The Irrawaddy Magazine (Sept. 2011, Vol.1 No.3)

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September 2011, Vol.19 No.3

Smiles for a Change The Eye of the Storm

From Outpost to Outpost

A Hero Behind the Lines

A Kyat in the Dark

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A Trip to Arakan State

A Port Heading for a Storm?

Battleground

It’s Written in the Stars

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Contents

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38

Cover Story The Eye of the Storm

profile

A Hero Behind the Lines

Aung Zaw

Kyaw Zwa Moe

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42

Travel

From Outpost to Outpost

Culture & Society

Sai Zom Hseng

The Floating World Ba Kaung

24 photo essay

The Lady through My Lens The Irrawaddy

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48

commentary

Dam Lies and Statistics

cartoon

Aung Din

Harn Lay

32 article

A Kyat in the Dark

Yeni Cover: The Irrawaddy The Irrawaddy, published since 1993, was established by Burmese journalists living in exile. We are an independent, non-profit publication providing in-depth news and information on Burma and Southeast Asia. Editor: Aung Zaw Administrator: Win Thu Sales & Advertising: advertising@irrawaddy.org Subscription: subscriptions@irrawaddy.org mailing Address: The Irrawaddy, P.O.Box 242, CMU Post Office, Chiang Mai 50202, Thailand E-mail: editors@irrawaddy.org; information@irrawaddy.org Printer: Chotana Printing (Chiang Mai, Thailand) Subscription rates (1 Year)

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From Outpost

to Outpost

An Irrawaddy correspondent visits both sides of the tense line dividing the Burmese military and the United Wa State Army–a place of neither war nor peace.

By SAI ZOM HSENG

F

rom our perch on top of Loi Pang Lone, a mountain in northern Shan State, Kyaw Kyaw and I could clearly see the red flag flying over the United Wa State Army (UWSA) outpost and the yellow, green and red flag flying over the Tatmadaw (Burmese armed forces) outpost, which were facing each other in the distance.

Kyaw Kyaw (not his real name) is a captain in the Burmese army. We studied together at the Defense Services Academy (DSA), Burma’s top training ground for military officers, and after graduation we were both deployed to northern Shan State and served in the same regional command, although in different battalions. From that point, however, our lives and career paths went in very different directions. Kyaw Kyaw continued along the route of a loyal military man, while I left both the army and Burma for a journalistic career in Thailand—from where it is possible to report freely and safely about events taking place inside Burma.

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Travel

A soldier from the United Wa State Army holds his weapon under the watchful eyes of children in Mong Yawn, a Wa stronghold near the Burmese border with Thailand. photo: reuters

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Today, Kyaw Kyaw is in charge of a Tatmadaw outpost that mans a checkpoint on the track to Pang Kham, formerly known as Panghsang, which is the site of the UWSA headquarters. Pang Kham, which is located about 170 miles from Lashio and is the capital of the Wa people, had been my intended destination. But when my car stopped at Kyaw Kyaw’s checkpoint, he recognized my face and invited me to visit his outpost.

As we toured the post and I observed the three dozen soldiers under Kyaw Kyaw’s command performing their duties, I felt nervous that somehow my secret professional identity would be revealed and the troops would move to snatch the journalist infiltrator.

But Kyaw Kyaw told me that his troops were very loyal to him, so I shouldn’t worry.

He sent a couple of his soldiers out to find us some meat for dinner, and later we enjoyed a nice wild boar curry. Afterwards, we sat on a bamboo bench and recalled our time at the DSA, easily slipping back into the goodnatured ribbing we used to give each other as cadets at the academy.

The early evening air was cool at mountaintop altitude, but our conversation became more heated when it shifted to Kyaw Kyaw’s daily life as an outpost commander.

His militaristic passion rose to the surface as he told me that he believes both the checkpoint and his duty as its commander are very important. The checkpoint is run by a task force, Kyaw Kyaw said, which is composed of members of the military, police, forestry service and anti-drug agency. He is the head of the task force, whose job it is to filter out illegal migrants, block the flow of goods to and from China and block supplies to the UWSA. As Kyaw Kyaw spoke, he looked out towards the mountainous area controlled by the UWSA, and even with daylight fading I could see the coffee mug in his hand shaking.

“They [the UWSA] are just separatists,” he said. “They want to break away from the union and depend on China. They should

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recognize the tolerance of the government.

Even though they still want to hold arms, they should transform into part of the Border Guard Force (BGF).”

The BGF was initiated in 2009, but the main ethnic armed groups, such as the UWSA, the Kachin Independence Army, the Shan State Army and the New Mon State Party, have refused to join the government force, which is under the command of the Tatmadaw.

What is now the UWSA was previously part of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB), whose goal was to unseat the Burmese regime.

But the Wa, who made up the rank and file of the CPB, mutinied against its ethnic Burman leadership in the late 1980s and then signed a cease-fire agreement with the government in 1989. The current UWSA, led by Bao Yu Xiang, is known as the strongest and wealthiest ethnic armed group in Burma. It controls an area in Shan State known as Special Region 2, and military observers say it has 20,000 troops and can add more if it desires.

But Kyaw Kyaw still believes that the Tatmadaw troops could attack and defeat the UWSA. “They [the UWSA] built a strong line of defense with bunkers and connecting channels, and they cleared the trees and bushes on the hills where their bunkers are located. It’s not possible to get to the top of the hills because they dug up the ground with bulldozers, which makes it very difficult to walk on. We also received information that their bunkers are equipped with 0.5 machine guns,” said Kyaw Kyaw.

As a result, Kyaw Kyaw said, if the Tatmadaw decided to attack the UWSA, it would be more effective to do so from the air.

“We’re just waiting for our orders,” he said.

As darkness fell, our serious conversation came to an end and Kyaw Kyaw retrieved his guitar and sent one of his sergeants for a bottle of rum. We drank and sang songs beside a big fire and later, when everyone lay down for the night, the only sounds on the

Travel

mountain were the chirping of the crickets and the snoring of the two drunken sergeants.

The next day I met Kyaw Kyaw’s junior officer, a lieutenant commanding the security force assigned to the Takawek Bridge on the Salween River, who came to visit the post. Placing his MA-3 automatic assault rifle on the bamboo table that sat beside the bamboo bench, Min Min (also a pseudonym) called me “A Ko,” or “brother,” and treated me as if I were still serving in the military. He then spoke about his life guarding the bridge, telling me that his duty is not only to secure the road, but also to watch the Salween River because the transportation of illegal goods in the area is normally done by boat.

After two days and one night at Kyaw Kyaw’s outpost, I continued toward my destination of Pang Kham. Only a few minutes after my car left the outpost, we arrived at the first UWSA checkpoint where a UWSA soldier wearing an olive green uniform and white gloves signaled for us to stop, walked up to the car and saluted.

Another soldier— who appeared to be in charge—then told us to step out of the car and said they were looking for drugs and weapons.

After talking with him for a few minutes, I realized that he could speak Wa, Chinese, Shan, Burmese and Kachin.

We later stopped at Mang Xiang, the first town in the UWSA-controlled area, a dust-covered place where most travelers in the region take a break from their journey for food, water and petrol.

The US government has labeled the UWSA a narcotic trafficking organization since May 2003. It says the UWSA is the largest drugproducing organization in Southeast Asia and has placed several UWSA leaders on its Assets Control List. Despite this, local authorities in Mang Xiang had placed anti-narcotics posters around town that said, “Wa State has wiped out drugs and narcotics since June 26, 2005, and

Cars transport goods and passengers on the unpaved Tang Yan-Panghsang road. photo: the irrawaddy

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Pang Kham, seen from Memorial Square photo: the irrawaddy

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the Wa Police warn you that Wa State is not the place to produce and smuggle drugs.”

After another four hours in the car I arrived at Pang Kham, a small town located on the China-Burma border where the residents’ language, culture and daily lives are influenced more by China than by Burma proper. In fact, my driver told me that if I can’t speak Chinese, I would have difficulty in Pang Kham, and I soon found out what he was talking about—every person I met in town spoke Chinese, and very few spoke Burmese or even Shan. As a result, I often had to use body language to communicate.

The day after I arrived in Pang Kham, I met a UWSA captain named Nyi Kut, who invited me to lunch in the only restaurant in town where it’s possible to order in Burmese. Nyi Kut said that he joined the UWSA when he was 15 years old and is very proud to be a Wa soldier. Although the Wa people were formerly known as the “headhunters” and some people look down on them because of this label, Nyi Kut said this is meant to honor their bravery.

As we relaxed after our meal, Nyi Kut told me that he had been involved in battles with the Shan State Army (SSA) in 2001.

“When we attacked the SSA, we showed our courage. We also stood in front of the cowardly Burmese soldiers and hundreds of our troops sacrificed their lives to show the courage of our people. But later, our leaders realized that there is no benefit in fighting against other ethnic groups,” said Nyi Kut. The UWSA has since assisted another ethnic armed group, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA). In late August 2009, UWSA forces became involved in fighting with the Tatmadaw following escalating clashes between the military and ethnic Kokang forces from the MNDAA.

Travel

On Aug 27, 2009, the UWSA, the MNDAA and the National Democratic Alliance Army, an allied ethnic armed group based in Mongla, seized the town of Laogai back from the Tatmadaw, who had taken the town days earlier. The combined forces also ambushed a nearby police patrol, reportedly killing one police officer, wounding another, taking 42 officers hostage and seizing 56 automatic assault rifles—mainly M-16s. Further details of the operations could not be confirmed due to media restrictions within Burma, but The New Light of Myanmar, a state-run-media newspaper, reported that 26 Tatmadaw troops were killed and 47 wounded during the attack on Laogai.

