Tuesday, August 20, 2013

The Irrawaddy Magazine

The Irrawaddy Magazine

Gathered Farmers Call on Govt to End Land Grabs

Posted: 20 Aug 2013 07:48 AM PDT

88 Student Generation leader Min Ko Naing addressed the Voice of the Farmer event in Rangoon on Monday. (Photo: 88 Student Generation / Facebook)

RANGOON — About 500 farmers from across Burma gathered at a two-day event in Rangoon this week to call on the government to address the worsening land confiscation issue and to return farmland that was seized under the previous military regime.

Desperate farmers addressed the Voice of the Farmer event, which was organized by the 88 Generation Students Group on Monday and Tuesday. Many pleaded for help as their land — often their sole source of income — had been taken from them.

"I only had this land. We live a very simple life. Our life is to grow paddy. We did not have any work after they took it," said Mya Sein. The 60-year-old farmer from Irrawaddy Division's Kyoung Pyaw Township said she lost 2 acres of land in 2006 after local authorities allocated a total of 63 acres (25 hectares) in her village to an agro-industrial company.

"I will keep asking for our land. This is our right and it is our land," said Mya Sein, who represents a group of affected farmers in her village.

Activists had invited hundreds of farmers from areas such as Irrawaddy, Sagaing, Pegu and Magwe divisions, and Shan, Mon and Kayah states to voice their concerns over past and current land grabs.

"They [farmers] have been suffering for a long time as they had to stay under the military regime. I saw some farmers cry while they were speaking out. It was sad to see, but they are very brave," said 88 Student activist Tun Myint Aung. "If we keep working together, I believe that we will reach our goal."

During the past decades, the Burma Army forcibly evicted tens of thousands of farmers from their lands to make way for industrial zones, state-run agriculture and industrial projects, or to allocate land to private companies with links to the military.

A parliamentary commission found that about 300,000 hectares of land were confiscated by the army, which offered little compensation to affected farmers and crushed any local dissent. Under President Thein Sein's reformist government, these land grabs are now coming under scrutiny from both the public and Parliament.

Yet at the same time, economic development is leading to a growing demand for land and complaints of land-grabbing by powerful private firms are rapidly increasing, especially in Irrawaddy Division, the country's main rice-growing area. The land confiscations have been met with a rise in land protests.

Tun Aung from Nawnghkio Township, northern Shan State, said local authorities had asked farmers in 2007 to vacate about 50,000 acres (12,500 hectares) in order to make way for coffee plantations, adding that villagers had received no compensation for their loss of land.

So far, he said, the Ministry of Industry had begun planting about 500 acres with coffee plants, while Moe Thet Chan Company and Ahnandar Company had planted about 1,200 acres and 85 acres, respectively.

Tun Aung said the affected communities had since sent letters of complaint to local authorities and Nawnghkio Township Court, but they received no replies. He said the group recently sent letters to Parliament and to President Thein Sein's office.

In downtown Rangoon on Tuesday, some 50 residents of Buthidaung Township gathered outside of City Hall to protest against the loss of their lands located along the banks of the Rangoon River.

The protesters said big construction firms, such as Yuzana Company, Wa Wa Win Co, Ltd Eden Group Co Ltd, had confiscated their land for projects or declined to pay appropriate lease fees for use of the area.

The group said their repeated letters of complaint to municipal authorities, the Ministry of Construction and the president's office had been ignored.

"As the government didn’t take any action for us, we now have to come on the streets to express our demands," said a protestor named Myint Aung, adding that the group would continue protesting until their complaints are addressed.

"We don’t want to protest against anyone. We want to live in peace as ordinary people, many here are old. But we have to come on streets and protest in the rain," he said.

Dozens of Rohingya Asylum Seekers Escape Thai Detention Center

Posted: 20 Aug 2013 05:31 AM PDT

Rohingya Muslim illegal immigrants pray at an immigration detention center during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan in Kanchanaburi province, Thailand, on July 10, 2013. (Photo: Reuters / Athit Perawongmetha)

BANGKOK — A group of Muslim Rohingya asylum seekers in southern Thailand escaped from an immigration detention center on Tuesday, highlighting the growing desperation of a stateless minority fleeing sectarian violence in Burma.

Rights activists are critical of the Thai government’s response to the influx of Rohingyas and have urged the authorities not to deport the refugees back to Burma, where they face pervasive discrimination.

The 87 escapees used blades to cut through iron bars and hacked at cement walls before disappearing into nearby rubber plantations, prompting a large search operation, said Suwit Chernsiri, police commander of the southern province of Songkla.

"The men were detained for many months and tensions were high," Suwit told Reuters. The jail break was the second after a group of 30 Rohingyas escaped from a Songkla police station earlier this month.

More than 1,800 Rohingya who fled Burma by sea this past year are being detained across Thailand, often in overcrowded centers and shelters, and thousands more have been intercepted and pushed back out to sea by the Thai authorities.

Burma, a majority Buddhist country, says the Rohingya are Muslim migrants from Bangladesh. A 1982 Citizenship Act excluded Rohingya Muslims from a list of 135 designated ethnic groups, effectively rendering them stateless.

Thailand also denies Rohingyas citizenship and considers them illegal migrants. Bangladesh also does not recognize them.

Many Rohingya hope to end up in neighboring Muslim-majority Malaysia, where some have extended families but often fall prey to smugglers and traffickers in Thailand.

A Reuters investigation found that Rohingyas who fail to pay for their passage are handed over to traffickers, who sell some men into slavery on Thai fishing boats or force them to work as farmhands. Thailand's navy denies its personnel are involved in smuggling and trafficking networks.

The number of Rohingyas boarding boats from Burma and neighboring Bangladesh reached 34,626 people from June 2012 to May of this year—more than four times the previous year, says the Arakan Project, an advocacy group that has studied Rohingya migration since 2006. Many have ended up in Thailand.

