Burma (Myanmar)

Burmese Repatriation (or not)

Posted on by Laughingnomad

A couple nights ago I went to the Thailand Foreign Exchange Club in the penthouse of the Maneeya Building to sit at the bar along with all the foreign correspondents and reporters and see a documentary and listen to a panel of speakers about the repatriation (or not) of the 160,000 Burmese refugees in the camps in Thailand along the Burmese border.

As with everything else in the world, this issue is incredibly complicated too. Apparently the Burmese army didn’t get the memo about the cease-fire in a dirty war against the Shan, Karen and Mon minorities. There is no political stability or rule of law and many of the refugees either have no place to go back to because their land was confiscated and homes burned or they are petrified of violence perpetrated by the Army. With no transparency, rumors and tension abound. The UN is supposed to be coordinating this but they are kept in the dark too by the Burmese government who is calling the shots (so to speak) and no one seems to know what will happen…and killings and rapes go on with impunity.

In this information vacuum and continuing threat of violence, the minorities have issued some conditions: A nationwide ceasefire between the ethnic armed groups and the Army, rule of law and human rights improved, military bases withdrawn in the areas where they would return, landmines in areas cleared in areas where refugees would return, minority representatives must be at the table during planning and decision making and implementation. The repatriation process must conform with international principles of repatriation ensuring that refugees would return voluntarily and in safety and dignity and that those who do not wish to return to their original place can choose to live elsewhere. This last one will be particularly sticky with the Thai government. This will take years.

During the Q&A a guy stood at the microphone and started ranting loudly and vociferously about the lack of care and attention being given to the Rohingya Muslims who are native to Burma, but who are ethno-linguistically related to the Indo-Aryan peoples of India and Bangladesh (as opposed to the Sino-Tibetan people of Burma). The region of Rakhine (Arakan) was annexed and occupied by Burma in the 1700s thus bringing the Rohingya people under Burmese occupation.

As of 2012, 800,000 Rohingya live in Burma. According to the UN, they are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. Many Rohingya have fled to ghettos and refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh, and to areas along the Thai-Myanmar border.

This was all brewing of course 10 years ago (indeed for the last 30 years) when we visited Burma and found the people to be sweet and very friendly. They were hungry to talk to foreigners if they could speak some English…usually the people who had been English teachers before India left. (See my other blog entries re Burma) Now with the opening of Burma it’s all coming to a head.

In the Burma Couchsurfing group I think every backpacker in SE Asia will be there this winter…hopefully witnessing but avoiding harm if they are sensible enough to not try and sneak their way into the border areas.

Doctors Without Borders & Burma

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Aid to Burma
Wednesday June 4
Press Conference with Doctors Without Borders
Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Thailand in Bangkok

Question: How many people still need help?
Answer: Cannot estimate people who still need help…there are little huts among many little rivers…don’t know what was a village…was it there…how many huts were lost. Could get into the west…were obstructed from getting into the east by the authorities. So we cannot say how many people still need help.
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Press Conference on Burma

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Tuesday May 27 2008

Dr. Surin Pisuwan, Secretary General, ASEAN, reporting at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club in Bangkok Thailand on the donors’ conference Sunday with Gen. Than Shwe of Myanmar and UN chief Ban Ki Moon in Yangon. The key issue has been the loosening of strict controls on foreign aid workers pressing for unfettered access to the disaster zone. To counter Burmese fears of “hidden agendas” by Western workers, ASEAN has agreed to coordinate all relief efforts.

What has been achieved is far more than what was expected. A new humanitarian “space,” however limited, so that ASEAN with the support of the UN can engage with the Myanmar authorities. That humanitarian space needs political support because in and of itself it cannot be sustained. The secty general of the UN and ASEAN has asked for the full cooperation of the aid community.
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Hanoi Not Burma

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Well, I gave up on getting a visa to Burma. “You retired? What was your last job? What organization did you work for?” And he didn’t like my passport. Too many stamps from too many countries. Maybe I am a journalist? “We’ll call you,” he said. Never got a call. So I went back yesterday. “We’ll call you,” he said.

My Thai friend and I are scheduled to fly on the 29th so yesterday, she sweet-talked Air Asia into letting us change our route from Bangkok to Hanoi. That’s the only way to do it in Asia, she says. “I need very much a favor from you,” she said to the customer service rep.

So we have reservations for the 29th through June 1 at the Classic Street Hotel in the Old Quarter Hanoi…my third visit there and very much looking forward to it.

“The River of Lost Footsteps”

Posted on by Laughingnomad

The Bangkok Post review says that this timely book by Thant Myint-U, published by Faber and Faber London, rewrites 3,500 years of Burmese history “in order to enrich today’s debate on Burma and establish a strong base for future analysis and consideration.”

