Tuesday, February 5, 2019

The Irrawaddy Magazine

The Irrawaddy Magazine

Military Chief Discusses IDPs, Peace, Myitsone Dam with Kachin Religious Leaders

Posted: 05 Feb 2019 06:02 AM PST

 

YANGON—Military commander-in-chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing met Kachin religious leaders on Tuesday to discuss IDPs, the peace process and the controversial China-backed Myitsone Dam project, amid discussions with the Kachin armed group on how to move forward on peace negotiations.

In the meeting with representatives of the Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC) and the Catholic community at the military's Northern Command compound, Sen-Gen. Min Aung Hlaing said he wants to hasten the return of Kachin IDPs to their homes, expressed a desire to advance the peace process with the Kachin armed group, and said a final decision on the Myitsone Dam would depend on the public's wishes and on Parliament.

The KBC discussed two main issues with the senior general—creating transparency in the peace process focusing on lasting peace, and securing the return of IDPs with the help of Kachin groups including religious and community-based organizations, particularly those working with displaced persons.

KBC Vice President Tu Mai said his group had already set up the Kachin Humanitarian Concern Committee to help IDPs on the ground. The team includes members of many religious organizations and peace advocacy groups.

Tu Mai said, "If they don't discuss [these issues] with us, if something goes wrong, people will suffer the consequences."

He said the military needed to open discussions with all organizations including the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO).

"They need to cooperate with us on the return of IDPs," he added.

Recently, the Myanmar military facilitated the return of more than 100 IDPs to their homes in Waimaw Township.

Father Noel Naw Lat, who is in charge of the social-pastoral coordination office of the Catholic Diocese of Myitkyina, said Sen-Gen. Min Aung Hlaing promised that the Myanmar military (or Tatmadaw) would help to clear landmines and assist with other IDP-related issues in Kachin State.

During the meeting, Kachin religious leaders also conveyed to the Tatmadaw chief the public's objections to the Myitsone Dam. Local people are planning to stage a demonstration against the project this week.

The Myitsone Dam project has received nationwide pushback due to concerns over the dam's social and environmental impacts. It was suspended in 2011 under then-President U Thein Sein's administration. However, it came under the spotlight again when Chinese Ambassador Hong Liang claimed after a visit to Kachin State at the end of December that the Kachin people were not opposed to its resumption.

Father Noel Naw Lat showed strong opposition to the Myitsone Dam during the meeting. "He [Sen-Gen. Min Aung Hlaing] said it is hard to go against the public's will. He promised the Tatmadaw would do anything it can. But the final decision would be made by the Hluttaw [Parliament]," Father Noel Naw Lat said.

Last week Cardinal Charles Bo, the archbishop of Yangon, said in a statement that the controversial Myitsone Dam slated for construction at the source of the Irrawaddy River, known as Myanmar's lifeline, "must be stopped" to ensure a peaceful future for the country, adding that the construction of the dam would be a "death sentence for the people of Myanmar".

Father Noel Naw Lat said Sen-Gen. Min Aung Hlaing also mentioned that he would continue peace talks with the Kachin armed group, as he wants to see progress on peace negotiations in Kachin State.

In December, the Tatmadaw declared a unilateral four-month ceasefire effective in active conflict areas in north and northeast Myanmar. The first such truce ever initiated by the military, it covers the Northern Command in Kachin State.

China has been acting as a peace broker between the military and members of the Northern Alliance, a group comprising the KIA, the Arakan Army (AA), the Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA).

In January, government peace representatives and the KIA held an informal meeting in Kunming, the capital of China's Yunnan province. The KIA requested that government sit down with the other Northern Alliance members, the AA, TNLA and MNDAA.

On Monday, the Peace Talks Creation Group (PCG), a Kachin group that acts to broker peace talks between EAOs and the government, told The Irrawaddy that the government had agreed to hold a formal meeting with Northern Alliance members, but no date has yet been set.

As of Tuesday evening, the Office of the Commander in Chief had yet to make any official announcement regarding Sen-Gen. Min Aung Hlaing's trip to Kachin. The Irrawaddy attempted to contact the spokesperson for the Northern Command, but his phone was switched off.

The post Military Chief Discusses IDPs, Peace, Myitsone Dam with Kachin Religious Leaders appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Committee to Amend Constitution Gets Strong Show of Support in Parliament

Posted: 05 Feb 2019 05:54 AM PST

YANGON — A joint parliamentary committee to draft amendments to the country’s undemocratic Constitution appeared likely to take form after a strong majority of lawmakers who joined a debate on the proposal in Parliament on Tuesday endorsed the idea.

In the first move by the National League for Democracy (NLD) to amend the military-drafter charter since taking power in 2016, party lawmaker U Aung Kyi Nyunt submitted a proposal last week to form the ad hoc committee “as soon as possible.” The legislature’s military-appointed lawmakers objected strenuously, claiming the move violated constitutional rules. The military lawmakers, who are guaranteed 25 percent of the seats in Parliament by the Constitution, showed up to Tuesday’s debate on the proposal but refused to participate.

