The Irrawaddy Magazine

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• Photo of the week. (April 25, 2014)
• Hundreds of Arakanese to Gather for Conference
• Ne Win’s Grandson Recalls Win Tin’s “Brave” Defiance in Prison
• Burma Opens Shelter for Human Trafficking Victims
• Army-owned Conglomerates Slowly Loosening Grip on Economy: Report
• Burma Govt Claim Muslims in Arakan State Agree to Be Listed as ‘Bengali’
• Malaria’s Ground Zero
• World Malaria Day: Changes in Disease Control Amid Burma’s Political Transition
• Visiting an Imprisoned Win Tin
• Obama Wraps up Japan Visit After Security Pledge but no Trade Deal
• Thai Opposition Leader Seeks Compromise to Avert Bloodshed
• Pyongyang’s Pop Queens Stage Comeback

Photo of the week. (April 25, 2014) Posted: 25 Apr 2014 05:51 AM PDT The post Photo of the week. (April 25, 2014) appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

Hundreds of Arakanese to Gather for Conference Posted: 25 Apr 2014 05:45 AM PDT A chartered bus in Rangoon prepares to take Arakanese representatives to Kyaukphyu Township for a conference. (Photo: Facebook/ Working Committee for the Rakhine National Conference) RANGOON — Hundreds of representatives of Arakanese Buddhist organizations and political groups will gather for a five-day meeting in Arakan State's Kyaukphyu Township this weekend to discuss the socioeconomic challenges of their state and the conflict between Arakanese and Rohingya Muslim communities, an organizer of the event said. Nyi Nyi Maung, secretary of the Working Committee for the Rakhine National Conference, said the first participants would arrive Friday at Kyaukphyu town located on Ramree Island off the Arakanese coast. "We expect over 1,000 representatives. Representatives from Rangoon are coming by cars today. They may arrive here this evening; representatives also include our Rakhines [Arakanese] who live abroad. We mainly intend to discuss the issue of how to have peace and development in our region," he told The Irrawaddy. He said Arakanese community organizations and political parties, such as the Arakan National Party, and Arakan armed rebels groups would attend the event. Nyi Nyi Maung said some of the discussions will focus on how the Arakanese population can gain greater access to the natural resources of their impoverished state, which has vast offshore oil and gas reserves that are being exported to fund central government coffers. Since 2012 Arakan State, in particular its northern townships and areas around the state capital Sittwe, has been the site of recurrent outburst of deadly inter-communal violence between Arakanese Buddhists and the approximately one-million strong Rohingya Muslim minority. Tensions remain high in the region and in recent months Arakanese nationalists have directed their anger at the United Nations and international aid groups supporting some 100,000 people, mostly Rohingyas, displaced by the violence. Last month, riots against the UN and NGOs caused the suspension of aid operations, which have only recently resumed. Nyi Nyi Maung said the conference would address the ongoing conflict between Arakanese and Rohingya communities, although he would not go into the details of these discussions. "We only know that we will discuss the issue of the Bengalis, but there are a lot of issues we are going to discuss. This conference is not only focused on the issue of Bengalis," he said, referring to the Muslim minority as "Bengalis" to suggest that they are illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh. "We could not skip this issue as this is a current problem in our region," he said, adding that the Arakanese faced a "geography problem" because their state bordered on Muslim-majority Bangladesh. "There is a large population on the other side [of the border]. Our region is good for them to do business and so, they come into our region," he said, repeating an often heard claim by the Arakanese that large numbers of Bangladeshis are entering their region. Ethnic Arakanese organizations have held a large conference to discuss their people's interests four times before, Nyi Nyi Maing said, adding that during the last event in Yathedaung Township in 2012 the political climate in Burma was less open and fewer people could join. This time around, he said, "We could invite many representatives to this conference from different townships and every other representative who stay in other regions." According to government data, Arakan State's population number around 3.3 million people, a third of whom are Muslim. There are also substantial Arakanese communities in Rangoon, Burma's largest city and commercial capital. Arakanese nationalist groups and state authorities have been accused by international human rights groups of carrying out a campaign of organized violence against the Rohingya in order to ethnically cleanse Muslim communities from the state. The US-based Human Rights Watch noted in a 2013 report that large meetings of Arakanese politicians, nationalist organizations and radical Buddhist monks had often preceded outburst of anti-Muslim violence, as joint statements and pamphlets calling for their removal were spread after the meetings. A member of the conference organizing committee on Friday said Irrawaddy reporters were not welcome at the event as some Arakanese leaders disapprove its coverage of the inter-communal conflict. The post Hundreds of Arakanese to Gather for Conference appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

Ne Win’s Grandson Recalls Win Tin’s “Brave” Defiance in Prison Posted: 25 Apr 2014 04:55 AM PDT From left to right: Zwae Ne Win, Kyaw Ne Win and Aye Ne Win, grandsons of the late dictator Ne Win, at their Rangoon home. The latter two were released from prison on Friday. (Photo: Khin Maung Win / Shwe Inn Thar) RANGOON — Aye Ne Win, a grandson of former dictator Ne Win who spent about 10 years in prison, described the late democracy activist Win Tin as a "brave man" for his defiance against authorities during his imprisonment. Win Tin, a cofounder of the National League for Democracy (NLD), was detained for almost 20 years, mostly in Rangoon's Insein Prison and it was here that Aye Ne Win witnessed some of the activist's bravery in the face of repressive authorities. In a letter posted on a Burmese-language blog Shwe Myanmar Media Group, Aye Ne Win recalled that Win Tin, who passed away on Monday, refused to leave the prison gates after he was set free in September 2008 as part of a general government amnesty. "He [Win Tin] was supposed to go home immediately after his release in early morning, but he didn’t go home immediately and stayed outside the prison until the evening. He was a brave man," wrote Aye Ne Win. "The reason why he didn’t want to go home was that he didn’t want to appear as if he was freed because he was old and ill. He wanted to be viewed as a politician who was released to continue political works." According to Aye Ne Win, Win Tin told the prison authorities he would only go home if they recognized that he was freed in order to carry on with his political movement. The NLD politician demanded witnesses to this agreement and Aye Ne Win said that he, along with his father and two brothers, were brought over to witness the agreement. "He went home after he reached the agreement and had the four of us as witnesses. That's why I'm giving this witness account for him [Win Tin] as he passed away and I want to make sure the prison authorities can’t deny it," wrote Aye Ne Win. Win Tin was an outspoken critic of Burma's current and previous government. After his arrest in 1989, he spent nearly 20 years in prison where he was tortured physically and mentally. Aye Ne Win and his father and two brothers were imprisoned in 2002 after the then military regime of Snr-Gen Than Shwe decided to charge them with treason. Aye Ne Win and his brothers were released late last year. Former dictator Ne Win lost power to a new generation of generals after 1988, when the Burma Army crushed a democratic uprising and carried out a military coup. During his incarceration, Aye Ne Win spent several years in Insein Prison where he became friends with Win Tin. In his 2008 prison memoir "A Man-made Hell," Win Tin mentioned that he read Harry Porter and several other books that he borrowed from Aye Ne Win. Strongman Ne Win was known to like Win Tin and met him several times during his reign, which began in 1962. But in 1978 the Hanthawaddy Daily, the newspaper where Win Tin served as editor-in-chief, was shut down after it published an article critical of Ne Win's government. The post Ne Win’s Grandson Recalls Win Tin's "Brave" Defiance in Prison appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