Nyi Kut said that the UWSA troops are ready to fight the Burmese army to gain autonomy for the Wa people, but they haven’t received the order from their leaders.

“Our ancestors were very aggressive and strong,” said Nyi Kut. “We believe that the Wa people can defeat all of our enemies. But we have to stay silent to keep the peace between us and the Burmese army.”

Memorial Square in Pang Kham is a testament to the Wa bravery that Nyi Kut boasted about. The square is located on a hill from which the entire city can be seen, and people of all ages come there to walk and jog for exercise and relax and chat with friends. I sat in the square with Nyi Kut and his sister, E Hlwe Rhine, and while we watched some schoolchildren play nearby I asked her about the current state of life for the Wa people.

She sighed and said that right now things are difficult because of Burmese government restrictions and blockades.

“In the current situation, we have to depend on the Chinese people who came to our region more than a decade ago. They pay us small wages and discriminate against us in our own home,” said E Hlwe Rhine.

She said that many Wa people work as housekeepers, servers and night guards for

hotels, restaurants and wealthy business people.

“Wa people like us have to get jobs from the big bosses. Although they give us a small amount of money, we have no choice. Working at massage parlors is a good job and we can get a lot of money, but we can’t get jobs there because we have rough physical features. The owners just hire girls from China and Burma, who are better looking.”

E Hlwe Rhine said that a basic worker can earn from 60 yuan (US $8) a day, but sex workers in “massage parlor” brothels can earn 200 Yuan ($26) a day. She said she hopes the new government will soon open up more trading, employment and travel opportunities for her people so they can earn enough at normal jobs to improve their quality of life.

Given the fact that the UWSA and the Burmese military have for a long time been a hair-trigger away from armed conflict, not many people have visited the Wa territory in recent years unless they had to. But having sat down to dinner with friends on both sides, I’d like to return someday, and it would be nice if by that time there were peace and we could all dine together.

In that regard, there was an encouraging development after I returned to Thailand when in early September, Naypyidaw temporarily dropped its BGF proposal with respect to the UWSA and its ally, the MNDAA, prompting them to sign what Burma’s state media called “initial agreements for cooperation” with the government. The reports added that the government and the ethnic armed groups agreed to continue to hold peace talks with a Peace-Making Committee that would be formed by the government.

So if the future talks go well and a permanent cease-fire agreement is signed, then maybe Kyaw Kyaw and Nyi Kut will never receive the orders to attack that they are waiting for, and maybe we’ll be able to share a meal together after all.

September 2011

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Commentary

Dam Lies and Statistics A campaign of misinformation about the Myitsone dam in Kachin State threatens to obscure the very real threat this project poses to the Irrawaddy River and the people of Burma

By AUNG DIN

G

rowing numbers of people are speaking out against a massive dam being built at Myitsone, the origin of the Irrawaddy River in Kachin State. The Irrawaddy River is the lifeblood of the country, and this dam—being constructed by China, for China—will cause irreparable damage to the country. This is a turning point for Burma’s officials.

Which will they put first: China’s ready money, or the interests of the people? Chinese and Burmese officials have responded to the outcry with a campaign of lies, when what is really needed is a truthful assessment of the impact of this megaproject.

Burmese living in Malaysia protest against the Myitsone dam project outside the Burmese embassy in Kuala Lumpur. photo: reuters

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The first lie that needs to be dispelled is the claim that the people of Kachin State support the dam. In fact, the resentment of the Kachin people toward the Myitsone dam has been sustained, diverse and dynamic for years. China insults the Kachin people by claiming that they widely support this project.

Duwa Howa Zau Gan, a prominent Kachin leader, believes that the Chinese government has two objectives in building the Myitsone dam and six other large dams at the confluence of the Irrawaddy River and the Mayhka and Malihka rivers: One is to get hydropower to satisfy China’s growing energy needs; and another is to control Burma under the threat of the possibility of the collapse of these dams.

For Duwa Zau Gan, the Myitsone dam, located just 29 km from the Kachin State capital of Myitkyina, where he lives, is like a time bomb. The people of Kachin State will have to live in constant fear of its sudden collapse, which could be triggered by natural causes, such as earthquakes or heavy rain, or by human error. That is why he and other Kachin leaders have protested against the project since he learned of the agreement between the Burmese military regime and the Chinese government in May 2007 to build seven hydropower dams in Kachin State.

On May 21, 2007, Duwa Zau Gan and 11 other Kachin leaders wrote to Snr-Gen Than Shwe, then chairman of the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), to demand that he put a stop to the Myitsone dam project. These leaders are not alone. Thousands of Kachin people, as well as civil society groups throughout Burma, have repeatedly appealed to the Chinese and Burmese authorities to stop dam construction projects since 2007.

However, the Chinese government has completely ignored the pleas and continued to push ahead with the project.

The Chinese corporations that are building these dams have taken the lead in propagating untruths about the public reaction to the project.

In a paper presented to a Technical Workshop held in Naypyidaw on Sept 17, 2011, organized by the Ministry of Electrical Power (1), Li Guanghua, the president of the CPI Yunnan International Power Investment Co, Ltd (CPI), claimed that “the Kachin

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people generally supported the project construction.”

Li based his claim on a public participation survey that included people of “different careers, ethnic groups, faiths and education backgrounds,” which found that 80.4 percent of interviewees believed the project would “bring more job opportunities and higher incomes to local people,” while 62.8 percent thought that “hydropower implementation could significantly promote development of the local economy.” Most of the interviewees, the survey concluded, “were supportive of the country’s development and project construction.”

Concerning the 13.8 percent of interviewees who didn’t support the project, Li said that they were people from Tang Hpe, the first village to be relocated, who didn’t understand the project at the

Commentary

An artist’s rendering of the completed Myitsone dam photo: the irrawaddy

time of the survey. He provided no further details on who was included in the survey, or how, where and when it was conducted.

Li was equally disingenuous about the environmental impact of the project, which he said CPI took very seriously. The facts, however, suggest otherwise. He said that in December 2008, CPI hired more than 100 experts from China and Burma to spend more than six months on a joint environmental field investigation. The Chinese experts were led by the Changjiang Institute of Survey, Planning, Design & Research (CISPDR), while the Burmese experts were from the Biodiversity and Nature Conservation Association (BANCA), based in Rangoon. These experts conducted many technical exchanges from June to September 2009

in Myitkyina, Wuhan and other places. Li noted that in March 2010, CISPDR submitted an environmental impact assessment (EIA) report that supported the project. What he didn’t mention, however, was that BANCA’s EIA report, submitted to CPI in the same month, recommended abandoning construction of the Myitsone dam.

At the same workshop where Li delivered his one-sided account, Dr Htin Hla, the chairman of BANCA, told a very different story. He said the joint assessment, carried out by 84 experts from BANCA and a few dozen Chinese experts, lasted just five months—from mid-January to June 2009—instead of the originally planned seven. Moreover, he said, the Burmese experts were not given permission to study the agreement between the two governments.

BANCA finished its draft report in October 2009 and submitted its final report to CPI in March 2010.

In the report, it recommended that CPI “abandon the Myitsone dam site because of the huge cultural significance of the Myitsone confluence for both the Kachin people and the people of Burma as a whole.”

The report stated that constructing a series of large and medium dams in Kachin State would “definitely impact on the people of Burma as a whole, in addition to [having] adverse impacts on riverine, aquatic, terrestrial and wetlands ecosystems.” The report recommended substituting the Myitsone dam with two smaller hydropower dams at appropriate locations above the confluence of Malihka and Mayhka rivers.

The BANCA report also said that a “systematic social impact assessment must be carried out by competent social scientists,” and urged the authorities to “fairly balance between negative and positive aspects of the dams” before approving their construction. However, these recommendations were ignored by CPI, which simply threw the BANCA report into the trash bin and relied entirely on the CISPDR report to get the approval of the Burmese authorities, who gave the go-ahead for construction to begin last year.

In response to questions about the report, which was leaked to environmental groups and activists in June, Htin Hla said that under BANCA’s contract

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Kachin women meet on the banks of the Irrawaddy River. photo: the irrawaddy

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Commentary

with CPI, he was not at liberty to disclose his organizations’ findings to the public. However, he said that the EIA could not be completed with just a single investigation, but should be an ongoing process that includes public participation and respects public opinion. He suggested that the authorities continue to conduct further assessments.

China and the Burmese regime have played up the benefits of the Myitsone dam, while ignoring the problems that typically beset hydropower projects.

According to Li, the project will provide a significant boost to Burma’s economy. He said the total investment of over US $20 billion will become Burma’s fixed assets, while the country will receive about 2,000 MW of electricity—10 percent of total output—free of charge. Furthermore, during the project’s 50-year operation period, the Burmese government will receive about $54 billion in foreign exchange earnings. Roads, bridges and earthquake monitoring stations will be built. Job opportunities for the people of Burma will be created. And under the Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) agreement between the two countries, after 50 years, Burma will receive full ownership of the dams free of charge.

