Protesters demand the release of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The protestors remain defiant in the face of the security forces tightening the screw. They are facing daily intimidation, threats and harassment at the hands of the police and soldiers strategically station to discourage and disperse the protests. CC BY-SA 4.0

By Larry Jagan
BANGKOK, Feb 17 2021 (IPS)

Myanmar’s top generals have begun the process to prevent Aung San Suu Kyi – the country’s popular civilian leader – from ever holding political power. Both she and president Win Myint were arraigned in a closed-door court session via video link Tuesday, Feb. 16. This is the beginning of a trial that is expected to take about six months to conclude. If convicted, it will prevent Suu Kyi from standing in future elections.

Suu Kyi is charged with violating import restrictions after walkie-talkies and other foreign equipment that were found in her villa compound. They were discovered during a search of her premises on Feb. 1, the day the military launched a coup, seizing all judicial, executive and legislative power, placing it in the hands of the commander-in-chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.

The Nobel laureate has also been charged with contravening a natural disaster management law by interacting with a crowd at an election rally during the coronavirus pandemic. A charge that was added after her original arrest and only publicly disclosed at her hearing. Win Myint is  charged with breaking COVID-19 restrictions. They reportedly appeared without legal representation.

The coup leaders have promised elections sometime next year after the state of emergency they have imposed is lifted. The authorities are still investigation more serious accusations related to receiving foreign funds – which could amount to charges of treason.

The military commanders also seem intent on preparing a case against her party – the National League for Democracy (NLD) — in order to ban it from politics and declare it an illegal organisation. The NLD, which overwhelmingly won last November’s poll, remains a thorn in the military’s side as for the past three weeks protestors have hit the street in their hundreds of thousands, to defend democracy and reject the coup.

“The civil disobedience movement is a non-violent campaign which was started by young doctors across the country: it was a spontaneous grassroots response to the coup,” Thinzar Shunlei Yi, a prominent activist involved with the protest in Yangon, told IPS. “It has grown daily as the civil servants have inspired others to defend our democracy,” she added.   

The protestors remain defiant in the face of the security forces tightening the screw. They are facing daily intimidation, threats and harassment at the hands of the police and soldiers strategically station to discourage and disperse the protests. But troops, tanks and water cannons have not deterred the protests, which are growing daily. But the strength of the movement is that it encompasses all generations, all walks of life, civil servant and workers. All of whom support democracy, though a large proportion also support the NLD.

“This is very different from the 1988 pro-democracy demonstrations when the student movement aspired to democracy but didn’t really know what it meant,” Nyein Chan Aung an 88-year-old veteran told IPS. “This time they know what they want, they know what they are losing, and they are very, very angry.”   

Meanwhile, the military are clearly on a mission to overhaul and restructure the country’s fledgling democracy, turning the clock back to the dark days of direct military rule.

For the past three weeks the new junta has rolled out a new administration: from national, provisional to district and wards. Removing the previous elected incumbents and putting in people close to the military.

The Supreme Court has been transformed, with the previous NLD appointments routed out and replaced with judges loyal to their military masters. The Union Election Commission has also been dismissed and swapped with military loyalists. Key ministries have also been targeted and military officers and personnel infiltrated, often at the highest level. This was the common practice during the previous military regime. But the public service has been largely transformed in the last ten years with comprehensive public reform.

“The militarisation of the bureaucracy is under way again I fear,” a former diplomat told IPS on condition of anonymity. “In the past it destroyed civil servant moral, civil service efficiency and expertise, and made the bureaucracy another arm of the military — stripped of initiative and think independently – making it powerless to do anything else but follow orders and recreating a truly authoritarian state.”

But the military junta has also dealt a death blow to developing democratic ideals and practices, with the worst being the wholesale changes in the laws and new edicts. Activists and human rights groups in Myanmar have condemned these measures as unacceptable and a gross erosion of basic civil and human rights, especially the changes to citizens protection and security laws.

These include prisoner’s right to a lawyer – Suu Kyi has been denied access to her lawyer since she was detained at the beginning of February.

It also includes the right to detain prisoners for an unlimited the right to arrest people without a warrant and search homes unimpeded by local administrators, carry out surveillance unconstrained, intercept any form of communications, and ask for users’ information from operators.

The government has also enacted a draconian Cyber Law which essentially allows them full access to digital information and all social media – with the right to prosecute anyone they deem has crossed the line.

“The changes in the laws amount to the removal of all rights of freedom of speech, association and liberty as well as the rights associated the rule of law and fair trial,” Stephen McNamara, a UK lawyer who has worked with lawyers in Myanmar since 2007, told IPS.

“These changes in the basic laws of Myanmar are wider than any amendments since the nineteenth century. It reflects a military that intends to stay in power for a very long time,” he told IPS.

The fact that the military launched the coup when it could not get its own way clearly reflects the army’s mentality and priorities. They could not accept the NLD’s crushing victory in the elections – and the second time in five years.