Burma Opens Shelter for Human Trafficking Victims Posted: 25 Apr 2014 04:30 AM PDT A signboard at the opening ceremony of the temporary shelter for trafficking victims in Kawt Thaung town, Tenasserim Division. (Photo: Foundation for Education and Development) Burmese officials have opened a new temporary shelter to support victims of human trafficking who were rescued or have escaped and are now preparing to return home. The shelter, located in Kawt Thaung town, Tenasserim Division, opened on Thursday with support from the Japanese government. It will accept 25 men and 25 women who were trafficked from Burma into neighboring countries, especially Thailand. They will stay at the shelter for about two weeks before returning home. "We aim to support the victims with temporary accommodation before they are reunited with their families," Min Khaing, a police official on Burma's Anti-Trafficking Task Force, told The Irrawaddy. "They will also be provided with health care, mental health care and counseling for trauma from staff of the social welfare department." The shelter is the first of its kind on the Thai-Burma border. The Japanese government supports a similar shelter in Muse, Shan State, which assists mostly Burmese women who were trafficked and forced to marry men in neighboring China. Burmese and Thai government officials have long collaborated to rescue trafficking victims, particularly Burmese men who were forced to work as fishermen in Thailand and Burmese women who were forced to work in the sex industry there. Both governments have anti-trafficking task forces, with the Thai group working in Ranong Township and the Burmese working in Kawt Thaung. The Thailand-based Foundation for Education and Development and the Myanmar Association in Thailand (MAT), which also assist trafficking victims, say they will transfer their cases to the new shelter in Tenasserim Division and collaborate with government officials to ensure victims can return home through the official channel. There are other shelters available in Thailand, but according to the Bangkok-based MAT, trafficking victims are often required to live in these for anywhere from six months to one year, much longer than many would prefer. Htoo Chit, director of the Foundation for Education and Development, said he had spoken with the head of Burma's Anti-Trafficking Task Force to ensure effective collaboration. "We will transfer our cases to the government shelter. So far we have two women cases," he said, adding that he had concerns about the resources available at the shelter in Tenasserim Division. Kyaw Thaang, director of MAT, said he welcomed the new shelter, which he said would not pose problems of language and cultural barriers like the shelters in Thailand. However, he said he worried the shelter might not be able to offer enough social and psychological support. "People who were trafficked are often already depressed. Even in Thailand, they face further forms of exploitation and social insecurity [at the shelters], where civil society groups have been effectively working in this field for decades," he said. "I wonder how the Burmese will overcome these issues, given that many of the civil servants tend to treat the poor people badly." MAT has assisted 625 trafficking victims since 2012, but the number of new cases is rising, Kyaw Thaung said. Aung Myo Min, a prominent human rights activist and director of the Rangoon-based Equality Myanmar, said it would be important for social workers at the Burmese shelter to understood the victims' rights and treat them appropriately. "They have already been traumatized by their harsh experience. The staff must support them with care and kindness, rather than treating them like criminals," he said. "The shelter's disciplinary system must protect the victims' dignity. It should not be about punishment," he added. The post Burma Opens Shelter for Human Trafficking Victims appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

Army-owned Conglomerates Slowly Loosening Grip on Economy: Report Posted: 25 Apr 2014 04:08 AM PDT Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing delivers a speech at a parade in Naypyidaw to mark Armed Forces Day, the anniversary of Burma taking up arms against the occupying Japanese. (Photo: JPaing / The Irrawaddy) RANGOON — The Burma Army is in the process of a carefully planned retreat from its monopolistic hold over the economy, but while the revenues of its commercial conglomerates fell the military has retained the same government budget figure in real terms, an International Crisis Group (ICG) report said this week. In its report "Myanmar's Military Back to the Barracks" ICG sets out an analysis of the reasons for military's move to cede political and economic control over Burma as part of its long-planned democratic transition, which started in 2011 when President Thein Sein's nominally civilian government took office and will lead to supposedly free and fair elections in 2015. The ICG is largely positive about speed and scope of the changes initiated by the generals, many of who have now shed their uniforms in order to take up civilian positions in the ruling party and Thein Sein's government. The army, or Tatmadaw, still retains sweeping political powers under 2008 Constitution that it drafted, including control of a quarter of Parliament, immunity from past crimes under the junta and a veto on constitutional changes. ICG notes the military "is not yet ready to give up constitutional prerogatives … Those guarantees, far from entrenching stasis, are what have given the Tatmadaw the confidence to allow—and in many cases support—a major liberalization of politics and the economy, even when many of the changes impact on its interests. "Its proportion of the government budget has been significantly reduced, the huge military-owned conglomerates have lost lucrative monopolies and other economic privileges… Many observers have assumed that the Tatmadaw would be a spoiler on issues of key interest such as the peace process and economic reform. Yet, this has generally not been the case." ICG said the losses incurred through the slow loosing of the economic grip of the sprawling Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings (UMEHL) and Myanmar Economic Corp (MEC) are acceptable to the military as it most of these revenues go to its shareholders, who are retired officers. Mismanagement of the conglomerates in an increasingly open and competitive economy could also become a financial drag on the military, it added. Meanwhile, the government budget received by Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing's army continues to be the same in real terms (i.e. absolute amount of dollars received) even though the relative share of defense in the overall budget has fallen from about 20 percent several years ago and stabilized at 12-13 percent this year, according ICG. Burma's overall government budget stood at around US $19 billion last year, meaning the military officially received about $2.3 billion. "The Tatmadaw's budget has been declining as a proportion of the budget, but the total government budget, and hence the real-terms military allocation can be expected to increase," the group said, adding, "The military conglomerates risk becoming a lossmaking burden in a new economic environment, and the commander-in-chief may prefer the predictability of national budget allocations." Burma experts and a defense analyst agreed with the ICG that the military had retained a largely similar size defense budget in real terms compared to previous years, but some disagreed with the group's assertion that the military's off-budget income was in sharp decline. Noting the Tatmadaw's renowned ability to keep its objectives, weapons systems and budgets secret, veteran journalist Bertil Lintner said, "The fact is that we know very little about Burma’s military budget and the businesses the Burmese army controls because most of it is shrouded in secrecy." Lintner, the author of several books on Burma, said it is hard to square the loss of the army's income as reported by the ICG, with a "military that has been able to expand its forces, buy new sophisticated equipment from abroad, and develop more and bigger indigenous arms factories than any other country in Southeast Asia." Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based security analyst for HIS Jane’s Defence, a UK publication, said the ICG also failed to take into account secret government budgets for the army "which the Tatmadaw—like other militaries in the region—almost certainly has access to." He said that the economic reforms that have seen military-owned conglomerates lose market monopolies do not indicate how much money the military earns because "none of this information is in the public domain." Speaking on the issue of the military's declining relative share of the official budget, Davis said, "As the [ICG] report points out, the budget itself is growing significantly so the military allocation today could actually be little different or even larger in real terms than might have been the case two or three years ago." Sean Turnell, an Australian economist who has long studied Burma's economic policies, echoed the conclusion of Davis, saying, "Most important of all is that military spending in aggregate kyat terms has not really fallen at all. The confusion here comes from the fact that the government budget itself is so much larger than it used to be, since now Myanmar’s gas earnings are recorded at the market exchange rate, and outlays in the same manner." He said Burma’s defense budget remains high compared to other nations and is still greater than health and education spending combined. "Military spending continues to distort Myanmar’s economy in significant ways, not least since such expenditure comes at the cost of more socially-constructive outlays. Military spending is destructive, in more ways beyond the obvious," said Turnell. Despite the decline of the relative share of defense spending in the overall government budget, reports also continue to emerge of procurement of foreign-produced, sophisticated arms or equipment by the Burmese government army. In January 2013, the London-based Campaign Against Arms Trade said that Britain approved sales of US$5.3 million worth of "inertial equipment," most likely technology that aids radar navigation systems, to Burma. Additional reporting by Paul Vrieze. The post Army-owned Conglomerates Slowly Loosening Grip on Economy: Report appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

