Thursday, July 4, 2013

Democratic Voice of Burma

Democratic Voice of Burma

Burma denies military ties with North Korea

Posted: 04 Jul 2013 05:27 AM PDT

The Burmese government has refuted allegations that it continues to enjoy a military relationship with North Korea, despite news that the US government has blacklisted a top general for dealing arms with the Asian pariah.

A spokesperson for the president told DVB that it is "strictly abiding" by the UN resolution on North Korea, which imposes an arms embargo on the military regime in Pyongyang.

But he denied any knowledge of the US Treasury's decision to place sanctions on Lt. General Thein Htay, the head of Burma's Directorate of Defence Industries (DDI), for allegedly "purchasing military goods" from their former military ally.

"We don't know the motive behind [their decision]," Ye Htut said, quickly distancing the government from the affair. "Lt-gen Thein Htay is not a member of the government – he is just an army official. And the US statement said the [blacklisting] was only targeting him individually, so I don't see how it could affect US-Burma relations."

But military analyst and Burma expert, Bertil Lintner, says it would be "absolutely impossible" for the former Border Affairs Minister to have carried out any arms deals without state authorisation. "He would have to answer to the commander-in-chief Sr Gen Min Aung Hlaing and President Thein Sein."

The DDI is a military agency, which carries out missile research and development projects, and reportedly has a memorandum of understanding to build ballistic missiles in partnership with North Korea. The agency was already slapped with US sanctions in July 2012 for their continued engagement with the dictatorship.

According to Lintner, North Korea is helping Burma develop a SCUD-type missile, most likely based on the Nodong model, which has a range of up to 900 kilometres, but is known for its poor accuracy. These allegations fall in stark contrast with repeated government pledges to severe ties with the pariah state.

In November 2012, the quasi-civilian regime agreed to abide by the UN's arms embargo on North Korea, and to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) full access to its own suspected nuclear facilities – also linked to Pyongyang. But the government has yet to take any steps towards fulfilling this pledge, which would include signing the IAEA's additional protocol, granting inspectors wider discretion to inspect sites at short notice.

"I know for a fact that the Americans are upset with the Burmese government for not severing ties, despite all the support and kudos it is getting from Washington," Lintner said.

"Now, apparently, the US doesn’t want to embarrass the government, just scare it into severing ties with North Korea by targeting an individual serving under the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and the president."

Military cooperation with North Korea has been a key sticking point in US-Burma relations for decades. But as bilateral relations continue to warm, the US has become increasingly reluctant to publicly criticise Burma.

Despite blacklisting Thein Htay on Tuesday, the US took great care to avoid reprimanding the Burmese government, which it said "has continued to take positive steps" to distance itself from the Asian pariah.

Lintner believes it reveals their geopolitical motives for reengaging with Burma, which is slowly emerging from nearly five decades of military rule, as directly linked to concerns over its diplomatic relationships with China and North Korea.

-Additional reporting provided by Ko Htwe

Lower House passes controversial press law

Posted: 04 Jul 2013 04:42 AM PDT

Burma's Lower House of Parliament approved the controversial Printing and Publishing Enterprise Draft Law on Thursday to the dismay of members of the interim press council who claim the bill still contains measures that will hinder the fourth estate.

According to Lower House MP Ye Htun, legislators made several amendments to the draft law before it was passed.  Such changes included revising a clause that would have provided "registration officials" with the authority to enforce printing and publishing regulations and deem publications "illegal".

"Now it allows the minister or an official appointed by the minister to declare a publication illegal if it is investigated and found violating any condition of article-7 (of the law) and in response, the publisher or owner of the enterprise can appeal at regional courts," said Ye Htut.

"So according to the [amendment], the decision made by the minister or an official appointed by the minister will no longer be final."

According to article-7 of the draft law, media outlets would not be allowed to publish material containing nudity or statements that are "against and violate the provisions of the Constitution and other legislations".

Interim Press Council member Zaw Thet Htwe said the press body plans to hold an emergency meeting tomorrow in response to the Lower House's approval of the bill.

"During negotiations with the Ministry of Information, we pointed out clauses [that would limit press freedom] and we learnt that those clauses were still included in the draft law that was approved by the Lower House today," said Zaw Thet Htwe.

"This means that the negotiations and discussions we had with the [ministry] were fruitless and this can hurt the cooperation between the Press Council and the Ministry of Information in the future. So we are going to talk with the Press Council members about how to deal with this."

The law draft, including the Lower House's amendments, will now be passed on to Upper House for approval. If both bodies sign off on the bill, then the Union Parliament has the power to sign the piece of legislation into law.

