The Irrawaddy Magazine |
- Burma Celebrates First Pulitzer Prize-Winning Female Journalist
- Thingyan Deaths Double in 2016
- Arakan Army: Clashes With Govt Forces Threaten Peace Prospects
- Avian Flu Strikes Poultry Farms in Sagaing Division
- Traditional Typists Persevere in 21st Century Burma
- Indonesia Takes Step Toward Reckoning with ‘65-66 Atrocities
- Thailand Says Songkran Holiday Road Deaths Rose 21 Percent
- Suu Kyi Vows to Amend Junta-Era Constitution
| Burma Celebrates First Pulitzer Prize-Winning Female Journalist Posted: 19 Apr 2016 04:41 AM PDT  Esther Htusan, Associated Press journalist and member of Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting team. (Photo: Esther Htusan / Facebook) RANGOON — An ethnic Kachin journalist from the Associated Press (AP) is the first woman from Burma to be among those awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for her reporting. Esther Htusan, 29, is one of four AP journalists who worked on an investigation into severe labor abuses within the Southeast Asian fishing industry, a sector which supplies seafood to supermarkets and restaurants abroad. The team's reporting contributed to the freeing of approximately 2,000 slaves; their work also brought perpetrators of trafficking and enslavement to justice and inspired reforms in the industry. From March until December of 2015, Esther Htusan, Margie Mason, Robin McDowell and Martha Mendoza broke the story of fishing industry atrocities in nine installments. On Monday, it was announced that the series had earned the AP team the award for excellence in journalism in the category of Public Service. Aye Aye Win, a former AP reporter from Burma, said she was very proud of the AP journalists for their service to those who would have otherwise remained trapped at sea. "Their reporting saved fishermen stuck abroad. Their efforts deserve the prize," she said. This is one case, she continued, where "reporting has given not only information, but also liberation." Myint Kyaw, a member of the Myanmar Press Council, said Esther Htusan's involvement in the investigation had an impact on the whole country. "Consequently, those who were forced to work in slave-like conditions were saved, and Burmese citizens also got rescued," he said. The AP team's success "is also beneficial to Myanmar," he added. The post Burma Celebrates First Pulitzer Prize-Winning Female Journalist appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
| Thingyan Deaths Double in 2016 Posted: 19 Apr 2016 01:18 AM PDT  Revelers of Burma's Thingyan water festival, April 2016. (Photo: The Irrawaddy) RANGOON — The number of deaths during Burma's five-day water festival, Thingyan, has more than doubled since last year, according to the Myanmar Police Force. The announcement on Monday said that a total of 35 people died and another 316 were injured between April 12 and 16, when millions of people across the country welcomed the Burmese New Year with wild street parties, ceremonies and water-throwing. Last year, a total of 16 people died and 356 others were injured because of traffic accidents and crimes that occurred during the Thingyan festivities. Fourteen of the reported deaths in 2016 were due to traffic accidents, while three were victims of murder. The other 18 deaths during the celebratory period were due to various other unnamed causes. Of the 235 people injured in traffic accidents, 73 were considered serious injuries. In Rangoon, however, statistics revealed lower numbers than 2015. There was one death in the commercial capital this year—the result of a murder—and 24 reported injuries, compared to three deaths and 69 injuries last year, Police Major Pyae Zone told The Irrawaddy. He added that the decrease in deaths and injuries this year was "mainly because of fewer traffic accidents in Rangoon compared to 2015." The post Thingyan Deaths Double in 2016 appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
| Arakan Army: Clashes With Govt Forces Threaten Peace Prospects Posted: 19 Apr 2016 12:41 AM PDT  Arakan Army soldiers conduct a military exercise in Laiza, Kachin State, where the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) is headquartered. (Photo: Thaw Hein Htet / The Irrawaddy) RANGOON – The Burma Army engaged in two ambush attacks against the Arakan Army (AA) during the country's New Year water festival on April 16 in northern Arakan State, according to AA communications officer Khine Thukha. The clashes reportedly occurred in Ponnagyun and Rathedaung townships. Khine Thukha claimed that at least 30 government soldiers were killed or injured in the fighting, but denied that AA had suffered any casualties. The Irrawaddy made contact by phone with residents in Rathedaung Township on April 18, who said that the situation had calmed, but locals in nearby Kyauktaw Township reported the reinforcement of government troops in the area since the clashes. Arakan State residents told The Irrawaddy that they sensed growing tension between ethnic Burmese and Arakanese communities due to what they describe as "hate speech" on social media, including inflammatory written posts and unverified photos depicting violent acts. Before the most recent clashes, Burma's Ministry of Information (MOI) stated on April 13 that government troops would try to remove ''AA insurgencies'' from Arakan State's Kyauktaw Township; military officials also acknowledged in state media that the army had suffered casualties in recent armed clashes with the AA. The AA commemorated its seventh anniversary on April 10 with the armed group's commander-in-chief Tun Myat Naing stating hopes of restarting a political dialogue with Burma's new National League for Democracy-led (NLD) government, which took power at the beginning of April. Under the previous administration of President Thein Sein, the