The Irrawaddy Magazine |
- Despite High Operating Costs, CEO of Yangon’s New Bus System Remains Optimistic
- Young Filmmaker Counters LGBT Stereotypes
- Myanmar Wields Colonial-era Law Against Reuters Journalists
- UN Human Rights Official Toughens Warning of “Genocide” in Myanmar
| Despite High Operating Costs, CEO of Yangon’s New Bus System Remains Optimistic Posted: 18 Dec 2017 12:34 AM PST YANGON— Dubbed one of the first big reforms made by the National League for Democracy government in Myanmar's financial hub Yangon, a new public transport system known as the Yangon Bus System (YBS) will turn one next month. The new system was aimed at replacing the former capital's old bus service—the Rangoon Motor Vehicles Supervisory Committee, also known as Ma Hta Tha—notorious for its worn-out fleets, unruly drivers, and conductors known for verbally and physically challenging any passengers who dared complain about their services. Blessed by Yangon Regional Government head Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein, YBS was heartily welcomed by the city's commuters who had grown weary of Ma Hta Tha's poor services despite its successor's bumpy start. The early days of YBS saw an insufficient number of buses traversing the routes, resulting in overcrowding at bus stops, as some buses scheduled to start on the first day of the service were not ready due to insufficient planning. Nearly 12 months later, with newly imported yellow and red city buses plying the busy roads of Yangon, the regional government seems committed to making the new system a success. At the helm of YBS is its CEO, Saw Bo Bo. A former cooperate banker at Citi and KBZ banks, the 35-year old has more than 10 years of international business experience. At Citibank, he closely followed Myanmar's economic and political transformation as part of his job grading the country's credit rating in 2014 and 2015. One of his areas of expertise is mergers and acquisitions, an aspect of strategic management that involves combining companies and unlocking synergies to help the new entity grow in a sustainable manner—making Saw Bo Bo a good choice for YBS, a public company made up of 15 units, including government firms. On the eve of YBS's first anniversary, Saw Bo Bo responds to The Irrawaddy's questions about the bus system that is currently used by the city's 2.5 million commuters on a daily basis. What is your assessment of YBS today? The most visible thing is commuters are enjoying the new buses. You can say our bus fare—200 kyats—is probably the cheapest in the world. The government has imported 1,000 new buses. Another 1,000 will join the fleet next year. We have also taken serious action against those (drivers, bus owners, operators) who violate our regulations. As we have opened a diverse range of complaint channels—social media, call center and a mobile reporting app—passengers can now file their complaints much more easily than before. As a result, we have had some 5,000 reports. We take action on those complaints—in a real time manner if needed—lest we disappoint our passengers. Mobile teams are now in action to check to see if bus operators follow the regulations. How many buses are running under YBS? Please tell me in detail how the government invests money in the system. So far, there are 95 lines. The number of buses approved by the government is nearly 3,000. Under YBS, there are 15 bus companies and 17 individual operators. The Yangon Regional Government has provided 80 percent of the needed investment, or 35 billion kyats each in Yangon Urban Public Transportation Public Co., Ltd (YUPT) and Yangon Bus Public Co., Ltd. (YBPC). We imported 1,000 yellow buses—500 for each company—at a cost of US$56 million from China. Currently, both companies are running fleets of 700 buses. Another 300 will hit the road soon. Why Chinese buses? There has been criticism that those buses are about half the price of international rivals and they will wear out and need to be replaced sooner than international standard vehicles. We had to think holistically before the purchase. The price gap is true. On the other hand, we also had to think how much we could invest and the number of buses we would need. Whether they wear out sooner depends on the road conditions as well as the maintenance they get. If we reach breakeven in the next five or six years and manage to turn a net profit in another four years, I think we'll have a sustainable business with those buses. The grandson of former dictator Ne Win is also an operator of YBS. There are also reports that another tycoon, U Zaw Zaw of Max Myanmar, is joining in. Please explain their involvement? Omni Focus Company run by U Kyaw Ne Win has applied to run 500 red buses. So far, more than 100 buses owned by the company are on the road. Max Myanmar will operate as Ludu Mateswe (People's Friend) in cooperation with Power Eleven Company. They will run 500 red buses as well soon. What are the challenges YBS is facing? Bus operators still can't manage the operational cost. It has impacted their profit margins as 75 percent of the revenue goes to covering costs. If we could raise operational efficiency, it would be OK. With the guidance of the chief minister and cooperation from the operators, this problem can be overcome. Has Daw Aung San Suu Kyi made any comments about YBS? I just met her on Friday at a Karen New Year Day celebration event. She told me to make YBS successful. Given the system's outreach—2.5 million commuters mostly at the grass root level— all