Once passed, the legislation will replace the draconian 1962 Printers and Publishers Registration Act that was commonly utilised by the country's former military rulers to silence dissent and exert control over the fourth estate.

After Ministry of Information submitted the draft law in February, journalists and watchdog agencies unleashed heavy criticism on the bill for containing provisions that pushed authoritarian measures that would allow for the continuation of censorship.

 

Displaced farmers suffer in Kachin state’s ‘tiger reserve’

Posted: 04 Jul 2013 03:22 AM PDT

Kachin farmers forcibly relocated to make way for plantations in the ecologically sensitive Hukawng valley (also Hugawng, Hukaung) are enduring great hardship at the poorly equipped relocation site where they have been forced to move to, according to Kachin human rights activists.

A recent report issued by the Kachin advocacy group Mungchying Rawt Jat (MRJ) accuses Burmese government officials and their well-connected business allies of condemning scores of farmers to grinding poverty after driving them off their land to make way for large-scale projects in Kachin state.

The forced relocation of an estimated 600 farming families began in 2006, some two years after the Hukawng tiger reserve was expanded to cover the entire valley’s 21,890 KM2, creating what has been heralded as the world’s largest tiger reserve.

According to Kachin activists, since the land grabs in the Hukawng valley began more than 200,000 acres of land has been seized from small-scale farmers to make way for massive plantations operated by the Yuzana company – one of Burma’s largest conglomerates.

It's of little comfort to those displaced by Yuzana’s activities that the firm’s millionaire owner Htay Myint, an elected MP for the ruling USDP, continues to be the subject of US sanctions, a punishment he received for his ties to the previous military regime.

Yuzana’s bears the bulk of the responsibility for the both the large-scale displacement in the Hukawng and the dramatic decline in the valley’s environment, according to MRJ spokesperson Ahn Htung.

"The relocated people are facing difficulty surviving," she told DVB.

One such displaced person is Bawk Nan, a 35-year-old women now living in Hukawng’s Sanpya "model village". She told MRJ researchers how her life and that of her family had deteriorated significantly since a joint group of government officials and Yuzana staff seized their land in early 2008.

"They forced us to sign that we would move according to the order from the government. After relocating, there is no land for farming," she said.

Prior to the land seizure, Bawk Nan and her family were able to grow 300 to 400 baskets of rice per season but now are left with few options but to work for the same crony-controlled firm that seized their land.

"You will come and work for Yuzana when you start starving. Prepare to be slaves of Yuzana," a Yuzana official told told Bawk Nan and her fellow villagers during a compulsory public meeting held shortly after the land seizures took place.

Life in the model village is difficult for Bawk Nan and her now landless family — the new village lacks proper water and the homes are far smaller than what they need and were poorly built, the villagers claim.

"We are unhappy, depressed and struggling to survive," Bawk Nan told MRJ.

La Mung Tang Gun, another farmer interviewed by MRJ’s researchers tells an equally depressing story. Tang Gun and his family used to be able to harvest more than 2,000 baskets of rice from his land every year until February 2008 when Yuzana’s tractors arrived. Today Tang Gun and his relatives are relegated to work as poorly paid laborers.

"We cannot earn enough for our food doing this kind of daily work," Tang Gun told MRJ.

Despite promises from Yuzana that their new home at the relocation site would even better than their old ones, Tang Gun’s experience has proved just the opposite.

"We could live happily and stay safely in our thatched house in our old village. Now they have built a house for us, but its poles are already rotting. They said the model village would be an improvement, and if we did what they said we would not face difficulty. They said: 'We are coming here to improve your lives and we'll rebuild the Hugawng Ledo road.' But now here we are getting poorer," he told MRJ.

Since 2009 Yuzana has operated a factory in the valley, reports the Kachin Develoment Network Group (KDNG), a Kachin environmental organization that has also been following developments in the valley. The factory purportedly processes plantation grown cassava, tapioca and sugar cane into biofuel.

Foul smelling liquid is regularly released from the factory into local a local river, according to local residents. The putrid discharge appears to have contributed to the dramatic decline in the rivers fish population, says KDNG.

Yuzana’s environmentally destructive practices in the Hukawng continue despite the fact that Burma’s central government has received had a steady stream of financial and technical support from two US-based NGO’s the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Panthera to sustain the controversial tiger reserve.

According to KDNG, it is likely no longer any tigers left in the reserve after numerous experienced animal trackers in the valley told researchers that they haven’t seen any tiger prints or other signs of tiger life for several years.

Neither WCS which proudly claims on its website to have helped create the Hukawng Tiger Reserve or Panthera, another conservation group that works closely with WCS, responded to repeated requests from DVB for comment about the tiger reserve.

