Thursday, December 7, 2017

The Irrawaddy Magazine

The Irrawaddy Magazine

Muslim village-head killed in Rakhine’s Maungdaw District

Posted: 07 Dec 2017 06:56 AM PST

YANGON – A Muslim village headman, Shaw Feik Amen, from Rakhine State's southern Maungdaw Township, was shot dead in his house by unidentified armed men on Tuesday night, a border police officer confirmed on Thursday.

Police Major Aung Win, citing testimonies of witnesses, said a group of residents from the same village of Du Nyaung Pin Gyee had allegedly burst into the victim's home to attack Shaw Feik Amen with guns and swords. The police officer, however, declined to provide the names of the suspects.

Du Nyaung Pin Gyee village is located about five kilometers from downtown Maungdaw and consists of more than 1,000 households. After the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), under its former name, Harakah al-Yaqeen (Faith Movement), attacked several dozen police border outposts in the surrounding area in late August, the majority of its residents fled to neighboring Bangladesh. However, some, including Shaw Feik Amen, chose to remain.

A primary school teacher, U Mg Tun, who lives in Kin Chaung village, not far from Du Nyaung Pin Gyee, told The Irrawaddy over the phone that he had heard some of the attackers crossed the river on a schooner from Bangladesh in order to kill the village administrative official for collaborating with the government.

Police Major Aung Win remarked that some Du Nyaung Pin Gyee residents had also come to a similar speculative conclusion but it was too soon to make an official statement as the case was still in the investigative stage.

U Mg Tun said Du Nyaung Pin Gyee village was mostly left alone during the Myanmar army's clearance operations and only a few houses were torched. Several hundred Muslims villagers had continued to live there despite the widespread armed clashes that had erupted across Maungdaw district following the ARSA raids. Moreover, nearly 700 villagers from Buthidaung Township had also temporarily sought shelter there.

During a government-sponsored diplomatic tour to Maungdaw Township in early October, which The Irrawaddy was also invited to attend — some Hindu and Arakanese villagers told the foreign envoys that residents had been warned by an unidentified group — believed to be ARSA members or supporters — to leave the village or they would be killed in the next round of attacks.

The threats came after Myanmar State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi called on the international community to seek the full story of the conflict-torn region as many Muslim villages continued to live in peaceful conditions.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has delivered diplomatic briefings and televised speeches twice in recent months calling on Muslim religious leaders to participate in the government's reconciliation effort in Rakhine State as well as to convince Muslims to apply for the National Verification Card (NVC).

On Nov. 27, the All Myanmar Moulvi (Ulama Al Haqe) Organization released a statement encouraging Muslims who do not possess any kind of official documents such as associated or naturalized citizenship papers or a "white card" to apply for the NVC.

The group's statement urged Muslims who live in Myanmar to hold at least one identity card issued by the authorities in line with existing laws.

Kyaw Soe, Ulama Al Haqe's secretary-general, said that the statement was directed at the entire Muslim population of Myanmar rather than just the Rohingya people in Rakhine State and they purposefully stressed the effort was being carried out in the national and public interest. He assumed that many Muslims could be living in Myanmar without any identity papers as they are unfamiliar with government procedures on applying for them.

"I can guarantee that our statement emphasized the interest of the public as well as the government," Kyaw Soe said.

However, the prospect of dealings with the government remains fraught with fear for many Muslims. Forty-eight Muslims were brutally beheaded by a suspected militant group between October 2016 and August 2017 and a further 20 went missing after collaborating with the government.

In response to a question on whether the Ulama Al Haqe's effort could be effective on the ground as many people were killed for assisting government officials, Kyaw Soe said that although the group didn’t know the exact perpetrators of the crimes, his organization was adamantly opposed to the violent conduct of ARSA.

"We don't accept ARSA. All these things happened after they started the problem," he said of the unrest, which has resulted in more than 620,000 Muslim refugees fleeing to Bangladesh.

He added that if government officials invite his organization to help, they could explain details of the NVC application process to Muslims in local areas.