Destined for Slaughter, 120 Dogs Find Safe Haven Near Rangoon

Posted: 20 Aug 2013 05:13 AM PDT

Stray dogs are seen at a shelter in Shwe Pyauk, near Rangoon, on Sunday. More than 120 dogs are staying at the temporary shelter after being rescued from a dog smuggler near Mandalay. (Photo: Kyaw Phyo Tha / The Irrawaddy).

SHWE PYAUK, Rangoon Division — In the beginning, they had a bleak destiny.

Clubbed on their heads and knocked unconscious at night, they were thrown onto a cart and dumped in a cage. When their headcount eventually reached 200, they would be shipped again, this time to the butchers' blocks at restaurants over the border in China, where dog meat is considered a delicacy.

Were it not for Myat Thet Mon, this group of more than 120 mutts from the town of Pa Late, near Burma's second-largest city, Mandalay, would still be crammed into small wire cages, painfully awaiting their turn for slaughter.

But now, as luck would have it, they are roaming freely around a temporary shelter more than an hour's drive from Rangoon, in a space that's nearly 25 meters by 12 meters.

"I can heave a sigh of relief for them now," says the 35-year old woman as she prepares food for the dogs at the shelter, which she runs with support from other animal lovers around the country. She rescued the mutts from a smuggler in Pa Late who had planned to sell them for 10,000 kyats (US$10) each in China. "Sometimes, I wonder how our nation has fallen so low to become a country that sells dogs."

Her efforts to save the mutts were heartily embraced by many people in Burma, a country where dog meat is rarely seen on the menu and street dogs are voluntarily cared for by members of local communities. Many people were happy to hear about the canine rescue, although some were also upset to learn where the dogs had been originally destined for sale, in China.

"Don't they think they have crossed the line?" says Ding Ra Nin, an ethnic Kachin woman volunteering at the shelter. "They have already exploited us with the Myitsone [a controversial Chinese-backed dam in north Burma]. Now it's our dogs!"

Myat Thet Mon's efforts became well known in Burma thanks to local media coverage, with online posts about her rescue mission going viral in late July.

The public support for the rescue highlights the resurrection of animal rights activism in the country amid an ongoing transition from military rule. Although the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is now defunct, animal rights activists have begun to network with each in their work.

Still, for Myat Thet Mon, the canine rescue was no easy task.

"It took me 26 days to bring all those dogs down to Rangoon," she says.

It all started with a post on Facebook. Myat Thet Mon read on the social media site that a smuggler in Pa Late had captured the strays and intended to smuggle them to China. Being an animal lover herself—with 50 stray dogs under her care at home—she visited the smuggler to determine whether it would be possible to rescue the dogs.

She traveled nearly 645 km (400 miles) north of Rangoon to see the dogs. They were in dire condition, she said, with loose skin hanging from malnourished, skeletal bodies. Some had open wounds on their heads after being hit by an iron rod.

"It was heartbreaking," she says. "Their sad eyes made me determined to complete my mission, as if they were pleading with me, 'Please, get us out of here!'"

She says the smuggler demanded that she pay 7,000 kyats for each dog.

With donations from animal lovers around the country, she initially gathered enough money to save 60 of 172 dogs, sending them to an animal shelter in upper Burma. The smuggler threatened to ship the remaining dogs to China if she did not claim them within two days.

Rather than meet his demands, she took a different approach.

"Why should I listen to him? He surely knew we were his easy prey. He would recapture the dogs and ask for a ransom again. It would become an endless circle," she says.

Instead, she reported the smuggler to any authority who might step in and help—including the head of the Buddhist monastic community in Mandalay, the divisional minister, the chief of the Mandalay Police and the local administrator in Pa Late. She urged them to take action against the smuggler for his cruelty to animals.

For a few days, nothing happened. Then she disclosed the case to the media.

"As soon as the news appeared in papers, the Mandalay Special Police Branch called me on August 1," she says. "An hour later, they threw the smuggler in jail."

After the arrest, Myat Thet Mon navigated bureaucratic red tape for two weeks before receiving official clearance to ship more than 130 dogs in a 12-wheeler to the temporary shelter near Rangoon. More than 30 dogs had died in the smuggler's custody.

The shelter in Shwe Pyauk village appears somewhat basic—a diagonal space closed off by a wire fence and roofed with tarpaulin sheets—but it seems spacious enough for the group of dogs.

Dr. Kyaw Lwin, a trained veterinarian who now volunteers at the shelter, says nearly ever mutt at the facility had been malnourished or wounded, and some were disease ridden. Since arriving at the shelter, nearly 10 dogs have died from illnesses or injuries sustained during their captivity.

"Our first priority is making them healthy again," the veterinarian says. "Then we have to vaccinate them for rabies."

Meanwhile, Myat Thet Mon is looking for ways to solve another looming problem: Shwe Pyauk village will only allow her to keep the dogs for two months at the current shelter, so she needs to find another permanent space.

"A plot of land is urgently needed," she says.

She hopes to create another safe haven for stray dogs across the city, where she could vaccinate and sterilize them. Rangoon currently has only one privately run shelter for street dogs.

Her ultimate goal is to promote a law for animal rights and welfare.

"At the moment we can only focus on finding a place for the dogs here," she says. "But just keeping the dogs safe is not the solution. We need to think broadly.

"Dogs have feelings, like all of us. Stray dogs are more vulnerable to mistreatment. It's OK if you don't care about them, but please don't mistreat them, I plead, because they are living things."

Opium Eradication Agreements Lack Impact: Shan Rebels

Posted: 20 Aug 2013 03:59 AM PDT

Poppy farmers in Shan State use rudimentary tools to process black tar opium resin collected from their crops. (Photo: The Irrawaddy)

The Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) said this week that its opium eradication agreements with Burma's government and the UN "could not be achieved so far" in Shan State.