They were shocked by the extent of their electoral triumph victory and had been counting on being able to form some sort of coalition government with various parties, including their pro-military partners, ethnic political parties and even the NLD if they did not have an overwhelming victory. 

The military foresee a political future where the army is an integral part of the political setup — integrated into the power structure and administration much like the way they see Thailand.  In fact the Commander in Chief is very fond of what he sees as the model – an important role for the army, where their economic interests are protected, a self sufficient economy and ‘democratic’ outlook – which resists leftist, socialist or communist leanings. It is a concept of pluralist democracy with no interest group having the dominant role or power.

Of course the coup leaders also see former Senior General Than Shwe’s ‘roadmap to democracy’ — developed in 2003 by the then intelligence chief and prime minister — as the model to be followed. This projected the final stage before a more liberal form of democracy as a coalition government of national unity. But always the emphasis was on a ‘guided democracy’. So while they are trying to turn back the clock to when the first elections were held – they have in fact wound it back into the dark ages.

“The soldiers, police and their hired thugs come out at night and wage a war of terror against the people – targeting prominent leaders of the protest movement – and conducting their campaign of intimidation, harassment and arrests,” Nyein Chan Aung told IPS.

“But this is different from 1988, and the new generational tactics have armed the protestors with weapons that will help defeat the military in the long run. With mobile phones, the internet and social media the civil disobedience movement has a voice that’s being heard across the world. The military’s tactics are doomed to fail this time round.”

Suu Kyi’s trial is expected to proceed on Mar. 1.

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Rohingya after they fled Myanmar in 2017 arrive at Shahparir Dip in Teknaf, Bangladesh. On Nov. 11, the Gambia filed a lawsuit against Myanmar in the International Court of Justice for the southeast asian country’s atrocities against the Rohingya population. Credit: IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 3 2019 (IPS)

On Nov. 11, the Gambia filed a lawsuit against Myanmar in the International Court of Justice for the southeast asian country’s atrocities against the Rohingya population. 

Over the past years, hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh for refuge, sparking one of the more dire refugee crises of the decade. They continue to remain in camps in Bangladesh, where they are vulnerable to human trafficking and other forms of violence.

Even though the crisis has been ongoing for decades, it’s a crucial time for the lawsuit to be filed, advocates say. And the Rohingya people’s continuing refusal to go back is only testament to the lack of security for them in Myanmar. 

“No one has been held accountable,” Akila Radhakrishnan, President of Global Justice Center (GJC), told IPS. “It’s the same forces [that] remain in Rakhine state, they remain kind of [as a] part of the military with no punishment. There’s no feeling that there’s safety and security to go back to Myanmar.”

Radhakrishnan pointed out that even though the lawsuit may be “far away” from when the crisis began, the continued fear of Rohingyas to return to their home shows how deeply the crisis persists. 

“I think there’s a recognition of the impossibility of the return of the Rohingya, a solution to the humanitarian crisis,” she said, adding that the lawsuit will push for the Myanmar government to take actions that focus on changing the laws and policies that enabled the genocide. 

The lawsuit by the Gambia is supported in large part by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and is being led by Attorney General and Minister of Justice of the Gambia Abubacarr M Tambadou, who decided to pursue actions after a recent visit to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, a region where about 900,000 Rohingya refugees are living in camps in that the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has termed the world’s biggest refugee camp. 

Tambadou, who also worked to bring justice for the case of the Rwandan genocide, immediately recognised a similar pattern and was moved to take action, he said during an event held during U.N. General Assembly in September. 

One of the key things being asked in the lawsuit is the request for provisional measures that would require the Myanmar government, on a basis of “extreme urgency”, to set a hearing date for Myanmar government to “restrain certain conduct” by Myanmar that’s enabling the genocide, Paul Reichler, head of Foley Hoag, the law firm leading the lawsuit, explained to IPS. 

“When you file a suit, you want to make sure the very object of the suit is not destroyed while the case is pending in court,” he explained. “The Gambia will be asking the court to order Myanmar to cease all acts of genocide against the Rohingya.”

But a challenge remains here: how can Myanmar stop actions they don’t acknowledge as genocide denial? 

“The court may wish to define what kind of acts should be stopped so the order makes clear what Myanmar is prohibited from doing,” Reichler said. “[The] main thing we’re asking for is final judgment…in the interim to prevent further irreparable harm.” 

In case Myanmar does not comply with the requirements of the lawsuit, Reichler says the court can take further actions or the international community “can react with political measures”. 

Within a few days of the lawsuit being filed by the Gambia, a lawsuit was filed by Argentina against leaders in Myanmar, including Aung San Suu Kyi, who is the first Nobel peace laureate to face such legal charges.  

Suu Kyi, however, has not budged from her position. She continues to justify the torture of Rohingyas while branding them as “terrorists” owing to a 2017 attack that sparked the most recent exodus. 

In the aftermath of the lawsuit, her government has set up a legal unit while she aims to lead the country’s defence at the ICJ, with a hearing expected on Dec. 10.  