The author is critical of the “absence of nuance” and the “ahistorical” nature of current debate on the country. Therefore, Myint-U focuses on why Burma’s military machine developed into such a powerful force by General Ne Win, the country’s “supremo” from 1962 virtually until his death in 2002, and why the country became so isolated.
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Now The Junta Makes More Sense

Posted on by Laughingnomad

It appears that the cyclone has done the Burmese generals a big favor in their genocide against minorities. The International Herald Tribune reports that the junta is stealing and stockpiling food and supplies…doling it out only to those favored…the Burmese. Bloggers in Burma report that the Karen and others are fleeing by the hundreds across the border to Mae Sot Thailand.
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Burma Embassy, Cows And A Guesthouse

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Bought plane tickets a month ago to go to Burma with a Thai friend. But Air Asia won’t let us cancel our tickets without losing the money. So I spent all afternoon in the embassy office with a few others waiting for the official to appear at the window. But don’t know if I’m going to get a visa or not…you are retired? What was your last job? What organization did you work for? He really looked over my passport closely…too many stamps in too many countries? Maybe I am a journalist traveling around the world? We are only offering visas on a case by case basis, he said. Your application will have to go up to headquarters, he said. And instead of the usual one day turnover, it wouldn’t be available for another 10 days. So I gave him my phone number and he will call and let me know if my application has been accepted. I doubt it. But my Thai friend who wants to go with me has two students at Kasetsart University that are from Burma and whose parents work for the government. They are going to call the embassy on my behalf. We’ll see.

Then on the way back to my hotel I was surprised by an exhibit at the Phrom Phong BTS station. There in front of the Emporium Mall were the same Herd of Cows that we saw in the plazas in the center of Prague in 2004. The life-size fancifully painted cows were culled however. Most of the most suggestive and political cows were missing…the humorous ones probably not translatable.

BTW, I highly recommend new friendly Som’s Guesthouse on a little soi next to Queen’s Park Hotel on Sukhumvit 22. Beautiful large room with wood parque floor, refrigerator, TV with scads of channels, free breakfast and best of all free WiFi…all for 800 baht ($25) a night!

Aid To Burma

Posted on by Laughingnomad

The U.N. is reporting as many as 100,000 dead and more missing.

International media is reporting that most countries wanting to send aid to Burma, including the U.S., are waiting outside the country in ships, helicopters and planes…waiting for permission from the junta to let them enter. NGO’s insist on distributing the aid themselves but the junta wants it to go through them…of course…and then they’ll snag much of it and take the credit for the rest…not wanting to admit that they can’t handle the catastrophe themselves.

Commercial flights, however, have partially resumed. The web is awash with people in Asia wanting to help. Yesterday a woman posted this:

I am presently talking w/ my colleagues back in Myanmar at the International School Yangon (Rangoon) and they are setting up a fund raising ‘relief’ fund in Singapore that they will be able to access to directly help the people of Myanmar without governmental interference – soon. Most likely I will find out tomorrow, Friday May 9, some more information and will be able to share that with you. Our school is putting together several community service projects to rebuild homes, provide safe water, food and other services. I will post the information as soon as I have it.

A Swiss guy living and working in Rangoon has this to say this afternoon:

“To my knowledge most of the money donated to charity will end up in administration and of the money that actually makes it to Myanmar a huge percentage will end up in the hands of the corrupt Junta. The best thing would be to bring in the money in cash and hook up with a NGO who can distribute it directly to the places where it’s most needed. I was in Bangkok during the disaster but some friends went to buy rice and gave it straight to the people on the street. That’s also a way to do it. I’m going back to Yangon tomorrow with lots of candles and purification tablets.”

A Thai friend and I bought tickets for Rangoon a month ago. Hmmmm.

Panties Subverting Burma’s Junta

Posted on by Laughingnomad

To widespread international condemnation, the military in Myanmar, also known as Burma, crushed mass anti-regime demonstrations recently and continues to hunt down and imprison those who took part.

So the International Herald Tribune has reported Friday that women in several countries have begun sending their panties to Myanmar embassies in a culturally insulting gesture of protest against the recent brutal crackdown there, a campaign supporter said Friday.

“It’s an extremely strong message in Burmese and in all Southeast Asian culture,” said Liz Hilton, who supports an activist group that launched the “Panties for Peace” drive earlier this week.

A comment on the Lanna Action For Burma web site goes like this:

The protest is innovative, but ironically it depends upon the willingness of women to reinforce a belief of the innate superiority of men over women that is held not only by Burma’s generals but also by most men in the country. Men are potent; women are weak. Thus women’s genitalia–especially if menstruating–are dangerous to men’s potency.