The ethnic rebel group agreed to the joint eradication projects in the past year, but it now says that the issue should be addressed more thoroughly during ongoing negotiations with Naypyidaw and in closer cooperation with the UN.

The drug eradication issue came up in talks soon after peace negotiations began in earnest early last year. The RCSS (the political wing of the Shan State Army South) then agreed with the government's Central Anti-Narcotics Task Force and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on the implementation of several pilot projects in Mong Nai and Mong Pan townships.

Numerous skirmishes between the Shan rebels and the Burma Army have since been reported, however, and implementation of the projects subsequently suffered.

In June this year, RCSS leader Lt-Gen Yawd Serk made a first-ever visit to Naypyiydaw to hold direct talks with President Thein Sein and military tensions between the sides have been reduced in recent months.

A RCSS report on opium trade and cultivation, released on Monday, said the discussions with Naypyidaw have yet to make an impact on the drug production in Shan State.

"The cooperation in narcotics drug eradication has been included as one of the most important points of the discussion. In spite of the agreements made, cooperation for the implementation could not be achieved in reality so far, as had been planned," the report said.

RCSS deputy spokesperson Sai Murng told The Irrawaddy that drug eradication efforts had faltered due to "a lack of collaboration from government troops in the region."

More than 300,000 Shan families grow opium poppies and the illicit crop is their main sources of income, according to the UNODC. Burma is the world's second-largest opium producer after Afghanistan, and poppy cultivation has increased in the last six years in Shan State.

The RCSS said it has been battling opium production since 1999 through its own program, which is led by the RCSS Anti-Narcotics Task Force.

The group has been engaged in a decades-long rebellion against Burma's central government in order to gain political autonomy and respect for basic rights for ethnic Shan groups.

In its report on Monday, the RCSS called for closer cooperation with the UN and Naypyidaw now that peace talks are progressing. "[S]olving the narcotic problems should not take longer. It should soon be implemented to benefit every party," the report said.

"[T]he danger of narcotic drugs that Shan State people face today becomes more intense. Therefore, while we are trying to find political resolution, it is also time for us to solve narcotic drug issue."

RCSS Anti-Narcotics Committee Secretary Sai Seng Wan said the group wants to wipe out opium production completely within six years after full implementation of joint projects start on the ground in Shan State.

"The 6-year plan of the RCSS is to be counted only from the time when all the stakeholders start working together in the process of the drug-eradication plan," Maj Sai Seng wrote in an email.

Sai Murng, RCSS deputy spokesman, said the group would also cooperate and share information with authorities in China and Thailand, the main destination countries of the illicit trade.

Shan Herald Agency News editor Khun Sai, a long-time observer of the drug trade, said opium had been a key cash crop for impoverished Shan families for decades and Burma's government had failed to create policies that addressed the issue and create alternative income sources.

"Despite the government's willingness to do eradication and create alternative development for residents, its policies have not yet fully succeeded," he said, adding that Burma's government lacks the means to offer alternative livelihoods to Shan farmers.

"We were told by the government that financial issues play an important role here, as budget needs are key for development projects" in Shan State, Khun Sai said.

Paying the Debt: 25 Years Later, Burma’s Struggle for Freedom Isn’t Over

Posted: 20 Aug 2013 01:28 AM PDT


Twenty-five years have now passed since Burma started its struggle for democracy. It began as the "8-8-88 Movement," a nationwide popular uprising calling for the removal of military dictatorship and the restoration of democratic government. Tens of thousands of young Burmese took to the streets, shouting the slogan: "To achieve democracy is our cause, our cause."

I was a 14-year-old high school student when I became involved in political activism in 1988 (after two of my siblings were arrested in a student protest at the Rangoon University campus). We distributed pamphlets and leaflets in our schools, staged hit-and-run protests in neighborhoods after school, established contacts with other high schools, and went together to Rangoon University to join their protests. I went on to become one of the founding leaders of the nationwide high school student union in Burma—where unions were illegal and just being a member could result in long-term imprisonment.

Student-led protests eventually snowballed into a nationwide popular uprising on Aug. 8, 1988 (8-8-88). You can think of it, without much exaggeration, as the "Burmese Spring." The public, including many sympathetic members of the police force and army, took to the streets; civil society groups mushroomed in every region and social sector; and media freedom thrived as dozens of independent publications sprang up. (Even the journalists at some state-owned media practitioners joined the democracy protests and reported on the demonstrations.) The spring, however, did not last long. Winter came early and nipped our hopes in the bud. On Sept. 18 the military staged a coup, killing hundreds of unarmed protesters. According to independent estimates, at least 10,000 people were killed in August and September of 1988.

After 25 years, veterans of the "Four Eight" uprising came together to commemorate the movement and its fallen heroes. The biggest event in the country was held in Rangoon on the 8th of this month with exhibitions, speeches, and a theatrical performance. More than 10,000 people attended the anniversary event, where they listened to opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi give a speech. Many of my former colleagues set up a stand in the exhibition hall to commemorate the activities of high school students in 1988 and to remember our fallen stars including Win Maw Oo, Thet Win Aung, and Maung Maung Kywe. Family members of those who died in the protests of the Four Eight movement or in imprisonment were in full attendance.

For me it was an incredible reunion. For the first time I had a chance to share stories with my former colleagues, and together we filled in many of the missing parts of our revolutionary puzzle. Some of us died, others went insane, and the rest struggled through a dark age of crackdowns, torture chambers, imprisonment and exile. Political conviction, a sense of solidarity, and the occasional favorable twist of fate helped us to cope with those days of political turmoil and suffering. Some of us were struck by seemingly avoidable misfortunes, while others managed to make improbable escapes from this worldly hell of autocratic repression.

