wet season in October and November, but this year the country is expected to face moderate El Nino dry conditions which could strengthen until December and may hinder efforts to control the fires. Indonesia’s national disaster management agency has made several forecasts for when the forest fires will be brought under control, many of which have now passed, but their latest target date is early November. Indonesia has revoked the land licenses of PT Mega Alam Sentosa and state-owned PT Dyera Hutan Lestari, Rasio Rido Sani, the director general for law enforcement at the forestry ministry, told reporters late on Monday. Both firms could not be reached for comment. Last month, Indonesia ordered four companies to suspend operations for allegedly causing forest fires. On the ground, NASA satellites detected 1,729 fire alerts across Indonesia on Wednesday, a national holiday, more than any single day in the last two years. About half of the fires during the last week have been on carbon-rich peat land areas, mostly in South Sumatra, South and Central Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Papua. Indonesian President Joko Widodo has increased government efforts to tackle the haze in recent weeks, making several visits to the worst hit areas and asking other countries for help, but apparently to little avail. “We all know that the burned areas are now widening beyond normal conditions,” Widodo told reporters on Sunday. “…The efforts to extinguish the fires are ongoing now both by land and air." The post Southeast Asia Set to Suffer for Months as Indonesia Fails to Douse Fires appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Teen’s Death in Indian Kashmir Mob Attack Sets Off Protests Posted: 19 Oct 2015 09:34 PM PDT A protester throws back a teargas shell towards Indian police during a demonstration outside Kashmir's main mosque in Srinagar, October 16, 2015. (Photo: Danish Ismail / Reuters) SRINAGAR — A general strike and curfew shut Indian-controlled Kashmir on Monday following the death of a Muslim teenager attacked by a Hindu mob over rumors of cows being slaughtered. Hindus consider cows to be sacred, and slaughtering the animals is banned in most Indian states. Businesses, schools and shops remained shut due to the strike called by anti-India separatists and traders to denounce the killing. State authorities canceled all university and college examinations on Monday fearing protests. Thousands of people who attended Zahid Rasool's funeral in Botengo village in southern Kashmir shouted anti-Indian slogans demanding freedom from Indian rule. Rasool and another truck driver were set ablaze by a mob after their vehicle stopped in the Hindu-dominated Udhampur neighborhood. A third person in the truck escaped unhurt. The injured were flown to New Delhi for treatment, but Rasool died from his burns on Sunday. Police officer Danish Rana said nine people have been arrested in connection with Rasool's death. Authorities laid razor wire across the main crossings and declared curfew in parts of Kashmir's capital city, Srinagar, and in nearby Anantnag town to stop protests and clashes. "Go India, go back" and "We want freedom," the crowd shouted at Rasool's funeral. Clashes also erupted in Botengo village as security forces fired tear gas to stop rock-throwing protesters from marching to the nearby main highway. Differences have deepened within Kashmir's ruling coalition, with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party demanding a ban on slaughtering cows and selling beef in the Muslim-majority state. A colonial-era law banned cow slaughter in Kashmir, but no one paid heed to it until a local court ordered its strict enforcement recently. Muslims resented the order and later India's Supreme Court suspended it for two months. Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist, took office last year, hard-line Hindus have been demanding that India ban beef sales. Most beef sold across India is buffalo meat. There has been outrage across India after a 50-year-old Muslim man was beaten to death by a mob last month over rumors that his family had eaten beef for dinner. Last week, a village mob in northern India beat a Muslim man to death and injured four others, accusing them of smuggling cows to be slaughtered for beef. The post Teen's Death in Indian Kashmir Mob Attack Sets Off Protests appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Return of Dollar Black Market Shows Limits of Reforms Posted: 19 Oct 2015 08:58 PM PDT A newspaper vendor handles kyat in Rangoon. (Photo: Steve Tickner / The Irrawaddy) RANGOON — Banks in Burma bought hundreds of millions of dollars in the black market this year, banking sources said, in a resurgence of an unregulated trade that flourished under military rule and has raised fears among foreign investors of backsliding on reforms. Lenders say they were forced to turn to unlicensed brokers for scarce dollars to keep the wheels of trade turning, as the central bank's efforts to prop up the kyat currency threatened to freeze up the nascent financial system. "We deliberately made our currency appreciate, while there