The Irrawaddy Magazine

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• As Shan State Clashes Continue, an Unforgettable Night in Wan Hai
• Cartoonists a Casualty of China’s Intolerance of Dissent
• North Korea’s ‘Girl with Seven Names’ Still Feels Hunted
• Bangladesh Police Probe Local Radicals in Latest Attacks

As Shan State Clashes Continue, an Unforgettable Night in Wan Hai Posted: 02 Nov 2015 03:36 AM PST Part of a mortar round that struck a home next to the Wan Hai village monastery on Oct. 29. (Photo: Nang Seng Nom / The Irrawaddy) WAN HAI VILLAGE, Shan State — Midnight, October 29. Silence hung over Wan Hai, and the air was cold and still. Hours earlier, villagers had lit up candles around their homes to celebrate the Thadingyut Full Moon Day, the religious holiday marking the end of Buddhist Lent. I was in Wan Hai, the headquarters of the Shan State Army-North (SSA-N), to cover the latest round of clashes between the ethnic insurgent group and the Burma Armed forces that had erupted early in the month. I was shocked when I heard the explosions. "Sister, pack up your things." The owner of the home where I was lodging had rushed into my room. "A mortar shell fell near the monastery. We have to leave here." I came out of my room and saw everyone else frantically gathering their belongings. The homeowner bundled blankets and clothes into her car and we drove for nearby Pan Lauk village. Joining us were a middle-aged woman and her seven-year-old daughter. Following us on the road out of Wan Hai were the rest of the villagers, fleeing for their lives in cars, on motorbikes and trailers, all in panic. I heard the seven-year-old girl asking her mother in the Shan language: "Why do the Bamar want our home? Why are they firing at us?" Her mother was lost in her own thoughts. "I heard five rounds of mortar fire. I was so scared that I didn't take anything. I have to go back and get my things in the morning." After a silence, someone offered a joke to ease the tension: "The guardian spirit of our village must be sleepy. That's why mortar shells fell on our village!" The car erupted into a chorus of laughter. Before I went to bed that night, I had asked the homeowner: "Has everything been okay here? Nothing has happened?" "It's okay," she replied. "We'll have to flee if something happens. We had to flee once in 2013." Prior to Thursday's attack, the SSA-N had asked Wan Hai locals to leave the village for a while, warning of a possible artillery attack. Fortunately, no one was injured in the bombardment, though a house and a car next to the village monastery was slightly damaged. Seven of the eight shells fired landed on farmland. Lt-Col Sai La, an SSA-N spokesman, has told the Irrawaddy the insurgent group's leadership believes the military is attempting to pressure them into joining the government's "nationwide" ceasefire agreement. The SSA-N's bilateral ceasefire with the government has been violated more than 100 times since it was signed in January 2012. The most recent conflict, which began on Oct. 6, has now forced more than 3,000 people from their homes. While the rest of Burma relaxed and celebrated one of the most important days on the Buddhist calendar, peace was elusive for the people of Wan Hai. The post As Shan State Clashes Continue, an Unforgettable Night in Wan Hai appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Cartoonists a Casualty of China’s Intolerance of Dissent Posted: 01 Nov 2015 09:51 PM PST A portrait of China’s President Xi Jinping, by cartoonist Zhu Zizun. (Photo: Reuters) BEIJING — Bai Budan took a morning stroll on Tiananmen Square to find inspiration for a new series of satirical cartoons, an art form only barely alive in China. He wondered about the sheer number of surveillance cameras installed on the square, opposite the iconic entrance to the Forbidden City with a huge portrait of Mao Zedong. “These cameras are for whose safety? Are they for the safety of the ordinary people?” he asked. He remembered the popular children’s song “I love Beijing Tiananmen” that he sang when he was young. He sketched the Mao portrait and made a note about updating the lyrics. Back in his studio, he quickly drew two pink cupids pointing to three security cameras, with the Forbidden City as a background. The caption read: “I love the security cameras of Beijing Tiananmen.” When he feels the work is finished, where will he show it? Who in China will see it? Those questions are fraught with risks. Cartoons used as political satire have been rare in China since the 1949 Communist Revolution, though some began gaining notice about three years ago. In particular, single-panel cartoons from an artist known as Rebel Pepper were widely circulated on social media. In December 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping made headlines for stopping to have a simple lunch of steamed buns in a small Beijing restaurant, in an event staged to portray China’s most powerful man as one of the people. Rebel Pepper’s rendition showed Xi as