“Aung San Suu Kyi and the civilian government failed to act against genocide in Rakhine State with any level of urgency and have taken no steps to hold the military to account,” Radhakrishnan said in a statement for Suu Kyi’s announcement.

“Now, they are going to defend the military and government’s genocidal actions on one of the world’s largest and most influential stages. The international community should no longer have illusions where Suu Kyi and the civilian government stand and must act to support the Gambia and take other measures to hold Myanmar accountable.”

Rohingya after they fled Myanmar in 2017 arrive at Shahparir Dip in Teknaf, Bangladesh. Credit: IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 26 2018 (IPS)

Policies that allow for impunity, genocide, and apartheid are “intolerable” and make repatriation of Rohingya refugees impossible, say United Nations investigators.

While presenting an annual report to the member states at the U.N., Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar Yanghee Lee expressed disappointment in Myanmar’s government under State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, stating her hope that it “would be vastly different from the past, but it really is not that much different.”

“The government is increasingly demonstrating that it has no interest and capacity to establish a fully functioning democracy for all its people,” Lee said during a press conference.  

She also added that the Nobel peace prize laureate is in “total denial” about the mistreatment and violence against the Rohingya which forced over 700,000 to flee across the border to Bangladesh, and questioned her staunch support for the rule of law.

“If the rule of law were upheld, all the people in Myanmar, regardless of their position, would be answerable to fair laws that are impartially applied, impunity would not reign, and the law would not be wielded as a weapon of oppression,” Lee said.

The Chair of the U.N. fact-finding mission on Myanmar Marzuki Darusman, who also presented a report to the U.N., echoed similar sentiments, noting that the government’s “hardened positions are by far the greatest obstacle.”

“Accountability concerns not only the past but it also concerns the future and Myanmar is destined to repeat the cycles of violence unless there is an end to impunity,” he said.

One of conditions that contributed to the atrocities committed since violence erupted in August 2017 is the shrinking of democratic space, they noted.

While the arrests of Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo gripped international headlines, the government has been increasingly cracking down on free speech and human rights defenders in the country.

Most recently, three journalists from Eleven Media—Nayi Min, Kyaw Zaw Linn, and Phyo Wai Win—were detained and are being investigated for online defamation. If charged and convicted, the journalists face up to two years in prison.

Lee and Darusman also expressed concern over the apartheid-like conditions in Myanmar that persist today including restrictions on movement and access to services such as healthcare and education.

While the government is building new infrastructure for both Rohingya still inside the country and those who fled, Lee noted they are usually segregated from Buddhist communities.

If a policy of separation rather than integration continues, atrocities will be committed yet again.

“It is an ongoing genocide,” Darusman said.

In the fact-finding mission report which looked into the past year’s events, investigators found that four out of five conditions for genocide were met: killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

Of those, three conditions can still be seen in the country.

For instance, in 2015, Myanmar’s government imposed “birth spacing” restrictions on women, requiring a 36-month interval between children with forced use of contraception in the interim.

The Population Control Healthcare Bill was introduced in response to a 2013 government report that saw “the rapid population growth of the Bengalis [Rohingya] as an extremely serious threat.”

Prior to this, the government enacted a two-child limit on the Muslim community in Rakhine.

And it is because of these conditions that Rohingya refugees cannot go back.

“Repatriation is not possible now. Unless the situation in Myanmar is conducive, I will not encourage any repatriation. They should not go back to the existing laws, policies, and practices,” Lee said.

She urged for the civilian government to adopt laws that protect and advance human rights for all, and for Suu Kyi to use “all her moral and political power” to act.

“Myanmar now stands at a crossroads—they can respond as a responsible member of the United Nations and take up the call for accountability or they can be on the same self-self-destructive road,” Darusman said.

Of the actions that can be taken towards the path to accountability is the pardoning of human rights defenders and journalists who have been arbitrarily detained in order to restore democratic space.

Myanmar should also allow for unhindered access for humanitarian actors and U.N. investigators, Lee added.

“I think we are at a point where Myanmar and the international community both are at [a] juncture where the right choice to make will determine the future of not only Myanmar but peace and security in the region and the world,” she said.

Novice monks beg for alms near the Sule Pagoda in downtown Yangon. The barbed wire barricades behind them were once a permanent feature on this busy road, but have been pushed aside to make way for peace. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
YANGON, Nov 23 2014 (IPS)

Myanmar is never out of the news for long. This has been the case since a popular uprising challenged military rule in 1988. For over two decades, the country was featured in mainstream media primarily as one unable to cope with its own internal contradictions, a nation crippled by military rule.

Since 2011, with the release of pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest, as well as democratic reforms, the country experienced a makeover in the eyes of the world, no longer a lost cause but one of the bright new hopes in Asia.

U.S. President Barack Obama has visited the country twice since 2011, most recently this month for the 9^th annual East Asia Summit (EAS).

But beneath the veneer of a nation in transition, on the road to a prosperous future, lies a people deep in poverty, struggling to make a living, some even struggling to make it through a single day.