These figures cannot, however, be taken at face value. Building large dams is very expensive, and usually takes longer than planned, with outcomes that are always less than expected. In Thailand, for instance, 25 hydropower dams have produced just 50 percent of the electricity they were expected to generate over the past 20 years. It is also notoriously difficult to estimate the final cost of dams, in large part because they often become feeding troughs for construction companies and others involved in their creation. Former Argentinian President Carlos Menem once described the Yacyreta dam, located on Argentina’s border with Paraguay, as a “monument to corruption” that cost $11.5 billion to build—far more than the $2.7 billion originally estimated. It produced only 69 percent of the power it was designed for.

It is also unreasonable to expect that the dams being built in Kachin State by China will continue

to yield much electricity after they are handed over to Burma in 50 years’ time. All dams have finite lifetimes. Sediments from the upstream river accumulate on the floor of the reservoir because there is no way for them to flow further downstream. This build-up reduces the water level and, consequently, the amount of electricity that can be generated.

Therefore, when the Chinese government transfers ownership of the dams to Burma after 50 years, they may be little more than large man-made ponds full of sediment and mosquitoes, with no ability to produce electricity.

According to Li, there are at present a total of 4,819 employees working at the dam construction sites, of whom 1,440 are from Burma. Although he didn’t specify what kind of work the Burmese are doing, we can assume that most are engaged in unskilled labor and paid far less than their Chinese counterparts. In any case, there are already well over 3,000 Chinese workers involved in the project, a number that is expected to increase to 40,000 in the coming years. Having this many foreigners in this relatively remote part of the country, with no ability to speak the local language and no understanding of Kachhin culture, will surely have a negative impact on the lives of Kachin people, whose cultural heartland of Myitsone is being destroyed by these foreign invaders.

Speaking in Naypyidaw, Li said that the Myitsone project, from planning to design and construction, is being carried out according to Chinese standards, which he described as among “the strictest and most advanced standards systems in the world.”

In September 2003, China’s People’s Congress approved the Environmental Impact Assessment Law, which makes it mandatory for all enterprises to conduct an EIA with public participation prior to beginning construction on any project. Under this law, the EIA must also be approved by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, which in February 2006 issued the “Provisional Measures for Public Participation in Environmental Impact Assessment,” which include procedures for engaging the public in

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the EIA process, deciding who should be included in public participation, what methods can be used to facilitate public participation (hearings, soliciting comments, public forums, experts forums, etc) and how to address, incorporate and preserve public input on the EIA. While China may have, at least on paper, a welldeveloped system for addressing public concerns about the impact of mega-projects, there is no evidence that CPI employed it before implementing its dam

Now is the time for the government of President Thein Sein to make a choice: listen to China, or listen to the will of the Burmese people.

projects in Kachin State. BANCA’s recommendations were ignored and its EIA report and other official documents were never made available to the public.

No public hearings or experts forums were conducted before construction began. The people of Kachin State and the rest of Burma only learned about the dam projects when the regime’s mouthpiece, the New Light of Myanmar, ran a story on the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Department of Hydropower Implementation and CPI on June 20, 2009.

According to the intergovernmental Mekong River Commission, a full EIA requires a total of ten assessments, including basin and catchment ecosystems and habitats; river flows and water levels; flooding patterns; wetland ecosystems and habitats; irrigated agriculture; population growth in relation to domestic and industrial water use; water quality (including suspended sediments); saline intrusion in river deltas; riverbank erosion and sedimentation/

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channel erosion; and flood management in the lower basin and delta. The EIAs conducted by BANCA and CISPDR were just a preliminary assessment, and more assessments remain to be done.

Although Li indicated that further studies are being conducted on the impact of the project on downstream hydrological conditions, watercourse evolution, ecology and water resource utilization, these studies should have been done before the project was approved and the start of construction.

Despite the best efforts of CPI and the Burmese government to obscure the facts about the Myitsone dam project, the people of Burma are no longer in the dark about the adverse impact it will have on the Irrawaddy River and their lives. Kachin leaders like Duwa Zau Gan are determined to protect their cultural heritage, and the people of Burma now know that they may lose the Irrawaddy forever if they don’t stand up to demand a halt to this project.

The Irrawaddy River is the major lifeline of the people of Burma, past, present and future.

Building a New York City-sized reservoir at the origin of the Irrawaddy will have a huge impact on agriculture, transportation and the environment.

It will exacerbate poverty and contribute to the destabilization of the climate. In 20 years time, it could wipe the Irrawaddy off the map. That is why the people of Burma have begun to realize that this is an issue of national importance.

Opposition to the Myitsone dam project grows day by day, and now is the time for the government of President Thein Sein to make a choice: listen to China, or listen to the will of the Burmese people. If Burma’s rulers continue to cling to China as their great benefactor, they will be swept aside by the tide of history. The Irrawaddy revolution has begun.

Aung Din was a student leader during the 1988 pro-democracy uprising who served more than four years in prison. He is now the executive director of the Washington-based US Campaign for Burma.

Editor’s Note: On the day this issue of The Irrawaddy went to press, Burma’s President Thein Sein reportedly told Parliament that construction of the Myitsone Dam would be suspended.

Informative, reliable and in-depth reporting www.irrawaddy.org

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The Eye of the A meeting between President Thein Sein and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi brought a ray of political sunshine to Burma, but will the winds of change blow strong enough to sweep away the dark clouds of repression that still swirl around the country?

By AUNG ZAW

Aung San Suu Kyi meets President Thein Sein at the presidential palace in Naypyidaw. photo: the irrawaddy

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Cover Story

Storm

September 2011

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F

or the last two decades, Snr-Gen Than Shwe’s regime devastated Burma in much the same manner that Cyclone Nargis devastated the Irrawaddy Delta in 2008. The junta’s oppression and mismanagement was a political, economic and human rights disaster for the Burmese people, and the sham election in 2010 gave every indication that the military authoritarianism that has battered the country would not leave anytime soon. But then in August, President Thein Sein invited Aung San Suu Kyi to Naypyidaw for a face-to-face meeting, and the pro-democracy leader seemed to emerge from the conference having discovered the calm at the center of the storm.

The meeting in Naypyidaw appeared to be a spontaneous, home grown initiative that was not sponsored or organized by the UN or any other foreign body, but rather was initiated by Thein Sein and his key supporting players in the new government. It was the first time that Suu Kyi and the new president had met, and they spoke cordially for about an hour and then had dinner together.

Burmese state media reported on the meeting and showed video footage and photographs of the two leaders sitting beneath a picture of Suu Kyi’s father, Burma’s independence hero Gen Aung San, who was the founder of the Burmese armed forces.

Suu Kyi was reportedly heartened to see her father’s photo displayed in the offices of the new government, and the tone of the state-run newspaper

It is notable that Suu Kyi’s body language changed after she met with Thein Sein—a broad smile returned to her face and she seemed more cheerful than prior to the meeting.

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report of her meeting with Thein Sein was genial and polite, using the Nobel laureate’s full name preceded by “Daw,” a term of respect for Burmese females.

“The president and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi tried to find potential common ground to cooperate in the interests of the nation and the people, putting aside different views,” reported the The New Light of Myanmar.

The news report did not go into any detail about what “potential common grounds” were discussed, but sources say one area of possible agreement was the need to find some acceptable manner for the impoverished nation to receive additional humanitarian assistance from foreign countries and organizations. The two reportedly discussed more contentious issues as well, including political prisoners, the 2008 Constitution, the 1990 election and the legal status of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD).

Some analysts and dissidents opined that the meeting was merely a show meant to persuade the members of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (Asean) to grant Burma the association’s chair in 2014, the UN to withdraw its call for a Commission of Inquiry into human rights abuses in Burma and Western governments to drop their sanctions. In addition, the role played by Suu Kyi’s long-time nemesis, Than Shwe, is still unclear. It is widely believed that he still pulls the strings with respect to the military and national security, but it’s less certain how involved he remains in domestic political, social and economic matters.

Whether the meeting between Thein Sein and Suu Kyi was a meaningful gesture or merely a publicity stunt undertaken with Than Shwe’s approval, or possibly even direction, remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: the meeting injected a sense of hope into the people of Burma and the international community.

It is notable that Suu Kyi’s body language changed after she met with Thein Sein—a broad smile returned to her face and she seemed more cheerful than prior to the meeting. In addition, her lieutenants, including veteran activist and former political prisoner Win Tin, were more upbeat than before and softened their tone. Despite the lack of specifics to emerge publicly about the meeting, the change in demeanor by both Suu Kyi and her staunchest pro-democracy supporters is a strong indication that the discussions

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between Suu Kyi and Thein Sein were substantive.

Since Suu Kyi’s visit to Naypyidaw, several other events have occurred that indicate both she and the government are seeking to establish an atmosphere more conducive to exploring the “potential common grounds” the Burmese state media reported on.

First, the government created a National Human Rights Commission, which by its very formation at least acknowledged that human rights are an issue in Burma, although the commission itself is comprised of ambassadors who served under the repressive regime and strongly defended its poor human rights record at the UN and in other international forums.

Then to the shock of many, Suu Kyi accepted the invitation of Zaw Zaw—one of Burma’s most powerful tycoons who is close to several regime hard-liners and is on the US sanctions list—to sit next to him at a football match.

In addition, for the first time in 23 years, Burma’s notorious censorship board allowed an article written

by Suu Kyi to be published in the Pyithu Khit News Journal, and the Messenger News ran an exclusive interview with the Nobel laureate as a cover story as well—although the censors took 10 months before allowing the interview to be published and cut all of its political content. Burmese officials also lifted a ban on exiled media websites, including The Irrawaddy, and other international media websites, but access to the sites is still sporadic and some analysts question whether the new Internet openness is permanent or only temporary.

