Shan Herald Agency for News |
- Hsipaw civilian killed by unknown assailants
- Commentary on “Time to lead on the peace process”
- The Cowardice of Aung San Suu Kyi
- Commentary on "Questioning the government’s commitment to media freedom"
- Commentary on “Scores killed in clashes on Myanmar-China border: army”
| Hsipaw civilian killed by unknown assailants Posted: 02 Mar 2017 07:01 AM PST A community leader in northern Shan State's Hsipaw Township was shot dead by an unknown gunman or group on Sunday, according to local source.
Sai Kyaw Sein, the headman of Nam Ma tract, told Shan Heraldthat the village headman, Sai Sarng Pe, aged 57, was killed on February 26 at about 4:30pm near his farm in Nar Koon, Nam Ma tract, Hsipaw Township. He said that the victim was pronounced dead at the scene. "Sai Sarng Pe is the leading member of the community in Nam Ma tract," he said. "No one knows who shot him and who is behind the murder." He said that he was shot at close range, a matter deduced by the fact that his body was beside his car which was not hit by any bullets. "The gunman was clearly experienced with weapons because the shots were to vital areas such as his forehead and his stomach," he said. "We want this case to bring to justice because Sai Sarng Pe was a respected person. He has been one of the community leaders for more 30 years. We want to know the truth about what happened. "In any case, whether this was related to drugs or logging, the matter should have been taken to court, not resolved in this [violent] way," he added. "If assassinations are allowed to occur, then no one will want to be village headman. They will be too afraid." He said they have reported the matter to the local authorities but have not heard about any progress. This type of murder is happening in Shan State regularly, according to Sai Hor Hseng, the spokesperson of the Shan Human Rights Foundation (SHRF), an active non-profit organization monitoring, investigating and reporting human rights violations and abuses in the region. He said that this is because there is no rule of law in Burma. "The law cannot be enforced across the country, especially in remote areas, because there is no rule of law and the government also does not have the power to do it. "When local people are faced with problems like this they do not know who to ask for help," he explained. "Even though they are the leaders in the community they are frightened. They are afraid to become headman because they do not want to deal with the problems." He added: "Our people have been oppressed for so many years. The government must somehow step in and protect its citizens." By Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN) | ||
| Commentary on “Time to lead on the peace process” Posted: 02 Mar 2017 01:30 AM PST The lady so far has been only keen to engage with the Tatmadaw, basically to be able to survive in maintaining the NLD's role as an administration that tackles with the day-to-day tasks, while the military make major decisions like peace process using the unspoken understanding of ruling the ethnic states.  She has to refrain from appeasing the Tatmadaw only and put more meaningful cooperation with the ethnic nationalities armed and unarmed organizations, if peace and reconciliation are to be achieved. In concrete terms, it means help to stop the ongoing war in ethnic states; understanding the real sense of Panglong Agreement, Promises and Spirit included, as its originally stated value, and not reinterpreting to suit the Bamar ethnocentric doctrine; and rebuilding a federal union that has been envisaged by our founding forefathers; of course with necessary innovations to be in tune with the modern world. To understand all these, the Bamar political class and as well, the ethnic nationalities' leadership should basically restudy the following documents in details, so that we all will come to realize what our forefathers' envisaged vision of a federal union should look like. They are:
Link to the story: http://frontiermyanmar.net/en/time-to-lead-on-the-peace-process | ||
| The Cowardice of Aung San Suu Kyi Posted: 01 Mar 2017 07:59 PM PST  The life of a politician is made infinitely easier when, as the saying goes, their actions are judged by their reputation, and not the other way around. Such a phrase is befitting of Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whom the media can describe with a number of glowing phrases: Nobel prize laureate, democracy icon, human rights defender, champion of the Myanmar people. However, Keith Harper, who served as former U.S. President Barack Obama's ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council, had these words to say about her on Monday:
A few more choice extracts from the statement include:
The phrase"scathing attack" might have been apt to describe this statement if it wasn't for the clarity and logic of its argument. But when one criticizes Suu Kyi there is the sneaking suspicion that you will be palmed off as just an iconoclast or, perhaps worse, unfair. I can already hear the thoughts of her apologists: "Leave her alone, she's trying her best. Look at what she's up against." Very well. She is up against a military (Tatmadaw) that still automatically controls a quarter of seats in the parliament and three key ministries and has proven to be largely independent of the NLD government. And then there is a resurgent movement of chauvinist Buddhists, openly calling for the persecution of the Rohingya and finding a good deal support among the general public. But Suu Kyi has known what she is up against for decades (these are hardly new developments) and, even under the perilous situation of house arrest, was happy to deride her opponents for what they were: dictators and murderers and oppressors of the people of Myanmar. Yet, we are to believe that it is perfectly defensible, now she has achieved a position of power, that her once famed audacity to stand up to the forces of the Tatmadaw and chauvinists in society has become conspicuously quiet. A recent article in the Harvard Political Review intoned an odd mixture of feebleness and sophistry:
Of course she doesn't hate the Rohingya. Few sensible people claim as much. And the use of the word "careful" appears odd, since in this reading the NLD is in the most perilous position. Nevertheless, the intent of this opinion has become something of an orthodox view of many commentators, warranting two questions. First, isn't it an indication of opportunism and cynicism, not careful or sensible politics, to negate one's principles when in a position of power? Indeed, how else can one look at the situation other than that Suu Kyi possessed greater courage to stand up to the military junta and its civilian frontmen when under house arrest (with no power) than she does now as the de facto leader of an elected government, with a number of ministries to her name and the freedom to travel the world as an elected official (with the apparent ability to raise awareness of the issue and cash through the goodwill she is owed by some international statesman). In a 1989 essay, Suu Kyi wrote that "it is undeniably easier to ignore the hardships of those who are too weak to demand their rights than to respond sensitively to their needs." How the prophetic becomes the pathetic. Moreover, and this is important: she has not been "silent" on the persecution of Rohingya as some people like to say. Instead she called the accusations of human rights violations "fabrications." This is not avoiding the issue; it's taking the side of the perpetrator. Let us, for a moment, quickly look at what Suu Kyi believes to be fabrications. Here is just one story of many documented in a February report by the UNCHR on the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, which also stated that as many as 66,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since October escape what has been called "human rights violations." This is told by an 11-year-old girl:
In 2011 Suu Kyi was lauded by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when the pair met for the first time. During this address at the meeting, Clinton spoke warmly about the famed speech Suu Kyi delivered at a UN conference in Beijing in 1995 on women's rights. During that speech Suu Kyi oscillated between the blatantly false and the blatantly obvious, but it had a powerful effect anyway. "To the best of my knowledge," she said, "no war was ever started by women. But it is women and children who have always suffered most in situations of conflict." Two decades on, all Suu Kyi had to say on a conflict in which girls as young as 11 were gang-raped by the military personnel of the country she represents was that the claims were "fabrications." As for no woman starting a war, she might have overlooked other cases such as the fact that Queen Victoria was on the throne during the Second and Third Anglo-Burmese War. (Or was Victoria as "passive" in these wars as Suu Kyi is in Myanmar's persecution of the Rohingya? Hardly). Nevertheless, it is clear that Suu Kyi hasn't also done much to end the current war on the Rohingya, only fanned some of the flames. Now, returning to the orthodox view, the second line of argument is that her supposed reticence to speak out about the violations against the Rohingya and the actions of Buddhist chauvinists is a calculated decision, somehow reasoned to be for the greater good. She is gradually building a democratic society and does not want to anger the Tatmadaw, sparking a possible coup against the NLD, so the argument goes. If this reason is to be accepted, then it is clear Suu Kyi has placed politics and pragmatism above any ideals. Fair enough, but then one should see her for what she has become, a mere mortal politician, not the icon she is still thought of as (the Asian Nelson Mandela shown in the likes of Luc Besson's The Lady). Moreover, if it is some calculated decision, she had better show some results soon. At the moment, the social change the electorate thought it was voting for is happening at snail's pace, if at all. The NLD ran its 2015 campaign on the slogan, "Time for Change." "Vote for us, just look to the party flag," Suu Kyi