The commercial capital, Yangon, is in the midst of a construction boom, yet there are clear signs of lopsided and uneven development. By evening, those with cash to burn gather at popular restaurants like the Vista Bar, with its magnificent view of the Shwedagon Pagoda, and order expensive foreign drinks, while a few blocks away men and women count out their meagre earnings from a day of hawking home-cooked meals on the streets.

The former likely earn hundreds of dollars a day, or more; the latter are lucky to scrape together 10 dollars in a week.

The World Bank estimates that the country’s 56.8-billion-dollar economy is growing at a rate of 8.5 percent per year. Natural gas, timber and mining products bring in the bulk of export earnings.

Still, per capita income in this nation of 53 million people stands at 1,105 dollars, the lowest among East Asian economies.

The richest people, who comprise 10 percent of the population, control close to 35 percent of the national economy.

The government says poverty hovers at around 26 percent of the population, but that could be a conservative estimate.

According to the World Bank’s country overview for Myanmar, “A detailed analysis – taking into account nonfood items in the consumption basket and spatial price differentials – brings poverty estimates as high as 37.5 percent.”

The country’s poor spend about 70 percent of their income on food, putting serious pressure on food security levels.

But these are not the only worrying signs. An estimated 32 percent of children below five years of age suffer from malnutrition; more than a third of the nation lacks access to electricity; and the national unemployment rate, especially in rural areas, could be as high as 37 percent according to 2013 findings by a parliamentary committee.

Over half the workforce is engaged in agriculture or related activities, while just seven percent is employed in industries.

Development banks call Myanmar a nation in ‘triple transition’, a nation – in the words of the World Bank – which is moving “from an authoritarian military system to democratic governance, from a centrally directed economy to a market-oriented economy, and from 60 years of conflict to peace in its border areas.”

The biggest challenge it faces in this transition process is the task of easing the woes of its long-suffering majority, who have eked out a living during the country’s darkest days and are now hoping to share in the spoils of its future.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Novice monks beg for alms near the Sule Pagoda in downtown Yangon. The barbed wire barricades behind them were once a permanent feature on this busy road, but have been pushed aside to make way for peace. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
YANGON, Nov 21 2014 (IPS)

Myanmar is never out of the news for long. This has been the case since a popular uprising challenged military rule in 1988. For over two decades, the country was featured in mainstream media primarily as one unable to cope with its own internal contradictions, a nation crippled by violence.

Since 2011, with the release of pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest, as well as democratic reforms, the country experienced a makeover in the eyes of the world, no longer a lost cause but one of the bright new hopes in Asia.

U.S. President Barack Obama has visited the country twice since 2011, most recently this month for the 9^th annual East Asia Summit (EAS).

But beneath the veneer of a nation in transition, on the road to a prosperous future, lies a people deep in poverty, struggling to make a living, some even struggling to make it through a single day.

A woman loads bags full of vegetables on to a train carriage in Yangon. Many use the slow-moving passenger trains to transport goods that they will sell in outlying villages, since few can afford road transportation. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Arranging vegetables into small bundles, this vendor tells IPS she wakes up at three a.m. three days a week to collect her produce. She makes roughly three dollars each day. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

The commercial capital, Yangon, is in the midst of a construction boom, yet there are clear signs of lopsided and uneven development. By evening, those with cash to burn gather at popular restaurants like the Vista Bar, with its magnificent view of the Shwedagon Pagoda, and order expensive foreign drinks, while a few blocks away men and women count out their meagre earnings from a day of hawking home-cooked meals on the streets.

The former likely earn hundreds of dollars a day, or more; the latter are lucky to scrape together 10 dollars in a week.

A woman waits for passersby to buy bird feed from her in Yangon. The World Bank estimates that over 30 percent of Myanmar’s 53 million people lives below the national poverty line. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

A man pushes a cartful of garbage near a busy intersection in Yangon. The 56-billion-dollar economy is growing at a steady clip of 8.5 percent per annum, but the riches are obviously not being shared equally. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

The World Bank estimates that the country’s 56.8-billion-dollar economy is growing at a rate of 8.5 percent per year. Natural gas, timber and mining products bring in the bulk of export earnings.

Still, per capita income in this nation of 53 million people stands at 1,105 dollars, the lowest among East Asian economies.

The richest people, who comprise 10 percent of the population, control close to 35 percent of the national economy. The government says poverty hovers at around 26 percent of the population, but that could be a conservative estimate.

According to the World Bank’s country overview for Myanmar, “A detailed analysis – taking into account nonfood items in the consumption basket and spatial price differentials – brings poverty estimates as high as 37.5 percent.”

A man collects his harvest from a vegetable plot that is also a putrid water hole just outside of Yangon. The World Bank estimates that at least 32 percent of all children below five years of age in Myanmar suffer from malnutrition. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Women walk with heavy loads after disembarking from a train. Thousands still rely on the dilapidated public transport system, with its century-old trains and belching buses, because they cannot afford anything else. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

The country’s poor spend about 70 percent of their income on food, putting serious pressure on food security levels.

