People fetch water from the new well in the village of Htita, Myanmar. It is 600 feet deep and was built thanks to private donations. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

By Sara Perria
HTITA, Myanmar, May 25 2016 (IPS)

The central plains of Myanmar, bordered by mountains on the west and east, include the only semi-arid region in South East Asia – the Dry Zone, home to some 10 million people. This 13 percent of Myanmar’s territory sums up the challenges that the country faces with respect to water security: an uneven geographical and seasonal distribution of this natural resource, the increasing unpredictability of rain patterns due to climate change, and a lack of water management strategies to cope with extreme weather conditions.

Using water resources more wisely is critical, according to NGOs and institutional actors like the Global Water Partnership, which organized a high-level roundtable on water security issues in Yangon on May 24. UN data shows that only about five percent of the country’s potential water resources are being utilised, mostly by the agricultural sector. At the same time, growing urbanisation and the integration of Myanmar into the global economy after five decades of military dictatorship are enhancing demand.

The new government of the de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi now faces the major challenge of delivering solutions to support the country’s rapid economic growth.

A hydroponic greenhouse allows farmers in Myanmar’s Dry Zone to grow vegetable saving up to 90 percent of water. The project is promoted by NGO Terres Des Hommes using technology developed by the University of Bologna and involves over 40 villages. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Water tanks and pots are used to store water all over Myanmar. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

A water carrier in Myanmar’s Dry Zone. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

The arid village of Htita, in Bago region, Myanmar. The artificial ponds traditionally used to collect water are empty at the end of the dry season. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Members of Myanmar’s Htee Tan village community. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

A temporary water tank in Myanmar’s Dry Zone. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Water tanks and pots are used to store water all over Myanmar. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Speakers at the high level roundtable on Water Security and the Sustainable Development Goals held at Inya Lake Hotel in Yangon, Myanmar on May 24, 2016. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Water tanks and pots are used to store water all over Myanmar. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

By an IPS Correspondent
YANGON, Myanmar, May 24 2016 (IPS)

Lack of water management and limited access to data risk hindering Myanmar’s economic growth, making water security a top priority of the new government.

Climate change and increased urbanisation, along with earthquakes, cyclones, periodic flooding and major drought, require an urgent infrastructural upgrade if the country is to undergo a successful integration into the global economy after five decades of economic isolation under military rule.

“Water resources are abundant in Myanmar. However, we need to manage it properly to get adequate and clean water,” said Yangon regional government chief minister U Phyo Min Thein, attending a high-level roundtable on water security organised by Stockholm-based facilitator Global Water Partnership on May 24 in Yangon.

According to IMF data, Myanmar is the fastest growing economy in the world, following an easing of sanctions in 2011, when the military handed power to a semi-civilian reformist government.

“Water security is a priority for the new government,” said Myanmar’s deputy minister of Transport and Communication U Kyaw Myo.

The challenges inherited by the now de facto leader of the country Aung San Suu Kyi, however, are enormous. An expected industrial development and urbanisation boom are only going to make more urgent the need for efficient water management solutions in one of the most challenging areas of South Asia.

Water in Myanmar is plentiful, but regional and seasonal differences are so striking that the country covers the whole range of threats posed by water insecurity: flooding in the delta’s numerous rivers, flash floods in the mountains and Dry Zone, droughts and deadly cyclones. Malnutrition and illnesses are the first consequences.

Safe drinking water is also limited. Groundwater sources are highly unexploited, but those available are often saline or contaminated, mainly by natural arsenic. Villages rely extensively on open air communal ponds to collect fresh water during the rainy season. These, however, dry out quickly during the summer.

“It is important to activate stakeholders and trigger a snowball effect at this stage,” said Global Water Partnership chair Alice Bouman. It is equally important, she said, to act only once all parties have been involved and listened to. “The emphasis has to go in particular to the so-called intrinsic indigenous knowledge: only locals have a long understanding of their environment and can help to avoid expensive mistakes.”

Action should focus on how to avert disasters in the first place, not just react afterwards – that was the message coming from the Japanese and the Dutch officials sharing their countries’ knowledge at the conference.

“Investments should happen in advance and go in the direction of disaster reduction, by building better for example, or consider climate change adaptation in time,” said Japan’s vice minister of Land, infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Koji Ikeuchi.

However, said Myanmar Water Think Tank secretary Khin Ni Ni Thein, money is currently not enough. “First we need to build trust between communities and the government. It becomes easier to access to international donors when there is this connection,” she said. “But it is also important that communities pay for the service, to guarantee the structure.”

Informative statistics but also topographical data that would support reforms are scarce in Myanmar. This is partly due to poor infrastructure and fragmented institutions, with up to six ministries in charge of water issues. But the limited access is primarily a consequence of the military still being in charge of three key ministers, including Defence, and reluctant to handover precise topographical information.

The high-level roundtable on Water Security and the Sustainable Development Goals was held less than two months after the government was sworn in. Speakers from Korea, Japan, Australia and the Netherlands stressed how new policies should refer to the framework of the UN 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals. Among these are no poverty, food security, affordable and clean energy, clean water and sanitation and also gender equality.

“A lack of gender perspective is systemic to the region and many countries. We should always target an indicator, such as water and land laws, from a gender perspective. Some women, for example, cannot interact with the institutions without a male presence, [despite the fact that it’s the women in most societies who take care of the water],” said Kenza Robinson, from the UN’s department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Poverty is especially evident in rural areas. According to a 2014 census, 70 percent of the 51.5 million population live in the countryside. Life expectancy is one of the lowest of the entire ASEAN region and much of this is due to water and food security, impacting also on child and maternal mortality.

Over 40 percent of houses in rural areas are made of bamboo, with only 15 percent using electricity for lightening. A third of households in the country use water from “unimproved” water sources. A quarter of the population has no flush toilet.

“Water access is essential to economic development and effective water management requires sound institutions,” concluded Jennifer Sara, global water practice director at the World Bank.

Seven of the ten recipients of the 2015 U.S. Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage (IWOC) Award pose together with Richard Stengel, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Credit: Kanya D’Almeida/IPS

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 13 2015 (IPS)

On Apr. 6, 2013, Nadia Sharmeen, a crime reporter, was assigned to cover a rally organised by Hefazat-e-Islam, an association of fundamentalist Islamic groups in Bangladesh whose demands included a call to revoke the proposed National Women Development Policy.

When Sharmeen arrived, she directed her cameraman to get a shot of the crowd and proceeded to interview some of the attendees.

“They beat me, they took all my valuables. They threw me to the ground four or five times. They tried to tear off my dress. They wanted to kill me – that was their main goal.” – Nadia Sharmeen, a Bangladeshi journalist attacked by a mob of 60 men while covering a rally by the fundamentalist group Hefazat-e-Islam in 2013
“Suddenly a man came up and asked why I was here as a woman,” she tells IPS. “I told him I was not here as a woman, I was here as a journalist. But he did not accept this and started shouting at me to leave.”

The man’s verbal aggressions quickly drew the attention of a large crowd, and before she knew what was happening, a group of 50 or 60 men were attacking her.

“They beat me, they took all my valuables. They threw me to the ground four or five times. They tried to tear off my dress. They wanted to kill me – that was their main goal,” Sharmeen recounts.

Eventually, her colleagues braved the angry mob and managed to get her to the safety of a hospital. But the damage was done; her injuries left her bed-ridden for five months, and in need of multiple surgeries.

Forsaken by her employer, who refused to pay for her medical treatment and finally forced her to resign, Sharmeen got through the ordeal with nothing but her own strength and the unwavering support of her family.

Today, she is one of 10 women recognised by the U.S. Secretary of State for outstanding courage in their pursuit of peace and equality, and is currently touring the country as a recipient of the 2015 International Women of Courage (IWOC) award.

Speaking to IPS on the sidelines of an event held at the New York City Foreign Press Center Friday, Sharmeen says she considers herself “lucky”. She had a family who stood by her, and did not suffer permanent brain damage despite being kicked repeatedly in the head by scores of angry men.

Given the realities on the ground in the country, her analysis is not far from the truth: thousands of Bangladeshi women live in the shadow of violence, which manifests itself in countless ways. In 2011, for instance, 330 women were killed in dowry-related violence. In total, some 66 percent of Bangladeshi girls are married before their 18^th birthdays.

Nadia Sharmeen, a Bangladeshi journalist. Credit: Kanya D’Almeida/IPS

Other forms of discrimination – such as a 57-percent employment rate for women compared to 88 percent for men – also ensure that women systematically get the raw end of the deal.

According to some data, inequality of the sexes begins at birth, with a female child mortality rate of 20 deaths per 1,000 live births outstripping a male mortality rate of 16 deaths per 100 live births.

In a country where gender bias is finely woven into the social fabric, it is not easy for women to get back up after being beaten down. But that is exactly what Sharmeen did.

Sparking hope across Asia

This year, five of the 10 IWOC honorees hailed from Asia, where women comprise half of the region’s population of four billion.

Their struggles represent the diversity of challenges faced by women across Asia and the Pacific, where patriarchal laws and attitudes run deep.

Sayaka Osakabe, for instance, has spent the last several years fighting a form of discrimination that is perhaps more prominent in Japan than any other country in the region – ‘Matahara’ or maternal harassment, the practice of applying tremendous social on pressure on women to “choose” between having a child or having a career.

Quoting statistics from the Japanese Trade Union Confederation, Osakabe tells IPS that one out of four women are subject to maternal harassment, while 60 percent of all working women generally resign after the birth of their first child.

Osakabe herself faced harassment from her employers during two successive pregnancies, both of which ended in miscarriages because she was denied maternity leave.

On one occasion, her employer went so far as to turn up at her doorstep and inform her that she should not expect to renew her contract because she was causing “so much trouble” in her workplace.

Sayaka Osakabe is the founder of Matahara Net, an organisation that fights against the practice of maternal harassment in Japan. Credit: Kanya D’Almeida

Determined not to accept such blatant discrimination, she has focused all her efforts on fighting Matahara, in the hopes that others will not suffer the same fate she did. She founded the organisation Matahara Net, which in less than a year has reached out to over 100 women facing maternal harassment.

Her struggle sparked government action, including the first-ever court ruling that demotions or dismissals due to pregnancy are, in principle, illegal.

It has been a hard-won victory. Osakabe tells IPS she faced “tremendous backlash” from many corners of society, including from women.

“Housewives and high-career women – two groups forced to choose between their jobs or having babies – are the ones who target me the most,” she says.

In a country where women account for one in three people living below the poverty line, and comprise 63 percent of those holding jobs that pay less than 38 percent of a full-time worker’s salary, ‘matahara’ threatens to widen an already gaping gender gap.

By 2060, Japan’s population is projected to shrink to two-thirds of its current 127 million people, and officials are worried about the future workforce – yet society continues to demonise women who want both a family and an income, Osakabe says.

Life or death choices

Other award winners, like Burmese activist May Sabe Phyu, face a different set of challenges. Phyu is active in the movement to bring justice and dignity to ethnic and religious minorities, specifically to the internally displaced people (IDPs) in her native Kachin State, where civil conflict has driven over 120,000 people from their homes since 2011 alone.

In a country that has is becoming increasingly intolerant of minorities, she works against a bloody backdrop: just two months ago, Burmese soldiers raped and killed two Kachin women working as volunteer schoolteachers in a remote village in the Shan state.

Phyu herself has received threats and faces constant harassment and legal charges, but she forges on.

As a co-founder of the Kachin Peace Network and the Kachin Women Peace Network, she advocates tirelessly for the rights of displaced women and children who are most vulnerable to violence in makeshift camps. She also heads Gender Equality Now, an umbrella group of over 90 organisations collectively advocating for women’s rights.

None of these accolades have corroded her humility.

“When I heard I had been selected for this award I asked myself, ‘Do I really deserve this?’” she tells IPS, adding that many other women have shown even greater courage than she in times of adversity.

She speaks of her friend, also a Kachin woman, who first enlightened her of the plight of the IDPs and gender discrimination.

“She is my symbol of courage and whenever I’m feeling down I just look at her, listen to her, and her voice and her anchorage brings me fresh strength,” Phyu says.

May Sabe Phyu, director of the Gender Equality Network in Burma, has been advocating for the rights of IDPs in Kachin State since 2011. Credit: Kanya D’Almeida

The remaining honorees from Asia include Niloofar Rahmani, the first female Air Force Pilot in Afghanistan’s history, and Tabassum Adnan, a resident of the formerly Taliban-controlled Swat Valley who survived 20 years of physical and mental abuse before going on to lead the first-ever women’s only Jirga (council) dedicated to issues such as acid attacks, honour killings and ‘swara’ – the practice of exchanging a woman to settle disputes or compensate for crimes.

Both Pakistan and Afghanistan are deadly places for women at the best of times, with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) reporting more than 3,000 cases of violence against women during a six-month period in 2012 and Pakistan police records stating that some 160 women suffered acid attacks in 2014, though NGOs say the number is much higher.

In both countries, choosing to fight back is often a matter of life or death, but such a calculation has not deterred these women from walking the path to freedom.

Other award winners include activists and journalists from Bolivia, the Central African Republic, Guinea, Kosovo and Syria.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Border guards in Bangladesh refuse entry to Rohingya refugees from Myanmar in November 2012. Credit: Anurup Titu/IPS

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Oct 3 2013 (IPS)

An exiled leader of the Rohingyas, a persecuted Muslim minority in Myanmar, is raising the alarm from his London office about the fate of his community. He fears “ethnocide to remove all references to the Rohingyas” if the first census in 30 years goes ahead in the Southeast Asian nation.

Nurul Islam, president of the Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO), tells IPS in an interview that he is targeting the United Nations and European governments in the campaign. “We want to put pressure on the Myanmar government to count the Rohingyas in the census, revealing the actual figures of their population.”

Similar concerns about this stateless ethnic group living along Myanmar’s western border have been expressed by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The 12-day census to be held by the end of March next year is expected to cost 58.5 million dollars, immigration and population minister Khin Yi confirmed during a mid-September media briefing in Naypidaw, the administrative capital. The Myanmar government has agreed to commit 15 million dollars, while U.N. assistance is expected to cover five million dollars.

Western governments are expected to fill in the rest, including 16 million dollars from Britain and 2.8 million dollars from Australia. There have been further pledges by Norway and Switzerland.

The concerns dogging the 2014 census arise from a slew of discriminatory policies targeting the Rohingyas for decades. Some, such as forced labour, are human rights violations faced by other minorities.

Others have been unique to the Rohingyas – many are denied proper healthcare and schooling, are prevented from moving out of their villages, and are even stopped from marrying because they are not given approval by local authorities. Local leaders say tens of thousands of Rohingya babies have not been registered.

They are not officially identified as one of the country’s 135 recognised ethnic groups. The last headcount in 1983 put the national population at 35.4 million, while the registered population during the previous census in 1973 was 28.9 million. These two censuses, held when the country was under the grip of an oppressive military regime, did not recognise the Rohingyas as part of the population.

Official statements and the local media often refer to the estimated 800,000 Rohingyas as “Bengalis.” By implication the community are considered “outsiders” from neighbouring Bangladesh.

“The term ‘Bengali’ has the connotation of being a foreigner,” says Chris Lewa, head of the Arakan Project, an independent research organisation chronicling the plight of the Rohingyas. “Institutionalising the term ‘Bengali’ is therefore far-reaching beyond simply a rejection of the term ‘Rohingya’ and it is a denial of their rights as Myanmar nationals.”

“The census will not affect the Rohingyas’ citizenship status,” Janet Jackson, head of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) Myanmar office, told IPS in an interview. “The controversy around this issue must not be allowed to hamper a complete count of the population, and the conduct of the census should not aggravate tensions around the issue.”

UNFPA has received assurances from the government to conduct the census “in line with international census standards, [where] every person will be counted, regardless of citizenship or ethnicity.” Jackson expects the population profile for a country that has an estimated 60 million people to embrace “inclusiveness”.

Such words jar with the reality on the ground since sectarian violence erupted last year between the ethnic Buddhist Arakanese in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar and the Rohingyas.

Attacks on the Rohingyas in June this year and October last year, which killed nearly 200 people and left 140,000 displaced, earned the Rohingyas some sympathy. HRW described them as victims of “ethnic cleansing” in a report released in April this year.

That grim assessment has worsened. The Toronto-based Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention describes Myanmar as “a textbook case” for a country on the brink of genocide. “The machinery of genocide – the complex systematic process designed to eliminate the Rohingyas – is already operating in Burma [as Myanmar was formerly known] and has carried ethnic cleansing and isolation to its current point.

“Mounting evidence supports allegations that genocide in Burma is currently going on, and may merely be a matter of scale,” revealed the report ‘High Risk of Genocide in Burma’ released by the group in early September. Among the “key indicators of genocidal intent” is the “forced registration of Rohingyas under a ‘foreign’ ethnic identity, thus attempting to provide documentary denial of the existence of the group.”

Thai laws ban transgender women from changing their names and gender on their identity cards. Credit: Sutthida Malikaew/IPS

By Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau
BANGKOK, Jul 24 2013 (IPS)

A draft law being readied for parliament that seeks to offer lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) couples the same legal rights as heterosexual couples could make Thailand the first country in Southeast Asia to legalise gay marriage.

Last year, Nathee Theeraronjanapong (55) and his partner Atthapon Janthawee (38) decided to make their 20-year relationship legal.

Citing section 1448 of Thailand’s Civil and Commercial Code, which deems same-sex marriage unlawful, the head of registrations in Thailand’s northern city of Chiang Mai handed the couple a letter of denial.

“The LGBTIQ community really struggles with the issue of acceptance from our parents. There is a lot of pressure to conform to traditional beliefs of what a family unit is comprised of." -- Anjana Suvarnananda, co-founder of Anjaree Group.
In response, the couple filed a complaint with the Parliamentary Human Rights Commission, the Administrative Court and the National Human Rights Commission insisting that Thailand’s constitution guarantees them equal protection under the law.

The political storm following that incident, which generated considerable media buzz, prompted a member of parliament to gather a committee of parliamentarians, 15 scholars and LGBTIQ activists to draft the country’s first civil union bill, to legalise same-sex marriage.

Presenting the draft law on same-sex unions to Thailand’s parliament is Wiratana Kalayasiri, Democrat parliamentarian from the southern Thai city of Songkhla, who is also the chairman of the Legal Justice Human Rights committee.

He says most legislators in Thailand are over 47, which partially explains the staunch opposition to the law in its early stages.

“At first, there was a negative impression and people were wondering why I was doing this but as this process went on people started to understand that this is a human right of the Thai people, guaranteed under the constitution. Since then minds have changed,” Kalayasiri told IPS.

“We have held five hearings on the bill at several universities throughout Thailand and in parliament as well. A survey of 200-300 people showed that 78 percent are in favour of allowing same-sex marriage and 10.3 percent are against it.

“I was particularly surprised when we went to Songkhla [a city of roughly 75,000 people] for a public meeting and 87 percent of Muslims in attendance were in favour [of gay marriage].”