Burma Govt Claim Muslims in Arakan State Agree to Be Listed as ‘Bengali’ Posted: 25 Apr 2014 03:21 AM PDT Police officers and national census enumerators walk in a Muslim Rohingya village in Sittwe, Arakan State, on March 31. (Photo: Reuters) RANGOON — The Burmese government claims that more than 6,000 Muslim households in Arakan State have agreed to be registered as "Bengali" in the nationwide census, after they were told they could not self-identify their ethnicity. The government controversially declared at the last minute that members of the group who call themselves Rohingya would not be allowed to do so in the census, following protests from ethnic Arakanese Buddhists who did not want the term recorded. Enumerators conducting the United Nations-backed census have reportedly passed over any households where the residents insisted on calling themselves Rohingya, effectively leaving out of the census a group numbering in the hundreds of thousands in Arakan State. A front-page story in the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper Friday claimed that some families had volunteered to be counted as "Bengali," quoting an unnamed official from the Immigration and Population Ministry. "(But) over 6,000 families, mostly from Buthidaung, Maungtaw and Sittway townships, have been registered because they accepted themselves as Bengalis in the national census," the newspaper said. According to the newspaper, the ministry insists that rather than self-identify their ethnicity, people must be listed as they were in previous censuses. The newspaper, which did not use the word Rohingya in the article, said that "Bengalis" registered themselves as such in Burma's 1931, 1973 and 1983 censuses, "and also registered themselves as Bengalis when the current government collected data in Rakhine [Arakan] State in May, 2012." The United Nations Population Fund said it was concerned that the Burmese government decided not to allow the Rohingya to self-identify their ethnicity, in what it called in a statement a "departure from international census standards." Although some Muslims living in Arakan State continue to insist that they will not agree to be listed as Bengali, Myint Kyaing, director general of department of immigration and population, told The Irrawaddy that families had come forward to take part in the census under the government's terms. "It is more than 6,000 now, although we haven't finalized the data yet. They themselves come to census administration offices," Myint Kyaing said. Aung Win, a Rohingya activist based in the Arakan State capital of Sittwe, said that in his area, a local Muslim from the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) had drawn up a list of Rohingya residents, but said that members of the Muslim minority had not voluntarily participated in the census. "Someone who is a member of the USDP from our Muslim community collected a list of people, including their names, and handed it to the government. In fact, it is not true that the Muslim community agreed to participate in the census. It is not wish of our people," said Aung Win. He added that the man and his family, who are from Sittwe's Ohn Daw Gyi village, had gone into hiding after people in the Rohingya community were angered by his actions. Hla Maung, a Rohingya community leader in Maungdaw Township, also insisted that Muslim people in the area were still refusing to take part. "I don't think what the government said is possible. We will not accept to be collected as Bengali," he told The Irrawaddy, estimating that the Muslim population of Maungdaw Township alone was about 300,000. "We are not Bengali. Bengali refers to those from Bangladesh. We have been living here for a long time." The New Light of Myanmar said that the nationwide census-taking process, which began March 30, was 90 percent complete. But in Arakan State and Kachin State—where fighting has once again broken out this month between the government army and the Kachin Independence Army—collection has been extended beyond the initial 12-day period. Some 6,000 people have been displaced by clashes near the Burmese-Chinese border, where soldiers sent to the region to provide security for census enumerators have allegedly been involved in fighting. Additional reporting by Lawi Weng. The post Burma Govt Claim Muslims in Arakan State Agree to Be Listed as 'Bengali' appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

Malaria’s Ground Zero Posted: 25 Apr 2014 01:30 AM PDT Burmese refugees receive treatment at the Mae Tao Clinic in the Thai border town Mae Sot in this file photo. (Photo: Mae Tao Clinic) HKA NAW TAH — Francois Nosten has just crossed the meandering Moei river, which marks a natural boundary between Burma and Thailand. He climbs a set of wooden slats that wind away from the river bank, up a slope. His pace, as ever, seems relaxed and out of kilter with his almost permanently grave expression and urgent purpose. A rangy Frenchman with tousled brown hair and glasses, Nosten is one of the world's leading experts on malaria. He is here to avert a looming disaster. At the top of the slope, he reaches a small village of simple wooden buildings with tin and thatch roofs. This is Hka Naw Tah, home to around 400 people and a testing ground for Nosten's bold plan to completely stamp out malaria from this critical corner of the world. Malaria is the work of the single-celled Plasmodium parasites, and Plasmodium falciparum chief among them. They spread between people through the bites of mosquitoes, invading first the liver, then the red blood cells. The first symptoms are generic and flu-like: fever, headache, sweats and chills, vomiting. At that point, the immune system usually curtails the infection. But if the parasites spread to the kidneys, lungs and brain, things go downhill quickly. Organs start failing. Infected red blood cells clog the brain's blood vessels, depriving it of oxygen and leading to seizures, unconsciousness and death. When Nosten first arrived in Southeast Asia almost 30 years ago, malaria was the biggest killer in the region. Artemisinin changed everything. Spectacularly fast and effective, the drug arrived on the scene in 1994, when options for treating malaria were running out. Since then, "cases have just gone down, down, down," says Nosten. "I've never seen so few in the rainy season—a a few hundred last year compared to tens of thousands before." But he has no time for celebration. Artemisinin used to clear P. falciparum in a day; now, it can take several. The parasite has started to become resistant. The wonder drug is failing. It is the latest reprise of a decades-long theme: we attack malaria with a new drug, it mounts an evolutionary riposte. Back in his office, Nosten pulls up a map showing the current whereabouts of the resistant parasites. Three colored bands highlight the borders between Cambodia and Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, and Thailand and Burma. Borders. Bold lines on maps, but invisible in reality. Killer on the March Over the last century, almost every frontline antimalarial drug—chloroquine, sulfadoxine, pyrimethamine—has become obsolete because of defiant parasites that emerged from western Cambodia. From this cradle of resistance, the parasites gradually spread west to Africa, causing the deaths of millions. Malaria already kills around 660,000 people every year, and most of them are African kids. If artemisinin resistance reached that continent, it would be catastrophic, especially since there are no good replacement drugs on the immediate horizon. Nosten thinks that without radical measures, resistance will spread to India and Bangladesh. Those countries are too big, too populous, too uneven in their health services to even dream about containing the resistant parasites. Once there, they will inevitably spread farther. He thinks it will happen in three years, maybe four. "We have to do something before it's too late," he says. Hundreds of scientists are developing innovative new ways of dealing with malaria, from potential vaccines to new drugs, genetically modified mosquitoes to lethal fungi. As Nosten sees it, none of these will be ready in time. The only way of stopping artemisinin resistance, he says, is to completely remove malaria from its cradle of resistance. That means what happens in southeastern