But these are not the only worrying signs. An estimated 32 percent of children below five years of age suffer from malnutrition; more than a third of the nation lacks access to electricity; and the national unemployment rate, especially in rural areas, could be as high as 37 percent according to 2013 findings by a parliamentary committee.

Over half the workforce is engaged in agriculture or related activities, while just seven percent is employed in industries.

Democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi admits that Mynmar suffers from a long list of woes, but insists that the first step to healing is the return of the rule of law. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Large-scale construction is not unusual in downtown Yangon, where foreign investments and tourist arrivals are pushing up land prices. Officials say they expect around 900,000 visitors this year. Arrivals have shot up by 49 percent since 2011. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Development banks call Myanmar a nation in ‘triple transition’, a nation – in the words of the World Bank – which is moving “from an authoritarian military system to democratic governance, from a centrally directed economy to a market-oriented economy, and from 60 years of conflict to peace in its border areas.”

A man pushes his bicycles laden with scrap in the streets of Yangon. Despite rapid economic growth, disparities seem to be widening, with 10 percent of the population enjoying 35 percent of Myanmar’s wealth. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

The biggest challenge it faces in this transition process is the task of easing the woes of its long-suffering majority, who have eked out a living during the country’s darkest days and are now hoping to share in the spoils of its future.

 Edited by Kanya DAlmeida

A commuter on the Circular Train in Yangon reads a copy of the newspaper Democracy Today. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS.

By Amantha Perera
YANGON, May 5 2014 (IPS)

Kyaw Kyaw Aung is just 22, but already has dark memories of days when information, sometimes of the mundane kind, could land you in a dark cell for a very long time in Myanmar, a Southeast Asian nation that was under military rule for decades.

“It is all different now, but there were days not so long ago when talking about the (opposition) National League for Democracy or just uttering the words ‘The Lady’ in public could send you to jail,” said Aung who works at Yangon’s main railway station. ‘The Lady’ is the nickname that ordinary Myanmar citizens use to refer to Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.Despite a highly competitive market, a dozen newspapers now hit the streets every day in Yangon.

It was in August 2012 that the army-backed but reformist Thein Sein government loosened decades of suppressive media laws, lifting pre-publication censorship. In April 2013, it also issued new licences for daily newspapers.

Despite a highly competitive market, a dozen newspapers now hit the streets every day in Yangon. Exiled media groups like the Irrawaddy, Mizzima and the Democratic Voice of Burma have all set up operations here.

“Now there is so much information and rumour that sometimes you need to read 10 different articles on the same incident to get the correct picture,” Aung told IPS, pointing to a newsstand at the railway station entrance lined with over a dozen daily newspapers.

Journalists and media watchers agree that the state of the media in Myanmar is in far better shape now than any time in the last half century.

“Journalists are not afraid to criticise,” Chit Win Maung, a member of the Myanmar Press Council said. Topics that had remained taboo, like the Nobel Laureate Suu Kyi, her political party, ethnic violence and corruption within government are readily reported today.

But activists like Maung are quick to hold back on their enthusiasm and not go overboard. “Media freedom and right to information are limited,” Maung told IPS.

The restrictions are multifarious – in the form of government pressure and restrictions, or business owners muzzling reporting, or ethnic tensions spilling into newsrooms. All these are amplified by a lack of professional capacity within the media brought on by decades of draconian censorship and isolation.

“Sometimes we feel like we miss censorship,” U Thiha Saw, who runs the English daily Myanmar Freedom told an audience of international journalists at a conference on media freedom in Yangon.

Despite its overall reformist agenda and engagement with the outside world, the Sein government has displayed signs of using old ways of dealing with the media.

In December 2013, a journalist from the Daily Eleven newspaper received a three-month jail sentence for trespassing and defamation. The reporter was investigating a corruption story. During the same month, four journalists from another newspaper, the Unity Journal, were detained while reporting on a chemical factory suspected to be linked to the government.

On Apr. 7, Zaw Pe, a journalist with the Democratic Voice of Burma, was sentenced to one year in prison for reporting a story on corruption in the education sector. The sentencing was based on a complaint by an education official that Pe trespassed on government property.

Pe had been jailed from 2010 to 2012 for filming without permission. Currently at least six journalists are in jail in Myanmar.

The government has also tried to muzzle foreign journalists, who have otherwise found entry relatively easy in the last two years. Following the reporting of an ethnic massacre in Maungdaw township in the restive western state of Rakhine in January, visa restrictions were imposed on at least one wire service. Its reporters found their visas limited to one month and put through lengthy renewal procedures.

“The government really put the squeeze on them. It made it clear that there was no carte blanche given to foreign correspondents,” a journalist with detailed knowledge of the incident told IPS.

Government spokesperson Ye Htut, however, denied any new restrictions. He said the government found that journalists who had applied for short reporting stints were using one-year multiple entry visas to stay longer. Htut said the government had come across over 100 such cases.