Still, leading activists in Thailand’s LGBTIQ movement like Anjana Suvarnananda, who co-founded Anjaree Group in 1987 – the first organisation to raise the issue of LGBTIQ rights here – believes that the bill could facilitate the process of moving public attitudes from opposition to acceptance.

“The LGBTIQ community really struggles with the issue of acceptance from our parents. There is a lot of pressure to conform to traditional beliefs of what a family unit is comprised of,” she told IPS.

“This is why it is important that the language of the bill transcends defining marriage as being solely between a man and a woman. If we can put forth the idea that the family structure is based on the union of two loving and consenting individuals then…society and our parents would be more willing to accept our way of life.”

Under the current Civil and Commercial Code, same-sex families are not afforded the same legal protections as heterosexual couples such as medical coverage or recognition as being the sole caretaker of their spouse.

Suvarnananda believes the law will be particularly useful during times of emergency. “If there is a severe accident or health issue, like if my partner becomes ill, then in the eyes of the law I am no one other than just a friend. This forces us [the LGBTIQ community] to struggle by ourselves…We want more security,” she added.

In 1956, provisions making sodomy a punishable offense were repealed and consensual sex between same-sex couples became lawful, making Thailand one of Asia’s most progressive countries regarding gay rights.

Anti-discrimination laws protecting members of the LGBTIQ community are non-existent in the region. Sodomy is criminalised in six member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – namely, Brunei, Burma, Malaysia and Singapore, as well as  Marawi City in the Philippines and the South Sumatra Province of Indonesia.

Thus Danai Linjongrat, executive director of the Rainbow Sky Association, has been urging caution in the drafting of the civil union bill, so that it will not inadvertently fan the flames of intolerance and heighten regional stigmatisation of the LGBTIQ community.

“We are looking for a bill that equalises all relationships,” he told IPS. “For example, the current marriage law grants heterosexual couples the right to marry once they reach the legal age of 17, but for LGBTIQ people the legal marriage age would be 20 years old.”

“When we put forth language like this in a bill it merely reinforces discrimination against a certain segment of society when it comes to marriage,” says Linjongrat.

The situation is particularly complicated for transgender individuals, who confront a range of attitudes and biases across the region. Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore, for example, all have laws targeting and criminalising transgender women for “cross-dressing”.

Even in Thailand, where gender non-conformity receives a high degree of social acceptance, there has been little progress in formally recognising the rights of transgender people.

Thailand’s first sex change surgery was performed in 1972 and there are an estimated 180,000 Thai people who identify as transgender, including a number of pop singers, television personalities and movie stars.

In addition, a transgender beauty pageant, the Miss Tiffany’s Universe, is televised annually on a national scale from the eastern city of Pattaya.

Yet Thai law does not allow trans-people to change their gender or their names on ID cards, birth certificates or passports, leading to complications in finding employment and harassment at border crossings or immigration checkpoints.

Even with a university degree, transgender people have difficulty finding a decent job. To support themselves, many turn to the entertainment or sex industry.

Experts hope “this civil union bill will slightly reduce heteronormativity in Thai society, which could improve…health issues by reducing the likelihood of unsafe sexual practices [among the LGBTIQ community],” Prempreeda Pramoj Na Ayutthaya, an HIV and AIDS national programme officer for UNESCO in Bangkok, told IPS.

Thailand has the highest adult HIV rate in Southeast Asia, with nearly 520,000 people between the ages of 15 and 49 living with HIV/AIDS; a 2010 survey in Bangkok found that 31 percent of gay men and transgendered people are HIV-positive.

“In order for the transgender community to fully support this bill, it must ensure that we are granted the right to legally change our name titles,” Na Ayutthaya stressed.

By Sudeshna Chowdhury
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 10 2013 (IPS)

As the situation in Myanmar deteriorates, thousands of Rohingyas have fled the country in search of a safe haven.

Courtesy of Wakar Uddin

Reports continue to emerge depicting inhuman and squalid conditions in the temporary camps where these displaced people live.

Local officials in the Rakhine state of Myanmar recently called for the strict implementation of a “two-child policy” on Rohingya Muslims. Even though this announcement has been condemned by human rights groups around the world, the crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar is far from over.

In an interview with IPS correspondent Sudeshna Chowdhury, Dr. Wakar Uddin, director general of of the Arakan Rohingya Union, a non-governmental organisation incorporated in the United States, urged the international community to stand up for the Rohingyas of Myanmar, also known as Burma.

While the international community has taken note of the sectarian violence against the community, “it is not enough,” Uddin said.

Critics of the United Nations often cite examples from history when the world body failed to prevent such tragedies, such as the Rwanda genocide and more recently, the death of civilians in Sri Lanka.

“How many Rohingyas have to die for the international community to respond to the ongoing crisis?” asks Uddin.

Excerpts from the interview follow:

Q: What are the larger implications of a two-child policy on the Rohingya Muslim population?

A: This two-child policy is a tool employed to reduce as well as control the population of Rohingya Muslims. It is an ethnic cleansing policy filled with hate. The policy is specifically for Rohingya Muslims who are unwanted and hated by the government as well as some extremist Buddhist elements. Some experts would say that it is also a genocide policy.

The population of Rohingyas in Myanmar has grown like the population of any other ethnic group in any part of the world. It is about three million now globally, including those in Myanmar.

In fact, this two-child policy was there in Myanmar since 1994. However, it lacked serious enforcement. But surgical and forced operations were prevalent in remote pockets of the country. This is why it wasn’t reported widely. But now local authorities are actually stepping up the implementation of the directive.

The authorities are trying to eliminate the population by driving them out of the country as well as putting a cap on the birth of Rohingyas. So they are controlling the population growth in both ways. Eventually, there will be no Rohingyas left in the region and then one can easily grab all their land.

Q: So, this is not just about sectarian violence?

A: A significant amount of land in the Rakhine state, also known as Arakan state of Myanmar, is owned by Rohingyas. Areas within this region are rich in hydrocarbons, natural gas and other resources. So, the goal is to grab these lands that belong to the Rohingyas.

The extremist elements are trying to drive Rohingya people out of the country by making false claims. They are saying that the Rohingyas had illegally infiltrated the Arakan State of Myanmar, and that they actually belong to Bangladesh and to the state of West Bengal in India.

But what is important to understand is the fact that the Rohingya history in the country of Myanmar dates back many centuries.

Q: Is the violence spreading to other parts of the country as well?

A: The Burmans are the majority ethnic group in Burma. Therefore, what we are seeing is the “Burmanisation” of the country.

The aim is to eliminate other minority groups in Myanmar. In places like the Kachin state, people are now asking for autonomy. To begin with, violence was mainly directed against the Rohingya Muslims. But now you see Muslims, who are not even Rohingyas, being targeted by the ruling class. Slowly Hindus and Christians, too, won’t be spared as the violence escalates in the rest of the country.

Q: What is the current situation of those who are displaced?

A: The most vulnerable are the women and children. From lack of medicines to malnutrition to squalid conditions – you name it. Monsoons are coming so the situation is going to deteriorate further. The internally displaced persons (IDPs) are therefore at a huge risk.

What is most disturbing is the emergence of sex slave camps where Rohingya women are raped and used as “sex slaves” by Burmese forces. These women have nowhere to go. The authorities provide them with food and shelter. In return they exploit them.

While incidences of rape do get reported in the media once in a while, there is no systematic data collection or records that can give us an estimate of how many women have been raped.

Q: How are the neighbouring countries and the international community dealing with this situation?

A: Some of these Rohingya Muslims took shelter in neighbouring countries, such as India, Thailand and Bangladesh. But we are talking about 1.5 million people here. Absorbing them will not solve the Rohingya issue. The root cause of the problem needs to be addressed here. One has to give them their rights. Proper education and jobs will help solve this crisis.

As far as the role of international community is concerned, it is only now that people outside Burma are paying some attention to the plight of the Rohingyas.

As members of the Rohingya diaspora, we have to continuously work towards keeping the discussion alive, and keep reminding people that the Rohingyas are suffering and a permanent solution is important to solve the crisis.

But the international community, like the United Nations, is very slow in responding to such emergencies. Moreover, it is too bureaucratic in nature. Historically, the international community has been very slow in its response when it comes to intervention during such situations.

So, those capable of intervening wait until a certain number of people die. Before that they do not take action.

Also one must understand that until very recently Burma was a closed country. International media did not have much access to the region. It was only after the mass killings last year that the international community, including the media, took notice of the Rohingya crisis.

Excerpt:

Obama meets with Myanmar's President Thein Sein during his November 2012 trip to Asia. Credit: White House Photo/Pete Souza

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, May 20 2013 (IPS)

Myanmar’s President Thein Sein on Monday became the first leader of that country in almost a half-century to pay a call on the White House, a visit that has simultaneously highlighted a series of monumental changes seen in Myanmar in recent years as well as a reforms process that many are warning may have stalled.

It was only late last year that the United States lifted longstanding travel restrictions on Thein Sein, amidst a broader easing of economic sanctions by Washington and others aimed at nurturing a nascent opening-up in Myanmar, also known as Burma. Yet that process has been marred over the past year by ongoing armed insurgencies, continued rights violations and inept government response to anti-Muslim violence."It just seems like the whole [reforms] process is on autopilot.” -- HRW's John Sifton

At the White House Monday, President Barack Obama urged his counterpart to end attacks against Muslim minorities known as the Rohingya. Although President Sein did not directly mention the Rohingya, he did say that the recent communal violence was “extremely tragic”.

“Peace must be rooted in the broadest possible participation of public support, and we must forge a new and all-inclusive national identity,” President Sein said in public remarks at a university here following his visit to the White House, after which he took no questions.

“Myanmar people of all ethnic backgrounds and all faiths – Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Hindu and others – must feel part of this new national identity. We must end all forms of discrimination and must ensure not only that intercommunal violence is brought to a halt, but that all perpetrators are brought to justice.”

President Sein also noted that a balance must be found between security imperatives and “basic rights and openness”, and he requested “help and advice” from the United States in finding that balance.

Yet critics are increasingly sceptical about Washington’s role in this relationship, warning that U.S. policy towards Myanmar has not been responsive enough to failed pledges of reform by Thein Sein’s quasi-civilian government. The former general’s travels around Washington Monday were dogged by criticism from public protesters and U.S. lawmakers.

“We should establish firm benchmarks to give pro-reform forces within Myanmar … the appropriate leverage to foster democracy and lasting civilian rule,” Trent Franks and Rush Holt, both members of Congress, wrote Monday. They urged that such benchmarks focus on progress of rule of law and “constitutional reform to create a federal system with respect for minority rights and civilian control of the military”.

Carrots and benchmarks

“The problem is that both the president and government of Burma have already been rewarded for the reforms process that’s underway, even while the last six months have been among the least impressive in terms of reform since that process began,” John Sifton, Asia advocacy director with Human Rights Watch, told IPS.

“The [Obama] administration is showing very little inclination to calibrate its approach and use punitive measures when there are negative developments. Instead, they continue to hand out rewards.”

One case in point is last Friday’s release of around 15 political prisoners. With the release – ordered by President Sein’s office, rather than a high-profile committee set up for the purpose – clearly aimed at coinciding with the Washington visit, rights observers are warning that political prisoners are being used as mere pawns.

In addition, President Sein’s government has failed to follow through on a pledge to facilitate the opening of an office by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Further, little headway is being seen in multiple simultaneous negotiations among long-simmering ethnic conflicts.

And a recent government commission tasked with looking into the anti-Rohingya violence was nearly universally disappointing, recommending a security response over social reconciliation for actions that rights groups say constitute ethnic cleansing.

Indeed, that violence is continuing. Also on Monday, Physicians for Human Rights, an advocacy group, released a report detailing the recent deaths of over 100 Muslims in central Burma, in a communal “massacre” in late March.

While the Obama administration has repeatedly voiced its “concern” over these and related issues, public policy announcements over the past year have been in the Myanmarese government’s favour: continued rollbacks on sanctions (though some do remain), boosting of trade links, a historic visit to Yangon by President Obama, followed by Monday’s visit to the White House by Thein Sein.

“This encouragement policy is not working – over the past year, and particularly in the past couple of months, the Burmese government has escalated its human rights violations and military attacks against ethnic minorities,” Jennifer Quigley, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Burma, an advocacy group, said in a statement.

“Instead of retracting previous concessions or freezing new concessions … the U.S. administration has responded disproportionately by granting more concessions. President Obama is sending the message that crimes against humanity by state forces against ethnic and religious minorities in Burma will be ignored by his administration.”

Calibrated approach

U.S. officials, meanwhile, have repeatedly inferred that their actions are meant to strengthen the moderately reformist wing under Thein Sein, guarding against hardliners and entrenched interests.

“We can’t underestimate the fact that Burma has made great progress in the last couple of years,” State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said Friday. “Yes, there’s still more work to do, but the progress they’ve made has been significant and they’ve put in place an ambitious reform agenda.”

The Obama administration’s own acknowledgement of the ongoing “work to do” was given a strong fillip elsewhere in Washington on Monday. Just as Thein Sein and Barack Obama were planning to meet at the White House, the U.S. State Department was releasing an annual global report on religious freedoms.

The Myanmar section is clear-eyed in its reporting of the past year, noting that despite constitutional guarantees of religious freedoms, the government “in practice” enforces restrictions on those rights. “The trend in the government’s respect for religious freedom did not change significantly during the year,” the report states, noting also government complicity in the anti-Rohingya attacks last June.

Still, HRW’s Sifton alludes to broad if grudging agreement with the outlines of U.S. attempts to offer rewards for reforms and to bolster Thein Sein’s hand.

“Few in civil society are suggesting that the U.S. government turn its back on Thein Sein,” he notes.

“Rather, the issue is imposing a calibrated approach so that when the reforms process slows or there are other disappointing developments, those are met with corresponding slowdowns or punitive actions on the U.S. side. Right now, it just seems like the whole process is on autopilot.”

Border guards in Bangladesh refuse entry to Rohingya refugees from Myanmar in November 2012. Credit: Anurup Titu/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, May 1 2013 (IPS)

A long-awaited official report on last year’s sectarian violence in western Myanmar is being heavily disparaged by human rights and advocacy groups here, who say a government-backed commission has placed undue emphasis on strengthening security while almost completely ignoring issues of discrimination and accountability.

The commission was created in August, in the aftermath of violence between Buddhists and Muslims that spiked in June and October in the western state of Rakhine (also known as Arakan). Yet the 27-member body included no representation from the Muslim Rohingya community, a heavily marginalised group that has suffered by far the greatest losses of life and home during the continuing violence in Buddhist-majority Myanmar (also known as Burma)."There were some very offensive parts of this report, but none of those should detract from the realisation that this was first and foremost a failure as a government investigation." -- HRW's John Sifton

Indeed, the report throughout refers to the community as “Bengalis”, a reference to the perception that the Rohingya are illegal migrants from Bangladesh, while also making derogatory comments about the community’s “high population growth rates”. Such officially held views have been used for decades to rationalise exclusionary policies that have denied the Rohingya the option of Myanmarese citizenship.

According to newly released government figures, the 2012 violence resulted in nearly 200 deaths, the destruction of more than 8,600 homes and around 100,000 displaced people, mostly Rohingya and other Muslims.

The report was released Monday but came months overdue, reportedly due to sharp disagreements among the commission members. Non-official English-language translations are available for the report’s recommendations and executive summary.

Yet despite the findings being eagerly anticipated as a key indicator of the quasi-civilian government’s ability to enforce human and civil rights following decades of repressive military rule, the commission’s recommendations are overwhelmingly focused on boosting security. This includes a full doubling of security forces in Rakhine.

“We’re dismayed that this effort took so long to reach a conclusion and made so many recommendations that are either off base or outright counter-productive,” John Sifton, a Washington-based researcher with Human Rights Watch (HRW), an advocacy group, told IPS.

“The recommendation to double the local security force size in [Rakhine], for instance, completely overlooks the fact that these forces were complicit in the violence that led to the commission being appointed in the first place. That raises strong questions about the objectivity and intentions of the report authors.”

Ethnic cleansing

Sifton says such recommendations are of little surprise when viewed alongside the report’s broader absolving of government entities of any responsibility for the violence.

“This is in direct opposition to findings by the United Nations, HRW and other human rights groups on the ground,” he says.

“There is simply no doubt that local security forces were complicit in the violence, in some cases taking part in the violence directly or else standing by as Buddhist mobs attacked Rohingya people. If you don’t offer any criticism of the fact that no one has been arrested or held accountable for this violence, there is clearly something wrong with your report.”

According to a study released last week by HRW, the 2012 violence amounted to crimes against humanity. That document is one of the most thorough public compilations currently available of what happened last year, and includes reference to government authorities destroying mosques and refusing to allow humanitarian aid to reach displaced Rohingya communities.

“The Burmese government engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya that continues today through the denial of aid and restrictions on movement,” Phil Robertson, HRW’s deputy Asia director, said last week. “The government needs to put an immediate stop to the abuses and hold the perpetrators accountable or it will be responsible for further violence against ethnic and religious minorities in the country.”

Meanwhile, an estimated 125,000 people remain displaced, with Rohingya Muslims living in camps that rights groups have criticised as ghettoes. The new commission report does little to chart a clear path forward on how to do deal with this issue, however, though it does note that the official response to the situation has had “many gaps”, including a current 90 percent unmet need in the provision of shelter.

Yet on Monday the commission’s secretary was quoted in the media stating that the current “segregation” of Muslims and Buddhists will need to continue. “We cannot recommend swift resettlement to people’s original places because that would trigger more riots,” the secretary, Kyaw Yin Hlaing, said.

Government failure

The report does offer some strong language on issues of citizenship and discrimination. For instance, the commission notes that the government “needs to urgently initiate a process for examining the citizenship status of people in RakhineState” and calls for a ban on “hate language against any religion”.

It also urges the creation of a “truth-finding committee”, “to determine the root causes of sectarian violence between the Buddhist and Islamic communities”.

While potentially positive, critics are seeing such calls as either too weak in comparison to the rest of the recommendations, or as potentially laying groundwork for further entrenching discrimination in the future.

“A Truth-Finding Committee is a positive step, as long as it is part of an independent investigation to determine responsibility for the violence and its findings are released to the public,” Isabelle Arradon, deputy Asia director for Amnesty International, a rights watchdog, said Monday.

“But such a commission should not bar or replace criminal justice, or reparation for crimes under international law.”

According to HRW’s Sifton, the new commission report ultimately highlights that the Myanmarese government “is simply not ready to take care of its own affairs without international assistance.”

He points to a promise made by President Thein Sein during President Barack Obama’s landmark visit to Yangon in November that Myanmar would allow the United Nations to open an office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights – something that has yet to happen.

“There were some very offensive parts of this report, but none of those should detract from the realisation that this was first and foremost a failure as a government investigation,” Sifton says.

“The government was given an opportunity to investigate this violence and it failed. So now it falls on the international community – in the form of the United Nations – to facilitate an independent investigation.”

Nearly 20 of the world’s largest creditor countries have announced that they would be cutting nearly half of Myanmar’s total foreign debt, worth some six billion dollars.