of Myanmar's leadership will surely want to see it as a success story. YBS is under the Yangon Region Transport Authority (YRTA), an umbrella organization for transportation in Yangon. We learned that an YRTA law has been drafted. Any updates? Yes, it's now underway with input from JICA (the Japan International Cooperation Agency) and the ADB (Asian Development Bank) based on models other countries are using. It will lay a foundation for self-sustainability for the future of Yangon's transportation as it will include organizational structures, roles and responsibilities in detail. For YBS, for example, the law will help provide a more systematic approach when it comes to job scopes and contract terms for the operators. How is it running currently in absence of the law? The YRTA is chaired by Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein. The president is Electricity, Industry and Transportation Minister Daw Nilar Kyaw. For YBS policies, they are discussed at YRTA meetings and implemented with the endorsement by the Yangon Region Government. The post Despite High Operating Costs, CEO of Yangon's New Bus System Remains Optimistic appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
| Young Filmmaker Counters LGBT Stereotypes Posted: 17 Dec 2017 08:17 PM PST Hnin Pa Pa Soe was about 12 when she realized she was more interested in girls than boys. But it would be more than 10 years before she would come out to anyone. Social norms surrounding female behavior were so strong that, even as a child, she sensed that telling anyone about her feelings could have negative consequences. "I kept it to myself to avoid mockery," she said, referring to the most common reaction in Myanmar toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, whose image tends to be shaped by the stereotyped characters in comedy shows and movies. These days the 26-year-old uses documentary film as a tool to tell the stories of people who have shared her struggle. Her films counter the mischaracterization of LGBT people in mainstream entertainment in Myanmar. "I want to show that LGBT people everywhere contribute to society," she said. Social Outcast Transgender women and gay men in particular are usually portrayed as wacky and flamboyantly dressed characters who shamelessly hit on men and use vulgar language. Lesbians are shown as relentless pursuers of women, Hnin Pa Pa Soe said. In Hnin Pa Pa Soe's hometown in Mon State, movies and traditional dance shows were the mediums through which most people encountered LGBT "people." Growing up, she feared being lumped in with these characters and called a "dyke." She had very few friends at school. Her childhood memories are mostly of discrimination and being left out. "Teachers told us that tomboys dressed like boys and hung out with boys, but that eventually they all fall pregnant and 'turn into' girls," Hnin Pa Pa Soe said. She recalled how tomboys, too, were generally viewed through the prism of movies. "I hid my feelings," she said. Her boyish taste in clothing saw her singled out. "I was constantly being called 'tomboy' and 'bull dyke'. After a while I withdrew," she said. During school fairs or ceremonies, her teachers told her that there was no role or place for her and left her to take care of the empty classroom.  Journey of Self-Discovery Nearly two years ago she came out—but only to a few trusted people. Most importantly, she took an important step on her journey of self-discovery when she found a way to tell "a simple love story" about two transgender friends. In 2016, having realized she was an LGBT person while interning for Equality Myanmar, a human rights advocacy group, she felt a desire to show the public that LGBT people are not the way they are portrayed in comedies. Thanks to documentary filmmaking workshops organized by Colors Rainbow, the biggest LGBT organization in Myanmar, Hnin Pa Pa Soe was able to make her debut short film, "A Simple Love Story." The piece won the Best Documentary Film prize at the Wathann Film Festival, which showcases local independent film, in September. Despite the award, however, the film was not screened at the festival because Hnin Pa Pa Soe refused to bow to the Censorship Board's demand that the ending be changed. The censor advised that the closing line be re-edited for screening at the festival, but Hnin Pa Pa Soe decided that if it were not her version, she would rather not show it. "The Censorship Board's demand really upset me," she said. "The line [the board] wanted me to modify does not involve vulgar language of the kind they routinely allow in comedies," she said. Being LGBT herself, she said, she would never insult her own community and was willing to accept full responsibility for her portrayal of LGBT people. "My stance was firm," she said. "I won't show it if [the original version] is not allowed. I won't modify it." Hnin Pa Pa Soe is currently making a documentary about the struggles of LGBT people in the workplace. She said LGBT employees are left out of the conversation whenever gender disparity in the workplace is discussed, because they don't conform to gender norms. Hnin Pa Pa Soe said her goal now is to try to represent the many diverse faces of the LGBT community in Myanmar, to show that they exist in places where many people wouldn't expect to find them.  