“We are revising our visa policy,” he said adding that wire services working in Myanmar did not face any restrictions.

Many say that with ethnic tensions rising, divisions are also beginning to show in the media.

“In the mainstream media, the ethnic voice is very low,” said Zin Linn, a consultant with Burma News International (BNI), a network of 12 news companies reporting on Myanmar, including those representing minority communities.

Linn said that the lopsided reporting was partly due to Yangon-based organisations lacking the resources to report from far-flung regions beset by ethnic tensions. But he also fears self-censorship as ethnic tensions have become a dominant factor in the upcoming 2015 national elections.

Government spokesperson Htut also acknowledged the crucial role the media would play in the national elections.

For those linked with the media, the fear is that pressures and lack of resources will force the media to renege on its role as an impartial observer at this critical juncture in Myanmar’s history.

Opposition leader Suu Kyi told a Yangon audience recently that one of the biggest drawbacks for the Myanmar media was lack of training for younger journalists.

Linn from BNI said one of the main tips he gives the BNI networks is to always double-check sourcing and not be swayed by unverified information floating around on social media.

He also warned that the media should be mindful of pressure coming from owners. He said governments all over the world routinely tried to get the media to toe their line by using financial and business incentives.

“Economic power and political power are two sides of the same coin,” he said.

Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi remains jailed as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) starts a landmark case charging Myanmar with committing genocide against its Rohingya. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS.

By Amantha Perera
YANGON, Mar 31 2014 (IPS)

For over a quarter of a century Uhla Min has lived under the spell of “The Lady”, the popular nickname for Nobel Peace Laureate Aung Sung Suu Kyi.

His involvement with Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party dates back to the days when Suu Kyi launched a campaign in the late eighties to rid Myanmar of military rule.

Min, now 75, has vivid memories of listening to Suu Kyi speak at the famed Shwedagon Pagoda in capital Yangon, and of running from soldiers chasing down street protestors. He lost his government job because of his support for the NLD.She has now had to plunge into the world of realpolitik.

Min was jailed in July 1989 when Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest. The next 25 years their lives took parallel paths. Suu Kyi would be confined to her house in Yangon under house arrest, Min would be in and out of jail. He was tortured, like many other NLD activists.

“Jail was an endless horror, we were beaten till we fainted,” Min, now chairman of the organising committee at the NLD headquarters in Yangon tells IPS.

Like many others in jail facing a bleak future, Min had one hope. “We all new that The Lady was with us, she was like that small beacon of hope in that very dark place we found ourselves in.”

The allure of The Lady has not diminished for him, and for many others. Earlier this month, Zaw Linn Oo, programme director for the Sopyay Myanmar Development Organisation, a non-governmental organisation working on development issues, sat transfixed in a hotel lobby where Suu Kyi launched her new Suu Foundation.

He had not heard her speak in person for more than a decade. “I am so excited,” Oo said after listening to the icon of democracy in the country.

Oo’s associations with the NLD were peripheral. He remembers the big meetings in 1988 and then again in 2008. “I was never a full time activist,” says Oo. But, he said, he knows that “she is the only one who has been true to us.”

At the NLD office U Thein, a young woman in her late twenties, shares the same sentiment. She became an NLD volunteer 10 years back, soon after she left school. Her family was against the move. “They felt it was dangerous, and it was. People were being arrested and put in jail just for speaking her name in public,” U Thein tells IPS.

She said that Suu Kyi appealed to her because she was taking on a corrupt and violent leadership without resorting to violence herself. “Every time I saw her picture or heard her voice, I felt so much peace.”

She joined Suu Kyi’s then underground party, and dropped earlier thoughts of seeking a government job.

This enduring image of The Lady, as the champion of rights in the Gandhian mold, is  now being challenged by the more practical image of Suu Kyi the politician.

After she was released from house arrest in November 2011, and Myanmar opened up under the leadership of President Thein Sein, Suu Kyi has embarked on a campaign to wrest control from the Sein government that is backed by the army. The challenge will be the next elections due in 2015.

She has now had to plunge into the world of realpolitik.

“She is faced with a tough decision here,” says a western diplomat. “There is no one as charismatic as her who can lead the party, there is no one with her star power. But by getting into street politics she has allowed her image of the unsullied democracy icon to be open to attack.”

Suu Kyi has been criticised for not taking a tougher stance on raging racial violence in Myanmar. And some of her party supporters now say that years of isolation have made her uncompromising.

She also faces constitutional challenges that prevent her from assuming leadership of the country. Article 59 of the 2008 Constitution states that national leadership is not permitted to anyone whose spouse or children are citizens of another country. This effectively bars Suu Kyi from the presidency.

Suu Kyi has called for amendments to the constitution. But she has been ambiguous whether she would push for an all-out campaign ahead of the next elections.

“A politician thinks of the next election, a statesman thinks of the next generation,” she said at the launch of her foundation. “We all have to remember that the 2015 election is just a stepping stone, and a long journey lies ahead of this country.”