Those countries, which include the United States, United Kingdom and several members of the European Union, are part of the Paris Club, a group of 19 of the world’s largest donors. On Monday, the group stated that its members were aware of Myanmar’s “exceptional situation” and had agreed to a 50-percent cancellation of arrears and a seven-year grace period for the remainder.

On the sidelines, Norway and Japan came to separate agreements to cancel additional debts amounting to around four billion dollars. President Thein Sein, who has overseen more than two years of contested political and economic reforms in Myanmar, had reportedly made debt relief a priority for his administration.

The Paris Club move comes just a day after the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) came to a separate agreement to restructure close to a billion additional dollars that Myanmar owed the institutions. This deal, made possible by a substantial “bridge loan” from Japan, will give the country economic breathing room as it works to emerge from decades of international isolation and almost nonexistent economic and social development.

The deals follow on an agreement signed last month stipulating that Myanmar would adhere to conditionalities set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Together, the accords signed in recent days clear up, at least temporarily, almost three-quarters of Myanmar’s total foreign debt.

Estimated by the IMF at around 15 billion dollars, that debt load has been described by some economists and diplomats as one of the most significant impediments to the new government’s plans for reforms and development.

Among other things, the new agreements will allow Myanmar leeway to engage in new programmes through the World Bank, which had been constrained in the extent to which it could engage with the country. Last week, the World Bank approved a new credit, worth 440 million dollars, aimed at strengthening the country’s macroeconomic climate – and beginning to pay back the Japanese government’s bridge loan.

Future saddling

Myanmar received significant foreign financing during the 1980s, but that was largely halted following a brutal crackdown on civil liberties that began in 1988. By the end of the 1990s, the military government, amidst broad stagnation and increasingly isolated on the international stage, essentially stopped paying its foreign debts.

As the past two years of reforms have taken hold, however, international donors and multinational companies have begun to eagerly flood back into the country; the World Bank Group re-opened Yangon offices in August. Yet the fact that Myanmar will now again be fully integrated into the international framework strikes some overly quick – and the terms of the new agreements as overly generous.

“These agreements allow large amounts of new lending, before any investigation has been made into how past loans did and did not benefit the people of Burma,” Tim Jones, a policy officer with the Jubilee Debt Campaign, an international anti-debt advocacy group, said Monday in a statement.

He also noted that the new World Bank and ADB deals, which simply restructure rather than cancel Myanmar’s debts, will now allow the government once again to engage in borrowing from these institutions.

“None of these deals save Burma any money now, but they commit future governments to making payments on debt they inherit,” he says. “This support for a military dictatorship could bind the hands of a hoped-for future democratic government.”

Indeed, for all of the changes of the past few years, Myanmar’s government is still dominated by the military, with President Thein Sein himself a former general. And despite suggestions of significant factionalisation within that force, it is far too early for many in and out of the country to believe that the Myanmarese military is in any way reformed.

“It is incredible that Burma gets billions of dollars of debt relief when its biggest spending is on the military,” Anna Roberts, executive director of Burma Campaign UK, said Monday. “Burma’s leaders should be on trial in The Hague, not getting special deals on debt relief.”

Unnecessary exception

The “specialness” of the new deals is of particular interest. Over the past decade, after all, the international community has made some progress in consolidating a set of principles by which it should deal with foreign debt amassed by developing countries.

“If two developing countries have the same amount of debt, we’d like them to get the same deal,” David Roodman, who researches aid and debt relief at the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank, told IPS.

“But according to the norms that have been developed, Myanmar didn’t meet those requirements. So this agreement not only is an exception to those rules but undermines the rules-based approach more generally.”

In evolving discussions over the past 10 years, the international community has agreed to define eligibility for debt relief based on the sustainability of debt levels – the ratio of debt to gross domestic product (GDP), for instance, or the ratio of debt to exports.

Yet Roodman says that while the agreed level for debt to GDP is 30 percent, Myanmar’s debt stands at just 18 percent of GDP, almost half of the stipulated requirement. Likewise, the level for debt to exports has been agreed at 100 percent, while Myanmar’s stands somewhat lower at 85 percent.

“Further, the IMF has done some scenarios through modelling on the likely course of exports and GDP in coming years in Myanmar,” he says, “and they found that the debt load, if anything, is going shrink.”

The key to understanding the Paris Club decision, then, might have to do less with development than with foreign policy. From this perspective, while foreign governments may be successfully jockeying for position with Myanmarese officials, they may be losing valuable leverage that could still be required down the road.

Notably, Myanmar still owes around two billion dollars to China, the military’s closest ally for decades and a key reason many Western countries may be prioritising relations with Myanmar today. In a new blog post, Roodman notes that opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has in the past urged foreign governments to suspend rather than end economic sanctions.

“(T)he threat of easy reinstatement, in her judgment, would spur further reform,” he writes. “The analogous step in the debt dance was to refinance defaulted loans rather than cancel them. Just as sanctions can be permanently abolished later, so can debts be.”

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank Group arm that focuses on the private sector, announced Wednesday that it would be backing a new microfinance institution in Myanmar aimed at reaching 200,000 people by 2020.

The move marks the first investment the IFC has ever made in Myanmar, also known as Burma. Although the country joined the IFC in the mid-1950s, it had never received a loan by the time that most international financial institutions pulled out of Myanmar in the late 1980s, citing an increasingly dictatorial government.

Last August, however, following two years of contested pro-democracy reforms in Myanmar, the World Bank re-established an office in Yangon. Now, the Washington-based IFC has struck an agreement, along with several European financial institutions, to back a Cambodian bank’s proposal to create a major new programme to begin providing loans to micro and small businesses in Myanmar.

On the back of the IFC’s two-million-dollar investment, ACLEDA MFI Myanmar (named after its parent, the largest bank in Cambodia) is expected to begin operations by the end of this year. The IFC, which has also helped ACLEDA expand to Laos, says that the programme will be reaching out mostly to small businesses owned by women.

“Our investment in a microfinance institution is a good start to our support for Myanmar’s economic reforms in order to improve access to finance, create more jobs and reduce poverty for its people,” Sergio Pimenta, the IFC’s director for East Asia and the Pacific, said Wednesday in a statement.

According to a 2011 estimate by the United Nations Development Programme, which has been offering microcredit in Myanmar for a decade and a half, demand for loans by rural Myanmarese could be as high as 470 million dollars a year.

A microfinance initiative backed by major Western donors, including the United States, was set up in Myanmar in 2009, and began officially operating in 2011 after the passage of new national legislation formalising the domestic microfinance industry. Called the Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund (LIFT), the programme’s latest annual report says that it has already assisted 1.1 million people, around two percent of the population.

While the LIFT programme is overseen by the United Nations and exists largely to funnel donor monies in particular directions, the IFC sees the aim of the new ACLEDA initiative as being to pave the way for other international private-sector microfinance organisations.

“Through ACLEDA MFI Myanmar, IFC will help scale up the country’s microfinance industry and increase access to financial services for both the urban and rural poor,” Pimenta says. “This will help convince other players that affordable microfinance services can be delivered effectively in Myanmar.”

Responsible delivery

Microfinance remains a relatively young industry, having been created around two decades ago and having seen significant expansion only over more recent years. During that period, many of the world’s largest financial institutions have become involved in microfinance, offering banking services and small loans to impoverished individuals, communities and business owners.

According to many estimates, there are currently around 200 million users of microfinance programmes around the world – and upwards of another two billion that continue to lack access to financial services.

Proponents say such programmes allow applicants otherwise deemed uncreditworthy by most banks to participate more freely in the market economy, particularly helping women to set up or expand small businesses and, more generally, increasing financial inclusion.

But critics maintain that despite its successes, microfinance is little more than a way for multinational financial institutions to gain access to communities otherwise generally out of reach. They warn that for-profit programmes have a spotty record in furthering development or tamping down poverty levels, and at times have done more harm than good.

Given a notably rickety financial regulatory system, such dangers seem particularly apparent in Myanmar.

Microfinance leaders are clearly aware of this record. In a taped conversation posted by the IFC this month on microfinance and “responsible delivery”, Doris Kohn, a top official with the German banking group KfW (together with the IFC, the world’s largest microfinance partner), stated that microfinance is no “silver bullet” for development.

“There have been some bad experiences, but any industry experiences those, and there are some not-so-responsible players, but all in all this should not cloud the fact that there have been enormous achievements,” Kohn said. “We have seen some overheated markets and some … competition leading to over-indebted clients, so I do believe that regulation is needed to prevent that from happening.”

In Myanmar, however, financial regulation remains weak, although, pushed by the international community, the government has come out with a series of reforms and new laws aimed at strengthening long-maligned (or non-existent) regulatory authorities. Yet according to a new ranking by Maplecroft, a British risk assessor, the country remains one of the riskiest places to do business, ranked fifth from the bottom in the “extreme risk” category.

The worry for some scholars and activists, then, is that as Myanmar’s microfinance sector opens up, it will attract some of the industry’s more predatory or unscrupulous companies – the type against which KfW’s Kohn was warning.

Still others say that microfinance itself receives more emphasis from development institutions than it deserves.

“Far more important than microfinance is getting proper development banks – or central bank policies that provide similar functions – for medium and large domestic enterprises on a long-term, low-interest subsidised basis, as has been a cornerstone of all countries that have industrialised,” Rick Rowden, a development consultant who has worked in Myanmar, told IPS.

“Microfinance is nice and all, but it has little to do with the fundamentals of industrialisation or long-term development strategy.”

Worried over the possibility of further escalation of armed conflict in Myanmar, activists here are calling on Washington to take stronger action to condemn state forces for aerial bombardment of ethnic Kachin rebels and civilians in the country’s north, which some say constitutes crimes against humanity.

While combatants with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) have been fighting the Myanmarese state since tensions flared again in June 2011, the aerial attacks, which have continued daily since late December, marked the first time that helicopter gunships and modern aircraft have been used by state forces in the country’s many long-simmering ethnic conflicts.

The bombardments are said to have killed an estimated 300 people in the north, while nearly 100,000 people have fled the increased violence over the past year and a half.

“The fighting is not just hurting the Kachin army, but more than that it is the civilians who have to live in fear,” Myra Dahgaypaw, with the U.S. Campaign for Burma, told IPS ahead of a planned rally on Saturday in front of the White House and U.S. State Department. “What this tells us is that it doesn’t seem as though the changes that have taken place in the country in recent years are authentic.”

Over the past two years, Myanmar (also known as Burma) has seen a rapid series of political reforms, spearheaded by President Thein Sein. While some suggest that these changes remain only superficial, international actors, largely led by the United States, have rushed to embrace the moderately reformist regime and try to nurture on ongoing opening-up.

At Saturday’s rallies, activists are urging President Barack Obama to reconsider newly strengthened economic and diplomatic ties with Myanmar, and to reassess re-established military-to-military ties.

In October, following a series of rollbacks on economic sanctions, the U.S. military announced that it may extend an invitation to the Myanmar army to participate in joint military exercises in Thailand. Known as Cobra Gold, the drills are the largest in the region, and the possibility was seen as a major coup for the Myanmar Army.

But according to the Pentagon, the invitation would only be formally extended “as long as it is consistent with U.S. efforts to advance protection of human rights, civilian rule of the military, anti-corruption efforts and other reform issues.” (Likewise, the State Department has long said ending the sanctions was conditional on ongoing strengthening of reforms.)

“We don’t think that the Burmese regime should be allowed to attend a prestigious event like the Cobra exercises yet,” Dahgaypaw says. “More importantly, we want to ask the administration to keep pressuring the regime to enter into political dialogue with all of the country’s ethnic minorities – not just the Kachin – and to do so not separately but as a unified front.”

Selective peace

Myanmar’s use of armed aircraft against the Kachin has elicited broad international condemnation, including from the United States and United Nations. Yet the new clashes appear to have already sown bitter communal enmity among some Kachin, dimming the possibilities of long-term peace and threatening to undermine recent ceasefires between the government and other armed ethnic groups.

On Thursday, an umbrella group of ethnic groups, the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), announced that it would now be the only group authorised to negotiate with the government. In line with Dahgaypaw’s suggestion, this now sets up one side of a potential pan-ethnic discussion towards reconciliation.

Yet a stronger sense of unity on the part of the ethnic groups could also increase the possibility of additional flare-ups in other parts of the country, particularly in neighbouring Shan state.

“If the government continues its action, there could be offensives against the Shan, who border with the Kachin,” Nai Han Tha, a UNFC spokesperson, said in early January. “We will consider the Kachin’s situation and discuss what we will do for our next step.”

Although Myanmar is made up of some 135 ethnicities, the ruling Burman have long marginalised the rest of the country’s population. According to some, this process has not changed in the current reforms era.

“In Kachin and elsewhere, the government is trying to dilute the ethnic identity of these states – we are seeing that there is no intrinsic interest on the part of this ruling government to institute national reconciliation,” Gum San, a spokesperson with the Kachin Alliance, based here, told IPS.

“Kachin is just a test case. We’re getting the brunt of it, but this conflict shows this can happen to anyone else. ‘Peace is selective,’ that’s what the government is trying to establish here.”

Political settlement

The KIA is currently the only major group still fighting the government. Yet the group only took up arms again in mid-2011 after 14 years of negotiations over greater autonomy – some say mere equality – failed to yield any result.

According to a new analysis released Wednesday by the International Crisis Group (ICG), a global watchdog, this could present some grounds for optimism. The protracted struggle in Kachin has “produced two sides that may be wary but are very familiar with each other and in regular contact,” the brief states. “It is a complex but not intractable conflict.”

Still, ICG calls the fighting in Kachin “one of the most serious threats to peace” in Myanmar’s nascent transition period. Further escalation would be “serious” in two ways, ICG analyst Jim Della-Giacoma writes: by “making it harder to convince other groups of the government’s … intentions” and “undermin(ing) the President by suggesting either that he is not the peacemaker he claims to be, or that he does not have the power to rein in the military.”

Worryingly, President Thein Sein on Friday publicly lauded the Myanmar Army’s actions in Kachin, stating the military had done all it could “to make positive contributions to the peace process”.

But according to Kachin Alliance’s Gum San, no peace process will hold in Myanmar until a political settlement is reached that establishes equality for the country’s many ethnic communities.

“We were established as a union of Burma, but we have never developed as a nation. That is the central problem: the government has never been able to agree to equality for the ethnic people,” he says.

“These ceasefires have no substance, in that they have yet to address the foundation of the problem. In the ethnic areas we hear about development, development, development – but if there’s no political settlement, all of this development can be rolled back within weeks.”

As Thailand braces itself to combat drug-resistant malaria, a spread of small, nondescript buildings scattered close to corn and rice fields along its hilly, western border are being cast into a bigger, international role.

Hundreds of these health clinics and malaria posts have become a pivotal frontline to detect the genetic mutation of Plasmodium falciparum, which makes the deadly parasite resistant to artemisinin, the most effective anti-malaria drug used globally.

“They have been equipped to test and treat local people and migrant workers who come down with fever in that malaria belt,” says Wichai Satimai, director of the bureau of vector-borne disease at the Thai Public Health Ministry. “The results of a blood test are given in 15 minutes and the staff will be able to assess if the patient has malaria and what strain.”

This healthcare for the largely farming and migrant labour community has taken on added significance after medical researchers revealed signs of drug-resistant malaria along the border Thailand shares with Myanmar (or Burma) in April this year.

“These blood tests have to be carried out more regularly and frequently in the environments that are conducive to spread the parasite from carriers of drug-resistant malaria,” Wichai told IPS. “The health staff must regularly monitor and treat the patients.”

The efforts to contain drug-resistant malaria in the isolated areas along the border “makes the fight more difficult,” noted Fatoumata Nafo-Traore, head of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, a global initiative coordinating the drive against the disease, following a recent visit to health clinics along the Thai-Myanmar border. “There are communities living in forest areas and remote areas.

“We need to contain the resistance in these local areas,” she said in an interview with IPS. “This has to be seen as a global concern because there is no other highly effective anti-malaria drug than artemisinin therapy.”

But even as the border health clinics begin to shoulder a bigger role, concerns about funding the free health services offered to local and migrant communities are also growing. Officials of the Thai health ministry warned early this month that the Southeast Asian nation may have to meet the cost of containing drug-resistant malaria if international funding dries up.

Currently, the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which finances programmes to combat these three killer diseases in the developing world, remains a major contributor. It has disbursed 40 million dollars for a range of malaria control programmes, including the running of the 300 malaria posts and health clinics along the Thai border.

Thailand’s fear of a looming funding crisis was echoed in the ‘World Malaria Report 2012’, which was released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) this week. “International funding for malaria appears to have reached a plateau” that is below the estimated level to meet internationally-agreed global malaria targets, it states.

“An estimated 5.1 billion U.S. dollars is needed every year between 2011 and 2020 to achieve universal access to malaria interventions in the 99 countries with on-going malaria transmissions,” it adds. “While many countries have increased domestic financing of malaria control, the total available global funding remained at 2.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2011 – less than half of what is needed.”

The need for sustained funding was underscored by malaria’s global transmission, with 2010 witnessing an estimated 219 million cases occurring, while the disease killed about 660,000 people, mostly children under five years in Africa, according to the WHO’s report.

While South and Southeast Asia’s number of 2.4 million malaria cases in 2010 may be dwarfed by the global rates, the annual malaria report singled out the Mekong River region – shared by Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam – as the epicentre of drug-resistant malaria.

“If resistance to artemisinin develops and spreads to other larger geographical areas, the public health consequences could be dire, as no alternative anti-malarial medicines will be available for at least five years,” the WHO warned.

Artemisinin is the active ingredient in the anti-malarial drug artesunate. It comes from the wormwood plant in China and is the most potent antidote to falciparum malaria, the parasitic strain of malaria responsible for most deaths.

Artemisinin replaced chloroqunine, a once potent anti-malarial drug, following a resistance strain which emerged in Thailand’s eastern border it shares with Cambodia. The resistance to chloroquinine was first detected in Pailin, a Cambodian town that was once the stronghold of that country’s genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, and was then detected along the Thai-Cambodian border before spreading across the world.

Fear of such a repeat with artemisinin also haunts health clinics and malaria outposts along the Thai-Cambodian border, where artemisinin-resistant strains have been detected and contained.

“Good malaria control and elimination will contain the artemisinin-resistant malaria,” said Steven Bjorge, head of the malaria and vectorborne disease section at the WHO’s Cambodia office. “There is no way of knowing that a case of malaria is resistant or sensitive a priori, so detecting and treating each and every case is the proper and necessary means of containing the resistant cases.”

Cambodia’s western provinces such as Pailin, Oddar Meanchey and Battambang – once the spawning ground for the lethal parasite – have seen a reversal of the falciparum strain. “This is an indication of success in preventing transmission,” Bjorge told IPS. “The overall incidence rate has dropped. Deaths have dropped.”

With a new surge in sectarian violence in western Myanmar estimated to have killed more than a hundred people in recent days, top officials in the United Nations are criticising the Myanmar government for dragging its feet on addressing the “root cause” of a conflict that could disrupt the delicate reforms process underway in the country.