Thirty lawmakers did join the debate — 12 from the NLD, 11 from five ethnic minority parties, five from the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and one from the National United Democratic Party.. All except the five from the military-backed USDP spoke in favor of the committee and offered suggestions on what form it should take.

The Constitution has been criticized for being undemocratic both at home and abroad for articles that place the military beyond the control of the civilian government and that restrict the rights of ethnic minorities including the right to self-determination.

The NLD has been pushing for constitutional amendments since 2013. In a nationwide poll at the time, 97 percent of respondents in 267 townships across the country said they wanted the Constitution changed.

During Tuesday’s debate, Daw Htu May, of the Arakan League for Democracy, said she welcomed the formation of the reform committee because “the constitutional crisis is Myanmar's crisis” and called for an inclusive body.

"The constitution of a democratic country has to guarantee human rights, equality and self-determination for the nation. If you take a hardliner approach this time, you will disappoint people who hold the sovereign power of the union," she said.

U Sai Tun Aye, of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, said constitutional reform was needed to address issues such as decentralization, which could in turn help ethnic minorities achieve greater self-determination.

"I seriously agree with the formation of the committee and will actively be involved upon its formation," he said.

The USDP’s U Maung Myint “seriously” objected, echoing the military’s complaint from last week that constitutional rules were being breached.

Citing Chapter 12 of the Constitution, the USDP and military say any proposed amendments must be submitted as a bill before being submitted to Parliament for discussion.

"The committee has to be formed after we have the bill. Now it's in reverse order," said U Maung Myint.

However, U Aung Kyi Nyunt, who proposed the committee, and Speaker U T Khun Myat said the proposal had nothing to do with drafting a bill.

"The formation of the committee is the first step to drafting a bill to amend the Constitution," said U T Khun Myat.

Parliament, where the NLD holds more than half the seats, will vote on the formation of the committee on Wednesday.

The post Committee to Amend Constitution Gets Strong Show of Support in Parliament appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Government Agrees to Meet Northern Alliance as a Group

Posted: 05 Feb 2019 05:33 AM PST

YANGON—The government has agreed to meet the Northern Alliance, a coalition of four ethnic armed groups, as a single entity for peace talks, according to U Hsan Awng of the Peace-talk Creation Group (PCG), a Kachin-based organization that helps to broker meetings between the government, Myanmar Army and Kachin Independence Army (KIA).

Previously, the government would only negotiate with the members unilaterally, and consistently rejected the four groups' request to hold talks with the government as a coalition.

The Northern Alliance consists of the Arakan Army (AA), the KIA, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA).

"The date has not been set yet. But I am sure they will meet this month. I heard that the government agreed to meet them collectively," U Hsan Awng said.

The government's National Reconciliation and Peace Center (NRPC) and the Northern Alliance are currently choosing a date for the meeting and deciding which delegates to send.

However, U Hsan Awng warned that ongoing clashes in Rakhine State, where the AA is attempting to establish a stronghold, and the military's recent occupation of the headquarters of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang in the Naga Self-Administered Zone have eroded the ethnic armed groups' trust in the military and could hamper the talks.

Officials of the NRPC and a KIA delegation led by the group's leader General Gun Maw held informal talks in China's Kunming on Jan. 21. At the meeting, he requested that the government meet the Northern Alliance as a single entity.

The NRPC has not held talks with the MNDAA, TNLA or AA.

"When we met with the KIO delegation in Yunnan [in China] in January, they proposed a 1+3 negotiation format," U Hla Maung Shwe, an adviser to the government's Peace Commission, told The Irrawaddy.

"The policy of the government is, if the discussion is based on signing the NCA [Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement], a 1+3 negotiation is possible. Because all those four groups as members of the NCCT [Nationwide Ceasefire Coordination Team] participated in the NCA negotiation process with the UPWC [Union Peace-making Work Committee]. So, if the negotiation is based on signing the NCA, a 1+3 negotiation is likely," he added.

Colonel Kyaw Han of the AA said he had not been informed of the government's proposal for peace talks.

TNLA information officer Mai Aie Kyaw said, "They [the Myanmar Army] have declared [a ceasefire] for four months. But one month has already passed and there is still no dialogue. So, we don't know how they intend to hold talks. But it is important that many talks should be held during that [four-month] period."

He added that there had been no communication through informal channels such as by e-mail or phone between the TNLA leaders and the government.

The KIA briefed officials from the MNDAA, TNLA and AA on its talks with the NRPC at its headquarters in Kachin State's Laiza on Jan. 29.

Chinese special envoy Sun Guoxiang met the leaders of the MNDAA, TNLA and AA in Kunming two days later. However, the Chinese envoy simply repeated the statements of Myanmar Army chief Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing during the meeting, according to Mai Aie Kyaw.