Burma could decide the fate of millions. Man on the Move François Nosten always wanted to travel. His father, a sailor on merchant ships, returned home with stories of far-flung adventures and instilled a deep wanderlust. One of his teachers said the best thing you can do if you want to travel anywhere is to be a doctor. As soon as Nosten graduated from medical school, he joined Médecins Sans Frontières and started living the dream. He flew off to Africa and Southeast Asia, before arriving in Thailand in 1983. There, he started treating refugees from Burma in camps along the Thai border. In 1985, an English visitor arrived at the camps. A British clinician, Nick White had been drawn to Bangkok in 1980 by the allure of the tropics and a perverse desire to study something unfashionable. The University of Oxford had just set up a new tropical medicine research unit in collaboration with Bangkok's Mahidol University, and White was the third to join. "The rosbif and the frog," as Nosten puts it, bonded over an interest in malaria, a desire to knuckle down and get things done, and a similar grouchy conviviality. They formed a close friendship and started working together. In 1986, they set up a field station for White's Bangkok research unit: little more than a centrifuge and microscope within Nosten's rickety house. Three years later, Nosten moved to Shoklo, the largest refugee camp along the Thailand–Burma border and home to around 9,000 people, most of them Karen. Nosten worked out of a bamboo hospital, the first Shoklo Malaria Research Unit. Malaria was rife. Floods were regular. Military leaders from both Thailand and Burma occasionally ordered Nosten to leave. Without any electricity, he often had to use a mirror to angle sunlight into his microscope. He loved it. "I'm not a city person," he says. "I couldn't survive in Bangkok very well. I wasn't alone in Shoklo but it was sufficiently remote." The immediacy of the job and the lack of bureaucracy also appealed. He could try out new treatments and see their impact right away. He trained local people to detect Plasmodium under a microscope and help with research. He even met his future wife, a Karen teacher named Naw Colley Paw, who is now one of his right-hand researchers. The Shoklo years ended in 1995 after a splinter faction of Karen started regularly attacking the camps. The Thai military consolidated many camps into a single site called Mae La, which now contains almost 50,000 people. Nosten went with them. He has since expanded the Shoklo Unit into a huge hand that stretches across the region. Its palm is a central laboratory in the town of Mae Sot, where Nosten lives, and the fingers are clinics situated in border settlements, each with trained personnel and sophisticated facilities. Nosten has also set up small "malaria posts" along the border. These are typically just volunteer farmers with a box of diagnostic tests and medicine in their house. Thanks to the network, locals know where to go if they feel unwell, and they are never far from treatments. That is vital. If infected people are treated within 48 hours of their first symptoms, their parasites die before they get a chance to enter another mosquito and the cycle of malaria breaks. Cradle of Resistance Victories in malaria are often short-lived. When Nosten and White teamed up in the 1980s, their first success was showing that a new drug called mefloquine was excellent at curing malaria, and at preventing it in pregnant women. Most drugs had fallen to resistant parasites and the last effective one—quinine—involved a week of nasty side-effects. Mefloquine was a godsend. But within five years, P. falciparum had started to resist it too. Salvation came from China. In 1967, Chairman Mao Zedong launched a covert military initiative to discover new antimalarial drugs, partly to help his North Vietnamese allies, who were losing troops to the disease. It was called Project 523. A team of some 600 scientists scoured 200 herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine for possible antimalarial chemicals. They found a clear winner in 1971—a common herb called qing hao (Artemisia annua, or sweet wormwood). Using hints from a 2,000-year-old recipe for treating haemorrhoids, they isolated the herb's active ingredient, characterized it, tested it in humans and animals, and created synthetic versions. The results were miraculous. The new drug annihilated even severe forms of chloroquine-resistant malaria, and did so with unparalleled speed and no side effects. The team named it Qinghaosu. The West would know it as artemisinin. Or, at least, they would when they found out about it. Project 523 was shrouded in secrecy, and few results were published. Qinghaosu was already being widely used in China and Vietnam when the first English description appeared in the Chinese Medical Journal in 1979. Western scientists, suspicious about Chinese journals and traditional medicine, greeted it with skepticism. The Chinese, meanwhile, were reluctant to share their new drug with Cold War enemies. During this political stalemate, White saw a tattered copy of the 1979 paper. He traveled to China in 1981, and returned with a vial of the drug, which he still keeps in a drawer in his office. He and Nosten began studying it, working out the right doses, and testing the various derivatives. They realized that artemisinin's only shortcoming was a lack of stamina. People clear it so quickly from their bodies that they need seven daily doses to completely cure themselves. Few complete the full course. White's ingenious solution was to pair the new drug with mefloquine, a slower-acting but longer-lasting partner. Nosten started using artesimine combination therapy (ACT) along the Burma-Thailand border in 1994 and immediately saw results. Quinine took days to clear the parasites and left people bed-ridden for a week with dizzy spells. ACTs had them returning to work after 24 hours. But in the early 2000s, the team started hearing rumors from western Cambodia that ACTs were becoming less effective. In 2006, Harald Noedl from the Medical University of Vienna started checking out the rumors. In the Cambodian village of Ta Sanh, he treated 60 malaria patients with artesunate (an artemisinin derivative) and found that in two of them, infections cleared in four to six days, rather than the usual two. And even though the patients stayed in a clinic outside any malaria hotspots, their parasites returned a few weeks later. "I first presented those data in November 2007 and as expected, people were very skeptical," says Noedl. After all, a pair of patients is an epidemiological blip. Still, this was worrying enough to prompt White's team to run their own study in another nearby village. They got even worse news. The 40 people they treated with artesunate took an average of 3.5 days to clear their parasites, and six of them suffered from rebounding infections within a month. Resistance had arrived, just as it had done for other antimalarials. And it had come from the same damn place. Cambodia: Ground Zero Why has a small corner of western Cambodia, no bigger than Wales or New Jersey, repeatedly given rise to drug-beating parasites? White thinks that the most likely explanation is the region's unregulated use of antimalarial drugs. China supplied artemisinin to the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s, giving Cambodians access to it almost two decades before White conceived of ACTs. Few used it correctly. P. falciparum was regularly exposed to artemisinin without being completely wiped out, and the most resistant parasites survived to spread to new hosts. Genetic studies hint at other explanations. Early last year, Dominic Kwiatkowski from the University of Oxford showed that some P. falciparum strains from west Cambodia have mutations in genes that repair faults in their DNA, much like some cancer cells or antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In other words, they have mutations that make them prone to mutating. This might also explain why, in lab experiments, they develop drug resistance more quickly than strains from other parts of the world. Evolution is malaria's greatest weapon, and these "hypermutators" evolve in fifth gear. Kwiatkowski's team also found that P. falciparum is spookily diverse in west Cambodia. It is home to three artemisinin-resistant populations that are genetically distinct, despite living in the same small area. That is bizarre. Without obvious barriers between them, the strains ought to regularly mate and share their genes. Instead, they seem to shun each other's company. They are so inbred that they consist almost entirely of clones. Kwiatkowski suspects that these parasites descended from some lucky genetic lottery winners that accumulated the right sets of mutations for evading artemisinin. When they mate with other strains, their winning tickets break up and their offspring are wiped out by the drug. Only their inbred progeny, which keep the right combinations, survive and spread. It undoubtedly helps that Southeast Asia does not have much malaria, in comparison to West Africa. Cambodia's infrastructure may also have helped to enforce the parasites' isolation: local roads are poor, and people's movements were long constrained by the Khmer Rouge. West Cambodia, then, could be rife with P. falciparum strains that are especially prone to evolving resistance, that get many opportunities to do so because antimalarial drugs are abused, and that easily hold on to their drug-beating mutations once they get them. These are plausible ideas, but hard to verify since we still know very little about how exactly the parasites resist a drug. Earlier cases of resistance were largely due to mutations in single genes—trump cards that immediately made for invincible parasites. A small tweak in the crt gene, and P. falciparum can suddenly pump chloroquine out of its cells. A few tweaks to dhps and dhfr, the genes targeted by sulfadoxine and pyrimethamine, and the drug can no longer stick to its targets. Artemisinin seems to be a trickier enemy. Curiously, P. falciparum takes a long time to evolve resistance to artemisinin in lab experiments, much longer than in the wild. Those strains that do tend to be weak and unstable. "I suspect you need a complicated series of genetic changes to make a parasite that's not lethally unfit in the presence of these drugs," says White. "It would be unusual if this was a single mutation." Practices such as unregulated drug use and misuse may help encourage and accelerate the rate of such changes out in the field. Kwiatkowski's study suggests that the parasites may have evolved artemisinin resistance several times over, perhaps through a different route each time. Several groups are racing to find the responsible mutations, with news of the first few breaking in December 2013. That's the key to quickly identifying resistant parasites and treating patients more efficiently. (Currently, you can only tell if someone has artemisinin-resistant malaria by treating them and seeing how long they take to get better.) But time is running out. On the Burma-Thailand border, Nosten has shown that the proportion of patients who are still infected after three days of ACT has increased from zero in 2000 to 28 percent in 2011. Most are still being cured, but as artemisinin becomes less effective, its partner drug will have to mop up more surviving parasites. Plasmodium will evolve resistance to the partner more quickly, driving both drugs toward uselessness. This is already happening in western Cambodia, where ACTs are failing up to a quarter of the time and many people are still infected a month later. Long-lasting infections will provide parasites with more chances to jump into mosquitoes, and then into healthy humans. Malaria cases will rise. Deaths will follow. Bangkok Unit In his office at Mahidol University, Nick White, now the chairman of the Mahidol–Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit and a mentor to the dozens of researchers within, is gently ranting. "Everything to do with change in malaria meets with huge resistance," he says. He means political resistance, not the drug kind. He means the decade it took for the international community to endorse ACTs despite the evidence that they worked. He means the "treacle of bureaucracy" that he and Nosten swim through in their push to eliminate malaria. From the outside, things look rosier. Malaria is fashionable again, and international funding has gone up by 15 times in the last decade. Big organizations seem to be rallying behind the banner of elimination. In April 2013, the World Health Organization published a strategy called "The Emergency Response to Artemisinin Resistance." "It's a marvelous plan," he says drily. "It says all the right things, but we haven't done anything." It follows two other strategies that were published in 2011 and 2012, neither of which slowed the spread of artemisinin resistance, he says. He says that resources could be better devoted to getting rid of fake drugs and monotherapies where artemisinin is not paired with a partner. The world also needs better surveillance for resistant parasites. White is helping with that by chairing the World-Wide Anti-Malarial Resistance Network, a global community of scientists who are rapidly collecting data on how quickly patients respond to drugs, the presence of resistance genes, the numbers of fake drugs, and more. White also wants to know if artemisinin-resistant parasites from Southeast Asia can spread in African mosquitoes. P. falciparum is picky about its hosts. If resistant strains need time to adapt to new carriers, they might be slow to spread westward. If they can immediately jump into far-off species, they are a plane ride away from Africa. Battle Headquarters When Nosten's team first arrived at Hka Naw Tah last year, they slept and worked from the village's unassuming temple. Using development funds from their grant, they put up a water tower and supplied electricity for the local school. In return, the villagers built them a clinic—a spacious, open-sided hut with a sloping tin roof, benches sitting on a dirt floor, a couple of tables holding boxes of drugs and diagnostic kits, treatment rooms, and a computer station. It took just two days to erect. Most of the villagers don't seem sick, but many of them have malaria nonetheless. Until recently, Nosten's team had always searched for the parasites by examining a drop of blood under a microscope. But in 2010, they started collecting milliliters of blood—a thousand times more than the usual drops—and searching for Plasmodium's DNA. Suddenly, the proportion of infected people shot up from 10-20 percent to 60-80 percent. There are three, four, maybe six times as many infected people as he thought. These "sub-microscopic infections" completely change the game for elimination. Treating the sick is no longer good enough because the disease could bounce back from the hordes of symptomless carriers. The strike will have to be swift and decisive. If it's half-hearted, the most resistant parasites will survive and start afresh. In malarial zones, you need to treat almost everyone, clearing the parasites they didn't even know they had. This is Nosten's goal in the border villages like Hka Naw Tah. He has support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is "very much in the mood for elimination." Killing the parasites is easy: It just involves three days of ACTs. Getting healthy people to turn up to a clinic and take their medicine is much harder. The team has spent months on engagement and education. Earlier this morning, Naw Honey Moon, a Karen woman who is one of Nosten's oldest colleagues, knocked on the doors of all the absentees from the last round to persuade them to come for tests. As a result, 16 newcomers turned up for treatments, bringing the team closer to the full 393. Another village down the river is proving more difficult. They are more socially conservative and have a poorer understanding of health care. There are two factions of Karen there, one of which is refusing to take part to spite their rivals. "It's a good lesson for us," says Nosten. "These situations will be elsewhere." Eliminating malaria is not just about having the right drug, the deadliest insecticide, or the most sensitive diagnostic test. It is about knowing people, from funders to villagers. "The most important component is getting people to agree and participate," says Nosten. It matters that he has been working in the region for 30 years, that the Shoklo unit is a familiar and trusted name in these parts, that virtually all his team are Karen. If the strategy looks like it is working after a year, they will start scaling up. Eventually, they hope to cover the entire sinuous border. I ask Nosten if he would ever consider leaving. He pauses. "Even if I wanted to go somewhere else, I'm more or less a prisoner of my own making," he says. He would need to find a replacement first—a leader who would command respect among both the Karen and malaria researchers, and would be willing to relocate to a place as remote as Mae Sot. It is hard to imagine a second person who would tick all those boxes. Surrounded by airborne parasites, spreading resistance, and border-hopping refugees, François Nosten is stuck. He would not have it any other way. This article is adapted and abridged by The Irrawaddy under a Creative Commons license from Mosaic, a new online science research magazine published in the United Kingdom by the Wellcome Trust foundation. The Shoklo Malaria Research Unit and Dominic Kwiatkowski receive funding from the Wellcome Trust. The full version of the article is available here: http://mosaicscience.com/story/how-malaria-defeats-our-drugs. The post Malaria's Ground Zero appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