Then when the International Day of Democracy rolled around, not only did the new government allow Suu Kyi and the NLD to commemorate the event, it held its own ceremony featuring speeches by former top junta generals, who are currently leading members of Parliament, singing the praises of the democratic form of government.

The totality of these events have left many, both inside and outside of Burma, exclaiming that the dark skies of repression over Burma are rapidly clearing and sunny political weather is near at hand. But skeptics point out that encircling all of these displays of openness are the same instances of authoritarian abuse that were present during the black era of the junta, and there is no sign that those abuses will dissipate anytime soon.

At the top of the list of unresolved issues are Burma’s undemocratic 2008 Constitution and

election laws, the more than 2,000 political prisoners held in Burmese jails, the ongoing human rights abuses by the military and the escalating armed conflicts with ethnic groups.

The lop-sided terms of the military-drafted 2008 Constitution were the main reason that Suu Kyi and the NLD boycotted the 2010 election, and opposition members have publicly called for the document to be amended to eliminate the provisions giving the military 25 percent of the seats in Parliament and establishing the military dominated National Defense and Security Council, provide more transparency with respect to the actions of the Executive Branch, put more power in the hands of the Parliament and be more inclusive of the general population. The problem is that any amendments to the Constitution require the approval of more than 75 percent of the MPs. This means the military must approve the amendments, which in turn means that Thein Sein and Suu Kyi can talk all they want, but unless the generals are on board with proposed reforms, the Constitution will remain the same.

Another thorny political issue is the status of the NLD, which won the 1990 general election in a landslide but was not allowed to form a new government and assume power, then was officially dissolved by the junta last year for refusing to register for the 2010 election. Despite the fact that it has been disbanded, the party continues to operate in defiance of attempts at intimidation and threats from the authorities. And while it is impossible to go back to 1990, it seems the NLD leaders and dissidents want to see the Burmese government publicly acknowledge that year’s election outcome.

With respect to political prisoners, the new government appears to be taking the old approach of resolving the issue by denying it even exists in the face of airtight factual evidence. Some government ministers have audaciously claimed that there are no political prisoners at all, while others have argued that even if some prisoners are being held for their political views, the number is in the hundreds, rather than the over 2,000 documented by the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).

In denying that the government holds a large number of political prisoners, if any, top Burmese officials point to the fact that many included in the

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list compiled by the AAPP were sent to prison for violating the country’s criminal laws. But this is the reddest of red herrings, because these “criminal laws” that they refer to include the vague and draconian state security laws such as the Electronics Act and other acts outlawing “illegal associations” and covering the “disturbance of peace and stability.”

Under these laws, any activist student, politician, monk or ethnic leader engaged in opposition political activity could be charged with a criminal violation at any time, and even if they weren’t so engaged, the junta often framed them to make it appear as if they were.

The new government seems to be equally twofaced about conflicts in the ethnic areas, where human rights abuses such as using forced labor and rape as a method of intimidation continue to be documented. While professing to want peace, Thein Sein has labeled the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) “a mere insurgent group” and blamed them for the current armed conflicts even though the government has encroached on the KIA’s longestablished territory, sold off Kachin State’s natural resources and evicted tens of thousands of Kachin State residents from their land to make way for the massive Myitsone Dam. The Burmese military seems equally determined to escalate the conflicts with ethnic armed militias in Karen and Shan states, where troop reinforcements and skirmishes are reported on a weekly basis.

All of these issues must be resolved if the overarching goal of “national reconciliation” is to be achieved. So despite the top-level meetings, conferences and speeches, as well as the slivers of additional media freedom, there is still a long way to go before Burma can say that meaningful change has occurred.

Some international actors, such as US Special Representative and Policy Coordinator on Burma Derek Mitchell, are informed and cautious enough to understand this. Mitchell visited Burma in September and held talks with government officials, key members of Parliament, ethnic leaders, civil society groups based inside and outside of Burma and Suu Kyi. He raised issues regarding the detention of political prisoners, the government’s hostilities toward ethnic minorities and Burma’s military link-ups with North Korea. Though Mitchell

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said he was encouraged and pleased with the quality of openness of the exchanges, when his meetings were completed, he urged the government to prove critics who remained doubtful about reform in Burma wrong by taking concrete steps with respect to the larger issues.

“I offered respectfully that the government should take concrete actions in a timely fashion to demonstrate its sincerity and genuine commitment to reform and national reconciliation,” Mitchell said in a statement, and this message was soon repeated

by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Mitchell said that the possible steps included “releasing all political prisoners unconditionally, engaging in meaningful outreach to the political opposition, including Aung San Suu Kyi, and engaging in dialogue rather than armed conflict with ethnic minority groups.” He did not say directly that the US would lift sanctions if Burma made some progress—and in fact the US recently extended its sanctions—but did say, “…if the government takes genuine and concrete action, the United States will respond in kind.”

Others in the international community have been much more sanguine than the US about the prospects for reform in Burma. The Brussels-based International Crises Group (ICG) recently issued a report, “Myanmar: Major Reform Underway,” which called on the international community to support reform in Burma and the Thein Sein government.

“What is important to recognize now is that because the situation has changed both inside the country and in the region, so must the policies and tactics of those trying to use Asean as a lever to reform Myanmar [Burma],” ICG said in its 21-page report.

The report also said stated that Than Shwe no longer plays a role in day-to-day government decisions and has stopped “exercising any discernible influence over events,” except on one occasion in July when he reportedly summoned hard-liner and First Vice President Tin Aung Myint Oo to his residence and told him to “stop obstructing the work of the government.”

“This has given the president the confidence and space to implement his reform agenda,” said the report, although even some reform-minded

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government officials have warned that Thien Sein must tread lightly or risk a backlash from the hardline factions in both the government and military, who remain very powerful.

ICG claimed, however, that Thein Sein’s reform efforts enjoy the backing of armed forces commanderin-chief Gen Min Aung Hlaing and key government ministers, including the defense and home ministers.

The report added that there had been the possibility of a major release of political prisoners in May when Thein Sein announced a one-year clemency for all prisoners, but that did not happen due to disagreements within the top leadership. It also predicted that Asean is highly likely to grant its 2014 chairmanship to Burma, concluding that denying this request by the new Burmese government would deal a blow to the reformist group led by Thein Sein and encourage “reactionary elements in the administration.”

In addition to pushing for international support for Thein Sein and his new government, some in the international community have been attempting to sideline Suu Kyi. In fact, the German ambassador to Burma, Julius Georg Luy, has for months been trying to relegate Suu Kyi to the same status as representatives of the small democratic parties that Burma’s military regime allowed to win parliamentary seats during the sham election in order to lend legitimacy to the polls.

On March 14, the European ambassadors to Burma held a closed-door meeting to discuss their positions regarding the then upcoming EU sanctions review. A well-informed source revealed that the German ambassador argued against mentioning Suu Kyi’s name in official EU communications. Then after being informed that EU ambassadors were planning to meet with Suu Kyi, the German diplomat said that they should not meet the NLD leader separately, but only together with representatives of other opposition parties. Together with his Belgian and Spanish colleagues, he argued that other democratic and ethnic forces might be offended if it became public that Suu Kyi was being afforded special treatment.

In response, the UK ambassador rightly pushed for a separate meeting with Suu Kyi, pointing out that she is still the undisputed leader of the democratic opposition—a fact that EU member states should not deny. Germany, however, still believed that the goal

of such a meeting should be to seek a wide range of views from several interlocutors, without favoring anyone in particular. The Germans must have been puzzled, then, when Thein Sein decided to hold a one-on-one meeting with Suu Kyi and she was given a VIP reception when she arrived solo at the concurrent Naypyidaw-hosted economic conference.

Despite the attempts by some to sideline her, there is no doubt that Suu Kyi is still important to the Burmese people and the majority of those in the international community. US envoy Mitchell addressed the issue directly after his visit with the pro-democracy leader: “I met with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and leaders of the National League for Democracy to discuss their perspectives on recent developments in the country, the future of their party, and US policy approaches,” he said. “I was reminded consistently during my visit that Daw Suu remains deeply important to the citizens of this country, Burman and ethnic minority alike, and that any credible reform effort must include her participation.”

In addition to pushing for international support for Thein Sein and his new government, some in the international community have been attempting to sideline Suu Kyi.

There is also no doubt that the regime still sees Suu Kyi as the main political opposition leader, as attested to by her meeting with Thein Sein. But it cannot be denied that after two decades of little apparent progress, even some members of the Burmese opposition wonder whether Suu Kyi, who is now 66 years old, can regain the momentum that propelled the NLD to victory in 1990 and deliver

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current reforms with respect to the big ticket items of true democracy and genuine human rights and equality.

During the nationwide uprising in 1988, Suu Kyi reluctantly entered the fray, saying that as independence hero Aung San’s daughter, she could not remain indifferent to all that was happening in Burma at that time. Addressing the hundreds of thousands of people who came to listen to her first speech in September 1988 at Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon, she declared: “This national crisis could in fact be called the second struggle for national independence.”

This time, however, the adversary was not the foreign colonialists that her father faced in the first struggle for independence, but home-grown dictators who, both before and after Suu Kyi spoke those fateful words in 1988, have reduced the resource-rich nation to the ranks of one of the world’s poorest pariah states. The question now is whether Suu Kyi can finally beat the odds and succeed as her father did, or whether her highly principled approach will doom her “second struggle” to failure.

