Sunday, April 6, 2014

Democratic Voice of Burma

Democratic Voice of Burma

Rangoon ceasefire talks a ‘historic situation’, says Gun Maw

Posted: 06 Apr 2014 03:29 AM PDT

Negotiations aimed at drafting a nationwide ceasefire agreement began in Rangoon on Saturday between representatives of ethnic armed groups and Burmese government delegates, as well as members of the armed forces and parliament.

This meeting was notable as the first time that the armed forces and parliament have been equally represented alongside the government delegation at peace talks, with each of the three institutions sending five representatives.

In addition, ethnic groups which had not previously joined talks were now present: the United Wa State Party; the Restoration Council for Shan State (RCSS) or Shan State Army-South; the Eastern Shan State Special Region 4, a.k.a. the Mongla group; the All Burma Students Democratic Front; and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland.

Vice Chief of Staff of the Kachin Independence Army, Gen Gun Maw, said, "This is the first time that 21 revolutionary groups have joined the meeting. It is a historical situation.”

Speaking to DVB after the meeting, Salai Lian Hmung Sakhong of the Chin National Front said, "We have agreed to write the ceasefire agreement based on the points raised at the Myitkyina and Law Khee La meetings.

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"There will be seven sections," he explained. "Section 1 will be 'Basic Principles'; Section 2 is 'Aims and Objectives'; Section 3 is to be 'Ceasefire'; Section 4 is related on matters that will strengthen the ceasefire; Section 5 is 'Political Dialogue'; Section 6 is 'Future Plans'; and Section 7 will be titled 'General'."

The Chin leader continued: "These sections will incorporate the 14 proposed sections that the government put forward, and the 11 sections that the ethnic groups drew up at Law Khee La. These will be the basic foundations from which discussions will move ahead."

The ethnic leaders told DVB that a consensus has been reached on about 50 percent of the entire text for the nationwide ceasefire.

To date, the Kachin Independence Army and the Ta-ang National Liberation Army remain the only armed groups at the talks which have yet to sign a ceasefire agreement with the government. Fighting is ongoing is those areas.

Buddhists stone Muslim shops, mosque in Hlegu following scissor attack

Posted: 06 Apr 2014 01:31 AM PDT

A personal feud has sparked another wave of communal tensions in Burma, this time in Hlegu Township, 40km northeast of Rangoon.

Mob violence broke out near Zawgyi market on Friday afternoon following a fight between two Muslims and a Buddhist at Banda Road in the town's residential Zaygyi quarter. A confrontation apparently turned ugly when the two young Muslims, sons of a local cushion shop owner, attacked a Buddhist youth, the son of a watchmaker, with a pair of scissors.

According to an eye witness, the two assailants then ran into a relative's snack shop to hide, but a crowd gathered and began throwing stones at the shop. The mob, reportedly Buddhists, demanded the two be handed over and a tense standoff ensued for at least two hours when police arrived at 6pm to apprehend the two Muslim youths and take them to Hlegu police station.

Local sources said the crowd remained on the street and grew in size as word spread of the incident. At around 7 pm, the crowd started throwing stones at a Muslim "biryani" diner close to the market until more than 100 police officers arrived at the scene and dispersed the mob. A number of people were arrested, sources said.

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At around 7:30 pm, about 20 rioters circumvented a police line and headed to a nearby mosque where they began throwing stones. Police were quickly deployed and charged the rioters, beating at them with batons. Again, witnesses said, a number of people were arrested.

Police Station Officer Khin Myint confirmed on Saturday to DVB only that the two youths suspected of the scissor attack had been detained. "They have been charged and are being held behind bars," he said.

At 9 pm on Friday, the Hlegu Township administrator issued a curfew order, citing Penal Code Article 188, barring anyone going outdoors between the hours of 6pm and 6am. The situation was reported to be calm on Saturday.

It has been one year since communal tensions boiled over in Rangoon Division between Buddhists and Muslims. A similar incident happened in Okkan last April, following a deadly bout of violence in Meikhtila, central Burma, last March.