AA—along with ethnic Palaung (Ta'ang), Wa and Kokang armies—was excluded from signing Burma's so-called nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA) in October 2015. Eight armed organizations—out of more than 20—inked the accord, but some larger groups, like the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), withheld their signatures. Khine Thukha described the NCA as a "failed" agreement. "If the new government continues in the same way as Thein Sein, [the outcome] will be the same," he said in reference to the previous administration's approach to the peace process, which has yet to bring an end to armed conflict in Burma's six decades of civil war. He added that the AA would participate in talks with the government only if the other excluded groups were also invited. Ponnagyun constituency's Arakan National Party (ANP) lawmaker in the Lower House, Tun Maung, urged the NLD government to bring the AA into a political dialogue when they re-start the national peace process. "I believe that the NLD will carry out that matter for national reconciliation," he said. The post Arakan Army: Clashes With Govt Forces Threaten Peace Prospects appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
| Avian Flu Strikes Poultry Farms in Sagaing Division Posted: 18 Apr 2016 11:59 PM PDT  A farm worker feeds chickens in a poultry farm in Hmawbi Township, north of Rangoon, March 29, 2007. (Photo: Sukree Sukplang / Reuters) MANDALAY — Surveillance of the poultry trade in Sagaing Division's Monywa Township has been ramped up after an avian flu outbreak over the past several weeks. Some 500 chickens from Monywa poultry farms have died since March 31, after being infected with the H9N2 strain of avian flu. Local authorities have since killed over 20,000 chickens and restricted poultry trade from farms in the area. "With the help of the police and fire brigades, we have been able to control the avian flu [outbreak in Monywa] and have killed the infected animals and restricted poultry trade," said Myint Naing, chief minister of Sagaing Division. There are 250 poultry farms in Monywa's livestock farming zone, about six of which have reported cases of avian flu since the end of March. The Ministry of Health said in a statement on Saturday that there have been no reports of humans having contracted avian flu in the area. "We can't control the entire poultry market in the division, but we plan to investigate nearby villages and towns and will prohibit trade with poultry farms in Monywa," Myint Naing said. "Though H9N2 is not as severe as H5N1, and there have been no reports of human infection, it is important to take precautions. I ask poultry farmers and traders to inform the authorities of any chicken deaths without delay." In particular, the chief minister urged poultry farmers not to hide the deaths of potentially infected animals for fear of losing their farm. "Once a chicken is infected, it is necessary to destroy almost every animal from that farm, since we have no vaccine here to prevent the spread of the [avian] flu," he said. "The divisional government is taking data on farmers' losses and will work with the central government for possible compensation for loss due to avian flu," Myint Naing added. Poultry farms in the same livestock farming zone in Monywa were also struck by an avian flu outbreak in early 2015, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of chickens. The post Avian Flu Strikes Poultry Farms in Sagaing Division appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
| Traditional Typists Persevere in 21st Century Burma Posted: 18 Apr 2016 11:30 PM PDT                RANGOON — On most afternoons, Tin Zaw Htet sits in front of a Cold War-era typewriter surrounded by satin-and-gauze portfolios and legal certificates hanging in the unrelenting Rangoon sun. On the lower block of Maha Bandoola Park Road, several typists are dutifully stationed in individual makeshift stalls alongside him. They earn their living within a bureaucracy that demands typed forms over handwritten ones, but in a locale where computers and printers remain luxuries and electricity is still unreliable. Tin Zaw Htet shares a laminated certificate verifying his completion of a one-month typing course at a vocational training center five years earlier. Upon graduation, he left a job selling pet fish and joined his aunt, also a typist, in opening their own kiosk. "I only want to work in my own business, even if I have to run it on roadsides," he said. The 28-year-old earns 1,000 kyats (US$0.83) per page filling out marriage certificates, power of attorney forms and other legal contracts with Burmese or English typescript; on an average day, he gets between 10 and 15 pages of work. Small plaques engraved with the phrase "Made in Western Germany" betray the age of the typewriters that propel this small sector. Fifty-year-old Win Htay, who restores the machines, is nearly as old as the typewriters he has been repairing since he was 13 years old. He claims that they were first imported for Burmese civil servants under either U Nu or Ne Win's government in the early 1960s. Auctioned, refurbished and resold through the decades, the sturdy metal structures have yet to render themselves obsolete in Burma, even as the government offices that originally bought them now largely rely on computers, and lie 200 miles north in purpose-built Naypyidaw, no less. From a modest workshop in downtown Rangoon's 35th Street, Win Htay still sells them, fully restored, for around 100,000 kyats (US$83). "I have a close attachment to these typewriters," he said. "This is all I know how to do. I don't even know how to touch a computer." When government offices began to move from Rangoon to Naypyidaw in 2005, Win Htay lamented how many ambitious typists and repairmen also