Critics say that Suu Kyi lacks the pragmatism of Gen Aung San and doesn’t have a comprehensive understanding of Burma’s political complexity.

They have warned that if she doesn’t change her

Although her meeting with Thein Sein raised hopes and expectations at home and abroad, Suu Kyi is more aware than anyone of the Burmese government’s past use of the divide and rule strategy.

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tactics and strategy, she could become an obstacle to progress in Burma.

Some opposition politicians even criticized her stance on the election last year, saying Suu Kyi should have created a proxy party to participate in the polls and endorsed politicians who wanted to run in the election. She has thus far been opaque about the 2015 election, not saying one way or the other whether her rejection of the last election means she would rule out running in the next, especially if the government does not change the Constitution and elections laws that spurred the last boycott. This may not seem like a pressing question at the moment, but many of her supporters have begun to wonder if she has even considered her strategy for the coming years.

Suu Kyi has sent similarly ambiguous messages with respect to Western sanctions placed on the government and its leaders and cronies. For instance, she appears to remain broadly supportive of measures aimed at putting pressure on the ruling regime, even as she calls on would-be Western investors to ensure that their investments are ethical. Observers find it difficult to decipher whether this means she sees the lifting of sanctions as inevitable, or is warning investors to stay out, given the fact that “ethical” investment remains impossible under the country’s current circumstances.

Some critics have also questioned the amount of time and energy Suu Kyi expends on meeting different Burmese constituencies and foreigners at her office and delivering her message to a wide variety of domestic and international forums, arguing that it would be more effective to concentrate her efforts on selected groups. Her supporters, however, understand that it is important for her to meet many different players in Burmese society and the international community in order to hear different opinions, rather than just living in her comfort zone where she can easily find admirers and supporters who have blind faith in her leadership.

In that respect, some say she needs to negotiate with the government to allow leading NLD members to travel outside of Burma to understand more about regional affairs and international relations regarding Burma. They argue that if Burma’s leaders intend to build a democratic society, they should allow NLD leaders to travel freely outside of Burma.

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Possibly more than any other criticism, Suu Kyi’s supporters and skeptics alike want to see her recruit more young leaders to lead the party so that she is not spread so thin and a new generation of leaders who understand the modern world can be groomed to lead the pro-democracy opposition into the future.

In doing so, however, one challenge that Suu Kyi will face is that from some of the younger generation of activists. Given that the military remains firmly in control of the country and continues to serve the interests of the elite at the expense of everyone else, some have come to regard her non-violent approach as a dead end. They feel that another confrontation, which inevitably will include another bout of bloodshed, cannot be avoided.

Opposition activists are well aware that when Suu Kyi jumped into the Burmese political fray at the time of the 1988 national uprising, she joined the studentled movement when it was already in progress. Even though she courageously took the helm of the overall opposition movement, formed the NLD, stood up to the generals, risked her life at Depayin and endured years of house arrest, she was never the one leading the street demonstrations and braving the bullets— in 1988 it was the students, and in 2007 it was the students and the monks. The generals are aware of this as well, which is probably the main reason why she is free but the 88 Generation Student group leaders remain in remote prisons.

But Suu Kyi, who spent most of her time prior to 1988 abroad, has learned and matured a lot since her first speech at Shwedagon Pagoda. The harsh reality of Burmese politics has taught her to build up her political muscles, she has learned how to converse with and send messages to her adversary, and after dissidents and exiled Burmese whispered into her ear that she needs to step up and be more pragmatic at the negotiating table, she began to view small steps towards reform, such as those that have taken place recently, as potential cracks in the military’s foundation that could be exploited for future change.

Suu Kyi’s charisma has morphed into a cool gravitas, with both she and her NLD aides appearing savvier and less likely to be bullied during the recent talks.

Suu Kyi has also gained more support from ethnic groups, including the Kachin, who over the last four

months have been engaged in armed conflict with government forces. In June, the Kachin leaders held a public ceremony at their headquarters to mark Suu Kyi’s birthday, signaling strong support for her. For her part, Suu Kyi has offered to be a peace mediator between ethnic groups and the government.

All in all, while the olive branches held out by Thein Sein’s government have somewhat quieted the seas of opposition discontent, nobody knows exactly what the government’s motivations are and whether true reform will follow, and therefore it is difficult to find the appropriate way to characterize the recent maneuvers. Suu Kyi probably did so as well as possible on Sept 15, when she marked the International Day of Democracy with a rousing speech at the NLD headquarters in Rangoon that included the following statement: “I believe we have reached a point where there is an opportunity for change,” she told the assembled crowd of around 200, which included representatives from various political parties, members of the 88 Generation Students group and the national media.

Significantly, Suu Kyi did not say that anything that has happened to date constituted meaningful change. Although her meeting with Thein Sein raised hopes and expectations at home and abroad, she is more aware than anyone of the Burmese government’s past use of the divide and rule strategy, and of the fact that the regime used meetings with her to manipulate domestic and international opinion.

She is also aware that every time in the past she has been invited to meet top government leaders and the people began to get excited that the winds of change were beginning to blow in Burma, she was afterwards detained and placed under house arrest.

With this in mind, Suu Kyi is sure to have her own time limit for the current talks, and will likely pull out if they do not bear fruit within that period. Speaking to Washington-based Radio Free Asia, she said that she is willing to be exploited if it is for the sake of the country. But if change isn’t delivered and the people of Burma and Suu Kyi are left frustrated once again, upheaval is on the horizon. With the arrival of Thein Sein’s new government, the Burmese people not only want to see a change in the political weather, they also want predictability.

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Photo Essay

The Lady through My Lens A Burmese photographer who has spent many years documenting social and political developments in his country portrays, in words and images, his most famous subject Text based on an interview with the photographer, who has asked to remain anonymous.

D

aw Aung San Suu Kyi brings decency and progress to our national politics.

I have had many chances to travel with her on her political tours. As a photojournalist who records history with a camera, the most exciting moments are those when I am in the middle of a massive crowd of Burmese people showing their tremendous support for her. At the same time, however, I am also concerned about her security.

I was very pleased when I saw her meet President Thein Sein at the presidential palace in Naypyidaw. She has always sought national reconciliation through political dialogue. I was

also in high spirits when I took photographs of her meetings with government ministers, economists and other dignitaries at an economic development forum in Naypyidaw’s International Convention Center.

I hope I have a chance to take pictures of another such meeting between Suu Kyi and President Thein Sein, but this time including other political leaders who remain behind bars.

All political prisoners should be released in the near future.

I passionately hope to see a time when Burma can bridge its political divide and our country is on the path to genuine national reconciliation.

Aung San Suu Kyi speaks at the opening ceremony of a new library in Pegu, where in August she made her first “political� trip outside of Rangoon since her release from house arrest in November 2010.

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Suu Kyi and NLD members in front of Ananda Temple in Pagan. Her trip to the ancient Burmese capital in July was her first outside of Rangoon since her release from house arrest in November 2010.

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Photo Essay

Top: Suu Kyi greets well-wishers at a market in Pagan.

Bottom left: A huge crowd gathers for a glimpse of Suu Kyi. Bottom middle: Suu Kyi speaks briefly to supporters in Pagan.

Bottom right : People wave as Suu Kyi departs.

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A woman kisses Suu Kyi as she makes her way through a throng of supporters in Pagan.

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Photo Essay

Top right: People gather for a glimpse of Burma’s iconic pro-democracy leader.

Middle right: Smiling faces greet Suu Kyi in Pagan.

Bottom right: Suu Kyi makes a formal speech at a ceremony in Pegu.

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Top left: Suu Kyi attends an economic forum in Naypyidaw.

Bottom left: Suu Kyi and Border Affairs Minister Brig-Gen Thein Htay speak after the economic forum.

Bottom right: Suu Kyi watches a football match with Myanmar Football Federation president Zaw Zaw, left.

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Photo Essay

Suu Kyi and President Thein Sein after their first meeting in Naypyidaw

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A Kyat in the Dark Would floating the Burmese currency help to revive the country’s economy? Some experts say it might help, but it’s only a start.

By YENI

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Article

Cashiers count piles of kyat banknotes at a private bank in Rangoon. photo: reuters

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A

s Burma’s new, ostensibly civilian government finally begins to acknowledge the multiple economic challenges facing the country, one issue has come to the fore: a foreign-exchange regime that has for decades played a major role in keeping Burma in the global economic wilderness.

The reason for this sudden interest in the value of the national currency, the kyat, has little to do with the supposed reformist tendencies of Thein Sein, the ex-general who now serves as Burma’s “civilian” president.

Rather, the kyat has thrust itself upon the new regime’s attention because it threatens to eviscerate one of the few growth sectors of the Burmese economy: food and other commodity exports.

Since the beginning of this year, the kyat has appreciated by more than 25 percent, putting severe pressure on exports and threatening efforts to restart the economy after decades of stagnation under direct military rule.

Now sitting at around 750 kyat to the dollar, compared to more than 1,000 kyat to the US unit a year ago, the exchange rate has become such a serious concern that in August, Thein Sein was forced to acknowledge before an audience of economists, businessmen and local aid organizations that the currency’s strength was hurting the economy.