World Malaria Day: Changes in Disease Control Amid Burma’s Political Transition Posted: 25 Apr 2014 01:19 AM PDT A doctor tests a patient’s blood for malaria in Mae Sot, Thailand, where many Burmese migrants and refugees live. (Photo: Alex Ellgee / The Irrawaddy) RANGOON — As scientists continue to learn more about the rise of drug-resistant malaria in Southeast Asia, Burma has become a frontline in the battle to control the disease. For years, artemisinin-combination therapies (ACTs) have reduced the number of new malaria cases and deaths in the region. But pockets of resistance have emerged, first in Cambodia and also in Burma, with fears that it could continue to spread westward to Africa, where the disease already kills hundreds of thousands of people every year. As a result, experts are discussing whether a rethink in current strategies to combat the parasite is needed. In Burma, about 70 percent of the population lives in malaria-endemic areas, and the country accounts for most of the malaria-related deaths in the Mekong region. The disease is transmitted through the bites of mosquitos, with the parasite invading the liver and later the red blood cells. To contain drug resistance, the Ministry of Health's malaria program has started adopting a strategy in some areas known as DOT, or directly observed therapy, whereby patients are monitored to ensure that they take the full course of their therapy. Stopping medication midway through allows parasites in the body to develop resistance. But observation can be labor intensive, as the standard treatment regimen for malaria in Burma consists of six separate doses of medication over three days. DOT is particularly difficult because many of those infected by the disease are migrant workers who are constantly moving, according to Patrick Duigan, the Rangoon-based program manager at the International Organization for Migration. In the coming years, changing migration patterns will create new challenges, he added. As the economic situation improves in Burma, new transportation routes to neighboring countries will affect the movement of people across borders. The Asean free trade zone planned for 2015 will lead to a further opening of the region, connecting areas of malaria prevalence and drug resistance. But Burma's political transition since 2011 has been largely positive for the fight against malaria, particularly in terms of funding. Although the government's health budget remains minimal, the Global Fund, currently Burma's biggest contributor to malaria programs, has returned after pulling out of the country under the former regime. It committed US$105 million to malaria programs in Burma from 2011-16, as well as an additional $40 million to the country as part of a regional initiative to eliminate artemisinin resistance. In a major turn, community-based organizations and ethnic health departments are now being granted permission from the government to work on malaria projects, making them eligible for funding from international donors, said Dr. Adam Richards, a board member and health adviser at the NGO Community Partners International, which provides advice to community-based organizations implementing malaria programs in the country. As a result, these groups can access quality drugs from Rangoon, whereas previously they were forced to transport medication across the border from Thailand. Different actors are increasingly working together to fight malaria in Burma's southeast. Last year Thein Sein's government signed a memorandum of understanding with the Thai government to facilitate cross-border collaboration on public health issues, while private physicians with the Myanmar Medical Association are starting to train government hospital workers in Lower Burma about malaria prevention, diagnosis and treatment. However, concerns remain about a lack of access to health services in Burma's Arakan State, especially after the government in February suspended the operations of Medecins Sans Frontieres-Holland (MSF), which provided treatment for more than 10,000 malaria patients. In order to combat drug resistance, some say it will be necessary to not only contain the parasite, but to eliminate it. This would require significantly more resources, as it would be necessary to ensure that each and every case is caught and treated, including cases where the patients do not show symptoms. It would also be necessary to conduct prevention activities on a much bigger scale. Burma's anti-malaria program traces back more than half a century, and in 1963 the country implemented a seven-year elimination plan, but according to Dr. Thaung Hlaing, deputy director of the government's National Malaria Control Program, elimination was "found to be impossible" due to the inaccessibility of remote areas, poor coverage of mosquito spraying and population movement. He said the country still lacks the resources to undertake elimination efforts. Instead, the Myanmar Artemisinin Resistance Containment (MARC) program aims to "prevent or at minimum significantly delay the spread of artemisinin-resistant parasites within the country and beyond its borders." As part of the program, which began in 2011, the government has tried to ban the sale of oral artemisinin-based monotherapies that contribute to resistance, while promoting combination therapies that use more than a single drug to treat the disease. Efforts are also under way to map the movement of migrant workers, to increase the use of insecticide-treated nets, and to encourage people to spray the insides of their homes with insecticide to kill mosquitos. "We are a little behind the other Southeast Asian countries because we have been a closed country for decades and we just opened," Thaung Hlaing told The Irrawaddy. "So while Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam are trying to do the elimination phase, we can't at the moment." He said pre-elimination activities would likely begin in certain parts of the country between 2015 and 2018 to pave the way for full elimination programs. In the meantime, he said the government had scaled up efforts to control the disease by boosting its annual budget for malaria activities by more than four times, improving supply chain management, increasing community-level diagnosis and treatment, and working with about 20 local and international NGOs as implementing partners. The post World Malaria Day: Changes in Disease Control Amid Burma's Political Transition appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

Visiting an Imprisoned Win Tin Posted: 25 Apr 2014 12:42 AM PDT I was surprised and saddened when I learned about the death of Win Tin on April 21. The last time I met him in mid-2013, he was still in trouble with the Home Affairs authorities as they wanted him to give back his blue jail uniform, which he decided to keep as a form of protest against his nearly two-decade long detention as a political prisoner. I told him that if they continued with the bullying he could give me the uniform and I would send it to the Red Cross Museum in Geneva, Switzerland. The first time I met Win Tin was at Insein Prison in Rangoon in June 1999, when I was working as the head of International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegation in Myanmar. In May that year, the ICRC had, after many attempts, finally received approval of the military regime to visit political prisoners—a decision that would be reversed again in 2005. In 1999, Win Tin was being kept incommunicado in a small cell with a very small window and an iron door. In front of his cell there was a small hole in the roof through which he could see the sky once a day for about 30 minutes; another wooden door blocked any further view. That day we talked for about three hours about all sorts of things. I was the only visitor he had received in almost 10 years of incarceration, apart from a brief, well-choreographed visit of US Senator Bill Richardson, so I thought he had the full right to be very talkative. The next morning, I asked the chief of Insein Prison to let me go back to see Win Tin but he refused, saying that I had already spent three hours with him during which we probably talked about more than just the conditions of his detention. So I told him that the ICRC visit was suspended until I had further access to Win Tin. I said it was a breach of our tacit agreement to not to let us, ICRC delegates, meet a prisoner in a situation in which it was necessary. It took two hours of discussion until I finally got the green light to go and meet him again. In all likelihood, the decision to grant me permission came from the highest levels in the Military Intelligence. So we met again and decided to walk around the compound, passing in front of other cells where Win Tin could softly say a few words to other prisoners who were blocked from view behind their cell doors. Then we sat on a bench and I told him that he could write a message to one of his relatives if he wished and the Red Cross would pass it on. He mentioned an adoptive daughter living in Australia, so I gave him a form and a pen. He took the pen and tried to write but he had lost his ability to because of the long years of being prevented from writing; he tried again and again but he couldn’t. Finally, he asked me to write the message, which he dictated. He was disturbed by that situation. How could it be that he, a journalist, could not write anymore? Three months later, I went to see him again at the same cell at Insein Prison. I brought him a letter of his adopted daughter and a picture of her. The first thing he did was to show me that he had managed to recover his ability to write; he was so happy. He said that he felt better because of the ICRC's presence and the fact that political prisoners could reestablish a link with the outside world and feel that they were no longer forgotten. He said that he felt stronger in pursuing his struggle for democracy and against tyranny. After that I met him two more times in prison. On each occasion, I felt it was a privilege to meet such a strong, unique personality. Leon de Riedmatten served as head of ICRC Delegation in Myanmar from January 1999 until August 2000. He also served as interim Liaison Officer in Myanmar for the Swiss-based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue. The post Visiting an Imprisoned Win Tin appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