WCS’s Kachin critics also charge that New York based group is deliberately ignoring Yuzana’s destructive environmental practices and their impact on the tiger population of the Hukaung in order to please Burma’s government and powerful people like the firm’s owner Htay Myint.

"The problem is that the Yuzana company has cleared the forests. There is no more habitat for the tiger, this has caused the loss of the tiger," says MRJ’s Ahn Htung.

Unable to harvest their own fields and thus prevented from earning a living, Tang Gun, Bawk Nan and the more than 1,000 other people languishing in the Hukaung’s "model village" face a bleak future. One that is perhaps only marginally better than that of the valley’s tiger population.

Burma’s gambling problem

Posted: 04 Jul 2013 02:22 AM PDT

Illegal gambling in Burma is big business.

On the streets of Rangoon, the two-digit lottery is the most popular, especially among the city's poorest.

But people who only earn a few dollars a day are gambling away their livelihoods in the hopes of winning big.

For most, a big win doesn't happen and there is no social safety net to stop families from going under.

Political party to present interfaith marriage law to parliament

Posted: 04 Jul 2013 02:09 AM PDT

The National Democratic Front (NDF) is planning to propose a law to "protect" Buddhist women entering interfaith marriages in Burma during this session of parliament, a party spokesperson has confirmed to DVB.

It comes amid reports that a number of its grassroots members are actively helping the ultra-nationalist "969" movement collect signatures in support of a controversial law, which would require Buddhist women to seek official approval before marrying a Muslim man.

But NDF leader Khin Maung Swe insisted that their law will be "a bit different" from the monks' proposal and will not violate human rights, although he refused to condemn their campaign.

"Their proposal tries to ban Myanmar [Burmese] Buddhist women from getting married to other possible religious persons, but in our proposal there will not be that kind of a ban," he said, highlighting a woman's right to inheritance and religious freedom as the main issues.

But he conceded that there "may be some limitations, or steps to carry out before getting married" and echoed concerns voiced by "969" leader Wirathu about Muslim men spreading their faith by marrying Buddhist women.

"In our society we are too poor to earn a living, that's why persons from different religion take advantage of that and get married to Myanmar Buddhist women," he warned. "After they get married to such kind of man, they lose their link to their own society; they lose their natural rights and human rights."

Although it has not yet been drafted, the NDF's proposal will be presented to parliament in the next two weeks in the hopes of starting a parliamentary discussion about interfaith marriages. The party also wants to amend a 1954 law, which outlines existing protections for Buddhist women marrying men of a different faith, for "contemporary relevance".

“We want to show the public that our society needs a law to protect women's rights regarding marriage to a person with different religion,” he said.

But women's groups say that politicians should focus their attention on improving women's social and economic rights across the board, instead of focusing on interfaith marriages.

"Rather than proposing the ban on interfaith marriage, we need to focus on women's protection laws, like domestic violence, crime and rape. But nobody's talking about that," Shenn Lei, co-founder of the RAINFALL Gender Study Group, told DVB.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) describes violence against women as "one of the most pressing human rights violations" in Burma. It is one of only two countries among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that does not have a specific law banning domestic violence.

Although women's groups, including RAINFALL, plan to lobby against any law restricting women's marital autonomy, Shenn Lei worried that it may still obtain popular support.

"The majority of the population wanted to agree on [the monks'] law [so] for the political parties this is one of the ways they are collecting votes," she said, adding that even if many women oppose it, they might not "dare to speak out".

Some women report being abused and harassed on social media after speaking out against the ban, while a leading monk has threatened to rally against any politician, who votes against their proposal, in the crucial 2015 general elections.

The interfaith marriage ban, also known as the "national race protection law", has garnered significant backing across the country and fuelled Wirathu's "969" campaign, which calls for Buddhists to boycott Muslim businesses.

In an interview on Tuesday, the ruling military-backed party's vice-chair, Htay Oo, told DVB that the "national race protection law" sounded "noble". Meanwhile, dozens of grassroots NDF members rallied on the streets of Mandalay last week in a bid to muster support for the monks' legislation.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, another NDF executive, Kyaw Thura, admitted that party members “have been participating in discussions on the marriage law and supporting it.” Khin Maung Swe has also courted controversy by praising the government's two-child limit for Rohingya Muslims in western Burma, and insisting that the issue should not just be viewed from a "human rights point of view."

Burma has seen a rise in religious tensions since last year, when Buddhists clashed with Rohingya Muslims in Arakan state, displacing some 140,000 people and killing over 200. Since March, renewed bouts of anti-Muslim violence have claimed another 44 lives.

The NDF split from Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy in 2010, after falling out with the democracy icon over whether to participate in the contested general election.
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