“In consequence, local demand for goods is falling, and it has affected producers, especially farmers, who depend on exporting agricultural produce. So ways and means are being sought to ease the crises those farmers are facing,” the president was quoted as saying in the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

To reduce the burden on exporters, the government has cut export revenue tax on seven items—rice, beans and pulses, sesame, rubber, corn, marine products, and animals and animal products—from 7 to 2 percent, and exempted them from commercial tax

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for a period of six months, from Aug 15 to Feb 14, 2012. Burma’s Central Bank has also announced that it will reduce the interest rate on loans from 17 to 15 percent, in the expectation that easier financing will help boost private sector investment.

But temporary relief measures may not be enough. The danger now, say experts, is that the exchange rate could reach a point where repatriated earnings from exports are no longer sufficient to cover the costs of production, inflicting huge losses that could bring entire industries to their knees.

The rising kyat is also affecting the economy in other ways. Already, it is taking a sizable bite out of the value of overseas remittances.

Money from expatriates supports hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of poor relatives back home. According to Sean Turnell, a specialist on the Burmese economy at Macquarie University in Australia, the average worker in Thailand, where there are an estimated two million Burmese migrant workers, sends back around US $300 a year.

Most of this is spent on daily living expenses, or on housing, education and health.

In the longer term, the kyat’s continuing climb could also hit locally manufactured goods, as domestic consumers turn to cheaper imports to offset declining income—something that would have highly disruptive effects on an economy that has long been geared to selfsufficiency.

“The economic, social and political consequences of this chain of events could be serious,” wrote U Myint, a leading Burmese economist and the top economic adviser to Thein Sein, in a recent paper addressing the exchange rate issue.

No Relation to Reality With all the talk of how the kyat’s recent surge is impacting on the economy, it’s easy to forget that the currency’s current value is

Article

actually less than one percent of its official worth.

At the official exchange rate, one dollar fetches just 6 kyat—a figure that has never borne any relation to reality, and which is rarely used except when recording government revenue from the sale of offshore natural gas and other resources (thereby enabling Burma’s generals to vastly underreport the wealth the country should have accumulated under their rule).

In practice, of course, it is the market, or “black market,” that determines the real value of the kyat. Outside of Burma, it is worth nothing at all, being non-convertible. Even inside the country, it is not the only currency in circulation. The US dollar is widely used for a range of transactions, from paying for imported goods to dealing with foreign tourists. The Thai baht and Chinese yuan are also often accepted, particularly in border areas. Other convertible currencies like the euro, the Japanese yen and the Australian dollar are not as popular, but the euro has begun to gain ground as a hard currency of choice.

Despite all this competition, however, the Burmese currency has steadily increased in value since 2009. For most of 2010, one US dollar was equivalent to more than 1,000 kyat, but dropped to less than 900 kyat by the end of the year. There have been several explanations for this. Besides the declining value of the dollar worldwide, other factors include a dramatic increase in foreign investment, especially in the energy sector; high oil and gas prices (Burma’s biggest export is natural gas); and a spending spree by cronies of the military elite, who in the run-up to this year’s transition to ostensibly civilian rule used their massive dollar reserves to buy up real estate, gems and state-owned businesses.

While these factors may have driven up the value of the kyat, however, they have done little to put the country’s finances in order. In August, when budget figures were presented in Parliament for the first time since 1987, Maung

Toe, the secretary of the Public Accounts Committee of the country’s Pyitthu Hluttaw, or Lower House of Parliament, said that Burma would run a deficit of about 2.2 trillion kyat (US $2.9 billion) in the 2011-2012 fiscal year.

Responding to a question by an MP, Maung Toe said the government expected to raise 5.78 trillion kyat ($7.7 billion) in revenue, while expenditures were budgeted at 7.983 trillion kyat ($10.6 billion). Although he provided no details about government expenditure, an official document released earlier this year, known as the government gazette, showed that nearly a quarter of this year’s budget would go to the military.

Although the sale of stated-owned property might have helped to reduce the country’s ballooning fiscal deficit, the lack of transparency that characterized the entire process makes it impossible to know how much of the money raised went into public coffers, and how much wound up in the generals’ private bank accounts. It is also worth noting that much of this massive debt was used to finance the construction of Naypyidaw, with its imposing public buildings, extensive road network and lavish residences for the retired generals.

Despite its efforts to make all the right noises about poverty alleviation and curbing corruption, the Thein Sein administration continues in the footsteps of its junta predecessor in spending heavily on the military, while doing little in the way of implementing policies to support households and businesses.

Meanwhile, Burma’ central bank remains reluctant to tighten policy aggressively, as it is not operationally independent from the government. Burma’s domestic inflationary pressures remain strong owing to the fact that the central bank—which is operated by the Ministry of Finance and Revenue—is always ready to finance the budget deficit by printing money, with the consequent growth in domestic credit pushing up prices. Combined

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with pressure from rising global consumer prices, this could send Burma’s inflation rate up to 16.2 percent in 2011, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Of course, it is the very poor, who make up the bulk of Burma’s population, who bear the brunt of this erosion of purchasing power. But the country’s much smaller middle class also struggles with the distortions inherent in an economic system heavily weighted to favor a tiny handful at the top.

Ironically, despite the rising value of the kyat, most middle-class Burmese consider their national currency essentially worthless.

Those who somehow manage to rise above mere subsistence aspire to send their children to school in Singapore, Malaysia or Thailand, or to move to these countries themselves, to escape being squeezed by ludicrously high duties on the sort of goods that most people of moderate means take for granted.

Ironically, despite the rising value of the kyat, most middleclass Burmese consider their national currency essentially worthless.

On the Road to Reform?

While most of Burma’s economic problems are seen as an endemic feature of life under an entrenched authoritarian regime, there

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appears to be at least a nascent recognition among the country’s rebranded rulers that the status quo is simply unsustainable. How far they are prepared to go in reforming a system of their own creation is, however, an open question.

If Thein Sein was hoping that a few cosmetic changes would suffice to bring Burma into the international mainstream, the renewed focus on the kyat has served to highlight just how bizarrely out of step with the rest of the world the country remains. In addition to setting an official exchange rate that would cripple the economy if it were actually enforced, the government continues to print its own US dollars, in the form of dollar-denominated Foreign Exchange Certificates (FECs).

At least on this front, the government seems to be getting a grip on reality. Government officials have reportedly told Burmese business leaders that the FEC is on its way out. There are also growing expectations that the exchange rate will be readjusted to better reflect the country’s economic needs.

Dumping an unrealistic and grossly inefficient system that has long distorted Burma’s economy is definitely a step in the right direction, but it is one that will require a degree of expertise that is completely lacking among the country’s key decision makers.

That’s why the government has turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for advice. To provide this advice, the IMF will first of all ask Naypyidaw to provide key macroeconomic data, such as foreign exchange reserves, balance of payments, national budget, money supply, GDP (including its sectoral composition and growth rate), household income and expenditures surveys, foreign direct investment inflows and foreign trade statistics.

IMF spokeswoman Gita Bhatt recently confirmed that the Washington-based financial institution had received a request from the

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Burmese authorities to help them “prepare to modernize their exchange-rate system and lift restrictions on the making of payments and transfers for current international transactions.” She said the IMF planned to send a technical team to Burma in late October to begin the process, but other details about contemplated reforms weren’t available.

The government seems convinced that it is on the right track. The “problem of exchange rate gap, the main barrier to international trade, will be solved along with the proper evolution of market economy,” Finance Minister Hla Tun was as quoted saying in The New Light of Myanmar, which also reported that the authorities had reached out to the IMF and sent trainees overseas as part of its efforts to reform the exchange rate.

Beyond providing some much-needed advice, however, the IMF is unlikely to play a major role in bringing these plans to fruition.

Because Burma hasn’t paid back its debts to multilateral financial institutions—and because the US wields effective veto power over the IMF—the country is barred from receiving any new financial aid.

That shouldn’t matter, however, because Burma is believed to have abundant foreign exchange reserves (thanks to its sales of gas, gems and other natural resources), which it would need if it decided to discard the fixed exchange rate completely and simply float the kyat.

While this might seem like a radical departure for a country that has spent nearly 50 years under a succession of authoritarian regimes notorious for maintaining a stranglehold over every major sector of the economy, floating the kyat could very well be the best way forward. Best of all, it “would require quite literally little more than the stroke of a pen,” according to Macquarie University’s Sean Turnell.

In fact, introducing a floating currency would only be a matter of making official the

informal system that has long been in place in Burma, where for decades most international transactions have been based on an unofficial exchange rate determined by market forces.

Floating the kyat would reduce bureaucracy, increase economic freedom and hinder those elements that use the current exchange-rate arrangements as a vehicle for corruption, said Turnell, who added that the dual exchange rate allows government officials and state-owned enterprises to in essence maintain two sets of books, enabling them to hide revenues that could be diverted to other needs.

The only danger, however, is that bringing a degree of common sense to Burma’s exchange rate system could create the false impression that the country’s economic problems can be solved without other, more fundamental changes.

“The exchange rate issue is important, but it’s far from the most serious of Burma’s economic problems, which have their roots in the lack of property rights, reasonable policy making, a voracious state apparatus, etc,” said Turnell.

According to a 2008 paper by Dr. Tin Soe, a former professor and department head at the Rangoon Institute of Economics, Burma’s economy since the early 1960s, when the country first came under military control, has been characterized by “inconsistency, instability, interruption and discontinuation, rigidity and limited scope and vision, lack of transparency, unpredictability and uncertainty, quantitative physical targetsorientation, inefficient and ineffective implementation and use and abuse of consultancy and advisory services.”