The post Muslim village-head killed in Rakhine’s Maungdaw District appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

US Grant to See Restoration of 19th Century Church Through

Posted: 07 Dec 2017 05:02 AM PST

YANGON — Restoration work on the 190-year-old Judson First Baptist Church in the Mon State capital of Moulmein will continue thanks to a second round of financial support from the US Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation and help from conservation experts with the World Monuments Fund.

Built in 1827 by Adoniram Judson, an American missionary who spent nearly 40 years in Myanmar in the early 19th century, the church will receive an additional US$100,000 for its preservation. The church received US$125,000 in February 2016 from the same program. The World Monuments Fund aims to use the new grant to complete the two-year project.

Scot Marciel, the US ambassador to Myanmar, will announce the grant at the church on Saturday together with Mon State Social Welfare Minister Htein Linn and the church's pastor, Reverend David, the US Embassy's press invitation reads.

With hospitals and community organizations bearing the Judson name, the First Baptist Church represents America's longstanding engagement with Myanmar, the embassy said in a November statement. It added that the Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation has provided some US$225,000 to preserve cultural heritage sites in Myanmar since 2015. In 2013, US$500,000 was awarded for the restoration of the Shwenandaw Kyaung Monastery in Mandalay.

According to the World Monuments Fund, the restoration of Judson's church will be "an educational opportunity to introduce a cadre of local tradespeople, students and officials to cultural and architectural heritage conservation methods, building skills among Myanmar professionals that can be applied to similar sites in Moulmein and throughout the country."

In late September, leading members of Yangon Heritage Trust (YHT) — an advocacy group founded in 2012 for heritage protection in the country's commercial capital — visited heritage buildings in Moulmein at the request of Mon State Chief Minister Aye Zan, who envisions the founding of a local conservation group similar to YHT. He has also asked for technical assistance from YHT for the restoration of other historical buildings in Moulmein.

Besides the First Baptist Church, other significant heritage buildings in Moulmein include a 19th century Buddhist monastery, the 120-year-old Yadanabon Myint Monastery built by King Mindon's consort Sein Tone, the residence and tomb of the fourth daughter of Myanmar's last monarch King Thibaw, the forestry office of the Bombay Burma Trading Corporation built in 1897, a cannon built in 1827 featuring the emblem of Britain's King Edward, and a watchtower built in 1912.

The post US Grant to See Restoration of 19th Century Church Through appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Drug Czar Rebukes Anti-narcotics Deal Between Yunnan, Wa Army

Posted: 07 Dec 2017 01:00 AM PST

NAYPYITAW — The chief of Myanmar's counter-narcotics police force has criticized the signing of an agreement between China's Yunnan Province and the United Wa State Army (UWSA) to cooperate on drug eradication.

Yunnan Province government officials and UWSA leaders signed an agreement on Friday in Panghsang, the capital of the Wa Self-Administered Division, to work together to eradicate drugs and grow substitute crops in the division.

"The Yunnan government's decision to sign an agreement directly with the UWSA can cause misunderstanding between the two countries," Brigadier General Mya Maung told reporters in Naypyitaw at the launch of the UN's Myanmar Opium Survey 2017.

At a meeting on drug eradication efforts in November in Kunming, China, Myanmar made it clear that China should consult with the Union government before signing any bilateral deals to fight drugs with Myanmar's subnational authorities along its border.

"We've said very clearly that they can sign [memorandums of understanding] and letters of agreement on growing poppy-substitute crops only with the Union government," Brig-Gen Mya Maung said. "They can't sign agreements with self-administered regions and state governments unless they are approved by the Union government."

"Perhaps there is some misunderstanding about the policies of the Union government and political practices in areas that share a border with China," he added.

He said China's team at the meeting in November was led by the deputy standing general secretary of the National Narcotics Control Commission of China and included officials from Yunnan's provincial government. The two countries, he said, agreed to get started on a poppy-substitution project in relatively stable parts of northern Shan State.