The Myanmar Army (or Tatmadaw) has declared a unilateral ceasefire in areas overseen by five military commands effective from Dec. 21, 2018 to April 30, 2019. The ceasefire does not cover Rakhine State overseen by the Western Command. Clashes have intensified between the Myanmar Army and the AA in several townships in Rakhine and Chin State's Paletwa.

The Myanmar President's Office on Jan. 7 ordered the military to crush the AA with a counter-insurgency operation.

The post Government Agrees to Meet Northern Alliance as a Group appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Facebook Bans ‘Dangerous’ Armed Groups in Myanmar From Platform

Posted: 05 Feb 2019 05:11 AM PST

YANGON —Facebook announced on Tuesday afternoon that it has banned the four ethnic armed groups that comprise Myanmar’s Northern Alliance, calling them "dangerous organizations."

It said all related praise, support and representation of the Arakan Army, Kachin Independence Army, Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and Ta'ang National Liberation Army would also be removed as soon as the company becomes aware of it.

“There is clear evidence that these organizations have been responsible for attacks against civilians and have engaged in violence in Myanmar, and we want to prevent them from using our services to further inflame tensions on the ground,” its statement said.

The company said it was aware that the sources of ethnic violence in the country were "incredibly complex and cannot be resolved by a social media company" but that it wanted to do whatever it could to minimize incitement and hate speech.

"We don't want anyone to use Facebook to incite or promote violence, no matter who they are," it said.

The company added that since August it has also banned some of Myanmar’s most senior military officials from the platform and taken down three networks that were "misrepresenting who they were and what they were doing."

To reduce the likelihood that Facebook can be used to facilitate hate offline, the company said it was continually identifying and removing fake accounts, finding and removing violent actors, building better tools and technologies to "proactively find bad content" and updating its policies.

Contacted Tuesday afternoon, a spokesman for the Arakan Army said he was not aware of the ban and declined to comment. On Twitter, however, the group’s deputy chief-of-staff, Nyo Tun Aung, said the alliance members were freedom fighters and questioned Facebook’s decision to label them “dangerous organizations.”

Some Facebook users criticized the company’s decision to take down the pages and accused it of selectively targeting armed groups that have not signed Myanmar’s Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement. The country has dozens of active armed groups, most of which use Facebook to post updates on their clashes with the military or rival groups or on their negotiations with the military and government on a national peace accord.

Ko Maw Htun Aung, founder of Another Development, a Yangon-based social policy think-tank, said Facebook had become "frenetic” and was “overreacting to their past failure," referring to Facebook activity that accompanied the Myanmar military’s crackdown in Rakhine State in late 2017, which drove some 700,000 Rohingya refugees into neighboring Bangladesh.

"Their lack of monitoring of real hate speech led to real-world consequences. However, that should not make them overreact, because it could lead to the curtailing of the freedom of speech in Myanmar," he said.

Ko Maw Htun Aung said that when adopting new policies Facebook should distinguish between online activity that is and is not likely to cause real-world harm, and that posts by armed groups about their fighting with the military or other groups should not be considered a risk unless they explicitly call for violence.

The post Facebook Bans ‘Dangerous’ Armed Groups in Myanmar From Platform appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Informal Talks with Northern Alliance a Positive Move for Peace

Posted: 05 Feb 2019 05:07 AM PST

CHIANG MAI, Thailand—The government's decision to hold the first ever collective informal talks with all four members of the Northern Alliance, none of which have signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), in Kunming in China's Yunnan Province is a positive step towards bringing more NCA signatories to the table for formal peace negotiations.

The decision to hold the talks came after a meeting between government peace negotiators and a Kachin Independence Organization's (KIO's) delegation led by Gen. Gun Maw in Kunming on Jan. 21, when the KIO proposed that the government delegation sit down for talks with all four members of the Northern Alliance bloc. Talks are proposed for mid-February.

The bloc, comprised of the KIO's armed wing, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the Ta'ang Nationalities Liberation Army (TNLA), Kokang's Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Arakan Army (AA), was formed in late 2016 and is led by the KIA.

U Thein Zaw, vice chairperson of the government's Peace Commission been leading negotiations with other ethnic armed groups in northern Shan State. The informal proposed talks are to be held with the objective of negotiating an agenda for formal talks inside the country, according to the Peace Commission, a peace negotiation body under the National Reconciliation and Peace Center.

"We will mainly discuss how to move towards signing the nationwide ceasefire agreement," said U Khin Zaw Oo, the commission's secretary and a key negotiator. However, a date is yet to be agreed on.

For the peace talks to move forward comprehensively, the government intends to hold formal meetings with these four groups in Naypyitaw, following which, the Tatmadaw (Myanmar Army) negotiation team would then meet the groups individually.