Many of us tend to agree that the continuing political transition is worthy of appreciation. Some of the key leaders of the previous junta attended or sent goodwill messages to the event as a gesture of acknowledgment of the role the Four Eight movement played in Burma's political opening. In fact, the massive release of political prisoners, the removal of media censorship, Aung San Suu Kyi's entry into mainstream politics as a member of Parliament, the return of exiled activists, and the country's re-engagement with the West all constitute unprecedented progress that we have witnessed in a considerably short period of time.

It doesn't mean that we don't recognize the very substantial flaws inherent in the process so far. They include the flawed Constitution that the military adopted in 2008 to entrench its supremacy in politics by reserving 25 percent of seats in Parliament, by allowing the generals to appoint the three most important cabinet ministers, by authorizing the armed forces to take power in case of state emergency, and by limiting meaningful autonomy for ethnic minorities. Meanwhile we are still contending with the effects of simmering civil war and ethnic conflict, rising nationalism and communal violence, deepening poverty and a widening gap between rich and poor. The military has allowed unprecedented popular participation in Burmese politics, but they still control real political and economic power by means of the 2008 Constitution and highly skewed wealth distribution. Access to power has been dramatically broadened, but the exercise of power remains in the same hands: the military's.

For this reason, all of us who attended the reunion felt acutely that our mission still has not been accomplished. There is one 8-8-88 memory that has never let go of me. When we were marching during the 1988 democracy movement, the people had nothing to eat, but they made rice bags for us so that we could eat and keep marching. When we collected the rice bags, we always promised them: "You will get democracy one day." So far, we haven't kept our promise.

I feel that our movement still owes the people for the food we ate. This is a very simple thing, but the sense of responsibility remains. The rice I ate 25 years ago still gives me the energy and power to keep going.

Min Zin is the Burma blogger for Foreign Policy's Transitions, where this article first appeared on Aug. 19, 2013.

Airlines Scramble to Land in Myanmar, but Visas Still up in the Air

Posted: 19 Aug 2013 11:40 PM PDT

Budget airline Air Asia has moved aggressively to increase its flights to destinations in Myanmar in a bid to capture much of the tourist market. (Photo: Steve Tickner / The Irrawaddy)

BANGKOK — Foreign airline companies big and small are falling over one another in a battle for landing rights in Myanmar to tap into Southeast Asia's new and rapidly rising tourist destination.

Myanmar may still be a long way behind its neighbor Thailand in visitor numbers, but since President U Thein Sein began opening up the country two years ago, tourism has become one of its biggest businesses.

More than 20 foreign airlines now fly direct to several cities in Myanmar, ranging from the big German holiday package charter operator Condor to Thailand's tiny Nok Air.

Frankfurt-based Condor, the biggest holiday charter flights company in Germany, is already operating a weekly service, while Nok Air begins a service in September.

Yangon International Airport clocked almost 500,000 arrivals in 2012 out of a total number of 600,000 people coming into the country by air, according to government figures.

Last year, the number of visitors to Myanmar topped the 1 million mark for the first time, but the Ministry of Transport and the Department of Civil Aviation are forecasting annual increases rising to 6 million visitors in 2017.

The planned new Hanthawaddy airport, to be built about 80 km from Yangon in Bago Region, is being designed to handle 12 million passengers annually. It's provisionally scheduled to open in early 2018.

Nok Air is following the example of other budget airlines by offering flights on less crowded routes. It will fly between Mae Sot in northern Thailand and Mawlamyine in Mon State.

Mawlamyine is Myanmar's fourth-largest conurbation after Yangon, Mandalay and Naypyitaw.

From October, Nok Air will also fly to Yangon from Mae Sot. This seems set to intensify a battle between regional budget airlines for a slice of the Myanmar tourism cake.

Nok Air joins THAI Smile, the budget line of Thai Airways International, which now flies five times a week between Bangkok and Mandalay.

THAI Smile admitted it started its Myanmar service partly in answer to growing competition from Malaysia-based budget airline Air Asia, which also operates a subsidiary in Thailand called Thai Air Asia.

Tiny Bangkok Airways operates between the Thai capital and Yangon and Mandalay, often providing a feeder service for European airlines flying to Bangkok.

Major European airline companies are still hesitant about starting up services directly to Myanmar. For example, while the Middle East's Qatar Air flies out of London to Yangon via its Doha hub base, British Airways flies to Bangkok, where passengers have to transfer to Bangkok Airways for a Yangon connection. Etihad Airways of Abu Dhabi does the same out of London.

As with Bangkok, there is competition out of Singapore to fly to Myanmar. Both Singapore Airlines and its budget carrier subsidiary Silk Air connect with Yangon, vying with budget line Jetstar, which is owned by Australia's major airline Qantas.

China Eastern Airlines and All Nippon Airways, or ANA, fly direct between Tokyo and Yangon.

Japan Airlines and Mitsubishi Logistics Corporation have launched a joint venture cargo business to and from Myanmar.

Other regional airlines now servicing Myanmar include Malaysia Airlines, Laos Airlines and Vietnam Airlines, while another major carrier using its budget subsidiary for Myanmar routes is Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific, whose Dragon Air is expected to attract mostly Chinese passengers.

The strong competition on Thailand-Myanmar routes certainly seems justified by recent visitor arrival numbers.

In the first four months of this year, Thais topped the list of 253,000 tourists, according to the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism. That overall figure was over 40 percent higher than for the same period one year ago.

Asians totaled 60 percent of the four-month total, led by Thais with 37,000 visitors and followed by Japanese, South Koreans and Chinese. Among Europeans, French visitors were on top with 15,000, followed by British and Germans.