Meikhtila: one year on and 8,000 remain in IDP camps

Posted: 06 Apr 2014 12:07 AM PDT

One year after a wave of violence between the Buddhist and Muslim communities ravaged Meikhtila in central Burma, many wounds have still not healed. Dozens were killed, most of them Muslims, and many houses were burnt in late March 2013 after an apparently banal discussion in a gold shop unleashed an orgy of brutality that lasted for three days.

Now tensions between both communities have eased somewhat but are still present, as shown by the profusion in many shops of 969 stickers, the ultranationalist Buddhist movement with a neatly Islamophobic message. And 8,000 people, out of 10,000 in the aftermath of the violence, the majority Muslims, remain in five camps for internal displaced persons (IDPs), with some starting to lose any hope of going back to their homes again.

One of the places where some Muslim IDPs have been living during the last year is Yin Taw, an unofficial camp occupying the grounds of an Islamic school around 20 km from Meikhtila. According to the head of the camp, a businessman who prefers to withhold his name, they cannot attend to the needs of all the IDPs as the funding from donors is drying up.

Of the 2,500 people who took refuge in the camp after the violence, approximately 1,100 remain there, around 1,000 have returned to their houses, and the rest have moved to other places to look for work. This is the case of Ma Nyein, a woman who witnessed the killing of her husband in a madrassa where other 31 Muslims were slaughtered by a mob of Buddhist extremists. This reporter interviewed her one year ago in the same camp, but now she is living in Qatar working in a textile factory. According to the camp leader: "She couldn't stand the sadness of living here and had to move away. She now sends money home to her family."

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Ma Nyein is not the only IDP traumatized by the violence. While many commute back to Meikhtila to work every day, some of them cannot bring themselves to go back to their daily lives, and languish in the camp without working. Thant Oo, a 50-year-old man who used to work as a bus conductor, lost a son in the massacre at the madrassa, and has not worked since. "I only go to Meikhtila to visit my daughter," he said. "It makes me really sad to go there because I can't help but think of my son."

In practical terms too, most of the IDPs who remain in the camps, both Muslims and Buddhists, cannot go back to their houses because they have not been rebuilt yet. But there are also Muslims who are unable to go back home even though their houses were spared by the destruction. The reason is that the local authorities will not give them permission to go back to Buddhist-majority quarters because they claim that their presence could exacerbate tensions between the communities.

The house belonging to War War, 42, a mother of four, is still standing in the Yan Myo Aung quarter in downtown Meiktila. Her husband goes to the town every day to work, but she and her family cannot go back because the chairman of the quarter would not grant them permission. "We have been asking him for months if we can go home, but he says that the Buddhist people there don't want us to return. He said there had been an incident involving another Muslim family. But we have visited the old quarter and our neighbors have told us that they want us to come back."

The chairman of the quarter is a 60-year-old Buddhist called U Chaw. He said that in the area under his jurisdiction, where Buddhists are the majority, some 30 houses were destroyed, 23 of them owned by Muslims, and that there have not been any reconstruction so far. "Muslims cannot come back because this is a Buddhist-majority neighbourhood," he said. "But they will be allowed back when everything has been rebuilt."

U Chaw claims that he is following both orders from above and the requests of the Buddhist population of his quarter in denying Muslim families the opportunity to return home. Another underlying reason, he said, was because a local imam was discovered entering his home with 30 gallons of petrol and a knife. "People are afraid that returning Muslims will do something," said U Chaw. "It will take a long time to rebuild trust between the two communities."

Kyaw Myaing, a neighbour of the imam in question, said, "We never had any problem with that man before the violence. He was respected and everybody got along well with him."

"They started to set fire to Muslim homes and I begged them not to burn mine, because I am very poor, but one of them told me: 'Don't worry, the government will rebuild your house'. And they went ahead and burned it down anyway."