The four bloc members were included in a team which collectively drafted the NCA text with the Union Peace-making Work Committee in 2014 and 2015, but subsequently dropped out of the process after three of its members—the AA, TNLA and MNDAA—were denied equal inclusion in the peace process. As a consequence, there were heightened military tensions in Kachin and northern Shan State until a unilateral ceasefire was declared on Dec. 21 while sporadic clashes have continued to break out between the Tatmadaw and the AA in Rakhine State.

Although the Tatmadaw gave the green light to government negotiators to meet the four groups together as a collective bloc, the extent to which the groups can push forward in negotiating their demands remains to be seen.

The Tatmadaw has been engaged in battles with the AA in western Myanmar where it claims to be carrying out counter insurgency operations. It has also accused the Northern Alliance members of tormenting the public through forced recruitment, extortion, expanding their territories, creating interethnic armed conflicts and ambushing Tatmadaw troops. On Jan. 25 it ordered the groups to retreat from the Tatamaw’s areas of operation until next week and to enter peace talks with either the government or the Tatmadaw negotiation team.

Informal talks are also expected to take place between the government and a number of other individual armed groups including the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS), the United Wa State Army (UWSA), and Mongla's National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA) this month. Though the RCSS is an NCA-signatory, it suspended its participation in the joint ceasefire monitoring mechanism last November and has been holding negotiations with the government in order to get the formal talks back on track. The UWSA and the NDAA have only signed bilateral ceasefires and maintain that they don't need to sign the NCA as they only want to take part in the political dialogue process and not make the commitments stipulated by the agreement.

KNU not ready for informal talks with the government

As peace negotiations with the northern groups slowly move forward, the government and the Karen National Union (KNU) have not yet been able to set a date for their next round of informal talks.

The KNU won't be able to meet the government until after the third week of this month, as the members of the 10 NCA signatories are busy, according to Padoh Saw Kwe Htoo Win, the vice chairman of the KNU. The group said in January that it would only advance talks with the Tatmadaw after holding a meeting with all ten signatories of the NCA. Meanwhile, it will continue with informal talks.

The RCSS' plan to meet the government and Tatmadaw leaders for formal talks this week did not happen either.

The Tatmadaw's Jan. 25 statement made the armed groups—particularly the RCSS and KNU which had meetings scheduled—reconsider meeting the negotiation team and all signatory groups have postponed peace talks momentarily.

The RCSS will informally meet peace commission members at their headquarters in Loi Tai Leng, southern Shan State on Thursday during the 72nd Shan National Day celebrations, according to RCSS spokesperson Sai Meng. He said they have invited government and Tatmadaw representatives to their ceremony.

Peace council member U Aung Soe and advisor U Hla Maung Shwe will attend Thursday's event. The government has also invited the NCA signatories to their Union Day celebration on Feb. 12 in Naypyitaw and further informal talks are expected to take place.

Because negotiations have been on and off, peace negotiators are optimistic about the upcoming talks.

"[We] hope the situation will improve," added U Khin Zaw Oo, saying that informal talks are better than no dialogue at all.

The government will meet representatives of the Shan State Progressive Party (SSPP) for formal talks in Naypyitaw in the third week of February, according to the Peace Commission.

The post Informal Talks with Northern Alliance a Positive Move for Peace appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Scores of Orphaned Migrant Children Granted Thai ID Cards

Posted: 05 Feb 2019 04:05 AM PST

Some 46 children born to Myanmar migrants in Thailand and now living in an orphanage and studying at a school in the country have been granted Thai ID cards, according to the Social Action for Children and Women (SAW) organization.

Thai immigration authorities issued ID cards to all 46 students in Mae Sot district of Tak province, Thailand on Feb. 4. Being granted ID cards promises to transform their lives, said Daw Aye Aye Mar, the director of SAW.

"I had long wondered how to get ID cards for the children, because it is very important for their lives. If they don't have ID cards, it's not easy for them to stay in Thailand. It's not safe for them if they don't have ID cards," she said.

The 46 children have documents showing that they were born at the Mae Tao Clinic or the Thai public hospital in Mae Sot. Daw Aye Aye Mar said her organization was careful to keep all their documents when taking the children into their care.

"I kept all their paper documents in my files. I knew it would be useful one day," she said.

In the past, migrant children who did not have Thai ID cards were not able to study at Thai schools. However, in 2008, when the Democratic Party was in power in Thailand, the Thai government removed this restriction for migrant children.

"After we learned about this, we tried to send our children to Thai schools, but we were not successful at first," she said. She added that the group also tried to send some of the children to private schools, but it was very expensive.

"We had to inform the Thai school authorities about the changes made at the top by the Thai government. The Thai school authorities gradually accepted more students over the years. Eventually, more and more children from orphanages who did not have Thai ID cards were able to study at Thai schools," she said.

"My intention was that our children would get student ID cards once they joined the Thai schools. Their student ID cards would provide them with security instead of having nothing staying in Mae Sot," she said.

