Poacher turned gamekeeper? Burma to host ASEAN human rights meeting

May 14th, 2012

http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/4074

BANGKOK—The Asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) will hold its next meeting in Rangoon this June in another transitional landmark for Burma’s reformist government that nonetheless stands accused of ongoing human rights abuses.

Despite conflict between Burmese government troops and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in the country’s far north, the AICHR “will resume their discussion at the sixth meeting in [Rangoon], Myanmar on June 3-6, 2012,” after meetings last week in Thailand, according to a press release from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean)—the ten-state regional grouping of which Burma assumes the chair in 2014.

The Rangoon meeting is aimed at finalizing a draft regional human rights declaration to be presented to Southeast Asian foreign ministers, but has generated mixed feelings among Burmese activists.

Cheery Zahau is a human rights analyst from the Chin region of Burma, close to India. She told The Irrawaddy that “if Burma hosts this meeting, it needs to end the ongoing human rights violations committed by the army and all security forces in ethnic areas.” (more…)

---

Commodity prices, cronyism threaten Burma’s economy: UN – The Irrawaddy/Asia Sentinel

May 10th, 2012

http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/3928

http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4495&Itemid=217

BANGKOK—Burma’s economic prospects could be undermined by volatile commodity prices, according to the United Nations, which says that reliance on the now-lucrative oil and gas sectors could hinder fiscal modernization.

Western companies appear eager to tap into Burma’s natural resources as US and EU sanctions are relaxed or suspended in the wake of a succession of recent reforms such as the freeing of political prisoners and the holding of free and fair by-elections on April 1.

But although the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia-Pacific (UN-ESCAP) predicts 6.2 percent economic growth for Burma in 2012, the region remains vulnerable to fluctuating prices of commodities such as oil and the ongoing debt crisis in Europe.

Demand for primary resources from large “emerging” economies such as China and India has pushed oil and gas prices upwards. This means extra revenues for the Burmese government and, given the recent ending of the country’s dual exchange rate system, possibly a more transparent disclosure of the nation’s energy earnings.

But in an April research note on Burma’s economy, the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace warned that “it is critical that these net earnings are transferred to the budget and used for social and infrastructure development, especially in regions with ethnic minorities.”

Otherwise, Burma could fall victim to the so-called “resource curse” with “commodity boom countries falling back in terms of overall modernization and diversification of their economies,” according to UN-ESCAP. (more…)

---

KNU believes Burma government is on the level – The Irrawaddy

May 4th, 2012

http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/3599

BANGKOK – After two rounds of peace talks with the Burmese government, the Karen National Union (KNU) says that it believes the government is sincere about peace talks, but warns that substantive political issues remain to be discussed and that the 2008 constitution will likely need revising in advance of any durable settlement.

“I think you can take the government at face value,” said KNU negotiator and spokesperson Naw May Oo Mutraw. “The government has demonstrated a desire for change,” she added.

The KNUs armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) has fought the Burmese army since the late 1940s in what is often-described as the world’s longest running civil war, but KNU leaders recently met in Burma with President Thein Sein and with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, after a first series of meetings with government interlocutors back in January.

“There are indications from the second round of talks that the government will not rely on a military solution alone to solve ethnic issues,” said Naw Zipporah Sein, General-Secretary of the KNU, speaking at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand in Bangkok on Thursday night.

Looking ahead, fellow negotiator Saw Kwe Htoo Win said that if there is a settlement, once-unthinkable developments such as Karen militiamen joining the national army might be possible. “If there is a political solution, the KNLA can join the union army”, he said. (more…)

---

Why nations fail, and why Burma may succeed – The Irrawaddy

April 23rd, 2012

http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/2942

Authors of new book say it will be difficult for Burma’s rulers to return to all-out repression

Why Nations Fail – The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty is arguably the most talked-about social science book of 2012 so far. James A. Robinson, a Harvard political scientist, and Daron Acemoglu, an economist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, collaborated on finding and outlining answers to a big question: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?

After fifteen years of research and looking at historical evidence from the Roman Empire, Mayan city states, medieval Venice, across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, Robinson and Acemoglu conclude that it is man-made political and economic institutions that matter most.

The authors also take a look at some of the big issues for today: will China’s authoritarian growth model trump the West? Will the U.S. falter? How can countries – such as Burma – achieve prosperity?

Simon Roughneen discussed Burma with the the authors, getting their thoughts on what might come next for the country that is on a military-backed reform course, after a half-century of army rule.

Q. In your new book you discuss how governments often benefit from or even become ‘extractive institutions’, effectively looting the country they are supposed to govern and undermining development in the process. This sounds remarkably like Burma under the military junta. So do you see Burma – at least in its pre-2011 guise – as a case-in-point for your thesis?

A. Yes absolutely. The ‘extractiveness’ of the political institutions is manifest in two ways we think. First political power has been narrowly controlled by the army. Even now the there has been an opening of the system this is really just an attempt by the army to institutionalize their power in a way which they think will be more enduring.

Second, the state is not very strong, for example there are large almost independent parts of the country outside of the Irrawaddy Valley. The extractive political institutions have led to an extractive economy to the benefit of the military elite but at the expense of Burma’s development.

(more…)

---

Thailand and Burma wrangle over migrant worker laws – The Irrawaddy

April 20th, 2012

http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/2801

BANGKOK―More than 200,000 workers from Burma could be flown into Bangkok to be employed in Thai factories under a direct state-to-state agreement, according to a Thai Labor Ministry spokesman.

