The Irrawaddy Magazine |
- Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Dies Aged 80
- This Week in Parliament (Aug. 13-17)
- Exhibition Relives the Heyday of the Cassette Tape
| Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Dies Aged 80 Posted: 18 Aug 2018 05:35 AM PDT GENEVA/ACCRA, Ghana—Former United Nations Secretary-General and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kofi Annan, who recently headed a high-profile advisory commission on Rakhine State, has died at the age of 80, his foundation said on Saturday. Ghanaian national Annan died in hospital in Bern, Switzerland, in the early hours of Saturday, two of his close associates said. In Geneva, the Kofi Annan Foundation announced with "immense sadness" that he had died peacefully in his sleep after a short illness, saying he was surrounded in his last days by his second wife Nane and children Ama, Kojo and Nina. Annan served two terms as U.N. Secretary-General in New York from 1997-2006 and retired in Geneva and later lived in a Swiss village in the nearby countryside. In 2016, Myanmar State Counselor Daw Aung San Kyi approached Annan and asked him to lead a commission that would analyze the situation in Rakhine State in the west of the country, where communal strife between ethnic Rakhine and Rohingya Muslims had been on the rise since 2012. It was the first time foreign experts had been invited to assist the country's efforts to tackle the Rakhine crisis. He accepted the offer to lead the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State and made recommendations on ending the violence in the crisis-torn state and promoting development there. The commission released its final report at a press conference in Yangon on Aug. 24, 2017. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi immediately endorsed its 88 recommendations and vowed to implement them in the shortest timeframe possible given conditions on the ground. Annan's recommendations have been treated as a roadmap for promoting communal reconciliation and regional development in Rakhine. "In many ways, Kofi Annan was the United Nations. He rose through the ranks to lead the organization into the new millennium with matchless dignity and determination," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, whom Annan appointed to head the U.N. refugee agency, said in a statement. As head of U.N. peacekeeping operations, Annan was criticized for the world body's failure to halt the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s. As U.N. boss he was linked to peace efforts to reunite the divided island of Cyprus. He submitted a reunification blueprint for Cyprus, which was rejected in a referendum by Greek Cypriots in 2004. "The U.N. can be improved. It is not perfect but if it didn't exist you would have to create it," he told the BBC’s Hard Talk during an interview for his 80th birthday last April, recorded at the Geneva Graduate Institute where he had studied. "I am a stubborn optimist. I was born an optimist and will remain an optimist," Annan added. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein paid tribute to Annan as "humanity's best example, the epitome of human decency and grace." Zeid, who has criticized major powers and other countries during his four-year term, which ends later this month, said that whenever he felt "isolated and alone politically" he would go for long walks with Annan in Geneva. "When I told him once how everyone was grumbling about me, he looked at me—like a father would look at a son—and said sternly: 'You're doing the right thing; let them grumble.' Then he grinned!" The post Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Dies Aged 80 appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
| This Week in Parliament (Aug. 13-17) Posted: 17 Aug 2018 10:03 PM PDT Monday (Aug. 13) The Union Parliament approved the president's proposal to obtain 30 million euros ($34.4 million) in soft loans from Italy for the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation to supply electricity to rural villages in Chin State. Tuesday (Aug. 14) In Lower House, lawmaker U Min Thein of Taungdwingyi Township, Magwe Region, asked if the Education Ministry would appoint more male teachers, citing the low male-female teacher ratio in Myanmar. Deputy Education Minister U Win Maw Tun said that his ministry is making short- and long-term plans to increase the overall number of teachers while enrolling more male teachers in teaching degree courses. U Maung Myint of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) raised an objection to the term "dark era of education" used by U Min Thein in his question to refer to education during the time of military rule. Wednesday (Aug. 15) In Union Parliament, military representative Lieutenant-Colonel Myo Htet Win raised an objection to a term used by lawmaker U Khun Thaung Win of Kachin State Constituency 11 in discussing land confiscation by the military. He said a local war veterans' organization "unfairly" confiscated private sugarcane plantations in his constituency, prompting objection from the military representative. Parliament Speaker T Khun Myat declared that the modifier be removed from the record. Thursday (Aug. 16) In Lower House, the Construction Ministry came under fire once again for completing school construction projects on its own without inviting tenders. Last week, the ministry was rebuked for its poor oversight of road construction projects implemented under the BOT (build, operate, transfer) system. Friday (Aug. 17) The Lower House put on record the proposal of lawmaker Daw Tin Tin Yo which urged the Union government to adopt plans for the conservation of islands which are the habitat of edible-nest swiftlets. The post This Week in Parliament (Aug. 13-17) appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
| Exhibition Relives the Heyday of the Cassette Tape Posted: 17 Aug 2018 09:49 PM PDT YANGON—Time is kind to certain things in life, but passes other things by, leaving them to fade into memory as they are eclipsed by advances in science and technology. Cassette players and cassette tapes are very much in the latter category.  The format first became popular in Europe in the 1960s, but its global cultural moment was really the 1970s and 1980s. In Myanmar, the popularity of the cassette tape reached its peak in the 1990s. The Sony Walkman remained a sought-after fashion accessory for youngsters until the early 2000s.  Just a decade-and-a-half later, however, many members of Generation Z in Myanmar probably have no idea what a cassette tape is. An ongoing exhibition at Yangon's National Museum will give those born in the 1980s and 1990s a taste of the cassette tape's heyday in the 1990s, and offer those who recall the period a chance to relive it.  The exhibition "Sound Weaving" gathers together more than 5,000 cassette tapes. Apart from songs, the tapes on display contain recordings of Dhamma talks, literary discussions, and English and Chinese conversation lessons. The tapes bring back memories of the very fabric of society as it once was, said artist Htein Lin, the organizer of the event. "They represent a record of the entire era dating back to the time of the Socialist Programme Party of Burma. They remind us of the time we grew up in," he said.  The exhibition features a recording room so that visitors can record their comments summarizing their feelings about the show. They can also listen to the words of previous visitors via MP3 players arranged by the organizer. The recording installation was created by artists Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu. "This artwork will be complete only when audience members record and share their memories. We call it Inter-Artist," Tun Win Aung said. The work is designed to include the participation of people from all walks of life, encouraging them to share their memories and listen to those of others. "I feel as if I were young again. It was really moving," one female visitor said.  "When I was young, I had to go to a teashop to listen to music," said a male visitor. Not every household had a cassette player, but almost all teashops had one. They played music to attract customers. "I remember there was one teashop that used to dread my coming in; I would ask them to play two or three cassette tapes every day, while others only asked for one. I rented those tapes from a rental shop," he recalled. The exhibition will be held through Tuesday. The museum is closed on Monday. The post Exhibition Relives the Heyday of the Cassette Tape appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
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