Obama Wraps up Japan Visit After Security Pledge but no Trade Deal Posted: 24 Apr 2014 10:48 PM PDT U.S. President Barack Obama speaks to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (R) during their meeting at the Akasaka Palace in Tokyo April 24, 2014. (Photo: Reuters) TOKYO — U.S. President Barack Obama wrapped up a state visit to Japan on Friday during which he assured America’s ally that Washington would come to its defense, but failed to clinch a trade deal key his "pivot" to Asia and to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s reforms. Obama and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had been seeking to display the alliance was strong in the face of a rising China, but their success in putting recent strains behind them was partly marred by a failure to reach a trade deal seen as crucial to a broader regional pact. That failure delayed a joint statement on security and economic ties until shortly before the U.S. leader left for Seoul, the next stop on his week-long, four-nation Asian tour. Obama and Abe had ordered their top aides to make a final push to reach a trade agreement after the leaders met on Thursday, but Economy Minister Akira Amari told reporters that gaps remained despite recent progress. "This time we can’t say there’s a basic agreement," Amari told reporters after a second day of almost around-the-clock talks failed to settle differences over farm products and cars. "Overall, the gaps are steadily narrowing." Seeking to put a positive spin on the trade front, the two sides said in their statement that they were committed to taking "bold steps" to reach a two-way deal, which would inject momentum into a delayed 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact. A senior U.S. trade official said the two sides had achieved a breakthrough on market access, but provided few details. "There are still details to be worked out. There is still much work to be done … We believe we do have a breakthrough in our bilateral negotiations," said the senior official accompanying Obama to South Korea. The TPP is high on Abe’s economic reform agenda and central to Obama’s policy of expanding the U.S. presence in Asia. Security Assurance Obama on Thursday assured Japan that Washington was committed to coming to its defense, including of tiny isles at the heart of a row with China, but denied he had drawn any new "red line" and urged peaceful dialogue over the dispute. Friday’s joint statement echoed those comments and put in writing a long-held U.S. stance that the uninhabited islands in the East China Sea are covered by a security treaty that obliges Washington to defend Japan. Those comments drew a swift rebuke from Beijing, which also claims sovereignty over the Japanese-controlled islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China. Japanese and Chinese patrol ships have been playing cat-and-mouse near the isles, and Washington is wary of being drawn into any clash. "Extending the U.S.-Japan security treaty to those islands is both morally and legally wrong," the China Daily newspaper said in an editorial on Friday. "Obama should not expect Chinese connivance in his a blind eye to Japan’s thievery and its claims of innocence." Diplomatic Challenge The allies also said they wanted to build productive ties with China but expressed concern about its Air Defense Identification Zone covering the disputed isles, announced last year, as well as activities fanning tensions in the South China Sea, where other Asian countries have rows with Beijing. "Our two countries oppose any attempt to assert territorial or maritime claims through the use of intimidation, coercion or force," the statement said. The diplomatic challenge for Obama during his week-long, regional tour is to convince Asian partners that Washington is serious about its promised strategic pivot, without harming U.S. ties with China, the world’s second-biggest economy. Beijing has painted the "pivot" as effort to contain the rising Asian power. Abe, who returned to office in 2012 pledging to boost Japan’s security stance and tighten ties with the United States, hailed the joint statement as "historic" and said a "key milestone" had been reached in the trade talks. A Japanese government official, however, told Reuters that the trade stalemate had delayed issuance of the broader statement until just before Obama’s departure. "They (the U.S. side) wanted to delay the statement until we finished TPP," a Japanese official said. "Of course, TPP was not finished. It is still ongoing." But he added that there were some "meaningful discussions". The senior U.S. official accompanying Obama said the two sides had "identified a pathway to market access" in the politically tricky agriculture and autos sectors. Obama’s three-day stay in Tokyo – the first full state visit by a U.S. president since 1996 – was meant to show that the U.S.-Japan alliance, the main pillar of America’s security strategy in Asia, is solid at a time of rising tensions over growing Chinese assertiveness and North Korean nuclear threats. But the trade squabbling risked leaving something of a bitter taste, despite the pomp and circumstance of a stay that included a formal dinner hosted by the emperor and a casual meal with Abe at an upscale sushi restaurant. Asked about the summit, Finance Minister Taro Aso told a news conference that Obama did not have the clout to get consensus in the United States and that a deal was unlikely at least until after the U.S. mid-term Congressional elections in November. The post Obama Wraps up Japan Visit After Security Pledge but no Trade Deal appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

Thai Opposition Leader Seeks Compromise to Avert Bloodshed Posted: 24 Apr 2014 10:36 PM PDT Thailand's opposition leader and former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva gestures during an interview with foreign media at his Democrat Party headquarters in Bangkok April 23, 2014. (Photo: Reuters) BANGKOK — Alarmed by the prospect of bloodshed in Thailand as a six-month political crisis nears a critical juncture, former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has called for talks between the government and its foes, urging compromise to restore stability. The 49-year-old leader of Thailand's main opposition Democrat Party has joined street demonstrations in Bangkok aiming to force out Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, and his party boycotted a Feb. 2 election, which was nullified by a court in March after widespread disruption. But now Abhisit appears to be putting some distance between himself and the protesters. Violence is threatening to increase, he told foreign media in an interview late on Wednesday. "Given the accumulated frustration and loss of opportunity for the country, it's really time that people begin to speak up for the middle ground. "I think there are many people who want to see common ground emerging. My intention, this week, is to say that: isn't it time we all accept the reality that neither side can get its way, and even if it did, it couldn't bring long-lasting stability." The protests, which attracted more than 200,000 people at their height, have dwindled but hard-core demonstrators say they will continue to harass the government and disrupt any new election until Yingluck's government is toppled. Abhisit's comments were met with skepticism by the government. "What the Democrat Party says it will do and what it does are not the same thing," said Sunisa Lertpakawat, a deputy government spokeswoman. "If he's sincere, why didn't he join Tuesday's talks aimed at discussing a date for the next election?" she added, referring to a meeting arranged by the Election Commission that was attended by nearly 60 parties. Abhisit stayed away, citing security concerns. Yingluck's opponents have taken to the courts to remove her, alleging abuse of power and other infractions, and in response her "red shirt" supporters say they, too, will take to the streets if she is removed by what they say are politicized judges. Verdicts in some of these cases could come in May. "We Need to Move On" Thailand has been in crisis since Yingluck's brother, then premier Thaksin Shinawatra, was ousted in a 2006 military coup. On the one side are Bangkok's middle class, the royalist establishment and many people in the south, a Democrat stronghold, who say the Shinawatra family is corrupt and authoritarian. On the other side are supporters of Yingluck and Thaksin, strong in the north and northeast, who idolize Thaksin as the first leader to pay attention to the millions living outside Bangkok. Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban, a deputy prime minister under Abhisit until 2011, has said it could be two years or more before the country can go to the polls again. That is a daunting prospect for a country that has spent months under a caretaker government with diminished spending and policymaking powers. "I've been urging a dialogue between the prime minister and Suthep for months and clearly it's not happening … It doesn't mean that I should sit idly and look at what's going to happen or wait for something to happen," said Abhisit. "I will do what I can to see if we can break the stalemate." Critics have accused the Democrat Party, which last won a general election in 1992, of refusing to run in February because it knew it would lose, something Abhisit denies. In 2010, Abhisit was prime minister and Suthep his deputy when the military cracked down on pro-Thaksin protesters demanding an early election and they both face murder charges for their role. More than 90 people died during weeks of protests. The current protests are a reminder of that turbulence and observers fear Thailand could be heading towards an all-out confrontation between pro- and anti-government groups. "A lot of it could be rhetoric but the risks are clearly there," said Abhisit. Since the protests began in November, 25 people have been killed in politically related violence. "No one is blameless and we are all part of the problem," said Abhisit. "Now I'm saying that we need to move on." In the latest violence, Kamol Duangphasuk, a poet and pro-government red shirt activist, was shot dead in a restaurant parking lot by unidentified gunmen on Wednesday. Last week an ultra-royalist vigilante group, the Rubbish Collection Organization, said it would seek out individuals thought to be disrespecting Thailand's monarchy. Designed to protect the monarchy, Thailand's lèse-majesté law is the world's harshest. Thais are increasingly polarized between those who want it reformed and those who believe the law remains necessary. Kamol opposed the law. The post Thai Opposition Leader Seeks Compromise to Avert Bloodshed appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

Pyongyang’s Pop Queens Stage Comeback Posted: 24 Apr 2014 10:26 PM PDT North Korean leader Kim Jong Un receives applause as he guides the multiple-rocket launching drill of women's sub-units under KPA Unit 851, in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) April 24, 2014. (Photo: Reuters) PYONGYANG, North Korea — Step aside, Sea of Blood Opera. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's favorite guitar-slinging, miniskirt-sporting girl group, the Moranbong Band, is back. And these ladies know how to shimmy. After a six-month hiatus, the queens of North Korea's pop scene are once again playing to standing-room-only crowds and rave reviews in the state media. They're the darlings of primetime TV, such as it is. Even athletes at this month's Pyongyang marathon were treated to one of the band's livelier tunes—blared at them from a sound truck. More than merely a pop sensation, the Moranbong Band, said to have been hand-picked by Kim himself, has since its stage debut in 2012 come to be the softer, more hummable face of the new Kim regime, despite speculation at least one of its members had fallen out of favor in connection with the purge of Kim's once-powerful uncle earlier this year. The last big concert by the band, made up of more than a dozen members who play everything from electric violins and cellos to keyboards and drums, was in October. Kim was on hand this month for one of band's comeback concerts, when, according to state media, he was treated to "colorful numbers" including "O My Motherland Full of Hope," "Our Father," "We Think of the Marshal Day and Night" and other "light" arrangements. "The supreme commander spared time to watch the performance though he was very busy with the work to protect the destiny of the country and its people from the arrogant and reckless moves of the US imperialists and other hostile forces to stifle the DPRK," the concert host reportedly told the audience. "Kim Jong Un waved back to the cheering performers and audience and congratulated the artistes on their successful performance." Performances are peppered with solos, fast-paced drumming and mildly suggestive choreography that give the appearance of an almost-current Western-style pop rock show. In one of their early concerts, they played the theme song to the movie "Rocky." Led by violinist Sonu Hyang Hui, band members wear their hair clipped short—which has become all the rage among trend-conscious young women. They dress in a manner best called conservative sexy, with skirts cut well above the knee. That's generally a no-no for your average North Korean lady, but hemlines on the streets of Pyongyang do appear to be rising, which could also be partly because of the band's impact. Still, this is North Korea, where the national motto is "Military First." For their latest performances, the band mostly went back to military-style dress, with white or olive uniforms featuring epaulets, knee-high boots and pleated skirts just a tad shorter than regulation. "An all-female band that showcases both instrumental virtuosity and a more alluring femininity is pretty interesting," said ethnomusicologist Donna Kwon, of the University of Kentucky. "They are incredibly well-coordinated and obviously good musicians. I can't say that I like their music, per se, but they do seem to represent an effort to update North Korean 'popular' music practices in many ways." North Korea's top performing groups tend to be symphonies or operatic troupes, such as the Unhasu Orchestra and the State Symphony of the DPRK, which are as highly trained and technically skilled as they are stodgy and frozen in the amber of an era long gone to all but the most tenaciously nostalgic of Socialist cadres. Case in point: the Sea of Blood Opera Company, which has toured China and was also recently back on tour to entertain farmers and factory workers. The Moranbong Band appears to have hit a more resonant chord with both the regime it promotes—and which tirelessly promotes them—and the listening public. But in a country where all forms of art serve political ends, what exactly is behind this pop sensation? Could it be that Kim, who spent some of his childhood in Europe, harbors a promising openness to Western culture? Or are they just another repackaging of the old guard—this time in sequins? On that score, foreign reviews are mixed. "I guess the question is whether control from above can ever be relaxed sufficiently, and I see no signs of that happening," said Keith Howard, a professor at the department of music and center of Korean studies at the University of London. "Managers, composers, arrangers, choreographers and all the others who sit behind the performers themselves are still bound by the dogma of socialist realism, in terms of texts, towing the party line, respect to the leadership, morality." Adam Cathcart, a China and North Korea expert at the University of Leeds, said violinist Sonu's reappearance this month when the band went to the provinces after performing in Pyongyang was particularly noteworthy because it quashes rumors she was somehow caught up in the fallout of the purge and execution of Kim's uncle, Jang Song Thaek. He said the band travelled to China during Jang's visit there in August 2012. "She obviously hasn't been purged or otherwise ostracized," Cathcart said. The timing of the band's debut, less than a year after the transition to Kim from his father, Kim Jong Il, suggests they were one of the younger Kim's first big signature projects. Broadcasts of their initial show were so popular the streets of Pyongyang reportedly went empty. Kim's role as executive producer is also not unprecedented. "North Korea has a history of regime-supported arts that in both content and form serve the state," said Darcie Draudt, a North Korea analyst and contributor the Sino-NK website. "Kim Jong Il had a special interest in the film industry, and saw it as a powerful ideological weapon in service of the revolution. He also formed the Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble in 1983, which combined electronic instruments with traditional Korean music." Draudt said Kim Jong Un is similarly trying to use the Moranbong Band as a tool to "spur the appropriate spirit" of the nation behind the goals of his leadership. How the band feels about any of that is hard to say. Its members don't do interviews. But one thing is certain: they exist to serve their No. 1 fan. "I don't think [the band] is in any danger of eclipsing Kim Jong Un in terms of popularity, given the weight and inherent momentum of the cult of personality around the Kim leadership since the late 1960s," Cathcart said "North Korean artists and musicians know their place within that system and know that to succeed within it, one does not attempt to go beyond established boundaries." The post Pyongyang's Pop Queens Stage Comeback appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

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