In other words, if Thein Sein really wants to make a difference, his government will have to break half a century of bad habits.

Floating the kyat would be a start, but it will take much more than this to clean out the Augean stables of Burma’s economy.

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A Hero Behind the Lines Burma’s political prisoners rely on the heroic support of loved ones to survive their ordeal By kyaw zwa moe

I

n 1969, when Thandar was only three years old, she slept on the floor of a Rangoon to Mandalay train with her mother lying beside her. Seats were an unaffordable luxury, but neither Thandar nor her mother minded the uncomfortable 12-hour journey, because they were going to Mandalay Prison to visit her father, whom she had not seen since she was six months old.

The trip was the first of hundreds of prison visits that Thandar would make in her lifetime, and it could not have been a more inauspicious beginning. Upon arrival at Mandalay Prison, Thandar and her mother discovered that her father, a journalist and peace activist who was arrested by Gen Ne Win’s regime in 1966, had been sent to the prison on Great Coco Island in the Indian Ocean, known as “Burma’s Devil’s Island,” which had no inhabitants other than prisoners and their guards.

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Like thousands of others living under Burma’s successive dictatorships, Thandar suffered heroic hardships to support her loved ones behind bars.

Three decades later, Thandar once again found herself on the floor of a train from Rangoon to Mandalay. Life had come full circle, and this time she was the mother escorting a young child to see a father behind bars. Her five-year-old son lay next to her, and they were traveling to meet her husband, Nay Oo, a member of the National League for Democracy (NLD) who was serving a 14-year sentence in the remote Kalay Prison for his role in Burma’s pro-democracy movement.

After traveling the 400 miles from Rangoon to Mandalay, Thandar and her son had to continue by bus for another 160 miles through dense jungle to Kalay. Along the way, they had to cross the wild Chindwin River by boat, and as the craft was being tossed about by monsoon

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season waves, a tearful Thandar wondered whether she would survive the four-day journey.

But she wiped away her tears, gritted her teeth and endured, finally arriving at Kalay Prison for the 15-minute visitation period she would be allotted with her husband.

“You deserve an award,” the warden said mockingly upon her arrival. “Your husband was among the first batch of new prisoners, and you’re the first person to visit.”

“No thanks, I don’t need that award,” Thandar replied, unable to resist the retort despite knowing that it might bring trouble for her and her husband. Exhaustion and anger had consumed her.

After seeing Nay Oo incarcerated in deplorable conditions, Thandar decided to stay in Kalay so she could visit and bring him nutritious food every fortnight. But she had no money left after paying her travel expenses, so she decided to sell fish paste in the Kalay town market. A donation of 5,000 kyat–around US $5–from NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and another 5,000 kyat from a sympathetic poet, helped her get started.

“I feel I was born to make trips to prisons,” Thandar says, recalling the past from her current home in a refugee camp in Thailand. “I started with my father and continued with my husband.”

Like the trips to the prisons, she says her journey from a

illustration: harn lay/the irrawaddy

prisoner’s daughter to a prisoner’s wife was long and arduous.

As a young girl, Thandar was unable to understand that her father’s imprisonment was unjust, that he was not a criminal. So when other kids teased her about being a “prisoner’s daughter,” she was often reduced to tears and left hiding from her friends.

Thandar’s father was eventually released, but when she was 12 he was arrested for a second time. As a result, she had to quit school and work every day dying sarongs so her family could make ends meet and afford trips to the prison.

Her hardships became even more severe as a prisoner’s wife.

“It’s incomparably more difficult to be the wife of a prisoner than the daughter,” she says. “I was faced with more economic and social problems.

In my neighborhood, a wife without a husband was unprotected—she was viewed as having less integrity and was vulnerable to any insult.”

Some relatives wouldn’t even let her visit their home, because they were afraid that government authorities would put pressure on them if they were seen as having political connections.

“It made my life really miserable,” Thandar says.

But she is grateful to the many people in Kalay who bought fish paste from her because they knew her husband was a political prisoner and she was working to support him.

“They named my smelly commodity ‘democracy fish paste,’” she says with a smile. “Without their moral and economic support, I wouldn’t have been able to regularly help my husband.”

Between 1998 and 2005, the eight years during which Nay Oo was jailed, Thandar made more than 200 visits to Kalay Prison. During that time, she came in contact with the family members of

many other political prisoners, and tried to help some of those in even more dire straits than her.

Since the time that Thandar’s father was imprisoned, there has never been any shortage of political prisoners in Burma, and there are currently around 2,000 political prisoners incarcerated in 44 prisons across the country.

Due to the horrible prison conditions, the inmates rely on food, medicine and necessities supplied by visiting family members, and in addition to visiting her husband regularly, Thandar helped family members of other political prisoners make trips to remote prisons.

One family she assisted was that of a schoolteacher named Saw Ni Aung, who in 1991 was arrested along with his wife in connection with an ethnic Karen uprising in their hometown of Bogalay. When Saw Ni Aung was sentenced to life imprisonment and his wife to five years, they left a five-year-old and a six-month-old son behind.

At first, Saw Ni Aung was held in Kalay Prison alongside Nay Oo. He passed the time there making small soap sculptures of horses and elephants for his two sons, which he would pass to Nay Oo, who gave them to Thandar, who delivered them to Saw Nin Aung’s sons.

Although the sculptures may seem like a small gesture, Thandar says, they represented and transmitted Saw Ni Aung’s metta (loving kindness) for his sons.

Later, when Saw Ni Aung was transferred to another remote prison in Shan State, Thandar accompanied his eldest son on the long journey so that father and son could see each other for the first time in ten years.

At first, however, the prison authorities would not allow Thandar and the boy to see Saw Ni Aung— military intelligence officers interrogated Thandar and questioned why she was helping the

“It’s incomparably more difficult to be the wife of a prisoner than the daughter.”

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young boy, even asking if he was really Saw Ni Aung’s son. But finally, after the boy explained that he had not seen his father in a decade and provided an hour’s worth of details about his family, the officers were convinced and let him and Thandar see Saw Ni Aung.

“It was a sad meeting.

When I heard them call each other ‘father’ and ‘son,’ it made me tremble,” Thandar recalls. “Saw Ni Aung was looking at the face of his teenage son who he last held as a baby. I couldn’t hold back my tears.”

More tears flowed, this time from the eyes of Saw Ni Aung, when the prisoner asked about his wife.

“Mother died,” his son muttered, and then explained that his mother had passed away soon after being released from prison.

Before parting, Saw Ni Aung presented his son with a pair of football boots that he knitted out of cotton in his cell.

“I know you like playing football,” Saw Ni Aung said. “It’s a kind of art, just try your best.

That’s all I can do from here, my son.”

In 1999, Thandar transformed the hardship of her prison visits into success by writing stories based on her experiences under the pen name Hnin Pan Eain. That year, one of her stories received an award in a literary competition held by the NLD, and three more awards followed— one of them for an anthology of short stories published in Burma in 2007.

Then, in late 2008, Thandar, her husband Nay Oo and their son fled Burma and found shelter in a refugee camp in Thailand, where she continues to live and write. Her stories are broadcast on a weekly basis by the Washington, DC-based Radio Free Asia, where millions of people in Burma listen to her voice. In March 2011, she published a book in Burmese called “Heroes’ Kingdom in Darkness,” a compilation of her stories about 40 prisoners and their families.

With her husband now free, Thandar does not need to visit prisons anymore.

But her family’s unwanted legacy has been passed on to her niece, Pan Wah, whose fiancé Khin Maung Win was arrested just a couple of months after they became engaged in 2008.

Khin Maung Win was sentenced to 12 years in prison and sent to a cell for the same reason that Thandar’s father and husband were imprisoned— voicing political views that are in opposition to the oppressive generals and ex-generals who control Burma. Just before being shipped away, he married Pan Wah in a court ceremony.

This was both a romantic and a practical decision, because as his wife, Pan Wah is able to visit him in prison just as Thandar had done for Nay Oo. “Don’t worry, I will always come to see you,” Pan Wah told Khin Maung Win just before he was handcuffed and loaded into a police vehicle, which was waiting to take him away for 12 years.

Thandar says that she thinks of family visits as a kind of physical and mental nourishment for the political prisoners, who she sees as freedom fighters on the front-line, fighting for democracy and human rights on behalf of the people.

“They are warriors without weapons,” she says. “Our visits are a source of strength for them.”

Nay Oo, the husband she supported for so many years, agrees.

“For a battle, soldiers alone can’t defeat the enemy. They need a supporting line with ammunition, food and medicine,” he says.

“The support of my wife and anyone else is invaluable—even a 15-minute fortnightly meeting means a lot. Without them, we can’t be steadfast on our rough road. They are the heroes behind the lines, but are rarely recognized.”

“It was a sad meeting. When I heard them call each other ‘father’ and ‘son,’ it made me tremble.”

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The Floating The stateless Sea Gypsies find their culture and unique lifestyle

By BA KAUNG

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Culture

& Society

K

A Moken fisherman looks out to sea while two women prepare a meal aboard their houseboat. photo: afp

World in danger of sinking.

OH LAO, Ranong—On a crescentshaped beach lined with palm trees, an old woman and her teenage daughters walk along the shore’s edge and dig for worms and crabs.

