Committee Rejects Bid to Change Constitution PHOTO: TEZA HLAING / THE IRRAWADDY
the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who has stepped up her efforts to remove a clause from the military-drafted charter that bars anyone married to a foreigner or with children of foreign citizenship from becoming head of state. However, her Daw Aung San Suu Kyi addresses a crowd of supporters in party, the National Mandalay on May 18. League for Democracy (NLD), said the vote was not the final word on A parliamentary committee voted the subject, as lawmakers are not on June 6 not to endorse a probound to follow the committee’s posed amendment to Myanmar’s recommendations. 2008 Constitution that would Earlier in the month, the make opposition leader Daw Aung NLD rejected a warning from San Suu Kyi eligible to become the Myanmar’s Union Election country’s president. Commission over Daw Aung San The 31-member committee, Suu Kyi’s calls on the military to consisting mostly of lawmakers support the amendment. The body from the ruling Union Solidaraccused her of violating her oath as ity and Development Party and a parliamentarian by “challenging unelected military appointees to the army” in comments she made Parliament, voted 26-5 to reject at a rally in Mandalay in late May. calls to change the charter. —Zarni Mann The move was a setback for
Myanmar Army Accused of Torture in Kachin Conflict A report released on the third anniversary of the start of the conflict in Kachin State has accused Myanmar’s armed forces of using torture in its fight against ethnic rebels in the country’s far north. The report, titled “I Thought They Would Kill Me,” by the Bangkok-based group Fortify Rights, describes a variety of torture tactics employed, including beatings, sexual assault, sensory deprivation, and forcing victims to dig what they were told would be their own graves. “The authorities have tortured Kachin civilians with brutal and inhuman tactics, and those responsible for these crimes have acted with complete impunity for three years,” the group’s executive director, Matthew Smith, said in a press release on June 9. Fortify Rights said such practices are ongoing in Kachin and northern Shan states, where fighting between the Kachin Independence Army and government troops has flared on and off since the collapse of a 17-year-old ceasefire on June 9, 2011. —Andrew D. Kaspar and Yen Snaing
State Sangha Evicts Monks from Monastery in Ownership Dispute
July 2014
the time of the eviction, that the State Sangha monks stormed the Maha Thanti Thukha monastery “as if they were raiding a terrorist base and took away [my] monks.” The State Sangha has claimed ownership of the large monastery since 2002, when U Pyinnya Wuntha fell out of favor with the former military government. He said the regime granted the building and land to him in 1999, complete with legal ownership papers. —Lin Thant, Lawi Weng and Htet Naing Zaw
PHOTO: JPAING / THE IRRAWADDY
Seven monks and 32 laymen were evicted from a monastery in Yangon on the night of June 10 in a move by the governmentbacked Buddhist clergy council, the State Sangha Maha Nayaka, to claim ownership of the property. Five of the monks were later charged with religious offenses and were reportedly disrobed and sent to Insein Prison to await their trial, which could result in a prison sentence. U Pyinnya Wuntha, 86, told The Irrawaddy by phone from Japan, where he was on a visit at
Monks look on during a raid to remove followers of U Pyinnya Wuntha from the Maha Thanti Thukha Buddhist monastery in Yangon on June 10, 2014.
TheIrrawaddy
9