Coming Out to Parents Is Something Very Different Asked what she would have done with her life if she had not become a human rights trainer and filmmaker, Hnin Pa Pa Soe said she might have continued her studies to obtain a master's degree or become a teacher, which is what her parents wanted her to do. The only reason she didn't do these things was the regulation that female students must wear the traditional female garment, the longyi, at high schools and universities—something she was very uncomfortable with. As a young woman who liked to wear T-shirts and pants, Hnin Pa Pa Soe struggled with the issue of clothing throughout high school and university. "When I wore longyi at university, I would try to stay seated," she said. "All day I was just waiting for class to finish. I couldn't concentrate on my lessons." She tried to alter her clothing, but it was impossible, and she ended up transferring into a distance-learning program that didn't require her to attend daily classes. Importantly, she could wear what she liked during the rest of the time. "When I am wearing something I don't feel comfortable with, I withdraw, feeling inconsequential," she said. "There is no place for me there," she said. While she has come out to colleagues and a few liberal-minded people, she remains emotionally distant from her family. Her parents just think that she likes wearing boys' clothing; they don't know that she likes women. Hnin Pa Pa Soe wants her parents to understand her gender identity, but also thinks it's better not to tell them at this time, as she knows how hard it would be for them to accept her. "There would be conflict if I told them who I am," she said. "I am not necessarily hiding it from them; they will know when they know." Hnin Pa Pa Soe plans to keep advocating human rights and LGBT issues. She believes that the more people she reaches out to, the fewer people will have to experience the kind of resistance she has. "When people are able to accept their own identities, they are empowered to improve their lives," she said. The post Young Filmmaker Counters LGBT Stereotypes appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
| Myanmar Wields Colonial-era Law Against Reuters Journalists Posted: 17 Dec 2017 08:04 PM PST Myanmar has accused Reuters reporters Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, of breaching the country’s Official Secrets Act, a little-used hangover from colonial rule. Sam Zarifi, secretary general of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), said the law can ensnare working journalists “at any time”. The two reporters were arrested on Tuesday evening after they were invited to meet police officers for dinner in the north of Yangon. The Ministry of Information said they had “illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media”, and published a photo of the pair in handcuffs standing behind a table with documents laid on it. ORIGINS OF THE OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT The law dates back to 1923, when Myanmar, then known as Burma, was a province of British India. At the time British administrators worried that rival powers could seek to exploit anti-colonial unrest in its South Asian empire. The act, which amended earlier anti-spying legislation, was controversial in India even at the time, according to a history published in 2009 by the United Service Institution of India, a New Delhi-based think tank. British military officers pushed for the stronger law over concerns about an “increase in Bolshevik activity”, along with geopolitical threats including “the possibility of racial war between Japan and the USA affecting India”, the history said. WHAT THE ACT SAYS The Official Secrets Act covers trespassing in prohibited areas, handling documents deemed secret and communicating with “foreign agents”. It carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison. Zarifi of the Geneva-based ICJ – a human rights group made up of 60 senior international judges, lawyers and legal academics – said the definition of an official secret in the act is “incredibly broad”. “Just about anyone in possession of unpublished government documents could find themselves facing prosecution and the harsh penalties a conviction may carry,” Zarifi said. “Under this law many good journalists could be prosecuted at any time.” In India, where the same law also remains on the statute book, courts have ruled that it even applies to parliamentary papers such as budget proposals if they are leaked before they are presented in the legislature. USE OF THE ACT Legal experts say prosecutions under the act have been rare in Myanmar in recent decades. The military junta that ruled until 2011 frequently used other laws or the Penal Code – also inherited from the colonial era – to lock up its critics alongside common criminals. The sprawling code was drafted in 1860, and gives magistrates more than 500 sections under which to charge alleged offenders. In 1990, a military court sentenced two leaders of the then opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) to 10 years in prison under the Official Secrets Act after they passed an official letter to foreign embassies. The prosecution was part of a broad crackdown following an election won by the NLD that the junta ignored. They were freed in 1992, in an amnesty, according to a New York Times report at the time. Reports of at least two other cases brought under the act are recorded in the online archives of the Asian Human Rights Commission in 2009 and 2010. The first case involved a man jailed for trespassing on military land and recording video footage to allegedly send abroad. He had been helping a farmer file a land grab complaint against the military. The