Using iron rods as spears and sharpened rocks as trowels, they sift through the wet sand, clutch handfuls of sea worms, and fill their buckets as they go. Nearby, a handful of children laugh and scream and dive off small fishing boats into the sea.

Fifty wooden houses with corrugated tin roofs line the estuary of the Kra Buri River just a stone’s throw from the beach on one of a chain of tiny tropical islands in the Andaman Sea between Burma and Thailand.

A short way along the shore, an old woman is stooped over the rocks. As I approach, she turns and greets me in Thai: “Sawat-dee kaa.” I ask what she is looking for. “Kha-ru,” [crabs] she replies in a very guttural Burmese.

Known as the Salone in Burma and as the Moken in Thailand, this small community is more commonly referred to as “Sea Gypsies.” They speak a distinct language and are of Austronesian ethnicity. Mostly nomadic and seafaring, many have lived among the islands of the Andaman for generations. But it was during the 2004 tsunami that the Moken came to the world’s attention when their knowledge of the sea allowed them to anticipate the destructive wave and warn others to get to high ground. The Sea Gypsies’ actions saved hundreds of lives around this bay while in nearby Phuket thousands of local people and foreign tourists were not so fortunate.

Among the littoral and island communities of the Andaman, the Moken/Salone are famed for their extraordinary diving skills and for living in thatch-roofed wooden boats. Making their livelihoods almost exclusively from the sea, they roam the islands and shores of Burma, Thailand and neighboring countries.

Strewn with seashells and debris, the beaches of Koh Lao are a far cry from the pristine, white-sand shorelines that greet the Western tourists who visit Thailand’s five-star hotels and resorts just an hour’s drive away. There are few telltale signs of traditional Moken life, the exception being a small graveyard where they bury their dead on land—along with

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all their worldly possessions, which are generally slim pickings.

Superstition prevents them from burying their dead at sea.

Though obviously poor, the children look well-fed, and all wear clothes. The women cover their breasts and wear sarongs and shirts, unlike many of the nomadic ethnic women in the region.

Quiet and modest by nature, the Moken suddenly puff their chests when they talk of their exploits at sea. They are hardened seafarers and regularly sail as far as India’s Nicobar Islands in search of fish, crustaceans and sea cucumbers.

“I can dive for one hour underwater as deep as 10 to 15 arm swings,” said Hmin Ni, one of the few male Moken on the island that day (the rest were working at sea). He makes large circular motions with his strong arms to indicate how far that might be.

I quickly calculate that he may be talking of a depth of 20 to 30 meters. Impressive. However, I have found from my day’s experience of talking to the Moken that many have a limited grasp of distances and time. When he says “one hour,” I take it to mean “as long as anyone can hold their breath and come up with 10 or 12 sea cucumbers.”

Hmin Ni does not know his age and cannot even hazard a guess.

He looks to be in his early 30s, despite the leathery texture of his weatherbeaten face. He reckons that he started diving from fishing boats when he was around 10. He said he was jailed in Mergui Prison in Tenasserim Region “for several years” after being caught on an illegal trawler that was dynamite-fishing in Burmese waters.

After his release, he resumed diving again, but this time on Thai fishing boats in search of sea cucumbers. For one sea cucumber, at that time, he was paid just two baht (US $0.06). He said he now makes about 1,000-1,500 baht ($33 to $50) per trip, which usually lasts from seven to 10 days.

“No sea cucumber, no baht,” he said with a smile. “When I dive, I see sharks. But I’m not afraid of the sharks. But when I see the Burmese navy, I run away.”

Many Moken in Koh Lao expressed concern that their community is getting smaller and that they will be extinct in the near future. They see the increasingly harsh conditions in making a living as a significant contributing factor.

The Moken have never been recognized as an official ethnic minority by either Thailand or Burma. Their statelessness has made them vulnerable to persecution and harassment by local authorities, and exploitation by various gangs and businessmen.

“The Burmese navy shoot when they see us at sea,” said 45-yearold Sarnai in a mixture of Burmese and Thai. “Two of my brothers have been killed.”

Born on the Thai island of Koh Chang near Ranong, Sarnai grew up mostly in Burmese waters. She said she is one of several Moken widows on the island. After being hired as a diver, she said, her husband was beaten to death by the Thai fishing boat captain during a quarrel.

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A Moken diver searches for sea cucumbers. photo: afp

Culture

& Society

Many Moken men die untimely deaths at sea. Some of them get gunned down by the Burmese navy while working on Thai fishing boats that had crossed illegally into Burmese waters. Others die diving.

Despite such risks, almost all the 70 or so Moken men of Koh Lao work at sea as divers for Thai fishing boats.

Together with their wives and children—more than 100 Moken women and 115 children—they live on a diet of sea worms and rice. Most breed some livestock for meat and make extra money selling dried sea worms, one kilo of which retails for 200 baht ($6) in Ranong markets.

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“Moken people never cause trouble to anyone. They never steal. But they don’t know how to stand up for themselves.”

None of the Moken on this island—where large portraits of the Thai king and queen greet visitors to the village—has been granted Thai citizenship.

“That’s because they originally come from Burma,” said Ni Wan Ni, a 45-year-old Thai woman who grew up in Koh Lao and has been recognized by the governor of Ranong Province as this island village’s representative since the 2004 tsunami.

Her family is now the only Thai family left on this island where her great-grandparents settled. She says she helps the Moken who are arrested by the Thai police when they cannot produce an identity card.

“If I go to the police station, they will free the Moken because they know me,” she said, adding that there are few social problems in the Moken community with the exception of occasional domestic violence between mothers and their sons.

Ni Wan Ni said that, as far as she knows, the first group of Moken came to Koh Lao from Burma 30 years ago and that they move seasonally among the islands in Burmese and Thai waters.

“Moken people never cause trouble to anyone,” she said. “They never steal. But they don’t know how to stand up for themselves. They are extremely gullible.”

Some of the Moken children in this village go by boat every day to a secondary school on another island. However, none has ever finished high school, said Moe Moe Aye, 27, the daughter of a Moken fisherman and a Burmese woman.

Moe Moe Aye said she was born on Koh Lao, and that she attended a primary school for some years on an island in Mergui off Burma’s Tenasserim coast.

When she had completed the fourth grade, she was pulled out of school by her parents and started diving.

She said she has no regrets, and still bristles when

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she remembers how the other children taunted her for being a “dirty Salone.”

“They were always bullying me and saying that I never bathed,” she said. “Both Thais and Burmese continually refer to us as ‘dirty’ and ‘uneducated.’”

After the Indian Ocean tsunami, the plight of the Moken was spotlighted and several Thai NGOs took action, building 50 wooden houses on stilts and four communal toilets for the villagers of Koh Lao. However, the outside attention came with a negative side. Ni Wan Ni said that unscrupulous Thai businessmen have now acquired ownership of much of the land, and that the Moken are restricted to an onshore area of six acres.

“In fact, they can have better livelihoods in Burma,” said Ni Wan Ni. “But they feel safer on the Thai side.”

Back in 2005, National Geographic magazine estimated that some 2,500 Moken were still leading traditional seafaring and spiritually animistic lives around the Mergui archipelago.

Although current figures are unobtainable, it is clear their population has diminished due to Burma’s increased naval presence throughout the Andaman, as they seek—sometimes ruthlessly—to protect the interests of foreign petroleum companies drilling offshore for oil.

In 2004, when Burma’s Tourism Ministry organized an impromptu festival for the Moken, they were reportedly rounded up and detained on designated islands by Burmese soldiers who then “persuaded” them to perform for tourists.

Most of the Moken on Koh Lao still speak their own language, but many of those who have settled in Thai territory, especially the younger generation, have lost their native tongue, according to Daniel Murphy of the UN-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica, who worked on a survey about the Moken.

Moe Moe Aye said she is worried about the disappearance of the Moken, both as a people and as a culture. “One of the greatest problems is that we Moken are now so shy about our own identity. We pretend to be either Thai or Burmese.”

Chi Lon, 12, is one of 21 orphans on the island whose parents never came back from diving at sea.

Asked if he wished to become a diver or work at sea when he grows up, he quickly shook his head. “I don’t know what I want to do,” he said in fluent Thai.

“But I don’t want to work at sea. The police will shoot me.”

ားတိုင္း သ ္ ည ျပ ာ ္မ ၿပီ ြတ္ဖို႔ ျမန ို ဖတ္ၾက လ က မ ္ ာ ွ ႏ ္ က က္စာမ်က ေရးကို လ န ာ အ ္ တ ္ ည င ျပ ျမန္မာ န္မာပိုင္းအ မ ျ ီ တ ဝ ာ ဧရ

ဧရာဝတီ ျမန္မာပိုင္း အင္တာနက္စာမ်က္ႏွာတြင္ • သတင္း • ေဆာင္းပါး • အာေဘာ္

w

• အင္တာဗ်ဴး

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• ေထြရာေလးပါး

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• စာအုပ္စင္က႑

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a d d y . o r g / b u r

• ကာတြန္း • ရယ္စရာ ေမာစရာ • ေအာက္ေမ့ဖြယ္ ႏွင့္ • အျခား က႑မ်ား စံုလင္စြာ ပါရွိသည္

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www.i

org/ . y d d a rraw

Cartoon

Who holds the key?

“Hey Exiles ! Come on back There’s lots of space!”

The father of the nation is watching.

illustrations: harn lay/the irrawaddy

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