“We see (the government is) not at this point taking the proper decisions towards a real solution – I don’t see a real analysis of the situation,” Tomás Ojea Quintana, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, told journalists Thursday after handing over a new report to the General Assembly.

“Those decisions that are needed to be taken immediately to control the situation, to start addressing the root causes of the situation, have not been taken.” He noted that the situation in Rakhine is “quite different from the other ethnic minority areas in Myanmar”.

Rioting between Buddhist and Muslim communities in five townships of western Rakhine state broke out again on Sunday and continued through most of the week, though on Friday reports suggested that intervention by security personnel had achieved a forced calm.

Although the official figure of those killed this week was ratcheted down on Friday from 112 to 67 (along with 95 killed and more than 2,800 homes burned), such numbers would still put the new violence on par with clashes that initially broke out in June.

That episode, said to have been started by the rape of a Buddhist woman by Rohingya youths, left at least 90 people dead and more than 3,000 homes destroyed. It is not yet clear what reignited rioting this week.

“These latest incidents between Muslim Rohingyas and Buddhists demonstrate how urgent it is that the authorities intervene to protect everyone, and break the cycle of discrimination and violence,” Isabelle Arradon, Asia-Pacific deputy director for Amnesty International, a rights watchdog, said Friday.

The new round of violence was also deplored on Thursday and Friday by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as well as the U.S. and E.U. governments. Washington recently announced a 2.7-million-dollar contribution towards the displaced of Rakhine, shortly after the conclusion of the first U.S.-Myanmar Human Rights Dialogue, which reportedly focused extensively on Rakhine.

“Obviously there are deeply felt tensions and religious tensions here, but at the root of this problem is the extreme poverty and lack of opportunity that plagues both communities in Rakhine state,” U.S. State Department Spokesperson Victoria Nuland said Thursday. “So over the longer term, it’s going to be a matter of the government providing a better quality of life for both communities there.”

Stymied inquiry

Since June, nearly 80,000 people have been living in refugee camps that many allege have openly discriminated against the Muslim minority Rohingya community, a group that is officially stateless in Myanmar. The government moved quickly to impose its writ over northern Rakhine, refusing to allow the media, international observers or even international aid into the area.

In a generally praised move, President Thein Sein, seen as the architect of the country’s recent reforms process, did set up an investigative committee tasked with looking into the violence. While that committee is slated to present a report in mid-November, Quintana noted Thursday that it now appears the document will be postponed.

“I have been informed that the committee is facing obstacles in conducting its work,” Quintana told a committee of the General Assembly. “I hope the committee will address the underlying causes of the conflict, in particular the impact of deep-rooted prejudices and discriminatory attitudes based on ethnicity and religion.”

In a little-noticed opening on Sunday, President Thein Sein did announce that his government would relax its ban on international aid for the Rohingya, noting, “If we do not accept the humanitarian assistance, (the international community) will say we are not human.”

This move will be widely lauded. But Quintana’s new report, which is not yet publicly available, warns that little will come of government or international action without taking steps to address the root causes of the tension in Rakhine, where the recent violence only hints at long-simmering frustrations.

Quintana, who visited northern Rakhine in 2010, says even then he was able to foresee the communal clashes that would eventually surface in June of this year.

Endemic discrimination

Even the Myanmar government has implicitly acknowledged that its response in Rakhine has been hamstrung. “There are persons and organisations who are conducting manipulation in the incidents in Rakhine state behind the scene,” President Thein Sein’s office said in a statement on Thursday, noting that the “international community is watching ongoing progress in Myanmar with interest.”

Yet broad structural changes should be within its reach. In order to address the “endemic discrimination” suffered by the Rohingya community, Quintana’s report makes clear that the government must revisit the 1982 law that voided Rohingya citizenship.

Myanmar’s incremental opening up in recent months not only has gone unfelt by the Rohingya, but has increased the opportunity for long-festering inter-communal tensions to be more publicly aired.

Local reports suggest an explosion in anti-Rohingya slurs and propaganda on the Internet and social media sites, further exacerbated by a perceived prejudice on the part of the international community’s focus on the Rohingya amidst broad and grinding poverty.

In a stark reversal following decades of military oppression, many Rohingya have been telling human rights organisations that they now feel safer in the presence of state security forces than around the local Buddhist neighbours with whom they have lived for decades.

In this, Quintana points to a worrying increase in specifically inter-religious tension.

“We’re seeing demonstrations on the streets, against the United Nations and against the Rohingya … even monks have participated,” Quintana noted. “Somehow, a problem that was not necessarily a religious problem – with these demonstrations, religion now starts playing a role in all of this. And that becomes dangerous.”

Following sectarian violence in the western Myanmar state of Rakhine in June, human rights researchers are now warning that the government appears to be attempting to permanently house parts of the stateless Muslim-minority Rohingya in “temporary” refugee camps, segregating them from the rest of the population.

“There has been no acknowledgement that people have to go home eventually – the solution appears to be that the Rohingya can simply live where they have come to be,” John Sifton, with Human Rights Watch (which released a related report in August), said in Washington on Tuesday. “Segregation has become the status quo.”

Myanmar, also known as Burma, is in the midst of a series of contested anti-authoritarian reforms following on decades of repression by the military government. Yet even as the country opens up bit by bit, socially ingrained ethnic and racial tensions are proving real impediments to the reforms process, with the Rohingya seen by many as an important test case.

Myanmar is dominated by state-backed Buddhism, which has traditionally allowed little room for other religions. This has been especially true of the long-persecuted Muslims of Rakhine, known as Rohingya, who had their citizenship revoked in the early 1980s on the suggestion that the community was made up of migrants from Bangladesh.

Muslim-majority Bangladesh, meanwhile, has allowed in tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees since that time. But in recent years the Dhaka government has moved to shut down its border to new asylum seekers from Myanmar, reportedly running afoul of international law in the process.

Although drawing on longstanding tensions, the immediate situation in Myanmar goes back to June, when a Rakhine woman was allegedly raped by three Rohingya youths. This incident led to two weeks of arson and communal violence that resulted in thousands of Rohingya homes being burned and close to 100,000 people, Rohingya and other Rakhine (also known as Arakan) communities, being forced to flee their communities.

In response, the government sent in troops to quell the violence – a highly charged move given the half-century of military oppression these communities have experienced. In the event, however, several reports have suggested that the soldiers acted relatively well, and since then many Rohingya have stated that they now feel safer in the presence of the military than with no protection at all.

The government has also created an investigative commission to look into what took place in Rakhine in June, which will soon be offering policy recommendations that could potentially include a path to citizenship for the Rohingya. While observers have praised the move, it is hard to overlook the fact that the commission includes no Rohingya members.

Re-integration and reconciliation

Following the June violence, the most significant move by the government has been to impose its writ on the situation.

First, it created separate refugee camps of dramatically differing quality, set up for Rohingya and for other Rakhine communities that have been rendered homeless. Second, it decisively took control over the northern section of Rakhine, refusing even to allow humanitarian access.

“For the Rohingya camps, there’s really no discussion about what’s next – everyone says it’s temporary, but no one’s talking about how to end it,” Sarnata Reynolds, a researcher with Refugees International who recently completed a month-long investigation in Rakhine, said Tuesday in a talk at the Washington office of the Open Society Foundations.

“Neither the absolute closure of northern Rakhine state nor the segregation of the Rohingya population in Sittwe (the capital of Rakhine) supports re-integration or reconciliation. So any good-faith effort needs to renew access to northern Rakhine state and offer a timeline that measures efforts towards integration and reconciliation.”

Meanwhile, the conditions in the Rohingya camps are “profoundly” different from those housing the Rakhine, Reynolds reports. First, there are infrastructural differences, with the Rohingya camps, estimated to be housing some 75,000, lacking adequate sanitation, humanitarian assistance and education facilities, unlike the Rakhine camps.

Second, while the government has situated the camps such that the Rakhine can continue to live in town while their homes are being rebuilt, the Rohingya have been moved outside of the city. Their homes are not being rebuilt, and the government has completely revoked their freedom of movement.

“That means they can’t work. The kids aren’t going to school; indeed, there’s almost no talk of school,” Reynolds says. “So there’s this strange situation where you have shelters that are looking more and more like permanent situations, but there’s a reluctance to build infrastructure – education or health care – for the Rohingya because there is the fear that will make it more permanent.”

Indeed, over and above the constraints that the Myanmar government has placed on humanitarian assistance in Rakhine, the major international donors have been notably hesitant to commit funds to the Rohingya refugee situation for fear that doing so will give the government’s “segregation” strategy a stamp of legitimacy.

This includes the United States, often one of the most significant funders in humanitarian emergencies.

“Right now there’s a policy of segregation in order to quell the tension and violence,” Kelly Clements, a deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. State Department who participated in a major U.S. investigation into the Rakhine situation earlier this year, said on Tuesday.

“We (have) said that, for security reasons, one has to do what’s necessary. However, that should not be the medium- to longer-term solution to this particular problem.”

Some are worried that there doesn’t appear to be much planning taking place to help the Rohingya situation in the medium term either, and several groups are now calling on the United States to step up pressure on the Myanmar government to ensure that the focus will eventually move on to re-integration and reconciliation.

Perhaps most egregiously, recent events suggest that even the government’s draconian “segregation” measures have failed to stem the sectarian violence. On Sunday, the main mosque in Sittwe was attacked and torched, with an official investigation pending.

The tension has also spread across the border to Bangladesh, in what some analysts have suggested are retaliatory actions that indicate a new regional component to the ethnic strife. At least 20 Buddhist temples, including one Rakhine monastery, have been attacked over the past two weeks, reportedly as a result of anger over the recent months of anti-Rohingya violence in Myanmar.

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.”

Myanmar, also known as Burma, has taken important steps towards democracy and greater respect for human rights during the last months with one exception, activists say – the situation for the Rohingya minority, which has faced an outburst of violent attacks this summer.

A Rohingya woman in a refugee camp. Credit: Rohingyarefugeebangladesh/cc by 2.0

Activists are now hoping that opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will raise awareness of the issue when she visits the U.S. this week.

“I think she has a real opportunity to influence the debate,” Elaine Pearson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch‘s Asia division, told IPS after speaking at an event about Myanmar held at Columbia University in New York City on Friday.

“She has not been raising the question enough. She has been quite vague. She is a politician now, and these issues are highly divisive. I think she has concerns about taking a stand. But it is important to speak out,” Pearson continued.

Myanmar, a former British colony, was shaken by a military coup in 1962. Since then the country has been controlled by oppressive military governments.

But after decades of military rule a new, quasi-civilian government took office in early 2011. In April this year, another step towards democracy was taken when relatively free parliamentary by-elections were held. The famous opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi won a seat in the Parliament, along with several dozen other members of her National League for Democracy (NLD).

Aung San Suu Kyi has been a uniting force of the democratic opposition in Myanmar since the late 1980s. Due to her popularity, she has spent most of the two past decades detained under house arrest. She was unable to go Norway to collect the Nobel Peace Prize she was awarded in 1991. In 2010 she was released. And now she is a member of Parliament.

Pearson recently visited Myanmar on the behalf of Human Rights Watch, and says there have been positive developments in the country, such as land reform, the release of political prisoners, and newspapers reporting relatively freely on topics that were not being covered before.

“I saw progress that would have been unthinkable just 12 months ago,” Pearson said. “But progress is mainly restricted to Rangoon. For the majority of the population in Burma, the situation remains the same. And in Arakan it has gone from bad to worse.”

As IPS reported in June, clashes between the Muslim Rohingya minority and ethnic Buddhist Burmese broke out in the Arakan region in Myanmar after a story spread about a Buddhist woman being raped by three Muslim men. The violence is still going on.

“We see beheadings and stabbings between neighbours, parts of cities burnt to the ground,” Pearson said.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, also invited to the event at Columbia University, expressed his deep concerns about the situation.

“There are many things to celebrate in Burma right now. But there are also difficulties,” he said, calling the persecution of the Rohingya “an enormous problem”.

Sen said mobs of ethnic Burmese are attacking the Rohingya with the help of the military. “The security forces do not secure. Instead they commit violence,” he said.

Wakar Uddin, director general of the Arakan Rohingya Union, an umbrella of 25 different associations representing the Rohingya minority around the world, agreed.

“Massive ethnic cleansing is taking place as we speak today,” he said. “It amounts to genocide.”

Uddin called for an immediate stop of the violence, but also for more long-term solutions, such as giving the Rohingya the right to citizenship in Myanmar, and an improvement of their living conditions. Uddin brought up extreme poverty, forced labour, arbitrary arrests, land confiscations, mass rape and torture as some of the most burning problems.

He said some 1.5 million Rohingyas out of a total three million are living under abysmal conditions in Myanmar. Another 1.5 million externally displaced live under very hard circumstances in neighbouring countries. Uddin urged the Burmese government to give the refugees the right of return.

T. Kumar, director of Amnesty International USA, said he was “appalled about what is happening”. Kumar was especially concerned about curfews for the Rohingya in the Arakan province. “They are locked up in villages. It is a new form of detention,” he said. “Even if they are sick, thay can not go to see the doctor… There are people dying because of the restrictions. And imagine the impact on the kids, they can not go to school.”

According to Elaine Pearson, the Burmese government is doing very little to solve the alarming situation. They have initiated a report on the sectarian violence, but Pearson deems the commission being charged with writing the report insufficient. ”There has been no accountability of the abuses committed by the state security forces. The government is not looking into the citizenship law. And I see partiality and bias of members of the commission.”

“The government has clearly failed in addressing these issues… I think there will be a long, rocky road before we see peace,” Pearson said.

Pearson was also sceptical about some peace agreements being signed between the government and ethnic guerillas in Myanmar. She expressed concerns about what she called “cease-fire capitalism”, referring to a phenomenon of the government and guerilla leaders dividing natural resources between them.“I have a concern that the ethnic minorities will loose out in all this,” Pearson said.

A stream of hope is the news that Aung San Suu Kyi will be arriving in the U.S. this week. From September 18 until October 2 she will hold a number of speeches and take part of several meetings about the situation in Myanmar.

“Aung San Suu Kyi is the person who has the moral authority to ask for a respect for basic human rights. I hope she will take a more active stance on these issues”, Pearson concluded.

After decades of grinding poverty under successive military dictatorships, Myanmar’s rice farmers have a chance at a better future through rural reforms ushered in by the country’s quasi-civilian government. Microfinance is at the root of it.

The guarantees of small, low-interest loans to this least developed country’s debt-ridden farmers turn a page in the ledger of rural credit, which had virtually dried up within the small agriculture banking system during the 50 years of military rule, forcing farmers to borrow from money lenders at usurious interest rates.

Small loans ranging from 60 to 600 dollars are being offered to the agriculture sector by organisations like the Livelihood and Food Security Trust Fund (LIFT), a Western donor-backed microfinance initiative facilitated by the introduction last November of a microfinance law in Myanmar (also known as Burma).

LIFT donors, including Denmark, the European Community, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland and Britain, contribute to livelihoods and food security for achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger.

LIFT has stated strategy of  sustainably increasing food availability and incomes of two million targeted beneficiaries.

Small loans, much in need during the current ‘monsoon paddy’ season, are already  providing relief to farmers who must spend 100 to 150 dollars to produce one acre of paddy, says Andrew Kirkwood, LIFT’s fund director. “With affordable credit, more farmers will be able to afford to cultivate all of their land.”

“The new microfinance law has raised hopes that poor people will soon be able to get affordable credit, which is one of the keys to reducing poverty in the country,” he told IPS. “Access to credit from recognised lenders is extremely limited in Myanmar.”

The assistance from one of the 50 local and foreign organsiations that have been granted microfinance licences stands in contrast to the meagre options farmers faced during military rule when the only official source of rural credit – the Myanmar Agriculture Development Bank (MADB) – was, till 2010, offering eight dollars per acre to farmers.

With commercial banks in Myanmar banned from giving loans to farmers, the limited offerings of the MADB only catered to about a third of the farming population. The void was filled by the money lenders who charged interest rates as high as 20 percent per month.

A recent United Nations statement says that the promise of these new low-cost loans, with interest capped at 2.5 percent a month, has seen the demand for microcredit in rural areas inch close to 470 million dollars and that this could balloon to an estimated two billion dollars with growing demand for smaller loans.

This small change of fortunes for farmers in the rice-growing stretches such as the Irrawaddy Delta is part of a broader economic agenda that President Thein Sein has been pushing since last year. The reforms include the creation of a rural development and poverty alleviation central committee, whose objectives range from improving agriculture production to providing rural credit.

“The governmnt’s commitment to reform has led to the development or the revision of at least 25 new laws since (last year’s) first parliamentary session,” says Jenny Swe Swe Myint, policy coordinator for the Myanmar office of Oxfam, the British development agency. “In March, two land laws, the farmland law and vacant, fallow and virgin management law were approved as part of the land rights reform.”

“These laws would benefit the two-thirds of the population relying on agriculture for their livelihoods,” she said in an IPS interview. “However, there are still major gaps in both laws which could have serious negative impacts on farmers.”

The Thein Sein administration’s strategy is sound.  Agriculture accounts for 36 percent of the gross domestic product, employs the majority of the workforce and provides 25 -30 percent of exports by value, according to a new study by the Asian Development Bank.

“The opportunity to expand farm output, both at the extensive margin (more land under cultivation) and the intensive margin (increased productivity) remains enormous,” the Manila-based financial institution revealed in ‘Myanmar in Transition: Opportunities and Challenges’, released in mid-August.

“With its good weather, abundant water resources, and large rural population (about 60 million people) Myanmar could harvest this ‘low hanging fruit’ as a source of growth in the near term and further develop a vibrant export sector in farm products.”

Currently, according to the regional lender, only 18 percent of the country’s total land area of 68 million ha is cultivated and of which 18.5 percent is irrigated for crops ranging from rice, beans, sesame seed to vegetables. Rice coverage dominates the agriculture land, estimated at close to eight million ha.

“The success of the government’s reforms will be tested in the rural areas,” says Sean Turnell, a Myanmar expert at the Sydney-based Macquarie University. “It is so obvious an area of reform and part of that should require strengthening the rural financial sector.”

“The benefits will be profound, given the extent of rural poverty,” the economist who has authored ‘Fiery Dragons: Banks, Moneylenders and Microfinance in Burma’, told IPS. “It is here where the government can really demonstrate that the new economic change is meant to benefit the people and build a broader reform constituency.”

Following on a May announcement, the U.S. government on Wednesday moved to implement its most significant rollback in longstanding sanctions on Burma, also known as Myanmar.

Putting an end to what has been rumoured to be an intense debate within his administration, President Barack Obama’s declaration clears the way for U.S. companies to move into Myanmar’s rich energy sector.

“Easing sanctions is a strong signal of our support for reform, and will provide immediate incentives for reformers and significant benefits to the people of Burma,” President Obama said Wednesday, signalling the government to begin issuing licenses to companies wishing to invest in Myanmar.