Like all the other residents interviewed in Yan Myo Aung quarter, Kyaw Myaing said he did not place the blame on their Muslim neighbors for last year's violence. He said it is the local authorities who do not wish to see the Muslims returning. Nonetheless, he concedes "there might be trouble" if Muslims return to the quarter. Neither he nor other Buddhist residents in Meiktila would elaborate on what kind of trouble they envisaged, however a general consensus seemed to indicate that although they did not bear any strong hatred or distrust of their former neighbours, most residents were afraid of the consequences if the Muslim families returned.

Meanwhile, some Buddhist IDPs are also losing hope of going back to their homes again. The only official Buddhist shelter is Inn Gone camp, which hosts 457 IDPs. The population of this camp has actually increased since it was opened one year ago as there have been eight births during this period.

The chief of the camp is Poe That, a father of three who used to run a grocery store before the violence. "I was very depressed after the riots, so much so that I couldn't work," he said. "I ended up as head of the camp, but it's really difficult because people are very difficult to control."

Phoe That used to live in a Muslim-majority neighborhood, and claims that he always had good relations with his neighbors and still gets along well with them whenever he visits his old quarter. He said he lost his house on 22 March last year when a group of people he had never seen before set fire to homes in the neighbourhood. "They were very brutal, and I think they had been taking drugs or something. I was too worried about defending my house to know for sure whether they were Muslims or Buddhists, but I think they were Buddhists," he said. "They started to set fire to Muslim homes and I begged them not to burn mine, because I am very poor, but one of them told me: 'Don't worry, the government will rebuild your house'. And they went ahead and burned it down anyway."

Apart from his house and the shop he used to run, Phoe That said he owned another four houses that he wanted to hand down to his children, but all of them were destroyed and none has been rebuilt yet. "It saddens me that I have no houses to offer my children now. If the authorities could rebuild just three houses, that would be enough for me," he said.

One year on, many houses remain to be rebuilt in Meiktila. But it was not only homes; many people also lost their livelihoods. Also destroyed was the spirit of peaceful coexistence between the Muslim and Buddhist communities. The local authorities don't seem to be making much of an effort to rebuild any of these things.

 

Some of the names in this story have been changed for security reasons.

Carlos Sardiña Galache is a freelance journalist based in Bangkok.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not reflect DVB editorial policy.

Nay Phone Latt leads campaign against hate speech

Posted: 05 Apr 2014 10:35 PM PDT

A campaign against the use of hate speech on social media was launched on Friday in Rangoon, with activists distributing fliers in several busy parts of the former capital.

The campaign, named Panzagar ("flower speech") is the creation of well-known blogger and former political prisoner Nay Phone Latt, now director of the Myanmar Information Communication Technology for Development Organisation (MIDO).

"We initiated the campaign to reduce dangerous speech that can spread hatred among people – it started today [Friday] and will be ongoing for some time," said Nay Phone Latt.

"We are planning to hand out leaflets during the Thingyan festival and we have produced a song to go with the campaign."

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The campaign comes as Burmese nationalist and anti-Muslim propaganda have spread quickly over the Internet, much of it focused on the subject of communal violence in Arakan State and the status of that region's Rohingya Muslim minority.

The Burmese government estimates that only 700,000 of its citizens are online, however social media platforms such as Facebook are increasingly popular and serve as a platform for political debate, which in some cases can turn vitriolic.

The pamphlets distributed on Friday featured the campaign logo of lips clasping a flower branch, as well as the slogan: "Let's moderate our speech to prevent hatred among human beings."

Hein Min Latt, one of the activists distributing the leaflets at the Rangoon Central Railway Station on Friday morning, said people should practice "flower speech" on the Internet but also in their day-to-day lives to stem conflict, particularly among different communities in the country.

"We want to prevent conflicts in society as well as moderate the way people talk about these conflicts — we see that everyone should engage in 'flower speech' as a way to promote an equal consideration for both sides of a conflict," Hein Min Latt said.

The social media campaign asks netizens to create and post images and photos of lips clasping a flower branch to accentuate the need for online tolerance.
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