steamed bun surrounded by other breakfast foods kowtowing to him as though he were an old-time emperor. Another cartoon, in October 2014, shows Xi Jinping in bed with a nationalistic blogger named Zhou Xiaoping; Xi had praised Zhou, though the young man had drawn attention for writing exaggerated negative claims about the US. Authorities abruptly closed social media accounts belonging to Rebel Pepper, whose real name is Wang Liming, and searched his house last year. He later went into self-exile in Japan. The crackdown was part of broader moves by the Chinese leadership to curb online discourse of intellectuals, lawyers and any groups pushing for societal change by working outside the Communist Party. Bai avoids targeting leaders and instead takes aim at society in general, often using cute and irreverent cupid characters to make his point. Even so, his Facebook-style microblog account was terminated last year after he posted a cartoon of Tiananmen Square immersed in red ink. It looked like a possible reference to the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy students there by troops—still a taboo subject in China. Bai says it is a challenge to show his cartoons to the public and that he often resorts to private exhibitions. “I have not exhibited many of my paintings publicly. My Weibo account was closed down last year. But I try not to think too much about the possible risks. I try to think about positive things, or try to be optimistic,” Bai said. “Any career has risks attached. Right?” he said during an interview outside his home in Beijing. “A normal society would have these types of artists,” Chinese art critic Li Xianting said in an interview. “If no one raises their voice, then of course that is not a normal society. “There are fewer and fewer cartoonists in China. This is because there is no space for them to grow. They have no access to the public and there is no platform for them. In the past, newspapers and print media played a very important role.” Bai is originally from Shanxi, a mining province in the east of China. He creates cartoons using ink and inkstone on rice paper, and also remarks on social issues through photography and documentaries. “All the things happening in our society concern me,” he said. “I think about them and I paint them.” The post Cartoonists a Casualty of China’s Intolerance of Dissent appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

North Korea’s ‘Girl with Seven Names’ Still Feels Hunted Posted: 01 Nov 2015 09:45 PM PST Lee Hyeon-seo, author of 'The Girl with Seven Names', speaks during a 2013 interview. (Photo: Kim Hong-Ji / Reuters) UBUD, Indonesia — The girl with seven names is finding it hard these days to contact relatives in Stalinist North Korea on the underground mobile phone link defectors have used for years. Lee Hyeon-seo is also increasingly worried about her personal security since the July publication of the best-selling memoir about her escape from North Korea, “The Girl with Seven Names”. Defectors living in South Korea contact relatives in the North through Chinese mobile phones that are smuggled across the border. They communicate through transmission towers on the Chinese side of the border. It’s all arranged through brokers on the Chinese side, who also help smuggle money from the defectors to their relatives. North Korea, however, has been cracking down on this lifeline, using phone signal detectors and interference devices, Lee said in an interview on the sidelines of the Ubud Writers and Readers festival. The signals can reveal the location of the speaker if the conversation lasts much longer than a minute. Lee arranged for many of her family members to join her in exile after her own escape in 1998, but she still talks to an aunt there. “Right now the signal is not so good. I can’t hear their voice clearly…And my aunt says after a minute, oh my god, we have to turn off the phone now we’re being monitored.” The aunt was sent to a labor camp for a few months last year, accused of trying to escape. “She was reported by her best friend. That’s how this regime works,” Lee said. Sending money across the border—or private communications of any kind with the North—is also illegal in South Korea. The money from defectors goes into North Korea’s increasingly established rural markets, which sprouted up during the famine years when the state food distribution system broke down. The markets are thriving hot spots of commerce, where people can buy or barter for things, including smuggled Hollywood and South Korean movies. Despite the occasional crackdown, the government has been unable to shut down the markets and now basically tolerates them, Lee said, despite the fact they have become the thin edge of the wedge for Western influences. North Koreans have been brainwashed since the country was founded at the end of World War Two into thinking they truly live in a “workers’ paradise”, she said. “But the famine came, and then movies from Hollywood and South Korea became available in the black