Friday, July 19, 2013

Democratic Voice of Burma

Democratic Voice of Burma

Ethnic groups quarrel over presence of mediators at ceasefire talks

Posted: 19 Jul 2013 05:24 AM PDT

Ethnic minority leaders locked horns this week about whether mediators should be used to help negotiate a nation-wide ceasefire deal, as President Thein Sein reiterated his commitment to end decades of civil conflict in Burma.

An umbrella group for armed ethnic groups, the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), told DVB it would be "impractical" to exclude mediators from the process. "Given that there is no confidence between the parties, it would be hard to build mutual trust without mediators," said Nai Hongsa, secretary of the UNFC.

It follows news that two leading rebel factions, the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Shan State Army – South (SSA-S) described the peace process as too "complicated" for a mediator to resolve, in a joint statement published on Wednesday.

"The dialogue should [be] held only by the parties directly concerned such as the government, parliament, ethnic armed groups, political parties, women and the people. But we wouldn't want to have the discussions with mediators," SSA-S spokesperson Sai Lao Hseng told DVB.

"Also, there is a question; who will be the mediator? Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is just a representative in the parliament and for foreign organisations; the circumstances don't allow them to take up the role. So we should discuss directly [with the government.]"

The joint statement, which affirms each ethnic group's right to negotiate individually with Naypyidaw, has been seen as an attack on discussions held between the UNFC and a government peace team last weekend. The UNFC – which is made up of 12 armed groups, including the KNU, but excluding the SSA-S – had discussed ways to use mediators in the ceasefire process.

Reportedly KNU joint-secretary-2, Mahn Mahn, who attended the UNFC meeting, also backed plans to include peace mediators. A report in Burma News International said Mahn Mahn's prominent role in the UNFC has "embarrassed" the new KNU leadership, which was elected last year and has developed an increasingly conciliatory relationship with the central government.

The UNFC's relationship with the individual ethnic groups has become more strained in recent months, culminating in them boycotting a government-led peace working group last month. The UNFC has repeatedly called for ethnic groups to present a united front, while many rebel factions have opted for individual negotiations with the government. Critics have accused the government of attempting to divide Burma's armed ethnic groups.

The chairman of the government-backed Myanmar Peace Center told DVB that Naypyidaw had no plans to use mediators for a nation-wide ceasefire deal.

"I don't see any need for mediators at this point," Min Zaw Oo told DVB. "Usually you need a mediator when you have a situation when both parties can't even talk to each other.”

He added that nationwide peace talks would be held as soon as a ceasefire between the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) and the government was "officially endorsed". The KIO is the only major ethnic armed group yet to sign a formal peace deal with the government. In May, the two sides held a historic meeting in Myitkyina, where they etched out plans to reduce fighting.

But the KIO has insisted that genuine political dialogue, which addresses ethnic grievances and their right to self-determination, must precede a ceasefire. They have also persistently called for the inclusion of international mediators to oversee the peace process, despite rejecting a plea by democracy icon Suu Kyi to help mediate.

Nonetheless, Min Zaw Oo said that a formal agreement is not far off.

"Even in Kachin state there has been no major armed conflict since the start of this year – maybe some small clashes — so what we are observing right now is a quasi-ceasefire," he said.

Burma has been ravaged by ethnic conflicts since independence in 1948. Since the end of military rule in 2011, Thein Sein has negotiated ceasefire deals with ten out of eleven major ethnic armed groups.

-Additional reporting by Hanna Hindstrom

Karen torture victim recovering after successful round of operations

Posted: 19 Jul 2013 04:17 AM PDT

The 12-year-old Karen child who was severely scarred after being enslaved and tortured for more than five years by a Thai couple has successfully completed her first round of operations.

Thanawat Sathit, the director of Thailand's Kamphaengphet's Children and Families Shelter, said Nong Air underwent plastic surgery to repair her left arm that was fused with her armpit after being doused with boiling water. Nong Air is now recuperating at a hospital in Bangkok.

"Nong Air has gone through about three operations – the wounds on her arm, neck and armpits have been treated and now she can move her arm again," said Thanawat Sathit, adding that she still needs another surgery on her chest but will wait until she recovers.

"She has been at the hospital since 14 March and still has not been discharged."

The shelter's director said it will take time for her skin to heal but noted that the child looked more relaxed and happier than when she first arrived at the shelter.

Meanwhile, the couple, who are facing multiple charges including slavery, torture, forced labour and child trafficking, are still on the run after skipping bail in February.

Lieutenant colonel Suwitcha Nomjorn of Kamphaengphet police department's special investigation unit said authorities have issued an arrest warrant for the suspects – identified as 35-year-old Natee Taengorn and 33-year-old Rattanakorn Piyaworatham.

"The warrant was issued about three months ago and we learnt that they had fled to Laos," said Suwitcha Nomjorn.

"We have informed this to immigration offices at the border as well as authorities in Laos. We are investigating both human and financial resources to catch the suspects."

The lieutenant colonel added that Piyaworatham's mother had agreed to provided testimony for the case.

The Thai government has offered a THB 100,000 (USD$ 3,349) reward for anyone with information that leads to the arrests of the fugitives.

Rangoon commemorates Martyrs’ Day

Posted: 19 Jul 2013 04:14 AM PDT

Across Burma, Martyrs’ Day is being commemorated to honour General Aung San and seven other independence leaders who were assassinated 66 years ago.

At the Martyrs' Mausoleum in Rangoon, Burma's Vice President joined Aung Suu Kyi, to pay their respects to her father.