Day-to-day this means, among other things, that men in Burma actively avoid having contact with women’s lower garments, and that special restrictions are placed on the hanging of women’s washing that do not apply to men’s articles. Perhaps the organisers of the protest should have considered these features of the “culturally insulting gesture” before going ahead with it. Who is really being insulted?

The group, Lanna Action for Burma, says the country’s superstitious generals, especially junta leader Gen. Than Shwe, also believe that contact with women’s underwear saps them of power.

What do you think?

Power To The People

Posted on by Laughingnomad

It is ironic that people who suffer from the worst oppression seem to be the most able to thrive and “find themselves and their calling,” a woman friend from Iran recently said to me as we were discussing the release of Haleh Esfandier, the Iranian American who was recently released after 7 months in jail in Iran. And there is Sharon Ebadi, the Iranian attorney who has been incarcerated for defending over 200 jailed journalists and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003. Recalling the take-over of a television station by a group of women in Oaxaca last year, I am so proud of the women of the world who are courageously fighting for justice.

But of course, as in Oaxaca, it is usually the destitute that have the least to lose, except for their lives. You won’t see an uprising in the U.S. anytime soon. We have the most to lose…jobs that provide 401Ks destined for retirement and education of our children are more important to us in the short term than holding corrupt leaders accountable. Witness the University of Florida journalism student who was tasered after being handcuffed and removed from a venue where he was vociferously questioning Senator Kerry. See video here. Safer to hold leaders in other countries accountable.

Cambodia
Nuon Chea, the top surviving leader of Cambodia’s notorious Khmer Rouge, whose radical policies were responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people, was charged by an International Tribunal Wednesday with crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Nuon Chea, considered the right-hand man to Pol Pot, was arrested early Wednesday morning at his home in Pailin in northwestern Cambodia near the Thai border and flown to the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, where he was put in the custody of a U.N.-supported genocide tribunal. The late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998 and his former military chief, Ta Mok, died in 2006 in government custody.

The tribunal is investigating abuses committed when the communist Khmer Rouge held power in 1975-79. The Khmer Rouge have been blamed for the deaths of their countrymen from starvation, ill health, overwork and execution.

Officers later took the 82-year-old Nuon Chea – who denies any wrongdoing – into custody and put him into a car and then a helicopter for the capital, Phnom Penh, as his son and dozens of onlookers gathered to watch the historic scene in silence, witnesses said.

Burma
UPDATE Sunday September 23, 2007
The AP has reported that 20,000 March in Yangon (formerly Rangoon) Myanmar…double the number that marched yesterday in Mandalay.

The monks shouted support for Suu Kyi, while about 10,000 people protected them by forming a human chain along the route but riot police and barbed wire barricades blocked hundreds of monks and anti-government demonstrators from approaching the home of the detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi

Plainclothes police trailed the marchers. Some, armed with shotguns, were posted at street corners. Sunday’s security presence came after several days of a hands-off attitude by the authorities, who had clearly been trying to avoid provoking the well-disciplined and widely respected monks. One observer said “the military is not prepared, unless things get worse, to directly confront the monks in their uniforms but violence on a significant scale is not to be discounted.”

UPDATE Saturday September 22, 2007
London’s Guardian reported that witnesses say that upwards of 10,000 monks marched through the city of Mandalay in the 5th straight day of demonstrations against the iron-fisted military junta, the largest demonstration in a decade.

September 19, 2007
The associated press today reported that the Myanmar monks were taking to the streets for the second day in a row, marching in disciplined ranks as they extended a series of spirited demonstrations against the country’s military government into a second month.

The marches on Tuesday by thousands of monks in Myanmar marked the 19th anniversary of the 1988 crackdown in Myanmar in which the current junta took over after crushing a failed pro-democracy rebellion that sought an end to military rule, imposed since 1962.

The junta held general elections in 1990, but refused to honor the results when pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won. Suu Kyi has been detained under house arrest for more than 11 years.

The Yangon march and rallies in other cities Wednesday were to protest hardship brought on by the government’s economic policies, especially a sudden hike in fuel prices. The hike last month sparked the persistent protests – first by pro-democracy activists and now primarily by monks. The rallies also reflect long pent-up opposition to the repressive military regime.

The authorities know that restraining monks poses a dilemma. Monks are highly respected in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, and abusing them in any way could cause public outrage.

In addition to protests, monks have threatened to cut off contact with the military and their families, and to refuse alms from them – a humiliating gesture that would embarrass the junta.

Monks have nothing to lose…except their lives.