market. From the videos, we realized that South Korea was a heaven. The secret is out and is being shared widely. “Now the brainwashing is much less (effective), and the loyalty is less. For Kim Jong Un it is much more difficult to rule than his father.” The regime tolerates the markets because they do provide material goods for people who can see from the movies how their neighbors live, she said. “North Korea is changing, yes. There’s more cellphones, more fashion, the markets. But many things have not changed: the public executions, the labor camps, people are still starving. The people who don’t know how to make money in the markets, they are the ones starving.” Lee grew up in Hyesan, next to the Chinese border. She had a close family with an array of colorful relatives including “Uncle Opium” who smuggled North Korean heroin into China. Family life took place beneath the obligatory portraits of North Korea’s revered founder Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il, father of the current ruler Kim Jong Un, which hung in every home. Her father’s job in the military meant they were relatively well off. Her world turned upside down when her father was arrested by the secret police. He was later released into a hospital. He had been badly beaten and died soon afterwards. The circumstances remain unclear. Her book chronicles her escape to China at 17 and the hardships that followed. The book, and her criticisms of the North, have made Lee a target, she said. South Korean intelligence told her in August that North Korea had sent a letter to its embassies abroad about her and warned Lee she could face an abduction attempt. She lives in Seoul with her American husband. The post North Korea's 'Girl with Seven Names' Still Feels Hunted appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Bangladesh Police Probe Local Radicals in Latest Attacks Posted: 01 Nov 2015 09:39 PM PST Police stand guard in Dhaka after riots in June 2014. (Photo: Andrew Biraj / Reuters) DHAKA — Police in Bangladesh said Sunday that they were investigating the possibility a local radical Islamic group was behind two attacks on publishing houses in the capital this weekend that left a publisher of secular books dead and another critically wounded. The banned group Ansarullah Bangla Team is the main focus of an investigation into Saturday’s attacks, Munirul Islam, a senior police detective, told reporters. The two publishers who were apparently targeted in the attacks had links to a blogger who was killed earlier this year in an attack claimed by Ansarullah Bangla Team. “Our focus is on those who work under the umbrella of Ansarullah Bangla Team,” Islam said. Publisher Faisal Arefin Deepan was hacked to death in his Dhaka office in the second attack Saturday. The first attack left publisher Ahmed Rahim Tutul in critical condition, while two writers suffered less serious wounds. Deepan’s Jagriti publishing house and Tutul’s Shudhdhoswar had both published works of Bangladeshi-American blogger and writer Avijit Roy, who was hacked to death in February as he walked on the campus of Dhaka University with his wife. Roy is one of four atheist bloggers murdered in Bangladesh this year. Ansarullah Bangla Team had claimed responsibility for all four of those attacks and recently threatened to kill more bloggers. On Sunday, the English language Daily Star newspaper reported that another publisher—Farid Ahmed of Somoy publishing house—received a death threat for publishing the works of atheists. Ahmed could not be reached for comment. Another militant group, Ansar al-Islam, the Bangladesh division of al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent, issued a statement Saturday claiming responsibility for the attacks on Deepan and Tutul, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist online postings. The claim of responsibility could not be independently verified. Dozens of teachers, intellectuals and students rallied at Dhaka University on Sunday to protest Saturday’s attacks. Bangladesh has been rocked by a series of attacks this year claimed by Islamic extremists, including the blogger killings and, more recently, the killings of two foreigners—an Italian aid worker and a Japanese agricultural worker. An Oct. 24 bomb attack on thousands of Shiite Muslims in Dhaka killed a teenage boy and injured more than 100 other people. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks on the two foreigners and the bombing, but Bangladesh’s government has rejected that the extremist Sunni militant group has any presence in the country. The government has instead blamed domestic Islamist militants along with Islamist political parties—specifically the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its main ally, Jamaat-e-Islami—for orchestrating the violence to destabilize the impoverished nation. The post Bangladesh Police Probe Local Radicals in Latest Attacks appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

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