Reacting to criticism that she has been too quiet on racial violence, Suu Kyi said the answer to most problems facing Myanmar would be establishment of the rule of law.

Min has no doubt that Suu Kyi, if elected president, would inherit a monumental mess. “This is a divided country ruled by the military for over 50 years, she cannot make it right overnight.”

The next few months will be pivotal to how future generations remember her, he says.

“No matter what happens, for us she has always been and will always be pure.”

Speaking on Tuesday at her first public address in the United States, Myanmar’s opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, said that she supported the lifting of the last remaining U.S. economic sanctions on her country, but also warned that all remaining political prisoners need to be released.

“If you talk about genuine democratisation,” she said here in Washington, “there should be not a single political prisoner.”

Her visit comes just a day after the quasi-civilian government in Myanmar (also known as Burma) released another 500 prisoners, among whom Suu Kyi said that nearly 90 were political prisoners. According to her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), more than 200 political prisoners remain in Myanmar; some groups, including the U.S. government, say the figure could be twice that number.

Before the Myanmar government, long synonymous with the military, started a series of contested reforms two years ago, the number of political prisoners in the country was estimated at higher than 2,100.

The issue gets at the heart of the talks that will take place in the coming days between Suu Kyi and members of the U.S. government, which has been one of the most powerful voices for engagement as the Myanmar government has engaged in a contested reforms process over the past two years.

In the eyes of many activists, sanctions offer the last significant tool with which the United States can continue to goad the Myanmar government towards opening up. But U.S. government officials have said that the sanctions can be put back on anytime, should backsliding begin.

While Suu Kyi has publicly wavered on the issue in recent months, Tuesday she set out her views on sanctions clearly.

“I don’t think we need to cling on to sanctions unnecessarily, because I want the Burmese people to be responsible for their own destiny, and not to depend too much on external help,” she said Tuesday, following meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“We will need external help … but in the end we have to build our own democracy. And we would like U.S.-Burma relations to be founded firmly on the recognition of the need for our own people to be accountable for their own destiny.”

Finding balance

Suu Kyi, now an elected member of Myanmar’s new Parliament while continuing to lead the NLD, the country’s main opposition party, is at the beginning of a 17-day visit to the United States. While the trip is her first to the U.S. since a stint working with the United Nations in New York during the 1970s, this is her third international excursion since being released from nearly two decades under house arrest, in late 2010.

Having gained some official assurance that she would indeed be let back into Myanmar, Suu Kyi has already visited Thailand and Europe. Bu the pomp with which she was welcomed during those first two trips reportedly strained relations with the government, particularly with President Thein Sein, the quasi-reformist with whom Suu Kyi’s relationship is seen as particularly important.

This time around, although she is again being met at the highest levels of government – on Wednesday she will receive a Congressional Gold Medal, while a visit with President Barack Obama may also take place – Suu Kyi is travelling with a top aide of President Thein Sein.

In her introductory remarks, Clinton noted the need to find that balance, and discussed “the challenge of moving from protest to politics, from symbol to stateswoman”. She said that she, too, has had such an experience.

“It exposes you to a whole new sort of criticism and even attack, and requires the kind of pragmatic compromise and coalition building that is the lifeblood of politics but may disappoint the purists who have held faith with you while you were on the outside.”

Suu Kyi suggested that her entire country is attempting to figure out this same balance, from the top of government on down.

“I am now a member of the new legislature … we are beginning to learn to work together, beginning to learn the art of compromise, give and take, the achievement of consensus,” she said.

“This is beginning in the legislature, and we hope that it will spread out to the rest of the political culture of Burma. Because Burma’s political culture has been very weak in negotiated compromise – it is not the way we have worked for a good many years.”

Part of that compromise seems to be Suu Kyi’s willingness to countenance a final rollback of the economic sanctions that Washington imposed two decades ago. Since it took over in early 2011, the new government in Myanmar has pushed strenuously to have the sanctions removed.

While the United States has scaled back certain parts of the measures twice already this year, and while several other countries – most notably those that make up the European Union – have already done away with similar punitive measures completely, Washington continues to maintain an import ban that the Myanmar government is keen to get around.

In the lead-up to Suu Kyi’s U.S. visit, several analysts suggested that the Myanmar government was pushing her to request the U.S. to do away with the import ban. While Clinton made no reference to the issue on Tuesday, Suu Kyi’s endorsement could now push Washington to make an announcement on the issue during a visit next week by President Thein Sein, to attend the U.N. General Assembly.

Clear timeline

Still, both Clinton and Suu Kyi were quick to emphasise the massive difficulties that remain ahead, both in consolidating Myanmar’s nascent reforms process and in forging a new bilateral relationship with the United States. On this latter issue, Suu Kyi made a few pointed remarks in offering a framework for cooperation.

“While the United States seems to be concentrating a lot on the economic aspect of its relations with my country, I hope they will do this in full awareness of the need to promote rule of law,” she said.