relocated their businesses—and their typewriters—to the remote new capital. He is defensive when asked about the machine's place among an increasing selection of more modern gadgets, foreseeing a continued reliance on typewriters in courts, schools and government offices particularly in rural parts of the country. About 70 percent of Burma's population still has no access to the electricity needed to run more updated apparatuses. "All they need is ink," he pointed out, a testament to the typewriter's sustainability. Tin Zaw Htet acknowledges that one day he may have to adapt his work to accommodate changing technology, but says that he is lucky: He also knows how to use a computer. However, it is not a shift he will wholly welcome. "[Typewriters] challenge us to be more efficient, to see our errors on paper, so we are more careful not to make mistakes," Tin Zaw Htet explained. He also describes a satisfaction in working with the older machines. "The feeling of using typewriters and using computers is different. We can feel a lot of feedback from a typewriter's keys," he said, imitating the continuous clack-clack-clack of the metal buttons. "It makes noise. I kind of like it." Typewriters brought to Burma during an earlier era will likely continue to maintain a value beyond nostalgia and, for now, a function on the country's technological spectrum. The post Traditional Typists Persevere in 21st Century Burma appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
| Indonesia Takes Step Toward Reckoning with ‘65-66 Atrocities Posted: 18 Apr 2016 10:35 PM PDT  People watch "The Act of Killing," a chilling about the 1965-66 anti-communist atrocities, in Jakarta, February 6, 2013. (Photo: Beawiharta / Reuters) JAKARTA — Indonesia on Monday convened an unprecedented discussion of anti-communist massacres in 1965-66 that brought together survivors and representatives of the military that orchestrated the atrocities. Protesters who say the two-day conference will help revive communism scuffled with police outside the tightly guarded venue, in a sign of the deep divisions within Indonesia over what rights groups say was one of the worst atrocities of the last century. Researchers estimate that the military and religious groups killed half a million people in the attacks on communists and sympathizers that ushered in the 32-year rule of the dictator Suharto. Conference organizer Agus Widjojo, a retired general, said at the meeting that Indonesia is "torn apart" by the massacres and called for the government to establish a commission for truth and reconciliation. Within Indonesia, widely accepted accounts of the era gloss over the deaths, and descendants of Communist Party members are stigmatized and face legal discrimination that prevents them from holding government jobs. But the conference, being held at a hotel in Jakarta, the capital, has the backing of government figures and was opened by the Cabinet minister in charge of security and political affairs, Luhut Pandjaitan. Indonesia's attorney general, police chief and justice minister also attended. The killings began in October 1965, shortly after an apparent abortive coup in which six right-wing generals were killed. Suharto, an unknown major general at the time, filled the power vacuum and blamed the assassinations on Indonesia's Communist Party, which was then the largest outside the Soviet Union and China, with 3 million members. "Let's open this history together so we can all find out what has been wrong in our national system, why this nation could have the ability to commit mass killings," said Widjojo, whose father was one of the generals killed. Abdul Rashid, 71, was one of the thousands who escaped death but suffered years of imprisonment without trial or exile in remote corners of Indonesia because of a tenuous connection to the Communist Party. Rashid's crime was joining a youth group in South Sulawesi province that didn't advertise its links to communists. Four years later, when he was 21, he was seized by troops while teaching an elementary school class, and lost more than a decade of his life to detention and exile. "I still remember how a dozen military troops pushed into my class," he said in an interview. "They pushed in and pointed their rifles at me in front of my students." After being freed, a special stamp in his identity card made life difficult, stigmatizing Rashid and his family and making it hard to find work. "This stigma is a too heavy burden," he said. "There are so many innocent people who became victims of a black history. I want this stigma to be ended." Despite government backing for the conference, Pandjaitan, the security minister, said there would be no government apology to victims and also questioned whether estimates of the death toll were accurate. "I believe that this meeting will produce positive results to build our nation in the future," he said. "We must be able to create peace with our past. But don't ever think that the government will offer any apology." Andreas Harsono, Indonesia researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the two-day symposium by itself is not sufficient to come to terms with a buried past. "At the least, what the government can do is stop discrimination against the victims—the survivors and their children and their grandchildren," he said. Millions of people are affected by a 1981 presidential decree barring communists and their descendants from serving in the police, military or civil service. Before the conference, rights groups urged the United States to release all of its secret files on the massacres, which could help reveal facts about the period. Declassified documents held at the National Security Archive of George Washington University show that the US Embassy in Jakarta was aware of extensive killings in Java and other parts of Indonesia and passed lists of communists it had compiled to Indonesia's military. It also organized the supply of radios to the military and secretly gave money to a military-linked group involved in the repression. At the time, the US viewed Indonesia as a bulwark in its efforts to thwart the influence of the Soviet Union and China in Southeast Asia. An embassy communication to the Department of State on April 15, 1966, about the number of deaths said: "We frankly do not know whether the real figure is closer to 100,000 or 1,000,000 but believe it wiser to err on the side of the lower estimates, especially when questioned by the press." The post Indonesia Takes Step Toward Reckoning with '65-66 Atrocities appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