was an actual depreciation happening," said a senior central bank official. "The whole informal market re-emerged, no transactions were happening through the banks any more. That's when we came to the brink of collapse." The episode underscores the fragility of reforms introduced since a semi-civilian government took power in 2011 after decades of isolation from the international financial system. Sources said the main motive for rolling back on reforms that introduced a managed kyat float in 2012 was to avoid inflation becoming an issue that could damage the government's standing ahead of a historic election on Nov. 8. The Central Bank of Myanmar did not respond to Reuters requests for official comment. Strains emerged in early 2015 as the central bank's official exchange rate diverged further and further from the rate offered on the black market. International trade has grown quickly during the reform period, and as imports outpaced exports the trade deficit jumped to US$4.9 billion in the fiscal year ending March 31, from just under $92 million two years earlier, according to official data. That has tightened the supply of dollars, with rising foreign direct investment and tourism not enough to fully plug the gap. The chronic shortage of dollars worsened mid-year as exporters either held back dollars in the expectation of an eventual kyat devaluation or refused to sell at the official rate. Banks turned instead to the informal market, using well-established brokers with systems that were put in place to skirt sanctions when Burma was an international pariah. "They call it the black market but it's the real market," said Win Lwin, a senior manager at KBZ Bank. "It's very difficult for the banks to follow the rules." Banks 'Have no Choice' In interviews with Reuters, executives and traders at three Burmese banks said they had bought dollars in the informal market for clients needing to make international trade payments. All declined to be named, but said the practice was widespread. "We have no choice," said one foreign exchange trader at a local bank. "We have to go to the black market." Banks bought as much as $15 million a day through brokers, traders and executives estimated. The informal market purchases peaked in June and July when a dollar would buy you as much as 16 percent more kyat on the informal market. Under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, the central bank abandoned its defence of the currency after 10 months in July, allowing the kyat to devalue and increasing dollar supply. The kyat is now down more than 20 percent for the year, making it one of the worst-performing frontier market currencies in 2015. But without wider reforms to allow foreign banks to sell dollars in Burma, some traders and bankers believe it is only a matter of time before they are forced back into the informal dollar market. "This whole thing could turn on a dime," said an executive at one of Burma's banks. "We all know how limited the central bank is for dollar supplies. They could say overnight—the party's over, we've run out of reserves." The IMF estimates central bank reserves in dollar terms will reach around $5 billion at the end of this fiscal year, equivalent to around 2.5 percent of imports. The central bank declined to provide data on actual reserves. Offshore Network Burma's banks hold offshore accounts in Singapore to settle international trade. To get dollars to those accounts, the banks paid brokers in Burma in kyat, the executives and traders said. Those brokers then used registered companies in Singapore to transfer dollars into the banks' offshore accounts. The Monetary Authority of Singapore did not reply to questions on whether it was aware of the trades, had taken any action to prevent them or planned to do so. "Financial institutions are required to monitor for and report any suspicious transactions," MAS said in an e-mail. Electoral calculation may have played a part in the crisis, with the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party expected to fare poorly in what is being touted as Burma's first free and fair election in 25 years. "The difficulty with the authorities was that they were of course concerned about inflation if the exchange rate depreciates," said Yongzheng Yang, who oversees Burma for the IMF and led a mission to Burma in June. While banks are no longer buying black market dollars, many importers and exporters continue to do informal bilateral deals, said U Mya Than, chairman of Myanmar Oriental Bank and of the Yangon Foreign Exchange Market Committee. "There is no scrutiny of transactions and no enforcement," he said. That is a red flag for international banks entering Burma on the first licences granted since the reforms. "The central bank should crack down on the black market," said the head of the treasury department at a foreign bank that has recently launched in Burma. "It's impossible to build a normal financial system if we have it here." The post Return of Dollar Black Market Shows Limits of Reforms appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

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