She said that after the children attended the Thai schools for five years, the school authorities provided them with local Thai ID cards (known as 10-year-term ID cards). Those who receive the cards qualify for free medical treatment in Thailand when they are sick. The children can also travel freely to Chiang Mai for study trips, she said.

The 46 children are aged between 10 and 18 years old and study in the 4th to the 10th grades.

She said another six students were expected to qualify for Thai IDs soon. The minimum age to apply for the ID card is 10.

Daw Aye Aye Mar was a founding member of SAW. She said the group built the orphanage and had to struggle to find funding after international NGOs withdrew from the Thai-Myanmar border in recent years.

Most of the orphans' parents died of complications from HIV/AIDS. The Mae Tao Clinic in Mae Sot has to care for many abandoned newborns. Nurses at the clinic try to take care of them until they are a few months old, but limited resources and time makes it hard to take care of them permanently.

"They have no idea where to find people who can take care of them. That's why we opened the orphanage," she said.

Some migrants from Myanmar also abandon newborn babies at the Thai public hospital in Mae Sot, so the hospital has also asked SAW to help take care of such children, she said.

A Thai official presents a Thai citizenship ID card to a girl being raised in an orphanage for children of migrants in Mae Sot, Tak province, Thailand, on Feb. 4, 2019.

When they arrive at the orphanage, the children typically range in age from newborns to 3 months. SAW initially intended to adopt only girls, but they decided to adopt both genders due to the large number of abandoned boys.

All too often, girls arrive who have been raped by their stepfathers and are in need of a safe house. Children from refugee camps who have suffered violence at the hands of family members are also sent to the orphanage.

"As the number of children grew, we decided to open [our own school for kindergarteners and children in the early grades]. But we first had to get permission from the Thai authorities for that. We also wanted them to study at Thai schools [as they got older]. But our children did not have ID cards, so they could not join Thai schools [at first]," she said.

SAW has faced budgetary problems since 2015, when political reforms in Myanmar prompted many international NGOs to withdraw from the Thai-Myanmar border. Many of those international NGOs moved to work inside Myanmar.

Some promised SAW they would continue to donate to the organization if it moved its base inside the country, according to Daw Aye Aye Mar.

However, this was impossible, as all of the children were learning Thai; moving back to Myanmar would mean starting from zero for all of them, she said.

"It did not make sense, because our children were already as far along as grades 9 and 10. They grew up in the Thai community and they are happy to stay with this community. How could we move inside [Myanmar] and let them start primary school again?" she said.

Due to SAW's financial problems, it first had to close down grades 1 to 4 at its own school. This year it was forced to halt the children's studies from grades 5 to 7.

"We only have grades 8 to 10 available for the children to study this year [at SAW's own school]," she said.

Daw Aye Aye Mar said that most of the problems stemmed from conditions inside Myanmar. Many families do not have enough work to support themselves, or else their land has been confiscated by the authorities, leaving them without livelihoods. Many people have no choice but to seek work in neighboring countries, especially Thailand.

The border checkpoint between Kayin State's Myawaddy and Mae Sot is relatively easy to cross. Therefore, many people from Myanmar choose this as their entry point to Thailand, she said.

"[Myanmar] migrants will keep coming to Thailand as long as our country lacks jobs.  And as long as migrants keep coming to the border, children will continue to suffer," she said.

"They [international NGOs] think [Myanmar] has changed politically, but it's not true. If things had changed, no one would need to come looking for work in Thailand," Daw Aye Aye Mar said.

The post Scores of Orphaned Migrant Children Granted Thai ID Cards appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Close Call For Military Convoy on Explosives-Rigged Road in Rakhine

Posted: 05 Feb 2019 03:11 AM PST

SITTWE, Rakhine State — Three explosive devices went off in Rakhine State’s Ann Township only minutes after a military convoy passed the area on Monday, according to local officials and residents. No one was injured.

The three devices exploded between the villages of Me Let Maung and Chauk Chong about 15 minutes after a military convoy of five trucks passed the area at around 8 p.m., said township administrator U Ko Ko Myat, who described the devices as mines.

"Those mines were targeting the military convoys. But because they only exploded 15 minutes after the convoy passed the area, no man or truck was damaged," he told The Irrawaddy.

As the explosions happened only about 5 km from Me Let Maung, the entire village heard the blasts, said U Wai Lin, the village administrator.

"The entire village heard the mine explosions at about 8 p.m. yesterday. But we don't know the details," he said.

U Ko Ko Myat  said the Myanmar military cleared the area afterwards and was searching for the culprits.

"Some villagers said they heard artillery fire, which was in fact the mine explosions. They also said they heard small arms fire; they were fired by soldiers during their clearance operation. There was no fighting there yesterday," he said.

Contacted Tuesday, Rakhine State Minister for Security and Border Affairs Col. Phone Tint said he could not comment because he was in a meeting.