| Thailand Says Songkran Holiday Road Deaths Rose 21 Percent Posted: 18 Apr 2016 10:29 PM PDT  Revelers react during a water fight at Songkran Festival celebrations in Bangkok, April 13, 2016. (Photo: Jorge Silva / Reuters) BANGKOK — Authorities in Thailand said Monday that 442 people died in traffic accidents during the just concluded traditional New Year holiday—a 21 percent rise over the same period last year despite stern efforts to curb drunken and unsafe driving. It was the highest number of Songkran holiday deaths since 476 were reported in 2006. The weeklong holiday has been dubbed the "Seven Days of Death," though Thailand has the second-worst record in the world for annual traffic fatalities. There were 3,337 accidents during the week ending Sunday, with motorcycles accounting for more than 81 percent of the total, followed by pickup trucks, the Road Safety Directing Centre announced. Drunken driving was blamed for just over one-third of the accidents, and speeding for just under another third. Road injuries for the week totaled 3,656. The government had sought to curb accidents during the holiday by deploying 20,000 officials to checkpoints and ordering drunken drivers' vehicles to be impounded and their licenses revoked. Rewards were also offered to police making the most number of drunken-driving arrests. Deputy Government Spokesman Weerachon Sukondhapatipak blamed the high accident rate on unsafe road design and lack of discipline among Thai drivers. "Not only villagers, but educated people, who have been to developed countries, they obey laws in those countries but they don't do it here no matter how strict the laws are, how many officers were patrolling or doing their jobs at checkpoints," he said. The post Thailand Says Songkran Holiday Road Deaths Rose 21 Percent appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
| Suu Kyi Vows to Amend Junta-Era Constitution Posted: 18 Apr 2016 09:58 PM PDT  Aung San Suu Kyi and second Vice President Henry Van Thio attend the handover ceremony from outgoing President Thein Sein and Burma's new President Htin Kyaw at the presidential palace in Naypyidaw, March 30, 2016. (Photo: Nyein Chan Naing / Reuters) RANGOON — Burma's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi vowed Monday to push for constitutional amendments to build a true democracy in the Southeast Asian country as it emerges from decades of military control. Suu Kyi made the comments in a nationally televised address to mark the start of the Buddhist new year, highlighting her hopes for the future and also the difficult tasks ahead for her new government. "Our policies and principles are to ensure national reconciliation, internal peace, the rule of law, amendments to the constitution and keeping the democratic system dynamic," she said. "The constitution needs to be one that will give birth to a genuine democratic union," she said. "We need constitutional amendments." Suu Kyi's power to change the constitution remains hamstrung by the military, which still retains considerable power in government and parliament. But she has repeatedly said the current constitution—written during the era of military rule—must be revised so the country can move forward. The constitution reserves key ministerial posts in the Cabinet for the military, which heads the Home Ministry, the Defense Ministry and the Border Affairs Ministry. It also allots 25 percent of the seats in parliament for military officers, ensuring that no government can amend the constitution without the army's approval. Suu Kyi has been working to build alliances with the military but has reportedly angered the military with her government's initial acts since taking power two weeks ago. Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, won a landslide victory in November elections, ushering in the country's first civilian government after 54 years of direct and indirect military rule. Suu Kyi is the country's most popular political figure but was unable to become president because of a clause in the constitution that bars anyone with a foreign spouse or child from holding the job. Her two sons are British, as was her late husband. To get around that clause, Suu Kyi selected her longtime confidant, Htin Kyaw, to become president. One of his government's first acts after taking power at the end of March was to give Suu Kyi a newly created position called "state counselor" which is akin to that of prime minister. Htin Kyaw's government has made it a priority to release political prisoners detained during military rule. Prior to the New Year, his administration freed more than 100 political detainees and on Sunday granted amnesty to another 83. "We will continue to try to release political prisoners, political activists, and students facing trials related to politics," he said in televised comments Sunday to mark the new year. The post Suu Kyi Vows to Amend Junta-Era Constitution appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
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