He hastened to note that “Burma’s political and economic reforms remain unfinished,” saying the government “remains deeply concerned about the lack of transparency in Burma’s investment environment and the military’s role in the economy.”

U.S. companies investing in Myanmar will now be required to file regular reports on their activities in the country.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who arrived in Cambodia on Wednesday, is expected to lay out more details on how the sanctions regime will be wound down during a major meeting with U.S. business executives in Phnom Penh, on the sidelines of a meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers.

Rights groups and some U.S. lawmakers are reacting to the announcement with disappointment, saying the administration has ignored recommendations at the behest of U.S. corporate interests.

“As it stands now, investment in many of the most attractive sectors of the Burmese economy is likely to worsen the human rights situation while directly benefitting individuals and entities responsible for rights abuses,” warned a statement from several Washington-based advocacy groups, Freedom House, Physicians for Human Rights, United to End Genocide and the U.S. Campaign for Burma.

“What little progress has been accomplished in Burma – as well as the prospects for lasting peace, human rights and democracy – is being undermined by failures in U.S. decision-making.”

Wide-ranging U.S. sanctions have been in place on Myanmar for decades, but the United States has emerged as a primary supporter of the new quasi-civilian government, which has been in office since early 2011 after taking over from decades of military rule. Since then, a suite of unprecedented but still contentious reforms have been put in place that, cumulatively, have done much to open the country’s civil space.

Of particular importance for many international powers, in April these reforms culminated in relatively free parliamentary by-elections, which resulted in opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi winning a seat in the Parliament along with several dozen other members of her National League for Democracy (NLD).

Suu Kyi herself recently urged foreign governments not to allow investment in the state-owned Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), citing its lack of transparency and related worries over the extractive industry generally.

“The (Myanmar) government needs to apply internationally recognised standards … Other countries could help by not allowing their own companies to partner (with) MOGE unless it was signed up to such codes,” Suu Kyi said in mid-June.

Yet while President Obama on Wednesday did specify that U.S. companies will not be allowed to invest in entities owned by the Ministry of Defence of the armed services, these exemptions technically no longer cover MOGE.

“By allowing deals with Burma’s state-owned oil company, the U.S. looks like it caved to industry pressure and undercut Aung San Suu Kyi and others in Burma who are promoting government accountability,” Arvind Ganesan, with Human Rights Watch, said on Wednesday.

“The Obama administration promised to replace sanctions with responsible investment in Burma but instead has opened up every sector without adequate measures to ensure that companies act responsibly.”

Insufficient groundwork

For many observers, the most significant concern is not necessarily the sanctions rollback, the broad contours of which had been hinted at in May. Rather, the fear is that insufficient groundwork has been done to ensure that foreign investment – particularly in the extractive industries – do as little harm and as much good as possible for local communities in Myanmar.

For months, rights groups in and out of Myanmar have been urging the U.S. government to update its so-called specially designated nationals (SDN) list – a black list of alleged human-rights abusers and others with whom entities in the United States are barred from investing with – before taking the final step to allow U.S. companies into Myanmar.

In having failed to do so, “They’ve put the cart before the horse,” Jennifer Quigley, advocacy director for the U.S. Campaign for Burma, told IPS.

“Now you’ll have people going in and establishing connections with those who should be on the list – the oligarchy that actually has the businesses in Burma,” Quigley says.

“In the future, even once the list is updated, those investments will likely be grandfathered in, negating the affect of adding that individual in the first place. You’re just entrenching the status quo.”

Quigley says that a similar dynamic was seen in 1990, when the U.S. petroleum company Unocal – now Chevron – was grandfathered in on its Myanmar investments despite the imposition of new sanctions.

Indeed, the Unocal example has remained a stark warning for many longtime Myanmar observers during the debate over how and when to allow U.S. investors back into the country. In recent months, the pro-business lobby in Washington has been arguing that U.S. companies, bound by U.S. law, would have a positive effect if allowed to operate within Burma.

On Wednesday, for instance, John Murphy, an official with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, stated, “It’s a false choice to say we have to choose between human rights and business interests in Burma. Ensuring U.S. companies have a strong presence in Burma will help raise labour and environmental practices and corporate social responsibility.”

Yet Unocal’s operations in the country following the 1990 exemptions led it to become the junta’s top moneymaking operation for years.

Further, the primary issue at stake may not be the intention of U.S. business, but rather the pre-emptive actions taken by the Myanmar military in advance of foreign investment.

“The United States is giving itself a pat on the back for refusing to include military-backed business, but there’s no prohibition on the military’s ability to go in and clear out villages, to use forced labour in the name of foreign investment,” Quigley says.

“There has been a pandemic of land confiscation in Burmese tied to foreign investment, mostly connected to businessmen who want to set up special economic zones. It seems clear that some sort of safeguards need to be put in place to deal with these issues.”

The outbreak over the past week of communal violence between Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine State seriously threatens the ongoing reform process in Myanmar, according to experts here.

The violence, whose death toll currently stands at more than 20, constitutes a major test not only for the government, which Monday ceded power to the military by declaring a state of emergency in the western coastal state.

It also poses a major challenge to Myanmar’s indigenous democracy movement, according to some human rights activists who have supported the movement.

“It’s been a very disappointing week,” said Jennifer Quigley, advocacy director of the U.S. Campaign for Burma. “There have been too many leaders of Burma’s democracy movement who’ve added to the tension as opposed to working to alleviate it.”

The United States, which recently began rolling back long-standing economic sanctions against Myanmar as part of a broader Western effort to encourage the reform process launched over the past year by the government of President Thein Sein, said it was “deeply concerned” about the violence in a statement issued by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Monday.

“The situation in Rakhine State underscores the critical need for mutual respect among all ethnic and religious groups and for serious efforts to achieve national reconciliation in Burma,” she said, using the official U.S. government name for the Southeast Asian nation.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), which called Tuesday for Bangladesh to open its borders to refugees fleeing Myanmar, warned that the violence “is spiralling out of control under the government’s watch”. It expressed concern about the military’s enhanced powers in the state and called for opening the area to independent international observers.

“Influential government such as the U.S., Japan, Australia, and members of the European Union should continue to press for full civilian control over the military and building the rule of law, instead of giving up all its leverage at a moment when the reform process has barely begun,” the New York-based group said in an implicit reproach for the recent lifting of sanctions.

The reported rape and murder of a 27-year-old Buddhist woman in late May apparently sparked the violence. The police subsequently detained three Muslim men and resisted calls by Buddhist mobs to hand them over.

Following the distribution in the area of inflammatory leaflets against Muslims, who are often called Rohingyas in Myanmar, one mob attacked a bus and beat 10 Muslim passengers to death on Jun. 3.

Inter-communal violence, particularly in the state’s largest city, Sittwe, has intensified since, despite the president’s establishment of a commission of inquiry and the declaration of a state of emergency.

Rohingya Muslims have long suffered severe discrimination in Myanmar where they have been widely regarded as “Bengalis” – that is, immigrants from Bangladesh – despite their having lived in Myanmar for generations.

Much of the resentment against the Rohingyas can be traced back to the colonial period, when the British authorities encouraged immigration of Muslims and other groups to Burma either as minor officials, as part of a commercial class, or as indentured labourers, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG).

Since the 1960s, successive military governments have launched campaigns to expel them from the country, which is predominantly Buddhist. In 1982, almost all Rohingyas were denied citizenship and excluded from the census the following year.

Some 800,000 Rohingyas are believed to live in Myanmar, where, among other restrictions, they must gain official permission to travel beyond their villages, to practice certain professions, attend school, or receive health services. Another 200,000 Rohingyas live in Bangladesh, many of them refugees who were forced to flee Myanmar.

In a statement Tuesday, ICG suggested that the recent violence could be attributed in part to the ongoing reform process itself. “It is not uncommon that when an authoritarian state loosens its grip, old angers flare up and spread fast,” it said.

While rights groups here have been critical of the government’s decision to send in the military, which has historically committed serious abuses against Rohingyas, they have welcomed Thein Sein’s statements against sectarian divisions.

“The situation could deteriorate and extend beyond Rakhine state if we are killing each other with such sectarianism, endless hatred, the desire for vengeance and anarchy,” he said in a nationally televised address in which he declared the state of emergency. “…If that happens, make no mistake, it would cause a severe loss to our fledgling democracy – stability and development.”

The main opposition leader, Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who met with Muslim leaders early in the crisis, has also called for reconciliation and non-violence.

“The majority have to be more compassionate and more understanding,” she was quoted as saying. “I want Burma to be a country where people from every race and religion feel secure.”

But Quigley told IPS that Suu Kyi’s message “has so far been drowned out by the folks (within the opposition) who want to get into the historical issue of religions and nationality in Burma”.

“Will (opposition leaders) support religious freedom and human rights for all, or will a racist agenda dominate (the movement’s) discourse, as it has during the past week?” she asked. “Suu Kyi has so far been an exception to the rule.”

Some analysts have suggested that the current crisis have may been stoked by government hard-liners eager to discredit Suu Kyi who last week, on her trip abroad in more than 20 years, advised foreign investors against “reckless optimism” regarding the country’s reform process.

“I don’t think they orchestrated any of this, but I think they see it as an opportunity to force her to take a position where will either be weak on human rights by not supporting the Rohingyas or come out strong for their human rights in which case she will alienate some of her supporters,” according to Quigley.

Rights activists expressed greatest concern about the decision by the U.N. to withdraw its staff from Rakhine State – thus effectively reducing the number of international observers – and by the likely anti-Rohingya prejudice of the military that has been charged with stopping the violence.

“Who are these troops?” asked T. Kumar, international advocacy director for the U.S. chapter of Amnesty International. “How can you expect them to protect these communities when the Burmese official media is calling Rohingyas terrorists?”

“Given the Burmese army’s brutal record of abuses in Arakan (Rakhine) State, putting the military in charge of law enforcement could make matters worse,” said HRW’s deputy Asia director, Elaine Pearson. “The government needs to be protecting threatened communities, but without any international presence there, there’s a real fear that won’t happen.”

Amnesty’s Kumar also stressed that the current crisis constitutes a serious test of the entire reform process and those, like the U.S. and other Western countries, that have promoted it.

“The U.S. authorities and Suu Kyi should take this as a wake-up call to find a permanent solution to Rohingyas, especially giving them full citizenship. Unless that happens, the whole reform process that people are talking about in Burma becomes effectively meaningless,” he told IPS.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

As campaigning for the Apr. 1 poll in Burma (also Myanmar) gets into full-swing, there are misgivings on whether the National League for Democracy (NLD) party of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi will get a fair deal.

NLD spokesman Nyan Win at a Feb. 20 press conference in Rangoon. Credit:Mizzima

The election is a test of strength between the liberals who support President Thein Sein’s reform agenda, and hardliners who seem intent on derailing the reform process, despite publicly declaring support for it.

Already NLD spokesman Nyan Win has complained of difficulties in getting permission to use public venues for its meetings. “We want fair play, but restrictions have lately increased. We hope the government keeps its word and allows a free and fair election,” he told IPS.

Suu Kyi, however, needs no venues and thousands of supporters and well-wishers flock her routes to catch a glimpse of the iconic figure who spent most of the last 20 years under house arrest.

Everywhere the reception has been the same, with adoring crowds yelling their support for the Nobel peace laureate who led the NLD to a landslide victory in 1990 – only to be thwarted by the military which refused to hand over power.

“She’s treated like a pop star,” said freelance journalist Min Thu who has been following her entourage. “The excitement is overwhelming as people want to see her, waive to her, and for those close enough, to touch her.”

“Now we can have democracy,” said Aye Win, a retired schoolteacher in Rangoon. “When she is elected she will help end poverty and repression in the country,” she told IPS over email.

The NLD is contesting almost all the seats – 40 in the lower house, six in the upper house and two in the provincial assemblies.

While this represents less than 15 percent of the seats in the national assembly – 440 seats in the lower house and 224 in the upper house – the results are less important than the way in which the polls are conducted.

“Suu Kyi’s decision to run for parliament is an extremely important move for the future of the country,” said Prof. Sean Turnell, a Burma specialist at Macquarie University, Australia, who recently visited the country.

“She is uniquely placed to drive reform forward and bring on board a substantial constituency to help maintain that momentum,” Turnell told IPS.

United States secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, stressed the need for the by-elections to be free and fair when she met government leaders in December in the capital of Naypyidaw.

Since then the mantra has been constantly repeated. United Nations human rights envoy, Tomas Ojea Quintana, on his mission there last month, said that any rolling back sanctions was dependent on the conduct of the by-elections.

“We have taken the necessary measures so that the upcoming by-elections will be free, fair and credible,” speaker of the lower house, Shwe Mann, told European Union development commissioner, Andris Piebalgs, last week.

Piebalgs, who announced a new 150 million euro (198 million dollars) aid package for Burma, said in a statement that the purpose of his visit was “to assess the ongoing reforms and encourage their continuation.”

However, many leaders of the army-backed, ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) are not happy and there is evidence that they are trying to scupper the NLD’s campaign.

This became evident a few weeks ago when Suu Kyi wanted to speak to her supporters in Mandalay. The EC gave her permission to speak, but she was not allowed the use of the main stadium there to address the rally.

On her first trip to the Dawei industrial zone in southern Burma it became clear that former fisheries minister and USDP central executive member, Maung Maung Thein, had warned residents that if they did not vote for the USDP they would lose their jobs, sources told IPS.

Maung Maung Thein has considerable business interests in the area – especially in the fishing industry – and he has also been accused of colossal corruption.

All along the main road in Suu Kyi’s constituency of Kawmhu on the outskirts of Rangoon there are big, colourful billboards giving credit to the USDP for infrastructure projects, medical centres and schools built by the government.

This may not dissuade voters from electing Suu Kyi, but may influence voting in other parts of the country.

The pro-democracy leader is not anxious to cry foul. “We have certainly come across a few hitches in the last couple of weeks with regards the campaign of the NLD,” she told reporters.

“We hope that these will be sorted out because free and fair elections depend on how a campaign goes, not just how people are allowed to cast their vote on the day itself,” she said.

“The problem is access to resources, and when so much is at stake that there will be setbacks,” said Aung Naing Oo, a former activist and now development specialist who returned to Burma from exile in Thailand for the first time in 20 years.

“There will always be obstacles to democratic change in the short-term, especially the danger of vote buying,” he told IPS.

While the NLD may win most of the seats it contests, it will be a minority party in the parliament. More than 70 percent of the parliamentary seats are already held by the pro-military legislators from the USDP, including many who are serving soldiers nominated by the army chief.

“Even if she is the leader of a minority party in parliament, Suu Kyi will be a potent symbol for national reconciliation and democratic change,” said Nyo Myint, a political analyst and pro-democracy activist based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. “The lady is showing her trust in the government,” he said.

(END)

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.”

By Marwaan Macan-Markar and - -
BANGKOK, Dec 16 2011 (IPS)

Six months after fighting erupted between Burmese troops and ethnic Kachin separatists, international relief is finally trickling in for over 30,000 people who fled their homes near the snow-capped mountains north of the country.

The United Nations-led relief effort began distributing ‘essential household items’ on Dec. 13 in Laiza, a town deep in the mountainous terrain under the control of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA).

The convoy, which included two truckloads of aid, travelled along a road that the government troops and the KIA agreed would serve as a humanitarian corridor.

“This is the initial delivery of U.N. assistance to Laiza,” Zafrin Chowdhury, spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told IPS from Rangoon. “The U.N. certainly hopes that additional relief supplies will be allowed to reach the most vulnerable people displaced in and around Laiza.”

The ‘Blue Flags’ are a lifeline for local Kachin aid workers, who struggled to distribute meagre rations of food and clothing to the refugees forced to live in forests and in rickety bamboo-shelters battered by harsh winter conditions.

Most of the relief work is being handled by the Kachin Independence Organisation, the political wing of the KIA.

“We can now feel hopeful for more international humanitarian assistance since we have been desperate for aid in the past months,” La Rip, director of the Kachin Development Group (KDG), told IPS during a telephone interview from Laiza. “Our appeals for international aid since June have been finally answered.”

The access three U.N. agencies, including UNICEF, have got to an area close to the Chinese border is unprecedented. It follows the alarm bells rung by international and regional humanitarian and human rights groups about a looming humanitarian crisis.

“It is a desperate picture out there,” Lynn Yoshikawa of the Washington D.C.-based Refugees International told journalists in Bangkok last Friday following a two-week mission to an area in the Kachin state close to the fighting. “There is potential for a dire humanitarian crisis with the number of displaced growing and little aid available.”

The plight of the victims was worsened by the politics of international aid after the quasi-civilian government of Myanmar, as Burma is also known, pushed through a policy of isolation to defeat the KIA.

Western governments were reluctant to channel aid directly to local relief groups like the KDG preferring U.N. agencies instead, according to a Rangoon-based diplomatic source.

Such cross-border assistance raised the touchy issue of sovereignty, given that relief would have to be channeled through China. “China is concerned about international assistance flowing into the Kachin state from its end,” Yoshikawa said. “China has been permitting some aid to go through, but they don’t want anything high-profile.”

But it is not a new story in Burma. The nearly 500,000 other victims displaced by decades of conflict in ethnic areas close to the Thai-Burma border have also been deprived relief from Western governments and international humanitarian agencies if U.N. agencies are not present to channel funds.

The current round of fighting has undermined the reformist image being cultivated by Burmese President Thein Sein, who took power in March and has ushered in a raft of policies aimed at ending the nearly 50 years of military dictatorship. While the Thein Sein administration has sought peace deals with three other ethnic separatists in the country, it has turned its guns on the Kachins.

“The Burmese army started this fight in early June. They violated a ceasefire agreement we had with the government since February 1994,” Col. James Lum Dau, the KIO’s deputy chief of foreign affairs, told IPS. “They want to annihilate us, finish us by military force.”

And even though Thein Sein issued an order Monday for the Burmese military to stop fighting the KIA, the ‘tatmadaw’, as the Burmese army is known, is still on the offensive. “The fighting has not stopped. We can hear gunfire and explosions,” confirmed La Rip of KDG.

The latest battle in a protracted conflict going back to 1961 is rooted in the 2010 push by the last Burmese junta to get the four armed ethnic forces to serve under the military as border guards. The KIA refused and was subsequently described as “outlaws” by senior general Than Shwe, who preceded Thein Sein.

The last round of fighting has left in its wake a disturbing picture of human rights violations. The Burmese military is being accused by international and Kachin human rights groups of gross abuse against civilians.

“Between June and September, the Burmese troops looted food from civilians, fired indiscriminately into villages, threatened villagers with attacks and used civilians as porters and human minesweepers,” revealed the United States-based Physicians for Human Rights in a report released late November.

The Kachin Women’s Association has accused the Burmese military of unleashing a policy for soldiers to systematically rape women and girls since fighting began, according to an early December report. It echoes similar disturbing accounts of Burmese soldiers targeting women from other ethnic communities, such as the Shan and the Karen, during clashes over the past decade.