Despite Monday’s explosions, the situation in Ann Township remains stable and passenger buses and cargo trucks are running normally between Yangon and the Rakhine capital, Sittwe, through the area.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.

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Ex-Minister’s Son Prosecuted on Drug, Weapons and Other Charges

Posted: 05 Feb 2019 02:15 AM PST

NAYPYITAW—The Dekkhinathiri District Court in Naypyitaw on Monday prosecuted the son of a former sports minister on 14 counts of illegal possession of firearms and illicit drugs, defense lawyer U Myint Aung told The Irrawaddy.

Police detained U Phyo Ko Ko Tint San, the owner of ACE Co. and the son of the sports minister during U Thein Sein's administration, along with two of his employees at Naypyitaw Airport in October 2017 after discovering 12 yaba tablets, 1.5 grams of methamphetamine, two pistols and 72 bullets in U Phyo Ko Ko Tint San's backpack.

Further investigation led to the seizure of about 30 firearms and more bullets and drugs from the ACE Hotel, property belonging to U Phyo Ko Ko Tint San's company, and his houses in Naypyitaw and Yangon.

Though the seizures were made in two places, Myanmar's Supreme Court ruled that all of the detained suspects should face trial at Dekkhinathiri District Court in the capital.

Twelve other suspects detained in Yangon and Naypyitaw were also prosecuted on Monday along with U Phyo Ko Ko Tint San, lawyer U Myint Aung said.

Along with the drugs and weapons offenses, U Phyo Ko Ko Tint San was charged under Article 67 of the Telecommunications Law for keeping walkie-talkies, Article 8 of the Export/Import Law for keeping drones, and Article 61(a) of the State Secrets Act for the unauthorized use of the National Security Council (NSC) logo on cars and possession of bullet-proof vests and camouflage jackets with SWAT badges similar to those worn by the president's bodyguards.

The trial at Dekkhinathiri District Court began in January last year, and over 400 prosecution witnesses were presented to the court. The court prosecuted the suspects despite having heard testimony from only 200 prosecution witnesses so far.

The judge has the authority to prosecute if he believes that the testimony of the initial witnesses is sufficient to proceed, lawyer U Khin Maung Zaw of Pyinmana Township told The Irrawaddy.

"This will accelerate the trial process which otherwise would take time. As the court has tried them, it is OK not to cross-examine the remaining witnesses," he said.

U Phyo Ko Ko Tint San reportedly told police during interrogation that he had been planning to establish a security company, though existing laws do not allow private companies to provide armed security services.

The next trial session is scheduled for Feb. 11.

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Ex-General U Shwe Mann Registers New ‘Union Betterment Party’

Posted: 05 Feb 2019 01:46 AM PST

YANGON—Ex-general and former Lower House Speaker U Shwe Mann applied to register a new political party called the Union Betterment Party with the Union Election Commission (UEC) in Naypyitaw on Tuesday.

Rumors that U Shwe Mann, ousted chairman of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), would establish his own political party to contest the upcoming 2020 elections have been speculated since last year.

The ex-general said that he submitted the party registration with the UEC, announcing the party name and its five main objectives, on his official Facebook page.

He said his party will work towards building a democratic federal union; for economic development as a basic necessity for the development of the country; systematic implementation of education, healthcare and culture; and to establish strong rule of law, stability, equality and peace.

He also added that the new party will work to establish a constitution which is suitable for the country.

"We will work for national and public interests in the right way and effectively, together with the people," he said in a video message which accompanied the announcement.

According to sources close to him, U Shwe Mann, who has close ties to State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, aims to support her through his party by reinforcing the civilian government.

U Shwe Mann was elected for a Lower House seat in Naypyitaw in the 2010 general election representing USDP. Later, he was elected to the position of Lower House Speaker.

He was sacked from the position of USDP party chief amid a power struggle with the then-president U Thein Sein in August 2015.

In the 2015 general election, he ran for office in his native Bago Region's Phyu Township but lost to a National League for Democracy (NLD) candidate.

U Shwe Mann, who was once considered the third most powerful man in the former military regime, currently chairs a powerful legislative body, the Union Parliament's Legal Affairs and Special Cases Assessment Commission.

Ex-military officers and some members of the Legal Affairs and Special Cases Assessment Commission will be members of the Union Betterment Party.

As part of the registration process, the UEC will publish the proposed party's basic information in state-run newspapers. If no one objects to the proposed name, emblem or flag, the Union Betterment Party will be officially registered.

There are currently 96 registered political parties in the country, according to the UEC.

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Leaders of Alleged Christian Cult Sentenced to Jail

Posted: 05 Feb 2019 01:25 AM PST

PATHEIN, Irrawaddy Region — A court in Irrawaddy Region's Kyonpyaw Township on Friday sentenced five leaders of an alleged Christian cult to a year in prison with hard labor for blasphemy.