told a crowd in August that year. "It's time for change, let's vote for NLD and have real change!" Instead of the change, the NLD government has cracked down on free speech, allegedly formed close ties with "crony capitalists," and seen hundreds of NLD activists quit, claiming the party's leaders have become too authoritarian. It has failed utterly to deal with demands of the various ethnic groups and the economy has hardly surged as predicted. Moreover, the whole saga of Suu Kyi not being able to become president left a bad taste in the mouth. Today, NLD members and Suu Kyi seldom speak to the media, one might guess because they will be asked difficult questions they don't want to answer. It even took her a month to make a public comment on the murder of prominent Muslim lawyer and activist U Ko Ni, an old comrade and friend. Of course, some reforms have taken place. But they are nothing like the ones promised. On the issue of change, Suu Kyi has offered only excuses. She said last month: "Our citizens who have been struggling hard for many decades may think it's a very long time. But for the history of a country, for the history of a government, 10 months or one year is not much. This is just a short period." Wasn't this the same line of the ancien regime (give us more time to reform and change)? And where is the sense of urgency that motivated the NLD before their victory? Some apologists have tried the line that expectations were simply too high after the NLD won in 2015, consciously turning the blame on the electorate, not the NLD. I have even seen in print the suggestion that Suu Kyi's fawning over the military is, perhaps, akin to Stockholm syndrome (which is either hyperbole or an admission that she is unfit to lead). One conclusion, drawn by Kirsten McConnachie of the University of Warwick, writing in The Conversation in February, is that "the new government looks much like the old regime." Another is that the whole saga speaks not of patient or clever politics (however unsavory that would be given the context) but of a government and a leader completely out of their depth. Maybe rumors of declining health also factor into this. Towards the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, the character of Nick Carraway comments that "the loneliest moment in someone's life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly." There is a stirring emotion to feel some sympathy for Suu Kyi; she has fought for decades and sacrificed a great deal (more than most would forego) to get to where she is. But such sympathy quickly fades when one considers that it is the people of Myanmar who have truly suffered, and that these are the same people being let down by the person who promised them genuine change and has, so far, failed to deliver. Then again, another emotion stirs: I desire nothing more than to be proven wrong.Link story : http://thediplomat.com/2017/03/the-cowardice-of-aung-san-suu-kyi/ | ||
| Commentary on "Questioning the government’s commitment to media freedom" Posted: 01 Mar 2017 07:11 PM PST In a democratic country, the government couldn't have newspaper of its own, as the press is an institution of its own to point out shortcomings, including other irregularities, to the public to form its own opinion, which would go a long way to influence opinion pools and also the voting trend.  In short, the government is only allowed to clarify its policy implementation in factual manner and not in anyway promote any political party, including the governing party or parties that is running the administration. If the party or parties that formed the government is making use of the government facilities to promote its party's or their parties' policies to gain more electoral votes in the election, this will become a fraud and could be sued in the constitutional court. Thus, even a government having a newspaper as its own is against "freedom of press", as it could be biased. The NLD-led regime should let the New Light of Myanmar and the likes become private than keeping them as government enterprises, to promote real press freedom, so that it would be able to check on all the institutions and reports irregularities, for the benefit of the people. Link to the story: Questioning the government's commitment to media freedom | ||
| Commentary on “Scores killed in clashes on Myanmar-China border: army” Posted: 01 Mar 2017 07:07 PM PST The problem with Western advice and lavish funding is that it only aims at achieving a semblance of democratic governing, to further its geopolitical advantage and national interest, and not the real ethnic nationalities' right of self-determination, anchored in an agreeable, genuine federal union system that cater to their aspirations.  But they are place between a rock and a hard place, which is to say between China and the West. It would be interesting to see what kind of choice the ethnic nationalities would make out of the two necessary evils. Link to the story: http://www.atimes.com/article/scores-killed-clashes-myanmar-china-border-army/ |
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