Political analyst Yan Myo Thein said the agreement between the UWSA and the Yunnan government was not unusual because the UWSA has been viewed as a distinct entity in Myanmar for a long time.

And because they share a border, he added, they may be cooperating in other areas as well.

"Unless political problems are solved through political means, the UWSA will remain a distinct entity," he said. "We need to build a true federal democratic Union promptly. Only then can similar problems and challenges be reduced."

The UWSA signed a ceasefire deal with the military regime in 1989. But it opted out of signing the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) with the government of U Thein Sein in 2015, saying it was unnecessary because the truce it reached with the previous government was holding.

It boasts of the largest and most powerful army among Myanmar's ethnic armed groups with an estimated 30,000 troops and leads other armed ethnic groups along the Myanmar-China border in the Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee, which is demanding an alternative to the NCA.

The head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Jeremy Douglas, who attended the report launch, urged armed ethnic groups to join Myanmar's fight against the illicit drug trade.

The total area of opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar has decreased significantly in 2017 to 41,000 hectares, down 25 percent from the 55,500 hectares recorded in 2015, according to the report.

The report also reconfirms the link between conflict and opium cultivation in Myanmar, and that insecure areas with active insurgencies continue to produce at levels similar to 2015

Myanmar's opium cultivation reached a low in 2006 but increased in 2013 before starting to decline again the following year, said Home Affairs Minister Lieutenant General Kyaw Swe.

In June, the UWSA claimed opium poppy fields had been completely eradicated from the southern part of the area it controls along the Thai border, more than a decade after it adopted policies to combat drug production.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.

The post Drug Czar Rebukes Anti-narcotics Deal Between Yunnan, Wa Army appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

ICG Urges World to Stay Engaged with Myanmar

Posted: 07 Dec 2017 12:44 AM PST

YANGON — The International Crisis Group suggested on Thursday that policymakers in the West should resist the urge to disengage with Myanmar, while warning of potential negative consequences of any punitive action taken against the country.

Myanmar has faced international criticism for its army's recent campaign against Rohingya Muslims in the western part of the country, where more than 600,000 Muslims have fled across the border to Bangladesh. The army has been condemned for committing human rights violations including torching homes, arbitrary killing and rape.

In the wake of the exodus, the European Union and the United States imposed sanctions against Myanmar's military leadership. Last month, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson labeled the army's sweep through Rakhine State as ethnic cleansing, after a visit to the country.

The warning by the Brussels-based NGO, which monitors democratic transitions worldwide, urged international policymakers not to lose sight of the distinction between the government and the people, "who should not pay the price for the actions of a military that is constitutionally outside of democratic control."

"People-to-people exchanges with the West through academic, cultural and commercial interactions and tourism are crucial for a country that was isolated for so many decades," the report says, while warning that the Myanmar people's aspirations for "a better economic future must not be forgotten" as the country is home to millions of the poorest people in Southeast Asia.

Among the four action points suggested by the group were maintaining development assistance and non-military engagement, and leaving in place recently reinstated trade preferences by the EU and US, which it said were "critical in supporting manufacturing jobs in the country and shouldn't be revoked."

As the US was considering imposing economic measures against those responsible for the atrocities committed against the Rohingya, the report also calls on the international community to work carefully to minimize the collateral impact of any targeted sanctions.

"Recent experience in Myanmar shows, however, that ostensibly targeted sanctions can have broader systemic impacts on the economy that should be avoided," it says.

The ICG said that based on its contemporaneous research, until 2012 Myanmar was under some of the most stringent bilateral sanctions of any country and these did almost nothing to influence the then military regime "but caused significant damage to the general economy and the fortunes of ordinary people."

The report also urges the international community to do all it can to mitigate the humanitarian disaster in Rakhine State and influence the situation in other ways, including providing substantial humanitarian support to Rohingya refugees, to reduce the risks of a further humanitarian catastrophe. Plus, it said, the international community should push Myanmar for a political decision to implement key recommendations of the Annan commission, including its suggestions on discrimination, segregation and citizenship.