But despite the growing popularity of Myanmar with airlines, tourists and business seekers, actually getting into the country is still cumbersome.

The visa-on-arrival service is unreliable even for business travelers, while tourists "often have to waste up to a week waiting for an embassy to clear paperwork," said the travel trade magazine TTR Weekly.

"Even the visa-on-arrival that is in place for business visitors requires a letter of invitation from a government department or commercial enterprise. It is essentially a pre-processed visa that is activated at the airport by immigration officials," said TTR Weekly.

The confusion over who qualifies for a visa-on-arrival has even led the US State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs to issue an advisory to would-be visitors, urging them "not to consider the visas-on-arrival program a viable alternative to a visa."

Another issue, according to TTR Weekly, is when Myanmar will relax its visa requirements for citizens of fellow Association of Southeast Asian Nation (Asean) member states.

"Although tourism is opening up, there has been no clear indication when Myanmar will comply with the Asean requirement that all 10 member states should allow visa free entry for up to 14 days for Asean region citizens," the magazine said.

The Myanmar Tourism Promotion Board in June told a regional tourism conference in Bangkok that a review of the present rules would be made "soon."

This story first appeared in the August 2013 print issue of The Irrawaddy magazine.

As English Football Season Starts, Burma’s Gamblers Play the Odds

Posted: 19 Aug 2013 11:32 PM PDT

Men watch the opening day of English football season in Tamwe Township, Rangoon. (Photo: Simon Roughneen / The Irrawaddy)

RANGOON — On a TV above the blue neon-lit bar in Rangoon's Tamwe Township, the hapless-looking Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger grimaced, sputtering an indiscernible obscenity, his hands resting forlornly on his hips.

As if mimicking the scowling Frenchman on the TV above, Aung Kyaw tutted and swore in Burmese as Aston Villa's Antonio Luna bore down on the Arsenal goal, while manky street dogs, bored and yawning in the musty evening, sniffed around the booze-covered table in the unlikely chance that some scraps of food might be thrown their way.

It was the 85th minute of the opening-day English league clash between Arsenal and the unfancied Birmingham team on Saturday. Aung Kyaw had staked 30,000 kyat (about US$30) on some of the weekend's matches, backing an Arsenal win as part of the outlay. But that looked like money poorly spent as the Spaniard Luna calmly rolled the ball off the foot of the goalpost and beyond the reach of the Arsenal goalkeeper, for what turned out to be an unassailable 3-1 lead.

"Better delete this message off my phone," said the bespectacled 40-something-year-old, holding up the football betting odds sent to him by a bookmaker earlier that evening. Betting is illegal in Burma, and Aung Kyaw said he did not want to be caught by the police with the message on his phone.

"It's better now than before, however," he told The Irrawaddy, referring to the use of mobile phones—still the preserve of less than 10 percent of Burma's population—for football betting. "Before cellphones, we had to use paper, and that was harder to manage for both collecting money and keeping hidden."

Both bets and winnings are paid after the fact, with odds sent out by bookies and gambles placed in return, mostly over the phone, although Aung Kyaw says online gambling is a nascent—and illicit—phenomenon in a Burma, where most of the estimated 50-60 million population lacks Internet access.

Bo Win, Aung Kyaw's heavyset, tattooed drinking buddy, chimed in from across the table—his epicene Mike Tyson-like voice seemed at odds with his man-about-town persona, after earlier nudging and laughing suggestively at the sight of young women sashaying home outside on the rain-sodden streets. "Sometimes we win, mostly we lose," he said with a laugh. "I don't bet every week, only sometimes. But it's the start of football season, so this week we bet."

Gambling is a big part of Burmese culture nowadays, with nicknames translating to English as "two digit" and "three digit" for popular games based on Thailand's stock exchange and lottery.

"One digit" is the third major form of gambling in Burma, referring to the European football seasons running from August to May but taking in international tournaments and off-season test-run matches as well. Of those, top-flight English football is by far the most popular and lucrative, with small-time bookie Min Maung telling The Irrawaddy that it makes up "around 70, 75 percent" of his total gambling work.

Whispering below the evening din at a teashop in North Dagon Township, in the north of Rangoon, the shy-looking 32-year-old said he makes about 200,000 kyat ($200) per month taking bets from what he says are eight to 10 trusted gamblers.

"I only work with people I believe," he said, with his head lowered below a sign advertising the shop's apparent specialty, seven different sorts of orchid tea—a pot of which he drained while he spoke.

With gambling illegal, there's no recourse—within the law—for bookies who do not get their money, or for gamblers such as Aung Kyaw who take the chance that they might never see the money if they win.

"I won 300,000 kyat some time back, but the guy disappeared. What could I do? Tell the police?" Aung Kyaw said with a laugh.

Just as Min Maung only accepts bets from players he knows, Aung Kyaw now only gambles with bookies whom he know and trusts. "This one I've known for six or seven years," he said, holding up his Samsung smartphone to flag up the same weekend football wager as a few moments earlier.

Min Maung is a small-time bookie, but like big-player counterpart Lin Nyo, he has to give a cut to the police to be allowed operate.

"I give 10,000 kyat a month—it is for security," he said, adding that he tries to keep as low a profile as possible to avoid ending up hand-in-pocket in front of another cop looking for an easy backhander.

For Lin Nyo in Thingangyun Township, football gambling is much more lucrative. He told The Irrawaddy that he handles around 30 million kyat ($300,000) each weekend during the regular football season, between bets placed and winnings paid out.

A chunk of the money, however, goes to the police and local officials. "Donations, we call them," he said, laughing. "I give around 300,000 kyat ($300) per month."

Lin Nyo is also trying to cut down on the amount of money he has to pay the police and officials to look the other way. "On weekends I don't stay home, I go elsewhere," he said, without elaborating. Several big downtown Rangoon hotels, he added, are weekend work hubs for bookies such as himself who do not want to work at home over the weekend, when the big money is up for grabs.