Remembering the martyrs and their hopes for Burma

Posted: 19 Jul 2013 03:09 AM PDT

Today Burma observes the 66th anniversary of the death of Aung San and his nationalist colleagues. It was also on this day all those years ago that Aung San's ‘Big Tent’ vision for the country, where ethnic equality and self-determination were to be the bedrock of the Union of Burma, was buried.

Aung San was a rare bird from a deeply traditional country under colonial control. He was a secularist, anti-feudal radical thinker and leader, who despised sycophants of all stripes and colours. The general did not bog himself down with questions concerning which races belonged in Burma and which didn't.

He defined tai-yin-thar (ethnic nationalities) as anyone who was born on Burmese soil and loved his or her birthplace. He would certainly be turning in his grave at this juncture in Burma's history.

In the weeks leading up to his assassination, Aung San was stridently opposed to British economic exploitation and accused the colonial authorities of attempting to destabilise Burma as the country edged closer to independence.  He called the British post-WWII policies towards the country “fascist” and derided their colonial mindset and worldview.

According to the Nation editor and publisher the late Edward Law-Yone, who met the last colonial governor Hubert Rance, London was thinking of putting U Saw – their local proxy and mastermind behind Aung San’s murder — in charge of forming a government immediately after the general’s death on 19 July 1947.

The late Brigadier General Kyaw Zaw, who was one of the members of the famed 30 comrades that made up the nucleus of the Burma Independence Army, was unequivocal when he wrote in his autobiography that the colonial crime investigation department (CID) in Rangoon knew days in advance about U Saw’s plot to take out Aung San.

And Aung San was also supposedly aware that the conspiracy was being hatched and told his aide-de-camp Captain Tun Hla that it would be U Saw pulling the strings.

According to filmmaker Rob Lemkin, who made the documentary “Who killed Aung San?”, the British government removed or otherwise destroyed official and potentially incriminatory dispatches sent from Rangoon back to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London following the assassination.

Lemkin's film also claimed that a key staff member from the British Council was the main liaison with U Saw. A few months prior to the assassination, news broke that about 200 British-made automatic sub-machine guns disappeared or were stolen from a colonial arms depot. The officer in charge of the depot slipped out of the country in no time, and with no troubles, assisted by the last colonial government to rule the country.

U Nu was eventually handpicked by the British to lead Burma's new cabinet, and Nu did everything in his power to quell popular public opinion by burying the truth behind Aung San’s assassination.

On his part, Nu, now head of the almost independent government provided the British government with major economic concessions and welcomed the country's military advisers to train the Burmese army. The communists bitterly opposed Nu’s terms of independence, which saw the Burmese pay full compensation to all the British commercial firms including the Burmah Oil Corporation (BOC), mining companies, etc.

"The former colonial rulers are heading back to their old stomping ground to exploit the country again!"

When the communists rejected the deal as a sham and went underground within 90-days of independence, the British came to Nu’s aid. They trained Burmese military leaders in ruthless counterinsurgency methods – including the infamous “Four Cuts” strategy. The British also sold the military hardware to General Ne Win and his army that they needed to fight the communists.

Now history is repeating itself.

Back in 1880′s the Kingdom of Burmah was known “one of the world’s unexplored markets”.  A century and half on, the country is again considered to be one of the very few remaining ‘frontier markets’.

The British banks sucked Burma dry leading up to the Japanese-Burma Independence Army “invasion” in Dec 1942, while externalising the financial side of the operations to South Indians, known as Chettyers, who became the scapegoats for all the ills of colonial Burma.

Now, the former colonial rulers are heading back to their old stomping ground to exploit the country again!

This time our ruling and opposition elites are facilitating the process. Oxbridge-trained financiers, Royal Military Academies-trained advisers and representatives from Britain’s arms industry, which sold  £12 billion worth of weapons to repressive regimes around the world last year, are all about to rush in to penetrate the world's latest frontier market.

While the country is about to be re-exploited by British interests, Burma's people have yet to overcome the country's colonial legacy. Burma was carved up under British rule. Ethnic groups were played off of each other as the British sought to divide and rule their colonial estate.

Aung San realised that for Burma to succeed, the country would to have embrace a secularist-multiculturalist society after independence.  This day 66 years ago Aung San and some of his closest multi-ethnic advisors – a Shan, a Karen, a Myanmar Muslim, a devout Bama Buddhist and a liberal socialists were murdered while meeting in the Secretariat in Rangoon.  "Made in England" weapons killed not only Burma's nationalist visionaries but also their dream of a multiculturalist, secular Burma.

Pro-Aung San Burmese campaigners trying to revive the annual call to pay homage to the fallen martyrs through the state broadcast of sirens at 10:37 am should go beyond these simple demands.

For the country to be peaceful, prosperous and democratic, Burma's leaders and citizens must urgently embrace, and actively put into practice, the martyrs’ ‘Big Tent” vision of a multicultural state for all – irrespective of ethnicity, faith, and ideologies.

Only then will the fallen martyrs be able to say: Sadu/Thadu! Sadu/Thadu! Sadu/Thadu (A good deed has been done!)

Maung Zarni is an associate fellow at the University of Malaya where he is also the editor of the Journal of Democracy and Elections and visiting fellow at the London School of Economics. 

-The opinions and views expressed in this piece are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect DVB's editorial policy.

The last of the Padaung long-necks

Posted: 19 Jul 2013 01:58 AM PDT

For generations Padaung (Kayan) women and girls have adorned their necks, arms and legs with long brass coils.

The tradition has earned them the name Padaung long-necks – or to tourists, giraffe women.

But younger generations are choosing not to wear the heavy rings, saying they are old fashioned and too restrictive.

DVB’s Khon Bo Thar visited Dor Klow Htoo village to speak to the last generation of the Padaung long-necks.
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