"Meaningful progress on these issue is vital to creating an environment conducive to voluntary repatriation, and giving international credibility to Myanmar's efforts," the ICG said.

Given China's support for Myanmar on the Rohingya issue due to its significant economic interests in Rakhine State, the NGO also cautioned Naypyitaw against taking the country's northern neighbor's blanket support for granted. China doesn't want this to come at the cost of its important relations with Bangladesh and the wider Muslim world, it said, which was part of the reason why it allowed the recent UN Security Council presidential statement to be issued.

Security Risk

Despite their organized raids in August, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army has not launched any new attacks since.

Based on interviews with ARSA members in camps in Bangladesh in September and November, the ICG says it appears most of the group's organizers and fighters are now in the camps, having fled along with the rest of the population.

The report says the group may thus shift to cross-border attacks as acquiring operating space in Bangladesh is a more realistic option given Bangladesh's anger and frustration towards Myanmar.

"If ARSA launches cross-border attacks, it could aim at opportunistic security targets in northern Rakhine or turn to attack any non-Muslim villagers resettled on Rohingya lands," the report said.

"New ARSA attacks would reinforce anti-Rohingya sentiment within Myanmar and prompt heightened security measures that would further diminish prospects for an eventual refugee return."

The post ICG Urges World to Stay Engaged with Myanmar appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Myanmar Army Restrictions Leave Tanai Residents Lacking Basic Commodities

Posted: 06 Dec 2017 10:59 PM PST

CHIANG MAI, Thailand — As the Tatmadaw has restricted the transportation of basic commodities in conflict-torn Tanai Township, Kachin State, locals have run out of fuel and are suffering a rice shortage.

The Tatmadaw (Myanmar Army) has restricted the transportation of goods in the region for more than a year, but the situation worsened after June 3, when the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Tatmadaw renewed fighting and displaced hundreds of locals from N'Ga Ga and Nambyu villages.

Tanai residents told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday that diesel fuel ran out a few days ago, as fuel trucks from Myitkyina have been stuck at military checkpoints.

Only gasoline can be bought, and one Tanai resident said the price is up to 6,000 kyat per gallon in some places where previously it had been about 4,200 kyat.

Locals also said the price of rice sacks had risen to double or triple the going rate in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State. They now costs 40,000 to 60,000 kyats per sack depending on quality, and they average around 20,000 in Myitkyina.

The Kachin State security and border affairs minister Col Thura Myo Tin told the Kachin State Parliament on Monday – in a response to a question by lawmaker U Zaw Win – that the Tatmadaw's Northern Command scrutinizes the transport of rice and petrol in order to obstruct gold and amber miners who pay extortion money to the KIA in areas without rule of law.

U Zaw Win, a National League for Democracy lawmaker representing Tanai Constituency No. 2, questioned Parliament on Monday as to what the government was doing in regards to his urgent motion – in which he proposed that the government allow free transport of these goods, as was passed in March.

Despite the state security and border affair minister stating that the transport of such goods is now permitted following scrutiny, lawmakers insisted and showed evidence to Parliament that people were facing difficulties in obtaining these basic goods.

"There has been a food shortage in the state because people have been unable to farm due to the frequent fighting. Now, with the Tatmadaw controlling the delivery of goods, locals' lives have gotten harder," said Kachin State lawmaker Maran Ja Seng Hkawn.

Renewed fighting, following the breakdown of a 17-year ceasefire, broke out between the KIA and Tatmadaw in June 2011. More than 100,000 people have been displaced, including villagers from Tanai Township.

Local pastor Mung Dan said that villagers used to be able to buy rations of rice and fuel arranged at the township, village and ward levels but that this had stopped this week due to a shortage for unknown reasons.

"We don't know why, but the quota system is no longer available and we are short of these supplies."

Lawmaker Maran Ja Seng Hkawn said the government would have to tackle this situation wisely, so that people aren't taking advantage of those in hardship.