second concerned a former army officer who was jailed in 2010 for allegedly having secret information on his laptop that he passed to foreign news agencies. The most well-documented recent case involving the Official Secrets Act came in January of 2014, when the Yangon-based weekly, Unity Journal, published a front page article it said exposed a secret chemical weapons factory run by the military in central Myanmar. Police arrested the newspaper’s CEO and four journalists involved in publishing the story, raided its offices, and attempted to seize all copies of the edition from newsstands. A civilian court in Pakkoku, near the alleged factory, sentenced them in July 2014 to 10 years in prison with hard labour – later reduced to seven years. The case was widely seen by the domestic media as a warning that military affairs remained off-limits even though direct military rule had ended. The Unity five were released in an amnesty in April 2016, soon after the NLD, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, had come to power following an election in 2015. The Unity Journal subsequently closed. Reuters was unable to reach government legal officials over the weekend to request details of any other past cases in which the Official Secrets Act was used. THE LATEST CASE Little is known of the allegations against the two Reuters journalists, other than that police said they were “arrested for possessing important and secret government documents related to Rakhine State and security forces” and are charged under Section 3 of the Official Secrets Act. Two policemen are also being investigated in the case, according to police. Section 3 covers entering prohibited places, taking images or handling secret official documents that “might be or is intended to be, directly or indirectly, useful to an enemy”. Human Rights Watch in 2016 said Section 3 “defines the offence of 'spying' extremely broadly”. “Where a military establishment is involved, section 3(2) of the statute effectively places the burden on the defendant to prove that they are not guilty,” the group said. The post Myanmar Wields Colonial-era Law Against Reuters Journalists appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
| UN Human Rights Official Toughens Warning of “Genocide” in Myanmar Posted: 17 Dec 2017 07:55 PM PST GENEVA — The top U.N. human rights official has said he would not be surprised if a court one day ruled that acts of genocide had been committed against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar, according to a television interview to be shown on Monday. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein told the BBC that attacks on the Rohingya had been “well thought out and planned” and he had asked Myanmar’s leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to do more to stop the military action. Zeid has already called the campaign “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and asked rhetorically if anyone could rule out “elements of genocide”, but his latest remarks put the case plainly, toughening his stance. "The elements suggest you cannot rule out the possibility that acts of genocide have been committed," he said, according to excerpts of his interview provided in advance by the BBC. "It's very hard to establish because the thresholds are high," he said. "But it wouldn't surprise me in the future if the court were to make such a finding on the basis of what we see." Myanmar denies committing atrocities against the Rohingya and has previously rejected U.N. criticism for its “politicisation and partiality”. The Myanmar military says the crackdown is a legitimate counter-insurgency operation. Zeid said Myanmar’s “flippant” response to the serious concerns of the international community made him fear the current crisis "could just be the opening phases of something much worse". He told the BBC he feared jihadi groups could form in the huge refugee camps in Bangladesh and even launch attacks in Myanmar, perhaps targeting Buddhist temples there. He did not say, in the excerpts provided, which court could prosecute suspected atrocities. Myanmar is not a member of the International Criminal Court, so referral to that court could be done only by the U.N. Security Council. But Myanmar’s ally China could veto such a referral. The United Nations defines genocide as acts meant to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part. Such a designation is rare under international law, but has been used in contexts including Bosnia, Sudan and an Islamic State campaign against the Yazidi communities in Iraq and Syria. Almost 870,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, including about 660,000 who arrived after Aug. 25, when Rohingya militants attacked security posts and the Myanmar army launched a counter-offensive. U.N. investigators have heard Rohingya testimony of a “consistent, methodical pattern of killings, torture, rape and arson”. Zeid said he had phoned Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in January, asking her in vain to stop the the military operation. The Nobel peace laureate's less than two-year old civilian government has faced heavy international criticism for its response to the crisis, though it has no control over the generals it has to share power with under Myanmar's transition after decades of military rule. The post UN Human Rights Official Toughens Warning of “Genocide” in Myanmar appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
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