The size of Burma's gambling economy is unknown—reliable and up-to-date statistics are hard to come by, even in the country's licit economy—but estimates in the past have put the value of the country's gambling economy at between $5 million to $10 million per day.  That's big money in an economy of just US$53 billion total, where millions of people live below the poverty line.

Gambling has a long history in Burma. Author George Orwell, once a colonial police officer in the country, was famously prophetic in his "Animal Farm" and "1984," allegories of the totalitarian and surveillance states he feared might emerge in the decades ahead. But he might as well have been talking about present-day Burma when he wrote much earlier in his career, in "An Incident in Rangoon," that gambling was "a native taste of these people, as drunkenness is with us [British]."

Referring to the two and three digit lotteries, a 2005 US diplomatic cable from the Rangoon embassy said that, "Though it is impossible to know how many people participate in these lotteries, one estimate we've heard from an organizer is that 70 percent of the adult population plays regularly (perhaps upwards of 17.5 million people)."

The dispatch made no mention of football gambling, which is more a male preserve, but the hna lone and thon lone (two digit and three digit) games are played by men and women.

Gambling in Burma incorporates some of the more esoteric aspects of popular culture. Numerology—the perceived occult significance of numbers—is pervasive in Burma and feeds into how people gamble, sometimes via the counsel of a palmist or astrologer.

In her paper "Female Gambler, Media, and Modernity in Myanmar After 1997," researcher Mi Mi Cho recounts that "one of the famous medium worshippers, who usually give digits, both three digits and two digits numbers, is a woman in the age of around thirty.

"People usually come and ask her about their economic situations, their difficulties and some students for their exam," Mi Mi Cho wrote. "According to her, she is the spirit medium worshipper of the famous female sprit of Pyay, the green goddess 'Ma May Sein.'"

But for some, such arcane methodologies are not that different to how odds are assessed in the West, and not just by small-time gamblers. Professor Reuven Brenner of Canada's McGill University—who co-authored "A World of Chance: Betting on Religion, Games, Wall Street," a respected book on the historic precursor role of gambling in mainstream business and finance— told The Irrawaddy that astrology has long been a crutch for Western finance professionals. "Even now you walk on Wall Street, you see storefronts with astrologers and palm readers," he said.

But football betting in Burma seems to be is less Delphic than the two and three digit games—and Wall Street and Western finance ministries, for that matter. There's team quality and form to consider, though gamblers sometimes have to see beyond their own partisan affiliations. Either way, the outcome is less down to chance than when gambling on the Thai lottery outcome, for example. "We bet on what teams we like or the teams we think might win," said Bo Min.

Gambling and sports betting occupy a contentious place inside and, as in Burma's case, outside legal systems around the world. Anti-gambling advocates say the practice spawns addiction and consequent related social and financial problems. Legalization proponents argue that prohibition creates a black economy, depriving the state of revenue from a pastime that people will engage in regardless of the law.

For Min Maung, who lives with and financially supports his parents, working as an illicit bookie is all he can do, he said, in an economy where youth unemployment has been described by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi as a possible threat to social stability. "There are no other jobs for me," he said. "I want to be a merchant but I have to help my parents, so I cannot save money."

In "A World of Chance," the authors compare the conclusions of the UK's third Royal Commission on Gambling (1976-78) to those heard in the United States decades before, when lawmakers there were mulling whether to end the prohibition on alcohol. The British gambling study outlined that "the strategy of prohibition has been a notable folly" and "instead of suppressing betting among poorer people, the law produced resentment and attempts to corrupt the police, contempt for authority and a bookmaking trade operating outside the law, prey to protection rackets and gang violence."

A May 2013 study, undertaken by Deloitte on behalf of the Association of British Bookmakers, said that the betting trade accounted for 2.3 billion £ ($3.6 billion) of the British economy and generated almost 40,000 jobs, but conceded, in the words of a separate 2010 survey, that "there is an unfavourable view of the effects of gambling on society."

The same 2010 survey showed, however, that most of those asked were nonetheless against prohibition. But betting is against the law in Burma, a place where, according to Suu Kyi, there is no rule of law to begin with. And as the country's Parliament handles a swathe of reforms—68 bills have passed since 2011—mulling over betting is not a priority for lawmakers, at least not yet.

"The mindset is that gambling is against the character of the Burmese people, so no-one seems ready to pronounce anything like changing the law," Nyan Win, a spokesman for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), told The Irrawaddy.

If that is the case, Burma's politicians are out of touch with ordinary Burmese, it seems.

"It should be legal, like in other countries," said Aung Kyaw, when asked for his views on Burma's betting ban.

Bo Min, sipping from a can of Red Bull, nodded in agreement, before shaking his head at the TV above as a scuffed shot by Tomas Rosicky, Arsenal's past-his-best Czech midfielder, slithered wanly across the green London turf, yards wide of the Aston Villa goal, taking along Bo Min's and Aung Kyaw's last hope of a weekend windfall.

Pseudonyms have been used for bookies and gamblers interviewed for this story.

Additional reporting by Sanay Lin.

Despite Bo’s Trial in China, No Redress for Victims of His Crackdown

Posted: 19 Aug 2013 10:28 PM PDT

A suspected gangster is detained during Bo Xilai’s crackdown on organised crime in Chongqing in this September 13, 2009 file photo. (Photo: Reuters)

BEIJING — The curtain may be about to fall on China's disgraced leader Bo Xilai, but victims of the harsh brand of justice he handed out in a high-profile crime crackdown are not making any headway in their campaign for redress.

Lawyers estimate there are thousands of cases demanding restitution in the foggy southwestern metropolis of Chongqing, which Bo ruled as Communist Party boss until he was dramatically sacked early last year amid lurid allegations of graft and murder.