She called on the U.S. to help President Thein Sein carry out current and future reforms, but also repeatedly stressed the need to strengthen the other two branches of government – the legislature and, especially, the judiciary.

“If you looked at our judiciary, you’d probably see nothing, because this is our weakest arm,” she said. “New U.S.-Burma bilateral relations need to be founded firmly in the need to give equal weight to the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, and to judge the progress of democratisation in Burma by looking at each of these institutions and how well they’re able to work together to establish democratic practices.”

And while the reforms of the past year and a half move ahead, she also warned that the process could not simply continue, indefinitely, at the sole whim of the military and the government’s top leadership.

“We need a timeframe when we’re talking of political settlement,” she said. “We cannot keep going on benchmarks – we have to know when we want to get to where at what time.”

Extraordinary political changes in the year since former army general Thein Sein came to power in Myanmar have prompted European powers to ease restrictions on the isolated nation, raising questions whether such rewards are too little or too much.

Citing “the remarkable programme of political reform,” the European Union announced on Feb. 17 it was lifting its travel ban on President Thein Sein and 86 other senior leaders from Myanmar (also known as Burma). The European Council, representing heads of the EU’s 27 countries, also said it would review other sanctions by the end of April.

While acknowledging the steady progress since Thein Sein became the civilian president in March 2011, some European officials remain cautious about ending some remaining restrictions – including those on commerce and certain types of aid.

“I would question how quickly these things are being done in Burma,” Sir Graham Watson, a member of the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said shortly after the EU announced it would end visa restrictions on top officials.

Watson has been highly critical of past EU handling of authoritarian regimes in Myanmar as well as the ousted leaders of Libya and Tunisia. A report he prepared, adopted by the Parliament earlier this month, cites Europe’s failure to prevent dictators and their families from socking away fortunes in EU countries with impunity.

“There will no doubt be some voices that say, and I think I will be among them, let’s make sure that the Burmese government is truly committed to what it is doing, and that this isn’t kind of a short-term fix,” Watson told IPS in an interview.

In contrast to the street revolts of the Arab Spring, Myanmar’s changes stem from the military elite that ruled from 1962 to 2011. The new government has freed hundreds of political prisoners and moved to end censorship of news media. Authorities have also eased their notorious travel restrictions and are encouraging foreign investment in a country that the UN’s Human Development Index ranks among the poorest in the world.

Freed from house arrest, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy are campaigning in by-elections scheduled for Apr. 1, nearly 22 years after her victory in national elections was nullified by the military junta. The Nobel Peace Prize winner was released from home detention in November 2010.

The changes have drawn swift recognition, with the United States moving to ease sanctions and restore full diplomatic relations. In December, Hillary Clinton became the first secretary of state to visit Myanmar in 50 years. Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, is due to visit in April, and EU aid commissioner Adris Piebalgs was there last week to pledge development assistance.

One organisation that has long monitored Myanmar, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, has urged Western powers to move more swiftly to reward the reforms.

“We see a very different system of government, and it’s a very different game being played right now,” said Jim Della-Giacoma, ICG’s project director for Southeast Asia.

“When the government is moving in the direction the population wants, when the government is moving in the direction that the international community has long called for, it’s no longer a situation of pushing or pressuring, but there needs to be a new approach of encourage and assisting, and in this context continued sanctions don’t play a very useful role,” he said in a telephone interview from Jakarta.

Della-Giacoma says Myanmar’s reforms partly stem from the need for economic opportunities that have been passing by during decades of isolation and Western embargoes. Western countries could help by removing sanctions apart from those on weapons, he said.

“Now is the time for the EU to craft new policies that reflect the current situation,” he said, “rather than dreaming up new benchmarks that justify the persistence of policies that should have been lifted long ago.”

Still, there are concerns about how far the civilian government will go. Thein Sein, a former prime minister under the former military junta, had a long career as an army commander. He was chosen as president by Parliament, not by popular vote.

Earlier this month, human rights advocates reported that dissident Ashin Gambira was detained by the police just weeks after being freed in the January amnesty. The Buddhist monk had been sentenced to prison for involvement in anti-government demonstrations in 2007.

The International Press Institute has expressed concern that some imprisoned journalists were freed conditionally, which the Vienna-based press freedom group says exposes them to government pressure and self-censorship.

Meanwhile, the Myanmar authorities continue to pursue their 60-year war with the Karen minority and other ethnic groups over their quest for autonomy.

Amnesty International urged Clinton before her December visit to put pressure on the government, noting in a statement that the army “continues to commit human rights violations against civilians on a widespread and systematic basis.”

Watson, the British MEP, says concerns about Myanmar’s commitment to reforms mean that the EU should not be too quick to reward the government.

“I think there is universal support in the legislature for the principle of more for more,” Watson said. “The more the Burmese government does to open up their society, to introduce democratic reforms, then the more we should be prepared to do to take away the sanctions we have applied. But I think it’s too early to end all sanctions.”