The plan is designed to address a labor shortage in Thailand and would involved available workers being flown directly to the capital. Burma has an estimated three million unemployed and many millions more on extremely low incomes.

The announcement was made at a joint Bangkok press conference on Thursday featuring representatives of both the Thai and Burmese labor ministries. The move would have to be ratified at a bilateral meeting in Burma next month.

Proposals to safeguard workers rights include having contracts that could be revoked or ended after six months on mutual consent if Thai bosses abuse their Burmese workers physically, the employer dies or the business finishes, or the employer violates the Thai Labour Law.

Meanwhile, five new centers enabling Burmese migrant workers to better-formalize their status in Thailand open on Friday.

Brandishing a new sample purple-covered machine-readable passport, which he says will be issued at the five additional nationality verification centers, Burmese Deputy Minister for Labor Myint Thein told assembled media that the Thai government finally agreed to allow the centers to open after a four-month delay. (more…)

---

Kachin abuses undermine Burma’s reform claims – The Irrawaddy

March 20th, 2012

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=23243

BANGKOK—Since a 1994 ceasefire between the Burmese army and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) broke down last June, Kachin civilians have suffered human rights abuses at the hands of the Burmese government forces, including extrajudicial killings, torture, rape, forced displacement and the denial of humanitarian aid, says New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).

More than 70,000 Kachin villagers have been driven from their homes by fighting in the resource-rich northern Burmese state, and on-off peace talks between the two sides have to date failed to yield a ceasefire. HRW says that both the Burmese army and the KIA are laying landmines and deploying child soldiers—sometimes as young as 14—to the front line.

“Both parties are using anti-personnel mines, both are using child soldiers,” says Matthew Smith, the lead researcher of the HRW report, Untold Miseries: Wartime Abuses and Forced Displacement in Kachin State, which documents over 100 interviews with those involved in and affected by the fighting. (more…)

---

Off the road to Mandalay – The Irrawaddy

March 12th, 2012

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=23193

MANDALAY—A visit to The Moustache Brothers is a rite of passage for any foreign journalist visiting Mandalay, Burma’s second city and the former capital before the invading British deposed the country’s last King, Thibaw, in 1885.

Lu Maw, the sole English speaker in the 60-something comedy trio, sits cross-legged on the floor in an upstairs room, chain-smoking cheroots and wise-cracking. A warm-up, it seems, for the Brothers’ nightly performance, due to start in a couple of hours.

An environmental report running on the Deutsche Welle news on a nearby TV sets him off. “You know Burma’s government will save us all from global warming,” he says. “Thailand floods: global warming, Australia bushfire: global warming,” and the list goes on. “The UN has a meeting on global warming and say ‘let’s turn off all lights for one hour, one day a year.’”

Then the punchline: “But the Burma government makes sure there is no light 24/7, all year! They will solve global warming!” quips Lu Maw, referring to Burma’s notorious electricity shortages despite the country having plenty of resources in the form of oil, gas and hydropower. (more…)

---

Kachin war aid largely a local affair – The Irrawaddy

March 7th, 2012

Estimated 70,000 Kachin war refugees living in camps by Sino-Burmese borders survive on local donations as international charities are unwilling or unable to gain access.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=23163

LAIZA, Kachin State—With headlights dimmed it is difficult to spot every rubble-strewn crest-and-wave in time, and the surrounding dark enhances the jolts from the bumps and hollows in the coiling road from Laiza to Jeyang camp.

It is just a 15 minute drive from Laiza—headquarters of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO)—to Jeyang, site of the largest camp for the estimated 70,000 people driven from their homes by fighting in the region.

The current conflict began in June 2011, ending a 17-year ceasefire between the KIO and Burmese government. The Jeyang camp sits a stone’s throw from the Burma-China border, marked by a river of the same name, and in what in daytime is sun-lit valley floor, walled off on either side by haze-topped, tree-lined slopes. (more…)

---

Karen Civic Leaders Call for Political Solution – The Irrawaddy

March 5th, 2012

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=23145

BANGKOK—Welcoming the tentative recent truce between the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Burmese government, several Karen leaders say that reforms are not yet being felt in Karen State and other ethnic regions of Burma.

“The KNU is still a banned organisation,” says Zoya Phan, the chair of the European Karen Network. “Many of the repressive laws are still in place in Burma, and these need to be changed.”

The rules effectively mean that the KNU cannot discuss peace openly with Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy, and that an estimated 160 Karen political prisoners remain in jail, despite recent government amnesties. (more…)

---

No saying no to rehab in KIO territory – The Irrawaddy

February 29th, 2012

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=23124

LAIZA, Kachin State — After 10 minutes talking about her arrest and detention by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), Ma Su Su wells up and a single tear dissolves a line through the cream-colored thanaka on her right cheek.

“I miss my children, yes, I do, a lot,” she says. For the past three months, she has been sharing a 10 x 10 foot cell with seven other women, since being caught carrying 40,000 yuan (US $6,350) worth of methamphetamines from China into Laiza, the capital of KIA-held territory in northern Burma.

A 15-meter wide river separates the two countries, making clandestine crossings relatively easy for those of a mind to do so. But Ma Su Su, an ethnic Burman from Bhamo in Kachin State, did not know that the KIA keeps a close eye out for drug smugglers at crossing points.

“I was promised 500,000 kyat [$625] to carry the pills to Laiza,” she says. “I usually only earn 2,000 kyat [$2.50] per day in Bhamo.” (more…)

---