Bo is to stand trial from Thursday and his police chief and his wife have already been jailed over the scandal stemming from the November 2011 murder of British businessman Neil Heywood.

But despite the official repudiation of Bo's tactics in Chongqing, China has shown little appetite to follow or publicize cases brought by the victims of his crackdown, largely because it could focus unwanted public attention on how the Communist Party operates.

Critics say Bo was simply doing what other party leaders were doing elsewhere, and continue to do—using courts, prosecutors and police to enforce their will. Openly vindicating Bo's victims could open a can of worms, they said.

"Bo Xilai was a leader in the party and the government, and didn't he interfere with the law? They [the government] don't want to give people a pretext to find fault with them," said Liu Yang, an attorney who published an open letter last year urging fellow lawyers to form a team to review criminal cases in Chongqing.

More than 4,000 people were arrested during Bo's much-heralded campaign against organized crime, launched in 2009, according to state media, though the government has never released figures for the number jailed.

Bo won national attention with his "strike the black" offensive, but critics have said it involved abuses such as torture and the jailing of innocent people.

As the appeals by Bo's victims mount, their demands for justice are emerging as a potent challenge for the government, already struggling to contain the consequences of the politically divisive case that has exposed rifts within Chinese society.

"When I defend my clients in court, I cite a Chinese proverb: 'One miscarriage of justice will lead to three generations of hatred,'" Liu said.

"The wounds that have been borne by these miscarriages of justice, they'll never forget."

Before his dramatic fall last year, Bo was set to join the upper ranks of China's leadership. But his rise was stopped by a murder scandal involving his wife, Gu Kailai, and his former police chief, Wang Lijun. Both Gu and Wang have since been jailed.

Bo is set to stand trial on charges of bribery and abuse of power in the eastern city of Jinan and is almost certain to be found guilty.

Red Culture

Liu said the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice told him to disband his organization to offer legal services to families in Chongqing just three days after he had published his open letter. Officials at the bureau could not be reached for comment.

According to Liu, the officials told him at a meeting: "At first, we approved of your action—it is motivated out of goodwill—but because you are not in line with policies of the central government, and your information isn't the same as that of the decision-makers, so we're afraid your work may sometimes affect the stability and unity that we have."

After his appointment as party boss of Chongqing in 2007, Bo turned the region into a showcase of revolution-inspired Maoist "red" culture, as well as state-led economic growth.

Bo's populist ways were welcomed by many of Chongqing's 30 million residents. But critics said the anti-crime campaign trampled rudimentary legal safeguards and was used to weed out people who Bo and Wang disliked.

During Bo's anti-crime drive, Chongqing police held thousands of suspects and prosecuted dozens of businessmen and women and officials accused of extortion, graft or running syndicates to protect rackets and prostitution.

One of the reasons petitions for redress are blocked is that judges and prosecutors in Chongqing who have ruled on these allegedly wrongful convictions are still in office. The Chongqing government could not be reached for comment.

"Several prosecutors who handled the wrongful convictions are still in their positions in court, so to ask that they correct their own mistakes, that's somewhat difficult," said Chen Youxi, a lawyer who is representing two clients who say they were wrongfully convicted.

Large Volume of Cases

Li Zhuang, a former lawyer and outspoken critic of Bo, said he is giving legal advice to more than a dozen people hoping to seek redress for their jailed relatives.

"If it's one or two cases, it's easy to handle, but when the volume is too large, what can you do?" Li said. "The government is now probably in a bind about this."

Li is himself appealing a conviction on charges of persuading a client to commit perjury. He was sentenced to a two and a half years in jail in early 2010 after vigorously defending a client on trial in Chongqing's anti-gang campaign.

Others caught in Bo's dragnet included critics such as Gao Yingpu, who was sentenced to three years in prison in 2010 on a charge of "inciting subversion of state power" after he criticized Bo's crackdown on organized crime.

Earlier this year, Gao appealed to have his name cleared, said a source with direct knowledge of his situation. The source declined to be named for fear of retribution.

The authorities have not responded to Gao, who was released in January after his sentence was cut by six months, according to the source.

Among the people persecuted during Bo's time, a large proportion were policemen. More than 5,600 police officers were punished by Wang over three years, Chinese media reported.

Family members say Wang wanted to remove officers he thought were loyal to the city's former justice chief and deputy police chief, Wen Qiang, who was executed in 2010 for protecting gangs, accepting bribes, rape and property scams.

One typical case was that of a 50-year-old police officer sentenced to 17 years in prison for accepting bribes and protecting gangs. His lawyer, Chi Susheng, said her client was targeted by Wang because he had worked for Wen and maintains that the charges are fabricated.

During his questioning, the police officer said he endured beatings, nine days of sleep deprivation and other torture to force him to confess to a crime he did not commit, according to his wife, who asked that the names of her and her husband not be disclosed. Now in prison, the police officer is depressed, she said.

"We will probably appeal for our entire lifetimes, until the day we die," said his wife.

When asked about the prospects for Bo's trial, she said: "I think even if there are loopholes in the law, God will not tolerate him.

"Heaven is watching, I believe he will not meet a good end."

Train Kills 37 Pilgrims in Eastern India

Posted: 19 Aug 2013 09:46 PM PDT

Burnt carriages of a train that were set on fire by protesters are pictured at Khagaria in the eastern Indian state of Bihar on Monday. (Photo: Reuters)

PATNA, India — A train ran over a group of Hindu pilgrims at a crowded station in eastern India early Monday, killing at least 37 people. A mob infuriated by the deaths beat the driver severely and set fire to coaches, officials said.

Several hours after the accident, flames and dark smoke could be seen billowing out of the train coaches, as protesters blocked firefighters from the station in Dhamara Ghat, a small town in Bihar state, officials said.