In June 2016 the Kyonpyaw chapter of the Myanmar Council of Churches (MCC) filed a lawsuit against the five under Section 295 (a) of the Penal Code for preaching sermons that do not conform with the teachings of the Bible. After a trial lasting two-and-a-half years, the township court convicted and sentenced them last week.

"They taught wrong things in the name of Christianity and sowed discord between parents and their children and siblings. Their actions therefore negatively affect the Christianity that preaches love. So I filed a lawsuit on behalf of the MCC," said Mann Htaung Sein, public relations officer for the council’s Kyonpyaw chapter.

Two of the five defendants, Mann Win Myint and Daw Nilar Tun, were sentenced to three years in prison by the same court in May under Section 363 of the Penal Code for kidnapping.

All five are serving their time in Pathein Prison.

"They not only attacked other Christian sects but also Buddhism. We are not happy that they were only sentenced to one year in prison while there was strong evidence that their actions not only defamed Christianity but also disrupted regional stability," said Mann Htaung Sein.

"So we'll submit an appeal to the Pathein District Court, and we will also ask the government to abolish [the group]," he added.

Section 295 (a) is punishable with two years' imprisonment, a fine, or both.

The five were the most senior leaders of the Christian group, called the Soul Family, led by Mahn Kyaw Soe, an ethnic Karen with Singapore citizenship.

The Soul Family conducted 40-day classes for "would-be" disciples, during which it persuaded students, most of them in their 20s, to shun their parents and relatives, and arranged marriages for them without their parents’ consent, according to followers who have left the group.

There were brawls whenever parents came to retrieve their children from any of the three centers the group had in Kyonepyaw and Kyaunggon townships. In November 2017, parents from Yangon, Bago, Irrawaddy regions and Karen State met Irrawaddy Region authorities in Pathein and asked them to abolish Soul Family.

According to residents of Kyonepyaw, there were clashes between the group’s followers and local villagers whenever members of the Soul Family said prayers in their villages.

According to the accounts of those who have left the group, members were asked to do unpaid work, sometimes in Singapore, on the pretext of making offerings to God, raising accusations of human trafficking and forced labor.

The group has branches in Singapore, Thailand's Mae Sot District and the townships of Thantaungyi in Karen State, Loikaw in Kayah State, Toungoo and Pauk Kaung in Bago Region, North Dagon and Sanchung in Yangon Region and Kyonpyaw, Kyaunggon, Kangyidaunt, Myaungmya and Pathein in Irrawaddy Region, according to the MCC.

The MCC estimates that Soul Family may have hundreds of followers.

Relatives say the group moves its members from branch to branch, making it difficult for them to find their kin.

"It is now almost four years since my sister joined the Soul group. We have visited her three times and asked her to come back home, but she refused. Now we cannot find out where she is, so we are constantly worried for her safety. I would like to urge the government to abolish the group that preaches extremism and that separates families," Nant Aye Aye Aung, from Yangon's Hlaingtharyar Township, told The Irrawaddy.

The MCC and Myanmar Baptist Convention have long distanced themselves from the group.

In May, the Irrawaddy Region government banned the group from gathering for prayers at its Hlel Seik Village branch in Kyonepyaw.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.

The post Leaders of Alleged Christian Cult Sentenced to Jail appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

US Star Angelina Jolie Visits Rohingya Camps in Bangladesh Ahead of Funding Appeal

Posted: 04 Feb 2019 09:20 PM PST

DHAKA—Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie on Monday visited the world’s largest refugee settlement, home to nearly one million Rohingya Muslims, in a bid to put their plight back in the headlines ahead of a United Nations $920 million funding appeal.

More than 730,000 Rohingya fled Buddhist-dominated Myanmar 18 months ago in the wake of an army crackdown described as “ethnic cleansing” by UN investigators and they are now living in camps in neighboring Bangladesh with no sign of moving.

A spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said Jolie, a special envoy for the organization, would spend three days visiting the camps to “assess” the needs of the Rohingya and the challenges that Bangladesh faced as a host country.

Jolie, 43, will also meet Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who has garnered global praise for committing not to repatriate any Rohingya unwillingly, and the Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen.

The UNHCR spokesman said Jolie’s talks would center around “the need for safe and sustainable solutions to the plight of one of the world’s most persecuted minorities, the Rohingya”.

The spokesman said the visit came ahead of the launch of a new appeal seeking to raise $920 million to continue meeting the basic needs of the Rohingya. Last year UN agencies launched a $950.8 million appeal for the Rohingya influx.

While this was Jolie’s first visit to Bangladesh, she met Rohingya refugees in Myanmar in 2015 and India in 2006. The Refugee, Relief and Repatriation Commission (RRRC), a government organization created to deal with the Rohingya crisis, welcomed Jolie’s visit.

“[Jolie] will definitely have a message to take back from here. We hope that the humanitarian community understands the kind of crisis the Rohingya are in through her,” RRRC commissioner Abul Kalam.