To avoid further attacks, the refugees are heading towards the Chinese border, said John Salin, a freelance Burmese video cameraman, who has just returned from the frontline. “They believe the Burmese troops will not attack them if they are near the Chinese border.”

Excerpt:

The Burmese army has been following a policy of systematically raping women and girls to subjugate the country’s rebellious ethnic minorities, according to a new report.

The latest conflict between the militant Kachin Independence Army and the Burmese military reveals widespread use of rape by the military as a psychological weapon.

The Kachin Women’s Association of Thailand (KWAT) reports that at least 37 women were raped by state soldiers over June and July alone when the fighting erupted.

Women’s rights groups operating along the Thai-Burma border have documented 81 cases of rape of women and girls over the course of eight months of fighting between the Burmese army and ethnic armed forces. Of these, 36 women were killed by the soldiers.

Over the last decade the Women’s League of Burma (WLB), an umbrella organisation for various ethnic women’s groups, has documented hundreds of cases that suggest that rape is not a by-product of war but a deliberate strategy used by the military.

“By looking at the nature of violations and the worsening situation during conflict, we can say with confidence that the military is precisely using rape as a weapon against women,” Shirley Seng, founder of KWAT, told IPS.

“Our aim is to collect information on sexual violence to understand the root causes and to publicise it to the international community,” Seng explains. Seng is the widow of the founder of the militant Kachin Independence Organisation.

“Whenever rape cases happen, we get information from our partners and we also go and interview the victims and conduct our own field investigations,” she said.

“How do we know that rape is being used as a weapon? Because the civilians who are attacked are told this by the soldiers attacking them,” said Seng.

Victims of rape may be in continuing danger not only from the perpetrators, who enjoy impunity, but also from their own communities due to the social stigma attached to rape, local reports reveal.

Conflicts in northern and eastern Burma that erupted between the Burmese military and ethnic armed groups in the Shan and Kachin states in March and June are reported to have led to displacement of more than 30,000 civilians.

Soldiers also regularly persecute the Rohingyas who are not recognised as citizens by the Burmese government, although they have lived in western Arakan state for generations with established roots, ties and property.

Stories of displacement, violence and persecution involving ethnic minority communities such as the Karen, Shan and the Kachin have been commonplace since the formation of the Burmese state in 1948 when ethnic representatives demanded autonomy.

When armed groups sprang up among these minorities the government responded by heavily militarising the homelands of these remote communities.

Amongst the most vulnerable in this struggle are women. Sexual violence has been a constant theme among ethnic minority communities living along the borders of the country. There are continuing reports of deliberate displacement and intimidation, with women targeted as part of a campaign to weaken the social fabric of the different ethnic groups.

“I was only four years old. My mother told me that we had to run away, otherwise they would kill us,” says 21-year-old Rahima, describing her flight from her home in the western Arakan state. During her flight across the country to the Thai-Burma border Rahima, and others like her, sought refuge in railway stations that were often raided by the military.

She describes soldiers taking away the “attractive” women who would be returned later with obvious physical injuries but hidden mental wounds as a result of sexual violence and torture.

Rahima’s sister was raped by Burmese soldiers. But due to the social stigma and ostracism that would follow in the local community, no one in her family spoke about the incident.

“It is very shameful in my culture to talk about rape. In my whole time there, dozens of women were taken. Not one of them ever told of what had happened,” said Rahima.

Narratives resembling Rahima’s are common in conflict zones where evidence suggests that the military uses rape as a psychological weapon to intimidate civilians, shame the men in the community, and to ‘Burmanise’ these populations by mixing bloodlines.

It is difficult to verify how explicit ‘orders to rape’ from the state military could be. But what is verifiable is that renewed conflict situations have coincided with concurrent and drastic rise in sexual violence.

Seng believes use of rape is not only encouraged but also ordered by Burmese military officials. Her peer at the WLB, Charm Tong, who leads the Shan Women’s Action Network, co-authored the report ‘License to Rape’ in 2002, which documented 173 incidents of rape and other forms of sexual violence, involving 625 girls and women, committed by Burmese army troops in Shan state.

Tong continues to travel to Shan, where she and her colleagues have documented cases of pregnant women and their daughters being raped inside their homes by state soldiers raiding villages.

The International Criminal Court recognises rape, sexual slavery “or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity” as war crimes when committed as part of a systematic practice.

WLB’s goal is to mobilise support for an investigation by an international body to examine the trends, patterns and extent of sexual violence perpetrated by soldiers in Burma.

Tomas Ojea Quintana, United Nations Human Rights rapporteur for Burma, expressed concern over “continuing human rights abuses such as forced labour, land confiscation and rape in ethnic minority communities,” and called for an independent investigation commission during a visit to the country in September.

Following Quintana’s visit, the Burmese government set up the Myanmar (as Burma is also known) National Human Rights Commission to “safeguard the rights of its citizens” as announced in the state run newspaper ‘New Light of Myanmar’.

Rights groups point out that any accountability mechanism for crimes must be followed by a remedy process and that any permanent remedy can happen only when militarisation ends in these areas.

By Marwaan Macan-Markar and - -
BANGKOK, Dec 5 2011 (IPS)

Condemned for decades as an international pariah, Burma is enjoying a diplomatic spring with droves of former critics heading towards the Southeast Asian nation.

United States secretary of state Hillary Clinton was the latest to see the quasi-civilian government steadily turning its back on nearly 50 years of military dictatorship.

Yet, Clinton’s three-day visit, which began on Nov. 30, must have given her a glimpse of something more than the early hints of democracy. Burma has acquired a new strategic value since the last time a U.S. secretary of state visited the country – John Foster Dulles, in 1955.

This shift is rooted in China’s current relationship with Myanmar, as Burma is also known. In the 1950s, China was the outsider and the civilian government in Rangoon saw the communist giant as a strategic threat.

Washington, conversely, had better ties, being welcome as an ally to contain the spread of communism. And, even the 1962 coup, which paved the way for successive military dictatorships, did not end the relationship.

But today, China is Burma’s most important political and economic partner. Beijing’s domination emerged in the late 1980s, following the collapse of the Communist Party of Burma. It was a period that coincided with Washington cutting off ties with Burma following a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests by the then military regime.

Evidence of the inroads China has made is everywhere, from the bustling towns along the border it shares with Burma to Beijing’s strategic prize – a port in western Burma that gives the Asian giant access to the Indian Ocean.

It is a story of transformation that cannot be ignored as Burma becomes a linchpin for China’s rise as a superpower, argues Thant Myint-U in a new book, ‘Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia’.

In Mandalay, Burma’s second largest city, China’s influence over its neighbour is evident. Streets and neighbourhoods, that once reflected its status as the country’s last royal capital, now display a garish mish-mash of Chinese capitalism.

“It had once been the neighbourhood of artisans and craftsmen, silversmiths and bronze workers,” recalls Thant of Mandalay’s 78th Street. “The area had become a Chinese preserve. There was no sign of any craftsmen now.”

China’s economic footprint had been brought into greater relief by the lack of balance, such as competing Western companies, due to the economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and European governments.

“There were no Starbucks or McDonald’s, or stores selling Apple computers, no Sheraton Hotels, no Shell petrol stations. There were also few Burmese competitors,” laments Thant of a setting that was creating an unequal society.

His ability as a Burmese to access parts of the country closed to scrutiny sheds light on other inequalities. In the areas home to Burma’s ethnic minorities near the Chinese border, girls and women have been trapped into meeting the demands of men in poor Chinese villages.

Burmese women have been sold for 3,000 dollars to be wives; others have been tricked by offers of non-existent jobs.

Yet for the Burmese historian and grandson of U. Thant, secretary-general of the United Nations in the 1960s, there is little mystery about geo-political implications of China’s designs on Burma.

China needs Burma for its abundant natural resources, including jade and timber, energy reserves such as natural gas.

Buma also represents an answer to its “Malacca dilemma” – Beijing’s eternal worry of depending on oil tankers from the Middle East coming through the narrow waters of the Malacca Straits. A new oil pipeline cutting across Burma will take care of such worries.

So in exchange for shielding Burma’s military from criticism on the international stage, the Chinese were given access to invest and trade in a country impoverished by successive juntas.

By the end of 2010, China had pumped in over 12 billion dollars out of Burma’s total foreign investment of 20 million dollars since 1988. And bilateral trade hit 4.4 billion dollars by 2010, making China Burma’s second largest trading partner.

The timing of the book could not have been better as the world comes to terms with the rise of China and the other Asian giant, India.

Long isolated Burma, sandwiched between the two, finds itself becoming a vital bridge as China pursues its “Go West” strategy and India pushes the other way, with its “Look East” policy.

Yet it is China that is driving the pace of change, finally realising an age-old dream of the Middle Kingdom’s emperors to view Burma as a gateway to South Asia. Thant captures this through a combination of analysis, history, memoir and travelogue, a style he also used in a previous book on the modern history of Burma, ‘The River of Lost Footsteps’.

India, by contrast, has a mixed interest in eastern neighbour. Although the two countries share historic ties, it has a distance to catch up with China. Current Indian investment in Burma stands at 189 million dollars and bilateral trade was 1.2 billion dollars.

Indian towns in its northeastern region, the inevitable gateway to Burma, come across as poor cousins when compared with the boom towns along the Chinese border.

Yet it is a reality that should not be dismissed, warns Thant. India’s growing interest in his country is poised to raise Burma’s stock as the missing link to unite South Asia with East Asia. This new Burma “would be a game changer for all Asia.”

Excerpt:

A poster of "The Lady". Credit: IPS.

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Nov 24 2011 (IPS)

Twenty years after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and a year after being released from house arrest, Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is the subject of a sweeping film that may increase international pressure on Burma’s ruling regime to speed up tentative reforms.

A poster of "The Lady". Credit: IPS.

“The Lady”, by renowned French director Luc Besson, has gained the support of Amnesty International France and will be in cinemas at the end of this month. Special screenings here have already sparked debate and spurred viewers to sign petitions calling for the release of prisoners of conscience.

“The film is a powerful portrait of what a human rights defender has to give up in the fight for freedom,” says Mireille Boisson, spokesperson for Amnesty International France and an expert on Burma.

“Suu Kyi had to leave her life as a wife, as a mother. She sacrificed a lot of things with the approval of her family and that’s typical of what human rights defenders have to go through,” Boisson told IPS after a press screening of the film this week.

“The Lady”, with Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh in the lead, focuses as much on this huge personal cost as on the facts of Suu Kyi’s battle for democracy in Burma. The film shows the impact on her husband and her two sons, and it is meant to be a love story as well as a true political account.

Suu Kyi’s husband Michael Aris, played by English actor David Thewlis, was a professor at Oxford, and he supported her tirelessly in her fight against the Burmese junta. But he died of cancer without having seen her for three years because he was repeatedly refused a visa to visit her in Burma.

Her sons were stripped of their Burmese nationality and also not allowed to visit for several years, as the authorities sought to break Suu Kyi’s will and force her to leave the country without any guarantee of being allowed back in.

The film sticks to historical facts, without seeming too much like a docudrama. A prologue shows the assassination of Suu Kyi’s father, Gen. Aung San, in 1947, as he worked to form a new government following independence from Britain. Suu Kyi was two years old at the time.

The more recent story begins with her life in England alongside her husband and sons, and describes her return to Burma in 1988 to care for her sick mother. Without the intention of being involved in politics, she is confronted by the brutal crackdown against young people demonstrating for change in the August 1988 movement and is a witness to the bloodshed.

The film shows her being asked by students and university lecturers to continue the work her father began, and it documents the beginnings of her fight for democracy. It also portrays the violence and human rights abuses carried out by the regime against her supporters after her party won 392 of the 485 seats in parliament in the 1990 general election.

Yeoh, an actress who gained international fame with “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, manages to capture the dignity and calm determination of the “steel orchid”, as Suu Kyi has been called. But she also expresses the vulnerability and isolation when Suu Kyi is first sentenced to house arrest in 1989.

The Burmese pro-democracy leader would spend 15 of the next 21 years in detention, becoming an international icon of the fight against oppression, much like Nelson Mandela of South Africa earlier.

Besson told journalists that he became involved in the project after Yeoh approached him with the script. He was busy with other projects at the time, but he said that the screenplay moved him enormously, and he subsequently told Yeoh that if she could not find another director, he would do the film.

He says he sought to verify major events through Amnesty International reports and by reading all the books available on his subject. He added that he made a conscious decision not to involve Suu Kyi in the production so that she would not be blamed for the contents of the film.

The result is a work far removed from Besson’s usual high-energy fare, such as “The Fifth Element” or “Yamakasi”. Instead, “The Lady” moves at a stately pace and mostly avoids gratuitous images, even if the human rights abuses and military atrocities are vividly revealed.

In some places, the film might be criticised for romanticising Suu Kyi’s personal life as well as the landscape and ethnic groups of Burma (some of the costumes seem a tad too perfect). And the dialogue in parts may seem stilted and predictable. But Besson said he had to make certain artistic choices.

“It’s always frustrating to tell the story of a living person that you cannot meet,” he has said. “You are afraid of betraying the truth or, conversely, accentuating it too much.”

The film has already had one predictable effect: Yeoh was refused entry to Burma earlier this year, with the authorities putting her on the next plane out after she landed at the airport. “The Lady” is not expected to see public release in Burmese cinemas any time soon, although the French Cultural Centre in Yangon will screen it.

Suu Kyi herself will run as a candidate in a coming by-election, after her party called off its boycott of Burma’s political system.

The regime also released 250 prisoners in October and may free more in the coming weeks, Amnesty International says. Another change is that officials have now said that there are 600 prisoners of conscience, after previously denying that there was any such category of detainees, Boisson told IPS.

With the film, their story and that of Suu Kyi will become more known, and international activism on their behalf is already increasing. At a special screening in the town of Amiens last week, Amnesty ran out of petition forms because so many people lined up to sign them.

By Christian Papesch and - -
NEW YORK, Oct 27 2011 (IPS)

In a move that highlighted its sub-par human rights record, the government of Burma announced Oct. 11 that it would release 6,359 prisoners, but how many of these will be drawn from the country’s estimated 500 to over 2,000 political prisoners remains uncertain.

Elaine Pearson of Human Rights Watch, Jeanne Marie Hallacy, director of "Into the Current", and Thet Moo, former Burmese political prisoner Credit: Christian Papesch/IPS

Among them was comedian and activist Zarganar, who was arrested in June 2008 for speaking to foreign media about the precarious situation of millions of Burmese left homeless in the Irrawaddy delta following a devastating cyclone. Five months later, Zarganar had been sentenced to 59 years in prison for public order offences.

Even though international activists and organisations such as New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) generally appreciated the initial wave of releases, they remain critical about the actual reach of the announcement.

“It is a positive step in terms of those individuals and their families, but in terms of bigger amnesties they should really release all prisoners unconditionally,” Elaine Pearson, deputy director of HRW’s Asia division, told IPS.

“It is really quite a small step forward. These people are not bargaining chips or hostages for the military to play with. They’re people who have been unjustly imprisoned.”

“Into the Current“, a documentary by Bangkok-based American filmmaker Jeanne Marie Hallacy, portrays some of those prisoners and gives an overview of the political and social situation in Burma, a country that was under military rule from 1962 to 2011.

“The most challenging aspect of the film was that we knew that we had to rely upon memory,” the director said in an interview with IPS.

“It was really challenging for us to find a way that we could be provocative and evoke the kind of deep emotion and passion that people experienced in prison without having visual evidence of what they actually experienced,” she explained.

But this lack of visual imagery also lends itself to the oppressive and alarming atmosphere of “Into the Current”. By relying on statements made by former prisoners, the political terror of an oppressing regime acquires a face, a voice and a destiny.

One of the thousands of prisoners who endured the cruelty of Burma’s jails is Thet Moo, imprisoned for seven years for being a member of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU), which helped organise the 1988 pro-democracy national uprising that was violently suppressed by the military junta.

In prison, “we don’t know our future,” Moo told IPS. “I don’t know if I can get out alive or not.”

Not only are mental and physical punishment the order of the day for the majority of prisoners, but filmmakers like Hallacy along with journalists supporting her work in Burma also face serious daily threats.

“Working inside the country is extremely difficult for journalists and media,” the director, who has not been granted a Burmese visa since the late 1990s, said.

“We have seen Burmese journalists who have been sentenced for 65 years for one story. And we have gotten corroborated information that they have been tortured in order to have them spill out other information about their colleagues in this underground network of media who gather information.”

For this reason, a lot of the material used in the film is old footage shot by Hallacy during the 1990s, secretly filmed recordings or personal statements and objects – portraits of families, letters to friends or a song sung by a prisoner himself.

“People respond to stories of individual human beings – people who are fathers or mothers or have sisters or brothers who are in prison,” Hallacy said.

“They’re numbed by numbers,” she elaborated. “If you cite a statistic, it’s meaningless to most people. But if you try to bring into focus a few of these heroes and heroines and their acts of courage it speaks on behalf of the whole.”

The broader image that “Into the Current” draws of Burma is a negative one, but the film’s message is not completely pessimistic. At the end, protagonist Bo Kyi, a former political prisoner who is currently in exile in Thailand, finally gets to see his wife and little daughter again.

Even though their family cannot yet lead a normal life in Burma, hope for a better Burma does exist, especially after last year’s election of a new government.

“The problem of the new government is that their bureaucracy is very slow,” Thet Moo explained. “We are waiting for them to change. If they are changing, everybody would want to return to Burma.”

For Pearson, the second largest country in Southeast Asia still has a very long way to go. “Burma has one of the most desperate human rights situations in the world,” she said. “We haven’t seen the new government really putting in the effort to effect change in the country.”

The great white hope of Burma – and one of the characters to which the film repeatedly refers – is Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese opposition politician and 1991 winner of the Nobel Peace Price “for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights”.

“The message of the film was to convey that non-violence is their path,” Hallacy pointed out.

“That’s what will prevail change – not vengeance, not hatred, not retribution but actual inclusion and responding to cruelty with kindness, because that’s what changes people. When you change people’s hearts, you change people’s politics.”

Aung San Suu Kyi has never been in jail, but she has been under house arrest for 15 of the last 21 years. This is one of the reasons why the politician has become a symbol of opposition against oppression for many Burmese, especially those who still remain in prison for their resistance against the governing system.

“We saw the release of 200 political prisoners, there is still another 1800 that remain in prison,” Pearson concluded. “These are people who have criticised the government, written controversial articles in the media, participated in demonstrations. They are not people who should be in prison. They are people who should be part of the community.”

Excerpt:

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Oct 13 2011 (IPS)

On the face of it, the sudden release of political prisoners in Burma would appear a triumph for the sanctions regime imposed on the Southeast Asian nation by Western governments.

The United States and European Union, which led the punitive economic measures, regarded the release of political prisoners in Burma, also known as Myanmar, as a benchmark of change after decades of repression under successive military juntas.

“We have made it clear (we want) to see progress on prisoner releases,” Kurt Campbell, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told an audience in Bangkok on Monday. “It is too early and too soon to make a final judgment on the change (inside Burma) and too soon to dismiss them.”