The Tatmadaw's actions seem to undermine the image of the NLD, said Tanai resident U Zaw Tan, as this crisis happened soon after the NLD governance began.

"Now the residents of Tanai have lost trust in the government and everyone is saying that the government cannot do anything," he said, adding that even without fighting in the town, locals are neither free to travel nor trade.

The post Myanmar Army Restrictions Leave Tanai Residents Lacking Basic Commodities appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Myanmar’s Opium Crop Plummets, But No Victory Over Asia’s Narco-boom: UN

Posted: 06 Dec 2017 09:14 PM PST

BANGKOK — A "dramatic" drop in opium cultivation in Myanmar underscored a regional boom in demand for illegal synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine, which many Asian countries are struggling to combat, a senior UN official said on Wednesday.

The area under opium poppy cultivation dropped by a quarter between 2015 and 2017, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a report released on Wednesday.

"The drop in opium production is welcome, but it is not a victory," Jeremy Douglas, the UNODC's chief in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, told Reuters.

"It appears to confirm that the shift in the regional drug market to synthetic drugs is well underway, and that the opium economy is being disrupted."

China and most Southeast Asian countries have reported growing demand for methamphetamine – a highly addictive synthetic drug also known as speed, shabu and yaba – and the Philippines is waging a bloody "war on drugs" to tackle it.

Meanwhile, regional demand for heroin, which is derived from opium poppies, has remained stable or decreased, with many younger drug users preferring methamphetamine, according to UNODC data.

The UNODC estimated that Myanmar's Shan and Kachin states cultivated 41,000 hectares of opium poppy in 2017, a 25 percent drop from the 54,500 hectares reported in its last survey in 2015.

For the previous decade, opium cultivation had increased annually before stabilizing at high levels, according to UNODC data.

The area under cultivation in Afghanistan, the world's biggest opium producer, hit a record high of 328,000 hectares in 2017, the UNODC said last month.

Myanmar's interior minister, Kyaw Swe, said in a statement released by the UNODC that his government was "pleased to see progress" and would support programs that provide alternative livelihoods to opium-growing communities.

Myanmar is the source of most of Southeast Asia's methamphetamine, which is mostly produced in lawless border regions outside the government's control.

Douglas also said it was "reasonable to assume" that Asian organized crime groups were making or planning to make fentanyl, a synthetic opioid many times more potent and profitable than heroin.

Shifting Market

In October, President Donald Trump said "the flood of cheap and deadly fentanyl" in the United States was fuelling a public health emergency of opioid addiction and death.

"People like to stretch profits in any business, and fentanyl is the ultimate profit-stretcher," said Douglas. "You can cut out the poppy farmers completely."

Growing opium poppies employs or provides incomes for hundreds of thousands of people in Myanmar, most of them in remote, mountainous areas of Shan and Kachin states.

Cultivation and production of opium poppies continued to flourish at 2015 levels in conflict-plagued areas of those states, which remained a "safe haven for those who run the drug trade," said Douglas.

Government troops have been fighting insurgencies by various ethnic minority guerrilla groups for decades, and both sides have been implicated in the drug trade.

According to the UNODC survey, opium cultivation plummeted in 2017 despite the government scaling back its poppy-eradication efforts.

Myanmar destroyed 3,533 hectares of opium poppies in 2017, down from 13,450 hectares in 2015.

Its giant neighbor China remained the largest market for the heroin made from Myanmar's opium.

But China was also reporting what Douglas called "a significant shift in market dynamics," with demand for heroin dropping alongside rising demand for methamphetamine.

"The regional drug market is changing, and governments need to change how they deal with it," he said.

He urged countries to increase their focus on synthetic drugs and the precursor chemicals used to make them, and to do more to tackle demand through prevention campaigns and voluntary, community-based rehabilitation programs.

The post Myanmar's Opium Crop Plummets, But No Victory Over Asia's Narco-boom: UN appeared first on The Irrawaddy.
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