Dinesh Chandra Yadav, a local member of parliament, said the pilgrims were crossing the tracks in the packed, chaotic station when they were struck by the Rajya Rani Express train. Several other people were injured.

S.K. Bhardwaj, a police officer in Bihar, said 37 people were killed.

Railway official Arunendra Kumar said the train was not supposed to halt at Dhamara Ghat and had been given clearance to pass through the station. However, some pilgrims waited on the tracks thinking they could stop the train, he said.

The train stopped a few hundred meters beyond the spot where it hit the pilgrims. Angry mobs then pulled out the train driver and beat him. Yadav said the driver died, but Kumar said the driver was in hospital in critical condition.

The mob then got all the passengers out of the train and set some coaches on fire. Groups of young men also smashed the windows of two other trains that were in the station.

A crowd of around 5,000 people gathered near Dhamara Ghat station and were chasing away the district officials who tried to remove the bodies from the tracks. The crowds blocked the railway tracks and the few policemen posted at the station had fled, state officials said.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appealed for calm in the area so that relief and rescue operations could be carried out, a statement from his office said.

Junior railway minister Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said the mob set fire to at least two coaches of the train, and protesters were preventing firefighters from reaching the accident site.

Police said the state government was sending additional forces to the area, but their movement was hampered because railway authorities had shut down train traffic on tracks leading to Dhamara Ghat, police officer Bhardwaj said.

Kumar Ashutosh, a passenger on the train, said that within a few seconds of hitting people on the track, the driver slammed the emergency brakes and the train ground to a halt.

"Soon, groups of people began running toward the engine. They asked us to get down from the train. Some of them pulled out the driver and his assistant and began beating them," said Ashutosh, who walked nine kilometers from the accident site to the nearby Saharsa station.

District magistrate Syed Pervez Alam said the dismembered bodies of passengers who had been killed were lying on the track. The angry mob has chased away policemen and officials who tried to reach the station.

"I had woken up and was sitting near the window, when all this happened. There were crowds of people on the platform and some on the track. It all happened so fast," Ashutosh said.

He said that although the train had been given clearance to pass through Dhamara Ghat without stopping, the driver was partly to blame.

"The driver did not slow down when the train approached the station. He maintained the high speed at which the train was moving, so it was difficult for him to stop when he realized that there were people on the track," said Ashutosh, who was traveling in the first coach next to the engine.

Railway officials said a rescue train on its way to Dhamara Ghat had to be halted at Saharsa because the tracks were blocked. Dhamara Ghat is about 280 kilometers north of Patna, the state capital.

Monday was the last day of monthlong prayer ceremonies at the Katyayani temple near Dhamara Ghat, a popular Hindu pilgrimage site. The pilgrims were returning from offering morning prayers.

More than 18.5 million passengers travel every day on India's vast railway network of about 10,000 passenger trains.

Floods Cover More Than Half of Philippine Capital

Posted: 19 Aug 2013 09:39 PM PDT

Bystanders push a car in floodwaters brought by the monsoon rain, intensified by tropical storm Trami, in Pasay city, metro Manila, on Tuesday. (Photo: Reuters)

MANILA — Flooding caused by some of the Philippines' heaviest rains on record submerged more than half the capital Tuesday, turning roads into rivers and trapping tens of thousands of people in homes and shelters. The government suspended all work except rescues and disaster response for a second day.

Officials reported at least seven people dead, 11 injured and four missing. The dead included a 5-year-old boy whose house was hit by a concrete wall that collapsed. His two adult relatives also were injured.

Throughout the sprawling, low-lying capital region of 12 million people, floodwaters made most of the roads impassable and reached waist- or neck-deep along rivers and creeks. Authorities opened more than 200 evacuation centers in Manila and surrounding provinces filled with tens of thousands of people, Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said. Overall, more than 600,000 people have been affected by the floods.

"I had to wade through waist-deep flood. I just need to go to the house of my boss … to get some money, then go home," said Esteban Gabin, a 45-year-old driver, who was plotting the best route to check on his family in Pampanga province, northwest of Manila. "But I may have to swim to reach my home because we live near the Pampanga River, and the flood there could reach up to neck deep."

The flooding followed two nights of heavy monsoon rains, enhanced by Tropical Storm Trami. The storm hovered over the North Philippine Sea and drenched the main northern island of Luzon with up to 30 millimeters (just over an inch) of rain per hour. It was forecast to move away from the Philippines toward Taiwan on Wednesday.

In many coastal towns along swollen Lake Laguna, near Manila, and in food-growing riverside provinces, residents were trapped on rooftops, waded through the streets or drifted on makeshift rafts. Many chose to stay close to their homes for fear they would be looted if they left. Floodwaters had subsided late Monday but the night of pounding rains Tuesday repeated the deluge.

Authorities said that up to 60 percent of the capital region was submerged.

Flooding has become more frequent in Manila because of deforestation of mountains, clogged waterways and canals where large squatter communities live, and poor urban planning.

"We're surprised by the rainfall. Some areas experienced record levels," said Science Secretary Mario Montejo.

According to an assessment from the Department of Science and Technology, rainfall reached 600 mm (23.62 inches) in and around Manila Bay on Sunday alone—more than a month's worth of rain in a day. That's compared to the disastrous 2009 Typhoon Ketsana, the strongest cyclone to hit Manila in modern history with 455 mm of rain in 24 hours.

Many domestic and international flights at Ninoy Aquino International Airport were canceled. Key roads leading to the airport are flooded and passengers and crew are inevitably delayed.

The Philippine archipelago is among the most battered by rainstorms in the world. About 20 tropical cyclones hit the country every year.

Associated Press writers Jim Gomez, Oliver Teves and Teresa Cerojano contributed to this report.
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