On Oct. 12, two days after Campbell delivered those remarks in a public address on U.S. foreign policy in Asia, over 200 of the nearly 2,000 prisoners of conscience were freed.

Among the first to walk out of jail was Ko Thura, better known as Zarganar, a comedian and frequent critic of the government, who was condemned to 35 years in jail. Su Su Nway, an equally famous labour rights activist and government critic, was also granted amnesty, ending a 12-year sentence.

This followed an announcement by President Thein Sein, stating that 6,359 prisoners will be freed and a rare, open letter to the state-controlled press by Win Mya, head of the newly appointed National Human Rights Commission, calling for “prisoners of conscience” to be released.

Other gestures of openness have been unveiled since Thein Sein, a former general, began his term in late March, ending nearly 50 years of military rule. The notorious Press Censorship and Registration Division has permitted dissident voices to air their views in the local media.

Such nods towards political reform have brought to relief the role that sanctions have played. Is Burma under Thein Sein changing because the sanctions imposed by the U.S. government and the governments in Europe, Australia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan have worked?

“The historic reforms underway are happening in spite of the sanctions, not because of them,” Thant Myint-U, a Burmese historian and author of a new book, ‘Where China Meets India – Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia’, told IPS.

“They are happening not because of outside pressure but because everyone, including the elites, has become increasingly aware that Myanmar needs to join the 21st century,” he added.

Washington was the first to impose sanctions after the military regime launched a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy street protests in 1988, killing over 3,000 activists. These targeted new investments and financial assistance, imports of Burmese products and the finances and assets of military officials and junta cronies.

The EU’s ‘Common Position on Myanmar’, the sanctions policy unveiled in 1996 and tightened in later years, imposed restrictions on sale of weapons to Burma, targeted the assets of 1,207 Burmese firms, and placed visa bans on military officials and their backers.

But, the sanctions had unintended consequences and impacted the Burmese people harder than the serial human rights abusers in the junta.

The collapse of the country’s nascent garment sector a decade ago is one often cited consequence. In 2000, there were 310 garment factories producing clothes for export, employing close to 120,000 people. Today, there are an estimated 130 factories, with 50,000 workers in employment.

“The garment factories were targeted by the U.S. sanctions,” said Zaw Oo, a Burmese economist based in Thailand. “The people who lost their jobs did not have any resources nor did they have many options to find alternative incomes.”

“These are the people the U.S. government should have helped, not punished,” he told IPS. “All the big fish in the country have been untouched by the sanctions. They have found ways to survive and the regime became more dependent on natural gas exports to boost the economy in the last 10 years.”

Sanctions also crippled the flow of official development assistance (ODA), with U.S. policies preventing the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund from offering financial assistance. The United Nations Development Programme found its hands tied from pursuing its development mandate.

Consequently, humanitarian aid to Burma slowed to a trickle, about four dollars per capita, compared with 68 dollars in neighbouring Laos and 46 dollars in Cambodia. Calculated another way, the poor in Burma have lost two billion dollars annually in ODA, according to reports.

“Now is the time to talk about the efficacy of sanctions with far more detail and nuance,” says David Scott Mathieson, Burma researcher for Human Rights Watch, the global rights lobby.

“The U.S., EU Australia, and Canada should be having discussions about which sanctions should be removed because of the reforms and which should stay to ensure the end of human rights violations.

“It is folly to remove all the sanctions because of the changes,” he argues. “We are still talking about an incredibly brutal, recalcitrant and isolated regime.”

Excerpt:

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Sep 14 2011 (IPS)

With Burma’s quasi-civilian government relaxing the iron grip on power maintained for half-a century by military juntas, the big question is: How real is the change?

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Southeast Asian nation’s most prominent political dissident, appears convinced. “The past situation is the past. The current situation is the current one and there has been some progress,” the 66-year-old told reporters on Monday.

Suu Kyi wants a line drawn in the sand between the nearly 50 years of military oppression and the current government of President Thein Sein, a former general and junta leader.

Following a meeting on Monday with Derek Mitchell, the U.S. government’s special envoy for Burma, the Nobel Peace laureate added: “Due to the situation, (the U.S. delegation) is also interested and so we exchanged our perspectives.”

Suu Kyi, who was only freed from over seven years under house arrest in November last year, had an equally significant meeting on Sunday with the family of Min Ko Naing, Burma’s best known political prisoner, in Rangoon.

“It was a visit to offer moral courage to Min Ko Naing’s family and for him also,” Bo Kyi, joint secretary of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in Burma (AAPP), told IPS in a telephone interview from the Thai-Burma border.

The plight of 48-year-old Min Ko Naing, condemned to a 65-year jail term, has come to symbolise the country’s political prisoners who have paid a heavy price for dissidence. Currently, there are 1,996 political prisoners in 44 prisons and labour camps, according to AAPP.

The few but noticeable political concessions, in a country frequently condemned for human rights violations since a military coup in 1962, started in July when the Thein Sein administration permitted the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to visit three prisons.

ICRC’s visit, to improve water and sanitation conditions, came six years after being denied access to political prisoners.

In August, Suu Kyi figured in the thaw between the former generals who doffed their uniforms for mufti in March and the anti-military opposition rallying around the banned National League for Democracy (NLD), which she heads.

On Aug. 19, she had her first face-to-face meeting with Thein Sein in Naypyidaw, the remote administrative capital in central Burma. The next day, she attended a meeting on alleviating poverty in the country, also known as Myanmar.

“Suu Kyi was quite encouraged by the level of openness at the conference and she wants to support the poverty alleviation efforts,” Zaw Oo, a Burmese economist who attended the meeting, told IPS. “It is one area where she and the government share a common interest without many ideological or political differences.” Thein Sein is also receiving credit for turning the spotlight on poverty, a scourge in a country rich in natural resources, including natural gas, which the earned the country eight billion dollars from export to Thailand from 2000 to 2008.

The former strongmen who reportedly profited from the windfall kept under wraps the fact of 19 million people – or 33 percent of the population – living below the poverty line.

Burma is currently ranked 138 out of 182 nations in the human development index of the United Nations.

“Giving such a high priority to poverty alleviation and economic development was unprecedented,” said Zaw Oo. “The government, recognising the problem and the challenges it faces, also held discussions that were open, with even ministers being challenged by members of the audience.”

The hint of reform in Burma under Thein Sein – who was chosen in late March by a national parliament elected in a controversial November poll, including blatant military interference – is winning international applause.

The European Union (EU) which has criticised the junta for years, and imposed sanctions on it, has responded positively. “I see an opportunity for more openness in Myanmar,” said Kristalina Georgieva, European Commissioner for international cooperation and humanitarian aid.

“I was encouraged by the authorities’ willingness to expand humanitarian access to more areas of Myanmar,” she told journalists here on Sunday following a two-day humanitarian mission. “The atmosphere in the country is different. We know there are agents for change.” The EU olive branch follows concessions announced after a pro-reform speech by the Burmese president soon after he assumed office. European ministers are now allowed to visit Burma and visa restrictions on Burmese officials, including the country’s foreign minister, have been lifted.

But, that is small comfort for victims of Burmese military oppression like Bo Kyi, a political prisoner for over a decade.

“The government has to release political prisoners and end human rights abuse across the country,” he says. “This change is only to ease international pressure and improve image.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
WASHINGTON, Jul 13 2011 (IPS)

Burmese convicts forced into military service have endured mistreatment that warrants a U.N. investigation into war crimes in the country, according to a new report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) Wednesday.

The 70-page report details the abuses carried out by the Burmese military, the Tatmadaw, against some 700 prisoners who were gathered from multiple prisons in January 2011 to serve as porters.

“Convict porters are the Burmese army’s disposable human pack-mules, lugging supplies through heavily mined battlefields,” said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at HRW. “Press-ganging prisoners into deadly front-line service raises the Burmese army’s cruelty to new levels.”

The report includes chilling testimonies from escaped porters, whose descriptions include being used as “human shields” in firefights and minefields.

The report was released as Burma has crept back into U.S. headlines over the past month.

Last month, the government warned pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi not to carry out her first national tour since she was released from house arrest in November.

Meanwhile, the nominee to be the first U.S. coordinator for Burma policy, Derek Mitchell, spoke at a Senate confirmation hearing at the end of June in a largely symbolic dialogue that suggested the Obama administration would be stepping up its engagement drive.

“The U.S. still seeks a peaceful, prosperous, open and democratic Burma that respects the rights of all its citizens and that adheres to its international obligations,” said Mitchell, a veteran diplomat on Asia.

Last week, however, a coalition of some 20 human rights groups, including HRW, sent a letter to President Obama, calling on his administration to exert greater pressure on the Burmese government.

The letter called for full implementation of all the banking sanctions authorised in the JADE act, which, similar to those imposed against Libya, allow the Treasury Department to target banks that endorse the government’s economic activities. It also called for a U.S.-led mobilisation for a U.N. Commission of Inquiry to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Burmese military’s campaigns.

Despite the scores of ethnic villages destroyed and hundreds of villagers arrested, tortured and killed by Burmese troops described in the letter, in addition to Wednesday’s report that detailed the accelerating vulnerability of prisoners to these abuses, the Obama administration has yet to deliver a response, Jennifer Quigley, advocacy director for the U.S. Campaign for Burma, one of the organisations that sponsored the letter, told IPS.

“[The Obama administration] has been extremely slow in taking action on this issue,” Quigley told IPS. “The U.S. has stated its support [for our advocacy], but it hasn’t moved from supporting us in condemning what the regime does toward actually doing something about it.”

A lack of accountability has bolstered a culture of impunity in Burma since the beginning of its military occupation in 1962.

For nearly two decades, the U.S. has imposed fluctuating sanctions on the oppressive regime long accused of murdering and raping political dissidents.

In a revised approach to the George W. Bush administration’s diplomatic offensive against Burma, Washington’s outreach to the Burmese government via peace talks launched in 2009 was one of the Obama administration’s first, of many, ‘carrot and stick’ tactics that marked a shift from his initial – unsuccessful – policy of isolating Burmese officials.

Choosing to engage Myanmar generals, as part of a pattern that continued with numerous other unpopular regimes, has left Obama’s administration open to criticism that it is soft or naive, and that it sidelines human rights concerns while legitimising authoritarian governments.

Nevertheless, in the wake of the country’s first elections in 20 years last November, the Obama administration refused to substantiate the victorious ruling party’s claims that it had won a free and fair election, as San Suu Kyi was banned from participating in the political process widely bent in the ruling party’s favour.

The new HRW report released Wednesday is “another shining example” that the military-to-civilian government make-over professed by the regime after its elections last November was little more than a change of costume for the country’s military officials, as the government today “pretends to be a new government when in fact, it is just the same,” Quigley told IPS.

The report is based on interviews conducted with 58 escaped porters, including both petty and serious offenders, who range in age from 20 to 57.

In the report, one escapee disclosed witnessing another convict being used as a human minesweeper.

“We were carrying food up to the camp and one porter stepped on a mine and lost his leg. The soldiers left him, he was screaming but no one helped,” he recalled. “When we came down the mountain he was dead. I looked up and saw bits of his clothing in the trees, and parts of his leg in a tree.”

In the report, HRW contends that the Burmese government’s longtime lack of accountability for its own abuses is worthy of a UN-led commission of inquiry into violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in Burma.

“The use of convict porters on the front line is only one facet of the brutal counterinsurgency practices. Serious abuses that amount to war crimes are being committed with the involvement or knowledge of high civilian and military officials,” the report said. “Credible and impartial investigations are needed into serious abuses committed by all parties to Burma’s internal armed conflicts.”

Burma is being considered as a host for the annual meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2014.

“ASEAN and European Union governments should stop hoping for things to magically improve in Burma and instead strongly push for a U.N. commission of inquiry,” Pearson said. “Every day that the international community does nothing is another day that the Burmese army will press more porters into deadly service.”

Excerpt:

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Jun 5 2011 (IPS)

If Burma’s quasi-civilian government was hoping for warmer ties with the U.S. government, Senator John McCain’s visit to this South-east Asian nation has placed such hopes on ice.

By the end of his three-day visit to the country, also known as Myanmar, the U.S. foreign policy heavyweight dropped hints he was giving Burma a failing grade over its supposed reforms toward democracy.

“Without concrete actions by this government that signal a deeper commitment towards democratic change, there should be no easing or lifting of sanctions,” the leading member of the Republican Party, who lost to President Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential race, told an audience in the former Burmese capital Rangoon.

McCain’s warning on the last day of his visit to Burma from Jun.1-3, targeted the government of President Thein Sein, a retired general whose administration took power in March following a flawed general election last November that ended half a century’s rule by a military junta.

McCain’s trip to Burma followed a visit last month by senior U.S. diplomat Joseph Yun and comes ahead of the Senate hearings to confirm Derek Mitchell, poised to become the first U.S. special envoy to Burma.

In 2009, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Kurt Campbell visited Burma, the highest-ranking U.S. diplomat to do so in 14 years, helping set the tone of the Obama administration’s Burma policy. That policy offers the carrot of greater engagement while wielding the stick of economic sanctions.

Before that policy, U.S. administrations had been steadfast in punishing the resource-rich but impoverished nation through a raft of sanctions. Since the mid-1990s, they included bans on imports of Burmese products into the U.S., prohibiting new American investments in Burma, and stopping the transfer of funds between the two countries.

Midway through McCain’s visit on Jun. 2, his fellow lawmakers at the House of Representatives in Washington D.C. held a hearing and echoed his views on Burma. “This engagement policy appears to have borne little fruit,” said Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, according to a story datelined Washington in The Irrawaddy, a current affairs website run by Burmese journalists in exile.

“Since its adoption, we have seen an American citizen imprisoned and tortured, Burmese generals engaged in possible nuclear proliferation with North Korea, a flawed election last year, and the continued imprisonment of over 2,000 political prisoners with only one, Aung San Suu Kyi, released,” she added, referring to the Nobel Peace laureate and pro-democracy leader who was freed from seven years of house arrest last November.

But the message McCain takes home to Washington is not all the Obama administration has to grapple with. Another challenge comes from Tomas Ojea Quintana, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Burma, who wants a commission of inquiry (CoI) to investigate gross human rights violations committed by Burmese troops along the country’s eastern and northern borders which are home to ethnic minorities.

“The government must undertake an independent and impartial inquiry of human rights violations,” the Argentine lawyer said in Bangkok recently, following a visit to Thailand to meet Burma’s ethnic minorities who have fled their country’s decades-long conflict.

“Systematic militarisation contributes to human rights abuses,” added Quintana, who made his first call for a CoI in March 2009, a move that is now supported by 16 countries. “These abuses include land confiscation, forced labour, internal displacement, extrajudicial killings and sexual violence.”

Among the recent victims are women from Burma’s ethnic Shan minority, whose accounts of suffering were shared with the U.N. envoy by the Shan Women’s Action Network (SWAN), a non-governmental group monitoring human rights violations in eastern Burma.

“Three Shan women were gang raped by soldiers from a Burmese light infantry brigade on Mar. 21,” revealed Charm Tong, a SWAN spokeswoman.

But while such disturbing accounts may strengthen the case for sanctions, critics of the measures imposed by the U.S. and European governments offer an equally disturbing parallel. The combination of economic sanctions and pressure to limit international humanitarian assistance to Burma has resulted in tens of thousands of children under five years dying from “preventable diseases,” including 1, they say.

The U.N. says Burma has the second worst child mortality rate in Asia, following war-ravaged Afghanistan. For every 1,000 babies born, an estimated 66 die before reaching the age of five, or one in every 15 children.

But humanitarian workers in Burma complain that such deaths – one estimate puts it at over 70,000 a year – have not triggered a rise in aid from the West. They point out that the country gets between five to six U.S. dollars per capita of aid, just one-tenth the amount Western donors spend per citizen in neighbouring and equally repressive Laos.

Western sanctions “have been incredibly counter-productive,” says Thant Myint-U, a respected Burmese historian. “The argument was that providing aid through the government would only strengthen repressive structures. But in thinking of the future, we need to rethink this equation.”

Excerpt:

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, May 10 2011 (IPS)

The new Burmese government’s request to chair the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) by 2014 has given its neighbours a political headache they have decided to put off dealing with till later this year.

But the dilemma that the 10-member regional bloc faces with Burma, or Myanmar as it is also known, is not the same one that had dogged it in the past, when the country’s oppressive record was seen as undermining ASEAN’s international credibility.

This time it is Burma’s slow and controlled transition towards democracy that puts ASEAN in a quandary.

The final statement read by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the end of the 18th ASEAN summit held May 7-8 in Jakarta reflected the new political realities Burma’s neighbours are grappling with. “We considered the proposal of Myanmar to host the ASEAN summit in 2014, in view of its firm commitment to the principles of ASEAN,” the statement said.

“ASEAN leaders do not object in principle to the proposal,” Yudhoyono added during the closing press conference in the Indonesian capital. “But Myanmar, which is the focus of world attention, is expected to continue progress on democracy so when it becomes chair it does not generate negative views.”

Holding out such a diplomatic carrot exposes ASEAN, which Burma joined in 1997, as being more lenient towards member countries such as Vietnam, Laos and Brunei. The latter have chaired ASEAN before, despite lacking the fledgling plural political culture taking shape in Burma following its first general election in two decades last November, ending nearly 50 years of military rule.

That November poll, despite its flaws, paved the way for a small parliamentary opposition to emerge, complemented by the political freedom granted to pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi after seven years under house arrest. The Nobel Peace laureate has resumed her role as a widely respected government critic.

“What differentiates Burma from other countries in ASEAN is not a lack of representative institutions,” said Thant Myint-U, a Burmese historian and author of ‘The River of Lost Footsteps”, an account of the country’s transformation during British colonialism.

“However flawed the elections, Burma now at least has a semi-elected legislature that includes opposition parties, and opposition figures including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi speak openly to the international media,” Thant said.

“This is far from ideal, but it’s certainly no worse, and arguably much better, than several other ASEAN countries,” he explained to IPS. “What differentiates Burma are the continued detention of large number of political prisoners, something that will hopefully change soon; Western sanctions; its extreme poverty; and perhaps most importantly, the unfinished nature of its six decade-long armed conflicts.”

Other Burma watchers also draw attention to the changing political landscape in the country, that hints at a shift away from the dominant grip of the military, headed since the early 1990s by Senior Gen. Than Shwe, and military strongman Ne Win before him.

“There is a diffusion of state power, unlike before, where power was in the hands of one man, Than Shwe and before him Ne Win,” asserts Richard Horsey, a former United Nations official who served in the country.

“Four power blocs are emerging—to balance each other and to compete with each other. They are the military, executive, parliament and the Union Solidarity and Development Party (the political arm of the former junta which triumphed at the polls),” Horsey, the author of a book on forced labour in Burma, told IPS. “Before the Nov. 7 polls, people had to impress Than Shwe to get things approved. But not any more.”

The International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, has similarly argued for countries to move away from punishing Burma, calling for a policy that “provides much greater support for Myanmar’s people.”