The post US Star Angelina Jolie Visits Rohingya Camps in Bangladesh Ahead of Funding Appeal appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Thaw of Himalayas Set to Disrupt Asia’s Rivers, Crops: Study

Posted: 04 Feb 2019 08:39 PM PST

KATHMANDU — At least a third of the ice in the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush will thaw this century as temperatures rise, disrupting river flows vital for growing crops from China to India, scientists said on Monday.

Vast glaciers make the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region, home to the world’s highest peaks topped by Mount Everest and K2, a “third pole” behind Antarctica and the Arctic region, they said.

“This is the climate crisis you haven’t heard of,” said Philippus Wester, who led the report.

“Global warming is on track to transform the frigid, glacier-covered mountain peaks of the HKH cutting across eight countries to bare rocks in a little less than a century,” said Wester of the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

The report, by 210 authors, said that more than a third of the ice in the region will melt by 2100 even if governments take tough action to limit global warming under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

And two-thirds of the ice could vanish if governments fail to rein in greenhouse gas emissions this century. “To me this is the biggest worrying thing," Wester told Reuters on the sidelines of an event to launch the report in Kathmandu.

Glaciers have thinned and retreated across most parts of the region since the 1970s. Ice in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region would push up sea levels by 1.5 meters if it all melted, Eklabya Sharma, deputy director general of ICIMOD, told Reuters.

Mountain climate hotspots

The region stretches 3,500 km across Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan.

The study said the thaw will disrupt rivers including the Yangtze, Mekong, Indus and Ganges, where farmers rely on glacier melt water in the dry season. About 250 million people live in the mountains and 1.65 billion people in river valleys below.

Changes in river flows could also harm hydropower production and cause more erosion and landslides in the mountains.

But more research is needed to gauge exactly how glaciers affect distant crops, said Wouter Buytaert, of Imperial College in London, who was not involved in the study.

“While glacier meltwater propagates downstream, it mixes with water from other sources such as direct rainfall, wetlands and groundwater, up to a point where the impact of glacier melting may become negligible,” he said.

The authors said that people living in small island states were often viewed as the most vulnerable to climate change because of rising sea levels.

“It’s not just occupants of the world’s islands that are suffering,” said Dasho Rinzin Dorji, an ICIMOD board member from Bhutan. He said in a statement that mountain regions were also extremely vulnerable as “climate hotspots.”

The post Thaw of Himalayas Set to Disrupt Asia’s Rivers, Crops: Study appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Rights Campaigners Seek UN Probe on China’s Xinjiang Camps

Posted: 04 Feb 2019 08:24 PM PST

GENEVA—Rights activists urged European and Muslim nations on Monday to take the lead in establishing a UN investigation into China’s detention and what they call its “forced indoctrination” of up to one million Uighurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang province.

Beijing, which faces growing international concern over its “de-radicalization” program for Muslims in its far western province, said last month it would welcome UN officials if they avoided “interfering in domestic matters”.

Groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International appealed to the United Nations Human Rights Council, which opens its main annual session on Feb. 25, to send an international fact-finding mission to Xinjiang.

“The abuse in Xinjiang today is so severe that it cries out for international action,” Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, told a briefing at the Geneva Press Club.

“The purpose of this detention is to erase the ethnic and religious identities of Turkic Muslims and ensure their loyalty to only the Chinese government, the Communist Party and the would-be leader for life, (President) Xi Jinping,” he said.

China denies such accusations. In January, Beijing organized a visit to three facilities, which it calls vocational education training centers, for foreign reporters including Reuters. In the centers, Turkic-speaking Uighur students learned in Mandarin about the dangers of Islamist ideas.

"Open-air prison"

Campaigners say one million Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities—nearly 10 percent of Xinjiang’s total population—are being held in mass detention, deprived of any legal rights and subjected to mistreatment.

“Today Xinjiang has become an open-air prison—a place where Orwellian high-tech surveillance, political indoctrination, forced cultural assimilation, arbitrary arrests and disappearances have turned ethnic minorities into strangers in their own land,” Kumi Naidoo, secretary-general of Amnesty International, said by video.

“Member states must not be cowed by China’s economic and political clout,” he said.

China says it protects the religion and culture of its ethnic minorities and that security measures in Xinjiang are needed to counter groups that incite violence there.

China is currently a member of the 47-nation Geneva forum, where it often leads opposition to setting up investigations into allegations of rights abuses in specific countries.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which acts as the collective voice of the Muslim world, worked with the European Union last September to launch a UN body to prepare evidence of crimes in Myanmar against Muslim Rohingya, including possible genocide, for any future prosecution.

“In our view Xinjiang demands a similar response,” Roth said.

Michael Ineichen of the International Service for Human Rights said: “It is really a test of the credibility of the Human Rights Council… We think it is time that membership also comes with scrutiny.”

The post Rights Campaigners Seek UN Probe on China’s Xinjiang Camps appeared first on The Irrawaddy.
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