“It would be a mistake to conclude that nothing has changed,” the Crisis Group noted in a March report, “Myanmar’s Post-Election Landscape”. “These changes are unlikely to translate into dramatic reforms in the short term, but they provide a new governance context, improving the prospects for incremental reform.”

By contrast, Vietnam and Laos, which have been under the iron grip of communist-ruled governments since the mid-1970s, and Brunei, an absolute monarchy, appear far from opening up to political change. Landlocked Laos had a tightly controlled election for its national assembly on the eve of ASEAN’s 18th summit, where there was no hint of an opposition. The same is expected to follow on May 22 for Vietnam’s national assembly election, say analysts.

Of ASEAN’s other members—Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand—only Indonesia and the Philippines win accolades for having an increasingly open democratic culture. While Cambodia and Singapore are largely one-party, authoritarian states, Thailand’s democracy has been hampered by military interference.

Consequently even trenchant critics of Burma, like Human Rights Watch (HRW), the New York-based global rights lobby, note that the country’s new government has put ASEAN in a spot by making a push to host the 2014 ASEAN summit in its quest for international legitimacy.

“Burma’s new argument is that it is no worse than Vietnam, Laos, Brunei and arguably even Cambodia,” says Phil Robertson, HRW’s deputy Asia director. “The government will say they should not be singled out; don’t make us the whipping boy.

“It was easier for ASEAN when things used to be black and white, between the military and Suu Kyi. But now things have faded to grey, and Burma will try to use this ‘grey’ strategy,” he told IPS. “But for us, nothing has changed in Burma.”

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By Larry Jagan
BANGKOK, Apr 25 2011 (IPS)

Already Burma’s new civilian government poses problems for its Asian allies as it tries to woo the international community. The month-old quasi-civilian administration, led by President Thein Sein has launched a new diplomatic charm offensive in an effort to get international approval for the cosmetic changes that have been introduced under the guise of a new civilian government.

The President’s first priority is to ensure that the region endorses the changes – and in a move to consolidate that, the Thein Sein has already written to the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan, renewing their bid to become chairman of the organisation.

It is the first salvo in a new diplomatic offensive to secure regional and international credibility for the new government and reduce its international isolation.

“The Thein Sein regime is desperate for international recognition,” said Win Min, a Burmese academic currently based in the United States. “It’s crucial for them to gain credibility and a measure of respectability for their new so-called civilian government.”

But this diplomatic offensive on the part of the Burmese leaders will inevitably increase tension between the West, which still supports sanctions against the regime, and Asia, which is keen to integrate Burma into the region’s economy and strategic structures. Burma’s diplomatic initiatives are only likely to intensify the divisions between Asia and the West – especially the U.S. – on how to cope with the problems posed by Burma’s strategic aims.

While the U.S. appointed a special envoy, Derek Mitchell, and the European Union’s revised visa restrictions on government ministers may signal a new preparedness to deal with the new Burmese government, what Burma wants more than tacit recognition, is approval and support, especially from the region.

Immediately after being sworn in as President, Thein Sein wrote to the ASEAN secretariat asking the organisation to accept Burma’s bid to become chairman in 2014.

In 2004, Burma skipped the chance to become chairman in 2006, amid international pressure on the group to reject Burma’s turn to chair the regional bloc. Now the government is anxious to take its turn again – and wants ASEAN’s approval at the forthcoming ASEAN summit in Indonesia next month.

But some of Burma’s neighbours remain wary of being used as a pawn in Burma’s global mission to prove the new government represents a significant change – from a naked military dictatorship to pluralist power structure.

The bottom line for many countries in the region is that Burma has always been a thorn in ASEAN’s side, ever since it joined in 1997, and has been a major obstacle to smoother and deeper relations with its strategic partners, especially Europe and the United States.

The emergence of a new civilian government under President Thein Sein has only complicated the situation, especially as the new Burmese administration seeks to get the region’s approval and bolster its international credibility as a legitimately elected government.

China has already been very supportive – and a senior Chinese political leader was the first international visitor to Naypyidaw, only days after the new regime was sworn in. But it is ASEAN approval that Burma craves.

At the ASEAN summit in Hanoi last year Thein Sein – then under Than Shwe’s instructions – pushed for Burma to be given the chairmanship in 2011. The top general’s aim was to have ASEAN endorse the new civilian government by giving it the ASEAN chairmanship. But the request was rejected – and Indonesia, Cambodia and Brunei were conferred as the next three chairs – leaving 2014 as the earliest Burma could expect to become the head of the organisation.

This was a clear message to Burma that concrete change was expected before the new government could become the chairman of ASEAN. It was the only way we could communicate our irritation at being kept in the dark over the planned elections and political change, the ASEAN secretary general Surin Pitsuwan told Inter Press Service in an interview in Hanoi immediately after the meeting.

“ASEAN is very much interested in the peaceful national reconciliation in Myanmar and whatever happens there will have implications in ASEAN, positive or negative,” he said.

Now the countries of ASEAN have been left in a deepening quandary. They want to pressure the Burmese government to become more democratic and transparent while maintaining whatever influence they have on the regime.

“We have to continue to engage with the Myanmar government,” Thailand’s Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva told correspondents in Bangkok recently. “If we hadn’t that stance, the situation inside the country would be much worse.”

Now it seems the issue of Burma’s chairmanship of ASEAN has returned to haunt the organisation – as it did more than ten years ago. But it is the only leverage the countries of the region have over the regime in Naypyidaw.

“Bullying, coaxing and admonishing them has had no effect,” an Asia diplomat with long contact with the top Burmese leadership said. “If we push too hard they will simply close the door on us, or worse, leave the organisation unilaterally.”

The chairmanship of the organisation may be the only clout ASEAN has with the Burmese regime. But more importantly ASEAN also knows that relations with their main strategic partners – especially Australia, the EU and the U.S. – will almost inevitably be put at risk.

Washington has already chipped into the controversy indicating it would be reluctant to work closely with Burma as its chair. “Obviously, we would have concerns about Burma in any kind of leadership role because of their poor human rights record and domestically,” the State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, recently told reporters in Washington.

So Burma’s diplomatic charm offensive may have already further fuelled the furore between the West and Asia over how to handle Burma; and instead of reducing tension between the two spheres, Burma’s so-called civilian government may have only become another bone of contention between them.

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By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Apr 25 2011 (IPS)

A raging insurgency in Thailand’s southernmost provinces has become a breeding ground for another potential killer – the malaria-carrying Anopheles mosquito – that is threatening to wipe out the gains Thailand has achieved in fighting the disease.

The number of malaria cases has risen to over 4,000 in the area close to the Thai-Malaysian border where a shadowy network of rebels has been fighting Thai troops since 2004.

The area – including the provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani – is far from the traditional locations where Thailand has been combating the killer mosquito, setting off alarm bells within the country’s public health community.

“The number of malaria cases reported near the Thai-Malaysia border for last year was 4,269,” Dr. Wichai Satimai, director of the Bureau of Vector-borne Diseases at the Health Ministry, told IPS. “Yala province had the highest with over 3,000, which is a huge increase from what it was before 2004, when there were less than 30 cases per year.”

Yala, known for its hilly terrain covered with thick tropical forests and rubber plantations, had emerged with the second highest number of malaria cases out of all provinces in this South-east Asian kingdom last year, according to the country’s Public Health Ministry. The neighbouring province of Narathiwat has also climbed into the top 10 provinces where the mosquito-borne killer parasite has left its mark.

The traditional malaria locations include Tak province along Thailand’s north-western border with Burma. Last year, 15,181 out of the total 22,342 cases were detected along the Thai-Burma border.

“If ignored, the number of cases could rise to 30,000 or even 300,000 rapidly,” warned Dr. Pratap Singhasivanon, dean of the faculty of tropical medicine at Mahidol University, on the outskirts of Bangkok. “Those infected will carry the parasites longer if we do not increase our mosquito control activity.”

Such disturbing numbers would mark a dramatic reversal from the feat Thailand achieved in rolling back the spread of malaria over the past decade. In 1999, the country recorded 125,359 cases, with 740 fatalities. By 2007, the numbers slid down to 33,178 cases, with 0.15 deaths per 100,000 people.

Thailand’s success has been attributed to the spread of nearly 900 malaria posts and clinics offering universal free treatment to anyone falling ill from malaria. These posts succeeded in limiting malaria hotspots to the borders Thailand shares with Burma, Cambodia, Laos and, now, Malaysia.

At the malaria posts, a trained staff pricks the finger of a patient to get blood samples, followed by a course of drugs to kill the malaria parasite. They also help with prevention, reminding communities to spray homes to keep them free of mosquitoes.

These posts have taken on added importance in the wake of a deadly malaria parasite that has developed resistance to the effective anti-malaria drugs.

But the conflict in Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani has hampered the operations of malaria posts spread across remote villages that are home to the Malay-Muslims, the largest minority in predominantly Buddhist Thailand.

Fear of getting caught in the insurgency has resulted in a drop in the number of medical staff willing to go to health centres in isolated areas, said Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat, Thailand analyst for the Crisis Group, the Brussels-based think tank. “Medical staff is reluctant to go to villages considered ‘red zones’ by the army.”

The insurgency has claimed more than 4,500 lives and left more than 11,000 people injured.

“Some places in the ‘red zones’ require the medical staff to walk to access communities to give them treatment, and this has decreased,” she told IPS. “Some hospitals in remote areas are also facing staffing shortages, because the medical staff fear working there.”

In over seven years of the insurgency, Thailand’s military has classified as ‘red zones’ nearly 350 areas where Malay-Muslim rebels are most active, out of nearly 2,000 villages nestled amid rice fields, rubber plantations and forests.

The recent weeks have seen a spike in the violence, including bomb explosions in Pattani and a late evening gun battle, which left a paramilitary soldier and two suspected Malay-Muslims dead following an ambush on an army outpost in Pattani.

“The violence since 2004 has seen a breakdown of the health outreach services to stop the spread of malaria,” said Arafen Thaipratan, a surgeon at the main hospital in the city of Yala, the capital of the province. “Before, the staff went to get rid of the source, in addition to helping with awareness and health care.

“People living and working in the rubber plantations have been most affected,” he revealed, in a telephone interview from Yala. “They are the people who work while it is still dark, to tap the rubber trees.”

The reluctance of health workers who are Thai-Buddhists to go to areas perceived as hostile is not the only reason undermining Thailand’s battle with malaria. Even Malay-Muslim recruits refuse to go, but for different reasons. “They are viewed with suspicion, as spies or government informers, by the locals,” said a health worker.

The current conflict is rooted in tensions that have grown since 1902, when Siam, as Thailand was then known, annexed the three southern provinces that were then part of the Malay-Muslim kingdom of Pattani.

Malay-Muslim feelings of cultural, linguistic and economic marginalisation in the wake of heavy- handed policies by Bangkok gave rise to the first generation of rebels, who mounted a separatist campaign in 1970.

Tropical medicine experts like Pratap cite the need to draw a distinction between the insurgency and the looming malaria threat in the south. “We are trying to make the local people separate the health issue from the conflict,” he told IPS. “The health system is there, but the medical staff does not have access to it.”

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By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Apr 22 2011 (IPS)

A small army of volunteers from local non-governmental organisations has fanned out across Burma to inoculate 3.4 million children from a rare strain of the polio virus that has re-emerged three years after the country was declared polio free.

Some 12,000 volunteers are racing against time to reach close to 115 of the 325 townships in the South-east Asian nation also called Myanmar. Local health authorities and United Nations officials want the vulnerable children under five years to receive the oral polio vaccine before the monsoon breaks in late May.

But health volunteers face other odds: Many of the communities are inaccessible, and health is not a priority of the Burmese government.

“To reach scattered and mobile populations and difficult-to-reach areas will be challenging,” said Dr. Tin Htut, health specialist for child immunisation at the Burma office of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “Best efforts will be made to reach every child through house-to-house visits to find any child missed in the days after the campaign.”

Polio, which is transmitted in human excrement, attacks the nervous system and “can cause irreversible paralysis within hours,” said the World Health Organisation (WHO). “Young children are the most vulnerable.”

The on-going mass vaccination campaign in Burma comes as a new government replaces a succession of oppressive military regimes that have been in power for nearly 50 years. The new government that took over after last November’s general election – the first in 20 years – is still largely military driven, although in civilian garb.

Critics of Burma’s military leaders do not expect the new government to stand in the way of the inoculation drive, but they ask whether the administration of President Thein Sein will inject more funds into the ailing public health system.

The country’s latest budget, announced in January, had allocated nearly 25 percent for the country’s 450,000-strong military and only 1.3 percent for health.

Concern about the re-emergence of vaccine-driven polio virus (VDPV) surfaced after a seven-month old infant was infected with the crippling virus in December in the Yamethin Township in the Mandalay Division in central Burma.

The case prompted the Department of Health to immediately immunise 10,000 children living in the vicinity. It also brought to an end the three-year period from 2007 till 2010 when U.N. agencies declared Burma “polio free”.

“The occurrence of even one case of polio in a previously polio free area is considered a public health emergency that requires rapid and high quality health responses as an utmost priority,” Ramesh Shreshta, head of the UNICEF office in Burma, said before the current immunisation campaign was launched. “This must involve a house-to-house campaign to ensure no child is missed.”

The brief outbreak of polio in Burma in 2007 came after a lapse of seven years, since the country had previously been declared polio free in 2000, marking another success at the time for a worldwide polio eradication effort.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), led by the World Health Organisation (WHO), UNICEF and Rotary International among others, is on the cusp of finally defeating this debilitating virus.

“Since 1988 (when GPEI was launched), the incidence of polio has been reduced by more than 99 percent,” said Dr. Patrick O’Connor, advisor for vaccine preventable diseases surveillance and polio at the WHO’s South East-Asia regional office, based in New Delhi.

From more than 350,000 children paralysed in 125 endemic countries each year in 1988, the incidence rate dropped to 974 children in 2010, O’Connor revealed in an interview.

“Only four countries remain endemic: Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan,” he added.

But the reappearance of the rare strain of virus in a community where some people have been immunized and others have not serves as a cautionary tale for public health experts.

“On occasion, when the polio vaccine is replicating in the human gut, it can genetically change and may spread and cause paralysis in communities that are not fully immunized, especially in areas with poor sanitation and over crowding,” WHO said.

“All countries in the region with poorly immunized communities remain susceptible to all forms of polio virus and are potentially at risk,” O’Connor explained. “Most recently Nepal, Indonesia and Bangladesh all had importations after a period of being polio free.”

Local authorities and U.N. agencies are now deep into the anti-polio campaign. “The first round was planned for the first week of April and the second round (will begin) in the first week of May,” said UNICEF’s Tin Htut.

“If this new government is sincere, they should spend money to improve the health system,” a Rangoon-based doctor told IPS on condition of anonymity. “It is more foreign aid than local funds going to pay for campaigns like the polio eradication effort.”

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By Larry Jagan
BANGKOK, Apr 10 2011 (IPS)

A new quasi-civilian government has taken over in Burma, but diplomats, analysts and pro-democracy activists are dismissing it as nothing more than “old wine in a new bottle”.

Burma analysts believe that strongman Than Shwe has only retreated to the backroom. Than Shwe recently stepped down as commander-in-chief of the Burmese army and relinquished day-to-day control of the country after nearly two decades as head of the military junta.

“He is likely to be pulling the strings from behind the curtain,” said the Burmese academic Win Min, now based in the U.S. “He will use his influence behind the scenes, relying on personal patronage and connections.”

“If anyone thinks this new government is a step towards democracy they are sadly mistaken,” said Maung Zarni, researcher at the London School of Economics.

Yet there are those who see change coming to Burma, though not the sort that most Burmese people are yearning for.

A new system of government has been unveiled, in which parliament will play a subsidiary part, and the executive, headed by newly elected president Thein Sein, will play the leading role.

The new government was formed after elections last November, in which the pro-junta Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) won by a landslide. Most western countries, and the pro-democracy movement led by Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, have rejected the results as a sham.

But there has been a clear transfer of power to a new generation. Although mainly military men or former soldiers, most of Burma’s new leaders are under the age of 60 and have a technocratic background. Even the military officers turned politicians, who occupy part of the 25 percent of parliament seats reserved for serving soldiers, have a different outlook.

The new army chief, 55-year-old General Min Aung Hlaing, is reported to be a professional soldier keen on restoring the prestigious image of the army tainted by the repression after the uprising of 1988, and the 22 years of authoritarian rule that followed.

There are other signs of change. On his recent visit, senior Chinese leader Jia Qinglin, the fourth most important man in the Communist Party’s political bureau, did not meet Than Shwe. Jia was instead hosted by Thura Shwe Mann, speaker of the Lower House and vice-president of the ruling party USDP.

But there are other signs that those who have resigned or retired from the army no longer have their military stripes. Soldiers no longer guard the homes of former top military officers, including Than Shwe and the former No. 2 leader Maung Aye, either in the capital Naypyidaw or Rangoon, according to residents in these cities. The police have taken over that duty, as they do in most countries that are regarded as civilian democracies.

This is a sign that Burma is moving, albeit tentatively, towards becoming a civilian-governed society. Of course, what Burma is experiencing now is a transition; it is not yet democracy and it may not yet be significant change. It is something akin to Indonesia under Suharto’s Golkar-led government.

This may not be the sort of democracy that most Burmese people want, but it could be a significant step towards an Asian-style democracy. Even in Thailand the military continues to play a significant political role behind the scenes, and in the recent past shown it was not averse to intervening with force as it did in September 2006, the last time the military staged a coup.

This is the critical hope for Burma – a transition similar to what has happened in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Thailand in the last 20 years.

Of course, worrying signs still remain that Burma’s form of “disciplined democracy” as the military prefer to call it, may not match the minimum standards of civilian-military regimes in the rest of Asia. Too many military men and former soldiers dominate the country’s emerging political scene. Change is impossible as the military mind remains entrenched even in the new political system which pretends to be a civilian administration, according to Maung Zarni of the London School of Economics.

Even if the top generals have retired to the back room, the new crop of officers are effectively clones. “The officer corps are a sub-class of society that has come to view themselves as the ruling class, feeling they are eternally entitled to rule,” Zarni said in an interview with IPS.

“Whoever takes their places (Than Shwe and Maung Aye) will not be more enlightened or more progressive, simply because they have all been inculcated with thuggish, racist, sexist and neo-totalitarian leadership values, and only junior generals who are their mirror image have been promoted,” said Zarni.

As yet there is still little room for discussion and dialogue – crucial elements of a democracy or an emerging civilian form of government. Parliament is yet to be a fully functioning legislature, though some questions that had been taboo before – ethnic education issues, land confiscation, the release of political prisoners – were put to the president.

The parliament is now in recess and may not meet again for another year, the minimum set by the constitution. But above all there is no role as yet for Burma’s real opposition – Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy (NLD) – though the opposition leader has asked to meet the new president and government, according to senior sources in the NLD.

But there is good reason to remain skeptical. Change will not happen quickly. “The train has left the station, but we don’t know where it going or how long the journey will be,” said a Burmese academic on condition of anonymity.

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